Former Guinness World Record Holder for largest book signing ever, Orrin Woodward is a NY Times bestselling author of And Justice For All along with RESOLVED & coauthor of LeaderShift and Launching a Leadership Revolution. His books have sold over one million copies in the financial, leadership and liberty fields. RESOLVED: 13 Resolutions For LIFE made the Top 100 All-Time Best Leadership Books and the 13 Resolutions are the framework for the top selling Mental Fitness Challenge personal development program.
Orrin made the Top 20 Inc. Magazine Leadership list & has co-founded two multi-million dollar leadership companies. Currently, he serves as the Chairman of the Board of the LIFE. He has a B.S. degree from GMI-EMI (now Kettering University) in manufacturing systems engineering. He holds four U.S. patents, and won an exclusive National Technical Benchmarking Award.
This blog is an Alltop selection and ranked in HR's Top 100 Blogs for Management & Leadership.
One of my early mentors taught me that if someone sells to the classes, he will live with the masses. However, if he sells to the masses, he will live with the classes. Simply put, it’s a matter of numbers. Would you rather be rewarded with one dollar and serve 10 customers or receive ten cents, but serve 10,000 customers? This was the secret to McDonald’s meteoric success when the brothers lowered the price of hamburgers from 30 to 14 cents. By cutting the price in half and building systems to support it, he nearly doubled his revenue with much less effort.
Systems thinking is essential in today’s day and age. The LIFE Business provides the “masses” with world-class leadership training at the best price in the marketplace. How can we do this? Because LIFE serves the masses, keeps cost low, and focuses on the long-term, we are growing at a record pace. For instance, last night LIFE had one of its best nights, adding more customers (those not involved in the compensated communities) than at nearly any time since we launched the company. Why? Because the word is getting out that LIFE delivers life-changing products to its members and customers.
Whether the reader desires to build a compensated community or just enjoy the world-class products, LIFE has something for everyone. Here is a video I did several months back describing the McDonald’s brothers and their effort to create a duplicatable system.
Chris Brady wrote an article on the LIFE business several days ago that I felt compelled to share in its entirety with my readers. As part of our LIFE Training, we share a systematic process to improve anything called PDCA. Chris’s article shares the key PDCAs that we applied to create the compensated community business of our dreams. With the best prices, products, compensation plan, free trips, and leadership rolled into one, I am proud to represent the LIFE business wherever I go.
The LIFE Business and LeaderShift
If someone is already chasing a dream, then he or she ought to become a customer of LIFE to improve his or her leadership and people skills. For instance, LeaderShift, Oliver DeMille’s and my new book, is being sold across the world. It’s this type of information that is available within the community.
The LIFE Business Community
If, on the other hand, someone is stuck in the subways of life with no way out, then he or she ought to become a member of the community and start climbing! Either way, the LIFE community is happy to serve. Here is Chris’s fantastic article!
There is something really right about a business that allows people to get started for a relatively small amount of money, work at their own pace, be their own boss, experience the responsibilities of business ownership in an actual business endeavor without huge downside risks, have the potential for high upsides, and get the tax advantages that come with business enterprise. These attributes (and others) are what originally attracted me to the profession of networking. However, as I experienced more and more of what goes on in certain parts of this industry, I quickly realized there were several things I hated about it!
I was not alone. Along with my friends Orrin Woodward, Tim Marks, Bill Lewis, George Guzzardo, Claude Hamilton, and Dan Hawkins, we founded the LIFE company in an attempt to build a business to not only be the model of what could be in this profession, but what should be, as well. In other words, we launched LIFE to fix what we didn’t like about the industry while preserving the parts we felt were right about it.
What the LIFE Business Is Doing
Below is a list of my beefs with the industry, and what we are doing at LIFE to make it right.
1. No True Customer Focus – Our fix: at LIFE, we not only have a customer focus but a customer requirement. If a LIFE member does not develop at least 50PV in monthly customer flow after a brief apprenticeship period, he or she will not be paid any bonus on group volume. Also, we have the 3 for FREE customer acquisition program, in which any LIFE member, and even any customer, who gets three customers subscribing to the same or higher value package gets his/her products the next month for free! Also we have sales competitions with bonuses for the top finishers, as well as special bonus incentives on sales of particular products. We are also about to announce a sales bonus chart designed to give the smallest participants in the LIFE business a huge sales margin on products sold to help them begin earning more money sooner!
