*==============================================* M A S T E R N E T W O R K E R The Art of Building A Business by Professor Lon Lindsey MASTER NETWORKER #37 July 2,1997 *==============================================* INSIDE YOU WILL FIND: "The Art of Building A Business - Selecting The Right Business The Archive of Master Networker Publications What's Hot Directory" Our weekly one liner. The humorous side. The Master Networker recommended business web page for the week. Master Networker Recommended Readings. ================================================== Hello fellow "Master Networker" subscribers! This is number thirty seven in the Master Networker series. If you happened to miss the first thirty-six publications, you can retrieve them at: http://masternetworker.com/mailfiles/mailfile.html or you can retrieve them by email from the auto-responder: MasterNetworker-issue-#.txt@masternetworker.com Substitute the desired issue number in place of the "#" Example: mailto:MasterNetworker-Issue26.txt@masternetworker.com **************************************************************** One of my subscribers, Larry Yarnell, suggested I do an article that would help people get through the jungle of opportunities available. That is certainly appropriate. Thanks, Larry, for the suggestion. In just a week, my wife and I will be leaving for the lake country of Minnesota. Minnesota is BEAUTIFUL during the summer! I haven't tried their winters yet. While in Minnesota we will also be attending the Watkins convention as Watkins is headquartered in beautiful Winona, Minnesota. Many of you know that Watkins is my main business and is considered my favorite FEEL GOOD company. If everything goes as planned, I will be able to email out Master Networker #38 next Wednesday just before we leave, but if, by chance, something happens to keep me from it, I will not be back until the 20th of July and the next issue of the Master Networker will go out July 23rd. Wow, where is the summer going! <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> T H E A R T O F B U I L D I N G A B U S I N E S S S E L E C T I N G T H E R I G H T B U S I N E S S WELL BEGUN - IS HALF DONE! Searching for the right business is serious business and deserves alot of thought and consideration. Over a third of your lifetime will be spent either working for someone else or working for yourself. Any business, even if it is a part-time business, requires alot of time and work. The time and effort spent in the beginning, choosing the right business, the business that is best suited to your likes and dislikes, will be well worth it. It will more than pay for itself in the long run by your being able to maintain your sanity. It is essential that you select a business that you can be happy with and one that you will enjoy working. A business is no different than a job in that respect. One of the most miserable feelings that many people have is the thought of having to go to work to a job that they hate and despise. You must pick a business that evolves around the things that you don't mind doing and avoid the ones that require you to work at things you are not good at. The moral of all this is that nothing is really work unless you'd rather be doing something else. FOCUS ON YOUR STRENGTHS Find a business that you like and can be enthusiastic about. Nothing of consequence was ever achieved without enthusiasm. This is called playing to your strengths, and it can give you a sense of accomplishment. Concentrate on what you do best, and success is sure to follow. A study was conducted of several hundred thousand professionals - athletes, doctors, pilots, teachers, executives, sales people - and concluded that the highest levels of achievement come when people are matched with activities that use their strengths. While this principle may sound obvious, it is rarely applied. Instead of spending time trying to correct your weaknesses - as many people are taught to do - experience suggests you should focus on your special talents. For every strength you have, you also possess a multitude of non-strengths. It would be a huge waste of energy to try to fix all your weaknesses. Choose one strength to pursue. Pursuing multiple strengths will achieve only mediocrity in the long run. What should you do? Surround yourself with others who have different talents. You see, a team is a group of people who have varied talents all working together for a common purpose. As you build your business, you will notice people in your organization who have talents in other areas than you. That is not competition, but is potential synergy! Share your talents with others and allow them to share theirs with you. In 1921, Lewis M. Terman, a Stanford University psychologist, began studying 1,440 genius level children throughout their lifetimes. When Terman retired, others continued his work. Eventually, the data showed that exceptional intelligence doesn't guarantee extraordinary accomplishment. Instead, it seemed clear that the distinguidshed spectacular achievers were focused on what they wanted to do in life. The power of self motivation and doing something one likes is what propels people to