Amber is a mother of two, living with her husband in the middle of the country. Amber worked as a receptionist in an accounting office full time, but was, in her own words, “SO over it.” She was underappreciated, underpaid and was always stuck training new receptionists who were half her age with double her attitude and who quit as soon as they started. Amber felt stuck and hopeless, and then one day, a friend of hers introduced Amber to an amazing opportunity. Amber knew this was her way out, and she immediately got to work. She called all her friends; they called their friends; and they took off like wildfire. Everything Amber touched turned to gold. She won the trips. She walked the stage and was recognized on calls.

But then, something happened. Or didn’t happen. Or stopped happening.

It was not the kind of something that’s an event or a tragedy or out of left field, but rather something more… subtle. Amber couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Suddenly, when she tuned into the recognition call, instead of hearing her name or her team’s names and being excited—or hearing other people achieving higher levels and using it as motivation for what she could achieve next—every name that was announced sounded sour. She would see other women posting on social media and would immediately unfollow them, brooding about their success for an hour or two. “Well of course she’s doing great—she doesn’t have XYZ to deal with,” or “Duh…look at her Instagram following…of course she’s getting ahead.”

Almost as quickly as she found success, it fell apart. Or, at least, it stalled. And while it would be easy to blame the company, the comp plan, her upline or whatever else she could think of, Amber didn’t. Well, she did for a while. But when that didn’t help, Amber wondered if maybe what she was dealing with wasn’t a problem that stemmed from outside her. Maybe it was a problem from within her. Not a capability problem—she had proven she was capable—instead, Amber believed she had a storytelling problem.

And that is when I met Amber: Amber and all of the stories that were holding her back.

The “Other” Kind of Story

It was November of 2020. As a global population, we were still in the depths of the pandemic. As a nation, we were grappling with an election. And, as an industry, we were still making things happen without the magic of being together in person. For me personally, I was deeply immersed in research for my second book; Choose Your Story, Change Your Life: Silence Your Inner Critic and Rewrite Your Life from the Inside Out.

Like my first book, the new book is about storytelling—a topic that is certainly not new to you as there is no question that the direct selling business is a storytelling business. And for nearly a decade now, I have joined you at your annual conventions and stood in your stadiums as a keynote speaker. There, I’ve taught your industry’s professionals not only that they should be telling stories, but exactly how to tell them; and, sometimes most importantly, that no matter who they are, their story matters. However, while it is true that “facts tell and stories sell” and that they would be more successful if they were to simply tell more stories instead of listing features and ingredients, nothing is ever as easy as it seems.

If success really was as simple as “share your product story,” your job would be a whole lot easier. The truth is, when it comes to breaking through barriers and achieving greater success, there is a much bigger story at play: The story we tell ourselves.

Human = Storyteller

Humans are storytelling creatures by nature. We are WIRED for story. And while the earliest stories allowed us to communicate with other cavemen about the dangers of that particular berry or the lion crouching behind a particular bush, the storytelling skill—like humans themselves—evolved. Eventually, a new kind of story emerged: The self-story. The inner monologue. Researchers have determined that we use self-stories for a variety of reasons, like solving problems, motivating ourselves, making plans for the future, self-control and self-reflection. Our internal dialogue helped us stay safe, fit into the tribe and make sense of the world around us; in turn, these benefits helped us to live longer and ensured our safety and survival. And so the self-storytelling cycle continued.

Over the course of hundreds of thousands of years, this self-storytelling habit became as automated as breath and blood flow, and now—fast-forward thousands of years—you have Amber and millions of women like her. Amber doesn’t need to be kept safe from poisonous berries or hungry lions, but that doesn’t stop her inner-storyteller from sensing danger a mile away in the shape of modern threats like rejection, failure, humiliation. In an effort to keep her safe, Amber’s self-stories immediately launch into action, replaying all the times she’s tried something and failed. They are as vivid as a movie on the big screen, and yet they are completely invisible because evolution automated them, replaying them subconsciously so that Amber doesn’t even know they are there.

If you’ve ever looked on, baffled, as one of your top leaders seems to self-destruct for no apparent reason—there is a self-story to blame. If you’ve ever watched in wonder as someone with all the potential in the world just can’t seem to take flight, it’s self-storytelling. You can talk about mindset or personal development all you want, but until you interrupt the automatic stories that are holding your people back and then help them to replace those stories with better ones, the Ambers will stay stuck.

If stories are what is holding us back, then only stories can move us forward.

Choose Your Story, Change Your Life

Could taking control of the stories we tell ourselves—stopping the automation and choosing to tell ourselves stories that motivate and encourage us, or at the very least stop the spiral of negative thinking—could that simple change everything? That was what I endeavored to find out through my research with Amber and a group of others, all seeking to break through barriers and limiting beliefs in various areas of their lives including health and well-being, money and finances, business and career, love and relationships and family and parenting. Over the course of 6 weeks, I walked the participants in the research group through a simple, four-step method to choosing better stories. It starts with identifying the limiting beliefs and the old stories propping them up and then analyzing those stories.

For Amber, her belief that she would never be “good enough” was keeping her stuck, and it was anchored by stories like when she didn’t make the dance team in high school. Or when she dropped out of college. There was an early divorce. Various mom-fails. She could remember, in detail, the wealthy women in her neighborhood who made her feel awkward at the community center holiday gathering. You name it, Amber had a story for it. Stories that were old and outdated, yes, but that her subconscious continued to play in an effort to keep her safe.

The only way to break free? Choosing better stories to silence that inner critic.

Amber (like most of the participants) found many stories that illustrated the opposite of her limiting beliefs, especially when it came to her direct selling business. There was the lake house she was able to rent for her family vacation with her side-gig income. There was the story of the first Christmas when she didn’t have to stress over whether she could afford the toys her sons so desperately wanted. Or the Tuesday afternoon that she went to the grocery store and, out in the parking lot with a cart full of groceries, she realized she didn’t take her calculator out once to make sure she had enough money— because she knew she did.

“I AM A BEAST!!” Amber shouted confidently and unprompted during our third session together. “Why have I been telling myself these terrible stories when I have so many great ones?”

