Do you have a success mindset?

3300 studies of leaders have shown the one trait that all of them have in common is vision. I had an amazingly successful home meeting last night. It was valuable not just in monetary terms but in the lessons reinforced. I’d like to speak with you today about those lessons.

There was a person there who is absolutely exceptional in what it is that he does for a living. He should be making easily ten to a hundred times what he makes just due to his exceptional skills and talents in his area of expertise.

What is unfortunate is that he is not doing so. It’s not due to lack of enough skills, talent, training, education or any of these classic reasons people have for not achieving their dreams or vision. The reasons given me were lack of money and lack of time.

What is truly missing is that success mindset. He is very successful and I respect what he has achieved. What touches me is that this person is capable of so much more.

This is true of so many other exceptional entrepreneur friends who I have watched struggle for 5, 10, even 15 years or more. 

In the book I’ve just written, which I am in the process of re-writing and editing, as well my last series of posts, I’ve spoken of the importance of that success mindset.

The largest measures of that success mindset are your belief and vision. Belief and vision go hand in hand. 

You can have a vision so big that it actually demotivates and demoralizes you rather than motivates and energizes you. I do believe what Napoleon hill said in his book “Think and Grow Rich” -

“Whatever the mind can can conceive and believe it can achieve.”

One of the keys to this is not to set goals for yourself that are so outlandish that you can not believe them.

However, I believe where a large percentage of people fail is not having vision. It has certainly been shown in massive amounts of research, as I stated in the beginning of this post, that where there is greatness there is vision.

Most people do greatly over estimate what they can achieve in a year, but they greatly underestimate what they can achieve in 5 years. 

What I would like for you to grasp today is that your level of achievement can be severely limited by your vision. Almost everyone alive has doubled or tripled their income one or several times in life, if you’ve been working for any length of time. There is absolutely no reason for you not to continue to do so.

Billionaire Bill Bartmann went from dead broke on the streets to assets of $485 million and one of the Forbes list of the richest men in America in a little over 5 years. He had a crystal clear vision, the belief he would do so, and then set some goals. He set out on the path and achieved his goals and vision.

If a homeless, alcoholic street gang member who did not graduate high school and was told he would never amount anything in life can achieve this, becoming one of the most respected business men in America, being named entrepreneur of the year twice…

what can you do?  

Listen to what Brian Tracy  says about doubling your income.

Create a success mindset.

 Create your vision today and believe in yourself. Set some goals and create a plan, then set your foot on the path today.

To your unbounded success and prosperity in 2010 and beyond,

~ Scott

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We spoke of personal development in the last series of five blog posts -

MLM Professional Essentials

Every phenomenally successful network marketing professional we have had on the line has agreed that personal development is a huge part of your potential for exceptional achievement.

In fact, if I broke down everything covered within the last five posts into it’s simplest terms, it would be that exceptional achievement in our industry boils down to two aspects.

There are many aspects that are all synergistic in effect. I covered all of those especially relevant to achieving exceptional results at any endeavor in the series.

All these synergistic aspects flow from two root sources -

• Personal Development
• Connecting

If you are not connecting with people every day, and doing some regular personal development, you should not be an entrepreneur.

Personal development and continuous learning enables you to always improve your mindset and relevant skill sets, such as connecting.

Connecting with people every day enables you to contimually add to your product sales, and most importantly your residual income.

It does not even matter if your connecting immediately adds a product sale or new member to your team.

What matters in connecting is that you do it well, and are always connecting.

If you continually become better at all that you do and continually connect and build relationships, eventually your network marketing business will take on a life of its own…

Make your success a reality,

~ Scott

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Hello MLM professional! So far we have covered the two essential elements that help you create the right mindset – your beliefs/philosophy and your vision.

There are other qualities of a great mindset, but without these two essentials, your chance of exceptional success is greatly diminished. In Napoleon Hill’s timeless book on success and the building of wealth he gives some fundamental principles or steps.

Some of them are desire, specialized knowledge, imagination, organized planning, persistence, decision, masterminds, using the subconscious mind (now referred to as the superconscious mind).

With respect to the MLM professional or any other type of entrepreneur, in depth study and ongoing personal development is essential. This is why I recommended Napoleon Hill’s book and others for more in depth study.

This is also why the one essential daily habit to achieve success in anything where you dream of greatness is personal development. Continuous learning of the simple principles and the specialized knowledge relevant to your field is an absolute necessity.

However, many of us over-complicate things today. There is an epidemic of analysis paralysis and indecisiveness that occurs while researching this or looking up that. It’s not really your fault, there is a massive amount of data that we are bombarded with on a daily basis.

