Vitamins for the Mind by Jim Rohn

Experience

Take time to gather up the past so that you will be able to draw from your experiences and invest them in the future.

Don’t let the learning from your own experiences take too long. If you have been doing it wrong for the last ten years, I would suggest that’s long enough!

Life is not just the passing of time. Life is the collection of experiences and their intensity.

It’s easy to carry the past as a burden instead of a school. It’s easy to let it overwhelm you instead of educate you.

Be like a sponge when it comes to each new experience. If you want to be able to express it well, you must first be able to absorb it well.

To Get Ahead, Use Your Head by Harvey Mackay

I'm the last person in the world who would tell you not to work hard. I'm also the first one to remind you that working hard must also be tempered by working smart, or you might just be wasting a load of effort. There is a reason why we were born with both muscles and brains.

Consider the story of two lumberjacks in a tree-cutting contest. Both were strong and determined, hoping to win the prize. But one was hardworking and ambitious, chopping down every tree in his path at the fastest pace possible, while the other appeared to be a little more laid back, methodically felling trees and pacing himself. The go-getter worked all day, skipping his lunch break, expecting that his superior effort would be rewarded. His opponent, however, took an hour-long lunch and then resumed his steady pace. In the end, the eager beaver was dismayed to lose to his "lazier" competition. Thinking he deserved to win after his hard work, he finally approached his opponent and said, "I just don't understand. I worked longer and harder than you, and went hungry to get ahead. You took a break, and yet you still won. It just doesn't seem fair. Where did I go wrong?" The winner responded, "While I was taking my lunch break, I was sharpening my ax."

Hard work will always pay off; smart work will pay better. Remember back in college, there were the kids who studied all day and all night, but still struggled to pass exams? Then there were the kids who studied hard but also found time for a game of cards or basketball, and still aced every test. Both groups studied the same material, attended the same lectures taught by the same professors, and took the same test. Was the second group just that much more brilliant? Maybe, but my money's on the way they approached their material and learned how to study. If they were smart, they applied those same principles after graduation: work hard, but work smart.

That's a lesson that can be learned by even young children. A little girl visiting a watermelon farm asked the farmer how much a large watermelon cost. "Three dollars," he told her. "But I only have thirty cents," the little girl said. The farmer looked around his field, and feeling sorry for the little girl, pointed at a small watermelon and said, "That one's thirty cents." "Oh good," she replied as she paid him, "Just leave it on the vine and I'll be back in a month to get it."

Call it creativity, call it ingenuity, call it whatever: I call it using your head. Knowing how to analyze a situation and how to execute an action plan will put you ahead of the game in the long run. There's nothing wrong with having a leg up on your competition—it's how you win. The combination of hard work and smart work is the formula for success. Think about what needs to be done, and then think again about the best way to accomplish it—not necessarily the way you've always done it, or the fastest way, and certainly not the hardest way. Never make work harder than it has to be. That's just a colossal waste of time.

Perhaps the ingenuity award goes to the fellow who came to the Canadian border on his motorcycle, carrying two saddlebags strapped across his seat. The border guards asked the obvious question, "What's in your saddlebags? " "Rocks," was the reply. So the guards emptied the bags to check out his story. Sure enough, all they found were rocks. So they sent him on his way. The next week, the same fellow came to the crossing, again on a motorcycle, again with the same payload. The guards checked once again, and found more rocks. Off he went. The scene repeated itself weekly for several months, until finally the guards couldn't stand it any longer. "We know you are smuggling something across the border, but every time we inspect your saddlebags we find only rocks. Please tell us what you are up to, and we promise not to turn you in."

"Well," the fellow replied, "It's really very simple. I'm smuggling stolen motorcycles."

Mackay's Moral: It's good to work hard. It's great to work smart. But it's best to work hard and smart.

If You Want To Succeed With Your Ambit Business You Have To Be a Successful Closer

Following the tremendous feedback and questions I have received about the business, it seems that many people still struggle with the whole area of prospecting and how to close people into the business. Therefore, it makes a lot of sense for me to break the Ambit business down for you. If you want to succeed in this opportunity, you basically have to master three things. 

Three Things to Master

You have to master inviting someone to look at your business,  presenting your business, and training them how you did those first two things. So very simply, it’s just invite, present, and train.  That’s all.

Okay, maybe it’s not that simple!

So, I’ve taken each of those subjects and I’ve broken them down further. I have training on a straightforward process to guide you and it's called the Inviting Formula.