It was a very good question. And asking it changed everything.

The Self-Storytelling Opportunity

In just six weeks, Amber reported feeling 50 percent more in control of her life than when she started and 150 percent more optimistic about her future—simply by choosing better stories. She revealed that even the people on her team had noticed a difference, commenting that she didn’t call and “Debbie Downer” them anymore. Amber wasn’t the only one who saw a change. The participants in the sample group as a whole were 225 percent more likely to report being “very satisfied” with life; five times more likely to report being “very optimistic” about their future; and 230 percent more likely to shift from a “fear of failure” focus to a “hope of success” focus.

The group size was small, so the results are only directional in nature, but if you have ever sat at your desk and—after all the training sessions, the incentives, the bonuses—you’ve still had a sense that something needed to change…look no further than the stories your colleagues are telling themselves. Change those stories, and everything can change.

Happily Ever After

During our last session, I read Amber’s list of limiting beliefs back to her, and she shook her head as I did. “I know I felt that way, so it’s not that it wasn’t real…. It just was never true. And now I’m actually more open to letting myself feel like I actually am doing good… and as a result, I’ve been doing more good… And I’ve come to realize, I’m actually pretty awesome!”

There’s no question that storytelling is an essential ingredient to success in this industry. My hope is that, in experiencing this book and what it teaches, the people you lead and inspire will come to the same conclusions that Amber and so many others did. That they will tell and retell themselves the stories of their successes—the stories that make them feel proud and brave and capable—and in doing so, rewrite their lives from the inside out.

KINDRA HALL is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Stories that Stick and her newest book Choose Your Story, Change Your Life: Silence Your Inner Critic and Rewrite Your Life from the Inside Out. She is a sought-after keynote speaker in the direct selling industry and beyond. Hall is based in Manhattan, New York with her two children, husband and puppy named Spacedog.

From the January 2022 issue of Direct Selling News magazine.

The post The Story That Changes Everything first appeared on Direct Selling News.

DID YOU KNOW that black buying power within the United States has now reached $1.5 trillion? By 2024, that number is going to grow to $1.8 trillion—a number that is larger than the GDP for Mexico.

Did you know that the Hispanic buying power for Hispanic Americans is $1.4 trillion, or roughly the GDP for Australia?

Did you know that the buying power for Asian Americans is currently $1.2 trillion and expected to grow to $1.4 trillion in the next few years?

How much of this buying power are you leveraging every single day?

Statements Versus Standards

As you assess your team’s current state, consider a Washington Post article released this year entitled Corporate America’s $50 Billion Promise. When you look at the breakdown of how this $50 billion was allocated, only $71 million went to organizations focused on criminal justice reform.

I mention that because the bigger question is, why are we here again? It’s not to say Corporate America didn’t step up, but there’s a difference between pressure and practice. You cannot pledge your way out of systemic racism. While the companies in this pledge made a statement, it was not a standard.

Everyone wants a seat at the table. When you invite people to the table, you aren’t just offering equality, you’re offering racial equity. This is about giving a hand up, not just a handout—which, it turns out, is not only the right thing to do, it’s good business.

A Trillion-Dollar Opportunity

So, who is currently incorporating effective racial equity initiatives into their business strategy? Let’s look at some examples.

• Salesforce decided they would create ventures that will invest $100 million in marginalized communities to help those businesses level-up and have a seat at the table. Salesforce has also gone on record to say that by 2023, they will increase their leadership ranks by 50 percent as it relates to people of color being directors and vice presidents in their organization. They are intentionally impacting communities that have been marginalized and disenfranchised.
• McDonald’s announced they will not only continue to invest $1 billion in black suppliers, but also that they understand it is not enough to have two board members who are black and two women on their board. Over the next few years, they have plans to increase diversity within their executive ranks by 25 percent.
• Nike’s CEO has gone on record saying that Nike would not be the company it is today if it had not had the support of black Americans and the black population around the world.

Who is at the table making decisions for your company?

The McKinsey Global Institute’s research is saying that in the United States, there is a linear relationship between racial and ethnic diversity and better performance. For every 10 percent increase in racial and ethnic diversity on the senior executive team, McKinsey says earnings before interest and taxes rise 0.8 percent. And in their study of 1,000 organizations in 12 countries, they found that organizations in the top 25 percent when it comes to gender diversity among the executive leadership teams were more likely to outperform on profitability and value creation.

And think about this particular piece of data: The Center for Talent Innovation says teams are 158 percent more likely to understand target consumers when they have at least one member who represents their target’s gender, race, age, sexual orientation or culture.

When you consider those numbers, where does your organization sit right now?

Do you have individuals who have their finger on the pulse of trillions of dollars of buying power?

Racial Equity Role Models

In October 2019, T-Mobile said they didn’t want to just throw dollars at the problem, but rather think long-term how they could grow together and solve racial injustice once and for all. They set aside $25 million and created a memorandum of understanding with organizations like the National Urban League, the National Action Network and the League of United Latin Americans to really look at how they think about talent, culture and brand.

Netflix has invested $100 million in disenfranchised communities and, understanding that it’s not just enough to write a check, they specifically look at putting money into financial institutions in black communities. Dr. Stacy Smith with the University of Southern California Annenberg Inclusion Initiative says, “When you have diversity and inclusion behind the camera, you will have diversity and inclusion in front of the camera.”

I had the opportunity to speak with the team at General Mills this year. The company is headquartered in Minnesota, which has one of the lowest ranked education systems for black Americans in the country. In Minneapolis, the incarceration rate of blacks is 11 times higher than whites and, according to NPR, while 84 percent of whites in Minneapolis own their home, less than 25 percent of blacks do.

In response to these statistics, General Mills looked at whole equity and representation and made the choice to double the representation of black managers, increase minority representation to 25 percent, and double its spending with minority-owned suppliers. Then it partnered with other local brands to create the Minnesota Business Coalition for Racial Equity which specifically focuses on workplace, policy, philanthropy and allyship, and outlines how the group will tackle education, housing, healthcare and internet access. All of these things help individuals level up.

