Wallace Wattleswrote: “[S]ociety is so organized that man must have money in order to become the possessor of things…” Whether you are a fan of Wattles or not, he is right, the days of trading a pound of butter for a bag of wheat are a little past us now. Randy Gage wrote recently that money is a measuring stick. “If you do something at an extraordinary, exemplary and world class level in the marketplace, the market will make you rich. Because that is the way prosperity works.”

The problem is not money, but how people use it and view it. Money is a symbol and a powerful one at that. Money is not just paper to most people. According to Richard Trachtman, Ph.D., the problem for most people is that money represents such a wide area of problems including anxiety, depression, paranoia, impotence, impulse spending, gambling, social isolation, suicide, and murder. Most people have been taught that it is a taboo to talk about money. There are even books such as Etiquette written in 1922 and its new 17th edition, Emily Post’s Etiquette, that tell us it is rude in most cases to talk to people about personal finances. In 1908 Freud even connected money with feces and connected it to anal eroticism… WHAT in the world? No wonder people are so afraid of money.

No question that money surrounds us. Money can be influential, tempting and seductive. It is a main motivation in our world today. It is a primary reason for divorce and the love of money is for many one of the strongest moving forces in life.

The philosopher, Jacob Needlemansays that money must become a tool for any modern man or woman seriously wishing to find meaning in their lives. “We must use money in order to study ourselves as we are and as we can become.” Money is just a tool and it is about time we studied how we feel about ourselves.

Randy Gage is right, money is a measuring stick (a tool) and most people subconsciously know that. That is why it scares the heck out of them. People feel that money proves they are worth little and accomplish almost nothing. Why do you think people run from the topic of money and are secretive, embarrassed and conflicted about the subject of money?

If money scares you to death, join the club. It is so hard to talk about, the majority of newly weds have yet to even discuss it in any depth before the big day. However, to be successful in business and especially in network marketing, it is time to comfort your fear and understand what money can become to you, instead of how you think it defines you today.

What do you think?

In network marketing we build romantic stories about the successful leaders. We imagine that they hit home runs every at bat, throw 90 yard touch down passes and sink hook shots from 50 feet out on a consistent basis. It reminds of the Mel Gibson Classic Braveheart, where a young soldier doubted Wallace’s identity because he looked too ordinary:

William Wallace: Sons of Scotland! I am William Wallace.

Young Soldier: William Wallace is seven feet tall!

William Wallace: Yes, I’ve heard. Kills men by the hundreds. And if HE were here, he’d consume the English with fireballs from his eyes, and bolts of lightning from his arse.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It borders the absurd how we describe the accomplishments of ordinary people (Network marketing icons are really just normal dudes like the rest of us). This improper characterization is bad for new people and discourages rather than keeping them going. Who in the world really ever built their business without getting the crud beat of them?  New people get discouraged if they think they have to live up to impossible feats of marketing. In reality network marketing legends become what they are because they do the little things well. In an Eric Worre video post, he accurately tells us the secret to retention in network marketing is really just small victories. He is right.

Jenkins Lloyd Jones summed life up pretty well when he said, “[The fact is] most putts don’t drop. Most beef is tough. Most children grow up to be just people. Most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration. Most jobs are more often dull than otherwise… Life is like an old?time rail journey delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed.”

The people who think they will build their businesses with 4,000 people at every meeting and sponsoring only superstars do not understand how real success is achieved in MLM. Only marketers who consistently and diligently achieve small successes will create extraordinary profits in network marketing or make a lasting difference in the lives of their downline.

If you want a group of successful people in your downline, teach them that you will not fill coliseums without filling out a ton of names lists with newbies, teaching them to get passionate about a great product and sharing it with others. Great accomplishments are rarely achieved by overcoming the impossible with a miraculous effort in a short period of time. Great success in network marketing comes from creating habits over time that allow you to build persistently and which allow you to consistently improve your performance.

Great marketing leaders such as Eric Worre, Dexter Yager and Doug Wead are often credited with making a giant impact on groups. These icons within network marketing became who they are because of their ability to do the small things every day. I would even go so far as to say that the icons in network marketing are who they are because of the thousands of people like you and me who are doing the small things each day in their downline. The ultimate downline does not consist of just an incredible leader, but a group of people dedicated to the same goal. May I be so bold as to say that our main goal should be to deliver small victories every day to our new people.

It is time to dispel the myth of the network marketing Hail Mary which is the false belief that we can skip the growth pains and create the foundation for our business instantly and painlessly.  Hail Mary’s almost never work in American football and it does not work in MLM either. True success comes from the small and simple things done continuously. When we do the basics of network marketing consistently it can lead to exhilarating moments when we fill an arena with people.

Great leaders in network marketing are just simple people. I have met so many of them and what makes them geniuses is the fact that they know they are not geniuses. Our industry will become respected and our incomes sustained when we realize that we too can create extraordinary results by consistently doing the ordinary.

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

– Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Rule 2 – Four hours a week won’t create much profitability. Read my last post in this series. Monavie distributors that put in 4 hours a week made almost nothing. Monavie distributors who put in 9 hours a week were making pretty good money. You know that you don’t have a superstar if he or she is not willing to put in the time.

Rule 3 – Test your people who say they are committed. Many marketers cringe at this rule. “I want everyone to be comfortable,” they think. “I don’t want to blow anyone out.” Well fine, have an underachieving group that never gets big if you don’t have the guts to ask more from your people. You have to know what your people are really doing each day in their business. Are they really showing the business as much as they say? If you know that your pseudo star is not really showing the plan as much as he claims, say this, “I don’t think you are nearly as committed as you say you are. I want everybody in my group to succeed, but I spend my travel money and the bulk of my time with those who are really committed. I don’t know if that is you or not. Are we going to do this or not?”

Holmes says that most HR departments encourage a loving and nurturing environment for businesses, but superstars must be challenged. I believe that is the same for your downline for the most part. You should gently encourage the 97% who are not ready to really commit to your business. However, if somebody claims that they are a 3% club member, you better test them before you spend 3 months dedicated to building their business traveling across the world for them when they are lollygagging. If you challenge a possible superstar; no matter age, sex or experience, they will rise to the occasion and disagree with you if you tell them they are not a 3% member. The 97% person who claims to be a star will not challenge you. A budding superstar will tell you she is committed and challenge you back. When the person rises up, challenge them to new levels of commitment. When they do not challenge you, love them, help them and encourage them to stay at it because they can learn how to become a superstar over time. Either way, you need to know what you have.

Rule 4 – Ask lots of questions. Interview your people on what they are doing each day, week and month. Know what is happening in their groups and if the rising leader is doing what is necessary to help them become a superstar. Do not hurt your 97% people in any way, but know you must take measures to know what your people are really doing. Smart uplines have an idea of what their downline is doing each day. Real superstars will not be afraid to be accountable. They want help and they will work hard to gain your respect.

Rule 5 – Know your people. Have your people take personality tests. A great book is Personality Plus. My upline, when I built an Amway business, loved using this book to understand us and how to better help us succeed. Certain personality traits are necessary to succeed in network marketing, they can be natural or learned. Either way, it sure helps to know your people and how to help them succeed.

Rule 6 – Superstars are not easy to find. Whether you personally sponsor a possible superstar or you find them in your downline, you will have to work to find them. Give your superstars and possible superstars your time and your attention. It breaks my heart to not be able to spend equal time with everyone who wants it, but you cannot spend a lot of time with the people who are not rising to the occasion. When you are new, you must have the discipline to sponsor everyone but search aggressively for superstars. If you are not looking diligently, you will miss some of the great ones right in front of you.

Rule 7 – I reserve the right to change my rules as I get better. If you think you have all the answers in this business, you are fooling yourself. Learning is the name of the game and it never stops. However, finding superstars is vital to your success and if you follow the rules above, you WILL find some real stars.

In his post “ORAC started the snowball rolling recklessly downhill” Gross has opined that ORAC is a result marketing research, not medical research. I wonder how much validity there is to his ideas, but I will search to see if there are differing opinions to Gross. His comments are below:

The oxygen radical absorbance capacity, ORAC, is a test tube measure of a food’s antioxidant state before ingestion. The method has been widely (and wildly) misused to infer antioxidant health benefits from consuming foods high in ORAC.

ORAC may have utility to food scientists as an index of polyphenol content in plant foods.

However, upon ingestion and following exposure to the enzyme and acid environment of the stomach, the polyphenol chemicals responsible for ORAC are altered (usually broken apart into newer, smaller compounds) and no longer have significant antioxidant value.

Further, the body sees these compounds as foreign and actively tries to get rid of them, indicating that ORAC measured in a test tube has no physiological meaning

It’s amazing how so many marketers allow themselves to think that by protecting their people from having to work hard that they can somehow find someone to step up. Protecting your people from responsibility and accountability will only give you average people. Average in network marketing is not good. For example the average Monavie Distributor’s check in 2008 was $30. In 2009 that average check dropped to $23. Ouch. Expect the highest possible commitment from your people and some of them will step up, others will wash out. Many of your marketers will quit even if you don’t challenge them, what do you have to lose?

If you study income disclosure statements you will see something pretty amazing. Take Monavie again as an example. Monavie claims that the average Distributor works 4 hours a week. Four hours a week in Monavie will gross you $1,214 a year. Not good. That check will barely cover your gas expense going to meetings. However, step up your weekly productivity to 9 hours a week and they claim you will gross $53,413 a year. Getting pretty good. The small difference of 5 extra hours a week makes an exponential earning difference in Monavie (if their numbers are accurate). What is even more amazing is that they claim with an additional 3 hours a week to a total of 12 and your average annual check will be $104,759.  Triple that number and they claim you will gross a cool $1,486,366. They do not say how many years you have to work 27 hours a week to earn this kind of cash, but my point remains: top earners are willing to do more, don’t hold your people back.

When we focus on creating networking studs we will have an elite corp of superstars that overcome obstacles by themselves without being dependent on a stretched upline. Chet Holmes claims that when we have a few right people who will step up to a challenge, they can be put in a bad situation with poor tools, no training, and bad resources and still, within a few months, they begin to outperform your best people or build your company in ways you never dreamed possible. Sponsoring or spotting the right people in your downline is not about luck. It’s about understanding the personality characteristics that fit elite network marketers and having the guts to challenge your potential superstars to see if they possess those characteristics.

If you challenge someone and they fail, continue to love them and encourage them. With encouragement and attendance at training events, hopefully they will continue to put in a couple hours a week. Maybe some day they will grow into a new level of production. However, you must continue your search NOW for superstars that will commit at least 20 hours a week to the business. Superstars are hard to find, but they do exist. Your job is to find them and train them. You can’t do that by fooling yourself into believing everyone is ready for that role now.

My next few posts are going to be very real. I have developed curriculum’s that can point people in the right direction, but they are not for lazy people or someone who finds excuses. My suggestions for extreme profitability in network marketing are only for the person that is mentally ready to take their psyche to peak levels needed to succeed in network marketing. If you are going to easily give up, you will become a part of the 97% who are never profitable in network marketing.

Network marketing involves sales. Anybody who tells you that you do not have to be good at sales to succeed at network marketing is telling half-truths. Success in network marketing can come as a result of finding a great product and meeting great people. However, if success is defined as profitable, then you must learn to sell.

A strong ego is vital to success in sales. Just because a person has a strong ego does not mean that person has to be viewed as pompous or arrogant. Everybody knows Donald Trump has a healthy ego, and some people cannot stand how he carries himself. His ego has served him well in business, but few people can act the way he does and not be punched in the face.  Some very successful people, such as George Lucas and Bill Gates, made their fortunes with strong egos that would allow them to get past rejection without appearing brash and overstated the way that Trump does. However, Lucas and Gates never would have made their fortunes if they were timid and did not sell their new ideas to whoever would listen to them. They are rich today as a result of not letting a “no” get them down.

Confidence and a strong ego are very necessary in network marketing because of frequent rejection. In his book The Ultimate Sales Machine, Holmes writes that a superstar salesperson must have a strong ego, show a great ability to influence others, is empathetic, has a psychological need to bond with others and a need to find something likable about every person. However, if the person is too empathetic he will be too understanding and never close a sale. The salesperson and the network marketer must be able to push with empathy. If you believe in your product or service, you should passionately push, but do so in a manner that does not offend in the process. This takes practice, study and time for most people.

When you are looking for future superstars, many times you miss them because they may seem annoying. They are always hanging around, asking questions and sometimes seem way to eager. Many potential superstars that have not honed their craft seem to need way too much attention and tend to never shut up. They can come on way too strong. Novice superstars in training have an audacity that can be off putting. However, audacity and bravado are essential ingredients needed to achieve greatness in anything.

My next post I will talk about how to test your downline to see if they have natural skills to be a superstar or if you have a lot of teaching to do.

Most network marketers go by instinct on who will be the next superstar in their group. Hate to tell all you superstar spotters, you are typically wrong. These wrong decisions cost you a ton of time and money. In network marketing your bad choice not only wastes your time, but you typically lose sight of the real stars while you are toiling away with someone who will never live up to superstar status. Chet Holmes, a master business trainer, believes that in traditional business an average bad hire can cost a company $60,000. In network marketing the cost is more difficult to put a dollar number to, but realistically we lose a lot of money and time trying to force the wrong person into a superstar role.

Many superstars make the mistake of thinking that everyone else wants success as much as they do. As a full-time network marketer, I was shocked that not everybody wanted to show 45 plans a month and drive their wheels off to get to meetings all across the country. Holmes describes business superstars as people who are eager to please, always looking for more to do, always wanting more responsibility, always wanting to know more than you think they need to know. I would say that your future superstars in network marketing could be described similarly. Because a budding superstar has characteristics that can be viewed by some as annoying, we lose many of our future leaders by crowning the wrong person as our future star.

In network marketing we think that all of our downline can eventually turn into superstars. My advice there, stop it. Stop thinking the impossible. I believe that we need to improve the experience of all our downline the best we can, but not everybody in your downline will ever be a superstar. Never. I agree with Holmes when he says that superstars are an incredibly rare breed. You will be much better off learning how to spot superstar characteristics and then hold your future stars to a whole different level than regular distributors. Regular distributors will quit long before they will ever do what a superstar will naturally want to do.

My following posts will teach you how to spot and train future stars and how to hold them accountable until they don’t need you everyday. When your stars burn bright without you every day is when you know you are on your way.

Most people that join your group will never do anything other than attend a few meetings and buy product.  Welcome them.  Love them. Encourage them.  However, there are also people that are hungry and want to succeed at high levels.  Those people should be pushed, held accountable and lovingly guided into success by expecting a lot from them.

These future leaders are not afraid to do whatever it takes ethically to succeed.  But many times their upline is trying to protect these future leaders from doing too much.  This is crazy, because top leaders get to where they are because of their attitude of doing more than what is expected.  Top leaders only create true stability when they truly replace themselves.  They will create generational income only when they ask the same from their leaders and future leaders that they ask of themselves.  If not, when they go away or die, so will their groups without their presence.  Longevity is created by creating leaders.  Leaders are made through accountability to themselves and their mentors.

One who is committed to a cause will not simply “go through the motions” in becoming a leader.  A committed distributor will not be satisfied with just making a visit to one of his downline so he can report to his mentor that his job is “completed” or “done.” A committed distributor would not be content to merely “give” a presentation but would want to teach with passion. The result, if your leaders have the guts to ask for it, will be making a real difference in the impressionable lives of the new distributors entrusted to his or her care.  It will create real leadership.

The training programs we make are done in a way that asks little from the 97% but much from those who say they want to be leaders.  Responsibility and accountability will show you who really deserves your time. Companies and top leaders need to create more leaders, and learn to identify and love the 97%, because you need them in your business too.  However, to ask little from your future leaders is a big mistake.  Leaders want to be accountable, leaders want to feel empowered, and to ask anything less is creating a house of cards that will crumble eventually.

Approximately 80 percent of the top network marketing companies sell health products or cosmetics. Give me $30,000 and two months and I can have you branded inventory of a health product or cosmetic item.  It is not hard to do. And guess what, it will probably be made in the same location as some of the world’s top brands.

