Many people have the mistaken idea that owning your own business is easy and doesn’t take any time since, after all, everyone says you can get rich in a few hours a week, right?

Wrong! At least, in the beginning that’s wrong. If you approach your Network Marketing Home Business with that attitude, I can almost guarantee you that you will fail. Anything worth doing takes time to do it right. And, when you own your own business, you will discover that there are hundreds of daily distractions competing for your time, energy and focus.

So, how do you keep your focus and not get derailed on the road to success? Here are five tips to help you keep focused.

1. Always keep the end in mind. What is the reason you wanted to have your own business in the first place? Now, don’t just say “money.” Yes, money is good to have, but it’s too vague to have as a goal. Why do you want money? Do you want to have money so that you have more freedom, and more time to spend with your family? Do you want to have money so that you can be a blessing to others? Do you want to have money so that you can leave a legacy for your children? Maybe you want to be able to spend more time with your children by working at home. Maybe you want to get away from a tyrannical
boss. Whatever your goal was when you started your Network Marketing business, keep that goal in mind at all times. It will help you keep focused and motivated to achieve success.

2. Treat your Network Marketing business like a real job. Remember, your earning will be directly tied to your effort. This is even more true when you own your own business. You may be able to get by with being a slacker at a 9-5 job, but if you slack off in your own business, you won’t last long. You want to be very efficient, and very focused so that you can accomplish as much as possible in a short amount of time.

3. Dedicate a certain number of hours every day to your Network Marketing Business. I know a lot of home workers brag about working in their underwear, but some people find it helpful to actually dress up for work to get themselves fully into the mind set of being a successful entrepreneur. I’m not saying you have to “dress for success” at home, but rather, do what puts you in the right mindset to work on your business. Your friends and family need to understand you are not available to “chat” during your work time. You and they need to take your business as seriously as you would a job outside of your home.

4. Organize your work schedule for peak efficiency. There are a lot of little time suckers that can disrupt your work flow and hinder your success in your Network Marketing business. One of the biggest distractions is email. Let’s face it, if you are building a business at home, you are on your computer most of your working hours. If you have email notifications going off constantly throughout the day, and you stop what you are doing to read and respond, you won’t be as efficient as you could be. Instead, try setting specific times to read and respond to email. One hour in the morning and one hour in the afternoon should be sufficient. Anymore than that, and you are probably falling into the trap of “chatting” rather than working. You can’t expect others to respect your time if you don’t.

5. Know when to outsource. When your Network Marketing business really gets rolling, you will find that you are spending a lot of time doing things that you really don’t need to do. Look at everything on your to-do list and first ask yourself if it’s something that can be automated. For instance, if you are personally responding to every lead, you are wasting a LOT of time. Use an auto responder instead. There are several inexpensive options available. Get Response and AWeber are two of the best. Second, ask if there are tasks that someone else in your family can take over. Maybe you have a teenager who wouldn’t mind taking over some of your more routine tasks for pay. Third, maybe it’s time to hire a service provider to take over some of your tasks. Check out guru.com or Elance.com. You’ll find people willing to provide mailing services (both email and snail mail), typing, research, design, advertising, ghost-writing, bookkeeping, etc. for a reasonable cost.

The success of your Network Marketing business rests on your shoulders. It is solely dependent upon the decisions you make day-to-day. You can be successful if you remain focused. It takes discipline, but in the end, the result is well worth the effort!

But, for others, the allure of being your own boss, setting your own schedule, and determining your own salary, makes the risk seem small. There is a certain personality type more suited to this line of work. They are the entrepreneurs, the risk takers, and the truly passionate people who are willing to invest everything they have for as long as it takes to reach their goals.

I have heard that Thomas Edison tried 999 prototypes of the electric bulb before he found success. Yet, he didn’t look at those as failures. Instead, he said he had discovered 999 ways that didn’t work.

It is also said that most millionaires went bankrupt five times before finding a successful way to generate wealth.

The old adage, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again, certainly holds true for network marketing.

Here are some tips to turn your failures into success:

1. Check your levels. Are you passionate about your product or opportunity? If not, you’ll have a tough time getting someone else to buy in.

2. Do you know who your target market is? You may be trying to sell to the wrong customers. The average apartment dweller doesn’t need a ride-on mower.

