Just think about it … If failure wasn’t an option we would never have heard of any of the following individuals. They all failed. Some of them miserably before they reached success. For all of them failure WAS an option!

Walt Disney …. Was fired from a newspaper because he “lacked originality and had no imagination.”

Lucille Ball … had been dismissed from Drama School with a note that said, … “Wasting her time. She’s too shy to put her best foot forward.”

Harrison Ford … was fired from Columbia Pictures and told he “was never going to make it in the business.”

Michael Jordan … was cut from his high school team saying he “wasn’t good enough.”

The Beatles … were turned down by Decca Records saying, …”we don’t like your sound and guitar music is on the way out.”

Abraham Lincoln … failed in business twice, had a nervous breakdown, his fiancé died and he was defeated in eight elections.

Thomas Edison … was told that his inventions were of “no practical use.”

I could keep going but I think you get the point.

All these people failed. But they never gave up trying. And because of that, all of them eventually succeeded.

Think back to when you were a baby…

When you first started walking, did you give up after falling on your butt a few times? No, of course you didn’t. You got right back up and tried again to the cheers of everyone around you.

What has changed?

So alright, maybe nobody is cheering you on anymore. (But maybe you’re wrong about that one. Your peers are watching and they want you to have success. Especially if you are part of the “Better Bunch.”)

Maybe FEAR has set in. Fear of Failure!

But think about what F.E.A.R really means … False Evidence Appearing Real. Do you think FEAR of failure stopped any of those people above? They were not even thinking about that. Not for a split second. They failed and they pushed on.

So, is failing in Network Marketing an option?

Absolutely! It better be! But only if you let failure stop you from trying again have you really failed.

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.” _ Henry Ford

Maybe you have heard of the failure rate in network marketing being 97%. That’s 97% of the people who join network marketing who give up because they failed at one time or another and didn’t push on. They quit.  And that made them fail permanently.

So, are the 3% that made it just lucky? No, luck has nothing to do with it. They succeeded because they didn’t let failure stop them. They used it as stepping stone, pushed on and never quit.

What would have happened if Thomas Edison just would have given up in his efforts to find a stable filament to make his electric light bulb invention work? He tried thousands of different versions and none of them worked. His comment: “I have not failed. I’ve simply discovered ten thousand ways that don’t work.”

So go ahead, embrace failure!

Because, for one, it’s going to happen anyway. Unless you stop trying all together. And two,  it’s the only way for you to get to where you want to be. And if you persevere then you will write your own network marketing success story someday and people will know your name too.

There is no success without failure. The only time you have really failed is … if you quit. Then failure becomes permanent.

To Your Success,

Ilka Flood

P.S. Let’s make some noise and share this post on Twitter, Facebook or Digg. Thanks!

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1. What Makes You Think You Are Not A Good Enough Network Marketer?
2. Which Way Is Success?

If you have been following my blog for a while you may have noticed that I like to tell stories to illustrate a point. Well, here’s another one …

Which Way Is Success?

A man meets a successful person on the road and asks him, “which way is success?”

The successful person speaks no words, he just points to a place off in the distance.

The man, thrilled by the prospect of quick and easy success, rushes off in the direction he was sent to. Suddenly, there comes a loud “SPLAT.” After a while, the man comes limping back, tattered and stunned, assuming he must have misunderstood the message.  He repeats his question to the successful person, who again silently points in the same direction.

The man obediently walks off once more. This time the “SPLAT” is deafening, and when the man crawls back, he is bloodied, broken, tattered and very irate. “I asked you which way is success,” he screams at the successful man. “I followed the direction you indicated. And all I got was knocked down. No more pointing! Talk!”

Only then does the successful person speak: Success IS that way. Just a little PAST splat. (Original author unknown)

How often do we give up too soon? If we only had pushed a little harder; gave it a little more effort; dusted ourselves off and tried again after we were knocked down; where would we be today?

Success doesn’t come easy. If anyone ever told you it does, they haven’t been telling you the truth. There’s no such thing as “Easy Street.” The road to success is bumpy and littered with obstacles.

Ask any leader in the industry and they will tell you they have been bloodied, broken and tattered many times. But they always got up again and went past “SPLAT” one more time.

I too, found myself nose down in the dirt many times. Quitting was never an option looking at the alternative.

“Quitters never win and winners never quit!”

How about you? Found yourself with bloody knees once or twice? Or maybe even more often? Share your thoughts with us in the comment box.

To Your Success,

Ilka Flood

P.S. As always, if you liked this post, tweet it or share it with your friends on Facebook. Thank you!

