Your Check Will Be As Big As You Are

Most people join an MLM Network Marketing company for one of 2 things:

1. To make more money.
2. To enjoy a wonderful product.

While both of these are excellent reasons for joining your MLM company, neither of them are the biggest benefit you'll receive ... if you're successful.

No, the biggest benefit you'll receive is your personal growth.

People buy books, go to seminars, listen to tapes (oops, I mean CDs) in order to achieve personal growth.

These can all be good. You need the right information to be successful.

But they are only "assistants" in your journey.

The only thing that will create real and lasting change (success) is actively working your business. This is where your real growth will come.

In fact, your business is the ultimate personal growth laboratory.

You can read all you want about prospecting, managing your time, training, lead generation, follow-up, "closing," etc., but until you start DOING these things, you won't get any real benefit.

When you DO start doing these things, you'll find they're harder than you imagined ... and now the real personal growth challenge comes:

Will you keep going even though it's hard, you don't have all the answers, and you're not sure you're doing it right?

Or will you put things on hold and go read a book, listen to a training, or go to a seminar so you can "figure out how to do this better before I go any further?"

I just finished a 3 month coaching program with the ultimate Google Adwords Guru, Perry Marshall. Although he's famous for writing "The Definitive Guide to Google Adwords," he's now built an entire team (more like "army!") around him to cover every cutting-edge aspect of Internet Marketing. It was an amazing experience and I highly recommend it if you're ready to work hard.

Anyway ...

At the end of the 90 day coaching program, he sent out an email that absolutely nailed what I'm talking about. Here's some samples from it:

Wanna-be's obsess about ideas.
Entrepreneurs obsess about implementation

Wanna-be's seek a perfect plan.
Entrepreneurs execute and adjust the plan later.

Wanna-be's put off practicing basketball until they've got Air Jordans.
Entrepreneurs practice barefoot behind the garage.

That's exactly right!

You'll never have it all figured out, develop your skills and become an expert BEFORE you start DOING your business.

It's the doing, getting feedback, making adjustments, and trying again ... that is the "magical" process that creates both personal growth and business growth.

In short, we succeed when we're willing to "fail forward!"

What Have You Done For Me Lately?

Your Sponsor is going to hate me!

... but here goes anyway.

What has your sponsor done for you lately ... in concrete terms? In other words, what are they doing to help build your business in a very practical way?

It's sad, but many people join an MLM company, looking for Network Marketing Success, only to be let down.

They expect their sponsor to be a Network Marketing Coach and provide them with excellent MLM training. But this rarely happens for several reasons:

• Your sponsor is also new to the business and still inexperienced.
• Your sponsor believes in the principle: "Throw them all against the wall and see who sticks."
• Your sponsor has no skills.
• Your sponsor has no money.
• You joined a program where "they" do it all for you ... and so got placed under someone who is also waiting for the mysterious "they" to do everything for them too.
• Your sponsor is a total loser.

None of the above is great ... but it's a common occurrence for a person's sponsor to be new and still inexperienced. Not many people are personally sponsored by winners.

But that's not a real problem. You simply research upline until you find the first leader.

Call them and ask for their assistance. More than that. Ask for their mentoring.

Why? Because you NEED it, deserve it, and it's their RESPONSIBILITY to give it to you.

Look at that word, "re-spons-ibility."

The word "Sponsor" is in the middle of it!

Your sponsor (or immediate upline leader) is partially responsible for your success.

The only way you're likely to succeed in MLM Network Marketing is to get on-the-job, earn-while-you-learn training from someone who is already making the type of money you want to make.

It's that simple.

2 days ago I received a phone call from a man in my downline. I had never heard of him before and he was very deep in my organization ... at least 10 levels under me. Maybe more. I gave him a 1-on-1 personalized training for an entire hour, customized just for him.

Then I offered to talk to all of his prospects for him the first few weeks, while he listened on the phone.

If he follows through, I'll also help pay for his advertising so he can get double or triple the number of leads he can afford on his own!

Gosh I'm a great guy!

