Hey, guys, welcome back. First off, I want to start off today with a big thank you. A lot of you guys have been listening now over the past couple of months that we’ve been doing this podcast and seeing the download numbers that are increasing and seeing positive feedback and reviews that I’m getting from people, it’s really gratifying. I want to give thanks for that because, ultimately, that’s why I do it. I really enjoy the training and the learning aspects that doing this gives me. Getting that feedback from people, it makes me feel good and just makes me want to keep producing good quality content. And, really, that is my goal: to produce quality value for everybody who’s in network marketing. It doesn’t matter what company you’re in. I want you guys to feel at home here. I want you to get some good, good value.
Today, we’re going to talk about armpits and shoes and other things that stink, like excuses. There’s an old adage: Armpits are like excuses, everybody’s got a couple, and they all stink. That is so true, and never truer than in network marketing.
In my early years in college, I was an ROTC Cadet with the Air Force. I had the opportunity, I will call it, to get yelled at by some very mean looking drill sergeants to get inspected. I remember a specific time we were at a drill competition. We did armed rifle drill. If you’ve seen the beginning of A Few Good Men with the with the Marine drill team, it was that stuff. It was awesome. I remember that this big African-American drill instructor, must’ve been 6’ 5” or 6’ 6”, had extra garlic and onions on his sandwich for lunch, because when he was about an inch and a half from my nose, literally an inch and a half. He was right there screaming me at the top of his lungs while I had to stand there at attention and basically not react to him. Let me tell you how much fun that is… but it taught me a lot of things.
One of those things is to not have excuses. They hate nothing more than hearing quibbling or excuses or, frankly, even reasons why something happened or why something was wrong. It didn’t matter what you said, you were always wrong. The sooner that you admitted that and accepted that, the better off you are going to be and the better experience you’re going to have.
I remember this particular drill instructor just absolutely laying into me because I think I had a little, they call it a cable, which basically a little thread on a seam on my shirt. I don’t even know where it came from. I thought I had cleaned them up. I remember getting yelled at for that or getting yelled at because somebody else scuffed my shoe and I didn’t have a chance to un-scuff it. I mean the litany of things that I did wrong, we’re amazing.
The point in all this is I learned that excuses just aren’t okay; in your business, they are even less okay. The number one way to drive people away is to give excuses. You never met a situation that you didn’t have an excuse for. In fact, I had a friend of mine who was ROTC who went on to become a navigator on the B-1. And his call sign was, honestly, was kind of derogatory towards him. They called him HEFO, and basically, it was Has Excuses For Everything. That was his call sign for a while. Who wants to be known that way? Nobody. It’s kind of sad now, he outgrew that call sign, people trade call signs. It’s not like Top Gun where you get to pick, “Oh, I’m Maverick,” or “I’m Ice Man.” No, doesn’t happen. You get to get that gets picked for you by everybody in your squadron. You have no say in the matter. He had some other interesting call signs, and I’ve got lots of friends and we could talk for hours about that.
The point of the matter is don’t make excuses. If something goes wrong, take personal responsibility for yourself. Take personal responsibility for your life. Life is so much more about how you react to things than it is about what happens to you. Ultimately, there are a lot of people in this world that some really, really bad crap has happened to.
I’m a big fan of the work that that the guys from Operation Underground Railroad do. They are literally saving kids, especially, from sex slavery. It’s an incredibly noble thing that these guys are doing. Former Navy SEALs and men in business who want to be able to give back and helping to bankroll some of these guys. The things that Operation Underground Railroad does is huge. These kids have every excuse in the world to have a bad rest of their life, but most of these kids come out so well adjusted because they’re survivors, and because they have gone through and overcome a lot of these obstacles that have been placed in their life.
I saw a picture recently, you guys have probably seen it, of Jeff Bezos sitting at a desk in his house with Amazon spray painted on the wall next to him. And that was Amazon and how it started. Jeff, right now, is like the richest dude in the world, and if he’s not, he’s like number two. He doesn’t make excuses; he takes responsibility. In fact, right now, he’s getting blackmailed by the National Enquirer. He came out and he said, “Yeah, here’s all the things. None of them were very good things. I don’t need to go into it. You guys can look it up, but not good.” He basically hit it head on and said, “Yep, they’re saying they’re going to blackmail me and send out pictures of ABC and D, and of course I don’t want these released, but what I want even less as them to get away with blackmailing myself or other people who are less able to take care of it than I am.” Life is so much about how you react to it and not about what happens to you.
If there is something that I can teach over and over and over again, if I could teach my kids, if I could teach the people on my team, this simple fact, they’re going to be so much better entrepreneurs, husband, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, whatever, and people overall. My main message today is to take your excuses and flush them because they are crap. Take those excuses and get rid of them. When you have a life that doesn’t involve excuses, you’re able to live your life more abundantly. You’re able to take advantage of opportunities as they arise.
