Installment # 54

One would think that a corollary of a lack of common sense would be a lack of confidence.  For years, however, I was fond of saying that I had a strong self-image, but that it just wasn’t very accurate.  I would plunge ahead confidently with almost any task, blissfully unaware that I lacked the ability to succeed.  Afterward I would say to myself, “I guess that is not an area I can succeed in.  Not sure why.  I’ll try something else.”  I spent about ten years trying to build a legal, legitimate multi-level marketing business, where the more you help other people succeed, the more you succeed.  Despite a great training and support system, I just could not change, grow and become the person I needed to become in order to succeed.  That ten year period came between ages 42 and 52 (1986 to 1996), by the way, during which time I was a full-time consultant/contractor and putting our daughters through college.   I did give up marathon racing in 1986, but continued to do long distance training runs during those years, and many years thereafter.  The point is that the energy level and drive I showed during my own college days was still there.

Early in the multi-level marketing training process, I heard and continued to hear speakers say, “If I can do it, you can do it.”  I believed them, because I wanted to believe them.  There were so many speakers saying the same thing, I felt that logically either they were all lying, or it was true, and I couldn’t believe they were all lying.  There was also the possibility that they all believed what they were saying, but they were all wrong.  That didn’t seem likely, either.  The common sense alternative that I finally came to about five years after I gave up, is that what they were saying was theoretically true, but not as a practical matter, akin to saying that anyone born in America can someday be President. 

I would combine this with the possibility that if someone has an aptitude for something; if something comes easy for someone; they may not realize that it is not easy, or even possible, for most others.  I know now that the intangible personal characteristics that it takes to attract, inspire and lead a group of high-energy, overachievers (what we used to call “winners”) are rare qualities.  The fact that someone else has these characteristics, or has acquired them, does not mean that the average person can do so, just because he wants to.

The guy with the largest organization could say things that most people might find offensive, but for those of us who wanted his success, his words were received as challenges that served as “jet fuel in our engines”, so to speak.  He would say from stage, speaking to thousands of attendees: “If I make in a week what you make in a year, one of us is stupid, and it’s not me!”  Or how about: “I don’t want to know anything that a broke person knows; it might be catching.”  We were all trying to “go Direct,” which meant sponsoring at least six “winners” and creating and sustaining a certain level of business volume within our groups.  He would motivate us with things like “Even a blind squirrel will find a nut once in awhile.” “A dog with a note in his mouth can go Direct.”  “Hell, I could probably find six people to blow up the white house…at their own expense!”  “You are going to need six pall bearers at your funeral; you better have at least six friends!”  People who wouldn’t get involved in the business or who did nothing with it, or who quit, he called “Losers.”  He said, “When someone tells me they quit, I say quit what?  You ain’t been doing nuthin to quit from.”  All these sayings served as motivation to those of us who saw ourselves as “winners.”

One guy said, “I figured nobody was twice as good as me.  It might take me twice as long to do half of what they did, but surely I could do it, if they could.”  That is where my self-image was at, too.  But try as I might, I could not attract people who were both willing and able to build multi-level marketing businesses down line from me. The business made such logical sense to me that I couldn’t see why anyone would not be motivated enough to get out of their comfort zones, go the extra mile, and make it happen.  I learned the hard way that people are not all like me.  I am a very cooperative person.  If a friend is a chiropractor or barber or whatever, I am happy to give them my business.  If the supermarket sign says, “please return carts here,” I am happy to do it.  Imagine my surprise when “friends” started making up flimsy excuses to not get involved in my business.  I never expected that and still don’t understand it.

To be fair, one of the speakers was fond of saying, “Who you are speaks so loud that what you say I cannot hear.”  There was also reference to “the music behind the words,” which sort of means the same thing.  But I guess I thought I could and would change and become the person I needed to be in order to succeed.  After ten years of honest effort, however, I began to doubt.  My corollary to “If I can do it, you can do it” became “Just because I can’t do it doesn’t mean that you can’t do it!”  Of course, someone who really can do it is going to recognize and steer clear of someone who cannot.  Sandy and I actually got to the level where we were asked to speak for 5-10 minutes, from stage, with microphones, to several thousand people.  By that time I was accustomed to being on my feet before small groups making presentations, so this was not a real stretch for me, but I marveled at Sandy.  She handled it with ease, grace and good humor.