It is time for network marketers to be more courageous. It is time to create more movements and to quit trying to sell a product with an economic opportunity. We don’t just need great products, because they are everywhere.  We need courageous people taking those great products and quit selling them based upon an economic opportunity.  That model is failing.  I repeat, THAT MODEL IS FAILING. Look at the following graph put out by the DSA. 2008 and 2007 had less sales than 2006.  And, if you account for inflation, we had less sales in 2008 than we did in 1999.  Some companies are growing, but network marketing is not in the United States.  All we are doing is stealing from each other as marketers jump from one fad company to the next. And marketers are jumping ship because corporations are failing on their product and opportunity promises. It is time to start creating product movements that stick based upon the merits of the movement, not just a commission.

I meet with a lot of marketers from many different companies now.  I am currently involved with no companies.  I am a network marketing lover affiliated with nobody on a day to day basis. One thing I can tell you company executives, your people would leave you if they had the guts to do so or if another opportunity that says the right things comes their way.

I am really shocked at how fearful so many field marketers are at “losing” something by staying with a company that treats them like a commodity. Let me tell company executives and top marketers how to create a movement and keep your people happy.

1. Quit treating your product as commodity that is sold because of an economic opportunity.
2. Make stuff worth talking about. If you are just one of many similar products, you better be really, really, really, really good at telling an authentic story.
3. Understand the new leverage in today’s network marketing.  Live your story, yes live your story. Give me happiness, not ingredient lists. Give me joy, not promises of riches I don’t really believe in. Give me a way to feel younger, with people that build me into greatness not scare me into submission. Give me life, don’t take it away from me.  Don’t tell me you care about how much money I make and then threaten me if I think the opportunity is better else where. Give me a reason to stay other than the lottery ticket chance of $10,000 a month. LIVE your story.

I love the movie Gladiator. My favorite part in the movie happened when Maxius found his small group of fellow gladiators in the Roman Colosseum about to be under attack. The attack came from a more numerous army of better armed warriors on chariots.  Maximus compelled his men by saying, “Whatever comes out of these gates, we’ve got a better chance of survival if we work together. Do you understand? If we stay together we survive.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

I can say I love network marketing.  I love what it can do for people and what it does to people. It is time to make our profession better.  It is time to have the courage to work better together in our companies. It is time for companies to empower their people, not threaten them to stay or suffer the consequences. It is time to grow our industry, our companies and our downlines. We better get better at creating a movement worth following.

There is nothing wrong with telling stories if they are true, or you can make them true under scrutiny. The best companies in the world are the ones that are constantly staying ahead of the crowd with their stories.  They are willing to admit when their story becomes tired or doesn’t resonate the way that it used to.

In 2007 I founded a juice company with my brothers. At the time there were a few different multi-juice blend companies, but today there are even more with “the best juice.” We decided to base our story on an unstory. The unstory was based upon my family’s desire to have a product made by nature and assembled by science. We did not want a story based on a mystical adventure in a rain forest and happening upon some indigenous people saving us from malaria with a magic potion. We believed people were too smart for that kind of story that was popular for a while.  Our juice was a great formula and our unstory had legs for quite a while. However, today I believe that most juice company stories have run their course, and like BMW did with its Joy Campaign, it is time to find a story that will resonate anew amidst all the new and continuing noise of “The best juice on the market.” Everybody preaching the same message that they are the best is frankly being lost on consumers who have heard it ad nauseam for the past 5 years.

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you watched the video clip above, you will see that BMW is a master at story telling. Masters because they are passionate about making their story true. BMW understands that people do not buy facts, they buy emotions that stories provide. Seth Godin says, “The facts are irrelevant. In the short run, it doesn’t matter one bit whether something is actually better or faster or more efficient. What matters is what the consumer believes.” “Stories (not ideas, not features, not benefits) are what spread from person to person.” For juice companies as a whole, I recommend a new direction instead of trying to prove that you have more of this or more of that, it doesn’t resonate any more. Does the number of phytonutrients you have really capture the imagination of large or important audiences. I would say no it does not, most people really don’t know how something with a phyto in it even affects them enough to care deeply.

“A great story is true. Not true because it’s factual, but true because it’s consistent and authentic. Consumers are too good at sniffing out inconsistencies for a marketer to get away with a story that’s just slapped on.” Let me give you an example of a new juice company that did something smart.  Rain Nutrition is a small company that started selling juice in the beginning.  Too small and too late to capitalize on the juice fad, they have recently taken a very important step to becoming significant.  They added a couple products and started a basic fitness program that also included a diet that featured their products.  They focused more on the emotional needs of their consumers. To me, their new story is, “Rain is Fitness”. I was told that their recent program has been a smash hit and at a recent convention they saw a huge spike in product sales as a result. Nice work separating yourself from the juice noise.

Time for more of us professional networkers to listen to Seth Godin and less to ourselves and the glory days. Great stories make a promise. They promise fun. The promise is bold and not just very good, it is exceptional or it’s not worth listening to. Time for all of us to ask if we are fulfilling on our promise and not just saying, “Oh yeah, my product can beat up your product!”

Seth Godin says, “Be remarkable! Be consistent! Be authentic!” Ask yourself, “Is my company remarkable, consistent and authentic?” Of course you are going to say yes, but is it really? Is your company based on a good product story that is priced appropriately for its target market, or is your product just an excuse to have compensation plan? Ask yourself how many marketers stay on the product for a year after they realize they aren’t making any money?  Ask yourself how many people say yes to the product when they say no to the opportunity? Finally, ask yourself how many people out of a hundred, who say yes to the opportunity, actually have the opportunity promise fulfilled?

If you are promising a great product experience first, you are more likely to be able to deliver on your story. You cannot make a person profitable if that person does not cooperate.  You cannot force a person to show plans and enroll people into your company. If your opportunity presentation alludes to the fact that a high percentage of people are making money with your company, you are not being authentic. However, if your product story resonates, it can become true immediately in the eyes of people and they will buy your product. Aren’t we really about moving product or services any way?

Seth says, “So, go tell a story. If it doesn’t resonate, tell a different one.” If people are not asking for your product when you finish your presentation, it is time to change your story. Very few people have what it takes to make it big in network marketing, but many people have what it takes to make a $150 a month profit if the product story resonates. How much better off would the masses be with an extra $150-$300 a month. How much better off would a company be that has many multiples of people telling a PRODUCT story that resonates with the masses? How much better off would health food companies be if they were told how to tell a PRODUCT story that didn’t focus on ORAC, roving radicals, unpaired electrons and catechins? (I too was once guilty of this boring health speak that nobody understands and few really care about.) How about a story that really resonates with what people will always listen to; how to lose weight and look younger? Then, actually have a product that actually delivers on that story.

As Seth says, “Either you’re going to tell stories that spread, or you will become irrelevant.” My advice, listen to Seth.

I would say that network marketing, just like other means of marketing is chuck full of liars.  It is too bad, because it is counter productive. Godin says that lying doesn’t pay off anymore in marketing.  The problem with lying is that when you “fabricate a story that just doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, you get caught. Fast.” Godin is right, it seems so simple.  If we lie, people will catch on and then we are doomed. Trust breaks down, attrition gets out of control and leaders get burned out trying to maintain their past incomes. Yet so many network marketing leaders, executives and those profiting from big commissions ignore the lies when it will ultimately burn them. Why?

Let’s list a couple of the big lies: everybody can succeed in network marketing, all you have to do is sign up 3 people and you don’t need to know how to sell to succeed in network marketing. Those lies may have worked 10 years ago, but consumers are getting smarter and the reality sinks into new marketers pretty fast that you can’t make a profit just by buying a spot in a downline.

I was speaking to a marketer last month and I asked him how much money he wanted to make.  He told me $10,000 a month (I think that is what he was taught to say).  ”Wow,” I thought, “I wonder how much money he makes in his job and how big was his best commission check in a year of building his business?” This great guy has never made close to $10,000 a month at his job and his biggest commission check was less than $250.  Some people may say, “Good for him, he has a big goal to get him through the discouragement.”  I say, bologna.  This guy needed help understanding to get to $10,000 a month, he needed to get to $500 a month first. If he has never made $500 a month in 12 months, how discouraged is he going to be when he realizes he may never make $10k? He’ll quit before he ever makes it at this pace.

I am going to explore the silly lies that we tell ourselves in network marketing for a few days and a better way to go about our stories.  Seth Godin says, “So, go tell a story. If it doesn’t resonate, tell a different one. When you find a story that works, live that story, make it true, authentic, and subject to scrutiny.  All marketers are storytellers.  Only losers are liars.”

Hallelujah Seth. People are joining us in network marketing, but statistically speaking MLM has not grown much faster than inflation in the past 5 years. Ouch. For such a great distribution methodology, perhaps its time we start telling a story that actually resonates.

Most people say they are dedicated to real training, but they are not willing to put in the time to do it right up front.  Consequently, they never have enough time to do what they want to do.  Their business owns them, they do not own a business.  If you don’t put the time in now, you will have even less time as your business begins to consume you.

A real training system must involve more live and automated weekly training followed up by mentors holding new marketers accountable to what they are learning.  If you want your people to grow in skills and confidence, they must have interaction with mentors or upline on a regular basis, preferably 5-6 times a week.  Without the interaction, your people will find other things to take up their time and energy.  To turn an employee into an entrepreneur does not happen overnight, but it does and can happen.

Training without accountability will fail most of the time.  To ignore that most marketers are not making a profit is just sticking your head in the sand.  We need each other to succeed in almost everything.  When we teach a new marketer a skill, we must reteach that concept again and again until it sticks.  In addition to repetition, the new marketer must also have contact from somebody in the upline 5-6 times a week to ensure that the new concepts are being implemented.

As soon as a new marketer leaves a training, there is immediate falloff of skills or ideas taught.  Skills improve in the short term, but will drop shortly thereafter. By teaching core principles on a consistent basis and repeated, skills improve now and become habits through repetition and accountability.  When your marketers are saying the same thing on level 35 as they are on level 4, your message to future prospects is the same no matter where you go on the globe. You become less burdened because you were disciplined to insist on proper training through all levels of your organization.

Vital network marketing training concepts:

• Teach new marketers in small chunks each day through:
  • A curriculum based Written Guide
  • Course of 500 word short emails sent 5 days a week to new marketers with a daily action to assigned.
  • Upline and Mentor accountability 5-6 days a week
• Video Curriculum – 3 minute teaching videos sent according to a curriculum once a week.
• Conference Call Curriculum – based upon the written guide.
• Accountability
  • Automated tools for top mentors/leader distributors.
  • 60-90 second calls 5 days a week to a building upline
• Mentor RSS feeds to show proper actions and “living the life” examples.

New marketers can succeed.  We just need to understand marketers better to really help them.  When your people have sharpened their skills, your downline and company will build better, faster and will be surprised you how much extra time you have.  Chet Holmes says, “Train or feel the pain.”  I agree, whether you are new or already have a big group, you better start real training now before your people leave you for someone who does.

1. They don’t know what to do.
2. They don’t know how to do it.
3. They don’t know why they should do it.
4. They feel there are obstacles beyond their control.

When people join network marketing to make money, they need significant training to make large checks.  To think otherwise is ignoring the obvious.  There are many people who have short term success who are fooled into thinking they have all the answers before their group begins to fall a part.

Profitability in network marketing is achieved by doing simple things 5-6 days a week.  When I say simple, I mean it.  However, simplicity is usually what trips most people up.  Leaders should track these simple activities of their proteges.  With thousands of people in a downline this may seem daunting.  All the more reason to train your people quickly so they are taking much of the load off of you.  If you fail to put the time into proper training of basic business building, you will be overwhelmed and stretched too thin to ever have a big group that sustains.

Here are 4 basic things that a new marketer should be doing 5 or 6 days every week.  They are very simple but “for precept must be upon precept, line upon line, here a little, and there a little” is how great things come to pass:

1. A minimum of 15 minutes everyday of reading from books, goal planning and daily activities planning.  One hour would be better, but most people struggle with 15 minutes in the beginning.
2. Upline accountability call.  Every day a call should be made to hold themselves accountable for these 4 daily items.  The call should not be more than 90 seconds most days.
3. Business development.  This may include showing the plan, making a prospect call, a follow up call or even just having lunch with a friend to reintroduce yourself. People need to learn to talk to each other again, businesses will grow when we make an effort to be with people, not just talk business.
4. Downline development. Once a day someone in your downline should be called, encouraged, trained and promoted.  If your group is new, don’t overwhelm your new people by calling the same person over and over again.  Use some common sense.

When proteges start to be active each day as an entrepreneur, they will start to program themselves to do what is needed to be profitable.  Be patient with new people as they have years of employee programming to overcome.

Stay with me as I discuss automation tools to simplify this process in upcoming posts.

Network marketing fails when untrained marketers use up their credibility collateral with friends and family and think they have nobody left to talk to. New marketers are often not skilled enough to sell enough product or to enroll sufficient distributors into their business to make money. As network marketing leaders we must get better at mentoring our people to gain the skills needed to become profitable.

Last year I attended a Zrii function where Anthony Robbins addressed the audience.  He told the crowd that if you can influence yourself first, then you have power. He said that if can you get yourself to do what is necessary, you will have power to succeed.  The problem that most new marketers have is that for most of their lives they have had employee patterns stamped into their psyche. A person that has been told when to be at work and when to go home will not likely start off well without someone there to guide him or her every step of the way.

In my last post, I wrote that to be happy we must develop our psychological muscles that determine good or bad patterns. We determine our happiness and we can change our mood and demeanor.  We get into patterns in our life. These patterns can make you succeed, fail or even create despair.  I believe a problem that we have in network marketing is that those who have been profitable in network marketing do not spend enough time with the new person to help them establish proper patterns because of being stretched too thin.  However, we must make time or systems that create time for the new people.  You simply cannot change years of programming with one motivational weekend.  It can take many repeated trainings to get our new people to where they need to be mentally in order to make network marketing a career.

Robbins also told the crowd that we must act during the time of decisiveness. I agree with him and the time when most people make the decision to build is right when they sign up with a company.  However, most new marketers wait too long after enrolling to act due to fear of the unknown.  We must get better at establishing success patterns with our new people from day one with regular training.  Huge group meetings are great, but daily patterns are not influenced by occasional motivation.

We need to teach our people to make more moments of decisiveness.  Big marketers are paid big commissions because the make many right decisions.  If you are going to lead, you must make decisions, even if some of them are wrong.  Most new marketers are too afraid to make decisions day in and day out.  We can help them learn to be a leader, and we must commit to regular training to grow now and long term.

Join me on my next post when I talk about what we should have our people doing each day to establish proper patterns and after that I will discuss how to implement regular training and still have a life.

To add to Churchill’s famous quote, when you are going through hell, just walk faster, you’ll come out.  Understand though that while you are going through your difficulties, you will find out who your real friends are and who your facebook friends are.  While we felt abandoned by many of the people we thought we had helped, we also realized how much our family loved and supported us.  In times of difficulty, you can worry about those who left you, or embrace those who stick with you.  We were lucky to have a great family.

Right around the time we lost our jobs, my plane ticket was cancelled for our distributor promotion trip to Hawaii.  With no job or prospects of money, I sat at home feeling hurt and betrayed while many of the distributors and employees we brought into the company were on a fancy company trip.  I had a decision to make.  Was I going to start studying for the bar to be an attorney or was I going to figure out a way to stay in network marketing? Either way, bankruptcy was staring me in the face.  To stay in network marketing was to stay in an industry that had embarrassed me and had brought a ton of negative emotions.  It also meant staying within an industry that is full of some of the most incredible people on the planet.

I decided to stay involved in network marketing in a way that would not distract from our company. My future aside, I wanted our distributors to remain unaffected.  I stayed in networking because I believe you must have the GUTS to be in an environment that makes you feel alive.  When you feel alive you don’t have to fill your life with food, alcohol or sports hero worship to make you happy.  Network marketing, with all its bugs and greed-based decisions, is also full of integrity, stories of greatness and most importantly it makes me feel alive.  Where else can I work with so many people and help them achieve something more than they thought possible financially, emotionally and spiritually?  There are not many ways outside of network marketing.

As the dust has settled, I have been honored by many of my friends and distributors that have come looking for my help again.  I really love being involved in their lives.  My new mentor business is booming and it feels great to be helping people.

To be happy we must develop our psychological muscles that determine good or bad patterns. We determine our happiness and we can change our mood and demeanor.  We get into patterns in our life. These patterns can make you succeed, fail or even create despair. To regain my confidence I had to recognize some patterns and change them in my life quickly to those that would enable me to help people again.