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2. If You Know Your Real “WHY”, Stick To It!
3. Are You Sabotaging Your Own Network Marketing Success?

There’s a reason it’s called NETWORK Marketing. You are not all by yourself. It’s about a large group of people doing a few simple activities over a sustained period of time. In other words, it’s about a lot of people doing a little consistently over time. It’s about leveraging yourself.

Don’t think you have to sponsor this large group of people all by yourself either. You only need a handful and then teach them how to get a handful. And so on. Over time you, and your handful of people, that you started out with, will have build your large network.

You can talk to any one of the top leaders in any company and they will tell you that they only sponsored a few people themselves. And those few built their network marketing organizations. Remember, it’s about a lot of people doing a little over a sustained period of time.

One of my favorite books is ‘The Slight Edge’ by Jeff Olson. In it he tells the story of ‘The Water Hyacinth. It goes something like this…

Although a single plant can produce as many as 5,000 seeds, the method it prefers to grow is by doubling itself. It can cover an entire pond in 30 days. However, for the first few weeks you won’t even notice it is there. On day 15 you may see maybe a square foot. On the 20th day you may find a dense little patch maybe the size of a mattress. On day 29 half the ponds surface will be open water. But, on the 30th day the whole pond will be covered with a blanket of the water hyacinth. You won’t even see any water.

So you see, just by doubling itself, this amazing plant covered a whole pond in as little as a month. It’s pretty much the same principle in network marketing. We double ourselves, and then again and again and again until we have a very large network of people who all do a little to contribute to the whole.

It’s not hard. It just takes time.

Many people give up to soon. If they would just have stayed the course, they would have reaped the harvest of the seeds they were sowing.

Don’t give up! Stay the course! Get a few. Teach them to get a few and help them teach those to get a few. And you all do just a few simple activities every day over a sustained period of time.

I know, I sound like a broken record…but there is a point to it.

I invite you to leave your experience in the comment box below.

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My post from yesterday talked about the “WHY.” Here’s another one. I hope it inspires you…

Who said the road to the top was going to be easy? Heck no, it’s definitely not. Au contraire mon ami. It’s actually pretty tough and only the strong will get there. Only the strong, the dedicated, the ones who know their real WHY will reach the top because those are the ones that will not quit until they get there.

Success doesn’t come without hard work. It doesn’t come without commitment either. Nor does it come without drive and determination. You have to overcome incredible obsticals sometimes and you may even have to give up things that are very precious to you in order to reach your final goal and get what you really want.

There will be many heartaches and many rough spots. You will feel like quitting many times, but it will be your WHY that will keep you  going.

If you have dream, if you know exactly what you want out of life, don’t let go of it until you achieve it. Don’t let anyone cloud your vision, don’t let anyone talk you out of it or steer you into another direction. Hang on tightly. Keep your dream alive and don’t quit until you are there. You may have to swim through a sea of no’s. You may have to overcome many obstacles. But you will get there at the end if you don’t give up.

Rocky is one of my favorite movies, but I didn’t know the story behind it until just now. I didn’t know about the unbelievable obstacles Sly, Sylvester Stallone had to overcome until the movie was made. Listen to Tony Robbins tell the story about “Rocky.” It will truly inspire you.

Click here to watch and listen to the story of “Rocky.”

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1. Is Your WHY Big Enough?

If you are in the network marketing or direct sales industry you’ve probably been told by your sponsor to establish your WHY, the reason you are doing whatever it is you are doing. You’ve got to have the desire. You’ve got to have passion. You’ve got to dream and you’ve got to believe you can do it. It is very important to find out what your WHY is, because there will be times when things get tough, when you get frustrated and discouraged. And if your WHY isn’t strong enough you might not have the drive to go through when things get rough.

A little while ago a heard the story about that dog sitting on the porch howling.

There was a salesman going door to door in that neighborhood and there were dogs on just about every front porch. They would all bark as the man walked by, but this one particular dog would just sit there whimpering and whining and howling like he was in some kind of pain. Everytime the man walked by that dog would be whining and howling. He couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t barking like all the othere dogs. So after a week or so he just couldn’t stand it any longer and he walked up to the porch and knocked on the door. An older gentleman came out and asked if he could help him. The man said, “Sir, there’s something wrong with your dog? Every time I come by he’s just moaning and groaning, whimpering and whining for an entire week. He should be barking like all the other dogs on the street, but all he does is just moaning and groaning. What’s wrong with him?” The owner said, “Well, he’s actually sitting on a nail. “  The man said, “Why is he sitting on a nail and why doesn’t he just get off?”  The owner replied, “Well, it just doesn’t hurt him bad enough.”

