Where are You on the Mastery Learning Curve?

The news that Bethany College, USA, had added a Network Marketing and Servant Leadership degree to its curriculum intrigued me. Needless to say the usual nay-sayers are out in force, lambasting the college board for their insanity in trying to "legitimise" network marketing and pointing out their negative statistics about the industry.

Yet, despite the prolific output of those who feel "it's all just a pyramid scheme", the statistics on the US DSA website give a better picture. Over $28 billion sales in 2009, in the height of a recession, with 16 million distributors of whom 84% are female, 92.5% work part-time and 77% are married.

Of those 16 million distributors, just under 5 million are inactive, and just over 4 million distributors only buy products for personal use. That leaves 3.7 million distributors and 3.2 million team/group leaders to retail the lion's share of those $28 billion sales.

The question is, how many of those buying products for personal use would at least retail properly if they got the right coaching? Maybe a degree course isn't such a bad idea after all?

Take a look at the mastery learning curve chart below. This pattern plays out repeatedly in our industry; the timeline can be from 3 months to 10 years, depending on the company and the distributor involved:

Superstars (those with unstoppable focus, limitless cash and a really strong family support network) will go onwards and upwards. Those are the ones we all look at on stage in conferences, applaud like mad, then go home and think, "I'm never going to be able to do the business like that." They get there through a lot of hard work and make sacrifices that many of us cannot, or choose not to, do.

Mastery Apprentices are those of us who stick with it, but spend a long time being disorganised and not "getting out of our comfort zone". When we finally find out what works, usually through trial, error, and a lot of Life getting in the way, we can catch up with the Superstars amazingly quickly. We relate better to a lot of new starters in the industry, and we have personal testimonials of earning realistic amounts whilst still juggling home, work, family and social activities.

The rest? Well, they're the ones who aren't supported properly, for whatever reason. That may be because they are genuinely uncoachable - coaching is a two-way process; one-way coaching is lecturing and extremely enervating for the coach. Or, they have personal issues that cause them to feel unloved and unwanted despite their best efforts and those of their sponsor - those personal issues can include very negative family members. Of course, there are poorly trained sponsors as well, who perpetuate a cycle of poor training in their turn. The Unsupported will quit once they perceive the work to be too hard, too difficult, or taking up too much of their time, unless their sponsors can help them move out of their motivational trough and find their resolve.

Where are you on the chart?

Simon Cowell's Reality Check Interview

Simon Cowell is famous for his abrasive and acerbic quotes on wannabe pop stars - who is going to forget the classic, "If you win this competion, we have failed"?

But Simon Cowell providing advice to the network marketing industry? That would be worth listening to; luckily, Eric Worre had the idea first.

Anybody who wants to get on in network marketing really needs to subscribe to Eric Worre's videos. Today's video is a perfect example of the worth he brings to the industry (and no, I'm not an affiliate, etc.)

Seasonal Flu - How to Win with Network Marketing

For the past 3 weeks, I've struggled to keep going. I admit it. No matter how buoyant a distributor's personality, there are times when you have to run as fast as you can just to stay still.

In my case, as with many others at this time of the year, my family got knobbled by the seasonal flu that's doing the rounds. So I spent 2 weeks trying to cope with a full time job, a 90 minute round-trip commute and my Kleeneze retail targets, as well as ensuring that my sons were being looked after to the best of my abilities. Building a team was not on my list of priorities. Surviving each day was.

Just as they started getting better (this year's flu seems to hit people with a week of the usual symptoms followed by two weeks of bronchial problems), I got the darned bug myself. For four days, I struggled in to the day job, dreading every minute of that 45 minute each way trip. On the first day, my youngest son got clipped by a car on his bike ride back from school. He was extremely lucky and got away with scrapes and bruises; he walked his bike home before the shock set in. I took a day's holiday to keep an eye on him; I'm not sure who ached the most. By day 5, I'd got to the point where I crawled out of bed, phoned in sick and crawled right back again. It's now day 9 and I still feel like death warmed up, but I'm back at work with the bronchial phase warming up for Christmas.

So what has this to do with winning in network marketing?

Simply this: both I and my youngest son followed the same basic principles - to only commit to what we knew we could deliver, to do what we said we'd do when we said we'd do it, and to revise our planned activity to suit the new circumstances.

