“Even people who don’t succeed or stay in Network Marketing, leave a better person for having been in this industry,” Linda says. “And when they stay…” Linda Proctor was born in Columbus, Georgia. Her dad was in the military and when she was seven, they moved to Pensacola, Florida. It was, Linda says, a great place to grow up. Pensacola is a small city, a busy seaport connected to the Gulf of Mexico and it is home to the United States Naval Air Station. That afforded Linda the opportunity to meet and make friends from all over North America and the world. Linda says her family life was really like “Ozzie and Harriet,” the 1950’s television staple of the well-adjusted, idyllic American family. Linda had a great upbringing. Her family was very supportive and she felt secure and very, very protected. Linda enjoyed being competitive and was always involved in sports. She did well academically, too, and went on to university, where she met Jack, her future husband. They got married and three years into the marriage, he passed away. NULL
Linda’s short married life was a mirror image of her family life. She was very protected by her husband and felt comfortable and secure. Her mother had passed away three months before her husband died; both from cancer. So, at the “ripe old age” of 23, Linda found herself a widow, alone and on her own. She had no support system. The umbrella of safety and security she had known all her life was gone. She realized that it was up to her. Linda had to choose between cutting way back on her standard of living to suit her single paycheck as an accountant, or move forward and try to increase her income so she could support herself the way she really wanted to be living.
Linda made the decision to get into straight commission sales.
It was not an easy transition. Every time Linda took an aptitude test, she was told that she’d never make it in sales. That was obviously discouraging, but Linda was convinced and committed to sales as the only way she was going to be able to increase her income. She persisted in securing a sales career and finally got a job selling life insurance. She was thrilled. Linda went to her friends and family and told them her good news, but none of them shared her happiness. They saw themselves as targets for her sales efforts, and they let Linda know right away they had no intentions of buying life insurance from her. Their nay saying didn’t dissuade Linda. She knew this was the path for her. Four years into her sales career, Linda met the man who would become her mentor and husband, Bob Proctor, at a seminar he was doing for her company in Atlanta. Bob stood in the front of the room and asked, “Can you see yourself earning $100,000 a year?” At that time (in the 1970s) Linda was struggling. She was earning $24,000 a year, working really hard. She was cold calling 200 people a week, getting 10 appointments and making one sale every three weeks. Her numbers were horrible. So, when Bob asked if she could see herself earning four times her current income, Linda figured she’d need to quadruple her efforts.
“Can I cold call 800 people a week?” Linda asked herself. And even if she could, did she want to?
Bob sat down with her and pointed out that to be successful you needed to know two things: Where you are and where you’re going. He said, “There’s no way doing what you’re doing now you’re going to reach the objectives you’re setting.” Bob told Linda, “You’re going to have to work differently if you really want to move forward.” Bob made two simple suggestions: Be in front of someone every morning by 9:00, and ask everyone to buy $100,000 worth of life insurance? Linda agreed that she would. Following Bob’s counsel, Linda’s results changed dramatically. Instead of making one sale every three weeks, she made 118 sales that year and earned a little less than half a million dollars. Lessons very well learned. “It’s about working smarter,” Linda said. “And you don’t have to believe in yourself to be able to achieve bigger results. When I started, I didn’t believe in me. I believed in Bob and what he suggested I do. I just believed in Bob until I was able to believe in myself.” Linda performed at that level for a number of years, then, at Bob’s suggestion, she started her own financial services company. Linda thought it was a great idea. Initially the business took off and all was right with the world, but over time, the overhead, managing employees, bringing in all the clients, the 70, 80, 90(!) hour weeks, wore Linda down to a frazzle. One day, totally overwhelmed and feeling very sorry for her self, Linda went home early and crawled into bed. She literally pulled the covers over her head thinking, “I can’t do this anymore.” What she really wanted was for Bob to take over the business. Bob came home a number of hours later and found Linda under the covers. “What are you doing?” he said. “What’s wrong? Sit up here and talk to me.” Linda never told him, “I want you to do it.” She was hoping he’d get the message, but if anybody knows Bob, that’s not what he was going to do. Linda remembers him saying “I love you, and you have two options: “
“You can quit and I’ll support you. Or I will mentor and coach you to do what needs to be done, but I will not do it for you.”
Although Linda was really ticked off with him for saying that, she knew he was right. And as it turns out, that’s what led Linda to her extraordinary career in Network Marketing. Bob was doing a speaking engagement in Barcelona and his host had provided two first-class tickets. He asked Linda if she wanted to go. Linda hadn’t done much traveling at that point and would have loved to, but… she had her business to run. She couldn’t. Bob quoted Michael Gerber to her, “If your business requires your presence, you don’t have a business. You have a job.” Linda knew that’s just what she had. She told Bob, “You know, I love working, I love having a career, but I really need to have it on my terms.” Bob told her to write down her “terms.” Linda thought of a lot of things. At the top of her list of wants were: High income potential. A great product or service that offered real value. To work with interesting people all over the world. Good training and support (if she were going into something different). And above all, time freedom. She couldn’t think of anything that provided all of that. Bob could. He said, “What you’ve described is Network Marketing.” Linda was not excited about that suggestion at all. She’d heard about all the failures in the business and remembers thinking, “I’m not going to argue. I’m just going to keep quiet and maybe he’ll forget that suggestion.” But Bob countered, “Before you totally disregard the idea, I suggest that you talk to some people who’ve been successful in Network Marketing and then make your decision.” Linda agreed and Bob introduced her to people who were earning the kind of money she wanted to earn. “When I got in front of them, I realized I couldn’t have been more wrong about this industry,” Linda said. “The people who were making the larger incomes were doing it differently. I got very excited because I realized it was something that was in agreement with what I wanted to do, with my life purpose.”
