Decide today to make March your special month

Today is the last day of February so let's talk about what you want your March to be. Growth doesn't just happen because we have incredible products to work with and a earning opportunity that has no ceiling. Things happen because people make things happen - because of decisions they have made. The secret to growth is to work intentionally and not just hope things change. Hope by itself doesn't work.

Are you satisfied with your February numbers? Did you have goals for February? New PV goals? Sponsoring goals for yourself as well as for your people in your personal group? Do you have the desire to make March your best ever? March starts tomorrow so why not make March a special month for you and your business?

I will work intentionally to achieve my March goals:   Yes______   No______

I will increase my PGPV in March to ___________________.

I will make appointments, show and tell the Shaklee story.   Yes____  No ____

Let's just keep this simple and focus on the above three issues. Have goals for March and start talking to people about how you have an idea that can change their future and mention that you just want them to take a look. If you do just those three issues you will be doing what I call "the right things to create growth."

Why not you?  Why not now?

Enthusiastically,

Gary Burke

What is your philosophy?

I think many of us have a view or opinion on what the key factors are for building a highly successful business. I've read many books always looking for ideas or a key principle that might help me understand better what has to be done in order to achieve the goals that we have.  The following quote from Jim Rohn is what I would call a diamond in the rough idea.

"The key factor that will determine your financial future is not the economy; The key factor is your philosophy."

Mr. Rohn says the key is our philosophy. When I read this I always seem to think about my personal philosophy; of course that comes from books I've read and people I've listened to. I will use the word "view" in place of philosophy for this message.

1. What's your view on network marketing?   

2. What's your view of failure?   

3. What's your view of having a mentor?

My view of network marketing is it's a great opportunity for people to build a fantastic future.

My view of failure is I've learned failures are steps for moving forward. No failures mean no effort is being done. Failures lead to learning and success. 

My view on having a mentor is that having a mentor will save me time. I have mentors who have achieved what we want to achieve so I ask them questions, read their books and take their advice.

My advice to you is to ask yourself questions. Develop your philosophy or view. Once you learn the basics of this business you will have a teachable point of view which will also be your philosophy.

Enthusiastically,

Gary Burke

We have control over two things

One of my favorite principles is one I've sent out before but I think it's okay to repeat, so here it is.  

A person doesn't have to do 2000 things to become successful, but that person will have to do 5 or 6 things 2000 times.

This is a short message but I suggest you take some time out of your schedule every day and give some thought about what you want your business to look like 3 years from today. Then just do the right things over and over. We have control over two things as we build our future: we can control our efforts and we can control our attitude. That's it! Keep it simple.

So my questions to you today are simple: first, how would you rate the effort you are putting into building your business and your future? Think about it. Give yourself a score from 1 to 10. Next, how would you rate your current attitude?  1 to 10 again.

Are you positive? Are people on your team inspired because of your terrific attitude? What are the two major things you would like to improve?

Enthusiastically,

Gary Burke

Things don't just happen, we make them happen

We are in our 46th year of being in this business. When I think of that,  what goes through my mind is, "Really?"   Time flies and I'm sure everyone would agree with that. Time flies when we look back at our lives but when we look forward to the next 2 or 3 years, we might think "Oh, I've got plenty of time."   Really?

I start with that kind of thinking because I believe that most people in our business would love to have their Shaklee business growing and I happen to believe that we are looking at a major growth cycle over the next three to five years. A question I like to ask people when doing some teaching and coaching about this business is, "what do you want your business to look like 3 years from right now?" Most people don't have an answer because they haven't thought three years down the road.

So allow me to ask you the question: what do you want your business to look like in 3 years? The same as it is today?  Double or triple your PGPV? Maybe reach a certain rank?  Increase your income to X a year?

We have options. In this business each of us has the opportunity to choose what we want our future to look like. Really?    YES! Think about it. Put your future on paper. Design your future, don't just allow it to happen.

Enthusiastically,

Gary Burke

New thinking creates new and old behaviors

I received the following interesting message from Cokkie Eaker who has been a sales leader for many years.  Cokkie has decided she wants to change her business and grow so she is thinking about how she grew her business when she got started. I think there are a lot of people who also want to grow and it's a matter of doing what Cokkie is doing.  Asking herself questions and making new decisions. Read her thoughts two or three times as this will give you an idea of how you can also move forward.  

