Don't Waste a Minute!

No more excuses!  With all the resources available today, if you are not where you want to be - in your life or your business - it is probably your own fault.


Yes!  I dared to say that!  With today's technology, you have access to the combined knowledge of hundreds - maybe even thousands - of the best minds in the business (no matter what business you're in).  And that same technology allows you to perform most of the tasks related to your business with an ease never before experienced.  It gives the marketer working from his bedroom the same global reach as even some of the largest companies.


Network marketing is not hard.  Business in general is not hard.  Most of the obstacles we find along the way are actually of our own creation.  (Yup!  I said it again.  It's your own fault). 


I know.  There's a lot of conflicting advice out there about building your business.  Why is that?  Well, what works for me and what I'm comfortable with may be very different than what works for you.  I hate cold calls.  In fact, I hate the telephone in general.  And so all the advice out there on this topic is a waste of my time.  I do the bare minimum necessary.  But I have a friend and team member who LOVES the phone.  I think one day we may have to have it surgically removed from her ear!  I tried to teach her how to build her list and how to blog.  And she hated every minute of it.  So how do you sort through all of the information out there to find what works?  Well, first, look for what feels right to you.  Focus on your strengths and make them stronger.  We all need to learn new skills.  I may learn to perfect my phone technique one day.  But right now I prefer to write. And it works for me.  So I'm taking coaching and training in copywriting and blogging.  My friend is perfecting Facebook Live and video.  Because she likes to talk.  Both methods work, as long as they are being used by the right person.


I've been told that I need to "get with the times" and do more video.  And maybe someday I will.  But that's your belief.  I'm doing fine right now with my own DMO (daily method of operations *smile*).


"But not everyone believes in network marketing.  They won't listen.  They think I'm a fraud!"  Ok.  Some will.  Some won't.  Who cares?  Work with the ones that do.  Ignore the rest. 


You can do this!  I know you can.  You have the power within you to live your life on your terms.  Many of you won't and that's sad.  But some of you want something more.  Go get it!


I have a small group of friends.  We call ourselves the Ninja Marketers.  Our sole purpose is to share our skills and knowledge with others in the business and to support and motivate each other.  We are a team.  When one of us succeeds, we all succeed. 


Find your Ninjas.  And if you can't, you are welcome to come and hang out with us.  Either way, find others who share your vision and work together to live your dreams.


Don't waste another minute!  Get up right now and do something - anything - to get your business back on track, to build the life you want to live, to move closer to your goals.  If you don't have goals, write some!  I have a blog post about that!  Then take MASSIVE action - to COMPLETION - to achieve them.  And yes, I have a blog post on that too. 


It's time.  If you truly want to live the life you were meant to, the life you dream of, then stop making excuses.  As Henry C. Link stated, ""While one person hesitates because he feels inferior, the other is busy making mistakes and becoming superior."

Advice From the Experts

Why am I not doing better in my business?  I was asked that question recently by a client.  And the answer?  She's not doing anything to move her business forward. 

I know all the excuses.  I used to use them myself.  "I'm not sure this will work."  "I need more information."  "I'm waiting until the new _______ (computer, software package, printer, etc) goes on sale."  "I can't afford _____ (to advertise, host a website, hire a coach, etc)."  "I don't have enough time."  "I just need my _______ (website, infoproduct, ebook, etc) to look a little bit better."

I don't use those excuses anymore.  After attending one of Ken McArthur's jvAlert events and meeting successful people like Felicia Slattery, Carrie Wilkerson, Bob Jenkins, and Adam Urbanski - and of course Ken himself - I saw what was possible.  Listening to their advice helped me get up and running.  A speech by Bob Jenkins gave me the push to go back to my room that same night and launch my first blog - "The Adventures of Traveling Bob".  He said "Take action.  Revise later."  That was also the day Carrie Wilkerson told me that to be successful one needed to take massive action - to completion. 

They didn't just give me pep talks that weekend.  They also gave me concrete advice on how to proceed.  So in keeping with the spirit of jvAlert - people helping people - I pass on to you today some of the knowledge they shared with me.  Use it to make your business better.

1.  Learn what you need to know.  Don't waste your time buying every book, course, and seminar that's offered.  Determine exactly what skill or knowledge you need and then find a way to obtain it.  For example:  Before hearing this I had books on every conceivable way to make money online you could think of.  Problem:  I had no idea how to even begin building a site of my own or researching to see if there was a viable market for my ideas.  Once I focused on obtaining just that information I progressed pretty quickly - and I saved a ton of money on infoproducts that I didn't need!

