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Leadership Is Not Easy!
You may have heard the saying that “success is very simple, but it is hard.” Or for for network marketing “it is a simple business, but it’s not easy”. Well, the same can be said for leadership. “It is simple, but it is not easy.”
Why is that?
On the one hand, while people all know what it takes to be a great leader, few can muster the levels of discipline and persistence required to become a great leader. Even though achieving leadership is not theoretically complicated, it is difficult for most. Exemplary leadership requires levels of courage, discipline and persistence that few can muster. And, some things people know they should do, they don’t. Maybe those things are too “hard”, or, would force people to leave their comfort zones [heaven forbid 
]!
But, on the other hand, there is another piece – a very important one. There are some things that people don’t do because they believe that they will not make a difference when in fact they really would. Oops!
For instance, many distributors believe that holding themselves responsible for their own less than optimal behavior and work ethic is not important, and will not make a difference to them and their team. This could not be further from the truth! Or, similarly, they fail to keep members of their downline accountable for actions and goals to which their team members committed.
So, what is the solution? First, people must get themselves and their people to learn to lead – to read the books, go to the meetings, listen to the tapes, do all the personal development work that is required to step into a leadership role. Second, they must get people to believe what they learned and to believe that applying leadership principles will really make a difference in their business. And, third, they must get people to put these principles into practice every day, even though this requires levels of discipline and persistence that few people can muster.
How do you and your team stack up? Do you need help in knowing what to do? Do you need help in getting yourself to muster the discipline and persistence that you need? If you do, please give me a call. This is where I can help! I look forward to hearing from you!
Best,
Mark
If you are reading this, you are probably one of the thousands of people that want to run their own MLM business. Unfortunately, many never get started because they hit critical information overload and panic. There is so much information out there and most of it is just plain trash. People get confused and then take no action. Let’s try and clear up some of the misinformation you probably have come across so you can better understand how to get started and pick a company that will maximize you chance of success.
I’ve seen hundreds of MLM companies come and go, new and old. A very high percentage of the new ones fail. Some make it past two years and even fewer make it to five and ten years or more [nevermind to $1+ billion in sales]. You want to make sure that you pick one that’s going to make it – a company that won’t let you down. And you want to pick a company that has a large opportunity for growth.
Of course, every company says that they are the next “chosen one.” And the distributors that prospect you aren’t intentionally lying to you when they tell you this. They honestly believe what they’re saying. Unfortunately most do not have enough experience, knowledge and perspective to really understand what’s required for a company to go from small to big and take you with it.
So, what does it take? If you look at the companies that have gone from small to big you will see commonalities. You will find that they all had:
- A Sizzle Product Line in Tune with the Market
- Corporate Leadership and Management Depth
- Proper Capitalization
- A Compensation Plan that Promotes the Correct Behavior
- Field Leadership and Great Systems
- And, of course, Perfect Timing.
Let’s have a look at each of these criteria.
A Sizzle Product Line in Tune with the Market
This is absolutely critical. If you don’t have these things, your life will be much more difficult than it needs to be. You want to select a company that is in a market that is large, growing and is fueled by demographic trends. This is because it is much easier to increase sales in this situation, where you can take advantage of the market expansion, instead of relying on taking market share away from you competitors.
Of course, you are best off if you have a company that has a product line that people can get excited about, is unique, exclusive [and cannot be easily duplicated], and consumable. Of course, it also has to be positioned properly in terms of cost, branding, and the like. Overpriced products will not support a long term opportunity. You also want it to be a line that people would buy even if they were not involved in the business. That is what will give you your long term stability.
Note that you, personally, do not need to be the in target market for the product line to be successful in the business. If the product is as good as it should be there will be plenty of testimonials out there. Yours is not needed. Think of it this way – let’s say that you are marketing a fantastic new weight loss product. I’m sure you would agree that there is a very large market for something like that, that works, right? There should be a lot of money to be made. Now, let’s say that you are 5’10″ and 125 pounds. The last thing you need is a weight loss product. Does this diminish the opportunity? I don’t think so. Make sure you don’t make that kind of mistake in your evaluation.