A lot of us get caught up in that situation. We’re sitting on a nail, but it doesn’t hurt bad enough. Our situation doesn’t make us uncomfortable enough to do something about it. To change things. But if our WHY is strong enough, if we really want it with every fiber of our being, it will move us off of that nail. Think about YOUR WHY. Better yet, write it down. Studies show that if we are just thinking about something, we have a 50/50 chance of accomplishing whatever we think about. However if we think about it and then write it down it jumps up to 75%. If we think about it, write it down and then tell somebody else that jumps up to 85%. Pretty powerful, huh? So make sure you write it down.

Why are you doing the business that you are doing?

_ Is it to pay off a car?
_ Pay off credit cards?
_ Buy a house?
_ Send your kids to college?
_ Bring your wife home to be with your children?
_ Quit your job?

If your reason is big enough, powerful enough it will move you off of that nail.

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The Power of Discipline

Millions of people say that they’d like to write a book someday – a novel, their life story, a children’s book, a murder mystery, or perhaps a self-help book. Of these millions, perhaps a million of them actually do it in any given year. Of this million, almost 300,000 of them get published (in 2007 the figure was 291,922). Each of these books has less than a 1% chance of being stocked in an average bookstore, and the average book sells about 500 copies. (Publishers Weekly, 2006) In other words, once you write a book, getting it published is a long shot. And if you get it published, making it successful is an even bigger long shot.

Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen learned this the hard way. They spent three years gathering stories and editing them for a collection they called Happy Little Stories. By the time they were finished, they were $140,000 in debt.

Then they found a literary agent who agreed to represent them and he set about sending the manuscript to publishers he thought might be interested. The response was unanimous: “no.” One publisher said, “Nobody buys anthologies anymore.” Another said, “It’s not topical enough.” Yet another said, “We just don’t get it.”

And finally, the worst “no” of all – their literary agent dropped them. After pitching the book to dozens of publishers he came up empty-handed. “I can’t sell this book,” he told them. “Nobody buys short stories.”

That could have been the end of the story for Canfield and Hansen. Undoubtedly, most authors would have given up by now – but not these two. Instead, they decided to try to sell the book themselves.

They made 200 copies of their manuscript, stuffed them into their backpacks, and headed to the annual American Bookseller’s Association convention (now called Book Expo America). They roamed the aisles of the huge convention center, button-holing every editor and publisher they could find. They handed out dozens of copies of their manuscript, but still no takers.

Finally, after two days of non-stop hunting and schmoozing, they met Peter Vegso, owner of a small publishing house in Deerfield Beach, Florida – Health Communications, Inc. (HCI) This publisher was in the business of doing primarily recovery books (12-step), but they had fallen on hard times, as the recovery movement peaked and waned. On the verge of bankruptcy, Vegso had put his company on the market to sell it.

In the meantime, he was still trying desperately to save it by expanding into a broader category of spiritual books. Vegso agreed to take a chance on this collection of happy stories. After all, he figured, he didn’t have much to lose.

After much discussion, they changed the name of the book to Chicken Soup for the Soul, and in 1993 HCI published it. Then the hard work for the authors began in earnest. As Hansen says today, “Making your book successful is 5% about writing a good book, and 95% marketing.”

He knows what he’s talking about. He and Canfield lived it. For the first year after the book was published, both men lived, breathed, ate, and slept their book. They were monomaniacs with a mission. They had bet the farm on their book – mortgaging their houses to the hilt – working non-stop, day and night, to make their baby successful.

They went to their hometown newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, and walked through the newsroom one afternoon, handing out copies of Chicken Soup to every reporter and editor, hoping that someone would write about their book. No one did.

They spread the word: sending out press releases, doing book signings, promoting their book in their seminars and workshops, and hiring publicists and others to help them make their book successful.

Canfield and Hansen did everything they could to take their baby to the top, and in fourteen months they made it. They arrived at the Nirvana of books and authors – the #1 spot on the New York Times Best-seller list – where they remained for two years.
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We all face adversity in our lives. It’s not a matter of if…but when. And during those times we need encouragement and inspiration to get us through. The Chicken Soup story is one of many in BJ Gallagher’s new book, The Best Way Out is Always Through…The Power of Perseverance. I love it! And it’s gotten rave reviews since it was released a few weeks ago.

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