I delivered ordered goods, put out far fewer catalogues than normal, but ensured I got my 10% bonus volume by week 3 of the period, as per my goals.

My youngest son, despite the flu and his injuries, turned up to do his paper round every morning, regardless of how ill he felt, because he knew the newsagent was short-staffed. I'm so very, very proud of him.

The great thing about a good network marketing company is that, if you are diligent and consistent, results happen when you least expect it. I currently have a dozen people to contact with more information about building their own Kleeneze business, many of whom came in directly via my Kleeneze website, all due to the effort I put in before the seasonal flu took hold. I'll be talking to them over the next few days, sending further information and discussing their joining my team. 2010 was good - 2011 is going to be even better.

Network Marketing - 3 Simple Steps to Help Beginners Succeed

I've just had my first article approved on Ezine Articles - 3 Simple Steps to Help Beginners Succeed. More will follow. I have a firm belief that business building should be based on simple, but solid, foundations. Why not have a read and let me know what you think?

Building an Ethical Network Marketing Business

Did the title get your attention? Good.

Firstly, let's get a few NOTs out of the way.

This is NOT a criticism of the network marketing industry as a whole, nor should it be seen as an opportunity to take pot-shots at individual companies.

What I am concerned with is the ethical perspective of some network marketing "experts". As an example, the advocation by some of lead generation activity that verges on spamming. The sort of advice that recommends creating 100 webmail accounts of the getinfo01 - 99 @ webmail.com variety, so that you can bypass the submission terms and conditions of free advertising sites by simultaneously using all 100 email accounts to produce your leads. You can predict the resentment that this behaviour causes amongst both website admins and other users.

I know of one "expert" whose idea of lead generation is to effectively steamroller over the "opposition" by inundating an area with lead generation aimed at his website. He gets his accounts revoked on a regular basis, but he doesn't care because he's got his leads. His behaviour has a negative effect on both his downline, who can't emulate him, and the other poor network marketers whose adverts look similar to his and who can't work out why they've been booted off a particular site with their first and only advert.

What these "experts" fail to remember is the networking part of network marketing. Networking involves building relationships with others and that includes the moderators of the sites where you are promoting your own business. Spamming sites with cut-and-paste advertising clones is just one of the reasons why MLM is held in such low regard by others, to the point where you can't promote yourself as a network marketing representative on many free sites.

Now, I'm not saying that you shouldn't have a couple of backup email addresses, in case you accidentally fall foul of the submission guidelines on a given site. Nor am I saying that you shouldn't place a variety of adverts on the same site, if the guidelines permit that. But you need to be clear in your mind as to what you are trying to achieve - is it long-term sustainability or short-term profit?

To be a leader in network marketing, you need a strong set of values as a foundation for how you do business with others. If you behave like a flim-flam artist, you will drive away honest hard-working distributors who have been told to duplicate their upline's systems, but cannot bring themselves to use your methods.

These aren't precepts, but they are common-sense guidelines for building an ethical business:

1. Treat everybody you 'meet', whether online administrators, customers or potential representatives with respect.
2. Keep in contact with everybody you 'meet'. You never know who may join your business - it may be the friend of the person you were nice to 2 years ago.
3. Ask yourself, how do others view me/my behaviour/my business activities. Then ask your best friend for an honest appraisal. If you don't know how you come across, you can't improve.
4. List 5 qualities that you want to make part of your personal brand. Mine are honesty, loyalty, hard-working, nurturing, coaching. Write them down and put them somewhere prominent. Remind yourself to be your brand every day.
5. List 3 core values you intend to adhere to. Simple is better - think of the French motto, "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" - both catchy and pithy. Add those to your brand statement.
6. Commit to a kaizen mindset.

Nightingale Conant's UK website has a good mission statement generator. Why not try it out and see what your mission statement looks like when you slot in your core values and qualities?

Kleeneze, Small Businesses and Network Marketing in General

I've decided this blog is deviating slightly from its original purpose, which was to be a general commentary and advice blog on all forms of small business and network marketing, including low-cost franchises such as Kleeneze.

My more Kleeneze-specific posts will be put on The Kleeneze Lady - feel free to hop over for a visit.