This is the conversation. Equality, yes, but the goal must be equality plus equity.

Your Next Steps

What can you do?

First, it starts with a CEO’s commitment. The Corporate Leadership Council says emotional commitment is four times more important than rational commitment in driving discretionary effort. When the CEO is committed to the goal, the conversation flips from “this is something we have to do” to “this is something we want to do.” That emotional commitment lets the entire organization know this is important.

As leaders consider how to approach these important strategic decisions, the website CEOAction.com can be a powerful resource, providing examples of what 2,000 CEOs from 85 different industries are doing every single day to think about racial equity through a fresh lens.

From there, establish an executive champion who will own the mission and ensure that racial equity does not get pushed to the back burner while also providing accountability for implementation. This champion will keep the organization focused on how talent is attracted, activated and advanced; which policies impact the people you serve; how much purchasing power is spent with diverse businesses who need a seat at the table; and the measurable net impact of your philanthropic initiatives.

People, policy, purchasing power and philanthropy—that’s how we begin addressing racial equity.

Your Bottom Line Is at Stake

Having hard conversations is good business. If we really want to understand how we can make a great impact and take a long-term view of this trillion-dollar opportunity before us, we need to ask how we will lead differently.

McKinsey tells us that companies pay a penalty for a lack of diversity. Organizations in the bottom 25 percent for both gender and cultural diversity were 29 percent less likely to experience profitability above the industry average. Working to create racial equity isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s a proven strategy for developing longevity and success.

Where are you right now in your diversity, equity and inclusion journey?

Simon T. Bailey’s purpose is to spark listeners to lead countries, companies and communities differently. He goes beyond feel-good content to deliver practical strategies, based on 30 years of experience in the hospitality industry, including serving as sales director for Disney Institute, based at Walt Disney World Resort.

From the December 2021 issue of Direct Selling News magazine.

The post The Business Case for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion first appeared on Direct Selling News.

1. How well do I manage change: As an individual? As a leader?

2. What is the secret to managing change?

The bottom line is that the most successful people manage change effectively by managing their mindset. Although you can’t control everything, you can control your mindset.

Without change, there is no innovation, creativity or incentive for improvement. Change is inevitable.

There are four main categories to look at in the change puzzle:

1. Life Changes

The world keeps moving on. Improvement makes life better. However, sometimes life changes can throw you a curveball!

You’ve always got to manage your mindset. Be willing to ask for help. Reframe your perspective. Focus on the future and look for positives. Life is ever-changing. It’s better to accept it and positively approach the future.

2. Individual Changes

Ask yourself—How well do I personally handle change? Here are a few statistics regarding the general population’s feeling about change. Where are you on this scale?

• Negative: 30 percent are resistant to change
• Indifferent: 50 percent don’t have a strong feeling either way
• Positive: 20 percent embrace change

People have their reasons for feeling the way they do. Here are a few thoughts to consider when facing a person who is negative and resistant to change. They may be experiencing or thinking any of the following.

1. Loss of control
2. Excess uncertainty
3. Unwelcome feelings of surprise
4. Things seems different
5. Loss of face
6. Concerns about competence
7. More work
8. Ripple effects
9. Past memories
10. Resentment

Indifference can frequently be the biggest challenge to deal with because this group feels no action is required at all for a different set of reasons:

1. Based on a belief that ‘this too shall pass,’ it is just another attempt to change what will inevitably remain the same anyway.

2. Individual doesn’t believe change requires anything on their part.

3. May feel that it just does not apply to them.

Positive attitudes about change can create a whole new perspective. Embracing change can be a beautiful thing! Time has proven out that the most successful embrace change with a positive, solution-oriented mindset that focuses on possibilities.

3. Leadership Changes

How do we best lead others through change? There are some specific strategies you can take to ensure your team is moving together in the right direction to make a smoother transition. For example, have open and transparent communications, be available and have effective meetings.

First, you need clarity. Define where you are going by sharing the vision with everyone. Understand and communicate the “why” about the changes that are coming. Let everyone know how all stakeholders can win with these changes. Explain how the vision is different, better, more compelling now than before. Ask your team questions/have them ask you questions to make sure they understand the rationale.

Then be prepared to manage organizational resistance. Phrase your communications to be more on the human side because people matter more than plans and processes. Understand the organization’s culture and be prepared to overcome objections that will arise. Predict what the outcome will be from these changes to avoid surprises and tackle uncertainty about the future. Speak to the individual when explaining expectations, measurements of success and what success really means.

Be an Influential leader, one who can instill hope for the future. Hope brings several major benefits to a culture. It renews faith, builds confidence, promotes empowerment with clarity, helps increase productivity and instills teamwork.

4. Organizational Changes

What’s your organizational culture? Does it foster change and working as a High Performing Team? Let’s do a quick exam of a culture that fosters a High Performing Team by incorporating changes into the DNA of an enterprise while driving operating results.

High-Performing Teams are successful at incorporating changes. They do this by using three strong concepts within their leadership behaviors. Accountability is one essential element, where you do what you say you are going to do, by the deadline or before. Communication is the second essential element, whereby you have a plan and communicate it, repeatedly. Turn the unknowns into knowns for your team. Trust is the third essential element, where leadership consistently follows through on promises and commitments.

Organizations thrive when change is a part of their cultural DNA. Life is ever changing…it’s better to accept it. Always cast a clear vision with hope for the future. Be in the right camp and embrace change.

Remember—get your head on straight. Manage your mind. Mindset matters! 

Tony Jeary—The RESULTS Guy—is a prolific author and a strategist. His organization, TJI, facilitates powerful meetings, keynote events and coaches high performers to accelerate their results.

From the November 2021 issue of Direct Selling News magazine.

The post Change: Mindset Matters first appeared on Direct Selling News.

1. How much have you invested in yourself in the last year to be better?
2. How many hours have you intentionally invested in yourself in the last twelve.

Take a look at your phone right now and count how many audiobooks you have in your library. How many books are on your Kindle or other device? How many podcasts have you marked? How many learning notes do you have from past events? This should tell you something.