2. Gaudy Lifestyle Representations and Outrageous Income Claims – Our fix: in our business presentations we give only basic scenario-based income representations (as in, “if you build a business that looks like this, the way the pay plan works, it would result in X amount of pay for that month”), with the largest scenario depicting approximately $9,000 per month in income. (See our Compensation Plan brochure for this). We don’t show cheesy lifestyle pictures or videos, bikini-clad girls on yachts, or shiny bling to try and attract people to a false expectation. Our presentation focuses upon things such as obtaining more free time, better financial security, more focus upon family, travel, church and charity, etc. (We don’t go as far as talking about more time with in-laws, however!) Also, being a new company, we’ve just now completed our first full calendar year in business (year 2012), and therefore can now release an Income Disclosure Statement to inform prospective participants and properly manage their expectations (look for this in the coming weeks).
3. The Host Company Keeps Too Much of the Money – and as a result, the people in the field get to fight over the scraps. Our fix: our pay plan is currently putting approximately 70% of gross product volume (PV) into the field in the various forms of compensation. The company was not just founded by people who had come from the field, but from people who have determined to stay in the field.
4. High Sign Up Costs: We have heard of companies charging hundreds upon hundreds of dollars to join. Our fix: keep it low! Our recommended sign up cost, including sample products (three CDs, a hard cover book, a sticker, access to the LIFE business management website, and two tickets to a LIFE Live event) is just $89.99, in which the products are optional. Our goal is to keep it “less than the cost of a tank of gas!”
5. Poor Guarantees: some are confusing, very limited, or difficult to enact. Our fix: simple and straight forward, a 30 day no-questions-asked money back guarantee for all our products, including the sign up cost.
6. Trips for Top Performers: While there is nothing wrong with this, we wanted to do something a little different. Our fix: we put two very exciting trips into the compensation program for people with relatively early progress up the performance bonus chart. One is at the 6,000 pv per month level, the other is at the 15,000 pv per month level. Also, these are not business trips in disguise, but legitimate vacations. The recipient selects the trip of his/her choice from the list of available options, and takes the trip when he or she chooses. (See Incentive Trips for more information).
7. High Priced Products – our experience is that many networking companies charge super high prices for their products and then give some of this back to the field and claim that this is their “profit margin,” when in fact, the products are so overpriced no one could ever sell them for that price to begin with. Our fix: keep the prices low! For the type of informational products that LIFE specializes in producing, our competition is almost always 20 to 200% higher. For instance, our CDs sell for just $10, while most on the market in each of our “8F” categories (Faith, family, fitness, finances, friendship, freedom, following, and fun) can be found for sale from $12 to $67! Also, in our subscription packages that include books, we almost always sell the book in that month’s subscription for ten to twenty five percent below list price, as it is just rolled into a standard subscription price that doesn’t fluctuate based upon that months’ book price.
8. Inferior Products – what does this mean? It means that specific products that can easily be commoditized (produced by someone else at a cheaper price or better value, over time) stay in the company’s portfolio long after they are no longer competitive in the marketplace. This leaves those in the field leveraging their personal reputation to sell a product that is no longer the best on the market. Our fix: Informational products such as those LIFE produces cannot become commoditized because they are unique – meaning, by specific authors and speakers whose communication styles, delivery, humor, entertainment value, etc. are not duplicate-able. While the information can perhaps be mimicked by another, the brand cannot be copied.
9. Products that Don’t Matter: The other part about representing commodity products is that they really have no ability to make someone’s life better. Why spend your valuable time and energy working at something that doesn’t do any good? As my friend Tim Marks said, “I don’t want to waste my life selling tube socks and lawn chairs!” My favorite quote is attributed to D.L. Moody: “Our greatest fear should not be that we won’t succeed, but that we’ll succeed at something that doesn’t matter.” As for me, although it’s possible to make money selling commodities, I want what I do to count in the lives of people (and yes, I understand that we all need commodities to survive, but you get what I’m saying). I want to make a positive difference in the world. So our fix: sharing information such as LIFE produces has helped people get out of debt, repair broken relationships, grow personally, break addictions, grow spiritually, and, as the tag line says, “live the life they’ve always wanted.” To me, THAT’s something that matters.