Reasons for Business Failure - Part 1: Planning

So, why do businesses fail? Why are a third of businesses gone in the first two years, and why do half not survive the first five years? What goes wrong between the initial enthusiasm and the final desperation? How can we stop that happening to us? How is this relevant to network marketing in general, and Kleeneze in particular?

Let's take the main reasons first:

Poor Planning

I don't know about you, but if I hear "Failure to Plan is Planning to Fail" one more time, I'll hit something. Anybody attending a network marketing training session will be told that, as though it's a failsafe mantra. Anybody who works at a relatively experienced level in any business or industrial sector will have heard a version of it.

Yes, some people fail to plan, but most people who are serious about building a business do plan. They are told to provide business plans to banks, or to plan their workload, so they sit down, try to work out what they want to happen over a given time frame and write it all down.

The trouble starts with what happens next.

Some create plans that look good on paper but which are wildly optimistic and are based on everything in life, including the global economy, being absolutely perfect. 

Failure to plan for adverse situations is planning to fail.

Some assume that, once the plan has been created, that's it. By some mystical universal force, everybody and everything will telepathically understand what's required and align with the plan, without further input from the creator. 

Failing to work according to your plan is planning to fail.

Some write the plan, allow for real life to intervene and work the plan but they don't amend the plan to allow them to grow their business. They are stuck in a mindset that tells them that as long as they do the minimum level required, they'll be fine.

Failure to review your plan and reset targets upwards is planning to fail.

I've planned to fail in the past based on those three criteria and it's painful. It's also OK. Planning to fail is a learning exercise that all new entrepreneurs will go through in one form or another and it should not be used as either an excuse for failure or a reason for others not to try the same path.

So you're overoptimistic at times? You haven't accepted how much work is involved in building your own business? You think you're heading for the stars when really you're coasting in neutral? 

Get over it, get a new plan written and commit to it. Work it; review it at weekly, 4 weekly and 13 weekly (90 days, remember) intervals; change it and improve it as necessary. Then get back to working the plan. Repeat until it's a part of you.

Because where your future's concerned, it's not an attitude, it's a way of life.

The Get Rich Quick Mentality Sucks!

It came as no surprise to me to find that if you type the word Kleeneze into Google, the second suggested option in their drop-down list is Kleeneze scam.

Why?

Because, as my first business lecturer told us, a satisfied customer will tell a couple of people, a dissatisfied customer will tell a dozen. Upgrade that to the Internet version and it's closer to a satisfied customer will tell their social network, a dissastified customer will tell their social network and then go on to conduct flame wars on every forum and review site that dares to mention the product.

The amount of hatred and bile directed at Kleeneze, Avon etc. is truly disheartening; you'd think people were nicer than their internet personae indicate.

But note:

This bile isn't spewing from dissatisfied Kleeneze customers. The pyroclastic flow ready to engulf the wary new distributor erupts from ex-distributors, many of whom appear to have distinctly distorted views of how to run their own business. There are complaints about fees needing to be paid to use various services, shipping costs needing to be paid if orders are under a certain amount, admin charges being applied in some cases. All of which, it has to be said, are covered in the manuals you get in your starter pack as well as online on the distributor site. Do these people not read any small print?

Part of the reason for the "bitter ex-distributor syndrome" has to be due to poorly-trained apprentice distributors not winnowing out applicants who are either tyre-kickers, lazy or who really just want an employer prepared to pay them better than minimum wage for no real effort. Those applicants would not make it in their own business; heck, they couldn't cope with fixed-price leaflet delivery work either.

In my previous network marketing company, my sponsor was a lovely lady who should never have been recruited into the industry. She would spend a fortune to avoid going out and talking to others about her own business opportunity, and then complained when she wasn't getting value for money for the few leads that came her way. All she really wanted was a work-from-home job from a "real" employer, who paid her PAYE.

Kleeneze is a business first and foremost. A Kleeneze distributorship is also a business, first and foremost. Sure, it's an opportunity. But opportunities are not treasure troves waiting for the taking. First you mine the gold ore, then you refine it, then you wear it or sell it on. Treasure troves only exist in fairy tales.

Let's face reality. According to US statistics, 30% of small businesses fail in the first 2 years; by the 5th year only 50% have survived. According to UK reports at least 33% of startups fail within 2 years; one BBC report had it closer to 80% since the credit crunch hit.

