Confidence

Those of you who have attended some of my training meetings or have read my article in the latest Forever Australia/New Zealand newsletter, will know that I believe that trust is a vital part of success in our business. If your prospective customers or distributors do not trust you, they will not do business with you. In order to be trusted, you need to be seen as being 1. Competent. 2. Reliable and 3. Honest. Betray any of these three elements and you have lost trust and it is VERY difficult to regain it.

As important as it is to be competent in order to be trustworthy, there are, of course, other good reasons why we should strive for competence. We become competent through learning and experience. In other words, we need to learn as much as we practically can about our business and our products, and then we need to use our products and apply what we have learned in all the other aspects of our business. It is by doing that we become competent or learn the skills necessary to become confident enough to succeed. The important words there are competent and confident, because competence builds confidence, which moves us to action.

If you are finding it difficult to talk to people about your business, or find that very few people are prepared to listen to you, it will invariably be because you lack confidence. Unfortunately, it is impossible to fake confidence indefinitely, and if you are not confident, you will not be able to sustain the effort necessary to succeed. The good news is that you can learn the skills and become competent and confident in a short time by having the courage to move out of your comfort zone and by “practising” your craft by actually speaking to people.

Are you going to make mistakes? You betcha! Making mistakes is good, in fact it is the only way you are going to learn. Making mistakes means that you are actually doing something, and you will get better at what you are doing, so don't beat yourself up about it, give yourself the recognition you deserve. Be kind to yourself. Even if your early attempts appear to be epic failures, remember that you are in training and every attempt is an exercise in your training program. Analyse what you have done, find ways to improve on it, and continue to practice, practice, practice. You will soon become competent and confident, and when you are confident, you will enjoy approaching and talking to people about your business, and you success rate will improve, which will serve to increase your confidence, and your success rate will sky-rocket! 

I absolutely love this business!

It's all about You

I have long been interested in the reasons why some Forever distributors are so fabulously successful, and others not so much. First let me define the kind of success I am talking about. It is not so much linked to income as to expectations. For example, someone may be quite happy with their lifestyle, having enough to pay all the bills and everyday expenses and are able to salt away a little every month for “rainy days”. Let's say they then have $300 to $400 of discretionary spending money for entertainment, hobbies etc. A little more would be nice, so they start a Forever business. Without too much effort, they create a business which brings in an extra $300 to $400, and are very happy with that. And why not be happy with that, they have just doubled their discretionary spending, which is where most of their “quality of life” comes from. That is significant, and if that is what they wanted to accomplish, they are successful.

So, back to the question, why are some more successful than others? There are, of course many reasons, but I want to drill down to the one factor which undergirds and overarches all the rest. So here is my reasoing. To state the obvious, all Forever distributors in any particular country have the same products, the same marketing plan and the same company leadership. It has also been proven that differences such as sponsor, personal citcumstances, geography and any others you can think of are not bariers to success, they are excuses. So, the only difference is the distributor. For some, this may be a difficult pill to swallow because it means that the success or failure of your business rests squarely on your shoulders. To my mind, this is fantastic news! It means that this is a sure-fire business! “If it is to be, it is up to me!”

Another amazing, fantastic, awesome implication is that a major part of our business is focused depends on our own personal growth and development. This is the absolute best investment in time and effort any of us can ever make, and it is what most of our training and “work” is designed to do.

I absolutely love this business!

Create passion and commitment!

Most MLM companies recommend that their distributors create and maintain a “Dream Book”. This can be a powerful tool for discovering what your real goals and aspirations are, or in other words, why you want or need to succeed in your business. This is often referred to as your “Why”. When I first started out in MLM, I was a miserable failure at doing this, because I did not understand what I was supposed to be doing and why I was doing it. Oh, I was certainly enthusiastic about it, so I rushed out and bought some wonderful glossy magazines (which I could not afford) with fantastic pictures of beautiful homes, boats, cars, clothes and all the other trappings of the high life. I meticulously cut out the pictures (I got an A for scissor work in kindy), glued them into my beautiful hand bound book, and added my own creative touches with coloured pencils, glitter and everything else I could think of. It was an impressive work of art and I was convinced that it would have the enthusiastic approval of my sponsor, and it did.

The problem was that I had become so absorbed in the process of creating a beautiful piece of art, that I had completely lost sight of the purpose of the exercise. When I think back on the contents of that “Dream Book”, I think that it should rather have been called a “nightmare Book”, because I was not passionate about its contents and nothing in it inspired me. It had been a complete waste of time, effort and money. So the question is, how is this supposed to work, and what is it supposed to accomplish? In order to answer these questions, I would like you to do a little exercise with me. I am sure that many of you will have done this before, but it will serve very well to make my point.

Imagine that you are holding a lemon in your hand. Create as clear a picture of it and what you are about to do with it as you can. Imagine the feel of it, what it smell like, even see its colour and texture. Now imagine taking a sharp knife and cutting it into four pieces. Now pick up one of the pieces from the cutting board, and notice how juicy it it, the board is wet from it. Now lift the piece of lemon to your mouth and take a good bite of it. Feel the tart, sour juice fill your mouth and run down your chin. The glands in your mouth immediately react to the tartness of the juice.

OK, now be honest, did you have to swallow I little extra saliva after that exercise? Of course you did. This illustrates very clearly that even though you were completely aware of the fact that there was no lemon in sight during this exercise, your thought process and your imagination were able to elicit an involuntary physical response, as if the lemon was real. This is an amazing, powerful and important ability. This principal can be used in different ways which can affect our lives significantly.