I have known how to build downlines for a long time, however, my experience has helped me understand how to overcome adversity even better. I am not the only one who had their heart broken by network marketing.  It didn’t do me a bit of good to feel beaten.  I determine what I want and I determine my happiness.  I strongly believe that when you know what people need and show them how to get it, you will make a difference in your own life and the lives of many others.

So, when do you give up…never. If you are going through hell, duck your head and run.  You’ll come out a bit toasty, but you’ll be better for it.

Join me on my next post as I explain how to improve your psychological muscles to get yourself to take action.

I am very thankful to have him with us and to have another healthy baby boy.  It is a miracle every time a new one comes.  Welcome baby Ethan.  We love you.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Not all new networkers will take accountability seriously.  Some networkers will think they have all the answers right when they start, but we know what happens that that person after a couple months, they end up coming back for help or quitting. Some networkers simply do not have the stomach to do what it takes on a consistent basis.  However, the most hungry future leaders will do what it takes to succeed and they will attack any obstacle in front of them to achieve success.  These networker proteges will only hold themselves accountable to a person that is where they want to be and who is truly doing what he or she is preaching.

I discussed the pain points that top leaders from different companies have told me are obstacles to their success.  For review those pain points are:

• Lack of accountability from downline.
• Stretched too thin to spend quality ?time with real leaders.
• How to effectively identify ?future leaders.
• System adulteration in depth.

To achieve great results in your downline, you must be willing to take time now to replace yourself.  To relieve your pain as a leader, you are going to have to dedicate yourself to consistent training every day.  The tribal method of training does not work.  Tribal method is rampant within network marketing and consists of information being passed down the levels or generations without a formal daily, weekly and monthly curriculum.  It is done similarly to ancient Beowulf and the story keeps changing with each generation in depth.  I have felt the pain points above and having spent the last year visiting with network marketers across the globe, I can tell you they do too.

As a result of hearing the same pains over and over, we decided to build a system that helps, we call it Mentor DNA.  At its heart, Mentor DNA is focused on giving the right people, the right time with leaders who care about their success.  The most impressive result will be  that by measuring the daily activities of marketers, the leader mentor has direct insights and empirical data showing them if their proteges are really doing what it takes to succeed.  It can all be measured on a dashboard that shows their daily activities.  Knowing what a marketer’s commissions are can be helpful, but it is incomplete data and does not tell you what you need to know to help them succeed. Mentors and leaders need to know details of what a marketer is doing to understand why commissions are going up or down.  When you add accountability to an automated and integrated curriculum, what you get is a pure system that does not adulterate, measurable results and the benefits of live mentors working with proteges proving they deserve the time.

I love helping truly hungry people succeed.  I even loved driving hours to help a marketer grow the business.  I simply wanted to help others like me who believe in other people and want them to succeed.  Sadly we often miss the true future leaders by helping the wrong person.  That can be fixed and Mentor DNA can help.

Most top network marketers and company executives rarely work “on” their business, instead they are always working “in” their business.  They are so busy putting out fires, that they can’t put up a firewall.  The problem is that to truly keep growing, you must be able to be more strategic and differentiate yourself from others consistently.  You need to carve out the time to work “on” yourself, and “on” your business.

According to Audiotech.com, very few traditional companies do what’s needed to be successful, as 600,000 of them go out of business every year. Over 75% of the products launched every year fail. 38 corporations fell off the Fortune 500 in 2009 alone and only 71 of them from 1995 are still on it.

Just like there are traditional companies that do succeed, there are also networkers that are thriving also.  So why do some networkers thrive while the majority fail to make money?  How do they differentiate themselves?  I believe that Audiotech’s analysis of Fortune 500 companies applies to network marketing leaders.  ”They are run by entrepreneurs and executives that consistently consume the right information and act on it.”

• The average CEO reads about 60 books a year, 60x what the average person reads
• Bill Gates read 30 books on one recent vacation
• Warren Buffett credits his success to spending the majority of his time reading business books, periodicals, and company annual reports

It is clear, titans of business read much and often.  Top networkers must also do the same.  The problem is that most new network marketers are out of the habit and frankly do not have the drive that the world’s top performers do to hold themselves accountable to learning and reading. Leaders in networking spend many hours teaching people to do the following things over and over:

• Teaching of a distributor’s why
• Name List building
• How to sponsoring someone new
• Basic performance metrics
• Basic understanding of product or service
• Basic understanding of compensation plan

The problem that newbies and advanced leaders face is significant loss of information after it is presented.  Worse, just because it is taught, there is no guarantee that a newbie will act on what is taught.  How often does a newbie need to be reminded to make a names list before it is done?  Usually more than twice and many new marketers never make a list.

Network marketing training usually comes in a huge blitz.  Many times it is done on a big weekend with thousands of other networkers.  Everybody gets all jazzed up, their is a great feeling of value after huge doses of information is dumped on already loaded down minds.  Within days, information is forgotten and very little sticks.  This is where mentors come in.

Information dump training is better than nothing.  However, if you want lasting results you must have continuous follow-up and accountability.  Truly eager proteges will listen to a mentor and do what is recommended.  The proteges who want to succeed will allow a mentor to congratulate them as well as correct poor performance, even if the correction comes much more frequently than the accolades.

Top leaders can only effectively mentor 10-12 proteges at a time if it is done manually.  Having built large groups I know that I am guilty of being spread way too thin and spending less and less time with the ones I thought were the future leaders.  As a result, my company has created automation tools that will help a mentor automate the learning in smaller chunks.  We have created an accountability system that tracks daily activities.  As a builder I was always curious before my 4 hour drive if my “future leader” was really doing the small things each day that lead to large results.  I typically did not know until I drove all day if I was going to find an empty prospect meeting.  In addition to automating the bullet points above that help a protege start correctly, we also have created a way to track daily activities such as:

• Business building – contacting, inviting, etc
• Downline training
• Time spent planning and reading
• Upline or mentor contact

To be a leader and profitable in network marketing, new marketers must learn more.  Leaders must automate many of their activities so that they can spend quality time with the networkers actually doing the daily activities needed to grow.  When constant training and accountability is loaded into an automated system that frees a mentor to spend belly-to-belly time with those actually doing the right things great things will happen.

When frequent and even daily training is actually implemented correctly, the benefits to an automated daily training system will result in:

• More time for leaders
• More time to spend with achievers (future leaders)
• More time to live life
• More time to keep sponsoring
• More time to have more time

You want to earn more money?  Well, help your people learn more.  You will need to learn to hold them accountable.  You will need to have bullish desire to stick with accountability.  The benefits are too big to ignore.  You may be able to take a vacation without worrying your business is going to burn to the ground.

Accountability is the secret to success.  Not-so-sexy secret you may think, but I am here to tell you it is true.  People respect what you inspect.  People join network marketing wanting to succeed but have never been properly educated on what it takes to succeed.  Consequently, most people end up failing, some stats even go so far as to say that 97% of those who are a part of network marketing fail to ever make a profit.  This does not have to be the case.  There is a way to improve performance but it takes discipline and bullish desire to help your people be better educated.

I spent 6 years as a full time Amway distributor, significant time as a company founding executive and CEO, and 2 years helping network marketing companies succeed in everything from training to brand consulting.  Most recently I have been visiting companies learning about what is out there, going to their meetings, listening to their sales pitch, reading their material, researching their building tools and  generally speaking, just listening. No matter what company I visit, no matter the product or service, the majority of people enroll in a company with the hope of making money.  I wish that more people would join due to the sheer excellence of the product, but unfortunately that is not typically the case which means we must truly be dedicated to educating our people on what they must do to achieve profitability or even have a better product experience.

I have been able to speak to some of network marketing’s top distributors.  I asked many of them what were their top pain points to building a successful business.  Outside of product problems and silly corporate gaffes, the top answers are:

1. Lack of accountability from downline.
2. Stretched too thin to spend quality time with real leaders.
3. How to effectively identify future leaders.
4. System adulteration in depth.

I can’t tell you how many times I drove four hours to have nobody show up to an opportunity meeting.  I wasn’t too surprised to hear top distributors from other companies experience that all the time.  So how can accountability help solve the problems above?  How can proper accountability solve the age old problem of spending a month with a person who says the right things and does none of them?  And, how in the world do you get people on level 42 to teach the same thing that you want taught on level 2?

So many questions, but so little time.  I will address each of the pain points above, but because I know people don’t like to read a lot and I am now 560 words into this article, I’ll start my answers tomorrow and teach you how implement accountability into your downline. Stay tuned, because it works.

I was lucky, I had a great upline.  I eventually built a big group and I have enjoyed many great years as a network marketer.  How many casualties are out there as a result of lack of mentors in network marketing.  What would have happened to me if I did not have a great upline?  I can only wonder, but I do know how important having a mentor is to each of us.

The most common reasons people fail in network marketing have nothing to do with the product or compensation plan.  F.F. Fournies says that most people fail to succeed in any given opportunity because:

1. They don’t know what to do.
2. They don’t know how to do it.
3. They don’t know why they should do it.
4. They feel there are obstacles beyond their control.

Individuals that have mentors are 500% more likely to succeed than going about it by themselves.  The good news for mentors is that mentors are 600% more likely to succeed if they choose to mentor others.  These are amazing numbers and speak to the fact that we truly need each other to succeed.

Network Marketing can be a fruitful career, but like anything of value, it is not something that happens automatically.  Success in any career takes time and preparation.  In my next post, I will begin to talk about what the interaction between mentors and proteges should look like.

Dedicated to your success,

Jeffery Boyle
Network Marketing Guru

People are truly seeking for good experiences in life.  I would even be so bold as to say that they are looking for great experiences.  People want to feel alive and money is often too difficult of a concept for most people to truly believe they can achieve “lots of it”.  The belief of big money is hard because most of your prospects have never had more than a 9-5 job.  However, if you can truly help people achieve a good experience at your meetings and with your product, you will attract the masses.  When you attract the masses and not just MLM junkies, you will have a business that is built to last generations, not just a couple years.

If you want to a business that is built to last, we as corporate managers and top distributors must strive to improve the lives of our employees, our distributors and our families.  Network marketers are great because they can learn to think bigger than just 9-5 if they stick with it.  When we begin to think big, we want accomplish more in our lives.  When network marketing is done properly, we can have meaningful lives by truly concentrating on a joyous experience for the people around us.

Robert Brunner and Stewart Emery said, “Humans strive to improve their situation with the ultimate goal of ongoing happiness and joy in their lives.  Everything we do, difficult or easy, fun or painful, has something to do with having a better experience of being alive.  We want this for us, our loved ones, and on some level for society at large.  And along the road traveled, we want to make the actual traveling the best it can be.”

So, how do we create better experiences for our groups and ourselves?  First, start with a goal of creating a superior experience in our products.  Unfortunately, many companies have a product that would never sell in a traditional retail location without an “opportunity” behind it.  If you are selling a product for a company that has very small percentages of retail sells, you should probably be concerned.  If your product has no emotional impact beyond money, your product will not sell itself.  If you must rationalize, compare and measure your product to others, you may not have a product with a true emotional impact for the masses.  If people need to look up scientific journals to understand your offering, you are not likely to create true emotional impact.

To attract the masses, you must understand one thing very quickly; your prospects and downline are human beings.  They are far more emotionally driven than you give them credit for.  People can feel when you are full of it and when your product is money driven and not experience driven.  Make no mistake, there are currently some products that are not very good that are making their companies millions of dollars, but those products will not sustain the decades a good product experience or company experience would need to create generational money.   A money driven product will eventually run its course and be replaced by the next money driven product and your downline will go with it.

For your downline to pass the test of time, you must embrace the emotional side of people.  You must understand most people continue to attend meetings because they feel accepted and are having a good experience. They quit buying the product when they stop feeling accepted or that the promise of money is gone.  When we address the question of what people want from life, you will gear your meetings and events toward insuring that people have compelling information that makes their life better regardless if they make money or not.  When we address our product offering, we must accept the fact that most people do not make money in network marketing and they will take their business elsewhere if it is based more on making money than enriching their lives.  Your prospects want products and events that are insightful, gainful even if they aren’t making money and most importantly, FUN.

When network marketing companies and top distributors truly understand what their people desire, they will last the test of time.  Understanding the humans in your group is not easy and it is not something the accounting side of your mind will ever understand.  Just remember first, you are human too.  What makes you happy?  When you are alone, focus on your own happiness and how to help others get more happiness in their lives.  When you are with your group, focus on their happiness.  Really focus on their happiness and not just making money.  When you truly find what makes your group happy, you will matter in network marketing, and frankly of more importance, life.

Last night, on the way to Sun Valley with my pregnant wife and three kids, we totaled our car.  As we rounded a corner on a country highway, a large male mule deer walked across the road.  Because we were already turning while driving at least 55 miles per hour, I surprisingly told my wife in a calm voice, “Hold on, there is nothing I can do!”

As soon as we impacted the large deer, the hood of my car crumpled badly and parts of the car began falling on the highway and under my car tires.  My wife was scared but composed and my kids remained surprisingly calm until we came to a stop to inspect the damage.  As we came to a stop on the side of the country road, I stepped out into the crisp mountain air to inspect the damage.  My engine was smoking aggressively and there was evidence of the poor creature on the gnarled metal and plastic that used to be my van.

As it became evident that we were in the middle of no-where with a totaled van full of now screaming kids, I had a huge calm and happiness fill my mind and heart.  My pregnant wife and kids were safe.  I had made the proper decision to not foolishly swerve and possibly over turn my car in order to save my van.  I was blessed to have the calm to stay the course and we walked away safe.  Now I just have to figure out how to get a totaled van home that is in the middle of nowhere.

Most network marketers and management teams have no idea how to be authentic. I continue to be amazed at how we in network are marketing make claims and statements that assume people will simply buy into our ridiculous one-liners. People are smart. To believe anything other than the idea that people are smarter and more perceptive than the way we have been treating them is a recipe for disaster going forward. If you want dumb distributors, treat people like they are dumb.

Let me give you a couple phrases that are very tired and overused in our industry:
• Ground floor opportunity
• Once in a lifetime
• Family values and integrity

In my years as a network marketer I have had about four chances at “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” I have found that everyone, including some of the biggest thugs on the planet claim to operate with family values and integrity. The most fun claim of all is presented to us once a week, the ground floor opportunity. Unfortunately ground floor usually just means a dirt floor. New companies can be a great opportunity but there is a ton of work for the management team and field leaders to make it legitimate.

I love network marketing, I intend on being a part of it in one form or another for the rest of my life, but people, let’s work on some real authenticity. Authenticity in network marketing requires that corporate and distributor behavior is consistent with our claims. It requires that we really care about people and have a true commitment to improving our own bottom line by really, I mean really, bringing people with you. Network marketing is not just business as usual. No matter what your sell, your real product or service is built on the backs of your downline’s faith in you. Do not underestimate how much you can help or devastate those who buy into your message.

Network marketing is rarely philanthropic, but few businesses really are. However, there is not a problem with wanting to make money and network marketing allows you to truly help people when you do it correctly. If we fail to become authentically interested in bringing people with us, our prospects and downline will see right through our one-liners and disingenuous statements. People see through empty words and partial truths more than ever before. Our downline has many options today and can sense if we are not being authentic.

Here’s a way to start being authentic. Ground floor is fine if you are willing to work through the difficulties in the beginning. Tell people the advantages and disadvantages of not having a system built yet. Demand management teams be accountable. Demand true product value at real prices. If your company says one thing and does another, hold their feet the fire. Help people recognize that the opportunity is in how we make it, not in what others give us. Show people you have integrity and values by committing to it over the time, don’t just say it.

Network marketing is the real deal and is coming of age. Let’s quit screwing it up.

A few years ago I was consulting with a company founder and told him that developing his people with true leadership concepts was the most important “tool” investment he could ever make.  He disagreed and believed that the perfect brochure and video set would sponsor the thousands he wanted in his business.  I believe that many management teams fall into the trap that tools make the group grow.  I believe tools are important, but developing leaders is the future strength of any company whether they are already at a billion dollars of sales or just starting.

The most effective distributors I have seen in any company need few if any tools.  The only tools they use are the ones that they use to appear duplicatable.  Frankly speaking, these leader distributors could sponsor with or without tools and only use the basic tools so that newbies will also.  Leaders focus on the person or group in front of them.  They watch their prospects facial expressions and they hear the doubts expressed during their conversations.  True leaders have conversations with prospects, they don’t spew out a memorized speech.