I remember that all of the couples who were scheduled to speak that weekend met with our Diamond, and some of the people seemed really scared and nervous.  This may be what prompted our Diamond to tell us that if public speaking “breaks you,” it will “make you,” but if it “makes you,” it will “break you.”  What he meant was that if you get a big charge out of being up there getting the attention, and it makes you feel like a big shot, you will not relate to people, and they will not follow you.  But if you stammer and stutter and embarrass yourself up there, you will win people’s hearts, and they will want to follow you.  That sounded so contrary, I thought it must be very wise.  But it didn’t change the fact that I enjoyed speaking from stage.  A similar “wise” saying I heard was to the effect that, “Your greatest strength will become your greatest weakness, and your greatest weakness will become your greatest strength.”  Again, it is all about being relatable.  Unfortunately, by the time I had heard that I had burned through a lot of prospects trying to use my credibility, instead.

I had never been part of a sales organization before.  A lot of statements that sounded incredibly wise and helpful to me were really old ideas, sometimes modified for our particular goals.  For example, being materialistic was to “love things and use people.”  Our great leaders encouraged us to follow their example: “Use things and love people.”  Also, being materialistic was to “spend money you don’t have to buy things you don’t need to impress people you don’t like.”  We were taught to get out of debt and stay out of debt.  Then there was, “If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always gotten.”  “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.” “A rut is just a grave with the ends knocked out.”  Then there is the “law of sewing and reaping” and the “law of compensation,” both of which are fairly self-explanatory.  I won’t get into them here.  Also, the Napoleon Hill quote: “What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”  That was a deceptively compelling idea until you realized what it means to really believe something.  Hoping, praying and positive thinking don’t cut it. In the end, then, if you are not succeeding, you don’t really believe strongly enough, and therefore it is your own fault.

I really liked the idea: We know more or less how many seeds there are in an apple, but…how many apples are there in a seed?  In multi-level marketing you were going about spreading or sprinkling seeds, knowing that some of them were going to take root and eventually create whole orchards of trees, with hundreds of apples and thousands of seeds to perpetuate the process. One of my favorite concepts had to do with considering a scale of 1 to 10, where a really sharp, motivated, charismatic, high-energy person who could succeed at nearly anything (a “winner”) would be a 10, and of course the further away a person was from that description, the closer to zero on this scale.  The speaker went on to say that each of us sees ourselves (our self-image) a little lower than what is accurate, and we tend to see other people a little higher than would be accurate.  As an exaggerated example, if I am really an 8, I may see myself as a 6, but a prospect may see me as a 10.  The prospect may really be a 4 and see himself as a 2, but I see him as a 6.  So I am really comfortable sponsoring him, because I see him and myself as 6s.

What I needed to do under this concept was approach people who I saw as 10s, because they are really 8s, and so am I, though I feel like a 6.  The kicker is that, unless we really fight against it, we will always sponsor “down,” and the people we sponsor will do the same, so that 8s will sponsor 6s, 6s will sponsor 4s, 4s will sponsor 2s, and you end up with “the slugs of the earth” (the speaker’s terminology) populating your business.   Not being one to back down from a challenge, I went ahead and approached successful business leaders and professionals (doctors, lawyers, etc.) with predictably dismal results.  In the absence of common sense, I had that strong, but inaccurate self-image that had me preparing, as noted, to be a CFO of a publicly-traded company; to be a platoon leader at a “young” 17-18 years of age and, come to think of it, a husband at age 22 and homeowner and father of three while doing low-paying blue collar work.  I didn’t know what I was doing, but I didn’t know that I didn’t know what I was doing!

After ten years of futility I was ready to hear a message by Stephen Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People and other books.  He said that his problem with books like How to Win Friends and Influence People (Dale Carnegie) was that they taught you to act a certain way, rather than to be a certain way; that real and lasting success has to be consistent with who you are.  You cannot maintain an act.  By this time I understood that multi-level marketing is all about maintaining close personal relationships over a long period of time.  Try maintaining an act over a long period of time!  Again, the message I was getting and believing was that I could change, if I tried hard enough.  One speaker said, “If you don’t like the kind of fish you are catching, you need to change the bait.  And guess what…you are the bait.”

