You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
The first step that was instrumental to my success was pushing through my fears. Starting a business, especially a network marketing business, is both exciting and scary. I pushed through my fears by jumping into personal growth. The first book I read was called Feel the Fear and Do it Anyways. Looking back, one of the most important things I’ve learned is that we are the limits to our own success.
Tenacity would be the second trait instrumental to my success. The first year after starting my direct sales business it did not grow. I had family and friends telling me I should give up. However, I knew that if I kept doing the next right thing, I would be taking steps closer to my vision and goals. I was able to use the opinions of others to fuel my fire instead of extinguishing it.
And the third trait instrumental to my success is never stop learning. I am committed to personal growth and business growth no matter the success I achieve. And I believe mindset is everything when growing a business. Your business can only grow as much as you do. At the beginning, I dove into books, training, affirmations, goal setting and visualization. Eight years later business coaching and life coaching thousands of people, I seek these books, trainings and more.
Within a year and a half after starting my business, I started seeing growth. It then became exponential and the seeds I planted started to sprout.
How have habits played a role in your success? Can you share some success habits that have helped you in your journey?
Our habits can either bring us closer to our dreams or push them away.
When we create positive habits, we don’t rely on motivation or feeling, it becomes automatic. Just like brushing your teeth in the morning you never say today I’m not in the mood to brush my teeth, it just becomes automatic.
That is why we created 90 Day Habits and the journal. If you do tasks for 90 days that are positive and push you towards your goals, they become an automatic part of your lifestyle.
One of the biggest success habits that has helped me in my journey is tracking everything in my journal. While I was growing my network marketing business, I tracked each person I introduced my products to, met with, spoke with about the opportunity and more, all from right within my 90 Day Habits Journal. With this approach, nothing fell through the cracks and I held myself accountable to keep my business growing.
This will be intuitive to you but it will be helpful to spell this out directly. Can you help explain a few reasons why it is so important to create good habits? Can you share a story or give some examples?
I believe that what you track grows. If you create good habits around tracking your business activity, those good habits will drive your direct sales business growth.
When building a plan to create good habits, first start with a look at how you start your day. Do you get up, leave your bed messy before stumbling for coffee and lagging to get in the shower, just to rush to whatever work you have to do? Or do you get up and get inspired immediately — make your bed, meditate or pray, reflect on the previous day and set yourself up mentally with positivity? Or something in between? Whatever it is, assess that routine and get clarity on whether or not it pushes you closer to your goals.
Creating habits around a morning routine was life changing for me. I went from being unproductive, unmotivated and lacking structure, to creating habits that set me up for the day, kept me on track and helped me thrive.
For example, when I first began to shift my mornings, I started with waking up 10 mins early to read. Then pushed it to 30 mins and added in meditating and eventually it was really easy to wake up an hour early. Now every morning I have an hour to myself before the kids wake up to read my newest personal growth books, meditate, practice gratitude, say positive affirmations to myself and make my bed. And it has been life changing.
Speaking in general, what is the best way to develop good habits? Conversely, how can one stop bad habits?
The best way to develop good habits is to start with writing down your goals in your journal, and what you believe it will take to achieve them. For example, you could have a goal of waking up an hour earlier so you can help improve your mindset. Be sure to not set yourself up for failure by just forcing yourself into the new hour. Start with going to sleep 15 or 30 minutes earlier the night before, and waking 15 or 30 minutes earlier. Do that until it’s easy, and then push yourself to 45 minutes and then 60 minutes.
Always start small. James Clear used an example in his book Atomic Habits of starting a new workout routine. He said just workout for 2 minutes. You can do anything for 2 minutes. And it may be easy, it may be hard, but soon enough your subconscious and body will say “well I’m already here, I may as well keep going.”
There’s another incredible book I read called Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself. The author describes the first step as understanding why we do the things we do. Through understanding ourselves, we can start to break habits that don’t serve us. With the right method, it’s relatively easy to correct!
This is the concept that we put into the 90 Day Habits products. Each takes the action of building good business habits and puts them on paper for network marketers to follow, write down and be guided. We’ve essentially done the hard work for them!