Abundant Freedom

I really enjoy Thanksgiving because it really does give us a reason to reflect and be thankful for all of the wonderful blessings in our lives.  I am extremely thankful this year for my family who I love more than anything, and all of the wonderful friends, associates and business partners that I have.  Thank you all!

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!

If you haven’t seen it yet, the folks at Gojiteam have done a tremendous job at putting the new YourWayOut video site together.  Here’s the link to my landing page which you can opt-into and then check it out:

http://Amazing.YourWayOutVideo.com

If you’re interested in getting your own site like this visit Gojiteam.

Your Way Out Video Site

At the end of the day are you satisfied with what you accomplished in your business?  Do you ever say “Where did the day go, I hardly got anything accomplished?“.

I know when I first started working on my own full-time from home, I thought my days would be long and I’d have plenty of time to get a lot more accomplished than I did when I worked a full-time job.  What’s funny though is my days go by so quickly now that I can’t possibly comprehend where the time goes.  Does that mean that I love what I do and it’s fun and not work which makes the time go more quickly?  I’m sure that’s a very big part of it.  But the fact remains that at the end of many days, I look back and see that too much of my time was wasted on non-income producing activities.

The first step to fixing a problem is realizing that you have a problem.  At least then you know what needs fixed.  Once I realized I had a problem, I started researching ways to solve my productivity dilemma.  The first thing I learned is that I needed to get good at figuring out what activities were income generating and which were not.  With some activities, it’s very easy to tell.  With others, as you’ll see, it’s not easy at all.

To help give you some guidelines, here are some classic examples of non-income generating activities.  Ask yourself if you’re guilty of any of these?

• Surfing the web
• Getting ready to get ready (aka “Saddling Up” which is not riding)
• Reorganizing something that doesn’t need reorganized
• Chatting with business partners about non-critical things
• Reviewing company material
• Checking email
• Cleaning up your desk or your office
• Attending conference calls or webinars
• Growing your social network on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. (disclaimer-this can be income generating but it’s longer term income, not much short-term income potential)
• Reading a self-development book (this activity, like the last one, will definitely have an impact on your income but it’s just hard to measure since it will be much longer term)

What are income producing activities?:

• Calling prospects to set appointments or send them info to review
• Doing 3-way calls with your ME’s
• Prospecting / Generating leads
• Presenting the opportunity to prospects in person, on the phone or in a webinar
• Following up with a prospect
• Following up with a new customer or ME
• Training a new ME so he gets moving out of the gate quickly duplicating proper activities

80% of your time should be spent on the above types of activities

Dramatically Increase Income-Producing Activities — Alex Lopez with Sydney-based Quantify Corporation uses a simple technique to double his income-producing activities.  He divides his to-do list into two columns.  Column one is labeled “Non-income Producing Activities” (Red) and Column two is labeled “Income Producing Activities” (Green).  He then forces himself to place a to-do item in one of the two columns.  When he first started, his non-income producing activities outnumbered his income-producing activities by a two to one ratio.  Over time, he’s been able to flip that ratio.  This is an excellent exercise for ALL of us to follow.  As Quantify Corporation’s tagline says “If you can’t measure it, you can’t control it.”

The trick is to create your task list for tomorrow as the last thing you do today.  When you get up tomorrow, you can charge head-on immediately into the tasks that you need to accomplish for the day without even thinking about them.  Try it, it REALLY works!!

Some thoughts from others on the importance of their daily agenda…

“The secret of a person’s success is discovered in his daily agenda.” — John C. Maxwell

“The whole purpose of time management is to enable you to have more time to spend with the people you love, doing the things you enjoy.”  — Brian Tracy

“Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not.” –  Thomas Huxley (1825-1895)

“Every morning when the alarm goes off, we have a totally new opportunity to do what we want with the hours we have been gifted. And we are gifted with that clean slate every day for the rest of our lives.”  –  Hyrum Smith, Originator of the Franklin Planner, 2000

So what are you going to do tomorrow?  Make it count!

It’s amazing to me how anytime I’m starting to feel bad about something…perhaps a situation in my life that I think is unfair, God shows me something that snaps me right back into reality.

If you’ve never seen this before, it will inspire you.  If it doesn’t, please check yourself for a pulse.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX2nIep59e8

Get that info where you can use it!

Have you ever gone to an event like a convention or a large training meeting and come home and forgot most of what you learned there?  That happens to many people, myself included.  So I’ve done a little research on how to combat that problem.

The most effective thing you can do when you come home is to spend a few hours and type up your notes into a document.  During this process, you will cut out the unnecessary fluff in your notes, organize them much better and commit much more of the information to memory.  There’s something about this process, this re-input of the information into your brain so you can pretty it up and type it out into a neat clean document, that causes your brain to absorb much more of it than it was able to the first time around.