Coaching is a force multiplier. It’s a powerful tool used by too few. Why are so many people not being coached? Perhaps it’s because they’re not as coachable as they could be or think they are. And let’s face it—they don’t proactively, regularly, and strategically seek advice. It’s a blind spot for many.

If you’re ready for it, coaching is a powerful secret weapon. When new clients come to our RESULTS Center, I take note of how they learn. Do they ask questions or just listen? Do they take notes? Do they engage or just absorb? Are they committed to taking action on the strategic plan we’re developing?

Ten Qualities of Being Coachable

Over the more than three decades I’ve been coaching, I’ve observed the qualities of the people who seem to respond best to receiving learning—the ones who internalize what they’ve learned and immediately begin to put it to work in their lives so they can be better.

As we share these qualities with you, take a careful look at yourself and see how they apply to you. At the end of this article, we’ve included an instrument to rate yourself to know where you stand on these qualities.

1 / Strong Self-Esteem

People with a strong self-esteem don’t have to defend their position. They exhibit a measure of humility because they’re willing to ask themselves, Am I wrong? Can I improve? What am I not seeing? They have the confidence to ask Can I invest a little of my time, energy, and money to be better? Those who are not strong often seem to feel like they always need to be right. They perhaps have not built up enough of an emotional bank account to say I could be wrong.

2 / Open 

How often do you seek insights and perspectives from a mentor, a trusted colleague, your banker, your field, your board, your team, your financial planner, and maybe even your kids or other people who are part of your life?

3 / Curious 

Dr. Denis Waitley and I were invited to join Zig Ziglar in making his last video before he passed. We were interviewed in Zig’s studio by Gerhard Gerschwandtner, founder of Selling Power magazine. At one point during the interview, I reversed the question to Gerhard: “What do you think is the keyword that is most valuable in sales and seeking success?” He surprised me with his response: “Curiosity.” He suggested that curiosity drives a person to ask questions, including the why’s, and eventually get into some really great kernels of information. At that moment, I realized how powerful having a strong sense of curiosity is, and that revelation impacted my life in a huge way. A person who is very curious is very coachable.

4 / Hungry to Discover Best Practices 

When you’re hungry, you’re eager to learn from everyone you meet, and you wake up every day asking, What can I learn today? You will be open to the best practices your coach shares with you and model part or all of them to grow your effectiveness.

5 / Willing to be Wrong 

This is a cousin to having a strong self-esteem. Many people aren’t willing to accept when they’re wrong, whether they’re seeing something the wrong way or they’re not as efficient or as effective as they could be.

6 / Understanding You have Blind Spots 

This is in the same family as being willing to be wrong. What are you not seeing that a coach could help you uncover? For example, maybe you’re making hiring choices that aren’t as good as they could be because you don’t have the ideal system for hiring the right people.

7 / Willing to invest in Yourself and Your Team 

Do you put money toward books and videos that will make you and your team smarter? And are you open to investing in a coach—the right coach—to make yourself and your team better?

8 / Sold Out on Learning 

Have you determined that you will be a lifetime learner and glean every bit of information you can each and every day? Having the consistent mindset of a student makes you very coachable.

9 / Self-Aware 

Are you fully aware of your strengths and weaknesses? How about the values that guide your life? When is the last time you used a discovery tool like 360, SWOT analysis to assess how you relate to others and what your key motivations, habits, challenges, and weaknesses are? Have you sought mentors who will challenge you to improve?

10 / Willing to Take Ownership 

A coachable person is willing to own up to the mistakes he/she has made and learn from them. Being accountable in this way is a choice you make and defines you as a person who doesn’t make excuses, manages expectations, and controls your thoughts and emotions.

Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 in the assessment below. Let’s add up your score to see how coachable you are.

How did you do? If you’re not as coachable as you thought you were or want to be, then work on those areas you’re not strong in. Decide today to become more coachable so you can take full advantage of this powerful force multiplier that can change your life and bring you extraordinary success and results.

Tony Jeary—The Results Guy—is a prolific author and a strategist. His organization, TJI, facilitates powerful meetings, keynote events and coaches high performers to accelerate their results.

From the October 2021 issue of Direct Selling News magazine.

The post Being Coachable first appeared on Direct Selling News.

I’ve noticed for years that certain people attract others, almost as if with a magnet. I’ve dissected that, and my colleague Daniel Marold and I have been studying what causes it to happen. Over the last year, we’ve put together a new book called Vibe: Energy = RESULTS Faster.

Vibe is the energy emitted by a person or an organization, and we’ve determined that the greater your vibe, the better your results. We’ve entitled this article “Your Vibe Attracts Your Tribe,” and we’re going to give you the “what” and the “how” to bring that to life.

The “what” is that having a great reputation—and attracting great people—at the highest level requires that you emit a great vibe, both as a leader and as an organization. You want to be strategic about your vibe so when people research you, your team, or your organization, the attraction is magnetic. As an executive, you want to attract members of your corporate team as well as field team members.

“The way to gain a great reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.”

— Socrates

It’s really about more than who you attract. It’s also about “how” you inspire others as well as what they retain. As we all know, those are the three miraculous elements of the direct-selling multilevel-marketing business: attract, retain, and inspire.

Now let’s go to the how. There are five opportunities to enhance your vibe, keep your reputation at its highest level, and attract the right people, and I’ve listed five steps associated with each opportunity.

Five Opportunities to Enhance Your Vibe

1. Word of mouth. What are people saying about you and your organization?
2. Web search. When people search for you on the web, what are they finding?
3. Your website(s). Are they up to date, and are they designed to attract the right people?
4. Your training tools. Are they updated, and do they have vibe?
5. Social media (such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube). How do you convey your vibe across these media?

Five Steps to Maximize Each Opportunity

Step 1: Select an element.

Step 2: Assess it and determine where you are and where you want to be.

Step 3: Assign a lead person (generally from the marketing department or perhaps a person in the field.)

Step 4: Define specific actions for anything in the assessment you don’t like so you can tweak it and raise it to the next level.

