Gain A Competitive Edge In MLM

Talent is Never Enough

We’ve been looking at Dr. Maxwell’s classic book, Talent is Never Enough, the last 2 days.

Building a large organization is more about extracting talent than finding it we have discovered.  Maxwell’s book brought us from frustration to prosperity because I got away from the ‘talent hunt’ and ‘looking for whales’ to getting more out of myself and others.

We’ve covered the 3 things you must buy into to succeed and discussed passion and how it energizes us.

So we’ve bought into believing in ourself, our potential and our mission and we’ve found something we have passion about.  For myself and The Fabulous Davene it is helping at least one person or couple be home with the kids, stress free.  We do it every year.

So all that is in place.  And we get the concept that networking is just talking to people and every knows everybody does that every day.

Will we begin?

Initiative

My Dad died in Korea when I was 3.  I was raised by 2 wonderful uncles who always said, over and over and over, “you can’t get started until you get started.”

It was a great comfort to read that talent-plus people, (people who take their talent to the next level and more importantly in networking, draw the talent out of others), need to understand initiative.

Maxwell breaks it down to 5 things and do they ever hit the bulls-eye for networkers…and I’ve added one of my own.

1. Initiative is the first step to anywhere we want to go. Let’s face it, it’s not where we start but whether we start.   Networkers are famous for planning and projecting and never getting started.  Initiative activates our talent and is really the match that lights the fuse to our explosive passion.

2. Initiative closes the door to fear. Everyone feels nervous or scared when getting started in our business and in the daily tasks that will drive the business. Action, taking that first step is courageous.  It would be nice if we could get courage and do the thing we fear.  But it is just the opposite.  If we do the thing we fear, we get courage.  Go figure.  Once we start…it’s 7:00 PM and we want to make calls to prospects…gulp…but as soon as we make the first call, fear vanishes and each one gets easier.

3. Initiative opens the door to opportunity. I was at a Regional Convention and the key speaker took very ill right after lunch.  They needed someone to fill his 2-hour spot, the keynote address and said I would like to give it a shot.  I liked speaking but was a big, big practice guy and had no material with me, no presentation…nothing.  I said ‘yes’ while my head was saying no.  It went well and all the district coordinators were there.  Within 20 minutes of the conclusion of the event, I had 11 bookings at $2000 bucks each.  I was lucky because I took the initiative.

4. Initiative eases life’s difficulties. Most people’s problems are not that life has problems, setbacks, and disappointments.  It is their reaction to them.  Pity pot, confusion, sad…no matter, pick your poison.  When the reaction is from the point of view that ‘every adversity has the seed for greater achievement’ that person takes action.  And it always gets better.  No initiative when things go sour always worsens the conditions.

5. Initiative is the difference between success and failure. Most people wait for someone to tell them what to do, and then they wait for others to tell them to actually do it.  The difference between success and failure is something we discovered years ago and I never miss a chance to shout it from the rooftops.  Successful people simply do the things unsuccessful people make a conscious decision not to do.  The winners exhibit initiative on the key tasks consistently.

6. Initiative stops us from making the perfect the enemy of the good. I think Maxwell missed one here.  To many people, prospects and distributors alike simply want things to be perfect to start.   This is something all of us see over and over and over.  If you’re supposed to make calls with a rep and he bags out on you.  You had the time scheduled anyway so it’s not perfect,  your plan got ditched by someone else.  The 3 best reps I have ever had all came in on nights I was blown off by a prospect or distributor.  Initiative.

Got initiative?

If we spent as much time calling people as we spend talking about calling people, we’d all be up another income level, or two.

THOUGHTS WHILE SHAVING

Master Key Mastermind Alliance

The Master Key Mastermind Alliance is exceeding the most optimistic expectations one could ever hold, even in their wildest imagination.   The course is designed to do something most self-help guru’s shudder at the thought of…the only guru we need is the one within.  Ut-oh…there go CD and seminar sales down the toilet.

As usual, the gratitude of the class is bass-ackwards.  We’ve learned more from the members is five weeks than we’ve learned in the last 6 months.