But the LIFE Business Isn’t Perfect
Now don’t get me wrong. We don’t have the LIFE business perfected yet, as that would be impossible. But we are working daily to make it better and better, in an attempt to deliver exactly what people want and expect in an informational product company, and for a potential business enterprise for many. Also, while we believe that our products are for everybody, we DON’T think the business building aspect of LIFE is for everybody. It is only for those who are prepared to work hard, who are looking for something more in life than they can currently accomplish, who enjoy working with and helping other people, and who have a long-term vision and can stay the course.
The fourth leadership soft-skill, according to the Center for Creative Leadership, is resiliency – the ability to bounce back from adversity. Resiliency is essential for any leadership endeavor because any worthwhile activity is filled with setbacks and disappointments. However, with resiliency, leaders are strengthened by the setbacks because the obstacles force them to make the needed changes to overcome and win. In the process, the leaders become better personally and professionally, which in truth, is the real reward for the leadership journey anyway. Unfortunately, many would-be leaders fall for the fallacy that leadership should be easy or they must not be cut from the leadership mold. Nothing could be further from the truth! In fact, it’s only when a potential leader realizes how poor his current leadership abilities are, through experiencing numerous failures, that he exercises his resilience by confronting reality, making changes, and pressing forward.
One of the biggest lies, propagated throughout our culture, is that people are either naturally gifted at leadership or naturally ungifted. This dreary belief system has deluded many good people, who tried to lead and failed, to surrender their responsibility to lead in life. Indeed, I believe many of the world’s greatest potential leaders were never developed because they swallowed this whopper of lies. Nonetheless, the LIFE Business rejects this dismal world-view; teaching instead, that everyone has leadership abilities when hunger and courage are added to the LIFE training system of reading, listening, associating, and implementing. There are hundreds of examples of men and women, who didn’t believe they could lead, who now, through their faith and convictions, lead hundreds, and some thousands, of people.
Leadership isn’t chance; it’s choice. Consequently, resilience is displayed when a person chooses to get back up after the world has knocked him flat on his back. If a person chooses to stay down, he shouldn’t blame the program, plans, or Providence; rather, it’s in the lack of purpose that ultimately leads to the lack of resilience. Several years back, I developed a quote to capture the essence of resilience, “A person either hates losing enough to change, or he hates changing enough to lose.” I HATE losing and when life knocks me down, which it has many times, I use the “down” time to reflect on what I can learn from this failure and why I need to get back up and run again. This is the KEY to leadership! Develop the plan; get knocked down; learn the lessons, get up and run again! PDCA. How simple to understand and yet how difficult to implement.
Joshua Bell is America’s greatest living violin player. This “poet of the violin” enthralls audiences around the world with his breathtaking mastery of the violin and the stage. Bell is equally at home as a soloist, chamber musician, recording artist, and orchestra leader. His summer appearances included the premiere of a new concerto for violin and double bass by Edgar Meyer performed by Bell and Meyer at Tanglewood, Aspen, and the Hollywood Bowl. In addition, Bell appeared at the Festival del Sole, Ravinia, Verbier, Salzburg, Saratoga, and Mostly Mozart festivals. He kicked off the San Francisco Symphony’s fall season followed by performances with the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Boston, Seattle, Omaha, Cincinnati, and Detroit Symphonies. Fall highlights included a tour of South Africa, a European tour with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, and a European recital tour with Sam Haywood. In 2013, Bell will tour the US with the Cleveland Orchestra and Europe with the New York Philharmonic as well as perform with the Tucson, Pittsburgh, San Diego, and Nashville Symphony Orchestras.