The most common reasons for business failure include poor planning, lack of customers, poor market research, rising fixed costs (overheads, employee costs, fuel, etc.) and failure to obtain sufficient financing to grow the business.

The initial startup costs for a business should not be underestimated either. As well as whatever is required in the way of business setup costs (IT, tools, vehicles, office/workshop rental), a new startup owner needs to consider how they are going to cover their own basic costs (food, clothing, bills, personal expenditure etc.) until the business makes a profit. When I attended a business startup course, the advice was to pare down my personal outgoings to a bare minimum, and then calculate the costs for 3 years to see how much I needed in reserve before I started my own full-time enterprise. As a single parent with a mortgage and no other financial support, I needed a minimum of £60,000! Couples need to ensure that they can survive on one income for 3 years before both work in the business full-time.

Take a look at the available opportunities out there. Be sceptical, do your due diligence and do your own calculations regarding projected income and expenditure. Then make a decision. But don't whinge if you don't make that million in the first few years.

Apprenticeship and Leadership

I got a mention in my upline's newsletter today, congratulating me on reaching my first bonus level.

Thanks, Amanda!

I'm not resting on my laurels yet; I have more bonus levels to reach for personal retail, the top one being 24%. That may have to wait a bit, but it's still a goal.

My next goal is two active distributors by the end of 2010. With less than 2 months to go, I can either get panicked, or get moving. Guess which I've gone for?

So far this month, I've had 3 enquiries and I've shown the opportunity video provided by Kleeneze to all 3 people. No feedback so far. That's typical and I'm not fussed about the lack of uptake. Proverbs about "leading horses to water" are there for a reason, after all.

The problem many new entrants into network marketing have with building a team is not a lack of detail on what to do, it's a combination of information overload and lack of confidence. Dealing with that killer combo takes time and experience.

That's where being a leader comes in.

To lead properly, you need to learn how to serve first.

Traditionally, people were apprenticed for 4 to 7 years before they were deemed capable of working on their own. During that time, they were taught all the details of how to be a competent member of their work community. They weren't paid, but the master craftsman who taught them would house, feed and clothe them during their apprenticeship.

Once they had completed their apprenticeship, they were entitled to charge for a day's work; they were now called journeymen. Some journeymen travelled all over the country, learning new skills from other masters in the appropriate guild. Many were effectively full-time employees.

To be accepted as a master and thus have apprentices of their own, they had to produce a piece of work known as a masterpiece. If that was accepted by their guild, they could join and call themselves a master craftsman.

This is exactly what we go through as team leaders and team builders within network marketing.

The problem is, many newcomers expect to go from application form to mastery within weeks or months. They don't realise that they are apprentices, that they will need to spend time as an apprentice before they move on to the next stage and that their outgoings may well match the income from their new business for a year or two. They don't listen to advice, think they know better and re-invent wheels faster than you can count the cliches in this paragraph.

Worse, they apprentice themselves to people who are still apprentices or journeymen. You now have the classic downhill spiral - demoralised wannabe masters leave in a huff, claiming that their upline is rubbish and thus demoralising the upline team.

I was "lucky" with Kleeneze (in that "the harder I work, the luckier I get" way). I'm in Gavin Scott's downline. Gavin has been Distributor of the Year twice and his group has the highest turnover in Kleeneze. I've apprenticed myself to a master craftsman who has been doing this for 18 years.

I'm still an apprentice. Still learning my trade. The difference is, my trade is leadership. I will be successful, and I will be a master. This is not about attitude, positive or otherwise. It's about making changes to my whole way of life.

Consistency = Success

Well, I've proven something to myself - and I can't stop smiling because of it...

A bit of background - I spent several years working with another network marketing/direct selling company and although I moved a couple of steps up the payment plan, I never really achieved what I wanted. Part of that was due to my own inconsistency (life got in the way A LOT, including divorce, kids changing schools, teenage angst, parental ill-health, you name it). Not once did I achieve a bonus from the company for any of my efforts.

After 3 months with Kleeneze, including more upheaval, a holiday and a really bad bout of bronchial infection - all of which wiped out 4 weeks and 2 potential bonuses - I have received my first bonus payment and achieved my first retail goal 8 weeks ahead of schedule!

That's big.

I have a story I can tell others now.