3. Do you know how to reach your target audience? Maybe you should invest in some demographic reports or, at the very least, do some research yourself on the internet or at the library.

4. Does your marketing plan need a make-over? Test market a new website design, sales letter, packaging, or price to see if your numbers improve.

5. It may be time to bury that idea and move on to the next. If the typical millionaire failed five times before finding success, consider yourself one step closer and move on.

The beauty of network marketing is there is no end to the opportunities that exist. This system will work, if you work it. Never give up!

Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire and begin at once, whether you ready or not, to put this plan into action. –Napoleon Hill

There are several different methods for creating a plan. One of the best is to start at the end and work your way backwards. That may not be the easiest way in this industry, if you aren’t certain how to achieve the end result. But, I still believe it is a valuable exercise and will help you to keep the end in mind while you are taking the steps to get there. So, let’s say you know you want to make $100,000 a year. Some of you may be thinking that’s a conservative amount, some of you are probably laughing at such a paltry sum. But, it’s a nice, round figure, so let’s start there.

What would it take to for you to make $100,000 a year? Break it down into pieces. If you are in a MLM company that sells products, how many dollars worth of sales would it take for your commission to reach $100K? I would recommend you look at it from several angles. What would the total sales be if you, personally, sold all of that product? OK, now what if you had some downline working with you. Let’s say you have two recruits who are selling lots of product. You personally sell enough to earn $50K off of commissions and they each sell enough for you to make $50K off of their combined sales. Keep breaking it down until you find a combination that seems “reasonable.”

Now, what would it take to get there? How many people would you personally need to recruit, and how much product would you personally have to sell in order to reach your goal? What about each of your downline? If nothing else, this exercise will teach you very quickly the power of leverage and why it’s so important to have other people working under you!

Now, how soon do you want to get there? Do you want to reach that level in 6 months? 12 months? 2 years? Let’s say you are going to give yourself 2 years to get there. How many people do you need to sign up in your business each month in order to achieve your goal? How many people do you need to help your downline recruit each month? Knowing that recruiting is basically a numbers game, and you will likely close less than 10% of the people you approach, how many people do you need to talk to in order to recruit that many people every month? I wouldn’t worry at this point about the variance in performance of your recruits. We all know that one enthusiastic recruit will outperform ten recruits with no drive. But, for now, we will assume that everyone will produce an average amount of sales and downline.

If you need to recruit 2 people a month, and you have to talk to at least 20 to do that, that breaks out to 5 leads a week. How are you going to generate those leads once you have blown through your obligatory list of 200 names? You need to have a lead generation system in place. This can be through a newsletter, a group or forum in which you participate, a website, EzineArticles, direct mail, advertising, pay per click or any number of other ideas.

Basically, we are trying to set realistic, but not easy goals. You need to have a target to shoot for.

Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible. –Tony Robbins

If you are short on knowledge on how to do anything, that’s OK. You can always start with what you know and learn as you go. If you want until you know everything about everything, you’ll never even get out of the starting gate! Now that you have a general idea about what lies ahead of you, you need to come up with a daily, weekly and monthly game plan. Realize that your game plan is always subject to change. Nothing is set in stone. But, resolve to do accomplish the goals you set for yourself. One of the mistakes many people make when they enter the Network Marketing arena is that they buy into the myth that they can be wildly successful and tremendously wealthy without doing any work. Trust me, it doesn’t work that way. The important thing is to not get bogged down in all of the details.

I’ll leave you with a final quote from philosopher William James: “To change ones life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly.”

Change your life today. Begin today.

“Imagination is the true magic carpet.”

–Norman Vincent Peale

We talked about imagining yourself the way you want to be in our last article. It is important to continue to do that. Commit to yourself to take a few minutes when you get up in the morning, and a few minutes before you go to bed at night, to picture yourself in your mind’s eye as a successful business person. Picture leads coming to you for information about your business. Instead of feeling desperate about the amount of people in your downline, feel content and excited about people chasing you down wanting to know how you became successful in network marketing.

Beyond your own imagination, make sure you feed your mind with other sources of good information too. Everything you see or hear is a seed being planted in your mind garden. You may not be personally planting them, but just as surely as the wind carries a dandelion seed to your lawn so that it can sprout up in the spring, these images, sounds and thoughts are being planted in your mind where they will grow.

