"Moderation in All Things" ... is Boring!

Many people believe that BALANCE is the key to a healthy life.

• St. Paul admonished people to practice "moderation in all things."
• Buddha's teachings are summarized in the "middle way."
• When when it comes to our health, we're advised to eat a "balanced diet."
  

Balance is definitely a critically important key to healthy living: spiritually, mentally and physically.

But what about business?

My experience over the last 30+ years of being in business is that not much has come easy. Success has come from living an UNbalanced life and bustin' my butt!

Success has come from the 110% Solution - doing more than the next guy, and then just another pinch more beyond what I planned to do. I'm in agreement with Zig Ziglar who says that when you want something out of life, you have to decide what you're willing to SACRIFICE to get it.

Hard work and sacrifice has paid off more than anything else.

So for a long time I struggled with this concept. For while philosophically I agreed with the ideal of leading a balanced life, my experience was that it lead to a very bland, boring existence.

If that's what you want, fine. But I've never been that way. I've always envisioned myself accomplishing things beyond the ordinary.

Then one day many years ago it dawned on me ...

It happened when I was destitute. I had not accomplished the great wealth I "knew" I would. In fact I was facing bankruptcy.

My financial life wasn't balanced at all. It was tilting toward poverty and disaster.

To bring things back to a healthy balance, would require going to an extreme for a short period of time.

When on a high beam, if you start tilting to the left, you don't put your weight to the MIDDLE, you put it to the EXTREME RIGHT, but only until you get back to equilibrium. Then you go back to a balanced state.

So it is in life and in business. When we get out of balance, we actually must do something EXTREME in order to get back to the middle way.

For me, it was 9 months of working day and night ... and but since then I've never had to worry about money again.

It was a short-term sacrifice for a long-term gain. And it was totally worth it!

Get with a company of integrity like I did so you can count on that residual income. And then go to work ... harder than you thought you could. Do MORE than other people are willing to do. And the reap the rewards of the life you always dreamed of.

... and the Winner is ...

Here's a question I get all the time:

"Yo, Barry, what books and tapes do you recommend?"

I get this question so often that I decided to address it in this Blog for everyone to see.

The first answer, is "Not many!"

There are multitudes of MLM educational materials available of course. I've spent a small fortune on it through the years.

But for me the bottom line is the bottom line: "Has it helped me make money?" The vast majority of it has not been very helpful. Most of it is rehashing the "same 'ole, same 'ole."

Many people relate to this. They want education that's going to increase their profits.

But don't misunderstand me. Most people want a specific lead source, or ad, or web site trick, or magic phrase that will directly result in profits.

That's not how MLM really works. It's not how life really works!

What has helped contribute to my bottom line the most was a change of perspective, a new attitude, or a renewed inspiration.

That's the difference that makes the difference.

I added a "BEST RESOURCES PAGE" to my web site that lists the best of the best books and tapes that I've personally found helpful in my Network Marketing career.

I've also tried to find the lowest prices for you. Most of the selections include very low-cost options to buy them used.

Some of these tools will help with your personal growth, others will give you very specific business-building tools. But what they ALL have in common is that they tell you the TRUTH without the hype. The training in these resources works in the REAL WORLD and I'm personally proof of it!

You can see what lead to my success here: BEST RESOURCES PAGE.

Enjoy!

Any Given Sunday

The Super Bowl is 4 days old, so this is my last chance to give a football analogy.

There's an old Chinese saying about football that goes like this:

"Any Given Sunday."

It basically means that there are many things out of a team's control, and anything can happen on any given Sunday.

In the movie by the same name, Al Pacino delivers the powerful "inches" speech. In it he tells his men that the entire game of football, moving up and down that 100 yard gridiron, comes down to fighting over any given inch.

Football, he says, "a game of inches."

Network marketing, and life itself, is like that too.

There is a lot of things beyond our control.

• Who happens to be on our prospecting list today
• Who happens to come within our "3 foot" zone
• What decisions our company happens to make
• Whether technology happens to cooperate with us today

But that which is in our control ... we fight for. Every inch of it.

• We work and rework every line in our emails and on our web site.
• Our plan says to call 5 prospects today, but we call 6 instead.
• The magazine says our ad will cost $$500, but we negotiate them down to $450.
• We make 5 follow-up calls when our competition only makes 4.

At one time early in my networking career my goal was to make phone calls for 2 hours every night after work.

Whenever I reached a live prospect, I would be on the phone with them for 15 to 20 minutes. So if it was 5 or 10 minutes before the end of my 2 hours, and I was off the phone, I would just quit reasoning that there wasn't enough time to make another call and be finished before my 2 hour limit was up.

I'd been doing this for months, and not making much money.

Then I read that the difference between success and failure was actually a very little bit of effort. That quite often those working hard, but not succeeding were very close to success and just needed to add an extra 5 or 10%.

So I decided to make one small change. Instead of STOPPING at the end of 2 hours, I would DIAL my last CALL at the end of 2 hours. That normally gave me just one extra call per day.

But that one single extra call per day was the extra "inch" I needed to begin seeing my checks go up, and up, and up!

The Bears are Winners!

Well, the Super Bowl is 4 hours old and the results are in. And the Chicago Bears are ...

Winners!

"Yo, Barry, what are ya? ... Nuts?"

Yes, I saw the same game you did. And sure, I know, the Colts had the higher score.

Congratulations to the Colts. They played a great game and looked like true champions.

But I still can't bring myself to say that the Bears are "Losers."

Seriously - have you done anything as great as playing your best, all out, month after month to get to the point where you would achieve the level of being broadcast on one of the most watched TV shows ever?

No one who gets to that level of "play" at anything is a "loser," even if they didn't win the last important game.

Our culture favors the winner. We think you have to be #1, because "nobody remembers #2."

Or, as the song goes: For me, it's all or nothing. Is it all or nothing for you?"

Forget what other people think. Design the life you want, and then make it happen. Not everyone can be #1, and here's a secret: You don't have to be #1 to be crazy happy!

#1 people are great. But the person who is #1 now, will be replaced by a different #1 next time.

And they rotate year after year.

Instead, focus on consistency. Work toward being at the top of your game every day, every week and every month ... whether you're #1 or #3 or whatever.

You can't control being the best of the best every time. You can control DOING your best.

Don't focus on your position. That takes all the fun out of it and leads to stress.

Instead, focus on serving other people and giving them your best. And enjoy the process. Then not only will you enjoy life, but you'll find yourself rising to the top of the heap ... naturally.