Friday’s Networker Riddle With Point, Simple One

RIDDLE

I am just 2 and 2. I am hot and I am cold.

I am the parent of numbers that should not be told.

I am a gift beyond measure, a matter of course…

I am yielded with pleasure, even taken by force

Who am I?

P.T. Barnum brought the circus to town, for you younger folks.

Became successful.  Very.

You may not know much about him, the circus or how it all worked out from him.   There may be a lot of things you don’t know about him but even if you never heard of him you know a quote of the greatest Ringmaster of his time…..even saying he was the greatest in history would not be stretching it.

“There’s a sucker born every minute.”

Maybe it was your Dad, Mom or Uncle Eddie.   You’ve heard it, we’ve all heard it.

Most of us last heard it coming from our own lips.

“But boss, why would you tell everyone that?”

“Why not?”

“We’ll lose the suckers boss,” his supporters would say……the press…..everyone in the Circus.

I can hear P.T. laughing now….”the one’s who hear it will quote it and they become the biggest suckers.”

Why?

No one thinks themselves a sucker and quoting P.T. does not exempt anyone from anything.

What’s P.T.  got to do with succeeding in network marketing?

Look, we have all directly or indirectly had this experience.  It’s called ‘the hook.’

P.T. worked the hook [making you believe you need it, can’t live without it], mobilized the community through the kids and it was cha-ching time.

EVERYONE just had to go to the circus & did and Barnum was on his way to the  next town, sucking money out of a town after town and not putting any back it.

He had barkers and people from the town start telling stories of amazement, freaks and world wonders for a few days before parading elephants and the like through town.

OK, OK…..that’s enough.  The truth is P.T. Barnum never said, “there’s a sucker born every minute.”

Even more interesting is it was a competitor trying to discredit him.

Much like the clowns out there telling people not only does MLM not work but the methods of building never worked.

…..these con men set the hook with a story while putting down the very business you are trying to build…..then, WHAM…..there’s a sucker born during their little video, sales letter, whatever.  Folks reach for that credit card so they can…… ‘find out the things their upline will never tell them’…….and …..’stop the frustration and pain’……and…….’avoid being part of the 95% that fail’……give me a break……

But, once the hook is set, you’re a goner…..buying systems…..and now we see these guys actually selling systems to manage systems…….

And once this infects your downline…..your group is a ‘goner’……unless you look at facts [not their version of facts], look to nature and  the answer to today’s riddle as a core value.

Nature has the answer, again.

We’ve all directly or indirectly had the experience of planting a bulb in the soil and taken pleasure in watching a green thing poke through the soil.

Then it starts to grow…..leaves……a bud……BANG…..a flower.

Glorious.  We stare.

Wonderful.

Have we considered that we plant a Tiger Lilly or crocus bulb and we expect a specific flower to grow.

Watering, weeding, protecting…….hmmmm.

Doesn’t feel like work does it?  Ever wonder why?

You know what do to and if you do it the outcome is a forgone conclusion.

We, maybe, have been through this with our kids.  Never gets old.

We never, I mean we would be out of our minds, to think we could plant a flower and expect a bulb to come up.

Yet this is precisely what we want our business to look like.

We’d like to start with a flower so we look around on line and next thing you now…..ut-oh…..we  expect to START with a flower…….and there are sucker’s born every minute …..nutured by folks who know that mindset and promise they can make it happen…..RIGHT NOW.

Just a “small start up fee” [said the spider to the fly], and a monthly fee and once you get in the back office one-affliate-must-have program after another….

We want the desireable results [that is a good thing] without doing the work [that’s a bad thing] and because some MLM failure or con artist sets the empathy hook……teams are spending more on ‘tools’ than product and spending more time promoting tools than your business……you know?

These guys are really good at psuedo empahty…….They tell you they ‘were at where you are at’……and can ‘make it all go away’…….they got you convinced, and this is our fault, not theirs, you can have the FLOWER right now……no work, no skills, no nuthin’

The unlimited supply of leads that will be attracted to you, self liquidating cost by referring others to their magic programs …..blah, blah blah….are all pointless if we don’t know what to say.

Here is the really cool part……once you do know what to say so better than 90% say ‘Sure, I’ll take a look’ everything changes.

I’m not after these guys and gals……as my friend and mentor ‘Big Al’ likes to say, ‘You can’t stop people from hurting themselves.’…..but we can offer encouragement by keeping things very simple.

This business is so simple.  We’ve all been doing networking since we were 6 years old.  We know how to invite people to meet us for a coffee.  We’ve all loaned out a book or DVD or CD.

It’s that simple.

It’s only when we BELIEVE we can have the flower without planting the bulb and fear of loss is aroused that we become suckers.

Do you ever think the bulb you planted will grow the wrong way and never come up?

It’s not about gadgets and systems …….it’s about skills and teaching skills.

What kind of skills?  We need to talk to people, get them to take a look with an open mind and give us a decision…….and until we learn that, nothing else matters.

What’s cool is once we know how to do that..then, nothing else matters.

Simple.  Keep it simple.

Keep it simple and you get wealthy, flowers blooming everywhere.

How’d you get flowers to grow?

Bulbs, planted them so many inches deep and apart.  Watered them, etc.

How’d we grow ’em?  We followed simple directions.  Now?  You don’t even have to read the directions.

How would you teach your kid to grow a flower?

Tell her she needs bulldozers?  Surverys? PH Balances?  Insecticides? Manuals?

“Sally, dig a hole about 6 inches…out this part up, cover it with dirt, keep it moist.”

Want more?  Plant more.

Same as teaching a new rep to grow a business.

Sort of like…..learn to invite in under 60 seconds, let the review, collect decision.

Simple.  Easy.  Fast. Fun……oh, I forgot…..free.

RIDDLE

I am just 2 and 2. I am hot and I am cold.

I am the parent of numbers that should not be told.

I am a gift beyond measure, a matter of course…

I am yielded with pleasure, even taken by force

Who am I?

A kiss

K-I-S-S

I never much like K.I.S.S. = Keep it simple, stupid

but if we don’t…..our teams will never realize the philosophy of the cross-promoting gurus……

Keep Inexperienced Suckers Spending

Fashion comes and goes, principles endure…….

You’ll find a library free right here

And, we’ve posted 2 new skills, free of course, here

Both are about and hour, Learning how to be a great story teller and the ink is still drying skill……so people won’t vanish right after you enroll them.

believe

mark januszewski

worlds laziest networker