In my first committed 4 week period since I started the business, where committed is defined as sticking to my revised target of 400 catalogues out every week, my retail income from Kleeneze, including my bonus is:

 
I am truly delighted about this!
 
Week 1 of Period 12 has just finished and I've already achieved 50% of the sales that got me the bonus payment in Period 11. Talk about an incentive to hit my next target ahead of schedule.
 
I now know that I can achieve regular Kleeneze bonuses and that I can teach others to do likewise. Time to build up that team.
 
Here's to a fun and prosperous month.

Day 3 - My First Sales

My first day collecting catalogues, as well as delivering them, and I made two sales! Not bad considering I overlapped with another distributor.

 

This is so simple a business compared to other Network Marketing/MLM opportunities out there. A little bit of effort and the rewards are there, commensurate with the activity.

 

Roll on my next day's collecting.

Day 2 - Getting My Feet (and everything else) Wet...

I spent another hour tonight bundling some catalogues together, then set off out with a catapuller full of Kleeneze packs, ready to take on the world.

And it rained. For the last 10 minutes of my first venture outside. For those minutes, the catalogues were a darn sight drier than I was.

I smiled, a lot. For somebody who enjoys walking, this job is so easy. I was even brave enough to smile at people in their gardens and announce "Your Kleeneze catalogue" in a loud and cheerful voice. Nobody rejected me, nobody complained. Mind you, one catalogue got shoved back onto the doorstep faster than it went through the letterbox, but I understood why when I saw another distributor's catalogues on a doorstep further down my route. That's bound to happen occasionally.

I'm looking forward to putting the rest of the catalogues out tomorrow.

Day 1 - Starting slowly

Today was a classic example of life getting in the way of planning.

I got home today to find I'd received 4 large boxes, all rather heavy. Catalogues weigh a lot, collectively. I cleared a space in the living room and got on with creating my catalogue packs.

Two and a half hours later, I'd done 100 packs, it was past 9 pm and I'd forgotten to eat anything...

I'd also listened to the DVD and CD in my official starter pack, so I was still fired up at the end of all that activity.

I still have another 100 catalogues to bag up, but I will deliver what I have tomorrow night.

In the mean time, all new Kleeneze distributors need the following AT THE START before they can be serious about their business:

1.  Day slips - these tell the customer when you will collect the catalogues. They are not supplied by Kleeneze, you need to make your own or buy them from one of the printers supplying Kleeneze stationery.
2. Recruitment advert slips - self explanatory, advertise to your customers that you are trying to build a team. These are not supplied by Kleeneze.
3. A paper trimmer. A lot easier/safer to use than a craft knife for trimming your own day slips.
4. LOTS of name and address labels with name, address, contact number and Kleeneze number. If you've got 200+ catalogues, the 650 that Kleeneze send you barely cover the 200 x 3 catalogues they send out at the same time. Again, try Able Label or one of the printers that supplies basic labels if you don't want to print your own.
5. A laser printer - essential if you're going to print your own day slips. Don't bother with an inkjet - head for Argos or other similar shops and work out the cost savings over a year.

Day 0 - Preparing the Ground

Having committed myself to actually sticking to a 90 day plan, I decided to organise myself a bit more.

First step - put up the new lockable postbox, so that my mail is in one place. That'll cut down the frantic hunting around the house for the latest repository created by my offspring. I've found 3 week old "pay now or else" bills behind the TV before now...

Second step - tidy the office. Easier said than done, as it's seen as a dumping ground for things that my eldest son doesn't want. Filed a lot of paperwork by the simple expedient of shoving it into a cupboard and closing the door. I'm obviously not that organised yet.

Third step - rough out the 90 day plan.

Of course, the simplest solution would be to map out identical blocks of time on every week day. However, this is the real world and as a single parent with a full-time job, not to mention full-time parenting, identical blocks of time is not an option.

So, I have set targets for both retail and recruitment lead generation. I will be keeping a record of planned activity, actual activity and results and I'll update it here on a weekly basis for the next 13 weeks.

Weekly Targets:

200 catalogues out, 3 times a week.
500 recruitment invites, door to door. 200 of those are going out with the catalogues.
10 clubs/organisations contacted with the suggestion of fund-raising parties based on the Christmas catalogue.

I'm bursting with energy and really looking forward to my first day of action. Here's to eventual success.

