Good Morning,

I hope that all of you here in the United States had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  I did.  We had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and terrific 10 days with my Mom.  But I love what I do and it’s always good to get back to work  However, I must be getting old, time appears to be moving much more quickly than ever before!  It’s hard to believe that those 10 days are over already .. and so is November and 2008 is closing fast.

And even though I love what I do, if I’m not careful I find it easy to fall into ‘feeling behind’ and then want to start pushing, pushing, pushing to get more done faster.  Not a great combination for success or sanity.

I found Seth Godin’s blog this morning really helpful to bring things back into focus.  He reminded me that it’s not about faster and it’s not about pushing.  Once again it’s about savvy. 

Are you thinking through what strategy will work and how to implement that strategy?  Is your current marketing plan for the long haul?  Or are you moving with momentum and expecting short term results?  Or are you doing both?  (Great idea!)  If you’d like a wonderful quick lesson in marketing your product or business check out Seth Godin’s blog.

Cheers and welcome back to your office this Monday morning.

Warmly,

Jillian

Ever been looking for something in a store and not been able to find it and ask the person helping you where you might find it?  How do you feel when someone says “nope” without thinking about it?  They can hardly wait to turn away and “go get the next person.”  Or worse, they keep on trying to sell you what isn’t going to work.

What do you do if you’re speaking to someone who is looking for an opportunity.  They take a good look at yours.  Alas, they determine that you just are not in the industry that they want to work.  You might be involved in child literacy, or health and wellness and they were looking for something in communications.  You are simply not a fit.  What do you do?

Do you keep trying to interest them?  (That by the way is the real definition of pushy.  You don’t take “no” for an answer.  Closing someone to an activity or a definitive answer is good business – not pushy!)  Or do you suggest some things they might want to look for in a communications company.  Like strength of company or a solid upline with good systems in place.  Maybe you know someone in that industry you respect and can even refer them.  As Seth Godin who was the inspiration behind this post today says, “Your ego might not enjoy it, but in the long run, your organization will.”

In other words do you do your best for them regardless of the outcome for you at that moment? It is no secret (pun intended) that what goes around comes around.  But it’s not magic.  Do your best for people regardless of what the immediate outcome is to you and you’ll build a reputation of being a real ‘mensch.”

People will talk about you in your world – what do you want them to say?

If there is something your business needs and you know what it is – and you don’t do it….bug yourself until you do it.  Keep bugging yourself – and keep bugging yourself.  Eventually you’ll bug yourself right into the habit of getting it done.  But only if you bug yourself…bug yourself.

Are you a self pest yet?

How do you get people excited to do the business?  You don’t.  Your job is not to motivate or excite.  However your job is to care enough to understand why they are doing the business.  If you understand their why, you can stay in authentic conversation with them to help them stay focused on their own prize.

When we are focused on our own prize our excitement fuels our drive.  We don’t need someone to get us excited to keep us moving forward.

Then the Savvy Sponsor offers a system that drives their business …. and the people drive the system … fueled by their eyes on their prize..

How do you deal with your successes and failures?  I’ve met some people who are just as afraid of being successful (maybe more so) than they are of failing.  Why do these two things give us so much grief?

We use them in a non-productive manner.  We don’t use them for what they really are:

• signposts
• lessons

Your successes and failures are simply feedback from your experiences.  Experiences are what drive us through our day.  If you see them simply as feedback – I like what happened I’ll do it again…I don’t like what happened I’ll tweak or stop that activity and keep going you’ll be amazed at the kind of life you lead.

And it is all about the journey, Right?  It is all about the kind of life you lead.

If you pay attention to your experiences they will also alert you when similar circumstances happen again.  Only this time you’ll be prepared to deal with things differently.

Labels often stop us in our tracks.  They are so final.  Let go of success and failure as a label.  They are simply an experience.  Learn from them and change your behavior accordingly.

Watch your life swing wide open to the wonders of the world!

In my current coaching program students are creating their vision of where they are headed in their lives.  Creating your vision all too often is stressful.  It is such a shame because what creating your visions “ought” to be is fun and exciting.  It is, after all, the map of the direction you are steering your life.

In our Savvy Sponsoring program we start with a big picture view and then bring it in to closer view.  Why?  The more specific we are about things the more real they are to us … and to others.  Plus in terms of something like a vision, the more detail we have the more likely we are to know how to get there.  But specific (details) come out of a big picture.  You need both to bring the vision to fruition.

The big picture feeds your creativity and gets your emotions cooking.  Breaking down the big picture into details is what accomplishes the vision. The two pieces work together to make things happen.