A couple of trends that are driving many markets are the aging of the baby-boomers and the lousy economy. The aging baby-boomers are driving the growth of the anti-aging, health, and wellness industry. Find yourself a company that has a unique, easy to explain product line that targets this group and you will be off to a good start. The shortcomings in the economy are driving entrepreneurship so your pool of business partners is also increasing. That will make building easier.
Corporate Leadership and Management Depth
As far as leadership goes, at the helm, you must have a visionary leader who has the charisma to light up a room. People want to be led. And they want to be led by somebody that can communicate the big vision of what the company is out to accomplish for its distributors and itself – somebody that you and your people will perceive is worth following.
Don’t get yourself stuck in a company where the management does not have a track record of success or has no depth. A solid team will have people who have built successful traditional businesses with buildings, employees, and payroll. The team must also include people who have worked inside network marketing companies and have been successful distributors. The depth must cover expertise in strategic planning and implementation, marketing, operations and logistics, information systems, finance, research and development, international, and so on. The depth must also include a true appreciation for and priority given to the distributor force and their role in the success of the company and their distributor colleagues.
If the company is public you will be able to find a ton of information out there on both these areas and the financials. If it is not, you will have to do more digging.
Proper Capitalization
Select a company that is not overcapitalized nor undercapitalized. You want there to be enough capital to fund the potential rapid growth but not so much that the management is not as careful in building the company as it should be.
Find out how the company is funded. If it is a pre-launch that is bootstrapping its way up, run away as fast as you can. If the company is venture capital or angel investor funded just know what these guys only invest if they have an exit strategy. I’d stay away. This usually means something like a merger, sale, or an IPO will be happening in the not-too-distant-future. Such an exit strategy is good for the investors but for you, maybe not so much.
A Compensation Plan that Promotes the Correct Behavior
An in depth discussion of what correct behavior is and how it is promoted via the compensation plan is beyond the scope of this short article. Suffice it to say that you need to have a plan that promotes leadership development since leadership and its duplication is the key to exploding a group – more on that in another article. However, the compensation plan also must allow the non-career distributors to make enough money to achieve their objectives too. It must be balanced.
Field Leadership and Great Systems
Just as you need that leadership at the helm of the corporation you also must have it in the distributor force. The companies that do the best in this industry are those that have leaders in the distributor force that are the best at developing leadership within the ranks. It is this leadership that distributors will follow and emulate. And these leaders must also have great systems in place. These systems consist of systems that give the tactics of building a business [both on and off line] so that distributors know what actions they should be taking on a daily business. These systems also consist of leadership development programs for those that want to build large organizations that move a lot of volume.
Perfect Timing
Yes, perfect timing. You need to do your best with this one since it is easiest to see only in hindsight! In addition to looking at the market trends you will also want to see where the momentum of the company is. Is it gaining speed? Is it slowing down? Where is the strongest growth? What new is being introduced – products?, markets? Where is the most interesting opportunity given where you are.
You can find a lot of this information on line. You can look at the change in Alexa ranking and the like. You can look at frequency of keyword searches. You can follow authority blogs [yes, there are a few! ]. Put your ear to the ground. Just make sure that people who voice their opinion to you have the experience and success in the industry to be worth listening to!
In Conclusion
So, how does the company you are considering stack up? Or have you yet to find one? If you would like my help in feel free to give me a call. And, Make sure that you enter your name and email over on the right so that you will keep up with what’s happening here.
To the top!
Mark
“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play, his labour and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself he always seems to be doing both. Enough for him that he does it well.”
- Lawrence Pearsall Jacks, 1932
Your best prospects for your business are a function of you.
You know how you naturally gravitate to a certain type of person and they to you? Think about it. I know you have noticed that in life.
That connection is “easy” for both of you because maybe you speak the same personality language and/or you share similar backgrounds. It is comfortable. You can relate.