Bell’s first recording was released when he was eighteen, and now he has over forty CDs released, including the Grammy-nominated crossover recording Short Trip Home with composer and double bass virtuoso Edgar Meyer, as well as a recording with Meyer of the Bottesini Gran Duo Concertante. Bell also collaborated with Wynton Marsalis on the Grammy-winning spoken word children’s album Listen to the Storyteller and Bela Flecks’ Grammy Award recording Perpetual Motion. Highlights of the Sony Classical film soundtracks on which Bell has performed include The Red Violin, which won the Oscar for Best Original Score, the Classical Brit-nominated Ladies in Lavender, and the films Iris and Defiance. In addition, Bell has been embraced by a wide television audience with appearances ranging from The Tonight Show, The Tavis Smiley Show, The Charlie Rose Show, and CBS Sunday Morning to Sesame Street and Entertainment Tonight. In 2010, Bell starred in his fifth Live From Lincoln Center Presents broadcast titled: “Joshua Bell with Friends @ The Penthouse.” Other PBS shows include Great Performances – Joshua Bell: West Side Story Suite from Central Park, Memorial Day Concert performed on the lawn of the United States Capitol, and A&E’s Biography. He has twice performed on the Grammy Awards telecast, performing music from Short Trip Home and West Side Story Suite. He was one of the first classical artists to have a music video air on VH1, and he has been the subject of a BBC Omnibus documentary.
Finally, Bell has appeared in publications ranging from Strad and Gramophone to The New York Times, People Magazine’s 50 Most Beautiful People issue, USA Today, The Wall St. Journal, GQ, Vogue, and Readers Digest among many. In 2007, Bell performed incognito in a Washington, DC subway station for a Washington Post story by Gene Weingarten examining art and context. The story earned Weingarten a Pulitzer Prize and sparked an international firestorm of discussion which continues to this day.
To say that Joshua Bell has achieved international fame in the musical world would be a serious understatement. Why do I tell the reader all of this? Have I suddenly joined the Joshua Bell fan club? Although I certainly enjoy his music, I have another reason for sharing his story. In an interesting social experiment, Washington Post reporter Gene Weingarten proposed that Joshua Bell play his violin incognito in the Washington Metro subway. It’s one of the busiest sections of the subway and would ensure many subway users heard the greatest living violinist. The video is embedded below.
For forty-five minutes on the morning of January 12, 2007, concert violinist Joshua Bell stood incognito on a Washington, DC subway platform and performed classical music for passersby. “No one knew it,” explained Washington Post reporter Gene Weingarten several months after the event, “but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made.” Weingarten came up with the experiment to see how ordinary people would react.
And how did they react? For the most part, not at all. More than a thousand people entered the Metro station as Bell worked his way through a set list of classical masterpieces, but only a few stopped to listen. “Some dropped money in his open violin case (for a total of about $27), but most never even stopped to look,” Weingarten wrote.
I thought about this scenario many times over the last year and it finally hit me why this was so fascinating to me: People are so busy, busy, busy surviving that few ever notice the beauty around them. The subway passengers walked right by the most beautiful music played by the best violinist on his million-dollar Stradivarius violin. One of the anonymous emails circulating about this incident asked, “If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?” What finally sunk in was, out of context, greatness in life is ignored. Joshua Bell, in context, is the greatest living violinist, but out of context, he is just another musician attempting to make a buck in the subway.
Joshua Bell, in other words, had to get out of the subway and onto the Metropolitan stages before his talents and gifts were recognized by the world. In the same way, many people, with talents and gifts, are playing beautiful music in their chosen fields, but no one is noticing. The subways of life keep people so busy that they never stop to notice the beauty around them, including the beauty and talents of those around them. Imagine if Joshua Bell only had this forty-five-minute window in the subway to determine whether he was any good with the violin. He may have labeled himself as a poor player because no one was interested! One of the keys for success is to never take advice from someone who does not have the results one desires! How, in other words, can a subway person tell you anything about the Metropolitan?
My whole purpose in life is to create “Metropolitan” stages across the world where people can reveal their talents. Study the leaders in the LIFE business and see how each had amazing talents that were hidden in the subway environment. It wasn’t until they climbed out of the subway that others recognized what they had within them. For instance, Chris Brady was a process engineer in a factory. The world wouldn’t have experienced his amazing blend of humor and teaching in the factory! Tim Marks was an engineering supervisor. The world would have missed one of the best implementors of the PDCA process I have ever met had he stayed in that position. Claude Hamilton was in the Canadian military. His leadership gifts and orchestration ability would have been hidden from the world had he not chosen to climb.
