Posted by Nick on September 17, 2009 at 19:46 pm
“One of the greatest powers in the universe is individual power of choice. And the most powerful choices are positive choices.” — Frederick Mann
“The POWER in LIFE is CHOICE.” –Craig Green
Jerry was the kind of guy you love to hate. He was always in a good mood and always had something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, “If I were any better, I would be twins!”
He was a unique manager because he had several waiters who had followed him around from restaurant to restaurant. The reason the waiters followed Jerry was because of his attitude. He was a natural motivator. If an employee was having a bad day, Jerry was there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation.
Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up to Jerry and asked him, “I don’t get it! You can’t be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?”
Jerry replied, “Each morning I wake up and say to myself, Jerry, you have two choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or you can choose to be in a bad mood.’ I choose to be in a good mood. Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or I can choose to learn from it.
Yes it is,” Jerry said. “Life is all about choices. When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people will affect your mood. You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood. The bottom line: It’s your choice how you live life.”
I reflected on what Jerry said. Soon thereafter, I left the restaurant industry to start my own business. We lost touch, but often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of reacting to it.
Several years later, I heard that Jerry did something you are never supposed to do in a restaurant business: he left the back door open one morning and was held up at gunpoint by three armed robbers.
While trying to open the safe, his hand, shaking from nervousness, slipped off the combination. The robbers panicked and shot him. Luckily, Jerry was found relatively quickly and rushed to the local trauma center.
After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Jerry was released from the hospital with fragments of the bullets still in his body. I saw Jerry about six months after the accident. When I asked him how he was, he replied “If I were any better, I’d be twins. Wanna see my scars?”
I declined to see his wounds, but did ask him what had gone through his mind as the robbery took place. “The first thing that went through my mind was that I should have locked the back door,” Jerry replied. “Then, as I lay on the floor, I remembered that I had two choices: I could choose to live, or I could choose to die. I chose to live.
“Weren’t you scared? Did you lose consciousness?” I asked.
Jerry continued, “The paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the emergency room and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read, ‘He’s a dead man.’ I knew I needed to take action.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“Well, there was a big, burly nurse shouting questions at me,” said Jerry. “She asked if I was allergic to anything. ‘Yes,’ I replied.
The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply… I took a deep breath and yelled, ‘Bullets!’ Over their laughter, I told them, ‘I am choosing to live. Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead.”
Jerry lived thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude. I learned from him that every day we have the choice to live fully. Attitude, after all, is everything.
That is the power of Attitude my friends.
Make it a great day because no one else will do it for you!
-Nick D.
Posted by Nick on September 17, 2009 at 19:08 pm
We have all been there. I certainly have. It goes like this: You have been working at it for months… wait, almost a year now yet there seems to be no way to get ahead. You have done the three-foot-rule and talked to everyone who was buying Idaho potatoes at the local grocery store. You called all your family and friends and their in-laws too. Perhaps you have even embraced new ways of marketing online. You have networked with people on social sites. You have also been advertising, and perhaps even spent hundreds of dollars on advertising that produced no results whatsoever. You work hard, yet you never come out ahead. Your business isn’t booming like you thought that it would. You don’t know what you are going to do. You just quit.
Hang on my friend. You are not alone. For the record it took me 5 years to get in the profit zone. It wasn’t anyone’s fault – honest. Certainly not the company’s fault. But finally the efforts paid off. Sometime I can’t believe how far I have come, from losing money every month, to earning multiple five-figures a month. But it has happened to me, and it can certainly happen to you.
A useful approach is to look at the reasons WHY you are not motivated. If you think it is because you are not happy with your team, sponsor, products or company, then you have every right to switch gears and work with the leadership and company that you have the best chemistry and connection with. It is your business after all. It is your right to do whatever you want. Just make sure that that is truly the reason, and you are not blaming it on them.
Now, let’s take a look at ways that you can put life back into that business. Take a deep breath and we will see what we can do to get things back together.
First of all, you are going to want to make sure that you don’t make the same mistakes over again. What mistakes have you done before? How did you network? Make a list of the things you believe you didn’t do well, and keep the list on a visible place on your desk. Look at it, and make sure you NEVER ever make those mistakes again.
In my case, I remember I was notorious for doing research on the internet and justifying it with the reasoning that I was learning. Yes, I was learning. But I was also spending way too much time on stuff I didn’t need to produce income right there and then. I had to make sure I was spending less time on reading, and more time on acting.
Did you spam other profiles, hoping that clients or customers would flock to your wonderful and creative site? If so, forget it, it is not working!! It will never work… you cannot spam a site and expect people to just flock to you. I see network marketers who try to spam, arm-twist, and bamboozle prospects all the time. Drop it.
Remember that this is the Internet. It is chock full of people just like yourself, eager to start their business behind a machine. Yep, that is all you are is a business behind this machine. Remember that when you want to spam the next person behind this machine. If you keep that in mind, you will know that being more personable will take you much further. The reason being is that there are so many scams out there and people are cautious about doing business transactions with others online because of that.
You have to get out there and convince the World Wide Web that YOUR business (or products/ service) is the best around. But spamming and sending unwanted emails just won’t work. It is a good way to be ignored, quick!
Establish what you want to get out of your business. Start by networking on a personal level. Think of it as your business, locally. How would you get local network marketing leads? How would you go about gaining customers locally? Walk around town throwing business cards at people? We didn’t think so! You would shake hands and introduce yourself. Get to know others and become acquaintances even, right?
The same goes for online businesses. We know that you can’t shake hands with them, obviously. However, if you start building relationships online, and get to know your new friends, you will begin to see trust build. When that happens, they will ask you about what your business, and you won’t have to sell anyone.
Bringing your business back to life isn’t hard work. It is simple, but it isn’t easy. There are moments when it feels stupid to continue. Moments when giving up is the only viable solution at the moment. It is not. Remember that the only way of losing in this business is by quitting. I know you have probably heard this before. But it is true. There are things that you can do when you set your mind to it.
Make a list of the things that got you excited about your business in the first place. Was it a new house? A brand new leather interior car? Travel the world? Set yourself free from the cubicle life? Fret not. If others have reached that level, you can too.
Build an inexpensive yet attractive website with what you have to offer. Go around and create some profiles on social networks and get to know others. Social Networking sites like Facebook, Myspace, Digg, Stumbleupon, and Twitter are my favorites. The goal should be to create Relationships with others however, and not to spam them with unwelcome offers.
Lastly, your grandma was right: “Patience is a virtue”. So many people fall victim of the Get Rich Quick schemes. It doesn’t work like that. Any business, including a home business takes time and effort to build.
Your friend,
Nick D’Angelo
P.S. I have created a free video (1hr 17minutes long) that explains a revolutionary way to get leads, and prospects to call YOU, ready to join your business, credit card in hand. You can access it here for free: Get Free Quality Leads, or go to http://www.DoubleYourSponsoring.com