To be a leader, distributors must own the message and must improve themselves over time until they have the characteristics they need.  A leader is made over time with self-improvement, not by having the perfect tool.  A true leader studies sales techniques and finds a mentor no matter how high they are in their organization.  A true leader understands people’s fears and adapts the presentation depending on the audience in front of her.

Don’t expand your number of tools and company messages aimlessly.  Your company must focus on quality, not quantity.  Your basic prospecting tools should be viewed as a crutch for the new person but your emphasis should be first on helping develop leaders amongst your management team and distributors so that tools become secondary to the person.

Let’s cut to the chase and boldly claim that there is not such thing as the perfect tool.  The best tool however, is a leader that understands people and owns the company message psychologically, physically and emotionally.  The leader understands the company limitations and addresses them head on in the appropriate times and places.  The leader was not always a leader and can empathize with the new person that wants to improve and become somebody special.  Your company will fail without the proper field and corporate leadership.  Your goal should be to create better leaders first and good prospecting tools second.

Answer – In a word, apathy.

Apathy is absence or suppression of passion, emotion, or excitement. When we are apathetic, we lack interest in or concern for things that others can find moving or exciting…  Summed up, we become lame duck, couch sitting, TV junkies, Cheetos eating bottom feeders.  (Was that too strong?)

“One of the first and most important steps toward any accomplishment is to find out what is holding us back,” Sterling Sill.

There are many reasons why people  give up on their dreams of financial and personal success.  However, few people wake up one day and say, “I’m done with my dreams, I’m not going to do what it takes to succeed any more.”

Statistics tell us that few people ever reach the top positions within any organization.  It does not matter if the top position is in traditional business companies or in network marketing.  Few people truly achieve greatness in anything.  However, there are a lot of people that skate through life having never really done anything truly spectacular.  Why is that?  We already discussed that most people don’t consciously turn off their dreams over night.  So what makes people apathetic toward success?

People slip into apathy in three ways:  ignorance, indecision, and indifference.

These three I’s are what I like to call “Success Sins.”  The problem with these three sins is that they are sins of omission, not commission.  This means that you commit them by doing nothing.  It is not big things that cause you to fail, it is the small things.  The small shrub is much more likely to trip you up than the giant oak.

Ignorance

Doers are almost never colossal failures.

• Wayne Gretzky says, “You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.”
• Babe Ruth hit 714 career home runs, but he struck out 1,360 times.
• Abraham Lincoln was defeated in 1832 for the Illinois State Legislature, and in 1858 for the US Senate before he was elected to be President of the United States.
• Forbes says Donald Trump is worth $2.7 billion, but Trump’s business entities have used bankruptcy at least twice (that we know of) to regain financial health.

Potential success stories have been interrupted far more by failure to understand success principles and dedication to understand success principles than outside influences creating opposition.  That means that people trip themselves up far more often than someone or something getting in their way.  Ignorance is what stands between most people and their dreams.

So why don’t more people study success principles and become inspired by the success of icons such as Abraham Lincoln?  If we were to only take time each day to study other success stories we would see that are heroes are just people; flawed, scared and initially incompetent individuals who are willing to improve and seek answers through doing or studying the actions of a mentor.  The answers to success are right in front of us.  Inspirational stories surround us, but we are often just unwilling to look for the obvious answers to success.

Indecision

Decision making is crucial to success and some people just can’t make a decision.  Guess what, if you never decide to act you are in deep trouble if you want to be successful.  If you are committing the Success Sin of indecision you can strengthen your  decision making muscles.  I am not saying that you look before you leap, but doing nothing until you have a perfect knowledge of what is going to happen will just not happen.

Good intentions will not make you a success.  Good intentions acted upon will sometimes cause failure.  However, good intentions acted upon on a regular basis will propel you to new heights.  Procrastinating is simply delaying the inevitable and if you continue to postpone your future and you will lose interest in your dreams propelling you into couch potato mediocrity.

After too much procrastination and vacillation, some actually lose the power to make a decision. I know of one man whose mind is so perfectly balanced between the positive and the negative that he has great difficulty forming an opinion either one way or the other. His mind resembles a teeter-totter in perfect balance. There is as much weight pressing down on the negative end as on the positive. He has difficulty getting enough of a majority on either side to get a conviction.  It is the old story of the donkey starving to death midway between two piles of hay.  – Sterling Sill

Stop delaying your future, get out of your own way and make a darn decision.

Indifference

The biggest Success Sin is not that people disbelieve in success principles or that they can succeed, it is far worse when people just don’t care one way or the other. It is one thing to broke, but it is much worse to lack interest and enthusiasm.

When you are indifferent, you inner fire remains unlit and eventually is snubbed out permanently.

No one deliberately decides to be ignorant. Ignorance is indifference to learning. Sloth is indifference to industry. Weakness is indifference to strength.  -  Sterling Sill

Find something to care about.  Indifference will sap you of more strength than anything outside of you.

Success Sins

These three success sins probably rob more people of personal success than any thing else.

Thomas A. Edison said, “There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the real labor of thinking.” If we are not actively thinking and planning our future, TV and those around us will plan our future for us.  I personally believe that NBC and HBO should not be planning my future.  James Allen and Proverbs tell us that we become think about.  We are so close to success if we just do our best each day to avoid apathy towards the things that are most likely to bring us our dreams.  It requires diligence and passion to succeed but isn’t our future worth it?   For many people success is far less important than clinging desperately to the mind numbing comfort of ignorance, indecision and indifference; just stop being one of them.

The three I’s have always been our biggest problem. We remain stricken with ignorance and poisoned by a continuous succession of small thoughts. We become centers of indifference. This prevents our progress. The three I’s develop a sort of “idleness and inactivity in perpetuity.” Sterling Sill

So what are you going to do about it?  Break the bad habits you have formed by the Success Sins.  Go out and make a decision quickly even if it is where you are going to lunch.  Read something positive everyday, even if it is only for a couple minutes.  Find a mentor, eat something healthy, write down a goal and do some exercise.  Get excited about something now to feel some energy pumping through your veins again.  Start now and change someting, even if it is small.  Make something out of your life by escaping apathy and you will find something in you that has always been there, maybe it has just been hiding.

Very few of us will ever be on Notre Dame and get a sack, even if we are taller than Rudy and weigh more than 100 pounds.  However, we all have a million reasons to give in to failure.  Sports are a metaphor for life.  Adversity, struggle, loss, defeat and victory are a part of what we do each day.  Below are some great quotes related to sports (and life really):

Click here to view the embedded video.

“I’m going to go out a winner if I have to find a high school race to win my last race.”
Johnny Gray

“I cannot have survival as my only goal. That would be too boring. My goal is to come back in my best running form. It is good for me to have that goal; it will help me.”
Ludmila Engquist (Olympic champion hurdler facing cancer and chemotherapy)

“There are clubs you can’t belong to, neighborhoods you can’t live in, schools you can’t get into, but the roads are always open.”
Nike

“Pressure is nothing more than the shadow of great opportunity.” Michael Johnson

“I always loved running…it was something you could do by yourself, and under your own power. You could go in any direction, fast or slow as you wanted, fighting the wind if you felt like it, seeking out new sights just on the strength of your feet and the courage of your lungs.”
Jesse Owens

“Most people run a race to see who is fastest. I run a race to see who has the most guts.”
Steve Prefontaine

“It hurts up to a point and then it doesn’t get any worse.”
Ann Trason

“Tough times don’t last but tough people do.”
A.C. Green

“What matters is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight – it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower

“The gun goes off and everything changes… the world changes… and nothing else really matters.”
Patti Sue Plummer

“You have to forget your last marathon before you try another. Your mind can’t know what’s coming.”
Frank Shorter

“Some of the world’s greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible.”
Doug Larson

“It’s lack of faith that makes people afraid of meeting challenges, and I believed in myself.”- Muhammed Ali

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”- Wayne Gretzky

“You can stand tall without standing on someone. You can be a victor without having victims.”- Harriet Woods

“The only one who can tell you ‘you can’t ‘ is you. And you don’t have to listen.”- Nike

“Accept challenges so that you may feel the exhilaration of victory.”- Unknown

“I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.”- Michael Jordan

It is very typical for us to believe that someone has it better than we do.  The grass, for most people, is always greener on the other side of the hill.  The recent death of Michael Jackson is very similar to the death of another beloved figure, Elvis.  Both men had adoring fans across the world.  Both men had more money then what could be spent in many lifetimes.  Both men were so miserable they had to use drugs to sleep and find peace.  What a terrible waste.

We only know about Jackson and Elvis because they were such public and famous personas.  There are many other rich and poor people who spend their days focused only on what could be.  Although not everyone has the luxury of loving what they do every day, all of us can have a passion in life.  We can all desire an increase and expansion, but we cannot forget to have gratitude for what we already have.

If you hate what you do for a living, find something you truly love to do in your free time.  When you love what you are doing, time will disappear.  You will find that your love helps you focus on constantly improving and you can find yourself not constantly wishing for a better life because you are making it happen.  You will also find that you disappear into your love and you become something better almost by accident.

Determination and passion are like muscles that can be developed.  Anthony Robbins calls this psychological strength.  Stephen Covey talks about replacing your paradigms or habits.  No matter what you call your new vision of you, it will take determination and persistance and you can develop your mental muscles.

What each of us must understand is that we have patterns in our life that make us succeed and fail.  These patterns can cause grief and happiness.  They also can give us new energy or sap our strength.  What we must do is recognize that these patterns are there and look for them when we are feeling a certain way.  When you recognize your patterns, you will understand how to change your life.  When you recognize what makes you tick, it will be easier to help others recognize their own patterns.  Recognize patterns in others and you will be able to show them how to accomplish their goals.

Think of something that makes you happy.  Close your eyes and concentrate on that thing or person.  Mentally draw a picture of it in your mind.  Imagine yourself spending time with that thing or engaged in a fun activity with a person that makes you happy.  If you really did this simple exercise you will notice that your complete physiology changed.  You became more relaxed.  Your problems temporarily went away.  You were happy. The opposite happens when you concentrate on negative things in your life.  Study yourself and your emotions.  What topic makes you upset and angry?  Now find a way to get that negative pattern catalyst out of your life.

When you begin to recognize the patterns and change your life you will not need outside influences to make you happy.  When you know what people need and show them how to get it, you will have tremendous positive influence in the lives of others.  If you can influence yourself first, then you have power.

Do you have the guts to realize you are the reason you are where you are?  Do you have a positive influence in your life that can tell you that you are messing up?  Do you have the courage to get off the couch and change your destiny by getting the negative catalysts out of your life?

Remember:

Decision is the force to change your destiny.

Get the GUTS to be in an environment that makes you feel alive so you don’t have to fill it with food, or alcohol, or sports on television.

You must act during the time of decisiveness.

You must make more moments of decisiveness.

Leaders are paid to make the right decisions.  They make the wrong ones, so they make another one.

If you are going to lead, you must make decisions.

**************************************

NEED MOTIVATION – You don’t need to be fearing for your life, maybe it is just a new pair of running shoes.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I stole the title to this post, “When It’s Head Versus Heart, The Heart Wins.”  The original article for that title was written for Newsweek Magazine February 11, 2008.  That article was about voter tendencies and the sub title said:

“Science shows that when we are deciding which candidate to support, anxiety, enthusiasm and whom we identify with count more than reason or logic.

Your organization is looking for someone they can identify with.  They are looking to have fun and receive acceptance.  I have said many times on my site and to distributors that network marketing leaders are selling hope and dreams first, your product and service second.  Frankly, most people in your organization are not really looking to make money.  Maybe they got into your business to make money, but soon found that it takes commitment and they may not be ready to give true commitment of the hours and passion yet to make their business profitable financially.

Most companies tout the horsepower of their product and service in an attempt to keep people interested in buying their goods.  This may work for some customers, but this is no way to build a downline.  Statistics are used to promote reason and logic.  This will not keep your people in your business building long term.

Politicians have spent hundreds of millions of dollars attempting to get people to follow them.  The modern, successful politician understands his/her people and how to keep them as faithful constituents.  Like a good politician, you must understand the hearts and minds of your downline.  You must understand that you are often the guardians of their hopes and dreams.  However, unlike many politicians that conduct polls and surveys to manipulate their message, I hope you are trying to understand your people so you can help them, not use them to make only your dreams come true.

I believe that there is nothing wrong for people to be involved with network marketing because they love the product and the association with people who make them feel good about themselves.  It is powerful to give people positive associations and new outlooks on life.  You can make money from the product those people buy.  You can be a positive outlook on their life.  And, just because they are not making money and you are, they are not a failure.  You just better be a good guardian of their needs in the process.

One of the better speeches on this positive thinking came from Tony Robbins.  Tony said,”It is ineffective to think positive only.  You wouldn’t go into your garden and chant ‘No weeds, no weeds.”  This is, as he called it, stupid.

Here are some Mandates on Leadership:

1. See problems as they really are, not better and not worse. You are not a leader if you ignore the facts.  Most people will make the facts worse than they are.  There are always problems, that is the nature of the universe, your goal must be to have a better quality of problems.  People make problems worse because most people only give 85% so that they have an excuse for failure.  They secretly don’t have the passion to completely follow through because success requires commitment and they don’t want to commit.  It takes no courage to doubt things, pessimism is not seeing things as they are, it just means you are gutless.  You are sick and broke because you sit on the couch eating Cheetos and watch too much TV.  Whatever you believe in spiritually, you will live.  Fix your problems, do not wish them away and your life will get better.
2. If I have to prove it to you, you are not the right person. You are looking not to convert people, but you are looking to have people who already have some standard of leadership to see things as they really are.  There are cycles of times.  Winter follows Fall.  Some people freeze in the winter, others go skiing.  Arguing that it should not be winter is silly.  Take advantage of it and make your story positive.  History shows that many people make some of the most money during hard times.
3. Pessimism in the marketplace is power. When others buy, make sure you sell.  Don’t panic about what you have lost.  See things better than the way others see them.  Make things the way you see them, not the way others see them.  Work on your circumstances until they become in physical nature the way that you see them spiritually.  Kids do not start walking immediately.  Kids fall down, they bump their heads, they look silly trying to walk, but you don’t stop them.  What you focus on is what you get.  Your desires and motives will be what fuels your life.  Your motives will support life.

~ Andy Tuck

In 2006 I had an important meeting with my brothers.  We had just finished working for another network marketing company helping them get off the ground.  It was so much fun to be reintroduced to network marketing and to be able work with so many entrepreneurs and people wanting to change their own life and the lives of others for the better.

When we were investigating the best model for a network marketing company, we frequently attended other companies’ meetings and corporate headquarters to see what they were doing right.  I continued to do that as CEO of Jus.  It helped me see so much that was right within network marketing.  I have continued to do it even today.  I am addicted to being around people who have a spark in their eyes and who are moving forward, not backward. That is why I want to make my living within network marketing, it is almost impossible to find another way to be around people continually who want to improve.

While working for another company, I attended a Xango meeting.  It was at that meeting that I saw person after person with a spark in their eyes telling me they believed in what they were doing and that they had a future.  It was incredible and helped me want to be in this industry as my livelihood.  I think everyone in our industry would be better if we would admit there is room for all companies that do things right and we quit attacking each other.  I believe Jus has benefited very much from people who learned how to be networkers in other companies.  I also believe that if the industry quit attacking each other and focused on our real competition such as television and complacency, we would be miles ahead and have the respect of more people outside of network marketing.

In 2006 we had a huge amount of obstacles we had to overcome to start Jus, but looking back, I would not have had it any other way, it was an incredible adventure that helped me overcome many of my personal obstacles and become a better person.  There were many times it would have been easy to give up before Aries made their valued investment, struggles to get the formula right and trying to convince people we actually had something different than what they had experienced before in network marketing. However, if we had given up, I would have missed so many incredible experiences with Jus and all the wonderful people who are now involved.

I recently wrote an entry on my blog called “Reinventing Myself“.  I have had some great comments on that article and even more people call me about it.  Some people have been concerned that I have allowed both positive and negative comments to be posted and not erased from that entry concerning Jus.  I have never erased negative comments on my blogs. Although there has rarely been any negative about the Jus drink, when there was, I posted the comments so I could address them.  I think that all information helps us know where we actually are so we can improve.  The comments by Jus IBOs that are viewed as negative by others should be read with interest so that any possible issues can be addressed and fixed.  If you don’t know you are off course, how can you fix your direction? I love Jus, I always will.  I write this article while sipping on my regular morning Jus shake I make.  However, if there is a way to improve, I was always interested in knowing what people felt so I could make an educated decision.

