Make Money In MLM With The Mastermind!

One of my favorite aspects of a MLM business is how it has automatically built into its business model one of the most powerful success concepts ever. This concept is called The Master Mind and I cannot think of a SINGLE scenario in which a person created a massive level of lasting success without utilizing this powerful principle.

In the book Think And Grow Rich, by Napolean Hill, he talks about the power of the master mind and how important it is to creating success. Here is his definition of the master mind...

"Coordination of knowledge and effort, in a spirit of harmony, between two or more people, for the attainment of a definite purpose."

Doesn't this sound like MLM?

In a MLM business, you are building an organization. Obviously, your organization is going to have two or more people in it and the purpose that you are building the business for is to market a specific product line so that you can generate income that can be used to do whatever you want with it.

In addition, you have an upline that you are able to tap into for assistance in building this organization. Your upline has financial incentive to help you because if you are successful and make money, they are successful and make money as well.

Besides the upline and the downline, this business model also allows you the ability to leverage the efforts of others who have no direct financial incentive to you. However, they are willing to help you because the both of you hae the same goal, which is to build your respective businesses.

For instance, I have a number of individuals who are not in my upline or downline who I can use for a 3 way phone call for one of my prospects. The reason why is sometimes my upline or downline isn't available to do one of these calls for me.

Why would someone do a 3 way phone call for me if they have no financial incentive to the outcome? The reason why is because they likely also find themselves in situations where their upline or downline isn't available to do a three way call for them. Therefore, if they help me when I need a 3 way call, they can count on me helping them when they need a 3 way call.

It's a classic example of the master mind at work!

If you study successful leaders in the MLM industry and you study their patterns of success, you will find that the large majority of the success they now currently enjoy occured after meeting someone who became a part of their mastermind.

That person could be a member of their upline, a member of their downline or even someone who isn't a part of their organization who had a major impact on them and that impact translated into massive success.

Mike Dillard, the author of the book Magnetic Sponsoring struggled for YEARS to become successful in the MLM industry. In fact his first 5 1/2 years, he spent significantly more money than he actually made.

However, by adding two people to his mastermind, he was able to go from struggling to millionaire over the next 2 years. Those people were Joe Schroeder, who taught him the concept of the funded proposal and Mark Weiser, who taught him how to recruit over the phone with posture.

Those two indiivduals along with whoever it was who introduced him to internet marketing have a dramatic impact on what Mike was able to produce. That production resulted in becoming a six figure earner in a number of different MLM opportunities and today he earns 7 figures from his primary opportunity as well as a seperate 7 figures from his funded proposal.

Eric Worre is another example. He got started in the industry at a young age and struggled for years to build a successful organization. However, one day he met a gentleman by the name of Jeff Olson. By adopting Olson's philosophies, he was able to earn millions of dollars in the network marketing industry.

I can go on and on with examples of MLM distributors who utilized the power of the mastermind to create and attract massive levels of success. The bottom line is it works and if you utillize this concept, you too can create your own success story in this industry!

Persistance - The Biggest Seperator In A Network Marketing Business

Persistence is without question, the biggest separator in a network marketing business between those individuals who create massive success and those individuals who quit. Half the battle to achieving success is just sticking with something long enough to get the results that you are looking for.

Out of the hundreds, if not thousands of people that I know by first name, I can probably count on one hand how many of those people have been involved in the network marketing industry for at least 10 years.

An even smaller number of those people have been involved with the same network marketing opportunity for at least 10 years.

Yet if you look at how much money these individuals make, pretty much every last one of them make a six or even seven figure income on an annual basis.

What's even more interesting is that many of them struggled when they first got started in the industry. Towards the end of this year I would have been involved in the network marketing industry for five years. When I compare the level of success I've had to many of these huge income earners today, I've made more money and build larger organizations than many of them had when they were involved in the industry as long as I have.

In fact, one person I can think of didn't even recruit his first person outside of his friends and family circle after 5 1/2 years being involved in the industry. Yet today, he makes a 7 figure annual income.

