Today, I want to talk about something that’s really kind of near and dear to my heart. I’ve been, as I’ve talked about, through multiple different network marketing companies in my career and had the benefit and the luck, frankly, to learn from some amazing leaders. People who have made millions upon millions of dollars in the industry. A lot of them have done it the old-style way, which obviously works for some people. Now, for me, I want to use 21st-century technology. The learning that I can get from that: making my downline and growing my downline much simpler for me, be able to automate some of these processes, and use technology to my advantage. Because, you know what, in my core I am a technologist.
Today, I want to talk about three things that everybody in multilevel marketing and network marketing needs to be successful. So, listen up. Here’s the three. I’m going to recap them quickly, and then I’m going to dive into them in more depth.
1) You need a friend, a mentor. You need somebody who you can latch arms with and go to battle with.
2) You need some nourishment, nourishment for the soul, nourishment for the mind; that’s going to be really important as you grow in your opportunity.
3) You need some responsibility.
Now, if you’re just starting out, responsibility can seem a little odd, but this responsibility can be to a couple of different things. I’ll dive into those individually. First: a friend and a mentor. When my wife and I got started this time around in our network marketing company, we were lucky enough to have a mentor who was very persistent with my wife. She got started with some of the products and then was invited to an event, where she really started to see the vision. This mentor, we’ll call him, John ‘cause, hey, that’s his name. John came back multiple times–I’m talking like half a dozen, maybe more times–back to Heather to say, “Hey, you should come to this. You would enjoy it. It would be really good,” and she said, “No.” And then, again, “Hey, you should come to this. You would enjoy it. It would be really good,” over and over and over. He came back again and again, and that persistence paid off.
Now, John has been an incredible mentor. We’ve been able to be mentored together by some incredible leaders, as well. What that taught me more than anything is I needed to have a friend. Now, we really consider our network marketing group family, and we were really that close. We have some of those struggles and some of those battles between each other, but we really do view each other as family. And this holiday time of year, as I look outside my window here, looking out at the beautiful Wasatch Mountains, they’re all snow covered. In fact, I had to snow blow about six inches of snow off of my driveway yesterday and then redo another shift this morning. I’m very thankful for the snowblower. What that tells me is everybody’s getting it and everybody has an opportunity, but when you have a friend, when you have a mentor, when you have somebody that you can lock your arms with and go out there and work; that is invaluable.
Why is that invaluable? Well, you guys have all experienced it, I imagine, but for those of you who haven’t, it’s hard. Talking to people every single day is difficult, even for somebody like myself. I spend a lot of time prospecting for my day job. And so, what do you think the very last thing that I want to do when I start my night job? When I start my side gig? When I start my network marketing businesses? Guess what? It is not prospect. Okay. Prospecting isn’t any fun. It is hard. It’s mentally taxing. I remember, actually, I was going through and doing some phone prospecting for my day job, and I got through it from the hours of like seven a.m. to noon, that five-hour block there. I got a lot of work done. In fact, I had more than a hundred phone calls, a hundred dials made before lunch in that timeline.
I was burned, I was cooked. I went to the lunch feeling like an absolute zombie. I was pretty useless, I’ll be honest, the rest of the workday. I had done so much mentally taxing work trying to get in and work on that. It was just too hard. Now, did I want to come home and talk to people or go and contact people or talk about an opportunity meeting? No, not a chance. No Way. With a friend and a mentor, you can work it together. You spread that pain out a little bit. They say misery loves company; well, so does success. Success loves company. People love to share successes. And when you can do that with a mentor and when that mentor can reach down and lift you up when you’re having a hard day, and when you can lift others up when they’re having a hard day, that’s what makes this business so incredible and so fun.
The second one, nourishment. It’s been often said that network marketing is actually a personal development course with a compensation plan attached, and I cannot emphasize that enough. I have spent the last–oh, the last number of years, frankly–but this year with a heavy focus on personal development. I actually just picked up a new podcast from an old friend of mine, who actually I’m going to have on; I’m not going to spoil the thunder, but I’m going to have him on for an interview here. He’s fantastic. In that self development and personal development space, I just picked up last night The 5 Second Rule by Mel Robbins, and it’s fantastic. It talks about the things that we need to do to get into action and that nourishment, that training, that personal development that we can do is amazing.
Now, I think I’ve talked about it before, and I’m continuing on my quest this year to read 52 books. One book a week for the entirety of 2018. I’m currently finishing number 49. I finished 48. I’m finishing number 49, currently. This is Marketing by Seth Godin: a fantastic book. Highly recommend it. I’m reading it on Audible. I cannot emphasize it enough. It’s a brand new book. Go get it. If you want a free copy of it via Audible, shoot me a link. I can send it to you for free because Audible’s cool like that.