greatness. ====================================================== Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort. There must be the will to produce a superior thing. - John Ruskin- ====================================================== Exercie your strength daily, no matter how long it takes to reach the degree of perfection that you desire. Benjamin Bloom and a team of researchers at the University of Chicago analyzed the careers of concert pianists, sculptors, research mathematicians, neurologists, olympic swimmers and tennis champions to determine what processes led to high levels of achievement. Evaluating participants in six major piano competitions, they found that these musicians worked an average of 17.1 years from the day they began taking piano lessons to the day they won a major competition. Daily practive is needed, not only to gain a degree of perfection, but to maintain it as well. For example, two-time U.S. Open winner, Curtis Strange, hit a couple hundred gold balls every day. In addition to his regular physical conditioning. Consider Tiger Woods at a young age of 21 who is captivating people all over the world. Consider how long he has been practicing and playing golf . . . even at his young age. SUCCESS IS A MARATHON - NOT A SPRINT World-class sports figures, musicians and writers have learned that talent alone doesn't guarantee success. Ultimate excellence is a product of total commitment, hard work over the long-term and heeding the message, "if it doesn't feel good, you're not working at or practicing one of your strengths." In other words, to be successful in business, you must make sure that it is one that you like and want to do. You must also be totally committed and willing to work hard over an extended period of time. You must be ready, willing and able to do whatever it takes to become successful. You must be ready to go that extra mile. You absolutely must like the business that you are in to be able to make yourself want to work hard enough to become successful. A successful business demands that you put forth an extraordinary amount of effort. Ignore weakenesses that don't hinder you. One of the greatest mistakes people make is believing they must correct their weaknesses before they can capitalize on their strengths. Instead, you should work on a problem only if it is lessening your productivity or self-esteem. By thus "managing" your weaknesses, you allow your strengths to overpower them, ultimately making them irrelevant. Look at logic. When are you most confident? When recalling a moment of success, or a moment of failure? Individuals are always stronger when they have their success clearly in mind. To do this, you need to have alot of patience. In fact, the key to almost everything is patience. You get the chicken by having the patience ot hatch the egg, not by smashing it. Success is a marathon . . . not a sprint! It's not how fast you get to where you are going, but how persistent you are to get to where you are going. It is possible to want something so badly that you want to get it too quickly. I know that may sound strange, but when people want something so badly that they feel they need it immediately, they are setting themselves up for disappointment and eventually failure due to getting down on themselves and losing self motivation and confidence. Sometimes we make decisions about building a business at a time when situations have taken place to force us to make money quickly....you know, loss of job or needing immediate cash flow or new expenses that have just cropped up. It is important that you choose a company that will allow you to work for your future as well as your present. That means having one year - two year - five year - ten year goals. Watch out for the $90,000 within six months hype! Don't let it grab you and cause you to make decisions you should never have made in the first place. HELP YOURSELF BY HELPING OTHERS In searching for a business, look for a complementary partner, one who preferably has already been successful in it . . . perhaps a sponsor who is already successful. Look for a role model. The result can be magical - the accomplishment of a goal that would otherwise be impossible. Try to select a business that focuses on things that you do or know best, because if you don't, you may have to hire someone to help you, and that could become costly. Better yet, utilize the strengths of your upline until you have a downline organization in which those strengths can be shared. Everyone needs support of some sort. It can be as simple as eyeglasses to correct poor vision. Or, as int he case of one CEO who is an accident-prone drive, it might be the help of a college student to provide transportation to meetings. Do you know what success is? It's not the circumstances that are dealt to you, but HOW you deal with the circumstances given you. ================================================== The greater part of our happines or misery depends on our dispositions and not our circumstances. -Martha Washington- ================================================= A saleswoman for a computer company, who enjoyed dealing with customers, found herself flinching