I am not talking about in your personal relationship. I am talking about in your relationship with success in business. We have talked on several of our recent Power Hour Tele-seminars about sabotaging success or the “It’s not working for me” attitude. If that is your favorite line then it sounds like you do have business commitment issues or a phobia of commitment.
Acceptance And Commitment
The very definition of commitment means that you will not stop until it is obtained. Accepting that this takes time and staying committed to your quest are the main challenges faced by most people in home businesses. Acceptance is the key to serenity and commitment is the key to success. Are you committed to your business? The only way to fail in direct sales and network marketing is to stop.
The 80/20 Rule
Most people coming into this business think that it will be easy to make money. If it was easy then there would not be an 80/20 rule. The fact is that it is relatively simple. It takes time, focus, education, willingness and commitment to succeed in any business. I am sure that all reading this have heard of the 80/20 rule. 20% of the people do 80% of the sales or 80% of the people do not stick around for the results! Network marketers think they are unique. We are not so special. When I worked in the hospitality business, 20% of the employees did 80% of the work. 80% of the new hires quit before the first paycheck. MLM, direct sales, and network marketing are not different than the rest of the world.
Don t Stop Now
As in all areas of life, success in business takes time and effort. Our lack of commitment to the process, or lack of acceptance of the process, shows up in all areas of our life. Don’t stop now! Don’t quit!
I am sure that you have heard people say: “When my ship comes in, with my luck, I will be at the airport!” If you want to be there when your ship comes in, then my advice is to stay committed and stay at the boat dock until the ship gets there.
Do you want success and it is eluding you? Is your goal moving up to the next level and you just can’t seem to get there? Do you say you want 8 shows a month and only end up with 3 consistently? Are your sales goals double your actual sales submitted? It is usually easy to pinpoint why a sales consultant is having these problems. In direct sales there is only one way to fail and that is to stop trying. This is all about effort, numbers and results. You can always make up in numbers what you lack in skill, and the numbers are what gives you the skill. What are you doing to achieve your goals? The answer lies in a couple of simple questions and answers.
Schedule Your Work Days
My first question to someone who fits into one of the above scenarios is how much time you schedule for your business. The beauty of network marketing and being a stay-at-home income producer is that you get to write your own schedule. Write a schedule you must, though. If you do not schedule your time to work and then actually work it, then chances are you are not working nearly as much as you think you are. Do you want to grow your business or do you want it to stay the same? If you want to have a business that maintains the status quo, then schedule 6 hours per show that you want to do. That means if you want to perform 8 shows per month, then you must schedule and perform income-producing activities 48 hours per month, just to stay the same. If you want business growth, then it will require 8 hours per desired show, or 64 hours literally scheduled on your calendar and worked. That would be 4 hours out of the house per show, and 4 hours office time for other income producing activities such as host coaching, customer care, data entry, cold-calling etc. As an entrepreneur,you certainly do have the prerogative to change your schedule without asking anyone, and you will need to make up that time. Just like working for a paycheck, if you continuously call off and do not reschedule your time, your check will be small.
Team Meetings And Training Are Key
Are you attending all of the training opportunities offered to you? Network marketers have a unique opportunity to get unlimited free training from their up line. The up line is more than happy to train. Unlike in the corporate world, the people that you train are not going to take away your job or income. Frequently I hear consultants whining that their up line does not do a good job of offering training. That is just an excuse. There is always an up-up line or even an up-up-up line. The way the “net” works is that it is to everyone’s benefit to train down at all levels and laterally as well. This collaboration makes for a strong team. Anyone who blames their lack of success on the up line is just looking for an excuse.
The other part of this equation is your individual education philosophy. A person who studies his/her chosen trade for 30 minutes each day will attain the status of the top 20% of his or her chosen trade within one year. If you are one of those people who always says: “I want more and it is just not working,” look at what kind of stimulus you are putting into your mind. If you are allowing other people to fill your mind with negativity (TV), then it is no wonder you are having a hard time succeeding in your business.