90 Day Plan Preparation

A 90 day plan has to be one of the simplest concepts in running your business. It's also one of the hardest to get right.

At first sight, there's no problem. You decide you want to run your own business. You start investigating options. You choose your preferred route to success. You attend some pre-business start up training, followed by some business training. And that's when the trouble starts.

As part of that business training, you get told that there are several key factors to your future success:

1. You need to be passionate. That's OK, I wouldn't be investing time and money in seed money and training if I wasn't passionate, you say.
2. You need to be organised. Not a problem, you assure yourself. It won't take long to tidy up a corner of the dining room/bedroom/attic. I've got my stapler, I've got my binders, I have a phone - how difficult can this be?
3. You need to have a plan. I've got a plan, you say, smiling to yourself. I'm going to do this business brilliantly, I'm going to make loads of money and I'm going to be a great success.

At that point, you've just joined Walter Mitty in WonderfulMe Land and killed off any chance of succeeding.

Let's face it, if achieving financial freedom was that easy, there would be no poverty in this world.

Success = commitment + focus + persistent action

You need all three parts to build a solid foundation. Focus gets you zeroed in on your target. Commitment binds you to a course of action that will enable you to achieve your goals. But without the persistent action, there will be no long-term achievement.

So, you need that plan, it needs to be simple, and you need to stick with it.

All too often, we come away from training meetings with our ears ringing with MLM mantra. The one I personally feel does the most damage is this classic:

Massive Action = Massive Results

Poorly applied (because nobody's thought to tell the poor noob how to do so), that mantra is responsible for more failed businesses than I care to think.

Let's break it down, shall we? Action = Results. We all know that. But who defines "Massive"? You? Your upline? Your family?

So the new distributor/representative/sacrificial lamb listens to the various speakers at the training meeting and decides they need to:

1. Buy into the business at the highest level possible, regardless of personal cost.
2. Buy huge amounts of lead generation material OR spend a fortune on leads.
3. Scattergun leaflets around the neighbourhood, spam their friends and family and fill up the garage with unsold products.

This leap into action usually means that on day 1, they do whatever they've been advised to do - say, deliver 500 leaflets, phone 10 relatives/friends, place 5 adverts in various papers.

By day 7, they're down to putting out 200 leaflets per night, there's no relatives left who'll answer the phone and the 5 adverts were obviously a waste of time because nobody called.

By day 14, they're not putting out leaflets any more, their friends are avoiding them at social events and they are scared they'll never shift that stock.

By day 28, it's meeting time again and they get encouraged to stick at it for another 4 weeks.

I know of people who've spent more than £15,000 trying to build their business like this. They all gave up, or the money gave out. Either way, it means the dream died.

So why on earth am I giving this whole Network Marketing concept another go? I must be mad, right?  

Wrong.

Just because there's a wrong way of following instructions, doesn't mean that those instructions don't have meaning and value. Just because some uplines seem more concerned with their own profits than helping you build a solid foundation for your business, does not mean all sponsors are corrupt, money-grabbing villains.

Each of us bears responsibility for our own actions. That includes the responsibility for performing a sanity check on what you've just planned for your business, buoyed as you are by the adrenalin rush of attending a really good business training. Your upline is not responsible for your business. You are.

Network Marketing is a People Business. As such, you are an ambassador for both your retail business and your team building. If you waste huge amounts of money on poorly targeted lead generation, don't follow up, don't build rapport with your customers by regularly calling/delivering catalogues/providing product - then that is what your team will copy, regardless of how many passionate members of their upline try to coach them differently.

To succeed in this sort of business, we all need to listen, learn, apply. We need to set SMART goals, not dreams. We need to plan and then stick to that plan. And we need to have an underlying mission statement for our business growth.

My business growth mantra is:

To build a Kleeneze team that is completely self-financing from retail sales.

In other words, after my initial investment of £171 for 200 catalogues, my distributor kit and a large Kleeneze-badged catapuller, all business growth will be funded by my retail profits.

Any lead-generation activity will be financed on that basis. I will start off with low-cost or no-cost promotions and move forward from there. I'll let you all know how it goes.

What does "It's not an attitude mean"?

It's simple. Really.