There is an axiom in sales that in order to convince others you must first convince yourself; or instead of trying to “sell” others, sell yourself and the rest will follow.  Unfortuntely, it also holds that in order to deceive other people you must first deceive yourself.  One of the first tapes I heard was a talk by a leading financial planner; another had been a CPA with one of the top firms.  As mentioned, I thought to myself: I have that kind of credibility.  I can tell people my background and they will be inclined to believe me and follow me.  Let’s not worry about the logical inconsistencies I was hearing or the legitimate concerns, let’s just sponsor a lot of people using my credibility and then let the support system of tapes and functions take over.

I noted and tried to ignore many almost laughable twists of logic.  There were several bible verses that speakers would take out of context and twist the meaning of in order to justify their points.  For example, “Without vision my people perish…” became the basis for emphasis on the importance of having a “dream,” meaning having goals and desires that are big enough and important enough to motivate you to succeed.  The bible quote becomes the basis for saying, “God says that if you don’t have a dream, you’re going to die!”  In context, the ‘vision’ spoken of in the bible means spiritual insight.  I knew that, but I hoped the people I sponsored wouldn’t catch on.

Another whopper was Jesus’ admonition to “love thy neighbor.”  This led to a discussion of how, as Christians, we could best fulfill that commandment.  It turns out that the best way would be to show him the business opportunity and help him achieve financial freedom.  As one speaker said, “What am I going to do, mow his lawn for him?  I ain’t gonna mow his lawn for him!  If I love him, to be true to my faith, I need to show him the plan.”  (The 2 to 5 year plan to financial freedom).  I could see right through that, but I hoped no one else could.  Along with “If I can do it, you can do it,” was the bible quote to the affect that “God is no respecter of persons.”  In context this meant that salvation was available to all, not just some.  Speakers used it to suggest that if God has allowed me to succeed, there is no reason why He will not help you succeed.

My point is that I worked hard at deceiving myself so that I could deceive others, though I saw it as convincing myself so that I could convince others.  The principle is more correctly put as: “If you would convince others, you must first convince yourself.”  And I am saying that you could substitute the work “deceive” for the word “convince,” and you would get an equally true statement.  It is said that the best, most convincing liars are the ones who, at some basic level, though completely false, actually believe what they are telling you. One of the diamonds said that he was really excited about the fact that he had some 10,000 people in his organization, because statistically 1% of all distributors go diamond.  That meant to him that he should someday have around 100 diamonds in his organization.  What it said to me was that there was about a 1% success rate.  (I also hoped no one else would catch that little fact). Again, building a long-term relationship based on deception does not work, unless you are really good at it.

I wasn’t going to mention the specific name of the multilevel marketing organization we are talking about here, because I am not faulting that organization or anyone in the distributor organization to which I belonged.  The fault was all mine that I was “clueless” enough not to recognize that I was not the type who could maintain close personal relationships over long periods of time based on sets of false premises, however well intentioned.  And I didn’t have the common sense to discern fact from fiction or to handle the myriad of interpersonal issues that inevitably crop up in a business based on personal relationships.  Anyway, I wanted to mention the “A word” and the “J word.”  The first hurdle in approaching a prospect was to get past the point in time when they first heard the word “Amway.” The second was when they heard the word “Jesus.”

Our distributor organization was very bible-based.  If you succeeded in getting a person to one of the major meetings (held approximately quarterly) they were going to get two ears full of bible-based Christianity.  So if you got them past the “A” word, you still had to get them past the “J” word, or they were not going to be around long.  This is a tall order for all but the most charismatic of people (the 1%).  Those who bought into the A word and the J word had to then be charismatic enough to continue the process.  Very, very few people fit that description.  As alluded to elsewhere, very few Christian “believers” have the self-image, motivation and skill set to succeed at something like this.

We were taught that the ideal situation was “me and my wife sitting down with him and his wife” in their home, building a relationship and getting them excited about their financial future.  In my naiveté I did not understand that most people are not proud of their homes or their marriages or their finances, and will make any number of plausible-sounding excuses not to let you see their real selves.  To make matters worse, I often would “show the plan” to the man first and then try to get the plan in front of them as a couple.  Good luck trying to get a man to get his wife to agree to meet with someone or some couple when they don’t know what you are going to be talking about.  So you have to show the man first, then he goes home and tries to tell his wife, and she adamantly refuses to learn more or get involved.  And behind her plausible-sounding excuses is the fact that she does not want the exposure to their budget or their marriage or their home life, or something.