Pastor Sam: a tale of tenacity

I spent the day yesterday with my good friend pastor Sam. This is a man who has not yet received his reward. The retired preacher moves slowly around his house on two canes with his voice just below a whisper. As soon as his wife left the house, he handed me a flat head screwdriver.

"Door pins." He whispered. So we took the doors off their hinges and he handed me a tape measure. 

"Desk," he whispered. "In the basement." I don't like to say 'no', so I measured out a thirty inch metal deskthat  needed to go through a thirty inch doorway at the top of a fleight of stairs. 

I'd have given up at this point, but Sam is man forged out of something else. In spite of all the setbacks, he was always ready to try something else. The legs don't come off? See if the desktop does. Can't get the hinges off the doors? Get my ratchet set and I'll pull that desk apart piece by piece. 

Sam's attitude was that he would outlast the problem, whatever it was. Just keep trying something else and eventually the problem will give up. He never got frustrated. He waited for the desk to get frustrated.

This is the tenacity that we need in our businesses. We need to absolutely refuse to quit until we've met our goal, then we need to move on to the next goal. However long it takes. It takes Sam a long time just to get across the room or to communicate something. But he's going to get there without fail.

Here's a practical tip: find someone tougher than you and spend a few hours with him once in a while. Tenacity is contagious.

Turn your team members into gold with these five support tips

Success in network marketing involves having (or developing) a skill in training your people to be at least as successful as you are. Since your associates are great people, I want to talk about a couple of great ways you can support them and get them off on the best start (or restart!). 

1) Do calls with them

 Once the person has drawn up an initial list of contacts, sit down with them (either in person or over video chat) and do some calls with them. That means listening in to their calls and also letting them listen in to a few of yours. Never expect your people to do something that you aren't willing to do yourself. During these calls, just listen, don't say anything. Stick to positive reinforcement by noting everything they do correctly, and don't worry too much about what they're doing wrong. Sometimes the biggest barrier when it comes to making calls is just doing it while skill at it comes later. If you start them out making calls and give them good feedback, they'll never have time to develop anxiety about it.

2) Have a good list of training tools that will help them

An advantage you'll have over people just coming in to this business is knowing which training materials are and aren't very helpful. That means whenever you see a video or read a book or article that's exceptional, add it to a list with a little note about why it's important. Business best practices and product information are the most important. Keep your list of links as lean as possible so it's accessible to newer people.

3) Connect them with upline leaders

If you're in a good company, you ought to have access to someone that's been really successful with it. A quick call or lunch with a person who has become rich from doing what you're teaching is very important to make the whole thing come to life for your person. It's one thing to tell them they can earn a hundred thousand dollars a month: it's another to sit them down with a real, down to earth person who's doing it.

4) Help them set goals, and mark their victories

Obviously, if your company has ranks, recognize your people when they advance in rank, possibly with a special team meeting solely for that purpose. You might also recognize them for things like weight loss goals if you've got a health product. You can always congratulate them when it looks like they're meeting their goals here. I think the best kind of goals to set are regular activity goals. For example, when the person spends a full month talking to five, ten, twenty, or thirty leads a day about the business (whatever the personal goal is that they set), recognize that. Maybe even congratulate them with prizes, because that skill and regular activity is what will lead them to success.

5) Connect them with a power partner

If you have two people with similar business goals, get them together. When your business is thriving the way it's supposed to, you won't have time to give everyone in your organization the attention you would give your best friend on an ongoing basis. But if you can set your people up to be friends, that enables you to give them the benefit of strong social connections in the business. People with strong friendships in the company are more likely to stay loyal to your company when others tempt them. They also have an ongoing source of validation as they see each other meeting and overcoming the same challenges. You may also consider matching your people based on how competitive or cooperative they are. Some people are really energized by friendly competition, whereas others are put off by it.

Network marketing is changing the way people think about work and business. It provides you with a way to change people's lives by putting you in a position to give them training and support to be successful. But it starts with you. Send me an email and you can get the training you need and get started today in the best industry in the world today.

Leveraging your laziness--The easy way!