So this exercise serves three purposes:

1. Helps you to commit more of the information to memory
2. Makes the information computer searchable
3. Makes the information worthy of filing for future more logical reference (a nice 3 ring binder perhaps?)

Once the info is in your brain, all sorts of new ideas and possible applications to your exact situation will automatically start to form.  That’s when the magic happens and when the true value of the time you invested in the original event is realized.

212 The Extra Degree

If you haven’t seen 212 The Extra Degree yet, you need to take 3 minutes and watch it right now.  It’s very short and worth every second of your time.  The concept is amazingly simple, yet amazingly powerful and applicable to everything we do as entrepreneurs.

Click on the image to watch it now.

If you haven’t seen this movie before you should take 30 minutes as soon as you can and watch it.  It completely explains the power and the positive nature of the Network Marketing business model.  It would also be great to share with anyone you know that doesn’t think that Network Marketing is a real or viable business.

Click the image above or the link below to see it and don’t forget to share it.

Brilliant Compensation Movie

Good Follow-up Is Critical To Your Success!

What’s the single biggest mistake people make in our business?  90% of Marketing Executives don’t follow up properly.  There are two types of followup in our business:

(1) Prospect followup
(2) Enrollment followup

In this blog post, I’m going to refer to prospect followup.  I will address enrollment followup in a later post.

Many people will say they are actively working their business and “talking to lots of people” but they get nowhere.  In almost every case, besides not prospecting properly and gathering the prospects information, it’s because they’re not following up at all or if they are, they’re not doing enough of it.

Read this statistic about the importance of following up from an association of professional salesmen, the National Sales Executive Association. Their statistics show that the most sales by far are made from the 5th through the 12th contact! Here is the data they have compiled about on which contact sales are made:

2% of sales are made on the 1st contact
3% of sales are made on the 2nd contact
5% of sales are made on the 3rd contact
10% of sales are made on the 4th contact
80% of sales are made on the 5th-12th contact

Why do I mention “sales”, you ask?   If we think we don’t make sales, that we simply educate prospects, point them to the info, etc., don’t kid yourself!  You are selling yourself, Freelife’s products and Freelife itself or you are not having any success.  Sales is not a dirty word; it is what we do to show prospects that they need our products and our opportunity.  Sales is an extremely noble profession since without sales, business doesn’t happen.  Learning some good sales techniques will definitely help you with your business.  In fact, if you haven’t read “The Greatest Salesman In The World” by Og Mandino, you should get it.  Great stuff!

The bottom line is this…  If you get really good at following up, your enrollment rates will probably double or triple.  And what if your good followup properly duplicates within your new enrollees?…think about that!  It really comes down to numbers and trust me…good followup will greatly increase your numbers and therefore greatly increase your income.

Here are some words of wisdom from Max Steingart:

I think this says it all

You determine your attitude.
You can respond positively or negatively to any situation.
Your attitude is not determined by circumstances,
but by how you respond to your circumstances.

Any challenge facing you is not as important as your attitude towards it,
for that will determine your success or failure.

It’s how you react to events, not the events themselves,
that determines your attitude.

Copyright 2008 www.yourdailymotivation.com

If you add up the letter position numbers for the word ATTITUDE it all adds up to 100. Just more proof that Attitude is truly Everything…100%!

A – 1
T -20
T -20
I – 9
T- 20
U- 21
D- 4
E- 5

= 100!  How cool is that?

Can you see exactly what you want your future to look like?  In a short sentence, I believe if you can’t see it, you can’t have it.

I don’t know if you’re a student of self-development or not (I encourage you to become one if you’re not), but many of the great business leaders of our time have talked about being able to visualize success before you can attain success.

“You can bring into your life more power, more wealth, more health, more happiness, and more joy by learning to contact and release the hidden power of your subconscious mind.”
- Dr. Joseph Murphy

“What the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve.”
- Napoleon Hill

The subconscious mind is an incredible thing and you’ll learn that you can actually program your subconscious mind for success.  Yes, it’s like a computer, it can be programmed to give you whatever you want.  Learning how to program it isn’t something that everyone knows how to do, but the good news is that anyone can learn how to do it, and it’s not hard to do.

If you haven’t yet read or watched The Secret, you should.  Some people might think it’s a little out there, but I have to tell you when you start to think about it, it really makes total sense.  Check it out if you haven’t.

Once you’ve read “The Secret”, another book I would recommend is Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz, M.D.. (Here’s a link to the Audio-book version version). This book provides even more scientific proof that your subconcious mind controls just about everything about you and your success in life. John Chickness studied with Dr. Maltz himself in the sixties. John will tell you…this works!