Significantly, each of these LIFE Founders had Joshua Bell talents, but people didn’t seem to notice his greatness when living in the subway. LIFE gives people a chance to climb out of the subways of life onto the Metropolitan stages. However, climbing is never easy, and few will consistently and persistently climb up and out. Nonetheless, I love the fact that everyone is given an equal opportunity to move up, if he or she so chooses. In truth, this is all anyone should ask for from life: a chance. When I was shown the stairway out of the subway, that was all I needed. Laurie and I took it from there, and we climbed relentlessly until we reached the Metropolitan. We have dedicated our lives to go back into the subways of life on “search and rescue” missions to find other people who want out of the subway but do not know where the stairway is. This thirty-one-minute video (I know it’s long for today’s media age, but it has essential lessons for life) was recorded live in Visalia, California at one of the three LIFE Leadership Conventions. It shares the key lessons I learned through meditating on the Washington Post social experiment with Joshua Bell.
If the reader loves what he does, then become a LIFE customer and enjoy world-class leadership training to help out in the stairway climb. If the reader has no plan to get out of the subway, then become a LIFE Member and be one of the best students of someone who has made it out of the subways of life. I wish you all the success you earn on your climb.
The LIFE office continues to produce world-class sales aids and information to support the fastest growing leadership community in the country: the LIFE business! Anyone from any walk of life (members and customers) can benefit from attending a LIFE seminar and learning life-changing information from one of the 8Fs of life: Faith, Family, Finances, Fitness, Freedom, Fun, Friendship, and Following. There are two main characteristics of leadership in any field: character and competence. Customers love LIFE Live because it builds character through teaching life lessons on courage, mental toughness, and doing the right thing because it’s the right thing to do. For less than half the money it takes to fill up your gas tank, you can fill up your mental tank monthly and associate with other winners in your local area. LIFE’s purpose is to build leaders within each locality and help create the LeaderShift (#1 on Barnes & Noble’s bestseller list two months before its release!) needed to get our nations back on the entrepreneurial trail! Which of the 8Fs are you working on? LIFE has a recipe for success; just add your hunger and courage. Indeed, reading, listening, and associating are the keys to implementing changes in a person’s life, and LIFE has created a community that reads, listens, and associates. Which LIFE Live event are you attending?
These sure are exciting times in the LIFE business. The LIFE community wrapped up a monumental set of LIFE Leadership Conventions, Wayne and Raylene MacNamara were recognized as new PC Members, and LeaderShift is just months away from launching a leader shift. 🙂 LIFE, in other words, is great! Because of the magnitude of the message captured within the LeaderShift fable, Oliver DeMille and I felt compelled to have this book published by one of the biggest and best publishing firms in the industry: Hachette Book Group. Even so, Oliver and I refused to have the LIFE community purchase our books without offering PV to the LIFE Members who market the world-class LIFE leadership and personal development materials.
Accordingly, even though the book will not be offered through the LIFE business until the paperback version is available, Oliver and I agreed to fund, for the first two weeks only, PV on quantity orders (see below) to help leaders serve their groups in a win-win fashion. In other words, LIFE Members can provide their customers with LeaderShift and still get points for doing so despite the product not being available in the LIFE shopping cart. Thanks to the support from the LIFE office, the book can be purchased through Hachette’s normal book distribution channels, and LIFE Members can just keep their receipt for PV credit (details below).
Oliver and I felt this was the best way to ensure the communities that are driving the leader shift in North America today are rewarded! Plus, this is our way of saying thank you to all the LIFE Members and Customers, who, in my opinion, are the best marketers and customers in the world! The LIFE community is a group of people who read, listen, and associate together in a quest for excellence in everything they do.
The embedded video is a talk from the California major on moving out of the subways of life into the Metropolitan stages of the world. Predictably, climbing out of the subways in life isn’t easy, but when a person has been called to do something, he doesn’t negotiate the price. In the same way, LIFE has been called to do something great and doesn’t negotiate the price to be paid. The LIFE Founders are committed to providing the best products and opportunity in the world, and LeaderShift is yet another world-changing product offered by the leadership team. I am confident the book’s message will resonate with leaders across North America and be a rallying point for liberty lovers everywhere.