My blog entry “Reinventing Myself” really should have been called what I have today, “Continually Inventing.” Whatever your age or circumstance, we are not bound by the person we were, we can always improve and get better.  When self-growth is a goal, we may not feel we are improving very much, but when you really look back on your past, you will be shocked on how much you have grown.

Dare to continually evaluate yourself and who you want to become.  Have a big dream and take huge leaps of faith to make them happen.  As I transition to a new adventure, I look back to mistakes I have made in this process.  People who feel that I have not said what I should have said, or done what I should have done, I sincerely apologize.  I was passionate about helping Jus grow and if I messed up, please forgive me.  I look at the things said and done to me, some of them have been good, some have been great and some have been discouraging.  Whatever they were, thank you for helping me be where I am today.  My mistakes make me better and I have truly learned who I can count on during this process.  Thank you Jus family for letting me be a part of your lives and I truly hope you find the wealth you seek, no matter what that wealth is.  Just be sure that you remember to live life while you do it, it’s a great adventure!

Jeff

Take a look at some of my favorite moments from the last three years:

The first batch of Jus comes off the line – When the first bottles started to come down that line it was an amazing experience.  Phil and I made the trip to Florida to make sure everything was on track.  You have to know how wonderful it felt to see a dream actually coming true right in front of your eyes.  The air in the room was alive with the smell of Jus as it poored into the bottles.  Phil and I sat there and just stared in amazement.  Weeks and months of planning was coming to fruition right in front of our eyes.  It was incredible.  Everyone should be so lucky as to see one of their biggest goals they have ever set come to life in front of their eyes.  There were so many things that made it possible; proper funding, hard work and the belief of a few hundred people that had joined before we even had a product.

First Hotel Meeting - Greg Belzeski arranged this meeting.  People just kept coming and coming until there was no room for anyone else.  I had nothing to do with this meeting except to say a couple things to the crowd.  The company was brand new, but people believed.  You know that things are moving forward when more than 100 people show up to a meeting that all you did was show up.

Jake Hines is speaking in this photo and Greg Belzeski was likely somewhere making sure everything was perfect.  Jake and Greg are true leaders and they will help determine the future success of Jus.  Today there are many more Jus leaders and they will help make Jus something special for many other people.

Jus Idaho Office – After being cramped in a small office for months to get the company started, it was incredible to start building out our new office in Boise.  It was so exciting to go each week and see all the new progress on the building.  When the walls went up and the projectors started to work it was so much fun.  Having the office with meeting rooms for the IBOs has proven great for Jus’ growth.

Since this time, Jus has opened offices in Tokyo, Taipai and now in Utah.  Each time an office opened it was fun to be a part of that process.  It gives the IBOs a place to call their own and a place for out of town IBOs to see as the hub of activity.

I genuinely hope that the current offices get overrun with growth and bigger spaces are needed throughout the world.

Question – What are leadership characteristics needed in network marketing to succeed?

Answer – Leadership principles are the same in network marketing as they are in almost every other human interaction.

I was searching leadership today and I found a blog with some excellent information on leadership.

Here are some action steps to enhance our Leadership Generosity:

Give people a sense of importance and meaning

Consider what small actions you can take today to make people feel that the work they do is important, and that they themselves, as people, are important to your team. Help connect the dots for them and help them see how they can and have helped others

Give encouragement and feedback, not criticism

If giving frequent criticism is your style of management, consider some of these questions: Is your motivation genuine, or is it to gain points? Are you picking the right moment? Are you stopping to reflect how you might deliver the feedback while still honoring the other person?  As a leader, giving people the gift of not just our appreciation for good work, but our genuine admiration for their talents, is generosity of spirit at its pinnacle. This is the difference between saying to someone: “Great job” versus “That was pure genius;” or “I appreciated your help” versus “I couldn’t have done it without you.” When it comes to genuine praise, like the sun at high noon, give resplendently. When you see good work, say it, and say it from the heart, just as you thought it. Free up the thought, and let it breathe – let it fly out there in the form of generous words, and watch what you get back. Giving is ultimately sharing.

Give people visibility

Giving people visibility on your team is a special gift we can give to help others shine and grow. Knowing that your leader is representing us well to senior leaders and upper management in your organization is a high-octane motivator, and engenders fierce loyalty.

Know when to forgive

Martin Luther King said that “The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.” Consider how harboring vindictive thoughts, even though so compelling at times, is nothing but violence to oneself. A characteristic of a generous person is a total lack of resentment – it’s in effect being too noble, too big for that. Who do you need to forgive? What do you need to let go?

Share your knowledge and experience

Resolve to become a philanthropist of know-how. What knowledge, expertise, or best practices can you share with others as a way to enrich them? Share with no expectation of return!

Give anonymously

Real generosity of spirit is doing something for someone without their knowledge. I have had the pleasure of listening to John Jackson every morning for the last few months as a new leader in our organization and he ends each of his calls with this call for generosity – Do something for someone today that will really help without them ever knowing you gave that help.  That is real generosity!

If you wold like to read the entire post click here.

I have purchased and listened to many of Tony Robbins’ books and tapes.  I remember when I was first building my Amway distributorship, I listened to “Awaken the Giant Within” over 100 times.  Tony has an energy about him that was addicting and after seeing him in person for the first time this weekend, his energy in person is even more impressive.  I thoroughly enjoyed the three hours he was on stage.

Since I am no longer a part of Jus International, I have been very fortunate to have been contacted by many wonderful people in network marketing.  It has been fun to meet with many successful company executives and distributors from other companies.  It has also been interesting to evaluate companies from an unbiased point of view.  This weekend I was able to meet with Bill Farley and see his team in action at their Zrii convention in Salt Lake City.

In February, Zrii went through a major shake up with their corporate team.  Their entire executive team was fired and most of its largest leaders were terminated when they tried to force owner Bill Farley to sell them their company under duress.  Although I do not have all the relevant facts about the February events, I do know that most new companies would have collapsed under similar public events.  I fully expected to see a dead function and a group of distributors trying to pretend they were still excited about Zrii.  I was completely wrong.  The Zrii corporate team is almost completely rebuilt and Bill Farley has taken over day to day operations of the company.  I felt that the distributors had a legitimate excitement about the rebirth of their company.  I was impressed how fast Bill Farley and his new team have regrouped.  Zrii is not going away and it seems to have passed the initial major test of adversity it was faced with that would have killed most network marketing companies.

Since I was at the meeting as an outsider looking in, I wanted to get a feel for where Zrii really was in an unbiased manner.  On Thursday Zrii had a mixer where the corporate team made brief introductions but much of the time Zrii distributors just talked to each other.  I walked around and heard very positive comments about the new direction.  In about an hour of observing, I only heard one group talking about how negative the February incident was on their group.  The rest of the mixer was upbeat and lively.

Zrii’s convention had the structure of a regular MLM large meeting, but their guest speakers seemed much different than the regular network marketing event, it was very refreshing.  From Chopra to Robbins, the message was unique and frankly quite enjoyable.  Robbins was truly electric and with his ability to speak frankly, he made the meeting much more than your typical network marketing message.

Robbins is a friend of Farley and is obviously aware of February’s events.  A couple ideas from his speech:

• People have been screwing each other in business as long as business has existed.  However, Bill would rather die than give up.
• Positive thinking is not something I believe in.  I believe in action.  It does no good to walk into your garden and chant, “No weeds, no weeds.  This is BS and it does not work.”
• You are not a leader if you ignore the facts.
• See the facts as they are, and make the situation better.
• When you love what you do, time disappears.
• There are patterns that make you succeed, fail, and create despair.  Just recognize the patterns and change your life.

Zrii pulled out their wallet to make this function a success for their company and distributors.  I spoke with Bill Farley for over two hours and I am impressed with his vision for the Zrii brand and company.  Having been to many meetings in my 10 years of network marketing, this function was a great investment for Bill Farley and his team.  If the Zrii nay sayers (and yes I was one of them before this weekend) take a non biased look at was is going on in Zrii, they will likely be impressed with how they have recovered so quickly.

Duff has heroically and humorously overcome her battle with sarcoidosis, as recounted in her best-selling book, Model Patient: My Life As an Incurable Wise-Ass.

Here’s what Duff told Marc:

The biggest mistake you can make is to do nothing when you can do a little. If you can do just a little something today, do it.

Duff was hitting it big when her illness hit her. She was at the Emmys with George Clooney, she’d just signed a contract with Revlon, and she had been named one of People magazine’s “50 Most Beautiful People.”

And by keeping her spirits up and expectations down, she did just a little bit that day. And a little bit more the next. And a little bit more the next.

And she re-built her life, her work, her career. She never lost her good spirits or wicked sense of humor, and has the most charming outlook on love, life and just about everything.

To laugh in the face of our enemies – even mysterious incapacitating illnesses; to thrive – not despite our problems, but because of them; to overcome, to conquer, to challenge; to take the worst that life can inflict upon us – and respond with the best that is within us.

That is the mark of my heroes.

Folks, whatever you’re facing today (and I know it is tough out there), but is it as bad as a life-altering illness?

And if it’s not (or if it is), can you do just one little something today?

Just one thing today for yourself, for your career, for your life.

The biggest mistake you can make is to do nothing when you can do a little.

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Thanks Marc for sending this email.  It was great.  Karen’s words to Marc are really an inspiration to us all.

You can subscribe to Marc’s emails at www.theladders.com

Network marketers have a real opportunity now with people wanting to get into business for themselves but fearing to get started in a traditional business that may suck their bank accounts dry.  There are many people disenchanted with corporate America and there is really no better time than now to get started as an entrepreneur.

Not everyone is cut out to be self employed because of the demands it takes to make a business work.  However, network marketing offers a unique ability for the person to be in business for themselves, without being by themselves like a traditional business startup.  Where a typical entrepreneur is wired to be comfortable with open-endedness and ambiguity, most people are not.  Many of these people who are not comfortable with ambiguity may do great in network marketing with a success system and a mentor.

The articles says:

Self-employed professionals also are known for being optimistic, competitive, creative and organized. They tend to have a head for business, understand what their customers want and act with integrity. And if they’re passionate about their venture, they work as many hours as it takes to get results.

If a motivated entrepreneur with the characteristics described above enters network marketing, they can have amazing results.

If you’re tired of leaving your career success in the hands of others and think striking out on your own is a better option, there are steps you can take to ensure that self-employment is a good fit before going too far down the entrepreneurial road.

See How It Feels

“Observe yourself like a bug and note the situations where you feel most creative and excited,” suggests Ms. Slim. “Hang out with entrepreneurs to see if you like the lifestyle, and go through some of the motions yourself — like approaching a customer or advertising your latest project — to see how it feels.”

It’s also important to consider what’s required, personality-wise, of the type of business you want to start. “Entrepreneurship is a continuum, and there are those who feel most comfortable and have the skill set to start new businesses over and over again, whereas others prefer to dip their toe in and then return to work for an established organization,” says Ms. Slim.

Finally, recognize that any kind of self-employment brings with it a host of new accounting responsibilities, from processing invoices to filing endless tax forms. Whether or not you can cope with it should factor into your decision to proceed.

I received a great email from Palo Alto software today and I thought I would pass on some of it.  It is very applicable to our efforts each day with prospects.

Stories are important — they remind us what’s possible

People overuse the phrase “never in my wildest dreams.” Especially when it comes to starting a business. The truth is, we entrepreneurs are all dreamers at heart.

Back in the ’80s, I gave up a lucrative consulting practice to start a software company on a shoestring budget. I believed in the usefulness of software in business planning, and nobody was doing it right. Now, did I expect that original product to grow into the world’s best-selling business plan software, and eventually to become the flagship product of a much larger Palo Alto Software? Not exactly. But I’d be lying if I said the thought never crossed my mind. We dream it, then we try to do it.

That’s why sharing our stories is so important. Starting a business — or growing an existing one — is hard work. And it’s risky. And it takes a particular mix of bravery and optimism. Hearing about others who have made the same journey successfully is like fuel. It helps us take off.

Good reasons to share your story

• Beyond the obvious, here are a couple of worthwhile reasons to consider spending your time on this:

• Inspire the next great entrepreneur! Nothing energizes potential entrepreneurs better than hearing about the experiences of others who have built their own successful companies. Share your wisdom with the crowd.

• Enjoy the free PR.

• Drive traffic to your website.

True brands live in the hearts of their followers. Smart executives know the difference between selling a product/service and selling a way of life. To illustrate, let me give you a couple examples: Apple, Harley Davidson, Disney and Abercrombie & Fitch. Harley riders even tattoo the logo on themselves. Now that is a powerful brand.

Levi Straus once was a shining example of passion and owning a niche, no longer. They lost focus and it is hard to get the trust of the consumer back. In network marketing, Amway is the Levi Straus of brand/trust equity. Amway once had niche domination in America, but somehow they lost focus on the fact that they were really selling hope, not soap. Trust is something that is hard to get and even harder to get back once you lost it.

Good examples of trust equity (Apple and Harley Davidson) understand that they are selling freedom and lifestyle. They know the hearts of their buyers. Harley Davidson riders know that there are faster bikes that are quieter, but they don’t care. Harley represents freedom from the 9 to 5, it represents a band of brothers and sisters. And, Harley Davidson corporate knows their customers. Harley employees are bikers, they live what they sell. Apple is an example of a company that had, lost it, and then regained it. Apple is now the shining example of understanding how to be important. They are more expensive, they are prettier, and they just keep getting better. Apple users resent inferior PCs and you cannot convince them that there is anything that compares to the iPod.

So who gets this in network marketing? Who truly understands what people are really looking for? Is it a high ORAC, is it cheaper long distance, is it more vitamin C, or is it a cool logo? No, no, no and no. Network marketing is coming of age, but few companies get what their customers really want (and yes, IBOs/distributors are customers, they are the ultimate customer). There are very few companies in the world that see and hear the same thing as their customers, and even fewer MLM company executives that get it. Instead, many companies try to force what they think their customer wants or spend too much time comparing themselves to another company.

IBOs don’t care about the supply chain or how exact your bank account is balanced. IBOs want to feel alive again, they want to feel needed. They want to belong to a band of brothers that will stick up for them when they are not in the room. They want to be free, even if it is only on weekends. My guess is that your company executives don’t get this and most have never really thought about it. There are many company executives that don’t even understand their own compensation plan. Most companies that are having momentum and communication problems have their problems as a result of the corporate team thinking the field cares about corporate’s problems. The field doesn’t care if the CEO or President is having personal problems or why the product is late. The field just wants things to be right now and if its not, when it will be fixed. However, corporate teams better care about what the field wants. It is very important. Corporate executives must understand the fields’ problems and do their best to fix those problems before they even start.

Instinct is important in company culture and brand importance. However, instinct dies in endless meanings because you justify away your instincts to the bean counters in the room. You want your company to matter? Well, start understanding that people care less about your product and more about themselves. What’s in it for them? Ask your corporate team if they have ever sponsored someone into the company, and if they haven’t ask them to. Don’t ask them to help you enroll someone, ask them to enroll their own friends or family for a year. Ask yourself if you feel excited each day to be a part of something special. If you don’t, fix it quick or someone smarter about human nature will take your group.

For about three years I have worked extraordinarily hard to start and run Jus International with my brothers and partners.  This month I was voted out of my executive position and from the board of Jus. I currently have no day-to-day responsibilities for the company I helped found.  I must admit, I disagree with the decision made by my partners and I was temporarily devastated.  I have had so many people ask me how this happened and how this was possible.  I still search for answers.  However, even though I had periods in the last three years that almost everything was sacrificed in my personal life to make Jus work, I can say that Jus alone does not define me and that I can succeed with our without Jus in my life.

At 37 I find myself in a unique position.  I have been approached by many wonderful people and opportunities.  I can confidently say that I will stay in network marketing.  I love working with people, and I love watching people improve themselves.  Network marketing allows me to be a part of people’s lives and help them improve.  I am not unlike many people in this new economy.  I have skills and I have desires, now I must reinvent myself again to apply them to new opportunities. My path is still not completely charted so I am a bit anxious, but I am sure I can make the new path something special.