Rhonda Byrne - The Secret - Napoleon Hill - Erica Combs
Speaking of your personal growth, have you read the book The Secret by Rhonda Byrne or Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill? Women In Power by Erica Combs is another important book on positive thinking. Napoleon Hill born in 1883 said the same thing that was echoed by The Secret in the year 2000. He said: “People are the creators of their own misfortunes because of the negative beliefs which are picked up by the subconscious mind and translated into the physical equivalent.” Deb Bixler says that your thoughts predict the future. Are you constantly filling your mind with positive information so that you can create a better future?
Get A Mentor
All successful people have a coach or a mentor. Baseball players, golfers, me, even my coach Myron Golden has a mentor. This is someone to whom you relate on a personal and business level and who can tell it like it is, keeping you accountable and on track. They are a partner, a collaborator and a mastermind. Find a mentor to share what they have learned with you and assist in guiding you on the path to success. A coach or mentor sort of clears out the fog for you. This can be your up line and frequently should be an outsider, someone not necessarily in your company. The important thing is to have respect and good rapport. All successful business people have a coach. I am always amazed at how much impact I am able to create in someone’s life as their coach. It is not what I do so much, but what they do as a result of our relationship.
Filling The Calendar
So, enough of all the philosophy stuff, right? Let’s talk about where to find business! It doesn’t matter whether you want to move up the ladder to a leadership role, or whether you just want to grow your team and make a bit (or a lot) more money. It all comes down to the same thing. You have to have enough shows on your calendar to find enough people who want what you have. So the question is: how do we find enough business to reach our goal? The conference calls and the articles in this site have been the answer. For the past year or more, twice a month the conference calls have covered where and how to find business. The CACFS website covers it all. The CD sets cover it all. Power-Up For Professional Results has an hour on filling your calendar and 2 hours on prospecting, as well as an hour on professional attitude which will give you the ability to attract people to you. I believe that there is an unlimited supply of free leads for the taking and if you do not have enough business it is because you are not using the resources available to you. Here are a few of the ways to fill your calendar other than scheduling at the show:
Gather cards from bulletin boards
Call calendar listings from the newspaper
Post your cards & flyers on bulletin boards
Go to expos and set up tables to network with paying guests
Go to expos as a paying guest and network with vendors who set up tables
Offer yourself as a public speaker to clubs, churches, schools
Offer to do fund raiser programs for clubs, churches, schools,
Teach workshops at sports clubs or YMCA-type places
Put up fishbowl-type prize drawings in area businesses
Success Is An Attitude
There are tons more ideas in the Power UP For Professional Results CD sets. Success in direct sales is an attitude and a choice. There are many articles on this site to give you more ideas where to find leads for your business. The study set Power UP For Professional Results is a proven marketing strategy that will work for you when you choose to utilize it. What are you doing to ensure your goals are attained? Hoping? Successful people plan and schedule their time, study their choice of trade, attend trainings and have a mentor, in addition to taking advantage of every available resource for marketing their business. Have you taken the actions necessary to succeed? Success is the result of a series of choices that will lead you to your goals.
Albert Einstein said that the most powerful force in the universe is compound interest. Everyone understands that compound interest applies to money. In the world of money, if compound interest is not working for you, then it is working against you. You can invest in something and accumulate interest that compounds and makes you money. Or you can borrow money and pay interest that, when it is compounded, costs you money. In both cases one day of interest is minor, yet when compounded it becomes huge. This is the financial principle of compound interest.
Principles Apply To Everything
The principle of compound interest relates to everything it is applied to. Just like the law of gravity, there are no exceptions. Compound interest applies to life, health and also to your business.
Let’s say that you eat a bag of chips today. Chances are that it won’t kill you. If the results of poor eating choices were more immediate, then fewer people would be unhealthy, because the fear of death would stop them from continuing to make poor choices in their diets. It is only when you eat a bag of chips every day that compound interest takes effect and becomes a powerful force which brings ill-health to you. The choice of eating an apple today will not result in immediate health benefits, yet when eaten daily, the power of compound interest will kick in and pay off for you with a healthy body.