I had a math teacher that used to preface everything he said with the words, "I'm real lazy". A lazy man doesn't multiply his denominators any bigger than they neerd to be. Laziness has kind of a bad reputation, but I think this is because it's easy to underutilize laziness and not accomplish much with it. What's needed is focused laziness.

I'm lazy, so I'll keep the core technique simple. Laziness, at its core, is the avoidance of work. The rule is to remain lazy, but rather than avoid all work, only avoid unnecessary work. For any given task, ask: "What's the easiest way to do this without letting the quality suffer?" That's critical: the quality of the product must always remain excellent as you seek to spend less energy on it.

Here's an example. One common problem in network marketing is finding new contacts. What I used to do was try to make friends in Facebook groups with people I thought would be interested in my business. A much easier approach is to just friend people through the "People you may know" tool, then count them as leads later after they've Liked or commented on my business posts. Here, you end up with much better results (only talking to people who are interested in what you're doing) with a lot less energy.

I think much of the problem is the mindset we pick up as hourly employees. I used to have a coworker that wore a t-shirt that said, "If I'm not moving very fast, it's because I'm paid hourly". I knew exactly what it was talking about because I'm not any better than him. 

There's a constant tension in hourly work between the employee wanting to drag the work out as long as possible (so you don't have to do as much during the shift), and the employer pushing his people to work more. The sweet spot for the employee is to maintain the illusion of busyness. We have to break ourselves of that as entrepreneurs and channel our laziness to a higher purpose. We want the best result in the least time, not mediocrity spread out over the course of many ten dollar hours.

How do we get there? One way is by building mastermind groups with like-minded people, like what we do in our network marketing business. I don't know a better way to build a business than by getting a bunch of lazy people together and talking about how to do it in the fastest and easiest way. So reach out to me and let's talk about how to build something great together.

Three means of achieving perfect outcome independence

I wrote yesterday about the concept of outcome independence, that is, not worrying about the results of your actions. So what should we focus on then? Here are three healthy foci that you can control because they're all based on your actions.

1) Focus on the process. Here your interest needs to shift off of what you can achieve through the process and on to mastery of the process itself. Your focus, moment by moment, is on performing the tasks necessary for your business with as much excellence as possible. You might try to improve your quality or your speed as you compete against your previous record. 

You become fearless because your objectives have nothing to do with what will happen. We have no control over the outcome, but we have complete control over our own actions. So if you master the actions that tend to produce the outcome you want, you're more likely to get what you want than if you'd remained a novice.

2) Focus on doing good for others. You can't go wrong by doing right. If you see a kid drowning in a pool, you aren't thinking about how silly you'll look with wet clothes or about how poor of a swimmer you are. You're the only one that can help him and it doesn't matter what's in your way. 

You can find that same energy for helping others through your business. In order for this to work, obviously your service needs to be one that actually does good for others in a way you're passionate about. 

3) Focus on pleasing God. The first line of my catechism says the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. If you ever wondered what the meaning of life is or what your purpose is, this is it: it's literally what you were created to do. Moreover, God is the only one with any control over the outcome, and is the rewarder of the proud doer.

This is the highest level we can operate on, but it's also the most difficult to stay on because of our tendency to corrupt our dealings with God. But you're unstoppable while you're walking with the Lord in your business, judging every action you take by what God thinks of it.

I think it's best to have all three foci in view, namely because you can use the first two as your means to do the third. Try to maintain a balance between thinking about mastery and thinking about helping others. Mastery adds skill to helping others, while helping gives context to your mastery, while glorifying God gives purpose to both. 

Remember to follow my posts and reach out to me with any thoughts you have. Thanks!

Getting what you want: a quick breakdown

One of the great challenges in business is figuring out how to get other people to do what you want them to do. You'll be out of business if nobody buys your product or joins your opportunity, so, ultimately, we need people to do one of these two things. How do we go about getting this outcome? 

I want to note first that I'm not interested in using techniques that manipulate people into doing what I want. I've never been very good at manipulation and I don't want learn now. Since I want lifelong business relationships with people, I want to cultivate goodwill with them by doing right by them. So we have an outcome we want and we want to get there ethically. 

