"Go Hard or Go Home"

I had the privilege of going to a gym yesterday. Not a "health club" - a gym, a real, honest-go-God boxers' gym. No carpeting, no air conditioning, no cappuccinos. Just a bunch of dedicated men (and a few women) building their self-esteem and their muscles, and practicing their art. It was a humbling - and inspiring - experience.

One of the walls of the gym is painted with a great quotation from Virgil about strength and spirit, but the words I found most inspiring were on the back of a trainer's T-shirt: "Go hard or go home."

If you're not going to give something your all, why in the world would you bother to do it halfway? I'm taking that message back to my team. We have too much work to do - too many people need our help to improve their health and their financial situations. I don't have any time for people looking for a new hobby.

Go hard or go home. And let's change the world.

Good Deeds & Good Work

Lauren gave away her "fat" clothes this weekend.

That's a big step for a self-described "cheap-skape" New Englander. But she felt she needed to make a commitment to herself, to her slimming, healthier self, putting up a big, neon sign for the Universe:

THIS IS NOT WHO I AM ANYMORE!

So she loaded up two very large garbage bags with stuff she bought 50 lbs. ago and we hauled them off to Goodwill. Her more formal clothes will be going to Dress for Success, a charity that outfits lower-income women in business attire so they can get better jobs. Good deeds, the result of a lot of hard work Lauren has done, sticking to the fat-burning program and exercising regularly.

Look for more donations to come from my growing (and shrinking!) team.

Fair? Nope, Fabulous!

Team "Slim Diva" set up a booth at a street fair yesterday. What an awesome day! Even when it rained - and oh yeah, did it rain! - we made great connections with people. We were talking with a very nice man, a body-builder type who wants to increase his lean muscle mass, when the skies opened up...and then the wind whipped up and started blowing away people's tents! There were only two of us working the booth at the moment (me and Lauren) and our arms weren't long enough to hold down all four sides of the tent, so this guy just grabbed on and stayed with us until the storm had passed. We didn't even have to ask! Thanks again, Malik, wherever you are!

We had various helpers who joined us for parts of the day, but Lauren and I were there from 9 a.m. until 8 p.m. Eleven hours. Physically we were exhausted by the time we got home. But mentally, we were jazzed. We met soooo many people and had tons of great conversations about how we can help them achieve their health (and wealth) goals. Now begins the work of following up with the 100+ people who were interested enough to give us their information. Whew! I can't wait to do it again!

Funny Business

If you ask 10 people what network marketing is about, probably 11 of them would tell you "Sales."

But I don't believe it's about sales at all, I believe it's about listening. Listening to what people say - and to what they mean - and then showing them how I can help.

So who are the best listeners in the world? Besides therapists and maybe bartenders, I think it's comedians. Especially comedians who specialize in stand-up or improv.

Stand-ups have to be engaging; they have to know how to "read" their audience. Improvisers have to be able to go with the flow, building on what the other person in the conversation gives them. These are all golden skills for networkers. And, yes, they're skills anyone can learn. But with comedians, they're standard equipment.

So I'm on the lookout for comics. And I'm currently talking to two of them: One I met at an audition - he was my partner in an improv scene and we made the auditioners laugh, a lot. And another whose business card I found on the bulletin board in a sandwich shop 250 miles from where he lives. It was pinned up alongside cards from a motley collection of Realtors, tutors, and a woman who'll assemble your scrapbook for you. (I'll be calling all of those folks, too - and some of them may even make themselves - and me - some money, but I don't expect any of them to make me laugh.)

"When I win the lottery..."

Spent some time in the dog park today. I just wanted to give the dog (she's 8 months old now - that's an old picture, but way cute) a chance to get some exercise and it was a lovely afternoon. I wasn't thinking about business at all.

And then this woman I was talking to started speaking a foreign language. Okay, not really. It was a language I understood - a language I used to speak, even. But not anymore.

"When I win the lottery," she said. She would have a house on Cape Cod. And a car and driver to get her there and back whenever she liked. Also a cleaning lady. "When I win the lottery."

Like I said, I used to speak that language. The language of, "I can't possibly get ahead on my own so I'll just wait for divine intervention." Of "without a bolt from the blue, my dreams will never become reality." Of "I'm not good, so I'd better be lucky." But I was surprised at how odd and wrong it sounded to me coming out of this nice woman's mouth.