What we require in an MLM business, or any other, is to focus on the actions and skill sets that produce the greatest returns with most of our time and with our best energy.

With respect to becoming a top producing MLM professional there is one skill set you require to develop above all others. There is much debate over which method of this skill set is most effective.

Indeed choosing the methods that offer the most leverage are essential for maximum results. Here is the problem with this debate.

People spend so much time and energy on this debate, and waste so much money trying to find magic bullets that they miss the forest for the trees.

The one skill set you require to cultivate above all others is the ability to connect, to communicate, to build relationships. It does not matter your field, it has been found in study after study that 85% of success and income is determined by your ability to connect and communicate.

Even with this general knowledge about business and the workplace, and with every MLM professional that makes $25,000, $100,000, $400,000 or MILLIONS per month telling us this simple truth, we often spend most of our time in our MLM business doing everything but connecting or learning how to be better communicators.

Over the course of my business career, and my journey as an entrepreneur I have accumulated a wealth of knowlege and much incredibly valuable experience.

The most important and useful thing I can tell you is that as much value as specialized knowledge has, it’s really the understanding and application of the most basic of timeless principles that have the greatest impact on your success.

I learn much every day, but my life becomes simpler. If you keep chipping away at the non essentials and become exceptional at the most basic things that matter most you will achieve dreams beyond measure.

For your ultimate success as an MLM professional or entrepreneur do this -

I. MINDSET. Start with right MINDSET, improving it continuously through personal development.

• First have the right BELIEF, taking responsibility for your situation and results; acccepting that there are simple principles proven to work by those who already have what you want. Commit to making those principles habit.
• Create a crystal clear VISION of specifically what you will do, be and/or have, with a specific date, and create a plan to get there.
• Glue your BELIEF to your VISION with an unshakeable DESIRE. (Your vision will be a guide for the necessary thousands or millions of course corrections to your plan along the journey). 

II. IMPROVE. Execute with complete commitment the practice of daily IMPROVE – ment.

• Personal development to improve mindset.
• Continuous learning to improve your skill set.

III. CONNECT. Find the simple principles (or skill sets) for your field. Execute them a set amount of time daily, every day.

• For the MLM professional, these principles are connecting with a certain number of people daily and exposing them to your business.
• You will require a relationship or rapport of some sort, before you expose people to your MLM business.

There are myriad ways to connect. You can learn the most cutting edge methods of internet marketing, you can utilize many different types of social media, you can use any number of offline methods of connecting with and exposing people to your business.

Some methods will give you far more leverage than others. However, if you are not connecting with the right amount of quality, targeted people for your desired results per day, you have completely missed the point of network marketing.

If what I just said feels like an accusation, or what I say below feels the same, understand that what I write comes from experience and self-observation. These realizations came about observing what I was doing wrong and what others were doing right.

If you do not start with the right beliefs/philosophy and a clear vision you are adrift in a sea of delusion…

Start today with this simple process and it will -

“Empower You To Achieve Your Dreams”

Here are the previous articles in this series :

1  MLM Business Essentials
 
2  MLM Business Essential Element 1

3  MLM Business Professional Element 2

4  MLM Professional – Personal Development 3
 

To your unbounded success and happiness in 2010 and beyond,

~ Scott

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Can I be an MLM professional, and still have the ethics and integrity I had as a professional in the traditional business world? What you may not realize is that there is a tidal wave of professionals from all fields moving into the MLM business today.

Many of the professionals who have no real knowledge of the industry are asking some important questions. 

Is MLM a pyramid scheme?

Is MLM a ponzi scheme? 

Will getting into an MLM business destroy my reputation as a professional?

These are all very important questions. If you are a respected business person or community member, you certainly don’t want to ruin your reputation or compromise your integrity for a new business or side income.

When I left sales in corporate America, being someone who was very committed to integrity in all my dealings, I was extremely concerned about a lot of these common questions.

I did not have an in depth understanding of the network marketing business model and how to differentiate a legitimate MLM business from a thinly disguised pyramid scheme.

I did not want to get involved with something dishonest, or that would damage my reputation and credibility.

I had been involved in several online businesses, and also been exposed to the network marketing industry. I had been a customer of some products and had looked at a few opportunities.

Some of the techniques used to try and recruit me seemed a little mis-leading and created some concern for me about the integrity of the people involved. I did quite a bit of research before joining a primary MLM business.