Let's look at things from our customer's perspective. I'm imagining my customer is a single factory worker. He works twelve hour days doing the same motions all day and comes home to collapse at the computer every night. His feet and elbows hurt all the time and his fingers feel like stones. Does he want another problem? No, of course not. So suppose we come to him communicating that we have this huge problem where we need to find people to join our business, and, oh, wouldn't he like to have that problem too! "No thanks," he'll say. He's got enough trouble in his life as it is.

We need to offer him solutions to his problems (like a prebuilt business model that'll get him out of factory work), but also we need to communicate a neutral attitude to whether our own problems ever get solved. And I think the best way to communicate that we have a neutral attitude to getting our problems solved is by actually having a neutral attitude to getting our problems solved.

I see two good ways to get there, which I'd like to write about tomorrow. So click follow and stay tuned!

Personality Tests: How to know if you''re using them to help or hurt your business

I love personality tests. From Meyers Briggs to "Which Street Figher Charater Are You", I enjoy listening to different people's explanations for why I'm the way I am. But personality tests can be a double edged sword on your business mindset if you use them incorrectly.

1) Remember that it's all theoretical. Taking a test isn't like visiting the oracle on Mount Delphi and hearing about your tortured fate. All the personality test is is some guy's idea about how to categorize people and where you might fit in to it. Personality theory isn't based on any hard science. It's meant to be helpful, but as with everything, if the model isn't helping you, throw it out, call it junk science, and ignore it.

2) Don't let the test give you new excuses. The test often comes with a list of negative qualities, and it's easy when reading it to just say, "Snippy, that's me. Lazy, that's me. Shallow, that's me " and then later when you're being lazy and snapping at people to tell yourself, "It's okay, the test tells me this is the way I am". We've got enough excuses that come naturally without needing some psychologists to put their credentials behind our excuse-making.

3) Think of negative personality traits as opportunities for character development. If the test has got you pegged on something that you don't like, remember that might be the way you've been, but it's not the way you have to be. The amazing thing about being a person is getting to decide who we are in every moment. Maybe it's helpful to think about the person described in the personality inventory as your default setting. That's how it comes out of the factory, but you can change it if you want. Sometimes when I take a personality test, I feel like it's describing a younger version of myself minus any character development I've had since then. Other times I feel like it's an alternate reality version of myself, like what I might've been like if I had made different choices. 

4) The main value of the test is in helping you identify your strong points. Generally, you'll see a list of roles or jobs that the test makers think you'd fit most naturally into. This is a good thing, because you always want to leverage your strengths in whatever you're doing. Don't think that you have to be in one of the careers it suggests if you don't want to. I had a test tell me I'm a phlegmatic, and it said I'd be good as a night watchman. Well I used to work night shifts watching guys in a group home, and I don't really want to go back to it. It's much better to think about how I can take the strengths that made me a good night watchman and apply them to what I want to do. In this case, it helps me see that tedium and loneliness don't really bother me. So my approach to network marketing might be one that seeks to leverage those special tolerances I have. I think it's fun to write every day, for example, but other people might think it's tedious. 

Personality testing can serve you if you let it help you find the strengths you can build on and areas of weakness you can improve on. The trick is figuring out how to apply what you've got, which I think is best done both by bringing in people that know you and by getting thoughts from people that are getting to know you. Working with a network marketing team is a great way to do this, where we focus on personal growth related to building a lasting business. Send me an email to let me know that you're interested and we can get started today.

Five tips on how to pick the perfect network marketing company for you

"So Alice stopped by today."
"Oh? Which Alice?" Jerry turned the page in his spy novel, only half listening to her.
"She's one of Margaret's cousins," Terry said. "We met her at the Christmas party two years ago."
"That's nice." Jerry's wife was quiet for a moment. He half expected her to turn off her light and go to sleep.
"She wanted to come over for tea." Terry continued with a little apprehension in her voice. "Which I thought would be nice."
"That does sound nice." Jerry's voice rose at the word 'does', feigning interest poorly.
"Yeah, but she ended up bringing a couple of friends with her. With several boxes of tea."
"What, were they selling it?" He asked
"Sort of" She said. "Alice set up a projector in the living room and they went through powerpoint slides about it."
Jerry set his book down.
"You let them set up a projector?" Terry picked something up off the nightstand.
"I was skeptical at first too, but then I tried the tea myself." Her voice dropped. "You can try a sample now risk free."
Jerry looked up at her. Terry held a box of herbal tea, her fanged grin dripping with a robust earthy blend and a hint of citrus.