Step 5: Manage it so you can keep it up, measure it, and continue tweaking it in order to keep your vibe at its highest level.

I’m suggesting that you apply each of these steps to each opportunity. Here’s what I mean:

1. You select the first one, word of mouth.
2. You assess it. What are people saying about you?
3. Determine who the lead person is on your team who should be in charge of word of mouth. Let’s say it’s the IDC—the independent counsel from the field—who is the lead person to handle word of mouth. Or it could be someone internally who works in your marketing department who would team up with someone in the field.
4. Then define specific actions we want to take to improve it. Be strategic.
5. Then you go about managing it. Every so often, you might take some surveys to see how word of mouth is working for you.

Now follow each of the five steps for the other four elements. The last step, managing, may involve these actions:

• For web search, you might have someone in your organization constantly be doing web searches to see what comes up.
•  For your website, you might take a good look to see if it’s outdated or whether it conveys your vibe.
•  For your training tools, you might look at what’s being put out by other companies and see if they may be a fit for today’s situation. An obsolete training tool could certainly affect your reputation.
• And of course, social media in today’s world is one scenario where you have to be constantly and consistently updating.

What kind of vibe do you have? How is it affecting your reputation? And is it attracting the kind of tribe you want?

From the July 2021 issue of Direct Selling News magazine.

TONY JEARY—THE RESULTS GUY—IS A PROLIFIC AUTHOR AND A STRATEGIST. HIS ORGANIZATION, TJI, FACILITATES POWERFUL MEETINGS, KEYNOTE EVENTS AND COACHES HIGH PERFORMERS TO ACCELERATE THEIR RESULTS.

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Learning from others who have gone before you not only helps you supercharge where you’re going; it also helps you avoid risks by learning from the mistakes others have made. Simply put, if you want different (better) results, you need new thinking. Learning strategically from the wisdom and insight of others helps you be more successful faster. In fact, it’s often the piece of the success puzzle that brings you the extraordinary results you could never have achieved alone. How are you doing at bringing strategic advice into your life?

Jay Rodgers has been a true blessing to me as my business mentor for many years. Three or four years ago, I asked him why he continues to meet with me frequently and pour his advice into me. He said, “Often when you’re older, one of the things you want to do is give advice to people who are willing to listen and actually take action on the advice you give them—and you always take action.” Jay and I usually meet twice a month, and during our sessions, I take careful notes. Afterward, I send him an email listing in bullet format the advice and aha’s he gave me. That not only lets him know I was listening—it also gives him an opportunity to correct anything I may have misunderstood. Then the next time I meet with him, I share the actions I’ve taken on those items.

Being a publisher, I asked Jay a few years into our relationship if he would consider co-authoring a book with me about mentorship. As we started digging in to write the book, we realized we needed to expand its scope since getting advice involves much more than just mentors. We came up with the title Advice Matters, and we wrote about the six places you can actually turn to in order to uncover blind spots and learn from others.

Mentors: Mentors help you see what you can’t see. Like Jay, they’re often at a point in their life when they want to pour back into others, and they will usually give you advice for free. Ideally, a mentor is strong in the areas where you know you are weak. People often ask me how to get a great mentor, and I tell them to find someone who has done (or is doing) what you want to do or who has accomplished what you want to achieve. If your values match theirs, they will often consider a connection. I have several mentors myself—mentors for health, parenting, and business—and I encourage you to do the same.

A Coach: Coaches are, in essence, paid mentors who will point out your key strengths as well as your blind spots to help you gain more clarity, and they often challenge you to find new perspectives and different solutions to achieve your goals. They help you focus. There are a couple of other significant differences between mentors and coaches as well. The exceptional coaches are those who have a toolbox—an arsenal of tools they have built over time that they can give you to speed up your learning and help you accomplish what you want to do. These tools could include books, articles, templates, checklists, videos, audios, helpful websites, and anything else that will help you in your pursuit of exceptional results. In fact, the bigger their toolbox, the stronger and more impactful they can be. The second difference is their connections (their Rolodex). The best coaches bring to the table a ton of other cool people they can connect you with who can open doors, share perspectives, and advance your results.

Trusted Colleagues: There are, of course, many organizations you can join where you will find trusted colleagues you can turn to for advice. You can also look to the people around you or those you work with (zero in on five or ten of your best business friends) for a reciprocal relationship where you share ideas and insights or actually ask for input on certain things. I encourage you to be intentional in finding several trusted colleagues who can be valuable to you by trading insights and advice, giving you new perspective to see details and distinctions, and helping you go to another level of thinking.

Paid Advisors: These are people like attorneys or CPAs whom you actually pay for advice. I’m told there are approximately 3.9 million words in the IRS code, and most of us are not going to take the time to study it. However, good CPAs will not just have a good grasp of it; they will also be able to dig deeply into it to find the distinctions you need for your specific situations. Because of their knowledge and expertise, they can often uncover blind spots you may not be able to see that will help you with your tax strategy.

Resources: Generally, resources fit into three categories: audio, video, or a book. I think it’s safe to say that everyone who is reading this article is a big believer in using resources. If you’re in the direct selling industry, you’re going to read, watch videos, and study as many resources as you can, because it is a remarkable way to learn and advance your results. You can even pick up great ideas from people who died years ago who had a recorded or published work. Are you pouring enough resources like these into your mind so you can consistently absorb advice from some of the best experts in the world? Optimizing the use of resources is an excellent way to help you make the best decisions and constantly be refining the distinctions and principles on your belief window.

Self: You really can’t see your own blind spots. What you can see is patterns. If the patterns are working, you want to continue and double down on them. If the patterns aren’t working, you’ll need to reflect and see if you can make adjustments to get more of what you want. Giving advice to yourself, reflecting, and thinking through challenges and ideas is something most people don’t do enough of.

So, there you have it—six specific things we wrote about in Advice Matters. I hope this simple article can have a great impact on your life. In fact, I hope it’s much better than just a perspective or an angle. I hope there are some aha’s here, or maybe even an epiphany or two, that could be life-changing kernels of wisdom that could really impact you and your organization.