Yet there are countless individuals who got involved in the industry, some of them even making money, yet for whatever reason weren't willing to persist long enough to make their goals a reality. As a result, instead of enjoying the lifestyle that they deserve they are still working on their traditional jobs, barely making ends meet and are wondering what is going to happen to them if they get laid off in this recession.

In Think And Grow Rich, by Napolean Hill, he lists 8 causes of persistence. If you struggle in this area, you can improve your level of persistence by implementing these causes as a part of your lifestyle. They are...

a) Definiteness of purpose
b) Desire
c) Self-reliance
d) Definiteness of plans
e) Accurate knowledge
f) Cooperation
g) Will-power
h) Habit

A network marketing business is truly a business that requires persistence. The reason why is because the big income is earned by leveraging the efforts of others. What makes it even more interesting is the following...

The large majority of top income earners generate the large majority of their income from 2-3 lines of sponsorships. Often these lines of sponsorships are responsible for 80 to 100% of that person's income.

The large majority of top income earners generate the large majority of their income not from a few superstars but from hundreds, even thousands of individuals making their minimum product orders.

The problem is 80% of your time in the business will be spent finding the people to join your organization that will lead you to these 2-3 big income lines of sponsorships and these hundreds or thousands of people making minimum product orders. Because people are conditioned to want instant gratification, most people will not stick around long enough to go through that 80%.

However, if you are willing to separate yourself from the masses and develop the persistence that is necessary to stick around in this industry and in your company long term, you can build as big of an income as you want in your network marketing business.

Decison - What Holds People Back In A Work From Home Business

If you study all of the top income earners in work from home businesses you will notice that they all have the characteristic of decision and they apply it to their business on a regular and consistent basis.

On the other hand, if you look at most of the people that struggle, you will find that many of them apply the opposite of decision to their business. The opposite of decision is procrastination.

In Think And Grow Rich, by Napolean Hill, he says the following at the beginning of the chapter on Decision...

"Accurate analysis of over 25,000 men and women who had experienced failure, disclosed the fact that LACK OF DECISION was near the head of the list of the 30 major causes of FAILURE."

I think if you would analyze people in this industry who fail, you would find similar trends as well.

You cannot procrastinate in building your business. You cannot wait until you know everything that you need to know. You cannot use lack of time or lack of ability as an excuse. I guarantee you that there are other people who have less talent and ability than you do and who have a tougher schedule than you do who are having more success than you are having.

Here is a great quote that I heard that I believe would serve you very well if you apply it...

"Successful people make decisions quickly and are slow to change their minds about the decisions that they have already made. Unsuccessful people make decisions slowly and are quick to change their minds about the decisions that they have already made."

Even though I have had success, I have also struggled with procrastination. It is a filthy habit that I battle on a regular and consistent basis. I think it is just as destructive of a habit as smoking and I believe that it has claimed the dreams of MORE people as smoking has claimed lives.

One of the tools that I have implemented to help me deal with procrastination is the use of a smartphone. I believe the purchase of my Blackberry Storm is one of the BEST investments that I have ever made.

Now, what I do is (preferably the night before, but at least at the beginning of the day), I load up in Microsoft Outlook the tasks that I want to complete that day and I assign them a number at the beginning of the task so I can sort it by priority.

I also add any appointments that I have into my Outlook calendar as well. I then synchronize my calendar in Outlook with my Blackberry Storm. As a result, I am able to keep tabs on everything that I need to do and make sure that I am making progress towards those action items.

The other tool that I have implemented is accountability. I received a call from one of my mentors today. He said that he is amazed because I have significantly changed my attitude and philosophies about building my business.

One of the tools that I owe to this shift is every week, I send a report to my mentors in the work from home opportunity that I am a part of. I have to write down exactly what I did to build my business this week. I cannot put down things like "straighten my desk" and silly stuff like that. It has to be productive activity, activity that has the potential to put money in my pocket.

Implementing this one tool has revolutionized my business. Now I cannot procrastinate actions that I normally would have because I know that at the end of the week I have to send that report and if I procrastinate the report is going to be pretty empty.

So make a DECISION today to make sure you are a person of DECISION and not a person of PROCRASTINATION! You will be amazed at what happens to you work from home business as a result!