I would like to extend a huge thank you to everyone within the LIFE community for being part of the vision of one million people who will change the world! Attached below is the email message sent out by the LIFE office with further details.
Please join us in celebrating Orrin Woodward and Oliver DeMille’s soon-to-be released book LeaderShift: A Call for Americans to Finally Stand Up and Lead, to be released on April 16, 2013. This action-packed business fable is the culmination of Orrin and Oliver’s combined expertise and will offer every North American a deeper understanding of the Five Laws of Decline and how the respective effects are becoming increasingly evident in the United States. LeaderShift will explain this devastating phenomenon in detail, motivate readers to take immediate and precise action and, most importantly, offer guidance on how each individual can contribute to not only stopping, but reversing this crippling trend.
Orrin and Oliver are proud to have LeaderShift published by the prestigious Hachette Book Group (second largest book publishing company in the world) and will hit the mainstream under the Business Plus imprint of one of the country’s most elite book publishing groups. In 2011, Hachette Book Group had a record 182 print books and 62 eBooks on the New York Times bestseller list, 45 of which reached #1.
We at LIFE wish to extend our hearty congratulations and support to Orrin and Oliver as LeaderShift is pre-launched and begins to accept pre-orders, which are now available on sources such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc. Due to the critically important and timely message that LeaderShift is carrying, the authors believe that Hachette Business Book Group is the best solution to deliver this message across North America. As such, Hachette maintains full rights on this publication and LIFE will not publish or distribute LeaderShift as we normally would with a book authored by one of the LIFE Founders.
Orrin and Oliver are excited to be working with Hachette Book Group on this project; however, they are also deeply devoted to the LIFE community and committed to ensuring win-win outcomes for everyone involved in LIFE (Members and Customers). Therefore, LIFE is offering a special invitation to its Members to purchase LeaderShift and receive 40 points total for purchasing between 5 – 9 copies. In addition, LIFE will offer 100 points total for purchasing 10 or more copies (12 copies ordered equals 100 points like 10 copies ordered does). LIFE Members should see their upline for purchasing less than 5 copies for a recommended 5-point transfer per book. Purchases may be made via the web, your local book store, or by placing a pre-order now—be sure to keep your receipt for PV credit after the April 16 release. All PV will be credited in the month of April—which is perfect timing for the April 27th Chart Topper Meeting in Tampa. Your upline will have further redemption instructions as we get closer to the book’s release. This special invitation runs from now through April 30, 2013. The LIFE business will not stock this item until it is released in paperback, which is at least six months after the hardcover release. It’s important to note that after April 30, 2013, no further PV will be available from LIFE until the paperback version is released.
Furthermore, don’t miss out on the special conference call with Orrin and Oliver for “VIP Customers” in early May! Members of the LIFE community that order 10 or more copies of LeaderShift and receive 100 points qualify for the conference call and will receive a personal invitation. This is your opportunity to share a very personal, insightful hour with the authors and achieve an even richer perspective on the significant role you play in this movement.
Below are links to pre-order LeaderShift from Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
Note: Credit cards are not charged until purchase actually ships.
Orrin and Oliver will be starting a book-signing tour—more details to come. We at LIFE will keep you posted on all the latest excitement surrounding LeaderShift, including news releases and other special events.
Wayne and Raylene MacNamara were recognized as new LIFE PC members at the LIFE Business Leadership Conventions. These two were Turbo 10 when they joined the Team community in late 2007, and now six years later, have over a thousand people at events! Leadership matters, and Claude & Lana Hamilton are building a leadership community that loves and serves one another. In fact, the Hamilton’s business is nearly six times bigger today than the day they joined the Team community back in late 2007. The dream is alive and well within the LIFE community.
Laurie and I are so proud of the Hamiltons and MacNamaras for dreaming, struggling, persisting, and ultimately achieving this Olympic Gold level award. The MacNamaras were factory workers with no avenue to move up when they were introduced to Claude and Lana Hamilton. Despite lacking funds, opens, and seminars (the MacNamaras were a distance group and therefore had to build all of this), Wayne and Raylene refused to make excuses and built the system from scratch to not only go PC, but also help so many others accomplish their goals and dreams. The MacNamaras have a contagious enthusiasm for life that attracts so many winners to them. I LOVE spending time with this couple, and I believe this is just the beginning of the impact this couple will have in the world! Today they are debt free, job optional, and enjoying their freedom lifestyle in Ontario, Canada.