So much of what surrounds us and enters our minds is negative. How often do you hear good news on the radio or TV? How often do you read an inspiring story on the front page of your local newspaper? How many magazines cover stories deal with success and heroism? When you are standing at the checkout stand, do you overhear people talking about how wonderful their lives are and how successful and rich they are? Do your friends or family members frequently tell you about their amazingly close and fulfilling relationships with others in their lives? How many people tell you how deliriously happy they are to get up and go to work every day?

Do you see what I mean?

“Any idea, plan, or purpose may be placed in the mind through repetition of thought.”

–Napoleon Hill

Unfortunately, this applies to both good and bad. So, if we are receiving negative input the majority of our 16+ wakeful hours a day, we need to make sure we are counteracting that with plenty of positive input. I highly recommend you build up a personal library of motivational books. Read books by W. Clement Stone, Napoleon Hill, Norman Vincent Peale, Stephen Covey, Anthony Robbins, Zig Ziglar, Dale Carnegie, or any of the other wonderful authors. In addition to reading, I listen to MP3 files and CDs most of the time instead of the radio. Don’t get me wrong, I love music, and I also listen to a lot of music during the day. But, even then, I am careful about what I listen too. If you pay attention to most of the lyrics of popular music — old or new — you’ll discover that most of it consists of negative seeds just waiting to sprout weeds in the garden of your mind. So, I recommend you even be careful about your choice in music. I am not suggesting you become a monk and seal yourself off from anything and everything negative, just that you be aware of the powerful negative influences you are surrounded by every day. You may decide you want to go watch the latest slasher movie, just be sure you counteract that with something good.

“Live out of your imagination, not your history.”

–Stephen Covey

Remember that repetition is a key component of changing your habitual thoughts. Many of us are held back by remembering our failures of yesterday instead of imagining our successes of tomorrow. If you don’t have enough successes of your own to think about, borrow someone else’s! There are lots of motivational stories out there. Find one that you can identify with, and memorize it; replaying it often in your mind. See yourself living out that kind of success. Talk to your upline, downline, cross line. Find someone who inspires you.

Put yourself on a self-improvement program. Determine to read a book a month (or a week, if you are a fast reader). Listen to a CD a week. In fact, I’d recommend you listen to the same one every day for a week to make sure you really get what the speaker is saying. Take classes. There are on-line classes and correspondence classes that you can take on your schedule. But, you should always keep your mind active and learning. It is well worth the time and effort spent. This is part of what Stephen Covey refers to as “sharpening the saw.” The analogy is that of a woodcutter using a saw to chop down trees. He is so busy chopping, that he never takes the time to sharpen the blade. In the beginning, he chops down a lot of trees in short order. But, eventually, he ends up cutting fewer trees less efficiently because his blade becomes dull.

In Part 5, we’ll cover the last step in the process — action.

“The creative mechanism within you is impersonal. It will work automatically and impersonally to achieve goals of success and happiness, or unhappiness and failure, depending upon the goals which you yourself set for it. Present it with ‘success goals’ and it functions as a ‘success mechanism’. Present it with negative goals, and it operates just as impersonally and just as faithfully as a failure mechanism. Like any other servomechanism, it must have a clear-cut goal, objective, or problem to work upon. The goals that our own creative mechanism seeks to achieve are MENTAL IMAGES, or mental pictures, which we create by the use of the Imagination.” — Maxwell Maltz, Psyco-Cybernetics

This series deals with developing a positive self-image. Most of this article is based on the research and techniques developed by Dr. Maxwell Maltz. Dr. Maltz was amazed by his patients who, after undergoing flawless plastic surgery and receiving exactly what they had said they wanted, still saw themselves as “ugly.” He realized that surgery alone, without a corresponding change in the patient’s self-image, meant nothing.

Our self-image is made up of memories, experiences and beliefs. While some of those beliefs may no longer be true, until we change our self-image, we will continue to be limited by our beliefs no matter how ridiculous they may be.