Organized Planning = Success In Your Business Opportunity

So many people wonder why they aren't having success in their business opportunity. However, when you ask those people to see their written plan for success, they look at you with a blank stare.

How do you expect to be successful without having a plan? That's like planning a trip from New York City to Los Angeles driving without using a map of any kind if you have never made that type of trip before.

If you haven't had success yet in your business opportunity you are embarking on unfamilar territory. If you wouldn't take an unfamilar road trip without a map, you shouldn't try to achieve success in a business opportunity without an organized plan.

How do you develo a plan to be successful in your business opportunity? The best way that I have found is to learn from people who have already achieved success in the type of business that you are looking to achieve success in.

What's great about today, living in the information age is that there is certainly not a lack of shortage in people who have achieved success in the type of business opportunity that you are looking to build and they are willing to share their plan of success with you. Even if they charge you for that plan, it is worth it because their plan will save you time and money.

In Think And Grow Rich, by Napolean Hill, he gives one of the best strategies for developing sound plans to acheive success in your business opportunity. That strategy is to build an alliance with the people that you need to carry out your plan.

There are many practical ways to build an alliance with the people that are necessary to successfully build your business opportunity. For instance, if your business opportunity utilizes the model of network marketing, an alliance is already built within your opportunity through the structure of your upline and your downline.

What you want to do is find a member in your upline that has already achieved a level of success in the business opportunity that you haven't achieved as of yet. Find out what they did to achieve that level of success. Then do what they did.

However, don't fall into the trap that if you do exactly step by step what they did, you will be able to duplicate their success exactly. As Jeff Olson, a successful author and entreprenur likes to say "there is no cookie cutter for success in a business opportunity."

The person you would with should give you ideas that you can use to formulate your own organized plan to achieve success. While your plan may and SHOULD follow the same basic principles and philosophies as your success mentor, the way you execute and implement those principles and philosophies might be different than what your mentor did.

Finally, once you have your organized plan in place, track your results and your implementation of that plan. One of two things will happen. Your plan will succeed or your plan will fail.

If your plan fails, the first step you need to take is to make sure you actually TOOK ACTION on the plan you created. For example, if your plan called for getting 100 people to look at your website presentation over the next 60 days, did you get the 100 people?

If not and the reason has to do with your lack of action, you need to figure out why you aren't implementing your plan. If you did do what your plan has outlined and you still don't achieve success, go back to your mentor and get some additional guidance. It may be that you might need to modify your plan. It also may be that you need to continue to execute your plan for a longer period of time.

By engaging in organized planning, you are more likely to achieve success in your business opportunity and achieve it at a much faster rate than you would if you didn't develop that plan.

Imagination Is The Fuel That Drives A Home Business Opportunity

One of the most important activities that you can engage in is to utilize the tool of imagination. It is the fuel that drives success in a home business opportunity. There are thousands of examples of entrepreneurs who were armed only with imagination who were able to use this powerful tool to change their existing circumstances for the better.

To achieve success it starts with imagination. You have to picture what your life will be like when you are successful in your business and imagine it in your mind first. If you feel you lack in this area, one way to help facilitate this process is to look at other people who are successful and see what their lives are like.

I am able to generate a lot of great ideas of how success in my business will be like by looking at the lives of those individuals who have already achieved success in the business that I am trying to build. Looking at their lifestyle, I can see that when I am successful, my business will be able to generate substantial sums of income even if I am not personally working the business.

What this will do is create time freedom for myself so that I can spend my time doing other activities that bring pleasure to myself and others. It may be to start another business. It could be to go on vacations and experience different things. It may be to do charity work. All of these activities are not only possible, but they already happen in my mind first through the power of imagination.

If you are involved in a home business opportunity where you work with others and their efforts contribute to your income, there is one tool that you can use to facilitiate not only your imagination but their imagination as well.

That activity is called "Dream Building"

In Think And Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill, the author shares a story about a minister that imagined what he would do if he had a million dollars. However, he never took any action. He just thought about it.

One day, he decided to take action. He preached a sermon called "What I Would Do If I Had A Million Dollars." Prior to preaching the sermon, he prayed that someone would hear the sermon who would be able to help him get that money.