The dictionary definition of "attitude" goes something like this (with thanks to dictionary.com):

at·ti·tude - noun

1. manner, disposition, feeling, position, etc., with regard to a person or thing; tendency or orientation, esp. of the mind: a negative attitude; group attitudes.

2. position or posture of the body appropriate to or expressive of an action, emotion, etc.: a threatening attitude; a relaxed attitude.

3. Aeronautics . the inclination of the three principal axes of an aircraft relative to the wind, to the ground, etc.

4. Ballet . a pose in which the dancer stands on one leg, the other bent behind.

So - it's basically the way you position yourself mentally or physically relative to something else.

A couple of years ago, it was seen as such a term of disrespect that I couldn't order a T-shirt online with the word "attitude" on it as it hit the site's profanity filter!

And that's the crux of the matter (how many cliches can I throw in here, I ask myself....)

Attitude does NOT equal reality. Attitude does not equal instant respect. Attitude is a pose, a pretence, a cloak. Attitude alone will not allow you to achieve your goals in life.

Action, focus and commitment will.

I have tried and failed in the past with a Network Marketing company. I've never grouched, never grumbled about lack of support from my upline, my downline or my customers. I have always been my hardest critic; always tried to learn from my mistakes (and there have been PLENTY of those).

I have never once thought that Network Marketing was flawed as a concept. I have, however, come to realise that you have to pick the right opportunity and then commit to it.

There is a saying, variously ascribed to the Buddha Sakyamuni, Wiccan teachings or Judaeo-Christian beliefs: "If the Student is ready, the Teacher will appear".

 There is more than a little truth in that.

Driven by stresses at work, I decided that I could no longer define myself by a 9-5 career path. I looked at taking my skills and creating my own business based on those skills. I defined a set of products and services that I could sell to other companies, I defined my potential regional area to sell those to. And then reality stepped in.

Without a team of similarly motivated people, I had little chance of success, unless I gave up my current job and stepped out into the unknown. That in itself didn't scare me, but not being able - as a single parent of teenagers - to pay the mortgage, did.

I needed an alternative solution. After a fair amount of research, I chose Kleeneze as the best option. I did what any potential company director would do at that point and did due diligence work. I discovered Gavin Scott and contacted him. I'm now in his downline.

Today's post proved why I was right to do so. He sent me a book, without prompting. Not just any book; Don Failla's 45 Second Presentation. Oddly enough, I had been planning on ordering it from Amazon this weekend. He didn't know that.

With that single action, I received more understanding and support from Gavin than from anybody else I've come across in my previous Network Marketing endeavours.

I can't wait to meet him to say thank you in person. Luckily, the Xmas Showcase is in September, so not too long to wait.

It's not an attitude with Gavin. It really is his way of life. That resonates with me.

It's not an Attitude...

Imagine the setting - a circle of uncomfortable people on uncomfortable chairs, a small community hall, a nondescript town. Then one stands up and utters the dreaded words:

"Good evening, my name is Anna and I'm in Network Marketing.... "

Yes, it's a MLMA meeting - Multilevel Marketers Anonymous. If they don't exist, they should. Some enterprising soul is probably setting up the first one as I type. After all, there are millions of websites out there that amount to a virtual MLMA meeting. "I lost a fortune." "They're all scams." "I didn't have the support I needed." "My upline ripped me off." "Leaflets/surveys/catalogues/online lists don't work."

And we all visit them, and empathise with their pain.

Then we go back to the daily grind and read our subscriptions to MLM newsletters, all of which promise us the opportunity to REALLY SUCCEED, so long as we cough up the cash (usually several hundred dollars) for the latest eBook, CD training, etc. Which we wouldn't use properly, even if we bought them.

What we all forget, at some time or other, is that excuses are easier than action. The longer we put something off, the scarier it gets. We forget, because we are the centre of our own world, that we are rarely more than a very minor part of somebody else's life. Nobody is out there waiting to condemn us - most of them fear our reaction to them. Nobody starts their day off by being determined to ruin somebody else's; it may happen, but it's very rarely as deliberate as we think.

For the world to change, we have to change ourselves first. We can't change others, but we can lead by example. We can follow the example of other leaders, but we have to take action to do so.

Action = Commitment + Focus

Consistent Action = Eventual Success

Try it for 90 days. I intend to.


It's not an attitude - it's a way of life.