Last year I was so busy, I forgot to register my oldest son Parker for baseball.  He loves playing and has done a fine job catching back up to his buddies.  Parker told my wife that he has really wanted to be awarded the game ball by his coach.  However, with a year off, he has struggled throughout the season to find his swing and strengthen his arm.  Last week my 9 year old was awarded the game ball after he drove in two runs, got on base all three of his at-bats and as a pitcher he struck out three in one inning. I was so proud of him because he has worked so hard to get that ball and it paid off.

In 2008, I flew over 120,000 miles and I frequently used Skype video phone to say good night (or morning depending on where I was at) to my kids.  In 2009, I have flown less than 10000 miles and currently have no job, but I watched my 9 year old achieve his goal of getting the game ball.  Reinventing myself is not much different than Parker’s goal of being awarded the game ball by his coach.  I will take my dedication to another level and although 2009 has allowed me a new opportunity to improve and reinvent myself, it will also be a year that will help define my future.  2009 has been a great year, and will only get better.

Using a powerful engine like Wordpress can give you many advantages over other free sites such as blogger.com, but there are lessons you will need to learn in order to make your site what it should be.

Click on the links below to help you get started.Some connections may take longer to load the videos below.  You may have to push the pause button while the videos upload completely.

Basics of Logging In – Click Here

How to make a Page and upload Images

How to make a Post on your site

How to make a Post on your site – Part 2

How to Configure your Featured Article on Front Page

How to add images/media and make edits

Doug Wead wrote:

“Jeff Boyle: Founder of Jus, he is included in this mix because he actually built his company’s own networks. Young. brilliant, with a big heart.  No one knows the science of networking any better.  He is the Alvin Toffler of the industry.”

To see what Mr Wead wrote about others, please click the link below:

Click Here to Visit Doug Wead

Network marketing’s main product and service sold today is hope.  We cannot be so naive to believe that everybody is going to make a lot of money in our downline.  However, we can ensure that everyone in our group walks away with more belief in themselves and the goal to improve.  Simply stated, network marketing requires skill, diligence and long-term thinking.  These traits are not embodied in every network marketer.  However, hope must abound in our groups.  The psychological income that we can give our groups of goal setting, life skills, and yes, hope for the future can truly change our downline’s lives.  Frankly speaking, network marketing may not make everbody a millionaire, but it should be a self-improvement factory.  If we become small minded and forget the importance of delivering hope to our groups by dishonoring the trust they have given us, we are no better than corporate America.

Network marketing and multi-level marketing are both used to describe our industry, but relationship marketing should be used more frequently.  I am sure you have heard many business people say, “It’s not personal, it’s just business.”  If network marketing begins to take this approach like corporate America, our industry is doomed.  It is not just business, we are dealing with people’s lives.  When we forget that, we too will see our industry focus turn from people to “just business.”  This would be a shame.

Below I have attached a famous short story by Geoffrey Chaucer.  Do not let greed ruin you or your business.  Develop your people and you stand a chance at having true wealth in network marketing.

Click Here to download the story.

If you are constantly negative or out for revenge, you will be sapped of energy, focus and motivation. The energy you are putting into revenge will be a huge opportunity cost you will be paying in lieu of allowing yourself to focus on the future and positivity. Revenge and negatives thinking is not a formula for success.

Angry, self-conscious people repel those around them. There are poor and very wealthy people that lack confidence or are living in fear. Negative thinking will not fix current problems and will often cause the person to slide into depression, self-pity, and hopelessness.

I have spent significant time recently talking to IBOs who want to focus on problems within their organization, compensation plan, or the lack of Nordstrom type of customer service. Guess what, your public scrutiny will not help you group or make you look smart. Instead it will kill your group. Try having a BBQ or sing some karaoke with some tone deaf friends. You will be amazed at how good that greasy hamburger can make you feel better and grow your business.

I began my sales career in earnest when I was eight.  I loved to buy candy and sell it to my friends.  I made about $50 my first summer doing it.  I was rich.  Today, I am still a big believer in the sales profession.  I believe that people love to buy, but hate to be sold.  Consequently in network marketing there is a fine line between selling and sponsoring, but below are a few tips that may help you sponsor and sell yourself rich.

Six Basic Concepts:

1. Decide on the exact amount of commission or bonuses you choose to earn.
2. You must feel worthy of receiving the money you desire.
3. You must repeat a prosperity affirmation daily.  Prosperity can be made into a habit, but you will need to work on it every day.
4. Invest time every day studying how people are compensated.  There is a law of compensation and you will need to become a student.
   a. Bob Proctor says the amount of money you will earn will always be in exact ratio to:
   -The need for what you do.
   -Your ability to do it.
   -The difficulty there will be to replace you.
5. What are you willing to give up in order to get what you want?  TV is a good answer for many people.
6. You must be the person in your mind before you can actually become that person.  You must think, feel and act like the person who is already serving others and earning the commission you have chosen to earn.

A: Don’t ever give up.

Is that really the secret?  It can’t be that easy you may say.  I tell you it is.  But never giving up is very hard for most people.  Don’t be one of them.

I love this cartoon.  I always have.  I have counseled some people to look at their first six months in network marketing as a learning period.  Whatever money you make is a bonus.  Sometimes it is a big bonus.  However, you must first learn before you can earn the big bucks.

Let me tell you the main reasons people fail in network marketing:

1. They are not talking to enough prospects.
2. They are not talking to the right type of prospect.
3. They are not following a proven success system.  (The right system tells them what to say and how to say it.)

Many people come into network marketing with these skills and a network developed.  Others do not.  However, all the skills that you will need to succeed can be developed if you are passionate about acquiring them.  Just don’t give up before you get there.

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Answer:  You may be holding on to things that are preventing you from the personal growth you need to get to the next level.

I recently received a tweet that said, “The universe cannot put good into your hand until you let go of what you are holding on to.”  How true this is.

I remember a book I read in the fifth grade.  Somehow a bunch of chimpanzees escaped and were evading recapture near a young boy’s home.  In order to befriend the chimps he had to get close to them.  The boy made a trap by putting food into a box that was big enough for the chimp to put his hand into the box.  However, when the chimp had the food in hand he became trapped because his closed fist would not come out of the box with the food.  To get free, all he had to do was let go of the food.

There are so many of us that have the answers to our troubles knocking us on the head each day.  However, we are too proud or lazy to let go of the unproductive past that is holding us back.  Is it TV, computer games, pride, or even fear that is holding you back?  Are you more passionate about emotional and financial freedom or holding on to the things that have made you comfortably miserable?

To gain your freedom and the prosperity you think you deserve, you may have to let go of what is keeping you captive.

Question – We are having growth in our business, but we are having too much attrition, what can I do to help people stay in the business long enough to start making real money?

Answer – Try having some fun.

Did you know that one of your main responsibilities as a successful network marketer is to start enjoying life again?  When you start to teach people to follow their dreams and to start living them now, you will create a culture of life and actually enjoying it. If you are not having BBQs, picnics and fun activities, you should probably start now.

Before I became a “serious” business person, I sure had a lot of fun.  I worked hard so I could play hard.  Snow skiing, water skiing, body surfing, golfing, snowmobiling, softball, beach volleyball, mountain biking…you get the picture.  If you start learning to have fun again you will keep more people in your business, you will keep more people ordering the product and you will start making more money.  The great part is that this will all be more realistic when your people are actually enjoying being in your business.

People stay where they see value.  People love being around people who are enjoying themselves. Start enjoying yourself.

(By the way, my body still looks the same as I did in purple shorts above, I just have a little less hair on my head.)

Bob Proctor tells us that if we are going to improve we are going to have to have an open mind and an open mind is being prepared to throw away some of our most cherished beliefs when a better one comes along.

The vast majority of people seem to back into the future dragging all of their own experience with them and when they are confronted with a new idea they ask themselves “does it fit?”  If it doesn’t, they say “it is wrong!” The “wrong” ideas are typically what are making you miserable.

What we need to do is ask ourselves “Will this new idea improve the quality of my life or is it going to take me in another direction?”  Before you throw something away as rubbish, you better know that it is not going to improve your quality of life.  You never know the great heights it could have taken you.

People talk about degrees as making you educated.  I can tell you that I know some really broke people with degrees.  Some people believe that specific knowledge makes you smart.  I believe the test of the educated person is their ability to:

1. Can you entertain a new idea?
2. Can you entertain another person?
3. Can you really entertain yourself?

What are your thoughts?

Register today for the Science of Network Marketing.

Ascorbic Acid Causes Hardening of the Arteries (Alternate Medicine Angel)

It seems hardly likely that taking high doses of vitamin C (ascorbic acid) can cause thickening or hardening of the arteries since so many people have taken high doses for a long time. Yet researchers from the University of California reported just that on March 2, 2000. People who took 500 mgs of ascorbic acid had a 2.5 times faster progression of thickening of the carotid artery (hardening of the arteries) than people who took no supplement.

Synthetic Vitamins Also Cause Deficiencies (Alternate Medicine Angel)

All store-bought vitamin C is either synthetic or fractionated (isolated from a highly-processed food like corn oil). The real vitamin C complex contains a myriad of nutrients, including organic copper, bioflavonoids, enzymes and coenzymes, trace mineral activators, antioxidants, etc. The ascorbic acid fraction of this complex is only the preservative or anti-oxidant portion which actually serves to preserve the nutrients of this marvelous nutritional complex. By manufacturing high-dose ascorbic acid supplements, we have opted to “extract one component and give it at a very high level, not knowing what we are doing to the system.”

It is a fact that the body cannot assimilate (use) high-dose fractions of nutrients without first putting them into a form that is functional to the human body. In the case of ascorbic acid, the body will scour the system for the missing components of the vitamin C complex in order to utilize the ascorbic acid. That is why almost all of this chemical ends up in the urine — because it cannot be utilized by the body in its fractionated form.

The potential problem with ascorbic acid is that prior to being excreted from the body, it scours the system for its accompanying nutrients. In so doing, ascorbic acid and other synthetic nutrients can create deficiencies of their nutritional partners. Prime examples are high doses of zinc causing a mineral deficiency, high doses of vitamin B1 causing a B vitamin deficiency, and high doses of ascorbic acid causing a copper deficiency.

Natural VS Synthetic

In an article entitled Vitamin Wars: Natural VS Synthetic, it was said that synthetic vitamins simply cannot measure up to nature’s finest. Over 3,800 different compounds have been identified in foods as having nutritional significance. However, in a laboratory, twenty nutrients are about all that modern science can reproduce and put into a vitamin product.

Gravity is easy to predict.  You step off of a two-story balcony, you will fall every time.  There is no need to fight against it, or you will simply keep breaking your legs.  Financial and personal success are the same.

I believe that God is so organized that He set laws and processes into place from the beginning upon which all things are predicated.  Any time we follow the laws and processes he put into place, we receive the benefit He desired when He set that law into motion.

Gratitude is a spiritual law that most people forget.  Lack of gratitude is also one of the main stumbling blocks to your success going forward.  Wallace Wattles’ masterpiece gives us insight into why gratitude is so important in the Science of Getting Rich.  Many of my thoughts below were taken or inspired from this great book along with my own personal spiritual beliefs.

The first step toward receiving spiritual wealth and temporal necessities is to convey the idea of your needs to God using the power of the Spirit in grateful prayer.

In order to do so it becomes necessary to relate yourself to God through prayer in a harmonious way.

It is easy to understand that the nearer we live to the source of spiritual and temporal wealth, the more wealth we shall receive; and it is easy also to understand that the soul that is always grateful lives in closer touch with God than the one which never looks to Him in thankful acknowledgment.

The more gratefully we fix our minds on the Supreme when good things come to us, the more good things we will receive, and the more rapidly they will come; and the reason simply is that the mental attitude of gratitude draws the mind into closer touch with the source from which the blessings come.

If it is a new thought to you that gratitude brings your whole mind into closer harmony with the creative energies of God, consider it well, and you will see that it is true. The good things you already have come to you along the line of obedience to certain laws. Gratitude will lead your mind out along the ways by which things come; and it will keep you in close harmony with creative thought and prevent you from falling into competitive thought.

Gratitude alone can keep you looking toward the All, and prevent you from falling into the error of thinking of the supply as limited; and to do that would be fatal to your hopes.

The grateful outreaching of your mind in thankful praise to the Supreme is a liberation or expenditure of force; it cannot fail to reach that to which it is addressed, and the reaction is an instantaneous movement toward you.

“Draw nigh unto God, and He will draw nigh unto you.” That is a statement of psychological truth.

And if your gratitude is strong and constant, the reaction to the laws created by God will be strong and continuous; the movement of the things you want will be always toward you. Notice the grateful attitude that Jesus took; how He always seems to be saying, “I thank Thee, Father, that Thou hearest me.” You cannot exercise much power without gratitude; for it is gratitude that keeps you connected with Power.

But the value of gratitude does not consist solely in getting you more blessings in the future. Without gratitude you cannot long keep from dissatisfied thought regarding things as they are.

The moment you permit your mind to dwell with dissatisfaction upon things as they are, you begin to lose ground. You fix attention upon the common, the ordinary, the poor, and the squalid and mean; and your mind takes the form of these things. Then you will transmit these forms or mental images which result will be the common, the poor, the squalid, and mean will come to you.

To permit your mind to dwell upon the inferior is to become inferior and to surround yourself with inferior things. On the other hand, to fix your attention on the best is to surround yourself with the best, and to become the best.

The Creative Power within us makes us into the image of that to which we give our attention.

God creates.  We are Godlike beings when we are empowered with creative powers, and as creative beings we always take the form of that which we think about.

Also, faith is born of gratitude. The grateful mind continually expects good things, and expectation becomes faith. The reaction of gratitude upon one’s own mind produces faith; and every outgoing wave of grateful thanksgiving increases faith. He who has no feeling of gratitude cannot long retain a living faith; and without a living faith you cannot receive eternal and material wealth by the creative method, as we shall see in the following chapters.  It is necessary, then, to cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you; and to give thanks continuously.

Answer: It can get better once you learn how to develop leaders.

John C. Maxwell once said, “A leader is one who knows the way … goes the way … and shows the way.”

Gary Eby summed up much of Maxwell’s thoughts when he wrote that powerful leaders promote leaders, they don’t just maintain followers. Powerful leaders not only mentally assent to knowing the way they actually go the right way. And true leaders then show the way to others. They duplicate themselves. Let’s make sure you understand this. I’ll say it again differently. ‘The “mediocre” teacher tells. The “good” teacher explains. The “superior” teacher demonstrates. The “great” teacher inspires.”

I love the idea that the great leader inspires people.  You can never prepare your people for every situation that they will ever encounter.  People must be inspired to great things, because a factually perfect presentation without inspiration is worthless.  You will not get people to follow you or to do great things if they lack inspiration.

Randy Gage has done a great job of describing what happens when people lack inspiration and a culture of duplication in their group:

…many people become “MLM Grinders.” These are the people who have to constantly replace their distributors because they drop out. They have to make all the presentations themselves, handle all the meetings, and pretty much do everything. If they slow down for one minute, things start to unravel in their group. They’re always grinding, but the recognition, big bonus checks, and free cars and trips always seem just a little out of reach.

Remember the parable about the emperor with no clothes?

Grinders are in a similar situation. They sell lifestyle and talk about residual income, but the sad truth is they don’t really have either. They work night and day because they’re afraid to let up. If they were to stop grinding for even a month or two, their income would shrivel up and die.

Duplication is key, but you will have to give up some of your control and teach people to do the right thing for their groups.  So what is the right thing?  You must learn to inspire people to learn more about themselves and the true principles of duplication.

Start today by clicking here to sign up for the next Secrets of Network Marketing teleseminar.

Why are some people successful when others are a complete failure in life and in network marketing?  Is there a secret that makes some people so successful while others fail?  The simple answer is yes.  There is a secret to network marketing and if you follow what I teach in the course, you will succeed.

There are many thousands of ordinary people who have learned and mastered the secrets of network marketing and are making six- and seven-figure incomes – the vast majority of them right from their own homes.  The wonderful part about network marketing is that these small business owners usually consist of single entrepreneurs or couples, but these small businesses have made people millions of dollars with an initial investment that usually costs less than a typical car payment.  Many people have heard of these success stories, I want to help you become one of them.

You could already be on the right path, or soon you could be on the right path soon.  Simply stated, network marketing is extraordinarily unique.  How many businesses will let you start from scratch, with very little initial investment, no prior experience and give you a legitimate chance of becoming a millionaire?  You can succeed if you have little money now or even if you have made a lot of money from another source.

Let’s start today on your path to success in network marketing.

