Hey, everybody, so glad to be here with you in this post-Thanksgiving week. I’ve got a lot of things to be grateful for, and I just can’t express all of them. This podcast, frankly, is one of them. The people I get to meet, and the people that I get to reach; they really make life a lot better for me. And so, that’s one of those things I’m grateful for.
In the tease, there, I asked if you tell lies. Many of us, we’ve been caught in a lie or two in our lifetimes. Many of us tell little white lies, seemingly inconsequential little lies. In MLM, we’re no different. We’ve heard it all before: MLM is super easy. We can make money fast. The products sell themselves. I made money on my very first day. Some of these may be in true; in fact, to be perfectly frank, my wife on our first day in our current MLM did make money on her first day. A fairly significant amount of money even. But, for most people, that’s not normal.
Now, we’re not normal. We’re Renegades. And, as Renegades, we use tools and tips and tricks to help us take advantage of 21st century learning and technology. When was the last time that you did something the very first time and everything went perfectly, and you knocked it out of the park? Yeah, me neither. It takes time. It takes testing. It takes an opportunity to grow and learn along the way. Some of these things may be true and some of them may not be. We hear a lot of the detractors in network marketing telling us that you’re going to have to bug your friends and family. Well, you know what? We found a way to avoid that.
You’re going to have to cold contact strangers. I have a friend who spent a lot of years doing exactly this, like meeting people at the gas station and passing along his business card and chatting them up right there. To me, frankly, that sounds crazy. Now, that was very much the early days of network marketing. That was how you did it. They talk about it belly to belly or eye to eye, face to face. For a lot of people that’s what they did. I know people who have made millions and millions of dollars. Here’s the thing: I don’t want to do that. That’s just doesn’t sound like any fun to me. And one of my favorite things about network marketing is it is fun. I get to hang out with people that I enjoy being around, that have similar goals to me, and do things that we enjoy doing.
They talk about only those at the top make any money. Guess what? That is patently false. I’m here to tell you false, false, false! Only people who work their butts off make any money. That’s really what happens here. Some people say that the market is saturated, let me tell you something, the market is not saturated. There is so much green field, open marketability, within network marketing that it is crazy. In the United States, we’re in single digit percentages for saturation.
Some people get stuck in, what I call, an echo chamber. And, actually this happened. I remember. The first time that I remember this happening was voting for president, not this last time but the time before that, and hearing what I wanted to hear. I’m a fairly conservative guy. I voted conservatively, and I was disappointed that night because I had been listening only to people who agreed with my worldview. Since then, I’ve learned. I’ve learned that when you get caught in an echo chamber, you start to hear only the things that you expect to hear. And that happened in the 2016 election, as well, that people on the other side of the aisle got caught in that same echo chamber, and they started to only hear the things which reinforced what they wanted to believe in: what they wanted to hear. Then, we saw the uprising of people as they were disappointed with the outcome of that. Don’t get caught in an echo chamber. Don’t believe that only the people around you are going to be able to give you good information and good insight.
One of the other fallacies, one of the other lies that we get told or that we tell ourselves, sometimes, is that we must be good at sales. This one kind of strikes me as a little odd, just because I work in sales; that is, that’s my day job. That’s what I’ve done for my entire adult life. Working in sales, to me, is a very honorable profession, but it’s not easy. It’s literally getting told no all day long.
I actually just read a book called Go for No! I highly recommend it to anybody who wants to learn more about this. In Go for No! he talks about going out and actually actively looking for people to tell him no. And the more people that he could get to tell them no, guess what, the more people told him yes. Because he was actively searching for that outcome, his definition of success changed. Now, all of a sudden, he was being successful if he was getting turned down. The more turndowns, again, the more the more connections, the more people who actually bought from him happened, as well. It was a really fascinating book. I highly recommend it. You should definitely take a look at that.
You don’t have to be good at sales to be in network marketing. You have to be good at people, you have to be willing to talk to people. I know some introverts who don’t necessarily like to talk to people a lot who are willing to get out of their comfort zone and work, and, those introverts, have made millions of dollars in network marketing. I know that you can, too.