Scientific research has documented that repetition creates neural pathways in our brains. This is one of the most amazing characteristics of the human brain. We can actually mold it through repetition. The neurons modify their connections to improve the efficiency of circuits. It is similar to taking the same path through the woods over and over again until it is well-worn and easier to travel. The same goes for our memories: the more we review them in our mind, the more deeply they are etched in our neural pathways. Can you see how going over and over and over those same negative beliefs, or replaying those past failures can be so debilitating!

Now, here’s the truly amazing part. Your mind doesn’t even know the difference between a real and an imagined event! So, what if you start replacing those tired old black and white failures from your personal ancient history with brilliant color graphics of your future — the way you want it to be? This same technique is being used successfully by athletes the world over; they view themselves sinking the shot, making the goal, slamming that ball out of the park, breaking the world record, winning the championship game, etc. You can actually improve your performance by mentally seeing yourself perform perfectly, even if you don’t physically practice.

Now don’t go off the deep end and tell people you are going to just “imagine” yourself to success without doing the work. You won’t. But, imagining yourself succeeding at a task before you undertake it will help you to achieve success. Maxwell Maltz believed that self-image was the key to success. Positive thinking by itself won’t get the job done. The thoughts have to be consistent with your self-image.

Richard Wilhelm puts it this way in the The I Ching, or Book of Changes

“Every event in the visible world is the effect of an ‘image,’ that is, of an idea in the unseen world. Accordingly, everything that happens on earth is only a reproduction of an event in a world beyond our sense perception…”

So, your assignment for today is to think about where you feel the least successful in your business. If you could change one thing, gain one skill, improve one ability, what would it be? Now, set to work imagining yourself the way you want to be in that area. Don’t just affirm it, visualize it. Take the time to flesh it out. See it in full color. What would it feel like, smell like, taste like? How would you behave differently? Would you dress differently? Would people treat you differently? Imagine standing in front of the person who least expects you to succeed when you are successful beyond your wildest dreams. What would that feel like?

Spend just a few minutes visualizing this way every day before you set out to complete your tasks, and you’ll be amazed at the difference you’ll see in your business.

I’ll leave you with one more quote:

“Formulate and stamp indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding. Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade. Your mind will seek to develop the picture…” — Norman Vincent Peale

In my next article, I’ll deal more with planting seeds and feeding the mind.

If you’ve done any gardening of flowers or vegetables, I am sure you’ve noticed that weeds come up all by themselves. You really don’t even have to prepare the soil. Weeds will automatically pop up. If you do prepare the soil, you don’t have to plant the weeds — again — they manage to pop up all on their own. In fact, once I’ve prepared the soil and planted my seeds, it never ceases to amaze me how much faster the weeds sprout up than the plants I am trying to grow!

The first thing you have to do is distinguish the weeds from the plants. This is usually fairly easy to do, although often a negative thought may be cleverly disguised as “fact” or “being realistic.” Generally speaking, a negative thought will make you feel weak or frightened. A positive thought will empower you.

Watch your thoughts for a while and see just how many of them are negative, and which category the thought falls into. You may be surprised to find out just how many weeds, and how many different types of weeds you are dealing with. Take the time to write down as many of these thoughts as you identify. Especially watch those that have anything to do with your business, your ability to succeed at your goals, or money in general.

Many of us harbor incredibly negative attitudes toward money and don’t even realize it. Things like “It takes money to make money.” “The rich get richer while the poor get poorer.” And my all-time personal favorite, “Money is the root of all evil.” That one, by the way, is not actually in the Bible, though many people swear it is. It is the love of money, which is stated to be the root of all evil, not money itself. You see, money is simply a form of energy exchange. You can also think of it as a magnifier. It will magnify whatever already exists. If you are foolish, more money will make you more foolish. If you are good, you will use your money for good. If you are careless with your pennies, having dollars won’t help you. It will only give you more money to be careless with!

Now that you have identified and listed your weeds, it’s time to rid your garden of them.

One of the safest, although time-consuming methods of weeding is to simply pluck out the weeds by hand. It avoids the use of chemicals, and doesn’t disrupt the seed. However, in the garden of the mind, it isn’t as easy as just plucking out a negative thought. For example, right now, I don’t want you to think about a pink elephant. Whatever you do, do not imagine a pink elephant, wearing a top-hot, riding on a tricycle. Just pluck that thought right out of your mind. I repeat, do not think about a pink elephant.