Your “Dream Book” or your goals or your “Why” needs to be so important to you that it creates a physical change in you. You need to be passionate about it and you need to look at it, think about it and refine it every day. This will flood your brain with dopamine, a hormone which makes you feel good, able to make better judgements and even increases intelligence. Consequently, you perform better, are more creative, achieve more and are far more likely to remain committed and to achieve your goals. If you listen to the stories of successful distributors, you will find that many had a very powerful why, rooted in severe financial difficulty or need. Resigning from your job without any other income may be a good way to create your own powerful Why, but I don't recommend it! Passion, enthusiasm and exciting goals, will make the journey far more exciting and enjoyable.

I can't stress enough the importance of this principle, and it is something only you can do for yourself, nobody else can do it for you and it is essential for success.

I absolutely love this business!

Network Marketing, Multi Level Marketing or whatever you want to call it, has been around for a long time. It was started in the 1920's by a company which later became known as Avon. The industry has a colourful past, to say the least. This, unfortunately, has led to the industry having a less than ideal reputation. Much has changed over the years as this amazing business model has evolved and progressed, and become what many consider to be the greatest business model of this century.

Gone are the days of Ponzi schemes posing as MLM companies and unscrupulous organisations persuading their distributors to buy large quantities of product they have no chance of selling in their natural lifetime! This practice, called front end loading has pretty much disappeared as the industry has matured and become well self regulated. It is still wise however, to choose your business opportunity with care. Forever distributors have chosen a company with a 35 year history of success. The company is privately owned, is debt free, cash rich, vertically integrated wit control over every step of the process from the aloe plants, plantations, manufacturing to the distributors and finally the customers. Sounds like a good choice to me!

In spite of the fact that Robert Kiosaki (of Rich Dad Poor Dad fame), Warren Buffett, Richard Branson, Dr Oz, Donald Trump and even Chuck Norris (so ya better join!) and many other great businessmen have endorsed MLM, many still view the industry with suspicion. Part of the reason for this is that so many people have "given it a go" and failed, or at least they know someone who has tried and failed. Some say that the failure rate in MM is as high as 98%! This deserves closer scrutiny, if only so that we can avoid the pitfalls and ensure that we fall into the 2% successful category.

It is important to acknowledge a problem in order to be able to address it. So let's explore some of the reasons for this high failure rate. This blog post will look at two of these reasons.

I think the most common reason, by a long shot, is lack of commitment. Let me illustrate. Let's say that you have just mortgaged your home to the max, borrowed money from your family, friends, acquaintances and anyone who would lend you money, and you have bought yourself an awesome franchise business. Since the failure rate of good franchises is around 10%, the risk factor would be acceptable to many investors. Let's say that 6 months after starting trading, you run into some problems. How committed would you be to solve the problems?  I reckon you would do whatever it takes to solve them, you would get over, around, under or through the problems, because the consequence of failure are just too horrible to contemplate. You would lose your shirt, your friends, your family and your self esteem. That is called commitment!

Now let's look at a brand new, bushy tailed, bright eyed distributor, filled with dreams and enthusiasm. They have just joined a business which has the ability to earn them the same kind of money the best franchises can and create a lifestyle second to none. All this without all the negatives associated with traditional businesses and franchises, such as staffing, statutory compliance, huge start-up costs....... What could possibly go wrong? And this opportunity cost them NOTHING, How cool is that!? Well, the truth is that the fact that it cost them nothing, is our industry's greatest strength and its greatest weakness all in one. When the problems start, and they will, the commitment is just not there. It is just far too easy to walk away than to face the problems and deal with them. There is nothing to lose, and to avoid the responsibility of failure, the fault will be with the business model, the company, the Sponsor, anywhere except with the distributor him/herself.

So how do we avoid this pitfall? How do we become committed enough to succeed? We will look more closely at how we develop and maintain our commitment in later posts on this blog, but for now we will look at one of the most important. Network marketing companies want you to be successful, have been around for a while and know what works, so it is a good idea to follow their advice. One of the first things new distributors are encouraged to do is to figure out WHY they are in business. This is not as simple as it may seem on the surface. We all need to explore this question thoroughly for some time to discover what our reasons for doing the business are, what are we passionate about, so passionate that it keeps us awake at night thinking about it. Something which creates excitement and enthusiasm. If you can't think of anything so motivating, create a passion and build on it, nurture it and become passionate about it. That is what will keep you committed.

The other reason for failure I want to deal with is the fact that most new distributors are very good at doing one of the core principles of networking. We are constantly being told that the purpose of recruiting is to duplicate ourselves, and reap the rewards of their efforts. The average number of people the failed recruit signs up before quitting is 2.5. So every 2 failed distributors recruit 5 people, train them to do what they themselves are doing, or duplicate themselves, which is how to fail! So 98% of new recruits ultimately fail and each one duplicates their own failure. This is the reason there is to listen to SUCCESSFUL distributors and follow their advice, rather than go your own way or listen to a well-meaning sponsor who may not know what you need to know. This does NOT mean that a new distributor can't be a great sponsor, it just depends on who they are listening to. Compare what they are saying with what the industry leaders are saying, and look at how close they are to successful distributors, and if they are are doing what the leading distributors are doing, go with it.