Kat
Hey, welcome back to another car chat with Kat. I am thinking right now about specifically network marketers. And, you know, it’s probably because of my history with network marketing. I was in a business for two years, I think it was, yes, two years before I even knew how to sell. Yes, I made sales, I was incredibly mediocre. I was very excited and hopeful and wanted to do everything right. And I wanted to listen and do what I was told to do. And was so happy to be part of the process. I just didn’t know what I was doing. So I really just meant the bare minimum. And it wasn’t okay with me, because I wanted to be the best I could be, which meant, you know, growing in ranks and things like that. Anyways, it wasn’t until I learned how to sell that those things actually happened. And, gosh, I could get so into that on what that looks like. And if you resonate with this, you can just message me and we can talk more. And we can make more content around this. Because I know a lot of you are network marketers, and I know a lot of people aren’t. And honestly, one of the coolest things about network marketing is that all you really have to do is sell. Now you have multiple jobs, you sell product, you sell a team, the mission of a team, right, like recruitment. And I guess that’s kind of it, I feel like there’s a third one, but you have to sell product, sell the recruitment and make maintain customers, I’d say and maintain the team. So that’s actually a lot could be up to four jobs if you really think about it. So there’s just a lot of nuances to network marketing that I don’t think many other businesses can relate to. And I just want to speak to it. And I want to validate what you’re going through and really speak to some of the experiences that you have, when you’re selling, and wanting to sell, wanting to grow, maybe you’ve plateaued, maybe what has worked in the past isn’t working anymore. Gosh, I have a couple of things. I’m just in the car right now talking like we would, if we were on a road trip, this is just what I would say to you in my stream of consciousness. One of the things is that you can absolutely make your own brand within your brand. And what I mean by that is like you can embrace your uniqueness, your passion, your personality within the company. I think so often people lean heavily on like the product of the company, the story of the company, whatever, because maybe I mean, I’m just gonna name some names because all these companies are great. But like Mary Kay has an incredible story of the woman who started it, and how she was like a female entrepreneur and all this stuff and, you know, the products are great, or maybe it’s Rodan and Fields and they’re dermatologists and they, you know, were in department stores, like that’s great. I just want you to know that you are unique and maybe you have an amazing upline, and they have a great proven track record. If I had to guess one of the reasons they’re probably great is because they really embrace their uniqueness and they lead their team with a heart that only they can do. And it’s so often it could just be easy to blame your plateau or frustration whatever the case may be on your upline, like oh my upline doesn’t do this anymore or they do this like they don’t do team calls. They don’t do Zoom blah blah blah. They don’t participate in professional development. Okay great. Like who cares honestly, your upline is irrelevant to your growth, some people have a great upline and that’s cool, but even if they are I would actually say that having a great upline is a detriment to your success, because you can rely on them too much. And when they don’t produce the success for you that they have for themselves, you could grow bitter. And that’s not cool at all. So that’s, that’s one of the things I want you to know is that you can you can and should be your own entity, your own entity, like put aside the brand story put aside your upline put aside the product and just like work from who you are and your unique gifts. Because if everyone if 100 people are selling Beautycounter then what’s to separate this gal from that gal? Probably their unique set of beliefs and desires and the mission that they’re on, right? Maybe one person’s mission is to, you know, help more clean products being in the homes of families with allergies, I don’t know. But like, go hard on it and lean and trust that there’s people out there. Some people might call this niching. And that’s fine. Like, if you want a niche within your network marketing company, great. What I’m talking about is honestly, looking at yourself, like you are the CEO of You Incorporated. Pretend like there’s no one else to blame at all for your success or failure, but yourself. That is it, because that’s actually the reality of it. What network marketing has done is given you an amazing business in a box, that you can lean on the product and in business in the company, but just don’t do that. Because you are doing yourself a disservice by not trusting that you have a unique capability. Another thing that really is, I think could be an encouragement to you about network marketing, is that if you have grown a team, and maybe you had a fast start, maybe you’ve had just a hot moment and things grew, grew, grew. And then they plateaued, like maybe COVID made it plateau or something. And people just aren’t showing up to team calls anymore. You can’t seem to get people to “work”, right? No one’s working. And everyone who you recruit just isn’t doing what they said they would do or what you expected them to do. And so you’re frustrated. I want you to know, with 1,000% certainty that leading a team is a sales job. Getting people onto a call is a sales job. What I don’t mean by that is tucking them into it, not only tucking them in, and incentivizing them to come. Because incentivizing and inspiring are two different things. If you have to incentivize your way into growing a team, or getting people to get, you know, making moves, that’s not leadership, inspiring them to be on the call inspiring them to do the work inspiring them to grow themselves. That is the work of a leader who looks at leadership as a sales job. And that is the beauty of sales is that you are inspiring people to take action. You’re not incentivizing them to take action. That’s fine incentives are super fun, and they can absolutely have their place when it comes from inspiration. First, let incentives be the cherry on top. And that’s why you growing yourself as a leader first, is huge, because you’re actually able to lead lead the way in should be the example for all the people who don’t know what they’re doing. But when you leave yourself, all of a sudden, they have someone to look up to and to follow, and they want to be on the team call