when it came to paperwork. "Every time I saw a form . . . a report on a meeting with a client, an expense account, even my checkbook . . . I'd get uptight." she says. It was estimated that she'd be 30 percent more productive if she managed her problem by hiring someone to write her reports and devoted herself to selling computers. As long as she tackled chores she didn't do well, she'd be controlled by her weaknesses. A business partner, someone who can do the things she can't do or doesn't like to do, may be the answer. Doing things you don't like to do will void you of energy . . . thus productivity. Doing things you enjoy doing will energize you . . thus increase your productivity. I don't mean you shouldn't TRY to work on problem areas. But at some point, you'll have to decide whether your efforts are fruitful. If the answer is "no", then stop and apply the same energy to what you're good at. The best time to do this, of course, is at the very beginning when you are in the decision-making process of finding a business. Stephen J. Cannell, a professional write, unfortunately has a weakness of dyslexia, a condition that causes him to transpose numbers and letters. "I'm bad at spelling and sequencing," he explains, "all the things that gave me trouble in high school." Yet instead of expending energy trying to correct a lifelong problem, Cannell types his scripts and then has an assistant smooth out the rough spots. When Delores Calcagno was vice president of training for Prudential Securities, she applied this thinking to Prudentials's hiring and management practices. "We focused on the individual and his or her strengths," Calcagno says. "We didn't ask guys who liked ot make cold calls to service existing accounts, or women who liked trading options to sell annuities." Calcagno, now with Prudential Mutual Fund Management, is emphatic on this point. "if you don't focus on strengths," she say, "you're plaing a losing game." TAKE YOUR TIME AND DO IT RIGHT I suggest that in choosing a business, you should take into consideration the thought or fact that you may very well be selecting a career business opportunity. First, make a list of your likes and dislikes, your strengths and your weaknesses. Then make a list of at least one hundred different business ideas or opportunities. Then investigate, investigate, investigate . . . interview . . .interview . . interview. Find out which ones most closely coincide with your own personal profile. Besides your own personal likes and dislikes, check out the backgrounds and reliability of the companies that you are investigating. What experience do they have? How long they have been in business will tell you something about their track record. How a person masters their fate is more important than what that fate is. The same thing is true in business. If you are not always going forward and making progress, you also may not simply be standing still. You may actually be going backward, as far as your competiiton is concerned. You must like what you are doing and you must do it will enough to always be making progress. It's human nature to keep doing something as long as it's pleasurable and you can succeed at it (which is precisely why the world population continue so double every forty years.) Enjoy your work and master your fate. BE CAUTIOUS OF BRAND-NEW BUSINESSES Do you realize that 80% - 90% of new businesses fail (go out of business) within their first two years of existence? Did you know that of those that survive, only 20% make it to five years and of those that survive only 20% make it to ten years? Are you wanting to prepare for your future as well as take care of your present? Could it be your future is more important than your present? I'm not going to say DON'T choose a rather new company . . . after all those companies that have survived the beginning stages of business were a start-up company at one time. Remember, it usually takes a business a considerable amount of time, like several years, to get into profit. Can both you and the company that you select to do business with afford to remain in business until you can regain certain initial expenses? In business, you don't necessarily get paid for what you do at first. You get paid for the good will that you create and develop over a period of time. In 1990, I chose a company to represent that I could feel good about being 99% sure they would remain in business. You see, before that time I had chosen rather new companies and had built up healthy organizations in those companies only to find they would go out of business within one to three years. Not only was that getting old . . .to build up a new business every couple years, it was not preparing for my future. I wanted and needed a company that I could FEEL GOOD about and KNOW that I didn't have to go day to day wondering if it would be around a year from now or five years from now or 20 years from now. What a wonderful feeling knowing that my energies can be in building a business that I KNOW will be around for my lifetime and for the lifetime of my children and more! To me, choosing such a company was the first criteria. After that, it was making sure I