What I discovered was business model that was extremely fair, in fact a great equalizer. There were little to no requirements with regard to:

• Race
• Education
• Previous Experience
• Age
• Background
• Starting Capital

In addition, there were not many limits geographically. Anyone that starts as a new MLM professional also starts at the top of their own organization.

There is not any other business I am aware of where you start as CEO & President with the lack of limitations above, and can do so with limited capital of $50, $100 or $200.

Compare that with one of the top franchises like Subway:

• About $1.2 Million up frontto start
• Long hours first 1-2 years, likely with no profit
• $30,000-40,000 per year profit once established
• $100,000-150,000 cash with sale after 4-5 years
• Best chance of success by very experienced entrepreneur

Granted, one of the reasons large numbers of people don’t succeed as an MLM professional is that they have no entrepreneurial experience.

However, the complexity of skills required is very low and many of the things you are required to do as a traditional business owner are handled by your network marketing company.

In fact, the reason most people do not have success with their new MLM business is because, on average, they quit 63 days into the endeavor.

There aren’t many self-made businesses that show profit and are extremely successful in the first two months, especially for new business owners. Yet, people expect this with network marketing.

Certainly, this is somewhat due to hype and some reps mis-representing their opportunity. If you are new to the business, expect there to be a learning curve.

If you are a professional of some type, with a passion for excellence, then becoming an MLM professional could be a ticket to a huge passive, residual income, freedom and attainment of your dreams.

The skill sets are simple, but the mindset and habits required are exceptional. It is the perfect business for people who love people, and who who strive to be exceptional…

You get paid commensurate with what you put into it.

In a landmark Larry King interview with Tim Sales, the truth was exposed. Larry was one of Bernie Madoff’s victims and was very interested in the differences between a ponzi or pyramid schemes and legitimate netwoek marketing.

Larry agreed that Tim had answered all his questions and was satisified that MLM was one of the fairest business models availabe today.

Ponzi and pyramid schemes are just excuses to pass money around. The people at the top get rich and everyone else loses. With a legitimate MLM business, there must be actual products of value to the marketplace, not just pay for recruiting people.

It just might be for you…

~ Scott

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Is personal development necessary for the MLM professional? We’ve discussed before that MLM success is elusive for most, and that 97% of those who start an MLM business never show a profit.

We also covered in the last two articles how the right beliefs and clarity of vision are essential to having real MLM success.

I mentioned that there is one action and a skill set that you require to have as daily habits in order to really have exceptional success. For some this is well known, and for others it is a well kept secret.

There have always been two businesses in network marketing. One involves your actual company or product, or network marketing. The other is the industry of personal development.

What is important to realize that continuous learning and personal development have always been inextricably linked to success in any field or endeavor, not just to being a successful MLM professional.

Brian Tracy and others have often talked of the many studies done of CEO’s, entrepreneurs, millionaires and billionaires, and what common themes are found in their success. Here is great Brian Tracy article on this for your reference -

Personal Development & Reading For Success

One of the most important commonalities is that leaders are readers. The average person in the USA reads less than 1 book per year and earns $20,000 per year, while the average CEO reads about 50 books per year and earns $1,000,000 per year.

Every top producing MLM professional I have heard speak or had on a call/webinar has agreed that those who have exceptional success, whether in six months or six years, have something in common.

They all invest a great deal of time, effort, money and energy into personal development and continuous learning.

A commitment to daily improvement in their skill sets and mindset is the one essential daily action that virtually every massive success at an MLM business has in common.

This action is not a new skill you require to learn, just something you must accept as a belief and then commit to make a daily habit through repetition.

Regardless of where you are in your journey, make a commitment to daily personal development and continuous learning to insure MLM success (or any type of achievement for that matter).

In fact, if you do not have the right beliefs, clarity of vision and a great self-image you may be well advised to begin work on your personal development even before you start your business.

My sponsor actually did years of  intensive daily personal development before starting his current MLM business, and has blown the world of internet network marketing wide open, achieving a fantastic level of MLM success in just five months.

Many people work for five years or more at their MLM business, never achieving his level of success.

As for myself, I had been getting more and more committed to personal development for many years prior to getting in this industry.

I have a blog and website that consistently rank around the top 1% of websites for traffic globally, with no prior experience in internet network marketing and very little knowledge of network marketing, before I started.

I credit a huge portion of my MLM success thus far to personal development and continuous learning.

The access to, and commitment to, such fantastic personal development and continuous learning as I receive through my current MLM business has been integral in my success.

I have moved from corporate professional to MLM professional, and would never go back.

A lot of people don’t make it based on their mindset, and having habits of daily personal development really helps with that issue. 