Tony Jeary—The RESULTS Guy—is a prolific author and a strategist. His organization, TJI, facilitates powerful meetings, keynote events and coaches high performers to accelerate their results.

The post Advice Matters first appeared on Direct Selling News.

One of the very best ways to do that is with a concept called strategic preparation. We invested months in producing a new book with that title and just released it.

Here are eight selected highlights we hope you will consider that will impact you.

1. Thinking Ahead: You’re better prepared personally and organizationally when you think deeply about your values, your purpose, and your goals, and you make thinking on these an intentional habit. By gaining clarity on what you want to accomplish and then on the action items that will take you toward your goals, you evoke a pulling power in that direction. Thinking ahead and then writing down and visualizing your goals activates your reticular activating system (RAS), which is your brain’s way of filtering out what does not matter and guiding you toward what does. You not only see the goals in your mind; you also begin to see things around you that will help you achieve your goals. If you don’t write down what you’re thinking, then your brain is not as clear about what is important, and your RAS filters out things you might need to help you achieve your goals. Decide what you want and plant that goal in your mind. Then be intentionally strategic about everything you do, and that will lead to better and better results.

2. Investing in Yourself: According to super achievers, including people like Warren Buffett, the best investment you can make is in yourself. We believe you must make a commitment to yourself and prepare every day for your future, and part of that plays out in delayed gratification. For example, as I was writing this article, we had just come off a Zoom call where we were brainstorming about the title of a book we were writing for one of our clients. We realized we had not invested the time to build a tool that presents the fifteen or twenty attributes that really make a title of a nonfiction book work. We immediately decided to build such a tool, which can harvest great dividends for the future. By investing the time to do the research and build that tool now, we are better prepared to help a client find the right title when that conversation comes up again. Often when we invest in creating tools for our toolbox, we’re investing in ourselves, which positions us to create better and faster results.

3. Helping Others Win More (doing favors): When you help people win now, it creates winning opportunities for you in the future. (That’s pretty obvious.) People like to be led by and do business with people who do things for them and who work to build a platform of trust. And an additional perk is that often when you are helping or doing favors for others, you build an internal vibe, or energy, which produces an excitement that enables you take more action yourself.

4. Saving Financially: Practicing delayed gratification and saving financially (e.g., having a reserve budget for your business) often puts you in a position where you can take the right action at the right time instead of settling for a shortcut. Or it can sometimes allow you to be more thorough in what needs to be done. If you have the reserves to invest, then you can buy a tool—maybe an audio series, a video course, or even an app—that would allow you to supercharge your team.

5. Inspiring Yourself: Own this little nugget. Inspire yourself with intentional actions and by deploying good habits. Think of the actions you could take now that will align with your goal achievement. These actions could include simple things like.

• Getting up early and working out
• Going to bed early and reading
• Developing your to-do list daily—both the night before and again the next day
• Constantly be inspiring yourself by getting things done fast and marking the X’s in the box. “Done” is one of my favorite words that inspire me.

6. See the Other Person’s Perspective: So many times, we filter the world around what matters only to us versus filtering it through what matters to others. And “others” can often be team members who are teaming up with you to help you take action. Be more strategically prepared by taking the time to really get to know your team members’ priorities and perspectives, and do your best to fulfill wins for them. In many cases, you can create what we call an elegant solution, where you’re so mentally prepared that you can accomplish not only what you want, but you can help the other person accomplish what they want at the same time. That may involve building their career, their arsenal, their thinking, or even just their experiences.

7. Building Tools: Tools work! The bigger your arsenal of tools, the more leverage you have available. Having the right tools at the right time can make a world of difference in preparing you and your people for success. When you have a powerful tool chest, you’re supercharging your potential. You don’t have to recreate the wheel each time something needs to be done. As direct selling becomes more and more the business model of choice in these times, business executives are doubling down on tools because tools really matter!

8. Study More Often: There is no doubt that learning should be a lifelong pursuit. I read books and glean wisdom daily, and I’ve actually been coached by the same guy for over three decades. Learning strategically from the wisdom and insight of others helps you be more successful, period. How are your study habits? Are you being coached? When you sharpen your thinking, you get better results. Wise advice can also help you avoid pitfalls that could derail your top actions for success. If you want different results, you need new and different thinking—it’s that simple. New information stimulates both your reasoning processes and your creative juices and helps you think and prepare better. Prepare for extraordinary results by seeking advice from people who have produced the extraordinary results you want to duplicate

Pick a few of these to zero in on that fit you and highlight them. Heck, take a photo of this page to remind yourself to work on implementing them in your life.

I’ve just shared with you what I’ve learned over the years of my own personal journey in becoming more strategic. I hope it’s impacted you and maybe given you an “aha” or even an epiphany about the importance of being strategic and using it as a major component in your own journey to success.

Cheers to strategic preparation, helping others win, seeking and taking good advice, and really preparing now so your future will be even brighter.

Let’s make 2021 a year full of many wins.

Tony Jeary—The RESULTS Guy—is a prolific author and a strategist. His organization, TJI, facilitates powerful meetings, keynote events and coaches high performers to accelerate their results.

The post Strategic Preparation first appeared on Direct Selling News.

One good thing that’s come from it is that it has helped us all reevaluate our priorities. And here’s another big win: because of COVID’s effect on so many businesses, many people are turning to our industry—causing a lot of momentum. In order to take advantage of that momentum as we go into 2021, we want to make sure we’re as clear as we can be on what our force multipliers are so we can focus our teams and our efforts accordingly. We want to be sure and execute with precision and obviously with accountability and create wins in 2021.

Here is a list of twelve distinctions that can help you have more momentum. You may want to take a picture of the list and talk about it in your staff meetings, or you may just want to review it for yourself ongoing and see which ones apply to help you have your best year ever.

1. CLARITY pulls you toward the direction of what you set out to accomplish. You can gain clarity of your goals by writing them down, visualizing them, and employing positive self-talk.

2. FOCUS ensures you don’t waste energy. What you want is less Low-Leverage Activities (LLAs) and more High-Leverage Activities (HLAs).