believed in the products, the company, the compensation plan, the people associated with the company and how I could utilize my strenghts in building that business. I truly represent a FEEL GOOD company and whether it will be here next year at this time is not even an issue. SELLING MEANS SUCCESS A person going into business needs to understand that in any and every business, something must be sold. It is the nature of all businesses that either a service must be provided or a product must be sold. Even if you are providing a service, it must be made known to the potential customers that you have a service to provide. By word of mouth or through ads . . online or offline . . . it's still selling. Sure we can call it "sharing," but sharing is a form of selling . . . if nothing else, sharing and selling yourself. Just the act of making something known to others is considered part of the art of selling . . . thus part of the art of building a business. In the case of products, something must be bought, sold and consumed. You do not have to be the one that actually does the selling. You can get others to do it fo ryou. You can sell to yourself the products that you need and would otherwise purchase from a store. As long as the products are needed and used or consumed, as opposed to stockpiling or warehousing, it is still considered a legal form of selling. Selling to yourself the consumable products that you need and use dialy, and then teaching others to do exactly the same thing, can create a very lucrative business for yourself. You must develop and cultivate long-term friendships that will stay with you in your business. Short-term acquaintances usually don't account for a whole lot. It is people who have the same long-term goals and desires that you have that you are looking for. It is people who kow what they want and are willing to work for it that count. By developing a teamwork type of situaiton with other people, you can create a residual income that otherwise would be impossible for most individuals to achieve. The effort spent in finding the right business could provide a life of happiness. ============================================ Success or failure is cuased more by mental attitudes than by mental capacities -Anon- Lon Lindsey Master Networker (and still learning) WE Never Outgrow OUR Need To Learn! ************************************************************************ How would you like to be the only representative from your business opportunity to be listed in this "What's Hot" Directory. Explode your opportunity by registering and setting up a web page today. Visit: The American Dream Network, Inc. http://www.munymaker.com **************************************************** This week's one liner ---------------------------------- If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal. ========================================================= The Humorous Side - Ever notice that what you hear is never quite as interesting as what you overheard? ****************************************************** >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Website of the week: Looking for a FEEL GOOD company that WON'T go out of business? Looking for a company you can plan your future on? http://www.freeyellow.com/members/riskfreebiz/ >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Master Networker Recommended Readings: BOOKS WAVE Three - Richard Poe Money, Money, Money, Money, Money - John Milton Fogg The Future Is Knowing Network Marketing - Patrick W. Higgins Who Stole The American Dream? - Burke Hedges Working Smarter From Home: A Guide For Network Marketers - Crisp Paul J. Meyer & The Art of Giving - John Edmund Haggai The One Minute Sales Person Publications Bad Blues - Venus Andrecht The Network Marketer's Guide to Success - Jeffrey Babener & David Stewart How To Succeed in Your Own MLM Business - Debbi A. Ballard How Secure if Your Financial Future?- Allen Baytes Beyond The Veil - Leonard Clements Network Marketing: The Business of the 90's - Crisp Publications Tax Advantages of HOme-Based Businesses - Carol Dilley A Better Way to a Better Life - Nancy Failla & Jerry James The Basics - Don Failla The Greatest Networker in the World - John Milton Fogg MLM Special Reports - Randy Gage You Can't Steal Second With Your Foot On First - Burke Hedges Beingthe Best You Can Be - John Kalench Mail Order MLM Techniques - Charles Possick Big Al Tells All - Tom "big Al" Schreiter How to Create A Recruiting Explosion - Tom Schreiter Power Multi-Level Marketing - Mark & Renee Reid Yarnell Winning the Greatest Game of All - Randy Ward Are You Walking Past A Fortune?- tom "Big Al" Schreiter MAGAZINES Cutting Edge Money N Profits Entrepreneur Magazine Success Magazine The Network Trainer Upline ------------------------------------------------------------- Any suggestions for Master Networker article ideas? Submit to: professor@multi-level.com Remember, on the internet, it's not only who you know and what you know, but also WHERE YOU GO! See you there! Professor Lindsey If you want to unsubscribe from "The Master Networker" send e-mail to professor@multi-level.com and put unsubscribe in subject area. --