There are times when you want a big picture and times when you want the details in lots of other places in your business besides your vision.  Big pictures give us one kind of information and details give us another.  Using the wrong image at the wrong time can be really costly in both time and money.  Do you know the right time to create “big picture” views vs “detail” views.

Check out Seth Godin’s blog.  He cuts to the chase in a way we all can understand.

How specific is your vision.  Do you have an “around the corner” view as well as an “another planet” view?  Do you know when to use each one?

A coaching client of mine emailed me this morning and asked how to cancel a standing coaching appointment with one of her downline without totally souring the relationship.  This person in her downline has never made an appointment and has rescheduled four times (she says she has the appointment in her calendar but “forgets to call.”)  Obviously this is not working for either of them and my client doesn’t want to waste any more time (rightly so!).

My suggestion is to build a bridge so you can move on.  This is what I mean.

What does a bridge do?  It connects, spans, links or helps people cross over.  What does that look like in Network Marketing?

1.  Compliment them.  Tell them what you do like about them.  Why you wanted to work with them in the first place.

***  then

2.  Tell them you understand that they cannot at this time do what you’d like them to do.  But when they are ready to move forward you will be happy to work with them.

This is an example from one of my coaching programs of setting someone free from feeling obligated or in any way beholdin’.  This story is about a woman who said “yes” to building a business and then her life got in the way.  So her sponsor built this bridge.

I know your heart is there but it is not a good time.  I’ll let you contact me when you are ready again.

What a nice thing to do.  You’ve given them permission to work with you if and when they are ready, but they can go away without getting defensive.  And you can mnove on too.

If it’s appropriate list some of things you really like about them.  They might be a great people person or bring certain skills to the table that you like.  What ever you like about them, tell them.  Then let them know you understand that the timing isn’t right, or whatever is appropriate for their situation, and invite them to call you when they are ready.

Give people lots of room to be exactly where they are (it’s my take they are exactly where they are supposed to be or they’d be elsewhere).  if you give them lots of room, if and when they are ready and able, they’ll contact you.

And if they don’t come back…rejoice that you didn’t spend (waste) any more of your precious time with them.

The news can be a bit scary at the moment. A $700,000 plus bailout (and that’s just the beginning) sprinkled with words like recession and depression. Things can look scary. Stomachs tighten and stress levels soar. What can you do?

Here’s my take. There is no point in my getting all wierded out, because there is little that I can do about it. I can let my elected officials know how I feel (and that’s a good idea). Then I have to let it go. It is, really out of my hands. This doesn’t mean that I ignore what is going on. The contrary, educating myself is important – reading and listening to good news sources. I like National Public Radio because of the variety of views. But stay informed.

However, it makes very little sense that I get my knickers in a twist over something that I can’t do anything about. I have no direct affect here, so after I’ve done all that I can do, the best thing for me to do is move on.

Obviously “moving on” is easier said than done, but that doesn’t let us off the hook to take control over the one thing we have control over – ourselves.

Reflect a moment. Do you make your best decisions under stress? Being emotionally distraught is not when I think my clearest! Being scared gets in the way of my clarity and hoses up my judgment. Not a good combination for decision making.

For those of you who have worked with me you know that I believe Awareness is Curative. What do I mean?

Awareness Is Curative

It means, that as soon as I become aware of an issue I’m having, I am already on my way to fixing the problem. The solution has already started. The trick here is awareness.

This is what happens to me. I’ll be working or playing and realize suddenly that I’m short tempered or feeling stressed out. You know, that knot in your stomach that signals all is not well.

Here’s what I do when that knot shows up in my stomach:

• Take a break immediately and be still for a minute and be conscious of my breath.
• Then I give the emotion I’m feeling a definition. Scared, angry….whatever.
• Then I give myself permission to feel that way. Yup just feel it. Don’t act on it.
• I then listen to the dialog going on in my head. Typically it’s telling me I’ve done something wrong or someone has wronged me.
• If I’ve done something I do what I need to in order to make amends.
• If someone else has done something I check my boundaries to see how I could have prevented myself from being in the situation so I don’t find myself here again.
• Then I go do whatever I’d do if this was not in my way. I ask myself this question, “If I wasn’t ranting and raving inside about the “wrongness” of it all, what would I be doing.” Then I go do it.

Keeping to Your Regular Day is Important

The last point of course is what gets you moving again in the right direction. That sage piece of advice comes from a women I worked with in Alanon. For those of you who don’t recognize that organization, Alanon is a support group for people whose lives have been affected by an alcoholic. When things were crazy it was important for me to remember to keep living. She used to ask me, If this wasn’t happening right now Jillian, what would you be doing? I’d tell her. And she’d say, “Go do it.”