When some people think of network marketing, they get the idea that we're in some kind of vampire cult. This is mostly unjustified and prejudicial, but I say "mostly" because some companies are better than others. I believe much of the horror of network marketing can be avoided by being careful about which network marketing company you choose. So how do you pick a company that won't have you eating brains door-to-door?

1) The company should have a strong focus on the product or service they offer. This is rule number zero on picking a company. You want to work with people that are producing a product with genuine market value. Their product should have scientific trials establishing that it does what it's supposed to do and it should be sold at a lower or equal cost to similar products. It should also be something that you actually want to buy. If the product is something that seems tacked on to the opportunity, it's not a good opportunity. The opporuntiy is good only if the product is good.

2) The company needs to have been around long enough that it's out of the crazy venture stage. Network marketing is a growing industry. I believe in the next few decades, virtually everything will have a network marketing component. Many companies today have attractive customer and employee referral programs that look like kiddie-pool versions of MLM compensation plans. But with all this growth in the industry, you've got a lot of companies that aren't going to make it in the market. You want your company to be around for the rest of your life and beyond so your work will continue to pay out for your children's children. So make sure your company has been around for a few years and that it has a history of making sensible business decisions.

3) The company should have plenty of room for growth. You're building an empire. If you're coming into a company too late, after it's already hit its plateau, there just aren't going to be as many people out there for you to work with. If you can find that holy grail of a company that's established itself but is still young enough that it's poised to grow explosively, you can make a lot more money than you would with one that's been around for decades.

4) Startup costs shouldn't be too expensive. MLM is a lot cheaper to get started in than other businesses since, with a good company, you don't need to pay for education, employees, inventory, or equipment. But even then, there are network marketing companies that are way too expensive to start in. I've seen companies that expect people to spend $500 to $1000 on startup. If you can find something like my company, it shouldn't cost any more than $35 to get started.

5) The product or service needs to suit you. This is beyond the product just being excellent: it needs to speak to you and meet you where you're at. Some people try to fake it, but I think most people worth working with can tell when we aren't really excited about what we have to offer. In my case, I could never be a representative for an insurance company, for example because I've always hated and distrusted insurance. Even if I found a much better deal with a network marketing insurance company, I'd hate myself every day if I were trying to get people to buy insurance.

Lord willing, you and your company will be together a long time. I hope these thoughts will help you to enjoy that time as much as possible.

I'd love to hear from you! Remember to follow my blog and email me with any questions!

Hack your productivity by shifting your cycle!

I've always been something of a late-to-bedder. My mom tells me that I always wanted to stay up to watch Letterman as a baby, and as a teenager, I had to watch Adult Swim at least until after Cowboy BeBop was over. So as much as I've been a connoisseur of all things late night, recent years have seen me transition into more of an early riser.

Time tested wisdom says waking up early is good for you. Why would Franklin lead us astray? The sun has been rising on this earth for a lot more years than I've been here, and that four to six o'clock range has always been early and hard to wake up during for everyone throughout history. So what are some of the benefits I've seen from not starting a new movie at 1AM?

First, waking up early gives me a built-in quiet time. I can read, exercise, write, or otherwise start the day in productive peace while all the loud rest of the world sleeps. For me, I need things quiet to be able to get practically anything done, so a couple of hours of it in the morning gives me a great start on the day's work.

Second, my mental energy is almost always in a better place in the morning rather than at night. I used to think night time was the best time to get things done because, again, the house is quiet then. But I find that I naturally gravitate to a passive mindset at night time. Once I get moving in the morning, I feel like working. Midday, I feel like napping, late night, I feel like starting a screen. But early in the morning, I feel like laying bricks.