All this personal development, it helps me elevate my vision. It helps me to see what I can become. It really helps me to understand where my creator wants me to go. It’s not a surprise here that I’m very religious. I spend a lot of time and my free time contemplating things of a religious nature. I spend a set amount of time every day reading scripture. The growth that I can get from personal development cannot be overstated. And I encourage all of you to do the same, whether it’s going and getting some of the classics like Think and Grow Rich or The Science of Getting Rich–both of which are fantastic books–or going for Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl. You know that one? Actually, I haven’t read it yet. That one’s actually just popped onto my list. I think it may be number 51 or 52 for the year. We’ll see. All of those are going to give you an elevated vision for life. And that elevated vision is the best thing that network marketing can give to you because you can make more out of your life when you’re willing to put the sacrifice of personal development in.
Now, the third piece is responsibility. As you begin to build a team, you have a responsibility. You start to help your teammates, but I want to talk about responsibility to yourself; to your future self, most specifically. When we’re talking about being responsible to our future self, my biggest fear probably is looking back at my life, say 10 years from now, and thinking, “Gosh, I wish I would have done that better.” Living with regret. Those are things that I don’t want to do. I don’t want to regret not taking a vacation with my family. I don’t ever want to regret.
Our oldest child just turned 18 recently. He is getting ready to leave the nest here after high school graduation next spring. It’s given us some pause and some thoughts like, gosh, we’ve had a cadence of going on a big family vacation every couple of years. We did a Disney World, and we’ve done a cruise. We did Maui, and now we’re looking at it going, “Oh my goodness, we need to do another family vacation before he leaves.”
He’s planning on serving a mission and we’re excited for that. We don’t know where he’ll go yet. We’ll definitely update you on that. He’s planning on going and dedicating two years of his life to spending time with other people in preaching the Gospel. And so, but beyond that, we want to spend time with him. That’s going to be a long time. And so we’re looking at a family vacation, where can we go? Maybe it’s Mexico or maybe we would go back to Hawaii. Our family loves to ski. Shoot, maybe it should be a ski vacation. Those are the memories. Those are the things. That’s the responsibility to myself that I’m talking about. Take that responsibility. Take what you want for yourself and visualize it happening, and then go out and do it.
There’s a saying that somebody gave me once, which was really, really important. It basically it said–and again, I don’t want to delve too far into the spirituality here–but the idea is get on your knees and pray like it all belongs. All the effort. The job entirely belongs to God. Then, get up on your feet and work like it all falls on your shoulders. When you can do that, you will make progress that you never thought possible. It’s amazing how the stars will align when you set a goal and you go after it. One of my mentors now Steven Larsen, who I also will have on the podcast here soon, he talked about setting a goal, and going after the summit.
I spent time doing some mountain climbing with my dad. He loves to do that, and I love to do it with him. My grandfather had heart trouble about the same age that my dad is now, and my dad used that as a focus to keep himself physically fit. He’s an IT guy. He sits at a computer all day long, but he gets out and he hikes and he climbs. We were able to climb Mount Rainier together, and I look forward to sharing that story one day in the future. Setting your sights on that summit, and then looking down and working and just going; not dreaming about the summit but putting one foot in front of the other and moving forward. That is what gets you to a spot where you can become indomitable. You can become so strong, and a force of nature that it becomes your will that will always take over when the going gets tough. And when the going gets tough, the tough get going. That’s one of those things that I’ve gained a clarity on.
I heard somebody say once, we only begin to get clarity when we get in motion. And that is so huge for everything that we do in network marketing. Part of that responsibility is getting in motion. If you’re not willing to do the things that you’re asking your downline to do, why are you doing them? Why are you asking them to do them? Be willing to do what you need to do. Now, for me, that means learning some things that have been hard. That means learning how to use technology to my advantage so that I can actually emphasize that with my team and grow. I’m in the middle of that process, in the middle of that growth. And you guys are along for the ride. And I’m excited about that, because, ultimately, we’re going to be able to help a lot of people all over the world to do this.
We’ve got a team member right now who spent some years living in South America. Our company’s about to open a South American country. We’re really excited about it, as you would expect. Opening a new market is huge. We found that because of the power of social media, it’s not nearly so difficult as it used to be. One of my upline leaders has an enormous presence in Southeast Asia and Thailand. In fact, I think his downline he has more than 60% of the country in his downline. That’s how much work you put in. But he also did things like leaving his family for three weeks at a time to be in Thailand to grow that business. Now with social media, we don’t have to do that. I’ve never been to the Philippines or Australia, but I have team members in those areas.
I have been to Chile. I lived there, and we have team members there–because of some of my friends and family–but I haven’t been back there since 2000 when I got home from there. Now, I have a huge desire to go back, but when we go back, it’s just going to be amazing. And it’s because of the power of social media. The power of social media is just one piece of what’s going into this 21st-century recruiting. I’m going to talk more about 21st-century recruiting. It is going to give us an opportunity to grow our downlines and grow our bank accounts in a huge manner. I’m excited to share that with you and work with you guys, as I actually develop the program in its entirety. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got definitely the broad brushstrokes in place here, but you guys are going to help me to build this. I cannot wait because it is going to change the way network marketing is done. There are a few of us out there, a few Renegades out there in the world, who are working hard to change network marketing. Count me in that group. I am a Renegade. I am going to change the way things are done and I am excited to bring you guys along for the ride with me.
Hey, thanks for listening, and please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. If you have any questions that you’d like to have answered on the show, email me at JR@MLMRenegade.com.