“To lead others to entrepreneurial situations that will reward them with time and money freedom.”
Linda did very well. She earned six figures in her first year. In her second year it went to a quarter of a million. By her third year, it was over a half a million. Linda earned millions in her 12 years with that company. Linda asked the people who became her upline mentors, “What does it look like to earn $100,000 a year?” They said, “Help six people earn $2,000 a month.” Then Linda asked, “What does it look like to
earn $1 million a year?” And they said, “Help six people earn $100,000 a year.” Linda knew that her goal was to be earning $1 million a year, so she set out to find a team of people that each wanted to earn $100,000 a year. Her approach was very direct. She’d say, “If I could show you how to earn an additional $100,000 a year doing something that I think you’re going to find pretty interesting, perhaps different than what you think it is; working with a good solid team of people who know what they’re doing would you sit down and have a coffee with me?” Occasionally someone would ask, “What are you earning?” And Linda would say, “Well, I’ve just started, but the people who are mentoring me are earning that kind of income and if they can earn it we can earn it.”
Linda had a vision, a goal, and she focused on it like a laser.
She was willing and able not to let the bumps in the road dissuade her. She was persistent and she picked great mentors to learn from. Her husband taught her how to think outside the box. “Bob always pluses everything,” she said. “We were working on our goals for the coming year and Bob told me, ‘Take that number and multiply it times 1,000.’ And I remember thinking, ‘How in the heck will I ever do that kind of volume?’ He just said, ‘Play with it. Visualize how you would be living, how you would be working, what your business would look like.’ That really expanded my mind – and my business.” “Bob gave me belief in myself,” Linda said. “Because I moved forward and started having success, I no longer had to rely on him to believe in me to get results. I started believing in my own ability. And now what I do in Network Marketing is provide that belief for others who want to follow in similar footsteps.” Linda believes that people leave tracks just like the little animals do in her backyard after a snowfall. Those tracks are our habitual behavior.
“Successful people are in the habit of helping people.”
They’re in the habit of helping other people feel good, look good and get good results. One of the things Linda looks for in the people she’s going to work with is the kind of habits they have; that’s how she can tell what their success is going to be like. Linda creates an environment where people that want to change can make those changes in their habits and get better results. She believes that one of the biggest benefits Network Marketing provides is that it opens people’s minds. Being able to entertain living anywhere you’d like, travel the way you’d love to, drive the kind of car you want, put your children in the best schools… is outside the realm of most people’s thinking, because they don’t have the vehicle to give them the income and the freedom of choice. “Network Marketing will absolutely give you that,” Linda says. “A lot of people come into Network Marketing and they don’t believe it’s possible, but if they’re around people who are making it happen, their mind opens up and they come to believe that, yes, I can do this.” Linda Proctor became involved in Network Marketing to be able to have a satisfying career where she could make a difference in other people’s lives and enjoy time and money freedom doing what she wanted to do. After 15 years, she continues to achieve those same goals and is starting fresh with a new company. “Even people who don’t succeed or stay in Network Marketing, leave a better person for having been in this industry,” Linda says. “And when they stay…” ___________________________ From The Greatest Networkers in the World
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He is the founder and former Editor-in-Chief of the highly regarded publication Upline®... was a Contributing Editor to SUCCESS magazine... the founder and former Editor-in-Chief of Network Marketing Lifestyles magazine... founding editor of Networking Times... the founder of GreatestNetworker .com... co-founder of TheNetworkMarketing Magazine.com and is the creative force behind TransformingMLM.com.
John is the author of the best-selling industry classic The Greatest Networker in the World, which has been read by more than two and a-half million people around the world and he has edited and contributed to far too many books to be mentioned here.
He has spoken around the globe, through out Canada and the United States, in Australia, China, Costa Rica, Crete, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore, Trinidad and the Ukraine.
John is married to Jekaterina (Katyusha), has a daughter Rachel 28, son Johnny 23, daughter Eleonora Milena (Ele) who's 7 and Anais Polina (his 'last child') was born in March, 2006.
- Carolyn Wightman– Who Leads the Leaders by John Milton Fogg - September 1, 2013
- Ørjan Saele– Seeds of Greatness by John Milton Fogg - August 1, 2013
- Sarah Robbins – The Big Picture by John Milton Fogg - July 1, 2013