Those are the people you should be seeking out first.
Worry about the ones that require more effort later if you need to. [You won't if you do things right. Trust me on that.]
For instance, here is a trivial example. You may be able to attract a killer investment banker because of your decades-long background in finance [and your ruler personality], etc., etc.
Yet, that investment banker may never be attracted to your neighbor [in her biz] because she may be a housewife with no business experience, no credibility [in the eyes of the investment banker], and may have a [tedious] “helper” personality to which he cannot possible relate.
Is he going to join her? NO WAY. Is he going to join you? Maybe. If you have what he wants. See what I mean?
The investment banker may be a natural fit for you so he will knock the ball out of the park with your coaching. However, if he made the “mistake” of signing with the housewife, she may not know that to do with him so he would quit for lack of direction.
Therefore, the investment banker is a great prospect for you but not for her.
Catch my drift?
The question you should be asking, then, is who is the right prospect for you given your background and personality type? If you ask that you will be on the right track and you will begin to attract the right prospect who will thrive under your personality and tutelage.
So, before you start asking . . . you need to get yourself together.
You need to figure out WHO you are, what your personality type is, what you have done that you have been good at and can relate to that people care about. You need to create your persona, your identity [yeah, your brand] before you try to answer the question.
Then you can go after the “right” people systematically to build a winning team.
“Whenever something doesn’t work out the way you thought it would, instead of thinking that something went wrong, see it as something that went unexpectedly well, but for reasons that are not yet apparent.”
People can fail in business for lots of apparent reasons. However, when you really boil things down the failure is not a result of having difficulty getting financing, not being able to find good employees, too much government regulation, changes in the tax code, the new health care system, bad luck, and the like. Such failure is almost always directly caused by the person’s mindset – their “stinkin’ thinkin’”.
Successful people think differently from those that are not. Successful people expect to be successful and don’t let external factors derail them. Where there is a will there is a way. Those that are not successful on the other hand . . .
As the saying goes, “Some people think they can and some people think they can’t and, you know what, they’re both right.”
So, what are some warning signs that your thinking is heading you for a fall?
How about these to start?
- You blame everybody and everything but yourself when things don’t go as you want,
- You whine and complain incessantly about the economy, taxes, people, the price of groceries, and so on,
- You continually find the reasons why you can’t do something or something won’t work,
- You expect things to go wrong,
- You expect the worst out of people . . .
Sound familiar?
If these do sound familiar, you can be certain that no matter how favorable your business circumstances, you will manage to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. You may have all the resources, skills, contacts, etc. but if you have any of these thought patterns you are guaranteed to fail in business – sooner or later.
The bad news is that, such thought patterns are pervasive. There are few people don’t fall into this thinking pattern trap. That is why success seems so elusive to most.
The good news is that, once you recognize these patterns of thinking in yourself, or others, for that matter, you can do something about them. They are simple to stop doing. They are simple to replace once identified.You simply replace your disempowering thoughts with the patterns of thinking that successful people have.
How about these?
- I don’t know the meaning of “It can’t be done.”
- There must be a way,
- I am responsible for my outcomes,
- Complaining is a foreign concept to me,
- I expect things to go well,
- I expect the best out of people,
- Hmmm . . . the prices have gone up – guess I’d better make some more money,
and so on.
Be honest with yourself. If you find yourself having those disempowering thoughts just stop them. Replace them with empowering ones. You can make these changes in an instant. And, pretty soon you will have established a new habit and you will be well on your way to success.
Unless you have been living under a rock, I am sure that you have noticed that the top online marketers have all attached their names to a niche market. For instance, When you think of Mike Klingler, what do you think of? You think of his “Marketing Funnel Mastery” programs. You want to take the same approach. You want to pick your internet niche and brand your name accordingly.
Once you have figured out what your most profitable brand should be and who your optimal target market is [these issues will be addressed in separate posts] you need to “get yourself out there”.