Lots of changes going on in my head. Asking myself, what did I do when I first started building?  What did I do back then?   Work every spare moment on the business!  Back then, it was unpacking/packing/shipping, calculate bonus, write out checks, phone calls, phone calls/no email or text!!!  It was about 1993.  I’m leaning towards increasing my PV by 2000/mo as if I were a new builder, finding business builders and product users – 3&10; do it again!   Setting an example for others to see, that is what I did back then!

 Last night I started following up/making calls – it sure felt good!

Action gets you out of doubt; doubt gets you out of action!

Cokkie Eaker

Developing skill with people

The following was taken from a booklet by Les Giblin, SKILL WITH PEOPLE

When you are talking to people, pick out the most interesting subject in the world to them to talk about.

What is the most interesting subject in the world to them? THEMSELVES!

When you talk to them about themselves they will be deeply interested and utterly fascinated. They will think well of you for doing this. When you talk to people about themselves, you are rubbing them the right way. You are working with human nature. When you talk to people about yourself, you are rubbing them the wrong way.

Take these words out of your vocabulary  -  "I, me, my, mine."

For those four words substitute one word -  the most powerful word spoken by the human tongue. "YOU!"

"This is for YOU,"       

"YOU will benefit from this."       

"Can I help YOU?"        

"YOU can do this."

"These products can help YOU."       "Would YOU like to earn more?"

Enthusiastically,

Gary Burke

First you will...

Last week we attended a meeting at the home office with many other Master Coordinators and we had the opportunity to meet and greet Heather Chastain who as of December 1st is the President of Shaklee North America. I was looking forward to this get together because I wanted to see and hear Heather lead this group for three days. All I can say is Heather in my opinion hit a home run.   We have to thank Roger Barnett for hiring Heather because I feel she will make a difference for all of us in the Shaklee field.

Heather made a comment I want to pass along to you because it's so powerful in my mind. What she said is simple but very meaningful. "How do you get to Master? First you have to want to."

How does a person improve their sponsoring numbers?  "First you have to want to."

How does a person double their monthly PV? "First you have to want to."

How does a person move up in rank?           "First you have to want to."

It's rather simple. Those who want to make advancements in their business will first have to want to. What is it you want to change in your business?  First you will have to want to. Really want to. Those who really want to are the ones who will make it happen.

Think about it.

Enthusiastically,

Gary Burke

New goals require two things

I think everyone would agree that setting goals is a part of the process for becoming successful. In the beginning I had never really set goals the way the books and the successful people talked about them. What I mean by that was I never had written goals before Shaklee.

I started reading books about personal development and every book talked about this goal thing and of course they suggested to write them out. I started to do exactly as the successful people suggested and I have to say that over 4 decades later it still applies. Do you have your goals and dreams on paper? It will make a difference. I don't know why, but it does make a difference. 

What I learned over the years is that new goals always require two things. New goals require new thinking and new behavior. This isn't a surprise to many of you but I'm willing to bet that most people might write out their goals - new car, trip to Europe, double monthly PV, earn more next month, etc. - but is there new thinking and new behavior? So here is my question, if you have new goals for 2016, what is your new thinking and what is your new behaviors?   

One last thing about goals. No one can reach their goals without having opposition. That's just the way it is.  There will be obstacles to face, negative people to ignore and problems to solve.   Don't allow opposition in any form get you off track. Fight through all that stuff because it's worth it. Don't back off just because there is opposition. Be mentally tough. Believe me it's worth it.

Enthusiastically,

Gary Burke

Some principles to consider

I have a book on golf by Dr. Bob Rotella that I've been reading and I thought I would share some ideas that I read in just a couple chapters. The reason I want to have you read these is it shows that whatever a person decides to do there are principles to learn that will make a difference. It's called personal development. When you get better as a person, everything else follows and also gets better.

A commitment to a process is the key factor in your personal improvement. At some point anyone who wants to get better as a person has got to follow a process. 

The mental game is a greater factor in determining success or failure.

Confidence is a change in attitude that makes the seemingly unworkable workable.

What we say about ourselves has the most powerful impact on our state of mind, because our own opinion holds more weight than anyone else's opinion about ourselves.

By the way, Dr. Bob Rotella is a sports psychologist. In other words he deals with the person getting better so he or she can play better golf. I hope when you read the above you think of yourself and the Shaklee business.

Enthusiastically,

Gary Burke

Are you ready and willing?