Actually it's got nothing to do with me being a nice guy (although I am anyway!). It's simply a smart business decision. If he succeeds, it helps me. So I'm happy to bend over backwards, give him my personal time and even help fund his business. Because it will pay me back many fold in years to come.

So why aren't all leaders so generous?

Even leaders make mistakes. Many of them are highly ambitious, aggressive and skilled people, but they could do even better if they understood how MLM works better than they do.

The 2 most common reasons they don't do this are:

1. They think they're too "busy." I say they "think" they are because they really aren't. They're usually spending too much time doing the wrong things. There's nothing more important than helping an ambitious new distributor. It's more important to spend an hour with one highly-motivated go-getter, than it is with 100 people on a conference call.
   
2. They think they can't do it for everyone. This is true, but what they fail to realize is that they don't have to.

That second reason is the most interesting. While it's true that leaders can't give personal attention to everyone in their large organizations, it isn't necessary, and therefore needn't be a concern.

First, we refer people to the upline leader most immediate to them. I designed my business from the beginning to have leaders at the top of each leg, and I taught them to do the same. Therefore each leader has a manageable number of distributors that are "unencumbered" by other leaders. Sure, sometimes things change and people become "orphaned," but you just search for the few go-getters in that group and create new leaders.

Second, you won't have many distributors that have enough self-motivation, self-discipline and drive that want your mentoring.

Most distributors are still seeking the Holy Grail of MLM, which is make money by doing nothing. Those people don't want mentoring. They don't want empowerment. They don't want to work.

The few who truly have the entrepreneurial spirit, - who have the drive and self-discipline, they are true gems that you should cherish and work with closely. These people are rare so you'll never have to worry about having too many of them in your downline to handle (we should all have such problems!).

So ...

If you are one of those gems, and you're not getting the support you deserve, call everyone in your upline until you find the first leader. Explain to them your unbridled commitment to your business and ask for their mentoring.

If they have 2 brain cells to rub together, they'll be thrilled to hear from you, and your call will be the best thing that happened to them all day!

Prospects Say The Darnest Things!

Sometimes prospects can be very frustrating can't they?

It's uncanny how so many of them seem to have acquired the unabridged "Encyclopedia of Excuses."

I've never seen it, but I'm sure it exists because prospects seem to all tap into the same resource for coming up with reasons they can't join our business.

My car broke down.
I'm sick
My spouse is sick
My kid is sick
I don't have any money
I'm too busy

Yep, they can come up with every excuse in "the book."

Let me translate those excuses into "Entrepreneurese."

They all actually mean the same thing:

"I don't believe I'll be successful."

It's not that your prospects are always lying. The objections they raise may be real.

But that's not the point.

If they believed they'd make a lot of money with our business ... they would join despite the obstacles.

So our job is to bolster their faith.

So how do we help them overcome their doubt? We don't.

Doubt is not the opposite of faith.

Fear is the opposite of faith.

So we need to identify their fears and help them overcome them.

Fear is a matter of focus. There are definitely risks in starting a new business, and those risks are not going to go away whether they join or not. But fear is alleviated when they focus on success rather than failure.

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to refocus your prospect's mind and emotions on their dreams and aspirations, rather than on "what if I don't succeed."

You need to also control your focus when talking with prospects. Don't get distracted by the excuse of the moment. Remember there is almost always a deeper fear underneath it that is causing the prospect to delay or withdraw.

Also don't get too frustrated with them. They're simply expressing their honest feelings, and a person's feelings are never "wrong."

Many years ago I was working a MLM company that was located in Florida.

I'll never forget one prospect. He loved our compensation plan and products. He was very excited about our marketing tools. But when I followed up to enroll him, he said ...

"I'd never join any company that's located in Florida!"

I couldn't believe my ears. I'd heard a lot crazy excuses in my life, but this was a first. Of course I asked him why in the world he wouldn't join a company just because they happened to be located in the beautiful state of Florida.

He said that he didn't know what it was, but he'd never had a good experience with any Florida company.

I told him that was crazy, but he didn't join.

A few months went by and then he called me, admitting that it was kind of nutso to think that every company was bad just because they happened to reside in a particular state. So he joined with me.

The ironic thing is:

That year the company was hit by a hurricane and put out of business!