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The second thing I focused on as an amateur was timing. I was always worried about timing. Did I get in early enough? Could I be the youngest top-level person in the company? How many other leaders were already in my local market? Were there too many to compete against? Were there enough to get true momentum? How was the company? Was it too big? Did I miss the growth curve? Was it too small? I was obsessed with the idea of timing.

The third thing I focused on as an amateur was positioning. Was I in the right organization? Did other people have a better position than me? Maybe I didn’t have the right upline. Would I do better somewhere else?

And the fourth thing I focused on as an amateur was shortcuts. I was always looking for an angle. Any gimmick that came down the road, I was up for it. Newspaper advertising? Okay. Help wanted signs by the side of the road? Let’s go do it. Passing out fliers at the mall? I’m in. Going door to door? Let’s try it. The Internet didn’t exist when I was an amateur. Just imagine how crazy I would have been over all the Internet tactics I could have used to distract myself. What that meant was, every time I heard of some shiny new approach being trained by anyone in the world, I was digging into it to try to find the shortcut.

And then, I finally made the decision to Go Pro. Wikipedia’s definition of a professional is, “A person who is paid to undertake a specialized set of tasks and to complete them for a fee.” My definition of a Network Marketing Professional is, “A person who is an expert at the skills required to build a large and successful Network Marketing organization.”

There is a phrase in our profession that does more harm than good. It says, “Ignorance on fire is better than knowledge on ice.” The point of this phrase is that it’s better to be excited and ignorant than it is to be apathetic and smart. That may be true, but why do we have to choose one or the other?

Let me give you an example. Let’s say you were in need of an operation. At the hospital you meet your doctor. He comes in and says, “I’m very excited to conduct your operation. I’m so passionate about it I could hardly sleep. No one on earth wants to help you more than I do.” You say, “Wow, thanks Doctor. How long have you been doing these type of operations?” And he says, “Well, I’ve never had any schooling on this particular operation, and I’ve never practiced and I’ve never done one, but it doesn’t matter because I’m so passionate!” How are you going to feel? Enthusiasm is great, but eventually you need to marry that passion with skill.

Professional athletes will devote endless hours to preparing for competition but when they join Network Marketing, they won’t give one day’s worth of effort to learning our skills. Doctors will devote a decade of their lives at huge financial expense to become physicians, but when they join Network Marketing they won’t give a month’s study and practice to become a Network Marketing Pro.

In his book
Outliers
, Malcolm Gladwell’s research showed it takes approximately 10,000 hours of practice to reach the expert level at anything. With four hours a day of practice, that adds up to about seven years. That formula applies to Network Marketing as well. It’s going to take about seven years for you to become world-class. The good news is, the profession is very forgiving and you can earn a lot of money while you’re becoming an expert. The trick is not to get complacent; don’t stop learning while you’re earning.

When I made the decision to Go Pro, everything changed for me. I stopped focusing on luck, timing, positioning, and shortcuts. I even stopped focusing on the money. My world changed when I started focusing on the skills and made the commitment to practice, practice, practice, until I mastered them.

Another thing happened when I decided to Go Pro. All of a sudden, my group started to grow. It was like people could sense my change of focus and my commitment to excellence and they wanted to be a part of it. Think about a time in your life when you were around a person committed to excellence. It might have been a teacher, a coach, a boss or a friend. How did it make you feel? It was inspiring, right? You’ll find you will be an inspiration to others when you make this important shift.

Bottom line: If you’re going to be involved in this great profession, decide to do it right and treat it like a profession. If you Go Pro, this business is great. If you stay a Poser or an Amateur, you’re going to be miserable.

And by now, you’ve noticed I use the word profession a lot. I do that on purpose. Network Marketing is more than just a project. It’s not an industry. It’s a profession. If you do it right, it’s truly a career choice. It can take you out of working in a job that doesn’t make you happy to a place of total freedom.

That’s why I called my website
NetworkMarketingPro.com
. Here’s what I tell people every day: “Ladies and gentlemen, my wish for you is that you decide to become a Network Marketing Professional—that you decide to Go Pro, because it is a stone-cold fact that we have a better way. Now let’s go tell the world.”

When the site launched on March 11, 2009, very few people called themselves Network Marketing Professionals. That’s no longer the case. Millions of people have changed the way they think about our business, and I’m proud of that fact.

I look forward to the day when it’s common for people to hear:

 

• I’m a doctor, but I’m also a Network Marketing Professional.
  
 

 

• I work in construction, but I’m also a Network Marketing Professional.
  
 

 

• I’m an athlete, but I’m also a Network Marketing Professional.
  
 

The more people hear those words, the more the world will be ready for
a better way
.

CHAPTER THREE

Like Any Profession, You’ll Need to Learn Some Skills

I hope by now I’ve been successful at convincing you that Network Marketing is a better way. I hope I’ve also gotten the point across that, if you’re going to be involved, it’s best to become a professional. The next step is recognizing that you’ll need to learn some skills. But before we get to those skills, let me give you some good news.

Unlike most professions, you’re not going to need a lot of money for your education. You won’t have to take out student loans and you can actually earn while you are learning. In addition, this profession isn’t biased. In fact, it’s the most equal opportunity on earth. Your background, experience, contacts, age, race, or gender aren’t going to be factors in your ability to learn the skills to Go Pro.