What an amazing group of like-minded adults like Success Coach Kathy Zimmer who want the truth and have already figured out it lies within them, not in a stadium where some clown is peddling rehashed material and claiming it as her/his own.

What really pisses me off about the proliferation of these bozos is that they spend more than 50% of their time up selling these absurd 3000 and 8000 dollar weekends.

No thanks.  I already know how to do the tricks with the hot coals and the breaking board.  Geez…

P90X Update

In week 8, down over 20 lbs.  Just like network marketing.  I keep showing up, working hard and getting better.  Go figure.

Where did all these microwave mentality folks come from?

Has the inter-webby thing done more brain damage than I had originally thought?

What has happened with P90X in this time is a result of 1 hour a day…focused and following directions.  I am not surfing the web for shortcuts.  An hour a day seems like a pretty small price for true health…and hour a day of contacting prospects for true wealth, trust me, is easier.

Hook, Path, Persuasion

Are people that naive?

I talk to 15-20 people a week that have spent a few thousand online…may in one shot, maybe in several $200-400 deals.

I ask what they looked at to see where they spent their money.  I have looked at over 50 in the last 2 weeks…

All, and I mean all, the same bullshit.

Hook…path…persuasion.

THE HOOK

Emotional appeal about money…then the hook…telling them they struggled too, and how bad it was.

THE PATH

The pitchman’s story about how bad it was always includes ‘rejection’ by people they know.  This is the persuasion…get them to identify with the suffering, the rejection, the ‘I didn’t know what to do, at wits and…and here it comes…

PERSUASION

and…”I did not know how to sell”, “I don’t like to sell”, “I’ve never sold anything in my life’ …blah, blah, blah…

It worked for me, it will work for you.  Here are some checks I made and some other checks other people made.

I look at this crap and I wonder who is committing the bigger crime – the hook-path-persuasion boys or the people who want to be lied to.  As Obi Wan Kenobi said, “Who is the fool? The fool who follows the fool?’

Clearly, anyone over the age of 18 should understand the hook-path-persuasion con.

Apropos of nothing

1. e-lationships. Do people really believe they have a relationship based on email, texting, skyping etc.?  Good grief.

2. If you are talking to someone and don’t know the color of their eyes, you are not listening and you are surely not connecting.

3. Bet the networks are pissed Texas and San Francisco are in the World Series…they wanted Philly and NY.

4. Serving flour, sugar, eggs, baking powder, water, and chocolate and calling it a cake is like diversity without unity.  Nothing.

5. Authentic reputations are built at the bottom, not the top.

Updates from my 5 Mentors

1. What we need is more people who specialize in the impossible. Theodore Roethke

I learned a long time ago that when you can see the invisible, you can do the impossible.  Successful networkers believe it before they see it.  Most people need to see it before they believe it.

2. Don’t try to become a man of success.  Instead, become a man of value. Einstein.

Careful.  It’s not about the money and working for money creates insecurity and worry.  Principles endure and create an authentic sense of security.  That is what people want and that is what they ultimately follow.

3. Our choices determine our character and our character determines our choices. George Eliot

We don’t build a group and get ‘good’ and start giving to charity etc.  Do the good things now, right now.

4. Empowerment isn’t magic. It consists of a few simple steps and a lot of persistence. Ken Blanchard.

Calling up a rep and telling them ‘you done good’ is not empowering.  Compliment?  Yes.  Empowering, no.  Giving someone a task, like doing a webcast or hotel meeting who has never done it before…then practicing with them…and coaching them afterward…then practicing with them again is empowerment.  The folly of a kind word or two being empowerment does more damage than we can imagine.   We gotta give something of greater responsibility then work our asses off to help them succeed with this task.

5. There’s nothing more boring than actors talking about acting. James Cann

Yes, Jim, there is something far more boring than actors talking about acting.  Networkers telling the ‘he said then I said‘  blow-by-blow reenactments of people who said ‘no’ and how brilliant they were…forgetting, of course, the prospect did not come in.

believe

mark januszewski

world’s laziest networker

 

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