Compound interest plays a role in your business too. Make your calls today and it will affect your business a little. Make your calls 5 days a week for the rest of your life, and compound interest will become a force in your office, generating a solid and consistent stream of income. It goes the other way too. Skip your calls today and your business will not fold up. Skip your calls continuously, and your business will be shutting its doors due to the effects of compound interest.
Compound Interest Is Working For You Or Against You
Albert Einstein believed that compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe. If compound interest is not working for you, then it is working against you. Deb Bixler says: “Life Is A Razor Blade”. Think about your health, your business and your entire life as a razor blade. This is an old fashioned razor blade standing on edge straight up and sharp. Life is a razor blade, and you are sitting on the cutting edge. We make millions of choices each day and every choice is a slice made with the razor blade of life. Every choice you make in itself is only a razor-thin slice of life and has little or no major impact on the future in itself. Every slice/choice of life you make is either positive or negative, and alone it is weak. Yet every slice of life is compounded with the others to create the most powerful force in the universe. Think about every choice you make in your life, and do your best to make razor-thin slices on the positive side of life, so that when they compound and become the most powerful force in the universe, they drive your future in the direction you want to achieve successes in. When you slice too many slices on the negative side of life, compound interest will work against you. When you slice more on the positive side of life, you will leverage your results by using compound interest on your behalf.
Change Your Future
In your business or your health, every choice is minor in terms of immediate results, yet long term, the most powerful force into he universe will be working for you or against you. Successful people understand that life is about making razor-thin choices each day to choose their future and put the principle of compound interest to work for them.
Life is a razor blade. You can change your life using compound interest as leverage by choosing to take positive slices of life each day.
Best-Business-Practices
Best business practices are business principles. A principle works the same for everything it is applied to. The Power UP For Professional Results CD set is a set of Best-Business-Practices that apply to all sales businesses. When you apply them to your business, you will get professional results on what ever level you are looking for. Incorporate principles into your home business to fill your calendar, increase sales, sign up more reps and more….
Are you sabotaging your own successes? Surprisingly, there are just as many people with a fear of success as there are those with the more well-known fear of failure. Are you one of them? Many people have a fear of success or maybe they are sabotaging their own ability to achieve personal goals.
What Does Sabotaging Success Mean?
According to Webster’s dictionary ‘success’ is a person or thing that prospers. ‘Sabotage’ means to willfully and maliciously destroy or impede. ‘Willful’ is defined as with intention, or headstrong.
The implication here is that we do it on purpose. At first most of us will object to that idea. I have to say that, since we have choices in life and the fact that we can choose to do or not do something, sort of carries out the definition. Even while most of us do not decide to willfully destroy or impede our prosperity, we can and do make choices that improve successes and also diminish success as well. Therefore, the implication is that we do in fact choose to sabotage ourselves.
Are You Sabotaging Yourself?
The simple answer here is that you and I can choose to be prosperous and to succeed and we can also choose to sabotage our successes. So how do we know if we are sabotaging ourselves? The fear of the unknown is common. Many people deliberately impeding their own progress based on their fear of the unknown or of change.
Here is a simple test to see if you may be suffering from fear of success. See how many of the following situations can you identify with.
I read lots of self-help books but can’t seem to improve.
I go to seminars and conferences frequently and nothing changes afterward.
I am insecure about money or making a lot less than I should be making.
I have a job that doesn’t allow me to express my real talents or true abilities.
I expect perfection of myself.
I try to be all things to all people.
I frequently start projects and have a hard time finishing them.
I feel guilty saying “no” to others.
I frequently feel as though I am not doing enough, even though I am doing all I can.
I have a low opinion of myself, even though other people think I am smart, funny, and capable.
I usually settle for less.