2.  Advertise. I was so excited when I started my first Pay-Per-Click campaign.  It was a thrill to get online each day and see that I was actually getting traffic to my site!  From there I learned about Ezine advertising, and then Adsense and Adwords.  Now I was getting traffic to my site and they were actually signing up for my newsletter which started building my opt-in list.  Which allowed me to start advertising by email.

3.  Follow up.  It wouldn't have done me a bit of good to learn about advertising methods if Bob Jenkins hadn't casually asked me if I had an autoresponder.  Not wanting to appear completely dense, I did not admit I had no idea what that was.  But you can bet I went back to my room that night and found out.  What a concept!  I didn't have to try and follow up with each lead/subscriber individually.  I now had 24/7 follow up capability.  Awesome!

4.  Network, network, network.  You never know who you might meet.  I started out in business as a meeting planner and Ken McArthur was one of my clients.  He often invited me to attend one of his events and finally one day I was able to.  That event changed my life simply because of who I met there.  Not only did I learn what  I have shared with you here, I also learned the value of networking.  It was here that I was introduced to Ryze, and Twitter, and LinkedIn, and Facebook.  And it was through these social networking sites that I met Terri Dennis aka PopArtDiva, Bev Mahone, Heidi Caswell, Wendy Y. Bailey, Heidi Richards Mooney, and so many others.  Each of them have taught me something that has helped me take the next step.  Learning to network also gave me the courage to attend local networking events where I met Linda Gracy, Carrie Perrien Smith, Linda Concoby and many more.  These ladies have also taught me a great deal and have quickly become friends.  And all of them have introduced me to others in their networks.

5.  Perhaps the best advice I received that weekend came from Ken himself.  I confessed to him that meeting planning, while fun, was not where my heart was.  I told him I had been trying various things to get an online business going but nothing was working.  His advice was stop trying various things, figure out what my skills were, determine what my passion was, put the two together and focus on that.

What are you waiting for?  Take the next step.  Use the advice I received from the experts.  Stop making excuses and let's do this!

The Four Stages of Your Business Life

I was speaking with a member of my team last night. She was one of the first to join my network marketing downline and she went after it with all she had. Before long, she was making more money than I was! Last night, she called to tell me she had hit a slump and she thought maybe she had taken this business as far as it could go. Of course, she is wrong. She has just hit that stage in her business life that I call the "dry spell."

If you have been in any kind of business of your own then you know what I'm talking about. You will go through stages while you get things up and running and then find your equilibrium. There are typically four stages to the life of any business and what you do during each of them can dramatically impact the life of your business.

The first is the "new business excitement" stage. You have just joined a great opportunity or launched your first product or put up your first site and you are jazzed! You are have the best deal out there and you are going to whip the world. You are going to make so much money that no one will even believe you when you tell them. You are full of energy and new ideas and can't wait to do them all. Unfortunately, that's the problem at this stage. You may have a tendency to scatter your time and resources among so many different things that nothing gets accomplished and you get discouraged. You are so busy building your business that you forget about the rest of your life. As resources dwindle and energy drops, you begin to worry more and more about your decisions until - you quit, thinking your business idea was a bad one or the network marketing opportunity was just a scam.

How to you make it through this stage? Focus. If you have joined a network marketing business, concentrate on finding customers for your products and team members for your downline. Decide how many prospects you can talk to effectively each day. That's your goal. If you don't gain a customer or recruit a team member that day, don't keep pushing out of desperation. Panic shows! Just set it aside and start fresh tomorrow. And don't spend all your money buying the videos or trying the products or going to the meetings. You will need to budget for these things while you grow your business. When I first joined Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing, it was just a few months before the annual meeting. Everyone was talking about it and asking me if I was planning to attend. I almost got caught up in all of the excitement and was just about to spend LOTS of money on plane fare and hotel rooms when someone in my upline stopped me. He asked me how much money I was making and I told him I had just started. Then he said if I wasn't making enough from my business to pay for my trip, I should reconsider. There were probably other more important uses for that money and my time could probably be better spent at home building my business. It made sense, so while everyone else was in Las Vegas, I stayed home and recruited enough people to promote myself to the next level.

Stage two is the "dry spell." You have been working as hard as you can and yet you just aren't growing like you did in the beginning. You have run out of people to tell about your business opportunity. The initial excitement for your product has worn off. Your site just isn't getting the hits it used to. You're wondering "does this thing really work?" Don't panic. This just means it may be time for some changes. If you are in network marketing, it may be time to stop concentrate on building your own downline and focus on helping your team build their businesses. After all, if they are successful, it impacts you as well. Or perhaps it's time to look at some new marketing techniques or different markets for your products. Now is the time to learn some new ways to do things. Talk to your mentor. Read some of the books and newsletters published by the experts in your field. Brainstorm. And then make the changes necessary to move you past this stage.