I like to think about each day as a miniature lifetime. You wake up, like you're coming to life, and you go to sleep which is sort of like dying. And you see the same thing in the world: it goes from dark to light, coming to life, then light to dark, dying. There's something old and resonant that triggers in our bodies when we synchronize them to the cycles of the day. There's a value to this, but it's one that needs to be experienced consistently to acquire a taste for it.

As with everything, your mileage may vary: you need to find what works for you and your schedule in your business. But I do suggest trying an earlier schedule if you haven't for a while as it could be just what you need to punch through with explosive productivity in the next few weeks.

The big secret to finding new business associates without the misery of cold calling

If you’re like me, cold calling/emailing is probably your least favorite thing to do in the world. I love people and I love what I have to offer them, but I hate the whole, “Hey, it’s been a while, I love your kids pictures! Want to get together so I can try to sell you something?”

I only like to have to take one shower a day, thank you.

So what are we supposed to do then, get day jobs? In the immortal words of the guy at the beginning of Pulp Fiction, “Not in this lifetime.” But I know a much more effective way to get leads than to collect peoples’ wallets in a restaurant at gunpoint. The answer just the opposite: Be a hero, Honey Bunny. That is, be a champion for your people.

Think back to the playground. What was mom’s advice for making those first couple of friends? Try sharing the toys instead of hoarding everything to yourself. Let someone else play in the sandbox with you instead of kicking sand in their faces and saying, “Mine!” Given that eternal wisdom from mom, this same advice can make a better world for us as adults. There are way too many people that never learned this lesson and are out for themselves/don’t care who they step on on their way to the top of the slide. But we can do better than that.

The key is a servant-mindset. What can I do for the people I want to work with that helps them with their problem beyond just trying to sell my thing to them? People want to work with people and buy from people that demonstrate and prove a genuine interest in helping them. In my case, I hate people trying to sell me junk (and I automatically consider it “junk” if someone is trying to sell it to me), but I like buying things that I want. I want the things that the guy that’s already proved that he can help me has to offer.

What about strategy? The overarching goal is to identify the people you can help, and give them something that helps them wrapped up with an offer for more help from your paid services. The specifics will look different based on what you’re offering and who you want it to help, but you want it all to fit together as neat as a superhero's uniform for the people you serve. The messages you put out need to consistently address that specific group's needs, and they need to have a tie-in to whatever you're offering that has a price.

So write out some things you can do to save your people in your business! If you don’t have a business that’s working for you, I know a great one that I can get you started in FAST along with strategies we’ll design to work for you. As always, remember to comment, follow, and email with any questions!

Five magic keys to time management

Managing your use of time is critical if you want to successfully juggle your business and still have a life. I'm of the philosophy that you absolutely can work for yourself and have time to enjoy what you're building. But it'll take a little bit of planning to get there, so I'll share what I'm doing for time management and hopefully it'll help you out in your own business.

1) List out what you need to get done. The actions need to be clear and specific, like email Shawn, video chat with Alexander. When you nail down the actions, they tend to stay manageable. But if you leave it all in your head, the actions all melt away like clocks in a Dali painting until it's all messed together in one big lump of brown Play Dough that you don't even know what to do with anymore. So get it on paper and make it stay put. 

2) Plan out a time where you know you can do the things on the list: This'll nail them down even tighter. You want to have a time where you're at work, and a time where you're free to do whatever, just like if you had a regular job. In my thinking, if you don't ever want to do the things on the list, then it would probably be better to try a different approach. Maybe that means joining a new company that produces something you can be proud of. Maybe it means a complete career change.

3) Take effective action steps. I used to blame teachers and bosses for giving me busywork, but now I know I'm the worst at giving myself pointless tasks to do. It's easy to waste a bunch of time preparing for calls or presentations, for example, when it would be a lot better to just make the call. Probably the worst thing I do here is spending too much time doing research and training, but never implementing what I learned. Knowing what steps are effective and which are a waste of time will come with experience, and you'll only get experience from taking action steps. Having a good mentor to work with in your business industry can greatly lessen the number of mistakes you make on the way though.