Exactly what do you need and how do you do this?
1. Get yourself an appropriate domain name. You can register it through GoDaddy. Once you have your blog or web site set up you will be able to point your domain name to either one. This is very easily done and if you can’t figure it out, the live 24/7 support at GoDaddy is great! [I have used it too many times ] Make sure you use the domain masking feature. This will let www.yourdomain.wordpress.com to show up as www.yourdomain.com – much more professional.
2. Sign up for a marketing engine to support your efforts. I like MLSP. It has material that can get the newbie off to a rapid start yet is ultimately customizable so you can brand yourself as whatever you like. Subscribing to such a flexible system saves you the time and expense to create your own. When it comes to the “buy or build” decision here, the optimal decision is clearly to “buy”!
3. Get yourself your own autoresponder. If your visitors like what they see they will want to be kept abreast of what is new on your blog and what you have to say. The autoresponder is ideal for this. You can send messages out when you make a new post and you can have your autoresponder loaded up with a free training program [you can start with the ones that come with MLSP] or the like to give additional value to your people. This way, you will can keep in touch with your followers.
4. Drive people interested in your niche to your automated marketing system – the one being powered by the marketing engine we talked about above. You can do this in many ways – via Twitter, other social media marketing, on and off-line advertising and the like. A second wonderful feature of MLSP is the training on how to do these things that comes with the system. You will find that people will begin to opt in and, through your autoresponder emails, you will begin to build a relationship with them and they will begin to know and love you.
5. Set up your blog. Your blog can be set up for free and easily on wordpress.com. It can be stand-alone initially and can later be integrated with your web site if and when you set one up.
You will want to do this because when you are driving traffic people will want to know who you are. A blog is an ideal solution. You can have its URL as part of your signature file in your autoresponder emails and you can get it to pop up in the search engines when people search on your name. This will be an additional way to make a great impression and build your identity.
Make sure you update your blog at consistent intervals with content that is specific to your vision. Make sure you stay on topic. If you stray you will confuse your audience. Also, your content does not all have to be written by you. You can post materials from other sources as long as it supports your brand [make sure you give credit to the original source]. You can also invite others to be guest authors.
Finally, make sure that you have a way to capture your visitors’ information so you can continue to build your marketing list. You can easily create an opt-in box through your autoresponder service for this purpose.
6. Additionally you can further brand yourself in your niche through other media – like video and audio. This type of live media is excellent at making your visitors feel they know you. You may not be able to see them but they can certainly see you!
Make video posts of your niche content on your blog, use your own videos in your marketing engine, post audios of trainings, interviews with market leaders and the like.
And, of course, make sure you also have a good looking photo of yourself to use in your materials – well groomed, smiling, looking at the camera, and no glasses – people want to see your eyes!
Using these media will show your personality to your people and will also show them that you are a real person.
These points should give you a good start. Please give me a call and let me know where you are in this business process. If I can be of assistance make sure that you let me know.
The latest Direct Selling Association industry numbers are in! And they tell us a lot.
Of initial concern might be the overall sales trend in the direct selling industry which we declined by 4.3% from $29.8 billion to $28.33 billion in the US.
However, when compared to the tanking of retail sales, I have to say that the direct selling industry has really held its own.
This is all while the number of direct sales people in the US increased by 6.6% from 15.1 million to 16.1 million people. So, overall, the industry is gaining strength in numbers. I expect that sales will recover as the concerns about the economy diminish.
The top three product categories comprise almost 70% of total US industry sales with Home/Family Care/Home Durables (cleaning products, cookware, cutlery, etc.) at 23.9%, Wellness (weight loss products, vitamins, etc.) at 22.8%, and Personal Care (cosmetics, jewelry, skin care, etc.) a close third at 21.3% of the market share in the US.
Interestingly, face-to-face selling still makes up 78.1% of total sales with 73.3% of those sales happening in the home. This is in spite of all the talk about the internet and its dominance in the industry. Internet sales came in at a scant 7.3% for the year. There is a lot of room for growth here.