The Inviting Formula

So, whenever I refer to the Inviting Formula, you are going to understand it to mean a six-part formula, and those six parts are:

1) Greet your prospect.
2) Qualify your prospect.
3) Invite them. “Invite them” means, just ask them to do something.
4) Handle their questions and objections.
5) Close them to take action.
6) Follow up with them if it’s required.

Close to Action

Notice the next to last point is “Close to Action.” This is the agreement about what steps you’ll both take to progress forward. For example, progress could be that you’re going to follow up with your prospect in a month. Meaning that they’re really busy right now, and they have the interest but not the time, and so you just say, “hey, you know what, I totally understand. Is it okay if I just touch base with you maybe in a month or so? Maybe that time will be better for you.” 

So that might be the Close to Action that you’re going to take.  Or it could be that they’re going to watch a presentation that you’re going to send to them. In this case you would wrap up the call by saying, “I’m going to send you this presentation by email, and once you watch it, you will call me back in 30 minutes.”

The Close to Action Is Not an Independent Step

Many people write to me and ask about how I close people into the Ambit business. There are a lot of questions like, “I’ve got people on the fence,” or “I get to the end of the presentation and they seem interested, and then they’re not,” and various types of questions like that. Do you see now that a successful close is not an independent step? It’s just a single part of an aggregated process.

You’re never going to succeed in Ambit until you get really good at the steps that lead up to the close. So if you look at the close as being the “where you’re going,” and then you back each step up, you’ll then understand how important each one of the steps in the Inviting Formula is.

Next Steps: Need more help with inviting and getting your prospects to say “yes” to your business opportunity?  I offer a free ebook, “How to Build a Huge Ambit Business Part-Time“.

Evaluating Your Associations by Jim Rohn

I’d like for us to take a look at the power of influence in our lives and how it is possible to be nudged off course a little at a time until finally, we find ourselves asking, "How did I get here?"

We should ask ourselves three key questions:

1) "Who am I around?" You've got to evaluate everybody who is able to influence you in any way.

2) "What are these associations doing to me?" That's a major question to ask. “What have they got me doing, listening to, reading, thinking and feeling?” You've got to make a serious study of how others are influencing you, both negatively and positively.

3) "Is that okay?" Maybe everyone you associate with has been a positive, energizing influence. Then again, maybe there are some bad apples in the bunch. All I'm suggesting here is that you take a close and objective look. Everything is worth a second look, especially the power of influence. Both will take you somewhere, but only one will take you in the direction you need to go.


Only then can we discuss three ways to handle associations or relationships that are holding you back.

1) Disassociate. This is not an easy decision, nor something you should take lightly, but in some cases it may be essential. You may just have to make the hard choice not to let certain negative influences affect you anymore. It could be a choice that preserves the quality of your life.

2) Limited association. Spend major time with major influences and minor time with minor influences. It is easy to do just the opposite, but don't fall into that trap. Take a look at your priorities and your values. We have so little time at our disposal. Wouldn't it make sense to invest it wisely?

3) Expanding your associations. This is the one I suggest you focus on the most. Find other successful people that you can spend more time with. Invite them to lunch (pick up the tab) and ask them how they have achieved so much or what makes them successful. Now, this is not just about financial success; it can be someone who you want to learn from about having a better marriage, being a better parent, having better health or a stronger spiritual life.

It is called association on purpose—getting around the right people by expanding your circle of influence. And when you do that, you will naturally limit the relationships that are holding you back. Give it a try and see for yourself.

Why People Are So Anti-Network Marketing

Chatting with a colleague recently, I could tell he was really frustrated and a little upset with himself. It turns out that things had been going really well with a prospect – he was building a sound relationship with that person. Having identified what the prospect needed, wanted, and didn’t want, my colleague felt confident that he had positively qualified his prospect and was ready to invite the prospect to take action. The prospect was all excited about the excellent  training offer and was certainly eager to move things forward . . . and then things suddenly went really cold.

It turns out that the prospect’s wife had found a bunch of junk on the internet that put down network marketing as an industry, and his company specifically. I can tell you that both objections are not based on true fact. I can also tell you that the same thing has happened to me and I shared my associate’s frustration. He wasn’t able to pick up on it early enough to deal with this new “‘objection” in time.

The “Anti” Lobby

The only way negative comments and negative websites will ever carry any weight, regardless of whether they hold any validity or not, is when there is someone willing to read and believe those things.

As incredible as the Internet is as a source of information, we all know that for every action there is a reaction. Unfortunately, the Internet has allowed the creation of what I would call the “Anti” lobby.

