You hear all of the success stories of women who have climbed the ladder, have achieved their big business successes, and are now telling the world about it. It’s so easy to look at that and go, wow, it looked effortless for them, even easy.
When we peel back the rose colored glasses and we start to look at our business and our opportunities, we realize that every single successful direct seller, network marketer, have had to endure roadblocks, obstacles, setbacks. They’ve had to adjust, grow, and learn new skills they never thought they would need to learn. You don’t always see that when you’re just following somebody from the outside. It is why I put an emphasis on focus on your own business and yourself rather than following and scrolling through social to try and be someone you are not.
So now, you might be wondering… what does the skill set that you have to possess in order for you to take your business to the next level look like?
Awareness.
Having an awareness of yourself to understand that you potentially could be the person standing in the way of your own success. Whether it is with recruitment, mentorship, duplication, but there is this sort of, I just am floating through my days, I’m checking off the boxes. You were sort of going through the motions.
But then, you can’t understand why there’s no duplication, because you are still showing up and saying I’m working my business, I’m doing my tracker, but nothing is growing. That is because you never really stop to say, are the things I’m doing actually getting me to where I want to go?
Most people don’t stop and take a look at their business and ask the questions:
Is my social media effective?
Is what I’m putting out there actually generating new leads, creating new conversations, actually getting people to sign up?
Or am I just documenting my day?
Whenever I start to peel back those layers with people they then see they have gone through the motions. This is the time to notice that you are the reason your business isn’t growth the way you think it should be.
Awareness is key. You can’t go through the motions and check off the boxes in your business.
Awareness is probably the number one thing that anybody who is not duplicating in their business is probably struggling with.
The second part when it comes to awareness is when something is not working, do not spend time doing it over and over again.
When I first started out my business, I was co-running a group with my mentor. We promoted a bikini body challenge. Meanwhile she is having endless success signing up customers, I had no success.
This is where my mindset had to be stronger than anything else. I could have said it’s only for people like her that have a bikini body already that just want to get a six pack. I’m not the problem. It’s the business model or it doesn’t work for me.
Instead, I had a moment of self reflection where I stepped back and I said to myself, I don’t know that this was the right marketing angle for me. Here I am standing in my kitchen with yoga pants on. I’ve been wearing the same yoga pants for five weeks. I’ve got a spit up on my shoulder. My hair is pulled back in a pony. I probably haven’t washed it in a week. I want to wear jeans and button them up and feel good. I’m not going on spring break. I’m not thinking about putting on a bikini. Neither are my friends, because all of my friends on Facebook, we’re all new moms.
That moment was an aha moment where I said, I’m marketing wrong. I pretended like the bikini bootcamp challenge went off without a hitch. I had lots of people that signed up and I just stopped talking about it. Then, I announced my next group, and I called it the Battle of the Bulge. I started marketing for the group, and I started thinking about my ideal client, what they needed to hear, what their problems were.
All of a sudden, people started to message me that they want to know more. Your message really resonates with me or I feel like you’re speaking right to me. I filled up a group with a lot of women, but it was the ability to have awareness of the fact that I was the problem. I wasn’t marketing right. And to be able to make that shift was really, really powerful!
I knew that as a business owner, when it came to awareness that I wasn’t perfect, I was acutely aware of that. There were a lot of other successful people in my circle. I realized I had a long way to go in my leadership journey. One of the first obstacles that could have sent me running for the hills and giving up on my direct sales career was definitely the bikini bootcamp challenge. The second one was, I started to actually grow a good community.
I had this wellness community. I was running a very engaged Facebook group. My customers were in there. I was guiding them on their wellness journey. I had not just one, but a handful of customers reach out to me and say, hey, Melanie, we love you. We think you’re a fantastic mentor, but we can’t be a part of your group anymore. You are too intense.
I was intense. I am an Enneagram three, if you know the enneagram, that is me to a T. I love a good competition. I’m very black and white. I want to strive to the top. I will do anything that is required in order to get there.
When these women said that I was too intense, that they could not not have a cheat meal, that they needed a little more flexibility, they couldn’t follow the workout plan to the T, they needed to have room for error. Intense Melanie responded with you said you wanted to lose 20 pounds. If you want to lose 20 pounds, why are you drinking beer on a Friday night? Why are you so snoozing and not getting up and doing your workout?
In my mind at the time I didn’t understand their point of view. I thought, If you want to make a change, I get it, it’s hard. You do it though. You figure it out. Then I was introduced to the book called Personality plus by Florence Littower. I read the book and implemented. I started to do fun things. Even though I didn’t need that in order for me to reach my goals, my people did. If I wanted to be a good leader, I needed to motivate my people in my groups. Leadership isn’t about solely leading team members. Leadership is leading customers and followers as well. On social media, it’s all of the above.
Click here to read my blog about 5 Strategies for a Bullet Proof Leadership Mindset.
So what I did was I started to create these moments of fun inside of my group. I thought about how does Sarah get motivated? How can I hold her accountable? What are the ways that she will show up and keep going? And I adjusted myself and my mentorship.
If you are not getting your customers results or they’re not reordering, instead of saying it’s the people that are the problem, I want you to look at yourself and say, what could I potentially do that could help to improve the outcome of my customers, the outcome of my team members success? We have to start clearly identifying our own blind spots. If you don’t know what your blind spots are, just sit there, and reflect on it. Ask yourself what could be standing in the way. Ask a success partner, friend, mentor, because the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over again, but expecting different results. That will not grow your business, either.
What happens through that process is, I learn how to evolve, change, how to lead people through times of change. So don’t be that person that isn’t willing to make a transformation to be a better leader overall. Awareness is number one.
Awareness of how you lead, awareness about your daily tasks, awareness about what’s producing results and what’s not.
That is the first step in this process in order for you being able to grow and scale your business.
I want to encourage you to spend some time here in awareness to really go back through the things that I shared today and think about, what are your blind spots? Have you stopped tracking in your business? Have you stopped paying attention to how many invites and follow ups that you’re sending? Have you stopped being accountable to your own goals? Have you stopped setting monthly goals? Are you just floating through your business right now, serving others and doing leadership things, but you’re leading nobody and you’re constantly feeling a little bit burnt out and resentful of the business?
Awareness is key. We can’t change something unless we know that there is a problem!
Book Recommendations:
The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You
The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth: Live Them and Reach Your Potential