After preaching the sermon a man in the congregation came up to him, told him he enjoyed the sermon, believed that he would do everything he said and told him to come to his office tomorrow and he would write the minister a check for a million dollars.

Dream building is an exercise that allows you to be able to put your imagination to work as well. It involves engaging in activities that stimulate the imagination.

An example of this is creating a dream board. What you do is you look in magazines and on the internet for pictures that reflect the type of lifestyle you will live when you are successful in your home business opportunity. You then cut those pictures out and place them on your board.

Another example of this is called dream outings. What you do is you start doing the research and the preparation work for the types of activities that you will do once you have reached the level of success in your business you are looking for.

For instance, if you have a dream car, you start researching the car now. You go out and you test drive the car. You research the different colors and features that are available just like you were going to purchase the car today.

By utilizing the imagination, you put the forces of nature at work towards helping you to achieve the level of success you are looking for in your home business opportunity.

The Specialized Knowledge Of A Network Marketing Business

Having desire, faith and implementing autosuggestion are all key components of success in a network marketing business. However, if you don't have the specialized knowledge that this industry requires, you will not achieve success.

It is not enough to just have book knowledge or knowledge in your head. You have to have knowledge that you have applied and implemented into your business. One of the best teachers of this concept is a gentleman by the name of Jeff Olson.

Why should you care what Olson has to say? You should care because this gentleman has taken 3 separate network marketing organizations to hundreds of millions of dollars in sales and has a heavy influence in the recent growth of a 4th organization Pre-Paid Legal Services. He knows what he is talking about.

Olson teaches that there are 4 ways you acquire specialized knowledge in your network marketing business. They are as follows...

1. Learned knowledge - This is the knowledge you gain from reading books, listening to audios, getting on company conference calls and attending company trainings.

2. Activity knowledge - This is the knowledge you gain from actually going out and doing the business. Talking to prospects, working with new distributors, etc.

3. Modeling knowledge - This is the knowledge you gain when you watch someone who is having success in network marketing and copy what they do. More importantly, you not only copy what they do but you try to understand how they think and model that thought pattern in your own business.

4. Teaching knowledge - This is the knowledge you gain when you teach someone else how to do the business.

There are lots of ways you can get specialized knowledge. One of the best ways is to plug into your network marketing company's training system. Often your company and/or the team or organization you are a part of has a system in place to provide to you the specialized knowledge necessary to build a successful business.

Some distributors believe that the company and/or upline doesn't want them to succeed. While there are occasions where this is the case, in the overwhelming majority of cases, this is not true. Your company and/or upline only makes money when you make money. Why would they NOT want you to know everything you need to know to have success?

There are some people on the internet that will tell you that your upline or your company doesn't know what they are talking about or that they are holding stuff back from you. Often the reason why they tell this to you is because they have their OWN program to sell you.

These are very skilled marketers who are taught to play into the frustrations that you may be experiencing because of the perceived lack of success that you might have in your business. So be careful and don't fall into the trap of believing your upline or your company is out to get you.

That being said, the internet can be a great place to get specialized knowledge providing you get it from the right people. For example, while I do sell specialized knowledge, I also offer a great deal of it for free right on this blog.

While there are a lot of areas that you can focus on learning, success in a network marketing business is found by mastering the following skill sets:

1. Prospecting - Finding people to talk to about your opportunity.
2. Recruiting & Marketing - Taking people you find through a systematic process to educate them about your opportunity.
3. Training & Promotion - Teaching those you bring into the business how to do these 3 steps and encouraging your team to plug into the systems and events that will teach and encourage them how to do these 3 steps.

Here's how you can identify what type of specialized knowledge you need. If you don't have enough people to talk to, you need to work on your prospecting.

If you have enough people to talk to but you aren't recruiting a lot of people, you need to work on your recruiting and marketing.

If you are recruiting enough people but your team isn't duplicating your efforts, you need to work on your training and promotion.

The importance of specialized knowledge is covered in more detail in the book Think And Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.

Work At Home Business & The Power Of Autosuggestion

If you are a work at home business owner and you are not using autosuggestion to build your business you are really missing the boat.

