Having financial freedom means being aware, paying attention (listening) to the story your business is telling you, and having the courage to keep swinging. Ahh George you have hit a nerve with your topic this month! What are “The Secrets Of Financial Freedom” indeed! The American dream. A good dream to pursue. However, for many it feels like the impossible dream. Yet, it need not feel impossible nor be impossible. What is the big secret to building financial wealth? There is no secret. There is no magic to financial freedom. It takes exactly what anything else you build takes. Awareness, action, courage and a simple plan. Sorry if I’ve disappointed you. But I believe in bottom line basics as much as I believe in anything. How Does One Make Financial Freedom Happen In Network Marketing? NULL
Over the years of working my own businesses, traditional as well as network marketing, I’ve learned (the hard way sometimes) that being aware and working sound basic principles and to keep swinging is the key to success of any kind.
How much money you make is only one factor in obtaining financial freedom. I’ve seen people make what we like to refer to in network marketing as ‘gangster money.’ Yet at the end of the day, they are broke. They live worrying about how they are going to pay for everything. And in some cases, they’ve lost what they did have and are now living hand-to-mouth. I’ve watched others in network marketing make good money, not gangster money, but good money and attain full financial freedom. I’m not talking about just a good financial life. I’m talking about a great financial life. If they want to travel they do, first class. If they want something, they have it.
How does someone make way less than someone else, spend the same kind of money, but have financial freedom at the end of the day rather than financial chaos?
Simple really. Being financially free is not just about how much money you make. It is also, not necessarily, about how much money you save. Oh they are factors, but not all the ingredients. Here are five basics of financial freedom: 1. Being aware of how much money you want to make. 2. Being aware of how you want to spend your money. 3. Being aware of how you intend to make it. 4. Being aware of how much money you DO make. 5. Keep swinging Awareness is a big factor in making any business (or anything at all) successful. I read somewhere years ago that ‘awareness is curative.’ In other words, as soon as you are aware of something you are on your way to ‘curing the problem.’ And as for ‘keep swinging,’ well nothing happens without action. Being Aware Of How Much Money You Want To Make. How many times have you gone on vacation and had no idea in mind of where you were going or what you were going to do? How many times have you gone grocery shopping and had no idea of what you needed to buy? How many times have you walked into the kitchen to make dinner and had no idea what you were going to fix? Regardless of how you answered the above questions, I’ll bet that if you knew where you were going on vacation and did some planning, your vacation was probably more enjoyable. If you went into the market with some idea (maybe a list) of what you needed you typically got home with everything you wanted. Once you decided what you were going to make for dinner, lots of the angst was gone and you could move forward to get it done. Why was it easier? You were aware of what you were going to do. You were no longer in the dark. You had a goal. You had a direction. You were aware of your primary intention. Money responds exactly the same way. Being aware of your primary intention is critical to any endeavor. If you play tennis, what is the primary intention? To return the ball over the net to the exact spot you want it to go. Everything you do in your tennis game is geared toward helping you do just that and to get better and better at it.
The bottom line primary intention of a business is to make money. Sometimes I think people in network marketing are a little embarrassed about that. There is nothing to be embarrassed about. The primary purpose of any business is to make money.
A great question to ask yourself (and your new recruits when they start their business) is, “How much money do I want to make?” You need that answer in order to have direction. Without a stated (aware) financial goal, chances are you’ll flounder. Your business must have a goal for its primary intention – to make money. Don’t let self doubt stop you from asking and answering that question. It is only a goal, a direction. It isn’t a life and death issue. Once you are aware of your target it simply becomes a measurement of your process. Your process is what becomes important once the target is set. The next four items are all about process. Being Aware Of How You Want To Spend Your Money Although financial freedom is something you hear people in network marketing talk about, it seldom means the same thing to any two individuals. Financial freedom has no meaning to any of us until we break it down into the personal. That is, until you are fully aware of what financial freedom personally means to you they are just words. Ask yourself, if you were financially free, how would it change your life? What would be the first thing that would be different? Would you quit your job? Would your partner quit their job? Hmmmm, how would that change things? These kinds of questions are critical to knowing why you want the money. It is that awareness thing again. I don’t know what your currency looks like, but in the United States it is green pieces of paper with dead men’s pictures on it. Nobody works for that. Nobody. We have no emotional connection to that currency. If we were paid for our labor in puka beads we wouldn’t care about those green pieces of paper. We only care about the paper because of what it can purchase. It is the purchases that motivate us to work for the paper. Not the paper. Why are we motivated by the purchases? We are connected to them emotionally. The things we buy make our lives better. They make us feel good. Without that emotional connection we are most likely not going to work for anything. We are emotional beings (regardless of how left brained you think you are) and we respond and react to things based upon our emotions.
If you want to make a million dollars, you need to know what you are going to use the money for. Because when the going is tough, and it will be tough occasionally this is the real world, you need to have a good strong emotional attachment as to why you want those ‘puka beads.’
Being Aware Of How You Intend To Make It Systems. I could close right here and go to the next section because it is the final word. Systems. If you want your business to operate in a financially vibrant way, you must systematically run it. What does that mean? You start a new recruit (all of them) the same way. You hostess coach all your hostesses the same way. You have a sound prospecting system in place that may include the following: buying leads, bumps, samples, giving to the community (you give first then get) leads groups (e.g. women network groups, BNI or chamber of commerce etc) social media. This just scratches the surface. But you get the picture. You have methods (systems) in place and you use them regularly. Your business needs to be systems driven. If you have systems that drive your business, you have laid the foundation for duplication and a financially thriving business. Everyone who joins your business can rely on your system not their personality to drive their business. Personalities are not duplicable but systems are.
Too many people start businesses without being intentional about how they
are going to run them. So it runs them… right into the ground. If you are aware of how you intend to run your business, and run it systematically it will thrive and so will you.
Use a system and keep asking yourself how things are working. Problems will become obvious long before they are terminal. You will have plenty of time to make adjustments. You will see what works and be able to enhance those tools and continue to make things run even more smoothly. Financial freedom comes from being aware and intentional about running your business. For those of you who are reading this and saying, “But I don’t know what to do.” Spend time paying attention to your business. When we don’t know what to do next we can often solve the issue by simp
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As creator of the Savvy Sponsoring Strategies programs, Jillian trains network marketers and direct sales consultants the same strategies she used to build two 6-figure network marketing businesses in 5 years.
Get Your Free Report: The "5 Steps to Work Less and Make Money In Network Marketing" at www.SavvySponsoring.com
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