This is just the first of a wave of PC who will be breaking in the LIFE community, as the system and products are dialed in for growth. Numbers are up, belief is up, and the speed of growth is up! I love what I am seeing across North America. Thank you to all who attended the Leadership Conventions and celebrated the MacNamara’s victory. 2013 is the year of breakthroughs within LIFE. Is 2013 a breakthrough year in your life? Who was there live for this recognition? Please share how it impacted you.
Hachette, the number two book publisher in the world, will release, under the Business Plus imprint, Oliver DeMille‘s and my new book LeaderShift on April 16 of this year. In LeaderShift, we wrote about the difference between Credentialists and Creators. The Credentialist career plan follows the traditional path of getting the right degrees, building the proper résumé, and following the approved formula for “success.” Creators, in contrast, take an unconventional approach to success and build their own trails to their dreams. Although we hadn’t coined the terminology yet, when I left the #2 MBA program in the USA (University of Michigan) in 1994, I exited the Credentialist path and launched my Creator destiny.
The MLM life intrigued me after I opened my mind to truly comprehend the opportunity. Over time, I realized I could rise as high as my leadership took me, no longer blocked by limited experience, age, or political prowess. Indeed, the Creator’s path rejects Credentialist opinions and moves up by serving customers, not kissing the boss’s behind. 🙂 Hating politics and loving numbers (remember, I am an engineer :)), I realized a person’s pay raise becomes effective as soon as he does. This is huge for a Creator since he can focus on serving customers, not bosses. Essentially, this is the difference between the two career paths. Creators like to challenge themselves in the marketplace to determine whether their ideas are viable. Credentialists, by contrast, like to stay behind the lines, hoping to advance up the hierarchy through impressive résumés rather than creative ability.
Many of my friends and family thought I was crazy and said I was giving up a great career as an engineer, in which, incidentally, I had already received four patents and won a National Technical Benchmarking Award by the age of 25. Furthermore, I was promoted to 7th level senior engineer at the unheard of age of 25 with a 19% raise for the year. Nevertheless, I knew the Credentialist path was too risky. Why? Because it placed my ability to advance into a boss’s hands, leaving me chained by his opinions rather than the customer’s satisfaction. Interestingly, the 12,000 people who worked at AC Rochester in Flint are now no longer working at the facility since the buildings have been torn down and it’s literally miles of cement surrounded by a fence. This is a very sad and sobering reminder of what happens when a person places his destiny in the hands of Credentialists.
Despite getting started in a poor compensation plan, I knew that any Creator path was better than the best Credentialist path for me. However, this isn’t true for everyone. Network Marketing/MLM, in other words, isn’t the ticket for everyone, which is why I stopped trying to get everyone into Network Marketing years ago. I learned that Creators are a different breed than Credentialists and are drawn to the LIFE business on their own when they understand it for what it is—a free-enterprise system that rewards performance. Creators love that they will be compensated based upon results, not politics. Credentialists hate it for the same reason. This, in essence, is the problem with America—the Credentialists who flocked to government in order to hide from their personal scoreboard are now using government power to destroy the Creators who created the American dream. Government control within the economic sphere destroys the efforts and rewards of the Creators, thus destroying the American Dream as we know it.
Network Marketing is one of the last bastions of free enterprise left in Western Civilization. It allowed Laurie and me the time (over five years) to refine our skills and develop ourselves for success. Many would say that’s too long to invest in a Creator path. On the contrary, we understood that a five-year investment to develop the Creator mindset is a small price to pay. For instance, look especially at how many people invest over five years to get degrees that are practically worthless upon graduation. That is too big a price to pay! Please don’t misunderstand me; I love education, but education and a college degree are not one and the same. What I love about compensated communities is the scoreboard constantly communicates whether true education is occurring or not. Leadership simply cannot be faked. If people are following a person, then he is a leader; if not, then he’s not, regardless of what his credentials might say.