The West and the South remain the strongest regions at 28.6% and 34.8%, respectively. The Northeast is the smallest market at 15.8% of sales in spite of its proportionally larger population base.
Of all the participants in the direct selling industry only 43.3% are in it to make money. Business builders comprise 20.1% of the industry and retailers comprise 23.2%. Most work part time with 92.5% working less that 30 hours per week. The vast majority of these prefer face to face interaction [64.3%] while 25.4% prefer party plan or group selling.
Demographically, 82.4% of direct sellers are women, 57% are between the ages of 35 and 54, and 22% are 55 and over, a number larger than the 22% of participants that are between 18 and 34. The vast majority are married [77%] and 71% have some level of post high school education.
Figures such as these are very useful. And, if you go to the DSA website, you can get these numbers back to 2000. Use them as part of your story as you talk to potential business partners and take advantage of the figures to determine who you should be targeting and how you should be approaching them.
To the top!
Mark
In the spirit of last night’s Academy Awards, I remembered a conversation that I had with a publicist friend of mine about what it takes to make the A-list in Hollywood. As I reflected, I noted how many commonalities there are between making it in Hollywood and making it in business.
Recognize that stars are made, not born. [You knew that, right? 
] The same is true for stars in business. In fact, with a tad of talent and a lot of focus and work anybody can make the A list in their field – as long as they follow the rules.
So, what are these rules? There are 10:
1. Figure out whatever it is that you are good at and then DO IT!
Everybody has talent – I don’t care who you are. Admit it! You are good at something. Figure it out! You will be happier and you will naturally develop your brand – the thing that differentiates you and makes people want to come to you.
2. If you can’t figure out what you’re good at get some help and figure it out anyway.
It is easy to have no idea what you are good at. It is also easy to not know how people view you. The solution is to ask. Start with your closest friends and family – people that will answer honestly. You will be surprised at the commonality in responses.
3. Never pretend to have a talent you don’t really have.
You will never be happy. People WILL spot you as a fake. You WILL get caught. And that is NOT good.
4. Get used to the spotlight.
Learn to like being the center of attention and get good at it. Practice speaking in front of a mirror with confidence. Learn to make conversation – do not throw up all over people. And, believe in yourself!
5. Educate yourself.
You must devour information so you know everything that is going on. Become an expert in your own industry. The credibility will work wonders for your reputation.
6. Formulate your plan of attack and stick to it.
Make 3 year, 5 year, 10 year plan that feels reasonable to you and then stick to it! Don’t hop from opportunity to opportunity and GET OVER your “shiny object syndrome” [SOS]. Remember, every step you make after you lay out your plan is a step in the right direction. Luck has little to do with your success.
7. If you want it badly enough you can get it – but don’t sell yourself short.
If you want something badly there are times when you might get desperate. You get what looks like a better offer [SOS] and you jump at it even though it is not what you really want because you are afraid that what you really want is never going to happen. This is settling for 2nd best. Don’t do it!
8. Never be mean – what goes around comes around.
It’s a small world. Those you treat badly will come back to bite you. And, watch what you say. People will judge you by your words and actions. Remember, today’s distributor could be tomorrow’s leader! Be nice to people on the way up because you never know who you are going to need on the way down.
9. People are going to “have issues” with you.
Develop a hide like a rhino. And, make sure you don’t give them a reason to bring you down. If you do things that are not good for you, STOP NOW! And watch who you hang around with. If something in your life threatens to tarnish your reputation or worse, don’t be afraid to cut loose and move on.
10. If you aren’t going to do something, stop complaining and stay home.
Woody Allen “90% of success is showing up.” Are you showing up or are you hanging around complaining and hanging on to your excuses? Sometimes the hardest thing to do it to take the first step. Then when you take it you realize that it was not so bad.
So, remove the words “I can’t” or “I’ll try” from your vocabulary, move forward and just get it done.
To the top!
Mark
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