OK, how successful were you? I am guessing you probably weren’t very successful.

Now, I want you to think about sitting on a bench and looking out into a field of daisies. The birds are singing in the trees around you. Bees are buzzing around the flowers. You can hear children laughing in the distance. The sun warms your skin, and lulls you into a peaceful state of mind, while a soft breeze gently moves the blades of grass in the field. Fluffy white clouds float silently by in the bright blue sky over your head.

Now, were you still thinking about that pink elephant? You see, the most effective means of plucking negative thoughts from your mind garden is to replace them with positive thoughts.

So, pull out your list of weeds again. Next to each negative thought, write a positive statement to replace it with. For instance, maybe you think, “I can’t call leads. I freeze up every time!” Replace that thought with, “I am an excellent communicator. I am offering a valuable opportunity to someone who has a genuine interest in what I have to offer and wants to talk to me. My conversations with leads are fun, stimulating and profitable!”

The next time you have that fear thought (by the way, a good acronym for fear is “false evidence appearing real”), replace it with your positive thought.

I won’t lie to you and tell you that this is easy. But, what I will tell you is that it does become easier with time. And it is effective. There are more steps, but you have your first assignment in hand. Go ahead and start making your list. Part three will continue where we left off.

In 1952, Norman Vincent Peale wrote a book that has had a profound effect on the lives of millions of people. “The Power of Positive Thinking” has been translated into 41 languages, and has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide. The information he presented in his little book over 50 years ago is now being backed up by scientific research. Norman Vincent Peale believed that if you change your thoughts, you can change your world.

The problem that many people have with the whole idea of positive thinking is, they tried it — once — didn’t see an immediate change in their circumstances, and abandoned the idea claiming that it didn’t work. Think about it. How many years did it take you to get where you are today? Why then would you expect your circumstances to change overnight? Think of your thoughts being like the rudder on a big ship. You turn the rudder, but the ship doesn’t make an instant, sharp turn in the water. However, the ship has changed course, and gradually, the change in course will become apparent. Your thoughts work the same way. They will begin to change the circumstances of your life and your business, but it will likely take some time to see dramatic results.

The problem is you can’t change all of your circumstances with one new thought when there are 50 other negative thoughts overpowering it. Most of us have heard so-called “facts” about business, money and success for so many years, that we have accepted these as true. Well, I’m going to let you in on a secret: facts are not necessarily truth. Think of facts as a temporary set of circumstances that is subject to change. Think of truth as a future potential.

“Any fact facing us is not as important as our attitude toward it, for that determines our success or failure. The way you think about a fact may defeat you before you ever do anything about it. You are overcome by the fact because you think you are.”

– Norman Vincent Peale

The fact is, you may not be a successful network marketer today, at this very moment. But, the truth is, you can be a successful network marketer. But, it will take a change of thought and some time and effort on your part.

In part two of this series, we’ll talk about weeding and feeding the garden of your mind.

On the surface, this may not seem to have much to do with network marketing, but there is a big connection between your thoughts and your success (or lack thereof!). The mind is a funny thing. We have this continual monologue going on inside of our brains. It never stops. Have you ever started reading something and 15 minutes later found yourself thinking about something totally unrelated to what you were reading and wondered how on earth you got there? Have you ever followed that trail back to the beginning and discovered all of the twists and turns that got you to the end destination?

Depending on which source you believe,the average person has anywhere from 12,000 to 50,000 thoughts per day. Most of these are the same old thoughts we were programmed to think from our childhood. Things we heard our family and peers say remain trapped in our brain on an endless loop. Some of my personal childhood tapes were, “the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.” “Big business has all the money and the little man will never get anywhere.” “The way to make money is to go to school, get good grades, and get a steady job.” Of course, from time to time, there were the other thoughts that got programmed in there like “you’re not good enough,” or “you’ll never amount to anything.”

If you truly paid attention to your thoughts, you’d probably be amazed to discover how many negative thoughts you have every day. What is worse is that these thoughts are usually playing on an endless loop through our mind just below the conscious level, so we don’t even realize we are sabotaging ourselves. You see, the problem with thoughts is, they seem to be too small to really matter. Besides, they are internal, and no one else knows what we’re thinking, right?