because I want to hear what you’re doing. Right? And I just encourage you to kind of have the mentality of replacing yourself and have a mentorship mentality. How would you if someone were to look up to you, how would you go and mentor them, not just tell them to check boxes of what to do, but inspire them to be their best self and inspire them to win. That’s the role of a leader. And it absolutely is a sales job. And I do want to encourage you that when you do School of Sales, that’s the tool that you get. You get the tools, that frame. every little, you know that, every moment honestly, the team call that’s a moment to sell in spirit to sell, sell and inspire, to persuade them for toward the good thing. Do you know the word persuade, it actually gets broken down into two sections. One section is the word per, and then swayed. Okay? The word or the, what he called the prefix per means through and the suffix I guess, swayed is sweet. So persuasion needs to get through to someone with a sweet way about you tone. It’s like sweet like honey to their, their soul. And I know it’s like how are we even talking about network marketing anymore? What’s the strategy? What’s the Instagram tip? The Instagram tip is to take that way of persuading to get through to someone with a sweet tone with a sweet heart about you for them. That’s how you do it. And it translates in your content, it translates in your conversations. It makes everything easier. And all of a sudden you have momentum, because you’re growing and people are actually following your footsteps. One of the biggest complaints people have about leading a network marketing team is that they feel like they’re pushing people, or pulling them, they’re dragging them. And if you feel like you’re dragging people, it’s because you’re really not leading them to the best of your ability. And if you’re not leading them to the best of your abilities because you’re not leaving yourself to the best of your ability. It’s just wild how, in the world of being a human, it is the easiest thing to do to blame someone else. Right? Like, they’re not working, they’re not doing this, COVID did this, shut everything down, blah, blah, blah. That’s hard. That is a hard mentality to live with. And to feel like, oh, gosh, I guess this is it, like, I guess it’s just gonna be hard. Or you can shift it to am I leading myself the very best, I can ask yourself that, am I leading myself the very best I can? Because when you are doing the very best you can to lead yourself. It is human nature for people to want to follow you is human nature. Everything gets easier when you lead yourself to the best of your ability. And I encourage you to do that. Network marketing is not dead. People are not nearly as skeptical as you think they are. If you think that people are more skeptical of the business model than in the past, then I feel like you’re looking at the scoreboard and you’re not playing the game. Because when you play the game, and you lead yourself and you grow yourself and you stay fired up, you stay sold. The most important sale you’ll ever make is to yourself, when you stay sold. People aren’t even comparing you to something else. I think man, she might be in network marketing. But that woman is on a mission. She’s she’s doing something different, I’m down with different, I will get down with a different vibe. Absolutely, they will. It’s when you enter things with the mentality of like, okay, no one likes this, no one’s doing it. That’s when things get weird. But you have the ability to make it feel different for people. And that only comes when you lead yourself first. That is honestly, I would bet to the end of the ages, will be the answer to being great at network marketing, it’s not gonna be in a recruiting strategy, it’s not gonna be in the content, strategy, all those things, just because of technology alone, changing so fast, like those things will change. And that’s why I hesitate to send anyone to a social media training, because by the time you learn it, it’s basically outdated already, which is depressing. And, you know, I have also invested in stuff like that it’s already outdated. And that’s fine. You know, it’s part of it, learning the new, you know, tactics. When you learn to lead yourself and you learn how to communicate, and inspire people into action. That’s when your life is not only enhanced, it’s just easier, you get to make everything for yourself easier. And it’s more profitable, you’re actually successful in those wins in that success. Even if it’s not financial yet, it will be because when people want to follow you, and they want to, therefore buy from you, they want to be in your sphere of influence, they’ll pretty much want to buy what you say. Because if it makes them more like you than they’ll do it. But I just want to challenge I just want to ask you, are you being someone that people even want to emulate? Are you growing yourself frst? Are you leading yourself first? And if you’re questioning, oh, a school feels right for me is this that, I want you to ask yourself, if your teammate came to you and said, oh, I’m thinking about doing, you know, Guide Culture School of Sales, blah, blah, blah, what would you tell them? Would you tell them to go for it? And to trust the process? And to grow? And to just go all in on their capabilities and their potential? I bet you would, I bet you’d be so fired up to lead an army people who are on mission to grow themselves, to inspire the people behind them to grow themselves, and so on and so forth. That is the kind of exponential growth that changes the world. And it’s so cool, because it all starts with you. You’re in control of that, you’re in control of leading the way, of setting the example. And of being in relentless pursuit of being 1% better every day. And communicating that to the people who matter to you. If you’re changing the lives of the people who do join your team, and who do buy your products, because it resonated with them on a deeper level. And that’s the beauty of having a sales job. It really, really is. So I want you to be encouraged that the industry is not going anywhere, that you have an amazing role to play. And that people matter. The people who do join your team, the people who are thinking about it, they probably need some hope. They probably need some encouragement, they probably need some wins. They probably need some freedom. And what better person to lead them than you. In fact, I would even challenge the fact that they’re waiting on you to lead them. They’re waiting on you to lead them. But you have to lead yourself first. And I just believe in you to do that. I think you’re the ones do that. I’m proud of you. I believe in you 100%. And I personally cannot wait to see you in School of Sales.