Now, one of the things that people say is that a network marketing, or MLM, has inferior products and has a superior price, or a higher price, which I think is patently false. In all of these companies, there are some, frankly, that might not be as high quality–that happens in any market. The junk floats to the bottom. Let’s look at dollar stores, for example. You can get plenty of things at a dollar store. I actually purchased some tools from a hardware store, and this place sells stuff cheap. I’m not going to name it, because I don’t want to disparage it. It’s useful for what it’s for, but it’s not the same quality that I could get if I go to Home Depot or Lowe’s and pay the prices associated with those higher-quality tools. With network marketing products, you’re paying for, generally speaking, superior products. You’re paying for high-quality, high-end premium products. That’s what these people want.
We have supplements through our through our network marketing company. I take them, and they are definitely not the least expensive, or even close to the least expensive supplements that I’ve ever taken. But guess what? They make me feel good and the quality is unmatched. I’ve seen the science behind it. In that case, I mean, how much is your health worth to you? My wife and I spend hundreds of dollars a month for a health club membership, going there and beating myself up. I went this morning, for example, and I came home absolutely exhausted; in fact, as I stand here recording this, my legs ache from the from the squats and the lunges we did this morning. I’m paying for that experience. It’s high end and I’m paying for the feeling that I get, which, hey, it makes me feel pretty good in the end. Look, I get that endorphin kick and it’s always a help.
The moral to the story, today, and this is going to be a little bit shorter episode, is don’t believe the lies that you’re told or that you tell yourself. Lies like, I can’t do it, it’s too hard, I can’t see my way to success, I don’t believe that I can be successful. These are all internal issues. We talk a lot about personal development. I’m huge fan of personal development. Some of you guys may know, one of my goals for 2018 was to read 52 books. That’s a book a week. It’s pretty lofty goal. I’m proud to say, at this point, I’m finishing book number 49 right now, which it is week 48. I’m about five days ahead of schedule at this point. It’s been awesome.
The amount of information that I’ve been able to consume is just mind boggling. I consume that reading a book. One of my favorite ways to fall asleep at night is actually reading a book, getting away from my screen, and letting my mind disengage from the chores of the day. I can read a good book, whether that’d be self development, whether that be my favorite story. I have some favorite authors out there that I will go out and purchase the minute they come out. Reading a good book helps me. As I do that personal development, I’ve been able to gain just a years worth of experience in this single year, as I’ve been reading those. And, probably, in a future episode, I’ll talk about some of those books and some of the lessons that I’ve learned and some recommendations that I might have for people who want a good reading book.
Again, don’t believe the lies that you tell yourself. Believe that voice inside you that tells you that you can do it; that you can make it to the top of that mountain. Another story, I’ll share for another day, is a few years ago, I had the opportunity to climb Mount Rainier. Mount Rainier is the second tallest peak in the lower 48 states. It’s in Washington state. I told you before that I grew up in Seattle and I grew up with Mt. Rainier staring at me in the face every single day of my life that it was out. Now, in Seattle, they say the mountain is out, which means you can actually see it. Because, as you know, in Seattle, it rains a lot. It’s cloudy, and you can’t always see it. But when you can, it rises up to 14,411 feet. And I knew that I could climb that. A couple of years ago I got to do that, and I’ll share that story with you.
Believe that small voice, that inner voice, that tells you can. Believe the voice that wants you to succeed. Don’t believe the voice that wants you to fail, because that guy is the guy that will never be happy. Misery loves company. Be happy. Be positive. Quit telling yourself these little lies. Quit believing the lies that others tell you. Back it up. Work and hustle and work hard. You will survive and you will thrive. Thanks guys. So happy to have you guys as Renegades with me. Join our Facebook group. We’re looking forward to having you there. You can find us at facebook.com/MLMdonedifferent.
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 (or the Blog), email me at JR@MLMRenegade.com.