I’ve learned, especially in recent months, opportunity is regularly disguised as hard work. When you go through that hard work, the obstacle becomes the way. You guys have probably heard me say that book was amazing and has left an indelible effect on my life. When you go through those trials, when you are able to overcome those excuses or overcome those situations, you are going to be a better leader and you’re going to be more believable.
I had an opportunity to invite some people to a business briefing meeting that we had for our team. The guy who gave it has been in our company for about 30 years. He’s made more than $20 million. He’s very laid back. I love him to death. He is an absolute rock star. But the people who I had couldn’t relate with him very well. Granted they were checking out the company and weren’t fully immersed into everything, but what they said was really intriguing to me. They had a hard time relating because he is literally on the pinnacle. He is at the mountain top. He is looking down on the rest of the world, not in an emotional sense. He’s there, and they don’t see what he paid to get there.
I know some of those backstories and I know how difficult it was during that time. I know the backstory. I wasn’t a part of it, but he didn’t do that. Frankly, guys, that is the reason why I have this podcast. I want you to see the journey to see the struggle, to see the opportunity that is in front of you, in network marketing. It is difficult. Anybody who says differently is lying to you.
I’m working on some training here that I’m really excited to roll out, a Renegade Recruiting System. The Renegade Recruiting System is going to give you the opportunity to really change the way that you’re working with in network marketing to give you the opportunity to auto-recruit people so that you don’t have to bug friends and family members, give you the opportunity to utilize the technology of the 21st century to do that.
Here’s the thing, somebody starting out fresh, are they going to have that immediately dropped into their lap and be able to suddenly go from having no recruits to getting two or three people every single day applying to join your downline? No. Let me say that again. No. There is a lot of work. There’s a ton of back work. I’m realizing more and more, especially as I’m building out this course and working on the podcast, the amount of work is incredible.
I’m so excited to share with you guys the journey of going through that. Because through that journey, you’re going to understand really that you cannot make excuses, that you just have to make it up sometimes and keep going. That when you set your sights on the pinnacle, when you set your sights on the summit of that mountain that you’re climbing, these individual steps, doesn’t mean that you can’t turn an ankle while you’re walking. It doesn’t mean that you can’t, that you’re not going to stumble, fall, skin, your knees. What’s going to happen in those times is that you’re going to be bloodied and broken and bruised. You’re going to have hard days. You’re going to have difficult times. You’re going to grow in your business, and then your business is going to retract and it’s going to grow again. You’re going to see incredible results.
For the past few months, really, it’s been a struggle. I just shared with you guys my personal struggle with a regular employment. I’m excited to say that is coming to an end, but still as I continue to work on my business, there are things that are going. I have team members. I’m so jealous because I’m not with them right now, but I have team members in South America recruiting around an opening of a country that we are working on. It is incredible the amount of success that they’re seeing. Miracles every single day that they are seeing because they are out there doing the work. They’re talking to people; they’re getting in front of people.
When you start out in network marketing business, action is everything. A lot of times that may be feel like running around like a chicken with your head cut off, but when you get into action, your luck increases. I have never had more “luck” than when I am working my butt off. It’s amazing. In my sales career when I’ve gone and didn’t know how to make my quota–I just don’t see it–I get into action and start working hard and working through some of the issues that I see, finding those roadblocks and blasting through those roadblocks. At the end of the month or the end of the quarter, I always come out on top, and sometimes it feels lucky. In fact, I’ve had multiple times where a week before the end of the period be it a month or a quarter, I had not reached my number yet. I’m like, “Oh no, what’s going to happen?” I got scrappy and I started thinking outside the box, which is totally a cliché that I hate using. I started thinking in different ways trying to figure out where I could get revenue from and to generate things. When you do that in your business, you build strength and you no longer will have the fear that something won’t happen.
We have a girl on our team who when she was in the early stages, the amount of things that she did as far as revenue generating activities astounded me. I never have a worry about her ever again because I have seen what the lengths that she will go to, like knocking on doors to sell cookies that she could use the revenue from to purchase product to sell. What she learned from that was that she can do anything. She wasn’t making excuses, there was no big thing: Oh, I can’t do it. That doesn’t exist. You can do anything.
Doc Brown of the future said, “Remember, if you can put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.” While that may seem a little bit trite, it is so true. You guys visualize what you’re doing. Take advantage of those six inches between your ears because they are the most powerful six inches in the universe. Repeating your chief aim morning and night and spending time visualizing your goals are two of the main things in the Renegade Daily Method of Operation; do those things. They are going to make you so much stronger mentally that it’s going to be incredible.
Guys, that’s all I’ve got for today. Just remember, excuses are like armpits, don’t use them.
Hey, thanks for listening. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. If you’d like some free training for your team, go to podcast.MLMRenegade.com and get your free 21st-Century Recruiting Kickstarter.