So far we have the two qualities or elements – right beliefs and clarity of vision. We also have the one daily action of personal develpoment - continuous learning.

Lastly, we have a skill set that is important to develop above all others, for any aspiring MLM professional. The action this skill set represents is the king of actions in your MLM business.

We’ll cover that one tomorrow…

Here are the other articles in this series, if you haven’t read them -

1. MLM Business Essentials 
2. MLM Business Essential Element 1
3. MLM Business Professional Element 2

As always, I aim to -

“Empower You To Achieve Your Dreams…”

~ Scott

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Hello MLM business professional! Have you been thinking about what the second essential element might be? Yesterday we spoke of starting with the right foundation, certain basic beliefs or philosophies.

There is one other essential element you require to achieve success in your MLM business or any other dream or goal you may have.

Obviously, we can’t know everything in advance, right? We can’t plan every little detail, because many things will happen that will require us to make adjustments on the journey.

We know we require a solid foundation to start from which is our beliefs, our acceptance and understanding of universal principles. We need one other essential element, no matter what actions or path we take.

The other essential element we require, in addition to our beliefs or philosophy, is a crystal clear vision of where we are going.

In Jeff Olson’s book, “The Slight Edge”, he speaks about how one of the most amazing, sophisticated pieces of engineering created by man, a rocket to the moon, is off course 97% of the time.

It requires constant corrections during it’s journey to reliably reach it’s destination. What is it then that is the guide?

It is a crystal clear vision that there is the moon and it’s specifically where I’m going.

In order for you to reach where it is you would like to be, you can’t know everything that will throw you off that path. You can, however, create a crystal clear vision of where you are going, so that you can make those constant corrections along the way.

Below is a quote from Brian Tracy’s “Focal Point” book on the importance of the quality of vision:

“In 3,300 studies of leadership, seeking for the common qualities possessed by great leaders throughout the ages, researchers found that the one quality all the studies had in common was the quality of vision. Leaders have vision.” 

So how do you do this and achieve exceptional MLM business success?

First, as Brian Tracy says in his book “Focal Point”, you need to engage in value clarification. You need to know what your core values are and make sure your vision is aligned with those core values.

For example, my most fundamental core values are -

• A belief in lifelong learning & personal development
• A passion for excellence
• A belief in teamwork, masterminds & relationships
• Prosperity & abundance for all through undivided integrity

I have more values, but everything flows from these. Once you are clear on your values, you create a crystal clear vision that is aligned with your values.

You then require to work backward from that vision to set goals that will measure how well you are performing along the way, and help you make the necessary course corrections in your journey.

As you can see, much of the in between stuff you will figure out between point A (your beliefs) and point B (your vision). (We’ll get more specific about the one daily action and the one skill set required to achieve massive success in your MLM business within the next two posts.)

Without both being honest about your beliefs and having a crystal clear vision of your destination, you may start far from where you need to start, or end up somewhere completely different than you would like to be.

If you have any doubt of this concept, most of us can look at our lives and see the undeniable truth in this.

If you are not where you would like to be today, it is most often because yesterday’s beliefs did not lead you to the necessary actions and/or you had no clear vision of where you were going.

And I’m not just picking on you, because this has certainly been true for me. I am still working to really distill my vision down to it’s ultimate level of clarity today. You can find the intitial overview post of this series here –

MLM Business Essentials 

and my post on essential element #1 here -

MLM Business Essential Element 1

For further study on these subjects, I recommend the following books -

1. “Think & Grow Rich – free download ” by Napoleon Hill
2. “The Slight Edge” by Jeff Olson
3. “The Lotus Code” by Mark Yarnell
4. “Focal Point” by Brian Tracy

The next article will cover the one essential daily action that you require to make a daily habit for exceptional MLM business success.

Until next time, my offer always stands. Work with me and I will -

“Empower You To Achieve Your Dreams…”

~ Scott

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For the MLM business professional today, it is very important to start from with the proper foundation. I worked diligently to figure out what that was as I learned the network marketing business.

I ran across many things that were very important, but this is a little different than essential.

I would separate the two by saying that things which are important will not necessarily lead to success or failure if they are added or left out of your endeavor.

Essentials make what ever you are doing functional. Without the essentials in place, you can strive for a lifetime and still not move closer to what you are trying to achieve.

With respect to my MLM business, I realized that the essentials were almost a carbon copy of what has been essential to personal and business success for thousands of years.

Granted, there are always some actions or habits that are specific to what you are trying to achieve, but the basic principles ring true across different types of achievement and every industry.