Dedicated to your success,

Jeffery Boyle

Dough, wonga, greenbacks, cash. Just words, you might say, but they carry an eerie psychological force. Chew them over for a few moments, and you will become a different person. Simply thinking about words associated with money seems to makes us more self-reliant and less inclined to help others. And it gets weirder: just handling cash can take the sting out of social rejection and even diminish physical pain.

It is so funny that money and even talking about it can make people feel better about themselves and it even helps with rejection.  Money is just supposed to be a tool, right?  Apparently it is not a regular tool.  Tools like axes help cut down trees, and money is just supposed to be an economic tool, right?  Well, it’s not.

…traditional economists tell us, dispassionately set the price of anything from a loaf of bread to a painting by Picasso. Yet money stirs up more passion, stress and envy than any axe or hammer ever could. We just can’t seem to deal with it rationally… but why?

In his book, Science of Getting Rich, Wallace Wattles says:

A man develops in mind, soul, and body by making use of things, and society is so organized that man must have money in order to become the possessor of things; therefore, the basis of all advancement for man must be the science of getting rich.

The problem with society is that we don’t just see money as a way of personal development, it has many facets.  Buchanan’s article says the following things about money:

1. Some people seem addicted to accumulating it, while others can’t help maxing out their credit cards and find it impossible to save for a rainy day.
2. Some people’s brains can react to it as they would to a drug, while to others it is like a friend.
3. Desire for money gets cross-wired with our appetite for food.
4. Money is virtually synonymous with status – so much so that losing it can lead to depression and even suicide.
5. Those strongly motivated primarily on money are also more likely to find their marriage ending in divorce.
6. Financial strain can bring depression, perceived loss of control and reduced life expectancy.
7. People who felt rejected by others, or were subjected to physical pain, were subsequently less likely to give a monetary gift in a game situation.
8. Just handling paper money could reduce the distress associated with social exclusion, and also diminish the physical pain caused by touching very hot water.
9. When society does not work (in other words you are friendless) money is acting as a surrogate friend. Could that explain why some people focus on extrinsic aspirations at the expense of real social relationships?
10. Money, like nicotine or cocaine, can activate the brain’s pleasure centres, the neurological pathways that make biologically beneficial activities such as sex feel so rewarding.
11. Hungry volunteers were less likely to donate to charity than those who were satiated; those primed to have a high desire for money, by having imagined winning a big lottery, went on to eat the most candy in a taste test; and people whose appetites had been piqued by sitting in a room with a delicious smell, gave less money in a game situation than those who played in a normal-smelling room.
12. Hungry people are less likely to donate money to charity than those who are satiated

Love it or hate, money controls the lives of poor and rich.  Avoid talking about it if you want, but money will not avoid you, you are surrounded by it.  Money does mess with your mind, you must admit that it is important.  I would like to think that money is just a tool for me, but I must admit that the times in my life when I had no money, I thought about it all the time and it was often with a feeling of panic.  In the end I believe money magnifies our personalities in both lack and abundance. With money, if you are bad, you will be worse, if you are good you will be better. Unfortunately, when we are completely broke, we are often selfish and unwilling to “do unto others.”

What are your thoughts?

WHATEVER may be said in praise of poverty, the fact remains that it is not possible to live a really complete or successful life unless one is rich. No man can rise to his greatest possible height in talent or soul development unless he has plenty of money; for to unfold the soul and to develop talent he must have many things to use, and he cannot have these things unless he has money to buy them with.

How do you feel about this paragraph? Give me your comments below.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to make more money.  I repeat, there is nothing wrong with wanting to make more money.

There is a book written over 100 years ago by Wallace Wattles that is likely what started the whole self-help revolution we see today.  In his incredible book he says:

It is perfectly right that you should desire to be rich; if you are a normal man or woman you cannot help doing so. It is perfectly right that you should give your best attention to the Science of Getting Rich, for it is the noblest and most necessary of all studies. If you neglect this study, you are derelict in your duty to yourself, to God and humanity; for you can render to God and humanity no greater service than to make the most of yourself.

If you are afraid to talk about money, people will feel it either concsiously or subconsciously.  You cannot run from your fears.  You must accept the fact that God wants you to be the best you can be and today, you need money to buy food, clothing, shelter, give to charity, have leisure time from your hard work and have the resources to better educate yourself on the wonders of this world.

There are three motives for which we live; we live for the body, we live for the mind, we live for the soul. No one of these is better or holier than the other; all are alike desirable, and no one of the three–body, mind, or soul–can live fully if either of the others is cut short of full life and expression. It is not right or noble to live only for the soul and deny mind or body; and it is wrong to live for the intellect and deny body or soul.

Live for the soul and mind, but do not forget the body.  You can be comfortable making money, but first you must be comfortable talking about money.

Synthetic Vitamins are dangerous

I have recently been getting a lot of visitors to my site searching for information about the difference between synthetic and natural vitamins. There are so many doubts about what synthetic can do for you. Not just because of how a lab may make them, but also because of how they are packaged and delivered. One thing is certain, if you can get your vitamins from natural supplements or from your diet your are much better off.  I will finding some quotes about this topic and I will be telling you a bit about the author and his/her background when I get the quotes.  Take that into consideration when you read what they have to say.

Vitamin tablets typically contain a variety of fillers and while some of them are just pulchritudinous for you, you do need to be on the look exterior for others, or the risk of overdoing them. Soybean oil is a very common filler and very unhealthy filler found most often in gelcaps. Soybean oil can actually do more harm than the good of the vitamin because it is very high in trans fats ( these are the bad fats ) and can cause all sorts of heart problems as well being obesity. Another unnecessary filler to be on the lookout for is artificial color. Artificial colors have proven to be carcinogenic and many people are allergic to them too. Quote by Garland Choate, health enthusiast and former airline pilot.

The difference in quality (natural vs synthetic) is due to dosage amount, synthetic verses natural, and the range of ingredients. Synthetic vitamins are typically cheap, and typically sold in the supermarket. They typically lack the necessary molecular structure of the natural version which goes unrecognized by the body and are unlikely to improve the body’s cells.

A number of studies have had the aim of showing the impotency of vitamins — that vitamins are bad for you, that they have no effect. However the vitamins in question were in the main synthetic vitamins category. This is particularly the case as Mike Adams points out with Vitamin E studies conducted over 20 years. The aim was to discredit the vitamin and they used synthetic Vitamin E to prove it.

Adams points out in this article that the aim of the JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) is to warn people about the dangers of synthetic vitamins — they can harm you or they have no effect. So not only do we have anecdotal evidence about the quality and efficacy of synthetic vitamins but now we have the apparent scientific evidence.

Studies involving Vitamin E have typically used a synthetic chemical which has a different molecular structure to the natural Vitamin E. Adams mentions that this has led to debate over safe dosage levels and about the benefits of taking antioxidants at all (3). At no time was there clarity about what was actually studied — synthetic or natural. This means that people could have been mislead and scared off from taking the natural Vitamin E.

Organic Consumers (www.organicconsumers.org) warns people against synthetic vitamins particularly; fat-soluble ones as these build up in the fat tissues, fat deposits and the liver. In addition they warn that the base of the synthetics can consist of petrochemical derivatives, nicotine and coal tars (by-products of coal).

Byron Richards points out what to look for when buying vitamins and says that it depends on the vitamin. In Vitamin B what is necessary are co-enzymes. His two part article is well worth reading. (www.naturalnews.com/023169.html)

With the price of groceries increasing, you may be considering a change in vitamin brands. First ask yourself whether the product is natural or synthetic. If it is natural, consider the dosage range and amount, and compare.

Lynn Berry – Lynn is not in the medical field by does a nice job of using references.

Stay stuned.  I will continue to find articles that may be of help to understand the difference between natural and synthetic supplements.

Dedicated to your health,

Jeff

The problem that we have today is that the news, the papers and everyone around us is in a state of failure thinking. It does not matter if it is about war or the economy, people are thinking failure. It has gotten bad enough that I can’t stand going to watch the news or read anything on cnn.com. I have had my fill of negativity and the idea that there is no recovery.

There is no doubt that failure surrounds us, but what everyone needs to see is that success is just as prevalent. We just need to open our eyes to it. My question for you is, “What do you do to fill your day with positivity and success?”

Looking to hear from you.

Jeff

1. Go to www.empowerz.com
2. In the middle of your screen it should say “start your domain name search here.” Enter your desired domain name (e.g. first & last name (John Smith)). Click “search.”
3. Select how you wish to have your domain name end (e.g., .com, .tv, .org)
4. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click “Continue.”
5. Now, enter your information, register and pay for your desired domain name. Dot com (.com) domains names are about $11.00 per year.
6. After your domain name is registered, visit www.empowerz.com again to login to your account with your username and password. Click “My Account” at top of page to login.
7. After successful login, click “Domains” on left side of screen.
8. Select the domain name you wish to have forwarded to your replicated website by clicking the box to the left of that name—a check mark should appear when you click box.
9. Different options will become illuminated above your domain name(s). Click “Forward”.
10. A box will appear with your forwarding options. Select “Enable Forwarding.” Then,  purchase 1 credit for $0.00. Then, select “302 Moved Temporarily.” Now, type in the full address to your replicated website (e.g. http://www.mysite.com/webalias)
11. Click “OK” button. Now, your personal domain name will automatically redirect to your replicated website.

For those who wish to create their own websites and not use the services provided them by your company, certain criteria must usually be met. Following is the criteria for Jus International when I was CEO/President. Check with your company for an updated policy so that you understand how to best stay within company regulations:

1. Any use of the Jus International logo and/or name on any material, including websites, is strictly PROHIBITED except by those who meet criteria and receive approval. To receive approval, contact Jus International via email at compliance@jus.net or call customer service at 208.846.7880 to explain and show explicitly how and where the Jús logo and/or name will be used.
2. Personal Jus websites, and any other IBO created material, must clearly state the words “Authorized Jus Independent Business Owner” in a conspicuous location. All material must be approved BEFORE it is used and distributed to prospects.
3. Personal Jus websites must display, in a conspicuous location, the Independent Business Owner medallion found on Jus replicated websites. The medallion can be found in the IBO’s back office. An explanation must be found close to said medallion which states, “If you wish to visit the official corporate website for Jus International, click here.” A link must be provided in this area to direct visitors to official corporate website of Jus International www.jus.net.
4. BEFORE personal Jus websites go active, the entirety of the site must be approved by Jus International. To receive approval, contact Jus International via email at compliance@jus.net or call for help with compliance at 208.846.7880.
5. If personal Jús websites, or any other material, are found to have not been approved beforehand by Jús International, the IBO who created such material will be asked to remove and discontinue use until Jus International can approve said material.

Answer: Yes, but it still works, and if it works, why fight it.

I have spent a lot of time this week calling purchased leads with an IBO. We have taken turns calling on these premium leads so he has an idea of how to cold call. It has been fun because I have done a lot of cold calling in my life, however, it is a lot of work and after many hours of calls we only have a few interested prospects. We also know that we will have a lot of work to get these prospects to become IBOs.

The same time we are making cold calls on leads we are also making his names list and calling his friends and family. We are having more success with the “old way” without question.

Meetings are good for belief, one on one meetings still build your base and your upline is still a powerful tool that deserves edification.  So many times, IBOs want to shortcut time-tested methods that still work today with new technologies.  I recommend that people not give up on what has worked for many years.  Friends, family and acquaintences have always been a good place to start.  You will feel very bad if you go to a meeting and see a friend has joined the business with another person.

I believe in social networking. I use twitter to notify IBO of news and good thoughts. I love Facebook but I don’t overdo it. I don’t invite IBOs to know about how I brush my teeth or when I like to go to bed. The new technologies are good but can be abused.  When things are abused, they stop being effective and simply become white noise.

Build your list, go to meetings for inspiration and don’t quit. You can succeed at this business.

Entonces, ¿cual es el problema con el negocio multinivel en la opinión de algunos?

Posiblemente ¿es la estructura de pirámide? Pues tu puedes pensar en ello como una estructura de compensación escalonada— Casi todas las largas organizaciones en el mundo usan una igual. Los vendedores ganan comisiones, El Jefe de ventas gana pluses, y así sucesivamente hacia arriba. Pero, en multinivel, la persona nueva puede hacer menos que la persona que ha trabajado por años

O posiblemente la cuestión ¿es porque tienes que pagar por participar? Pero eso no es así— es un modelo de franquicia estándar.

Y te aseguro que los costes de una franquicia tradicional son grandes en comparación a los costes de una afiliación a un negocio multinivel.

Por supuesto que también hay pirámides ilegales y demás estafas. Estas es donde el dinero proviene de personas afiliadas y poco o ningún producto que ser enviado. Pero a pesar de cualquier percepción que puedas tener, la cuestión es que hay mucha compañías de multinivel han vendido millones en productos a millones de clientes satisfechos, muchos de ellos sin ser distribuidores. Entonces, puede haber un problema de percepción aquí, pero si es así, la percepción esta fuera de la línea con la realidad.

Pero seguramente la mala reputación de los negocios multinivel es debido al parecido a ¿la ilegalidad de los esquemas piramidales?

El verdadero problema es que los negocios multinivel no son multinivel en si mismos. Pero algunas personas los atraen, los negocios multinivel son simplemente un modelo de negocios, y la verdad es que son un cúmulo de “micro-franquicias”, que se paga muy poco para comenzar, con el potencial de ganancias excepcionales, y hay los que alcanzan todo esto.

Pero estas mismas cosas que hacen que sea atractiva para algunas personas también lo hacen atractivo para personas que no están preparadas para ser dueños de su propio negocio multinivel. Las características mas notables que hacen ser atractivas un negocio multinivel para las personas son:

• No ha tenido el éxito en su negocio o profesión y tiene poco dinero ahorrado para invertir.
• No tiene experiencia en otros negocios o ser dueño.
• No tiene experiencia previa en ventas.
• Poca o no tiene experiencia desarrollando relaciones con trabajadores/socios de negocio.
• No esta satisfecho con su actual nivel de ingresos.
• Tiene las expectativas poco realistas de la cantidad de trabajo duro comparado al ingreso ganado.

No me malinterpretes— no estoy diciendo que estas cosas sean malas, o que describe a la mayoría de los propietarios de negocios multinivel — esto solo describe a un numero desproporcionado de dueños de negocios multinivel, y la mayoría de ellos nunca hace nada por remediarlo.

Como resultado, muchos distribuidores acaban así:

• Sobre venden la oportunidad
• Inapropiadas discusiones en situaciones sociales
• Llegando hasta la desesperación
• Sobre fijación en los nuevos distribuidores y abandonar a los clientes existentes
• Llegando a ser tanto inadecuado o decepcionado cuando hablas sobre el negocio.

Otra vez, no estoy describiendo a la mayoría de los distribuidores, pero describe a una cantidad considerable como para manchar la reputación de todos los demás. Para prejuzgar a alguien basado en una minoría es un error horrible, pero debemos comprender que la mayor parte de prejuicios tienen alguna base de realidad, incluso si ha sido distorsionado.

Entonces ¿Cuál es la solución?

Siempre hay un primer momento para todo. Y un negocio multinivel es una fantástica oportunidad para tener tu primer negocio, la primera relación de ventas, etc. Mi opinión es esta — reconócelo como lo que es : es un negocio, y tu eres el dueño. Y si tu nunca has sido dueño antes, si tu nunca has hecho ventas antes, si nunca antes trabajaste con distribuidores, tu necesitas aprender como hacer todo esto, no solo de expertos multinivel, pero si de expertos establecidos en estas áreas.

Los distribuidores que están serios en construir un negocio fructífero deberían leer y aprender sobre los fundamentos, las ultimas técnicas de marketing y ventas, estrategias para trabajar en equipo y desarrollo del negocio, etc. No solo aprender los trucos en la reunión de equipo semanal o mensual. Actúa como dueño de un negocio, y las personas te trataran como tal.

Answer – Competition is fine, but be careful, be very careful.  Be a good winner.

I love to play sports. I love competition. There is nothing like the thrill of a game and there is a great feeling of winning a well fought battle. However, after you win, there is no need to spit in the face of your competitors and taunt them after they loose.

CS Lewis said it pretty well when he talked about pride and competition.

Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. … It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone.