I don't need to wait for the lottery - I'm making my own luck, building my own business. I talked to her about it and she seemed interested. She took my postcard, read it, then folded it up and put it in her pocket. I hope she calls. I'd love to help her make some of her dreams come true.

Gooooooooooal!

I've never been much of a goal-setter in the past. I'll blame The Voice for that, can't I? You know, The Voice in your head that says unhelpful things - sometimes quite loudly and with the kind of annoying frequency usually only found in 2-year-olds who've set their sights on expensive toy.

My Voice told me that setting goals was a waste of time, especially since I wasn't going to meet them anyway! So for years, I never bothered.

But lately I've been working on The Voice, trying to give it a permanent case of laryngitis. And so I set a goal for the month of April. A pretty audacious goal, at that. I have a calendar hanging next to my desk and on the square for April 30th, the last day of the month, I wrote the number of people I wanted to have enrolled on my team.

And I found out...The Voice was right: I didn't meet my goal. I exceeded it!

So we've been making like soccer fans in my house, lots of high-fives and shouts of "Goooooooooooooooooooooal!"

Feels fabulous!

Team Slimdiva now has 17 members...and counting! With more goooooooooooals set weekly.

"Excuse me..."

One of the things I'm enjoying about this work is the opportunity to take some time for self-improvement. I realized early on that the skills I needed to develop to succeed in network marketing are actually skills I have needed to develop for myself anyway - stuff like talking to people, whether on the street or on the phone. I've been a freelance writer for over 15 years and still have trouble making myself pick up the phone and introduce myself to people who might want to hire me. Which pretty much meant that unless I fell into some work, I was out of luck. So learning to talk to and develop a rapport with people has always been high on my To-Do List. It's just never gotten To-Done.

Not anymore.

I'm much, much better on the phone. (It helps that I've got an awesome product that can benefit just about everyone - which I know because it's benefited me.) But I'm still working on the face-to-face contact with strangers - check that, face-to-face contact with people I have not yet met. So last week, I made a deal with myself. I had to spend the day in New York City, which meant I would be surrounded by people at the train station, on the train, on the street, in the subway, and I was bound and determined that before I got home that night, I was going to Make Contact.

For some people, talking to new people is just like, I don't know, pouring a glass of water. It's effortless, almost second-nature. My partner is one of those people and I used to think she was crazy - now I think she's a genius. She will even talk to celebrities, which always makes me cringe. For the longest time, if I spotted a famous person I would only tell her after either the star or we had left the area. I hated it that much - enough that I would deny her a small pleasure to save myself a cringe.

But I digress. Back to my day of Making Contact: It was not easy. I got all the way to my early-afternoon meeting, and I still hadn't had anything that I thought qualified as a conversation. So when I left the meeting and headed to the subway, I gave myself a stern talking-to. I vowed that I was going to talk to ONE PERSON before the train arrived. I walked past people on the platform, looking for the perfect person to talk to. And there was this man standing by himself, out of earshot of anyone else - so if I made a fool of myself, at least he would be the only person to hear me. I decided he was The One.

I had already planned my opening line. "Excuse me, I was wondering if you could help me. I'm taking a class and my assignment is that I have to talk to people. So can I talk to you?" Okay, so the "taking a class" part was not exactly 100% true, but I was engaged in serious learning. So I walked up to the man - who was standing with his back to me - and said, "Excuse me."

And when he turned around, I saw he was...a celebrity. Well, not a celebrity like a nationally known guy, but an actor. An actor I recognized, whose work I have seen many times and enjoyed. It was like my worst nightmare come true. I wanted to run away, but I was already committed with the "excuse me," so I decided to pretend I didn't recognize him (it's just my mind playing tricks on me) and follow through with my story about the class.

Well, he couldn't have been sweeter. He picked right up and started asking me questions - the best way to draw out someone who's shy - about my "class," about where I was from. I asked him questions back, and eventually got him to give me his name. (It was him. Cringe!) I apologized for "not recognizing" him and reeled off some of his performances that I've enjoyed, looked down the train tracks "Is this train ever going to show up?" and escaped.

It took me a day or two to let the shock of this experience work through my system. But I think that one conversation with the kind of person who's maybe the scariest for me (famous) was the equivalent of 20 or 30 conversations with regular folks. In fact, later that afternoon - though I was still shaking inside - I struck up a conversation with a shop clerk and got his phone number. I wouldn't say I've completely mastered the techniques yet, but I'm a lot farther on than I was before. And that's really good to know.