Success in MLM? Easy with the 4 Ds

MLM Easy?

Actually easy or hard has nothing to do with it.

What’s easy for you and hard for someone else, when the experience is identical, is merely perception.

For myself and The Fabulous Davene, it was hard then it got easy.

No, not because the checks went up.  It was simply because we made a decision about the 4 D’s.

Our perception was that it was hard, frustrating, ya know?

Prospects lie all the time, say they’ll review stuff and they don’t.  They blow off follow-ups too.

And reps?  They bag out on 3-ways…don’t do what they say they will…take 3 months to do a 20-minute exercise…and, (hilariously ironic), use the same excuses they say they hate hearing from prospects.

Love them all.  Really love them.

Just love them all?  Nice thought…but is it possible?

Yup.

The pathway to loving them all is understanding and committing to the 4 Ds.

She Was in My Downline

Way back in the 90s, this cool woman shows up in my downline.  Comes to my house with a group of reps for a goal-setting thing I was doing.  I gave the group of about a dozen people an assignment and promised them 4 hours of 1:1 time and 4 hours 1:1 help a week.  This woman, The Fabulous Davene, (she was just Davene at the time), is the only one who does the work.

We start working together.  We’re building but frustrated…when we find the 4 Ds.

Within 6 months of finding and committing to them, she’s out doing seminars all over the country.  And had never spoken to groups before.  I win Trainer of the Year.

We both have more requests to speak and get paid to speak more than the company allows per year.  It’s nuts how quickly things turned around and how it shifted MLM from hard to easy.

We laughed about it then and we laugh about it now.  All that happened…plus we fell in love…and got to manifest our dream of living in Kauai because we committed together to the 4 Ds.

DELAY GRATIFICATION

In the classic granddaddy of self-help, Think and Grow Rich, Hill talks about including in your Definite Major Purpose a statement about what you are willing to give up.

We found, instantly, goal statements never have this, ever.  Maybe your team leaders or company call it your ‘why’.  No matter, you get the idea.

We’ve built 3 MLMs to well over 6 figures, spoke to other leaders from other companies and never, not once have we seen a ‘why’ or goal statement that included what people were willing to sacrifice.

Even more amazing is that the average person has the TV on in their home over 6 hours a day (that’s not the amazing part), and we always ask audiences (we’ve spoken to well in excess of 100,000 people in hotels, conventions centers, etc), how much TV they watch.

Here is the amazing part:  We’ve never met an average person!!  Seems like no one who joins MLM watches TV or ever has.  🙂

Chart ALL your activities for a week.  You’ll find a few things you can ‘sacrifice’ that fall under the Delay Gratification “D”…and sacrifice it in writing.  Don’t be like my daughter who used to give up vegetables for Lent. Give up something of value for 6 months and link it to your heart’s desire.

DEDICATION 

The astonishing and shameful micro-wave entitlement mentality newbies have coupled with CLO-URU‘s, (def: clowns masquerading as guru’s), hustling secret short cuts makes it easy to forget the word dedication.  And no, not to your goals, company or product.  Any occupation, including MLM, is based on skills.  You’ve got to be Dedicated to learning the skills in the 3 money making areas.

1. Getting people to agree to look
2. Getting people who said they’d look to show up
3. Teaching people who say ‘yes’ how to do points 1 & 2 effectively

DETERMINATION

Not quitting…and all that attitude stuff is for the birds…has nothing to do with Determination.  Persistence is probably the most misused word in MLM.  Good grief.  Persistence is not a characteristic or trait.  It is actually a habit that is a by-product of 4 tiny habits anyone can do, at least if you want to give Napoleon Hill any respect.

1. A definite major purpose backed by a burning desire for its attainment
2. A definite plan, expressed in continuous action
3. A closed mind to all negative thought
4. A Master Mind Alliance [as opposed to a ‘feel good conference cookie club’ that calls itself a mastermind, good grief