Take it with money. Greed will certainly make a man want money, for the sake of a better house, better holidays, better things to eat and drink. But only up to a point. What is it that makes a man with œ10,000 a year anxious to get œ20,000 a year? It is not the greed for more pleasure. œ10,000 will give all the luxuries that any man can really enjoy. It is Pride – the wish to be richer than some other rich man, and (still more) the wish for power. For, of course, power is what Pride really enjoys: there is nothing makes a man feel so superior to others as being able to move them about like toy soldiers. What makes a pretty girl spread misery wherever she goes by collecting admirers? Certainly not her sexual instinct: that kind of girl is quite often sexually frigid. It is Pride. What is it that makes a political leader or a whole nation go on and on, demanding more and more? Pride again. Pride is competitive by its very nature: that is why it goes on and on. If I am a proud man, then, as long as there is one man in the whole world more powerful, or richer, or cleverer than I, he is my rival and my enemy.

I believe that a major problem we see in our industry is that we spend so much time battling each other we don’t make our own companies the best they can be.  And I don’t just mean one company battle the other, but one line within the same company battle the other.  I would also be willing to bet that many of the companies in our industry also fail because the corporate leadership can’t balance their need for recognition with that of the field or the other officers within the company.

Network marketing is in a good spot.  The rest of the economy is in the tank.  We are thriving.  I heard a statistic that only 15% of the population is participating in any level in network marketing.  Who knows how many are actually doing something.  So instead of going after a huge segment of the population that is hurting we are going after each other.  STOP IT.

We can win in network marketing without crushing the competition. There is no need to demean and crush your upline, downline, company or competition.  The beauty of this wonderful industry is that you succeed by helping others.  We can change the fortunes of many, let’s just try doing it without rubbing salt in the wounds of our defeated foes, it is not productive.

Today I don’t paint but I still love to create. I love taking ideas and watching them become tangible. I love helping dreamers overcome fear to achieve their passion.

Maybe someday I will paint again. Today my creations and new partners bring me enormous satisfaction.

Hay un anuncio de televisión simpático y entretenido estilo “Ice Age”. Eso anuncio tiene un mensaje buenísimo para el mundo sobre network marketing, “Si trabajamos juntos, todos ganamos.”

Comenzaremos por explicar punto principal bajo el cual funciona este modelo de negocio: La distribución.

Un dato interesante: en promedio, el 80% del costo de un producto se va en gastos de distribución. Solo el 20% en fabricación.

Por ese motivo una gran cantidad de las personas mas ricas del mundo están en el sector de la distribución en lugar de la manufactura, tal como Sam Walton fundador de Walmart, a quien su visión emprendedora lo llevó a ser el hombre mas rico del mundo en los 80’s.

Él lanzó una forma más fácil de adquirir productos y servicios donde en un mismo lugar pudiera adquirirse todo lo que la gente necesitaba y además a mejor costo.

Ahora bien, vivimos ahora en un mundo de constantes cambios, donde aparecen en el mercado cada vez mas productos y servicios que se convierten pronto en un BOOM por los beneficios que traen.

Pero existe un problema: Es evidente que ya no creemos en lo que la publicidad masiva en los medios nos intenta vender, cierto?

Por ese motivo las compañías que intentaban poner estos nuevos productos en el mercado, habían estado incrementando mas y mas los costos en publicidad para dar a conocer sus ofertas.

Ante eso, cada vez mas empresas han comenzado a adoptar una manera distinta de informar a su mercado, adoptando un modelo de distribución y publicidad que ha sido exitoso por mas de 50 años en la industria de productos de bienestar y enseres domésticos:

NETWORK MARKETING O Marketing Multinivel

Para explicar cómo funciona, una simple pregunta: ¿Cuál es la mejor publicidad que hay?

LA RECOMENDACIÓN ha sido y es la publicidad por excelencia porque tiene su base en la confianza y la honestidad de amigos compartiendo con amigos el conocimiento sobre los productos y servicios que les han traído beneficios.

Esto es algo que todos hacemos de manera natural cada vez que recomendamos un buen restaurante, una película en el cine o un nuevo modelo de teléfono móvil.

Realmente estábamos mercadeando inconcientemente. Por eso también a este modelo de negocio se le conoce como Mercadeo por Recomendación o Venta Directa, es decir de persona a persona.

Pues bien, eso que habías estado haciendo gratis, ahora tiene un valor muy bien remunerado cada vez por más empresas que adoptan este sistema de distribución. En otras palabras, TE PAGAN por recomendar sus productos o servicios y crear el vínculo o referencia entre la empresa que los provee y las personas a quienes se los recomiendas.

Así de simple es como cada vez mas personas están desarrollando de manera profesional sus propios negocios desde casa, usando el teléfono y cada vez mas el Internet para expandir sus negocios mundialmente, sin tener que desplazar mercancía física sino haciendo “distribución de información” de las ofertas disponibles por las empresas que han adoptado este sistema, encargándose éstas de toda la logística para llevar finalmente el producto al consumidor final.

Porqué hablamos de esto como El negocio de armar Redes?

Bien, volvamos al ejemplo de Sam Walton, fundador Walmart:

Cuando él montó su primer tienda, quizás nunca se imaginó la gran demanda que emergería por todos lados en virtud de la publicidad que le hicieron sus primeros clientes.

Una vez que eso ocurrió, Sam invirtió en la instalación de mas tiendas en todo Estados Unidos, con exactamente el mismo sistema tipo franquicia. Después la expansión fue mundial, originando una gran cadena (red) de tiendas… UN ROTUNDO ÉXITO!!

Cuando recomiendas un producto o servicio, que crees que hace la persona a quien le compartes esa información, sobre todo si sabe que también puede ganar dinero?

Así es, vuelve a repetir lo mismo. Pasa la recomendación a sus amigos y conocidos… luego ellos hacen lo propio y esto se repite…

Lo realmente fantástico es que las empresas de Network Marketing no solo te pagan por la referencia que tu haces personalmente, si no también por la que hacen tus referidos y los de ellos, siguiendo así hasta el nivel donde marca el Plan de Compensación con el que la empresa de Network Marketing te bonifica.

A eso también se le conoce como APALANCAMIENTO, uno de los principios básicos de la riqueza, porque multiplicas tus esfuerzos y horas de trabajo al crear una organización de socios y consumidores.

John Paul Getty, el primer billonario en Estados Unidos lo dijo mejor:

“Prefiero Ganar el 1% del esfuerzo de 100 hombres que el 100% de mi propio esfuerzo.”

En el Network Marketing, tu te beneficias del apalancamiento en la misma medida que te interesas en que tus consumidores y socios obtengan lo que desean. Esto obviamente genera un GANA-GANA para todas las partes involucradas: la empresa, los socios distribuidores y los consumidores.

Mientras mas dinero ganen los socios de tu red, tus ingresos también aumentarán según el porcentaje del plan de compensación que adopte la empresa de Network Marketing.

Esto da lugar a una mejor colaboración de todos, porque todos tienen las mismas oportunidades de crecimiento.

Como yo dije al principio sobre network marketing, si trabajamos juntos, todos ganamos. Ahora te digo, empieza hoy!

Answer – success isn’t the result of spontaneous combustion. People must be willing to set themselves on fire.

It would be great if we could motivate ourselves and downline as easy as lighting a match on gasoline, but it doesn’t work that way. Some people can’t get motivated if their life depended on it. And frankly a complete life requires motivation.

If your downline can’t get excited about the business then quit waiting for them. Move on and hope they will some day see why you are on fire.

This morning I awoke to a chunky two year old staring me in the eyes and gently rubbing my cheek.  For a Saturday morning it was a little earlier than I wanted to wake up, but you can never beat that kind of unadulterated love.  With his round head next to me softly breathing, I began to realize how much my family inspires me.  However, we often work so hard that we don’t get to spend sufficient time with the ones we love.  Balance in life is key, and I believe that money is a tool that can help us achieve balance.  The question is, how do you make enough money to afford the time away from a traditional career so that you can be with who you want to be or do the things that you really want to do? I believe it can come from network marketing as a successful IBO/distributor.

I believe that we are sent to this earth to develop ourselves and others.  I also believe that the world is so organized now that to rise to our greatest possible height in talent or soul development we must have plenty of money.  Nature is always expanding and our souls are destined for constant growth and improvement.  However, to have the time and resources needed for recreation, eating properly and spending time with inspirational people, we must have plenty of money to buy these things and get our time back before we are too old to unfold the greatest capabilities of our mind, body and soul.

Let me tell you some of the things that inspire me:

1. I will be taking my wife and kids to Disneyland next month with my parents.
2. I will be taking my wife and kids to the Smithsonian in Washington DC this summer.  We can’t wait to see the Spirit of St Louis, mummies, dinosaurs and the Hope Diamond.
3. I have my eye on a cabin in the mountains near a lake.
4. I have been researching 10 acres with fruit trees for our future home.  I want a tractor too and have plenty of chores for my kids to do.  I love gardens and flowers.  (Don’t make fun of it until you try it by the way.  It is a great way to get dirty and forget any stresses.)
5. My wife wants to go to Paris.  Don’t tell her I am planning a way to get her there with me.

I have more, but I want to hear from you.  Want are your wants, not needs?  Share them with me below or go to the forum and add them there.

Jeff

I have spent many hours on the road building downlines as an IBO and also a company executive.  One thing is for sure, some people do not deserve your time or your efforts.  There are many ways to build people, one of them is not doing all of the work for them.

You only have so much energy and so much time in the day.  You must be careful to spend time with the people who are willing to duplicate your efforts by helping others.  You must be careful that you never give anybody the indication that you will do everything for them.  Jim Rohn is right, you cannot carry people on your back to be successful in this business.

When you enroll a new person it is your duty to explain to them that they should be willing to spend 7-10 hours each week in business building exercises.  They must be willing to buy good books and listen to inspirational speeches instead of the radio on the way to work.  They must be willing to work as a team and not expect the upline to do all the work for them.

As an upline, you must be willing to spend the time to mentor, but not carry your downline.  There is a big difference.  Mentoring is done by teaching and doing.  You cannot expect most new people to make the first couple presentations alone.   However, if you are still showing all the plans for your new person in the second month, you likely do not have a real leader.

Learn to work with the people who need your help.  Be in front by example by always looking for new people yourself.  Learn to help those who deserve, not just those who need.

Answer – You always move on, but never give up, never surrender.

Today we met with a prospect we first contacted almost a year ago. When we first met, we spent almost a month trying to get him to join us. He eventually chose another company. We were disappointed, but we parted on very friendly terms.

However, we have stayed in touch periodically and remained friendly. After a year of not pushing but also not letting him forget, he now is quite interested.

Send top prospects an email monthly to say hi. Invite them to be a Facebook friend. Wish them happy birthday. Stay visible but not obtrusive. You never know what will come of it.

Answer: I hope you have signed up for a FREE Twitter account. If not get on it.

Twitter.com

Here’s something you can do within the next two minutes that can produce results for you almost immediately to build your existing downline and to get new leads.

If you haven’t heard of “Twitter” before, it is time to learn. I have always been a big advocate of technology but this one was built for network marketing. This post will teach you how to sign up, my next Twitter post will teach you how to use it. You need to know how it could help you build your business. This is a powerful tool and not just a toy for techies.

As I have been preparing social media ideas for my site and how they integrate into network marketing, I was blown away with the possibilities Twitter has for our business. This incredible lead generation and downline tool is a free service and is powerful.

Twitter has absolutely exploded into the social media scene and due to it being free and so useful, it will become even more powerful for our industry, even if they start to charge for it.

Fortune 500 companies like AT&T, State Farm Insurance, Verizon, Dell, IBM and many others are now using it to bond with their customers and promote their brand. If you haven’t yet created a free account you are missing the boat. Get on it.

It’s a great way to…

-Quickly reach new audiences of potential business partners and customers.

-Interact with each one of your downline on a personal and genuine level… while at the same time reaching huge numbers of people.

-Answer downline questions and inform them of upcoming products, events, or promotions.

-Build trust and get them bonded and connected to you by just being yourself.

You need to know that this could be one of the best tools you invest in all year to grow your business. And guess what, the investment is FREE.

Just follow these three simple steps.

1) To create your account, go to:

http://www.twitter.com

2) Click on the “Join The Conversation” button in the middle of the page.

3) Enter your name and email address and choose a username and password.

Very Simple stuff.

Once you create your account visit me at: http://www.twitter.com/jeffboyle

Then click the “follow” button that’s displayed underneath my photo.

Here’s what will happen after that.

You will start to receive daily thoughts on being positive and how to build your own personal brand and your business.

So take a few minutes to create an account at http://www.twitter.com.

Then visit my page at:

http://www.twitter.com/jeffboyle

And click the “follow” button that’s displayed underneath my photo.

Dedicated To Your Success,

Jeff

Answer – This one is simple; edify, edify and then edify some more.

There is nothing that will destroy momentum and a team mentality faster than negativity creep. Network Marketing groups should not resemble an episode of Survivor or the board room with Donald Trump on the Apprentice.

If you want to grow then keep negative comments about your company, upline, meetings, downline, crossline, the weather, taxes, competition, your wife, your teenagers, Obama, Republicans, communism, and gingivitis to yourself. If you have struggles, find a mentor and look to find solutions. If you find a shoulder to cry on, then you will just keep crying.  Don’t do it.

Get tough and you can get rich. Find the positive in life and talk nice about others, it will be incredible for your business.

In traditional business only 29% of new businesses are still in existence at the end of year 10.  The largest percentage of failure comes in the first 5 years, when half of startups go belly up.   Many critics of network marketing claim that the failure rate is much higher than that for anyone choosing to get involved in the industry.

Although I will not argue that getting involved into any type of business does not have its risks, network marketing has many advantages over traditional businesses regardless of what critics claim to be its success rates.  The main advantage of network marketing is the low startup costs involved with a potential huge rate of return.  Additionally, if the critics really looked at the individuals who treated their networking business as a full-time career and not a hobby, they would see a large number of six figure earners.  Numbers that are much higher than corporate America employees or small business entrepreneurs.

The purpose of this Success Answer is not to debate the merits of network marketing versus traditional businesses, but to give you a couple ideas that will help you keep in mind as you start you network-marketing career:

•    Realistic Expectations and a never die attitude.  When I first joined network marketing when I was 22 I expected to make $5,000 a month in a year.  After 9 months of doing about 10 presentations a month, I had made a total of $18.  $2 a month is not very good.  I changed who I was talking to, I got better at presenting, and I did not quit.  Never give up, never surrender.
•    Get better, don’t quit – Learn how to sell.  Yes, I said it, learn to sale.  My 2 year old rocks at selling.  He asks until he gets it.  I don’t suggest laying on the floor in a tantrum if people don’t get in with you, but believe in your product and realize that the best lawyers are good at selling their product.  The best actors know how to sell their services.  The best network marketers know how to sell.  You should too.
•    Work full or part time, not sometimes.  A career pays, a hobby costs.  Decide you will stop thinking about your business and just build it.  Build it consistently, build it daily, build it with passion.

A goal is really just a dream with a plan and a deadline.   But real goal making is more complicated than just telling yourself that you want something.  Real goal making includes accountability, commitment, and writing down one’s goals.  Research recently conducted by Dr. Gail Matthews shows that people who wrote down their goals, shared this information with a friend, and sent weekly updates to that friend were on average 33% more successful in accomplishing their stated goals than those who merely formulated goals.  In other words, write it down and get a mentor to share your goals with.

In the previous step, I asked you to spend some time analyzing your starting point in network marketing by filling out a self-analysis form.  The reason I believe that self-analysis is so important is that it gives you a realistic picture of where you are right now and where you want to be.  Now that you understand where you stand today, you need to have an understanding of what it will take to get where you want to be.  Time to become a goal achiever.

This part of Success Answers is detailed and will take you some time to complete.  However, failure to treat your goals properly will allow you to minimize their importance and you will lose valuable time in achieving your dreams.  In fact, failure to go through the steps I describe will likely result in rationalizing away your dreams as being unachievable.

Abraham Maslow said, “If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.”  I am here to tell you that your Creator has great plans for you.  You are capable of greatness and understanding goals and their importance will help you achieve greatness.  Don’t sell yourself short.  Become great, become a goal achiever.

“Mind is the master power that mold and makes
and man is mind, and evermore he takes
The tool of thought, and, shaping what he wills
Brings forth a thousand joys, and a thousand ills.
He thinks in secret, and it comes to pass
Environment is but his looking glass.”
James Allen

Before we go through the process of how to properly set goals, remember that you will never have a perfect knowledge of how to get something