The starting point is what we are going to discuss today. If you haven’t read the overview of this series you can read that here – MLM Business Professional

The first essential element or quality that you must develop or possess for MLM business success has been called by many different names. The most accurate descriptions, I believe, would be philosophy or beliefs. I will use the term beliefs.

Essential Beliefs

1. Responsibility – All right beliefs start from the viewpoint that we are responsible. There is no blame, criticism or complaining. By taking reponsibility we claim complete command of our results.
2. Learn the Simple Principles  - All achievement in any area is mostly based on learning a few simple disciplines that have been proven to work by others. This belief allows you to seek out the ones that have achieved the results you seek, find the simple disciplines they used, and make them habits.

 Accepting these beliefs as fact, and making them a philosophy of life allows you to tap into some essential principles that have remained constant for thousands of years or more.

The Law of Cause & Effect states that “Everything happens for a reason; for every effect there is a specific cause.” To achieve anything, you only to find the cause reponsible for that effect.

Remember that thoughts are causes and conditions are effects. The first thing you must look at is your belief.

Learning the simple principles is a perfect example. This has been proven true throughout time. Finding those simple principles for your area of achievement gives you the cause.

For MLM business success, you need only execute them daily and to the best of your ability, continually improving, so that they become habit. The effect will inevitably occur.

This takes advantage of the principle of exponential growth. Daily consistent actions repeated as habit, while the intitial changes are almost invisible, eventually lead to massive exponential growth.

For the quickest and surest path to access, accept these two beliefs and make them your philosophy.

Take responsibility for every result or condition in your life. Understand that your beliefs become thoughts become words become actions which repeated become habits.

Making habits of those simple principles that others have all used to achieve what you want to achieve is the starting point for achieving the desired effect.

Regardless of whether you are starting an MLM business or any other goal, this is your starting point.  

Tomorrow we will discuss the second essential quality or element…

To your unbounded success and happiness in 2010 and beyond,

~ Scott

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My MLM business has really evolved and has been a catalyst for quite the transformation in me. For several years I had been dabbling as an entrepreneur, prior to becoming an MLM professional.

I never really had much success with any of these previous enterprises. I didn’t exactly know why, until recently.

I credit most of that realization to the focus on personal development and ongoing training that is an integral part of my current MLM business.

I realized that all success has two common elements you must develop or possess as an MLM professional. I also realized that there is one basic action and one skill set that must also become daily habits.

Regardless of your field of expertise, if you have achieved the pinnacle of success, you will be very strong in these two elements and two habits.

If you are not where you would like to be with respect to personal or business success, you will find a direct correlation based on your clarity and honesty about the two elements, and how consistent you are in these two habits.

The realization of this knowledge was enlightening for me as it laid my true potential in front of me for the taking. I only need reach out and grasp it.

It sounds simple, and it is. The problem with mastery of simple things is that they only take repetition to gain the skill and the benefits. Most of us find things that are so simple are also easy not to do.

Some of the simplest things are the most powerful. This is why I love quotes by great thinkers. The combination of power and simplicity has amazing potential for transformation.

With respect to success as an MLM professional or success in any other entrepreneurial endeavor it’s these simple essential elements and these simple essential habits that have always had the greatest impact on success or lack thereof.

We spend far too much time adding tools & activities to our repertoire in the desire for immediate network marketing success. Without proper focus on the above elements and creating these essential habits, continuing to add tools and activities is delusional.

If you want success at the highest levels, you must focus most of your resources on developing these two essential elements.

Once you have done so effectively, most of your resources should be focused on the essential action and essential skill set becoming habits. It’s really that simple, but most people do not accept this fact.

I say fact, because 60 years of network marketers and 100 plus years of direct sales entrepreneurs have repeated this process millions of times, creating proven results. These facts have also been present in nearly every entrepreneurial breakthrough outside of our industry.

Today’s new breed of MLM professional proves these facts, just as do the old school top producers, who year after year, continue to produce millions per year in income.

My friend, David Wood, who is the most successful newcomer to internet network marketing I’m aware of, has proven that this works just as effectively with today’s most cutting edge online strategies.

Mark Yarnell is still using these two essential elements and two habits just as effectively today with old school offline methods.

These two elements and two habits are the secrets of how people can put in three hours per day and build MLM business empires…

Whether you’re reading or hearing Brian Tracy, Mark Yarnell, Jeff Olson & others, there are a few common themes that are ageless principles that still work today.

I will cover them all this week. Make sure you come back to read about them all. Be a top producing MLM professional in 2010.

To your unbounded success and happiness in 2010 and beyond,

~ Scott

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