Stage three is the "Wow - maybe this REALLY does work stage." You made it through stages one and two and you are seeing your business gain some new life. You feel a sense of hope that perhaps you can make this happen after all. You have new energy and a new outlook and a new optimism. Keep it going by concentrating on doing the things that helped you make it this far to begin with. This is where you want to really take a look at what held you back and what moved you forward. Discard the actions that limited you and focus on those that help you grow.

The last stage is the "I DID it!" stage. Your business is flourishing. You are making money. You have learned to balance your business life with your personal life. Don't lose it by becoming complacent. Always keep learning. No matter how long you been in business, there is still something you can learn. Always stick to the basic plan that got you here in the first place. When things slow down, take a good look at what's happening and don't be afraid to make changes if necessary.

You can do this. Look at me. Just when I was thinking about retirement and wondering how I was going to afford it, a whole new world opened up for me! I'm doing things with my business now that just a few months ago I would not have dreamed of. And it's all because I refocused my resources, listened to the experts, made some changes to my business plan, and DID it!

You've Got To Do Something!

Do you wonder why some people are successful and others aren't? I recently had this discussion with someone who is part of my Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing downline. He wanted to know why I had lied to him. Lied to him about what? He joined Fortune. He paid his $299, switched his cell phone to AT&T through Fortune, bought some vitamins, and sat back and waited. One year later he had made $21.00 and had no one in his own downline. He wanted to know why he wasn't making the money everyone else was claiming to make. Why? Because first you actually have to DO something.

Over the years, I've discovered there are 3 steps you must take to become successful at anything. First you have to be willing to make a decision. My team member had trouble with this. He would agonize forever about who to talk to, how to present the business plan, whether or not to ask someone to be a customer. These were all fairly simple decisions to make and yet he never could make one and stick with it. I'd hate to see how long it took him to make decisions that actually required some thought!

Second, once you make a decision to do something, you have to actually DO it. I asked this person how many people he had actually shown the business plan to in the past year. His answer - one! Then I asked him how many people he had shown our products and services to and asked them to become his customers. The answer - zip, zero, zilch! Did he go to any training? No. Listen to any conference calls? No. And he reaped the rewards of his inaction - nothing.

The third thing you must do is surround yourself with the people who ARE doing it. Instead of coming to training meetings or business presentations or even listening in on the conference calls where he would be with people who were successfully building their Fortune businesses and were positive and uplifting about their experience, he hung out with others who continually reinforced his belief that he had been taken advantage of, that network marketing was nothing more than a scam, and that it would never work for him.

If you buy a McDonald's franchise and then keep the door locked, you will not make any money. If you say you want to get in shape and continue to sit on the couch every day, you will not see any difference. If you get involved with a network marketing business and then don't talk to anyone, you will fail!

"There are risks and costs to a program of action. But these are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction" John F. Kennedy

"While one person hesitates because he feels inferior, the other is busy making mistakes and becoming superior." Henry C. Link

"In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing. " Theodore Roosevelt

Make decisions!
Take massive action!
Surround yourself with successful people!

Let's make the next year amazing!

Make Your Choice!

So here we are, sitting at our tables, looking at our list of New Year's resolutions. At the top of the list - build our business bigger. Or perhaps it's "start a home business." Or maybe "be more successful." We're staring at that statement wondering where to start. And we're looking at all the people we know or have read about and wondering what it is that makes them different from us. Do you really want to know? Good - because I'm going to tell you. They aren't sitting at the table wondering how to get started. They've already done it.

I've spent a lot of time studying successful people and I've found they all have a few things in common. They take action, they make decisions quickly, and they hang around with people like themselves. Successful people have been doing the same things for hundreds of years because it works! Someone - Theodore Roosevelt, I think - once said that the best thing you can do is make the right decision. The second best thing you can do is make the wrong decision. The worst thing you can do is make no decision at all. Think about it. If you decide on your first step to reach your goal and it's right - SUCCESS! If it's wrong, at least you may learn something from the mistake that will help you move forward. But if you never make a decision, you never get started - and you'll be sitting at your table again next year wondering how to change your life and what do all those successful people know that you don't.

Determine never to be idle. Do at least one thing every day to advance you toward your goal. It may be the wrong thing sometimes, but it's still better than doing nothing. Thomas Jefferson said, "It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing" Think how much you can accomplish towards your business and financial goals if you do one thing every day. Make a DECISION! Take ACTION! Take the action necessary to reach your goals.

Let's make this year your year to SHINE!