I worry a lot.
I’ve started to lose hope that I will ever live the life I dream of living.
If you can identify with 5 or more of these warning signs, you may suffer from fear of success. That fear may be leading to self-sabotage. You are not alone. Everyone has some fears, so why do we doing it?
Belief Systems
Most of us act on the belief systems that we were given in the past. Here is an example of what I mean. A person in my life when I was in my late teens was Rita Zehner. During the years I lived with her, she was a mother-type role model to me. Rita Zehner was good to me. She taught me her philosophy of life which I carried with me until my late 40’s. Rita’s philosophy was as follows: When we are born, we are all given a ticket. Like getting on a train or a plane, when you are born you get a ticket for the ride of life. You either get a working ticket or a riding ticket. Once you were issued your ticket you could not and did not trade it in for another. No one ever moved up to first class when given a working ticket. If you got the working ticket you worked hard for every cent you ever earned. Nothing came easy and you were always working your butt off. The people who got the riding ticket never worked for a cent. Everything came easy and they did not have to lift a finger. Rita said that she and I both had working tickets and were going to be stuck working hard till the day we died.
I lived that philosophy for 30 or more years of my life. I believed it, repeated it, and told other people that I had the working ticket for life, and that was just the way it was. And that is exactly what happened. I made decent money and worked my butt off for every cent I earned. I was always looking for success and it never really came. I worked extremely hard physically, mentally, and emotionally for every cent I earned. I could not find the solution to change in my ticket.
You Can Succeed
The point is that I wanted success and believed it to be impossible. This lack of congruency makes it impossible to be successful. I was certainly sabotaging my own personal success. We are who we are today based on who we were yesterday. Who we are today will determine who we are tomorrow. Success is a choice. You can choose your future success by making better choices today and begin to change who you were yesterday. The first step is to re-program your thoughts.
The Secret Law Of Attraction
In the book Think And Grow Rich, written in the 1800’s, Napolean Hill said: “People are creators of their own misfortunes because of their negative beliefs, which are picked up by the subconscious mind and translated into reality.” The Secret, written in 2000, teaches that positive thoughts attract positive things to your life. Deb Bixler says that your thoughts predict the future. If you are not happy with your life, the first place to start is with your thoughts. It is an inside job because of the laws of attraction; your positive thoughts can and will attract positive things to your life. Negative thoughts will attract negative things to your life.
Live An Attitude Of Gratitude
Incorporating positive affirmations into your life will change your life. We make millions of choices a day and think over 60,000 thoughts a day. What you were yesterday does not have to be who you are tomorrow. I have come to realize that my role model Rita Zehner was wrong. I can trade in my ticket and I have chosen to stop sabotaging myself. You can do it too. Things can and will change for you when you focus on the good in life. Focus on what you have and what you want so that you will attract more good to you.
We all have a lot to be grateful for, and here are some affirmations that reflect that:
I have a full life and I am grateful for it.
I am positive, proactive, self assured.
I am honest, open minded, and rigorously honest.
I am grateful to be making a difference in the lives of children through health and cash flow solutions.
I am grateful to have my health and a warm house.
Everything good involves risk, and commitment will get me there.
I am the most committed person I know.
I am at peace with the process of life, because I am creating my future.
Create your own affirmations. Your thoughts predict your future, so start writing your thoughts and begin to predict your future. As you begin to incorporate your positive affirmations consistently, you will change who you are today. As you change you will begin to change your future and stop the process of self sabotage.
Remember this:
It is more fun to be happy than it is to be miserable.
Success is infinitely more exciting, fun, and joyful than failure.
Power UP For Professional Results is all about having a business attitude for success. Success strategies always include investing in your education, your mind and your successes. The Power UP Program, available in MP3 download or hard copy CD is 8 hours of systems to prospect, build business and achieve your goals.
Home business expert, Deb Bixler retired from the corporate world & in 9 months created a direct sales business capable of replacing her $80,000 year job.
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