A couple of days ago I sent you a message from a little booklet I have from UCLA basketball coach John Wooden. I think I would call this little booklet "A Guide for Your Personal Development."   Coach Wooden calls it his Success Playbook. I'm going to lift a couple excerpts from this one small section where coach Wooden is talking about skill.

Skill is knowing what to do and being able to execute all of the fundamentals important to a particular task. Any measure of competency requires a command of the fundamentals of a given endeavor. Even a person with limited competency can become at least somewhat skillful if he or she works on the fundamentals.

I remember when I got started and was trying to do my best doing the basic fundamentals for building this business. I felt nervous and very incompetent with what I was trying to do. I wasn't sure of myself but at the same time I knew that as long as I kept working I would get better. I have seen so many high potential people who just weren't willing to work at the fundamentals. Very sad to me.

You've got to give yourself some slack and start doing things you might not be very good at today. All I can say is I promise that you will get better and some people who don't understand what you went through to develop the skills will call you lucky. 

The fundamentals for our business are:  Asking questions

Being a good listener

Getting appointments

Giving simple presentations of the products/earning opportunity

Conducting small group meetings

Sponsoring people

Following up

Teaching

Becoming a leader   

It's up to you to make a decision that you're going to become very skillful at the basic fundamentals.

Enthusiastically,

Gary Burke

Goals, plans, efforts

Do you have a plan for the month of February for your business? Higher monthly PPV? Sponsoring? How many?  Training meetings? The point is that working intentionally is very different than "Doing Shaklee." Once you have a target then it's a matter of creating a plan to make sure you have a track to run on.

What planning does is it helps to make sure you're putting your efforts where effort is needed. If your target is 10 new people into your organization for February how many will you sponsor?  How many will your team sponsor?    That's where you will want to put your efforts. Think about it. If you have a target to double or triple your monthly GPV, take some time to think it out and then write a simple plan for where your efforts will go.

There is a principle I read a few years ago that goes something like this: successful people say "yes" to their goals and plans, and "no" to distractions.

Have a great month. Be the example for the people in your downline. Remember, what people see is what they do. Lead the way.

Enthusiastically,

Gary Burke

Do you have the initiative?

John Wooden of UCLA was one of the best basketball coaches in history. He is known for winning but most of all he is remembered for teaching his players how to become successful in everything they do. I have enjoyed reading about Coach Wooden for many years and today you will be introduced to some of his simplicity.  

One of his teachings was, "initiative is having the courage to make decisions and take action."  When I read that simple principle I think about what it takes to build a successful Shaklee business. We all want to find people who are willing to make the decision that no matter what someone may say or do, we will continue to do what has to be done in order to grow the business.  

Yes, it does take courage to make that decision to move forward without fear of failure. We also know that any time someone makes new decisions they will make mistakes along the way. If we allow the fear of failure or the fear of making a mistake to keep us from taking action, we will never become successful or reach our full potential. So the message for today is to encourage you to step across the line and start doing things you might not be very good at. Or do the thing(s) that you know are holding you back from becoming the best you can be.   

Go for it! You can make it happen! Why not now? Why not you?

Enthusiastically,

Gary Burke

Do you have a good plan for February?

Time flies! Today is the start of a new month and a good way to start a new month off is to make sure you have growth activities on your schedule. Last week I watched an Eric Worre video and he made a very interesting comment, "Your schedule is your boss when you're an entrepreneur." So the way to start this new month is to look at your calendar for the month of February and check your schedule.

How does your schedule look for this month? Do you have appointments set?   Follow-ups from last month's appointments? Product and/or opportunity presentations to do? Meetings you will conduct and/or attend?  Webinars to do or watch? Remember, your schedule is your boss. I just checked my schedule and right now I have nin appointments for February. My appointments are three-way calls, webinars to do, a follow up with a new first level here in the Phoenix area, and a Master Coordinator conference call.   Somehow golf got on my schedule so weather permitting I'll practice and/or play three times. 😄

I just received a message from a new sales leader with the following comment.  "I learned something - and that is that I have to keep planning events and appointments ahead because I can't do it at the last minute. I think that's why I didn't have as much confidence and energy in January."   Amen! Well said. Thank you Ruth.

If your calendar doesn't look good to you what you might want to do today is invest some time setting up the rest of this month. It's not too late to take some action for February and work on your schedule.

Enthusiastically,

Gary Burke