Great advice to keep your life moving in the right direction.

Being stuck in an emotional crucible roots you in disaster. What’s more, most of the time we are rooted in these disasters because we are worrying about what might happen in the future. It’s not happening right now at all.

Is This Your First Disaster?

Here is an easy thing to do to keep yourself moving forward while the politicians determine the new monopoly rules.

Take a quick look around you and ask yourself if everything is OK right now? If it is, then things are great! Why? Because this is the only moment you have. You don’t need to sour it by worrying about something that may happen tomorrow or next week or whenever.

Besides which one of you hasn’t survived some kind of disaster? I know I certainly have. I got an email today from my Real Estate coach, Dave Lindhal. I thought he said it really well.

“When your neighbor looses his or her job it’s a recession. When you loose your job it’s a depression. Even if the rest of the economy looks great.”

If you’re like me, I’ll bet you’ve had times when money was short and it felt like options were too. I have been drop dead broke and thought I had no options. That was when I joined Excel Communications and it was the beginning of one of the best things I ever did for myself.

Often it’s when things seem at their worst that the best arrives. If you’ve get yourself in a knot of dithers you may miss it. Some of you know my story. I nearly missed Excel because I was in such a state of inner turmoil. But my best friend Coach Norine was persistent with me until I came to my senses and took a look. I got more information and low and behold there was a solution to my circumstances.

That’s the trick and the key. Don’t tune out but rather tune in. Keep your business moving forward, persevere and don’t worry about what you can’t change.

Educate yourself – read – listen – ask questions. Work with a mastermind group. Hire a coach. Go to free teleseminars – or pay for them. But keep yourself open to new ideas and new opportunities and solutions will come your way.

“The point of power is always in the present moment.” – Unknown

Warmly,

Jillian

If you read the paper and listen to the news it’s pretty easy to get into a mindset that says, “It’s all over why bother.”

Seth Godin nailed this attitude yesterday in his blog.

No point in my repeating what he so eloquently said, click Seth Godin and read this short and to the point blog on today’s financial market and how it affects you.

After you’ve read it, ask yourself, “Am I Chicken Little or am I going to be one of those people who not only survives this turmoil but prospers?  Because ladies and gents that is up to you.

Yesterday I talked about leading with the appropriate piece of your business to fill the needs of the person you’re talking to:  Product or the opportunity.  I get that many of you think it’s “easier” to lead with the product and then later when they love it, move them into the business.  The problem I see with that, it doesn’t work.  Oh it does sometimes.  I know that.  But if it’s so successful why don’t you have a huge money making downline of product users turned business builders?

Here’s something to think about.  Typically product users are buying out of their household budget.  They come with a consumer mindset and a consumer pocketbook.

Instead, look for people who are really looking for a business, any kind of business.  Don’t limit yourself.  Just because they haven’t thought of being able to make money from their home doesn’t mean they won’t be very interested when they see the facts and figures you present.

These people typically work out of a business expense budget.   The funds are earmarked as a business expense.  They are going to compare (with your help) what the business can do for them vs the amount it costs to get started.  You are head and shoulders above a traditional brick and mortar business by keeping start-up costs low with great financial potential.

A consumer has to take the money out of their household budget.  There are a lot of items that household budget needs to purchase; food, clothing, gasoline and utilities.  You get the picture, there’s a lot of competition for those funds.  Who do you want to present to?  Someone making a business decision or someone trying to determine how to spend their discretionary income?  hmmm?

If you’re presenting your business opportunity to people who are really looking for a business they have funds earmarked to start that business.  Your job is to walk them through the growth stages (what they can expect in the first few months, first year, etc) to determine if they see the value of starting their business.

But the big point here: There isn’t competition for those business start up funds.  They are earmarked to start a business. How many times have you been told, “I can’t afford it right now.”  That is a consumer mindset making decisions between food and a business.

Oh you say, “I can’t find people like that,” people who have money set aside for a business.  Really!  Where are you looking?  How are you marketing yourself?  Are you ready to sponsor and train those people?

Or do you doubt yourself?  Self doubt.  It will stop you in your tracks.

What do you need to do to get over yourself?  That’s not a retorical question.  Take a minute with a pen in hand (or at your computer) and write, and then write a bit more and see what you come up with.  Then take the action.

Persistence and action around small changes will ultimately give you big outcomes.