3. EXECUTION is the foundation for momentum. When you get things done and own that you’ve accomplished them, you get mental power that keeps you going.

4. Get RESULTS, not excuses! Whether you lead the pack, you’re in sales, or whatever your position, you have to keep things moving and own the fact that the results are up to you.

5. REVIEW your goals daily and adjust your daily lists to be sure they align with your global goals. If you’re part of a team, huddle and synergize on the goals at hand.

6. SOLVE problems. Be a roadblock buster. Things can come up every day to get in your way. Life is not perfect. Be flexible and have the mindset of being a problem solver. If you can’t personally solve the problem, reach out for a “lifeline”—get more information, find a technology tool that will help you, or reach out to someone who can assist you.

7. Put it on your LIST. If it’s not on your calendar, it doesn’t matter that much to you. Schedule actions on your daily lists, whether they are hand-written, on your computer, or on your phone (or all three).

8. EMPLOY Production Before Perfection. Stuck leaders can paralyze an organization. Be aware that people can get stuck because of perfectionism, and perfectionism can stunt momentum. Make sure to get people moving (including yourself) because a RESULTS culture is a winning culture! Procrastination is the enemy of momentum.

9. Have relentless levels of URGENCY. Understand that thinking—the right thinking—impacts your success. If you want more momentum, develop the thinking of Nike—Just do it!

10. Get the Xs in the box. At the end of the day, you either got it done, or you didn’t. If you got it done, you can put an X in the box and feel the accomplishment. Accomplishments support momentum!

11. Ask yourself what you can do right NOW to keep your momentum going. Maybe you need to:

 Make a phone call

 Send an email

 Send a text

 Give a gift

 Write a note

 Listen to a training

12. The stronger your desire, the more MOTIVATED you are. Be clear on what you value and know what you desire. Leverage self-talk. Say something like, “I am a person of action, and I get it done.”

The sooner you get going, the easier it is to keep moving forward. As you gain speed and stay focused, momentum will take over, and you’ll be unstoppable.

Tony Jeary—The RESULTS Guy—is a prolific author and a strategist. His organization, TJI, facilitates powerful meetings, keynote events and coaches high performers to accelerate their results.

The post The Power of Momentum first appeared on Direct Selling News.

As I was growing up, my parents modeled giving and serving others. That often involved giving of their time, when they would volunteer to help people in various ways. So, I grew up understanding the importance of not just giving value and doing more than expected but also looking for ways to be generous. In fact, that’s one of the things I shared in my tribute to my dad at his funeral—that he had modeled for me how to be super generous; that was his brand. Generosity can be a very powerful part of a leader’s brand.

How giving are you? And how about your organization? Is it looking for ways to contribute back to the world?

A year or so ago, I came across a gentleman, John Ruhlin, who was really into the world of gifting. We ended up co-authoring a very powerful little book together called Strategic Gifting. In the book, we discussed several valuable ideas about giving that we will be unpacking in this article.

One concept is to be both intentional and strategic with your giving. When generosity becomes a matter of the heart, there will generally be reciprocation in one form or another. Then, radical generosity becomes a strategic weapon that allows you to grow your brand, grow your business, and perhaps take it to the next level. As generosity truly becomes part of your brand, it often boosts referrals, retention rates, access, and growth like few other strategies. It unlocks what we call “active loyalty”—when your clients, customers, employees, and centers of influence start going out of their way to send you deals, referrals, prospects and business opportunities.

Gifting is actually a delivery vehicle for love, appreciation, and gratitude.

You’ll see astonishing results when you start proactively loving on your clients, customers, employees, and even your suppliers.

My co-author John and I discovered that we often treat our suppliers better than most people treat their best clients. And because of that, our partners—our suppliers—actually refer deals to us constantly. They often give us better pricing than some of the bigger companies they work with, and they give priority response time, shipping, etc. A giving brand matters!

Another concept is that sometimes you can give in ways that your gift keeps on giving with multiple wins, such as giving to an endowment. And your gift doesn’t always have to be large. Giving even a small thing of value can help people win on an ongoing basis. For example, I often will give coaching cards as a gift—a collection of cards that contain the best quotes and ideas that people have liked from my books over the years. The gift includes a cardholder so they can put the cards on their desks to continually motivate themselves and their team members.

Another idea we talked about in the book is giving to someone’s inner circle. A secret many people miss is that the real back door into relationships is not just taking care of the person who’s cutting the checks or the influencer—it’s taking care of the people around them. While you may be treating clients or centers of influence with all this love, for example, you’re often taking them away from their families in the evenings or for trips, and the assistants and spouses are left with juggling schedules and changing priorities. Spouses especially often get the raw end of the deal when the wage earner of the family is given these kinds of gifts because they are left to deal with all the challenges on the home front. If you give something of value to the kids or spouse—or even to a beloved pet—you can create massive impact.

One of my clients came into my RESULTS Center Studio on a Saturday a few weeks ago to give me advice on a few supplements, and he bought his three-year-old son in with him. His son got excited when he saw a yoga ball that I had in my office. So, I took a magic marker and wrote his name on the ball and gave it to him to take home. His dad was quite impressed with that very small gesture. I was not being disingenuous; that’s just the way I live my life. I look for ways to give, and I encourage others to do the same thing. I created multiple wins by giving away a $20 yoga ball. It was nothing for me to go out and buy another one, and yet this little kid was able to walk away with something that likely caused him to say, “Wow, Dad, that was really fun!” Also, it probably expanded the relationship I had with my client because I connected with his inner circle.

Many of the network marketing companies I advise and work with choose organizations to support that give back to the community. We have partnered with a company called Envision, one of the largest employers of the blind and visually impaired in America. They manufacture things like trash bags, magic markers, and face masks, and they also have a powerful call center. Eighty-two percent of the people in their factories are blind, and Envision helps them live a more normal life by being able to support themselves.

It just so happens that the CEO and I go way back, prior to his association with Envision. Because he understood and valued our methodology of clarity, focus, and execution and our practices of meeting effectiveness and streamlining organizations, he brought us in, and we ended up building a relationship where we could help his people in many different ways.

