Orrin Woodward on LIFE & Leadership

Inc Magazine Top 20 Leader shares his personal, professional, and financial secrets.

Archive for December, 2012

Marketing, Execution, & Orchestration

Posted by Orrin Woodward on December 4, 2012

It has been another stellar month for LIFE as it finished the first month of its second year in business. Volume is up again, and we have a new couple in the process of finishing Policy Council level, along with several others who are extremely close. This is what happens when you get three key factors right. I call it MEO to One Million. The “M” stands for Marketing. The “E” stands for Execution, and the “O” stands for Orchestration. These are the three things that LIFE will do all the way to one million people and beyond. Let’s analyze these three words further.

The first factor is marketing. Marketing is the ability to share your message with consumers. The LIFE business does this in two ways: offline and online. Offline marketing is the typical way communities grow in networking, as people share about their experiences person to person. However, in today’s Google age, online marketing has increasingly grown. Every business must message itself or it will not grow or thrive. The good news is, with three bestselling authors on the team, marketing can begin with leaving a comment on one of the LIFE founders‘ blogs, grow into developing your own blog, and eventually lead to writing your own book and becoming a bestselling author in your own right. Like everything in LIFE, it is systematic, starting with a simple step and getting increasingly more complex as your skills grow. In the same way, learning to become a top speaker starts with saying your name during recognition, then introducing a speaker at an open, and eventually doing opens and finally seminars.  Everything is step by step for success. All anyone has to do is add the courage to finish what he started.

The second factor is execution. Performers get results through executing the five-step pattern and going Power Player. Last weekend, I had leaders down from Guzzardo’s and Hawkins’ groups. Talk about a great time! We went out for a yacht cruise where we did a “bow-inar” at the front of the ship, enjoying food, fun, and sun together. One of the qualifiers has been in LIFE for six months and showed seventy plans in a row without one single rejection. That’s right, seventy consecutive yeses in a row! He runs a consulting company and had been using Launching a Leadership Revolution for years with his clients, so it was easy to turn his clients into either customers or members of LIFE through sharing what Chris Brady and I were doing currently. Execution means getting the job done, and across the LIFE community, people are getting the job done. Although few will ever get seventy yeses in a row, anyone can win through consistent effort and constant improvement. Market first; then execute on Power Player.

The third and final factor is orchestration. Performers turn into leaders when they not only produce results themselves, but they also help others do the same. This happens when leaders identify other leaders in their community who are willing to commit to their dreams. At any given time, 10 percent of a group will be ready to run now, and the rest will still be developing their thinking and posture to make their move. It isn’t the role of a leader to force a person to move ahead; rather, it’s the job of the leader to identify those who do want to move on and help them do so. I call it “crucial conversations” with the potential leaders who are ready to get results. Orchestration, then, is finding other leaders and mentoring them through the thought processes needed to be a top leader in LIFE.

Market your business, execute the plays, and orchestrate with other leaders in your community. These three factors will lead anyone who is ready to achieve the objectives they set out to accomplish. LIFE is happening all around you. Is it happening for you?

Sincerely,

Orrin Woodward

Posted in Leadership/Personal Development | 57 Comments »

Successful Sales: Qualifying the Prospect

Posted by Orrin Woodward on December 2, 2012

Successful sales requires finding qualified prospects. I learned this lesson when I was nine years old selling candy bars back in Columbiaville, Michigan. I don’t care how old you are, the first time you call upon someone to share your business or product, it can be a little scary. Thankfully, however, with the PDCA process described in RESOLVED: 13 Resolutions for LIFE, anyone can get better at it. Success is typically a string of failures glued together with a good attitude! The LIFE Business is succeeding because a group of men and women have committed to fail their way to success. What are you waiting for? Start failing, or should I say succeeding today. 🙂

Sincerely,

Orrin Woodward

Posted in Fun, Leadership/Personal Development | 46 Comments »

Turn Rejection Into Energy

Posted by Orrin Woodward on December 1, 2012

In the tenth grade, near the end of the school year, LakeVille Schools had a Lap-a-Thon contest to raise money for the sports programs. Since I intended to play sports, I volunteered to gather sponsors who paid me based upon how many laps I could run. Having never run a mile in my life, I had no idea how many laps I could run. I have no idea what mental calculations I performed to arrive at this number, but I set my sights on 30 laps. Why a 16 year old kid, who had never ran in his life at that point, believed he could run 30 laps is beyond me! Furthermore, when all my classmates told me unequivocally that I would never run 30 laps, feeling I would be lucky to run half that many, it really upset me. Remember, its not the size of the man in the fight that counts, but the size of the fight in the man. The more they said I couldn’t do it, the more inspired I was to do it. I committed to all my sponsors that if I didn’t run 30 laps that they wouldn’t have to pay, leaving me with a serious debt to the school on behalf of my sponsors. Talk about having a strong reason why! 🙂 With no practice, outside an 1/8 of a mile jaunt up my dead-end street, I went to the track resolved to run 30 laps or die trying. Here is the video to explain the rest of the story. 🙂

Sincerely,

Orrin Woodward

Posted in Family, Fun | 44 Comments »