Corporate Pyramid
Let me close with one of the greatest misconceptions in the MLM field. People will say to me, “But, Orrin, isn’t the MLM profession a pyramid?” Although I don’t get this objection as much as I used to since MLM is becoming more common, I still think it’s worth analyzing. There are several factors to consider. First, review where one works currently. Is it a corporate job or small business? Draw out the corporate hierarchy. Did anyone notice as he was drawing it out that the person at the top has several direct reports, who have direct reports, who have several direct reports until the bottom is reached? Indeed, this structure is the quintessential hierarchical pyramid because the guy at the top always makes more than the guy below him right down to the bottom guy or gal who makes the least. Moreover, moving up the chain isn’t based upon performance alone. Network Marketing, in contrast, doesn’t pay based upon where you fall within the hierarchy or how long a person has been with the company. Rather, it compensates based upon how many groups a person is willing to serve every month. For example, when Laurie and I started in MLM, we had tons to learn and made many mistakes. Still, within 12 months, we had passed hundreds of thousands of people who had started before us. In fact, within a decade, we had passed over a million people and were in the top handful of income earners within the company. Pyramid? On the contrary, MLM is the best method yet designed for Creators to rise out of the corporate quagmire. Where one starts in networking is irrelevant; what one does with his spot is everything.
Laurie and I followed an unconventional path to success and are proud we did. If you are a Credentialist, then either be willing to change or don’t join the LIFE business. LIFE offers nothing for the radical Credentialist because no part of his pay is based upon his past. Bonuses are based only upon a person’s ability to serve others. However, if you are a Creator or desire to be and have been frustrated by the Credentialist system blocking your path, then you will LOVE the LIFE business. The MLM life isn’t for everyone, but it sure has satisfied millions of Creators around the world. The choice is yours, and consequently, so too are the results.
The LIFE BusinessWinter Leadership Conventions kicked off last weekend in Louisville and will continue in Ottawa and California (total attendees have grown nearly 1,000 in three months!) next weekend. Three leadership conventions over two weekends for the fastest growing leadership communities is a must! Here were my highlights from the weekend. First, the crowd had a level of belief that I haven’t seen in years. So many people were recognized for new achievements, and goals were set for 2013. Starting with the Thursday night RT meeting, every speaker brought his or her A-game. Second, the groups were having fun, an essential part of any winning team. The LIFE business focuses on having fun, making money, and making a difference—in that order. We know that when groups have fun, they make more money and ultimately make a bigger difference. Third, the new PowerPlayer Top Guns Felmar and Sandra Montenegro were fantastic! They had just missed winning several times, but this cycle, they broke through to win! GREAT JOB!
Last, but certainly not least, the New PC Recognition of Wayne and Raylene MacNamara topped my highest expectations! Seeing the love, passion, and belief they poured into the crowd was the highlight of my weekend. In addition, the genuine love and respect they have for Claude and Lana Hamilton brought tears to my eyes. LIFE is so much fuller when enjoyed with true friends who love and serve one another. The Hamilton’s and MacNamara’s relationship displays all of this. I will wait until after the Ottawa Leadership Convention to show pictures of the McNamaras on stage, but I will show this picture of Claude and Lana listening intently to their new PC couple. Interestingly, the McNamaras were Turbo 10 when they joined the Team Training System after nearly three years in the profession, and now, just over five years later, they are PCs!! LIFE has kicked it into high gear in 2013. What did the Leadership Conventions do for you? What were your highlights?
I have taught the principle of going slow in order to go fast for years. This doesn’t mean build your business slow, but it does mean take the time to truly get to know your community. You can still go fast by having more people that you are cultivating relationships with and getting them around a community of winners. Sadly, however, many people rush through dealing with others, not understanding that all business is relationships and the best businesses have the best relationships. In fact, all of the LIFE business founders have a huge business because they are huge builders of deep relationships with their leaders. Below is a segment from a talk I did last year on the importance of relationships. If you want 2013 to be your best year yet, then start with building the best relationships today by applying the principles from the Top Five books and from the friendship chapter of my book RESOLVED: 13 Resolutions for LIFE. Enjoy the video.