We put up a giant Envision plaque in my office, so anyone coming into our space sees it, and we are able to talk to them about the good the company is doing.

In fact, we just produced and sent out to all my contacts a virtual tour of their facilities, in which we encourage people to help us spread the word and find companies that will employ blind or visually impaired individuals and donate to help in the work.

I encourage you to find something you feel good about that you can support, either with your time, effort, or dollars. Giving is a big deal, and I encourage you to be more intentional and become a strategic giver. DSN

Tony Jeary – The Results Guy, is a prolific author and a strategist. His organization,TJI, facilitates powerful meetings, keynote events and coaches high performers to accelerate their results.

The post Strategic Gifting: Generosity Can Be An Important Part of Your Brand. first appeared on Direct Selling News.

Here are twenty-one life areas where you can be more strategic. Be encouraged to think more and be more strategic in everything you do—not just in your business.

1. Strategic Thinking: This is where it all starts. Every problem is a thinking problem. What do you do when you don’t get the results you want, or when you don’t get the results you want fast enough? Make some changes. There’s a ton of power in thinking strategically.

2. Strategic Health: Being strategic with your health means you think about it in such a way that you make everything you do a habit—including eating properly, getting the right amount of sleep, handling stress, taking the right supplements, and exercising—so it becomes part of your lifestyle and who you are.

3. Strategic Preparation: Thinking ahead and being prepared pays off in spades in every area of your life. For example, delayed gratification is a powerful concept that involves thinking and planning far into the future, and it yields amazing results down the line.

4. Strategic Time: Strategic time has to do with getting really clear on the Low Leverage Activities that steal your time and investing in more High Leverage Activities that have the most impact on your results. Also, saying “no” to the things that don’t matter allows you to focus on the things that are important. Think through what you put on your calendar.

5. Strategic Emails: Emails can be a huge waste of time because most organizations have not taken the time to set email standards for their people. For example, our standards include frontloading your emails, so they’re really clear and concise and using bullets instead of paragraphs.

6. Strategic Goals: Being strategic in your goal setting is understanding that you become what you think about. Design your own life by setting goals on not just what you want to have, but also what you want to share, experience, give, and of course become.

7. Strategic Meetings: The two ways we communicate, especially today, are through emails and meetings—and many meetings today are virtual. Most people do well on their delivery in their meetings. The big takeaway we teach here is the power of effective preparation (including objectives and a strong agenda) and follow-up. (Live note-taking on a screen, showing who is responsible for what action and by when is a huge asset here.)

8. Strategic Travel: There are many great things you can do strategically to turn your travel into black-card experiences, starting with defining your perfect trip and all the details of what you want to experience. Be sure to strategically engage your co-travelers and your support team. Then plan to the hilt and check and double-check all you’ve done to make sure there are no glitches, and finally, enjoy!

9. Strategic Eating: Understand how food works. The big takeaway here is whatever you put in your refrigerator and your pantry is what you’re going to end up eating—so be strategic about your shopping!

10. Strategic Communication: When you communicate strategically, you understand how people want to receive it—by text, email, voicemail, podcasts, or whatever—and communicate that way. Understand a person’s personality style and communicate accordingly.

11. Strategic Assessment: Assessment is one of the most powerful tools you can use. Create a rhythm in assessing yourself, your company, and your team to see how you’re doing and then reflecting on your findings and making improvements on your efforts.

12. Strategic Service: Strategic service is going the extra mile and doing more than is expected. There is a little booklet called Customer Experience, and one of the big takeaways is the idea of giving your customers a membership experience—making them feel special, whether they are actually members or not.

13. Strategic Planning: Do you have a powerful and well-thought-out strategic plan for your organization, tied to a simple, well-thought-out vision? And do you have a system for ensuring all team members understand the vision and are reminded of it constantly, to ensure focus? How about a strategic plan (design) for your life?

14. Strategic Culture: Working with some of the greatest companies in the world, including helping the president of Ford create a High-Performing Team years ago, I have learned we can all be more strategic with our culture. It’s a matter of defining the standards and values you want to build your culture around.

15. Strategic Advice: In Advice Matters, it states that seeking advice from others who have achieved the kind of results you are looking for is one of the wisest—and quickest—ways to design and live a successful life. You’re able to uncover blind spots by intentionally having people give you insights so you can learn from things they’ve already done and be able to make better decisions.

16. Strategic IQ: Strategic IQ is having an intentional balance between your strategic (thinking) and tactical activities. It’s thinking strategically at a whole new level that focuses on solutions rather than problems.

17. Strategic Wealth: Being strategic about wealth is not just about money. It’s about delaying gratification and positioning yourself, so you win every day—now and in the future. That means intentionally putting some things off until you get everything in the right order.

18. Strategic Results: Everyone wants to get the best results, to achieve the best results think through what force multipliers will drive your results quicker, including how well you prioritize.

19. Strategic Relationships: Strong relationships help you leverage your career growth, expand your success, create your legacy (both personally and professionally) and live a happier life. It’s important to nurture your relationships by doing favors for them, whether they are your corporate employees, someone on your team, someone in the field, or even strategic vendors.

20. Strategic Success: Are you over-delivering for whatever you’re promising in your business? That’s one of the most powerful things you can do to get the results you want and be successful in life—both personally and professionally.

21. Strategic Acceleration: My foundational methodology is Clarity, Focus, and Execution. It’s a three-legged stool, and if you’re missing one leg, the stool (your organization) will collapse.

I’ve just shared with you what I’ve learned over the years of my own personal journey in becoming more strategic. I hope it’s impacted you and maybe given you an “aha” or even an epiphany about the importance of being strategic and using it as a major component in your own journey to success. 

Tony Jeary—The RESULTS Guy—is a prolific author and a strategist. His organizat ion, TJI, facilitates powerful meetings, keynote events and coaches high performers to accelerate their results.

The post Strategic 21: There are many ways to become more strategic and think deeper. first appeared on Direct Selling News.