And finally, this isn’t complicated. The skills necessary to grow a large and successful business are extremely learnable, and you’ll have a surprising number of people financially motivated to help you learn them.

There are three primary elements to your Network Marketing business.

First, you have the company’s products. If some people are successful in marketing those products and you’re not, it isn’t the product’s fault. In other words, everyone in your company has the same products to offer to the public.

Second, you have the company’s compensation plan. If some people are making a lot of money and you’re not, it isn’t the compensation plan’s fault. There isn’t one plan for men and one for women. There isn’t one plan for different age groups, or educational backgrounds, or for the color of your skin. The compensation plan is the same for everyone.

The third element is the most important, and that element is YOU. You are really the only variable. Everyone has the same product and the same compensation plan, but you are going to be the difference between success and failure.

That means right here and right now, you need to take full responsibility for your Network Marketing business. Decide today never to blame anyone or anything else for your lack of results.

In fact, in Network Marketing there is something of an epidemic going on. People just love to blame their upline (the people above them in the structure) for all of their problems. “If my upline did this for me or did that for me, everything would be better.”

If you’re committed to building a large and successful organization, I’d like to encourage you to do something important. I’d like you to say goodbye to your upline. Call them up and say something like:

“I want to thank you for this opportunity. I appreciate it. Getting into business for myself was important and I appreciate you introducing me to a company that you believe in and that I now believe in as well. But from now on, when it comes to building my business, I will use you as a resource but never as an excuse. I may call on you from time to time. If you’re available, that’s great. If you’re not, that’s okay too. I’m going to build my business and I understand one thing: It begins and ends with me.”

Everything changes when you take full responsibility for your Network Marketing career.

Would it surprise you to know there are only seven fundamental skills necessary to build a huge business in Network Marketing? Seven, not 70. Each one is fairly basic, but it always amazes me how little effort people put into learning them. If a college course were to be offered on Network Marketing, it would be one of the easiest classes to take. It’s not rocket science but you’ll be happy to know it’s one of the highest paid skill sets in the world.

Let’s explore each of them together.

CHAPTER FOUR

Skill #1—Finding Prospects

When people look at Network Marketing, one of their biggest questions is, “Do I know anybody? They believe if they know a lot of people, they can have lots of success, and if they don’t know a lot of people, they don’t have a chance. It sounds logical, but it’s just not true.

As I mentioned in chapter two, there are three kinds of people in Network Marketing: posers, amateurs, and professionals. When it comes to finding prospects, the posers make a mental list of three, four, or five people they hope will join their business, and their entire future is based upon the response of those few people. If they’re lucky enough to get one of them, they can extend the life of their career for a short time. They might even make another mental list of three or four people. Hopefully, they’ll eventually decide to stop being a poser and upgrade to the amateur ranks.

Would it surprise you to know that approximately 80% of all the people who join Network Marketing approach the task of building a business as posers? It’s true. Eight out of 10 distributors first approach their business with the poser mentality. They make a small mental list and see what happens. They never set out to develop the necessary skills. Your job is to make sure you’re not one of them and to help your team do the same. Educate people. Help them understand how powerful this opportunity can be if they treat it with respect. For the posers, their only real chance is luck, and that luck had better happen fast.

The second group is the amateurs. Instead of a small mental list, these people make a written list, which is a step in the right direction. Let’s say they make a list of 100 prospects. They charge out there with excitement, but not a lot of skill. They begin prospecting, and their list begins to diminish. As it grows smaller and smaller, their anxiety level grows higher and higher. Their biggest fear is running out of people to talk to. I know that was my biggest fear.

In my early 20s, my list wasn’t anything to brag about. As I mentioned before, I tried to use my parents’ contacts at the beginning, and it didn’t take long for me to run out of names. Soon everyone in my world knew what I was doing and had either said yes or no. It was scary. I felt like if I didn’t find some great people from my list and find them soon, I was going to fail in this business.

It never occurred to me that finding quality people to prospect was a skill. Up to this point in my new career, I always viewed “the list” as the ticket to wealth. If you had a good list, you’d succeed, and if you had a bad one, you either had to get lucky or you’d fail.

When I came to my defining moment and committed to become a professional, I began to study the people who had built large and successful organizations. I found that the professionals approached finding people to talk to as one of their core skills. It was part of their job to find new people. They weren’t interested in luck. They weren’t worried about running out of people. They developed the skill to make sure that never happened. The professionals started with a written list. But then they made the focused commitment to never stop adding to the list. They created something called an “Active Candidate List,” and I’m going to show you how to do the same thing.

One of the people who taught me how to do this well was Harvey Mackay, author of the huge bestselling book
How to Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive
. Harvey is a good friend and he’s also one of the best networkers in the world. I once asked him how he built such a large and influential list of friends. He told me that at the age of 18, his father sat him down and said, “Harvey, starting today and for the rest of your life, I want you to take every person you meet, get their contact information, and find a creative way to stay in touch.” He’s done that for over 60 years, and today his list of friends totals more than 12,000 people. And these aren’t just social media friends. They’re real friends, and I consider myself fortunate to be one of them.