Looking at the leaders in our business, here’s what you’ll find they’re committed to:
Association. 80% of success is just showing up. Your team cannot count on you without your predictable presence in the business. Make one decision to attend everything your leadership attends and stick to it. If your leaders think it’s worth their time to be there, it’s worth yours. Get the schedule; put it in your calendar, budget for the cost, and make whatever arrangements are necessary in advance.
Associating with your leaders is also the fastest way for you to succeed. Studying people who have already paid the price to learn the things you need to learn, and doing what they do, saves you the time and effort of having to learn it all yourself. The obvious opportunities to learn from your leaders are: training events, hotel meetings, leaderships, etc. Some not so obvious opportunities are: before and after events and meetings and after hours at the coffee shop. These are the times when you can tune in to valuable discussions that may teach you more than what you hear from stage.
Profitability. Guess what? You are in a word-of-mouth, sales and marketing business where your profitability depends on you. There are no advertisements – you’re it! Be a walking, talking advertisement for the products and services you market. To establish predictable profitability within your team, commit to Dot1 (Ditto on the first). Duplicating a simple team standard of Dot1 – setting up a Ditto Scheduled Order™ to process on the 1st of every month increases the average PV per team member by the end of each month while also affording teams a full month’s time to strategize towards their goals.
If you’re not teaching your team about product loyalty and profitability, you’re setting them up to fail. There is no profitability without product volume in this business and if you’re not setting that expectation upfront, you’re missing the boat on profitability. We’re not talking about stockpiling widgets; we’re talking hot, cutting- edge products like XS™ drinks, Gensona™ genetic testing kits, and NAO™ cosmetics. Anybody could eat their way to personal PV with the “incredible edibles” we have available today.
Positive promotion. Talk a little louder and prouder about what you’ve got your hands on. Focus your promotion on what makes your business grow and profit: meetings and training events, team goals, unity, fun, excitement, profitability, and making a difference. Promote the good in others and promote the products and services you love. Avoid gossip and trash talk. If you’re not part of the problem or part of the solution, don’t talk about it. Don’t waste your words perpetuating problems, focus on finding solutions and creating a positive buzz within your team.
Personal growth. Many of us aren’t accustomed to stretching and growing when we start our business. Perhaps we’ve spent years in a position where we simply repeated the same things over and over again without ever being challenged to move outside of our comfort zone. When we begin building this business, we find that our old comfortable patterns don’t apply so well. We realize that if we are to succeed we’ll need to do things we’ve never done before.
There is no better arena for growth than the personal and professional development system put in place by your leadership. It’s far more comforting to grow together with a team then it is to have to grow individually. And it’s much easier to grow into leadership when there are multiple examples to follow. In life we get beat up a bit by financial situations, family situations, and other things that sap our belief and energy. The system serves as a constant encouragement and positive influence to keep us keeping on.
Find people in your support team who can mentor you to greater levels of success. Unlike your friends, a mentor will stretch you out of your comfort zone to help you become all that you can be. A friend will agree with you and validate your excuses while a mentor will challenge and encourage you to rise above the excuses. No matter how great a mentor is he can only be as effective as you are willing.
When Rick first started building his business, like many of us, he thought his circumstances were too big to overcome. “I used to take my big ugly problems to my mentor and say, ‘Look at this big ugly thing. It’s ugly!’ I thought he’d say, ‘Yeah, let’s let it kill us both!’ But he didn’t. Instead, he taught me about attitude. He’d say, ‘You know, the average person would get hung up on that. What are you going to do?’ Other times he’d ask me, ‘Do you want a raise?’ And I’d answer, ‘Of course I want a raise!’ He’d say, ‘Then you figure out a way to deal with it.’ That used to tick me off so bad, but he was teaching me how to be a problem solver, not a problem enhancer.”
Think long-term. In business there are ups and downs. Some days you’ll feel like the whole world is against you and other days everything will click and turn in your favor. A leader feels the same emotions we do when we’re in the thick of a down turn.