The Internet allows anyone at all to publish whatever they want. There are so many “anti” sites out there it’s hard to believe. And I’m not just talking about anti-MLM business. Of course there’s a lot of anti MLM because there are a whole lot of people out there who had gone into network marketing, were not trained properly and did not do it right. These are the type of people that don’t take personal responsibility for getting bad training or no training at all. And then they turn around and talk negatively about the MLM industry.

Failure Can Lead to Resentment Towards the MLM Industry

The person who’s spouting the negativity most of the time is feeling negative because they failed at their business. The person who believes the negativity without any inspection or research to validate what is being said, is the person who has doubts in themselves.

They take very erroneous statements such as, “90% of the people who join network marketing don’t succeed,” and they believe them. They say to themselves, “oh, wow.  Maybe I shouldn’t bother with network marketing.” Well, I’ve got another statistic for you: 100% of the people who are born are going to die. So if my reaction to that was: let’s stop having more children – would that make any sense at all?

No it wouldn’t. It would be ridiculous – and so is the erroneous statistic about network marketing. In other words, you can distort any piece of data or information and twist it however you want. There’s not a subject out there that you cannot get on the Internet and type the word “anti” in front of, and not find that somebody out there hasn’t pulled it to pieces.

Do Your Own Research

The point I’m making is that you yourself have to be able to evaluate the information that comes to you. One of the most broad, sweeping perspectives you can take is to ask yourself: are they offering a solution to something or are they just complaining? If a solution isn’t offered following the complaint or the negative comments, then these people you’re talking with aren’t trying to solve anything. They’re trying to destroy something instead. What they’re doing – just complaining – doesn’t add any value at all.  One of the key components that I am always looking for when listening to a complaint is some sort of a “How do I?”  So, while these people spend all of their time writing up information about how network marketing doesn’t work, I tend to dismiss it.  Anybody who cares to turn around and look can see that it is a very large and successful industry.

The Genuine Complainers Will Offer a Solution

That isn’t to say that some complaints do not have merit, especially with regards to MLM training. However, I do find that the more genuine people who care are more likely to offer a solution, as well as making the complaint. That’s the key element that separates the instructor from the complainer!

That’s the whole reason why I now spend my time offering solutions and help in MLM and network marketing training.

So did my colleague learn from his experience? Of course he did! He realized that he had been able to sense that something wasn’t quite right when he met with the prospect and his wife. He also realized that he was talking to two people who were at different stages. The prospect was more than ready to take action, whereas the prospect’s wife hadn’t been qualified effectively and still had objections that had to be addressed. The solution would have been to focus on handling the objections, qualifying his wife, and bringing both the prospect and his wife to the same point of positive action.

Next Steps: Need more help with inviting and getting your prospects to say yes to your business opportunity?  Download my free e-book: How to Build a Huge Ambit Business Part-Time.

Vitamins for the Mind by Jim Rohn

Fascination

Fascination is one step beyond interest. Interested people want to know if it works. Fascinated people want to learn how it works.

Learn how to turn frustration into fascination. You will learn more being fascinated by life than you will by being frustrated by it.

I'm on my way to the airport to catch a plane that leaves in 45 minutes. The traffic is not moving one inch. I am now fascinated—not frustrated, but fascinated. But I must admit: it doesn't work every time.

Develop a childlike fascination with life and people.

Performance Tracker Can Help You Grow Your Ambit Business

I recently read this question from Shakira, a Network Marketer who is working to grow her MLM Business.

At this point, I think my biggest challenge (COULD be a character flaw … ! but! … ) is the ability to organize and prioritize my day. When do I do my affiliate marketing? When do I do my blogging? When do I do my calling and follow-up? How many live events must I attend monthly to solicit new business partners and customers? So much to do! All the time in the world to get it done, yet … I dilute my effectiveness with inefficient multi-tasking!!! HELP!!!!!

I doubt Shakira is suffering from a character flaw!  Organizing and prioritizing can be more challenging than many people realize — especially in the high tech world we maneuver through with our Ambit business endeavors.  There is a key to organizing and prioritizing that helps however – the trick is in aligning your activities to your goals. 

This may be easier said than done, so to help you develop that skill, I have a very handy tool that many networkers have found to be useful in making that happen.  It is called the Performance Tracker. You can see for yourself two very important things when you take a look at this document:

• Lots of people struggle with the same issue that Shakira described!
• Lots of people have gotten this tool and found that it was exactly what they needed to organize, prioritize and find the weak spots in their business!

If you feel that you also struggle with this issue, rest assured you are not alone; you don’t have a character flaw and most of all, there is a solution!

Wishing you great success!

 I welcome your comments and feedback!  Let me know if this was helpful and what else I can provide you with.  Or just give me your opinions! I love to hear from you!