What is autosuggestion? It is a strategy in which you influence your subconscious mind by what you allow to enter your five senses. By using your sight, hearing, touch, taste and feeling you can control what enters your conscious mind, which controls what enters your subconscious mind.

Your subconscious mind is where your thoughts come from and the thoughts that allow you to build a successful business is the result of good programming of your subconscious mind.

This is why most people who coach work at home business owners teach that you should constantly make sure you are engaging in the practice of personal development.

This means that you are reading books like Think And Grow Rich and listen to/watching good audios and videos that share with you strategies, insights and mindsets that are necessary to be successful in business.

The reason why most people struggle in business is because they allow autosuggestion to work AGAINST them instead of work for them. Instead of programming positive thoughts into their subconscious, they program negative thoughts into their subconscious.

This is one of the reasons why I limit certain types of music that I listen to. I cannot listen to hardcore gangsta rap all day and expect to be able to build a successful business. The reason why is because it is programming my subconscious mind in ways that negatively affect my business as oppose to positively affecting my business.

There is an older song that's got this beat that I really like by a group called Lil John and The Eastside boys. The song has been out for a couple of years now. However, there is NO WAY I can constantly listen to that song and expect to be a successful business owner. I'm not going to repeat the words here because they are way too explicit for this blog.

The song is basically about someone trying to start trouble with the group but they aren't willing to back up their trouble with action and what the group will do to them as a result.

If I constantly listen to that every day, what that is going to do is make me very combative and being combative isn't going to help me to build a successful business. In fact, I will probably lose a lot of business by being that way.

The news is something else I cannot spend a lot of time with either. I'll check some websites and click on a couple of articles just to keep myself up to date. However, there is no way in the world I would leave CNN running in the background while I work. That is just a recipe for disaster if I want to be successful in business, ESPECIALLY in this economy.

Just like autosuggestion can work against you, autosuggestion can also work for you. The key is to make sure that you implement it on a regular and continuous basis so that it can work on your behalf.

So how do you use autosuggestion to help you build a successful work at home business? Here are a couple of tips to help you...

#1 - Make sure you are constantly listening to and/or watching a good personal development audio or video. Also make sure you are reading a good personal development book. Do this daily.

#2 - Implement the concept of affirmations. What affirmations are is when you repeat to yourself phrases that affirm what you want to occur in your life.

Even the bible teaches this. There is a scripture that says "Let the weak say I am strong" Joel 3:10. The people saying this are about to go to battle. Those that feel weak are encouraged to affirm themselves by saying they are strong.

You need to do this in your business as well. If you want to hit a certain income or a certain level in your work at home business and you aren't at that level yet, you need to start using affirmations to affirm that income or level into your life.

For example, in my business my goal is to qualify for a level that is known as Bronze Executive Director. I am currently a Director so to reach this goal I have to first become an Executive Director and secondly become a Bronze Executive Director.

However, because I already have someone on my team who has qualified as an Executive Director before and I have other people who have come close, all I have to do is qualify as an Executive Director myself and make sure at least one of those people qualify the same month I do and I am a Bronze Executive Director. Therefore it's not as big of a jump as it would otherwise be.

Therefore, I have written the following affirmation for myself that I am reading on a daily basis starting today...

"By August 31st, 2009 I qualify as a Bronze Executive Director in Pre-Paid Legal Services. In return for hitting this level I commit myself to the service of my clients, the associates in my organization, the associates on Team Freedom and the associates in my company to help them maximize the benefits of this incredible product and take advantage of this awesome business opportunity. I walk the stage at my company's convention in Las Vegas in September during the recognition for new Bronze EDs. I say my name, where I'm from and "Got" and thousands of associates on my team chant "Freedom" while the other 10,000+ associates cheer for me. I lead by example and teach my team to do the same. God gives me the master plan to manifest the production and sales volume necessary for me to qualify for this level and I submit myself to His will to obediently implment that plan into my life and my business."

That's my affirmation. You can use mine as a basis and write one up on your own for you and your business.

Now don't think all you have to do is read books, listen to stuff and do affirmations and your business is going to grow. You have to actually do some WORK as well. However, it is this stuff that makes the work that you do more effective.