But rather than getting wrapped up in every moment, rushing to judgment about their business with every turn of events, a leader concentrates on the big picture. Instead of basing their success on the outcome of any one meeting, they evaluate their overall progress after showing a series of meetings. Rather than “trying it out” for a month, they commit to giving it their honest effort for a year. Napoleon said that the chief characteristic of an effective soldier is not courage, but endurance. Likewise, the chief characteristic of an IBO is consistency – the capacity to keep going, keep moving in the direction of his goals, despite the circumstances that surround him.
Work towards a goal. If you don’t have a goal, you’re going to hit it with amazing accuracy. Sit down with someone on your support team and talk to him about what you want to accomplish. Find out what kind of work is involved. How many plans will you have to show? What will you have to do to achieve your goal? If you’re just getting started, you can set a date to show your first plan or to set up a Dot1. Find out what type of recognition your support team has at your team events and set a goal to cross the stage at your next event.
Set goals around the vital signs of your business: achievement level on the bonus chart, individual and group product volume, number of new IBOs, number of IBOs on Ditto, number of IBOs attending monthly training events, number of IBOs subscribed to the continuing education program, number of plans being shown in the group, etc. Additionally, tying your goals to the achievement of key members in your team will help you develop leadership.
When you don’t hit a goal, reset it. Don’t quit setting goals just because you didn’t hit it – that’s about as ridiculous as throwing your car away because you didn’t get home on time. The goal itself isn’t what is significant – it’s progress that matters. Maybe you set it too high or you didn’t understand the work involved. Learn from it and move on. When you hit a goal, set the marker a little bit higher the following month to continually stretch yourself.
A goal left unachieved for too long will no longer motivate, but de-motivate you. Change it up, break it up, or focus on a different angle – just keep trying and re-set new goals. Reward yourself proportionately for the goals that you do achieve to help reinforce the process. You wouldn’t buy yourself a Lamborghini for showing 15 plans in one month, but you would treat yourself to an inexpensive lunch or download that new album you want for your iPod.
If you aren’t achieving goals, it may be that you have no one to answer to. Maybe you’ve gone a month, six months, or even a year without making any progress because no one has called you on it. It’s possible that no one ever will unless you ask someone to hold you accountable for what you know you are capable of accomplishing. Set up a time to meet with someone on your support team and ask for help. Talk about what you’d like in an accountability partner and be open to suggestion.
The role of an accountability partner is to make it uncomfortable for you not to hold up your end of the bargain. “Here’s what you said you were going to do, here’s why you said that was important to you, here’s what you did, what’s up? I know what you’ve got inside of you and this isn’t it.” Hitting your goals and communicating with your accountability partner is your responsibility. Don’t expect them to call you and check up on you every day; you call.
Take responsibility. You are responsible for your business, your team, your growth, your relationships, your finances, and your circumstances. The buck stops with you. Some of us have signed the registration form giving us the right to become business owners, but we’re still acting like employees. We wait for our support team to tell us to go to the next event, to try the new product, to set a goal, and to make phone calls. How do you know when you have employee mentality? You make excuses for why you can’t build your business!
Want a raise? Go earn it. Want more excitement at the meetings? Create it. Want better leadership? Become it. It’s your business. Support in this business is not something you have a right to; 
it’s something you’re blessed with. Be grateful for what you do have and take responsibility for creating the change you desire.
When Rick and Valerie pulled up in front of their IBOs house to show the plan and saw there were no cars there, they felt relieved. Instead of having to show the plan to someone new, they’d have an easy night developing relationships with their IBOs. Then after a while Rick started thinking, “You know what? I can’t take the easy way out my whole life. Somewhere along the line, we’ve got to get serious and we’ve got to build our business.” So Rick and Valerie started making everything count. They started getting focused on results rather than just taking the journey and that’s when things started to happen.