Well, have you ever said something, maybe even under your breath, and wondered where that came from? There’s a saying:

Watch your thoughts; they become words.Watch your words; they become actions.

Watch your actions; they become habits.

Watch your habits; they become character.

Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.

You will be bombarded with plenty of people — often your family and your friends — who will tell you that you’ll never succeed at network marketing. Many of them will tell you from their own experience that it’s impossible to succeed in this business. This is one of the reasons I don’t agree with the traditional method of recruiting people in MLM. The very people you love the most, and who love you, will likely have the most negative attitude toward your new-found opportunity. If you aren’t careful, you’ll adopt these thoughts as your own, and find your enthusiasm drop at an alarming rate. You’ll need to guard your thoughts, and be sure to counteract any negative ones with positive ones. One of the best ways to do this is to listen to and read about the success of others.

Today, spend some time watching your thoughts — especially when you are thinking about, or working on, your business. In fact, it wouldn’t hurt to put up little post-it notes or index cards with positive affirmations where you can see them first thing in the morning and throughout the day. Your friends, family and co-workers may think you are a little strange at first, but you will be able to have the last laugh when you begin to see positive changes take place in your life.

No one likes to get played. We want people to be straight forward with us, even when we aren’t straight forward with others. But, there is one person you need to play mind games with in order to be successful. You.

You will never be a success at network or multi-level marketing, or any other venture, for that matter, until you learn to think, and act, like a success. There have been more books and articles written on this subject that you could ever hope to read. One of the earliest and one of my favorites is Psychocybernetics by Maxwell Maltz. Other well-known books include Napolean Hill’s Think and Grow Rich. Scientific studies have verified the connection between thought and reality. Athletes have used the power of imagination for years to improve their performance. So, why is it that we have a hard time believing that our thoughts can control our destiny in business?

The old adage “fake it until you make it” is truer than many people will acknowledge. But, when you break it down and really take a cold hard look at it, it makes sense.

When you think about a failure, what kind of person do you picture? Someone who:

o is slumped over with poor posture?

o doesn’t smile, and looks either sad or angry?

o doesn’t look you in the eyes?

o walks with a slow shuffle?

o speaks quietly, perhaps with poor grammar?

o is introverted, and doesn’t “mingle” well in a social setting?

When you think about a successful person, what kind of person do you picture? Someone who:

o stands up straight with head held high?

o smiles and looks happy or at least confident?

o confidently looks you right in the eyes?

o walks boldly with a sure step?

o projects his voice and uses proper grammar?

o is extroverted, and introduces herself in social settings?

Which person do you picture yourself as? If there are differences between your actions and appearance and the successful image and the way you are, it’s time to take control of the situation and act as if until you are.

So, here are five easy tasks to improve your appearance and look more successful:

1. Work on your posture. It won’t just improve your appearance, it will also improve your attitude and your health.

2. Before you leave the house every morning, look yourself in the mirror and smile the biggest smile you can. Make it so big it looks fake, and keep it plastered on your face for at least 3 minutes.

3. Go for a walk around the block every day. When you walk, make a concentrated effort to walk confidently and smoothly. Lift your feet up. You don’t have to set a speed record, but walk at a brisk pace. Again, this will not only improve your appearance and attitude, but also your health.

4. An old acting technique is to project your voice. When you speak, speak to the back of the room. That doesn’t mean to speak loudly, but just to imagine that when you speak, you are speaking to the person at the other end of the room. If you are in the habit of using slang, clean up your language! If you want to attract professionals into your business, you have to be professional.

5. Many years ago I learned an easy an interesting technique from my upline to draw yourself out of your shell. Put five marbles in your left pocket at the beginning of the day. During the day, force yourself to talk to five total strangers. This can be at the checkout line in the grocery store, at the gas station, on the street corner, wherever you have to go to find someone you don’t know. Each time to you talk someone new, move one of the marbles from your left pocket to your right pocket. You don’t have to have a long-winded conversation. You just want to boldly and confidently introduce yourself. You can talk about the weather, if you want. Even better, ask them what they do for a living and see if you can get a business card, email address or phone number and add them to your contact list!

Practice these steps daily, and you will be amazed at the change in yourself – and in your business. After all, who would you prefer to work with: the person you pictured as a failure, or the person you pictured as a success?