4) Maintain extreme skepticism about anything you want to do for work that you didn't put on the list. I can usually convince myself that I'm "looking for leads" when I'm really just trolling people on Facebook, or I'll tell myself I'm "doing research" when I'm really just watching conspiracy videos about the hollow earth or the Berenstein Bears on YouTube. It would be a lot harder to justify those things if I wrote them out in advance.

5) Be accountable: Creating an atmosphere of accountability is pretty much the whole point of planning it out in advance because it feels icky to just not do something you put on your calendar. Being your own boss means you have to be accountable to yourself. Think like this: you wouldn't screw around at your dayjob when it's time to be working, especially not while the boss is watching. When you're your own boss, it means the boss is always watching. What would you think if you owned a company and your employee was playing hackeysack with a fidgetspinner when you had a shipment that needed to go out that day? Are you going to be easier on yourself than you would be on that employee? It's important to treat yourself like an employee and expect yourself to show up on time and do exactly what you need yourself to do. I'm sure in my case I'd have either fired myself or quit because I thought I was an incompetent employer a long time ago if I could, but for the time being I'm stuck with myself so I might as well hit the reset button and try again to be as good as I can be for myself. But it also helps to be accountable to a team of like-minded, independent business owners with similar goals. And that's part of the beauty of network marketing. Being on the right team and with the right company gives you a built-in mastermind of entrepreneurs that can draw from in meeting your own goals.

I hope these thoughts were helpful for you in your own business. You're invited to comment, follow, or send me an email if you have any specific questions that I could help with.

Two ways to think about fear that can change everything

This is the public journal of a coward.

Most people wouldn't know it by looking at me, but I'm afraid of a lot of stuff. Most of it is the usual stuff: like being chased through the woods by werewolves or falling into a tank of piranha. But I think the most crippling fear for me is fear of success.

Why should I be afraid of success? Success is accompanied by change and new responsibility. I think: failure is what I know; what if I don't like what's on the other side of it? What if I can't handle the new stresses? What if I can't change it back to the way it was?

The truth, as it seems to me, is that nothing is ever what you expect it to be. There's always some aspect to everything that feels uncomfortable like the chair you constantly have to shift your weight in.

If you're like me, you probably want to know how to get over being afraid of garbage that doesn't really make any sense because I know there are some things on the side of success that I actually do want. Like I want to be able to build a flourishing business that works for me and other people so I don't have to work for somebody else that wasn't afraid of success.

So, given that getting past fear is easier said than done, I'll say my two-pronged approach to thinking about fear and maybe we can all act on it together:

1) Try doing the thing you're afraid of

The thing about fear is that it's just a feeling. Feelings don't have any actual stopping power like a locked door. Anyone can push through a wall made out of air. Feelings aren't any different. The fear-feeling might make you uncomfortable while you're doing it, but it can't actually stop you.

2) Try listening to the thing you're afraid of

I'm not down on fear, honestly: I think it's useful sometimes. Sometimes it's warning you against doing something that'll hurt you. Some people think they need to hypnotize and affirm themselves into not being afraid of things anymore, and maybe that works for some people. But my fear has kept me from jumping into tanks of piranhas (not that I've had the opportunity in rural Indiana), and I'm really glad I've never jumped into a tank of piranhas before.

I try to think about my fear as a personal adviser. I'm in the executive seat in my life, and Mr. Fear comes in with stats and data when it thinks I'm about to make a mistake. If it has good reasons for what it's saying, maybe I should listen to it. But whether I listen to it or not, it's my decision: I get the last word on the matter.

When I think about fear like this, it's my servant and I'm its employer. Now the fear might grumble and complain like many employees do when things aren't going its way, but it can't do anything except say, "Yes sir" when I decide to move.

So I hope I've encouraged you to move when you decide to move and not let some sniveling, cowardly adviser stand in your way. In my case, I've been afraid of starting this blog because I mean to invest myself in it and build an organization with some very cool people through it.

Let's gather courage and make some great things happen.