Leave Nothing To Chance

 

With the COVID-19 pandemic, business leaders have to adapt to the new normal. Meetings and events are now being done via Zoom. Learn how these leaders were able to build and manage their businesses in these trying times. Discover how online training is the new normal for onboarding. Find out the power of Zoom and how it helps with the business for the foreseeable future. Join your host John Solleder and his guests Arlene Lowy, Joe Garcia, and Karen Ford as they discuss the world of business pre-pandemic, post-pandemic, and present. Learn what they did to keep their company afloat and employees satisfied during these challenging times. Find success as a leader today!

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Events Yesterday, Today And Tomorrow With Arlene Lowy, Joe Garcia, And Karen Ford

This is a first on the show. This is a group of extremely talented, successful career network marketers and people who’ve been in the industry for not only a long time but also have had success, in some cases, at multiple companies or at one company. They’re all well-traveled and people who are extremely well-respected within their companies as well as within the industry. I’m going to go around and introduce our panel. Arlene, why don’t we start with you? Arlene Lowy is in beautiful Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

How are you? I’m glad to be on. I’ve been in the industry for many years. I’ve been with one of my companies for the last several years.

Karen Ford, down in wonderful Virginia, how are you?

The best personal development program is traveling because nothing prepares you for that. Click To Tweet

Thank you for having me on. I’m very excited to be here. As you know, you’re one of my heroes. You have been for many years. I’ve started in this industry to make a difference for my own self as a single mom. I’ve been here for several years and made millions of dollars. I thought I would start to look at retirement possibly but I’m having so much fun that I decided this has come in my blood. This is what fills me every day. I made a decision to work with relaxed intensity more so. I still get to travel some. I love what I do and I love changing people’s lives. I hope that I can bless people every day and continue to do that long as I have breath.

Thank you, Karen. Thanks for being here. Finally, last but not least, the other gentlemen on the call, Mr. Joe Garcia, up in beautiful, wonderful Toronto, Canada. I miss living in Ontario. As you know, I had a home up there for a long time. Joe, welcome to the call.

Thank you, John. It’s an honor and a privilege to be here with these two beautiful women. I’m very grateful, ladies, and you are awesome. By the way, your podcasts were my favorites. I got started in the industry on June 21st, 1993. I got started in my early twenties. That’s all I’ve ever done as an adult and certainly the last couple of years with the same company. The first one went bankrupt. I know what it feels like when a company goes under but I made the right choice the second time around. I’m blessed to be a part of this.

Thank you so much, Joe, for being here. You’re probably the most traveled of everybody here. How many countries have you done business in?

There are over 60. It’s been a blessing to travel the world with my family, opening up new markets, and working with different cultures. I always tell people that, especially within my team and throughout the industry, the best personal development program is traveling within network marketing. Nothing prepares you for that. There is no book and no leadership training. Nothing prepares you for traveling.

 

I always follow your Facebook because you’re always in interesting places. That’s what we’re going to talk about. If you add up Arlene, Karen, and Joe’s experience, that’s many years. I was sharing with the panel. One of the executives of my company was a young guy. He said, “I would love to read a show,” and he believes other executives and people like ourselves that are in leadership positions within companies.

We want to talk about events because the world has changed. You certainly know. The people reading this, I don’t need to tell you what’s gone on. How has that changed? How would we have to adjust everything from technology to how we deal with people. My first question is, what major changes have you made to your daily method of operation COVID has started? Arlene, why don’t we start with you?

I’m a single mom, too. I became a single mom to my son when he was six months old. He turned 37 and I was still a single mom. It’s interesting from the very beginning as I was a single mom and I got involved in this industry. You got involved with John in 1994, and I got involved with him probably 25 or 15 years prior to that. My story is so similar to yours because as I met John, he said to me, “You have tremendous people skills, organizational skills, and follow-through skills. I’d like to work with you when you follow me.”

For some reason, there’s something about John and his whole character. When you get to meet him, he’s so low-key but at the same time, there’s this brilliance and knowledge behind him and his guidance. I hooked onto him like crazy. He is my mentor. He is the reason that I am where I am now. There’s no doubt about it. He’s probably the greatest teacher and friend I’ve ever been with. We talked about how long our friendship has gone. It’s amazing.

The reality was, in the beginning, as a single mom, I worked out of my house. I honestly did. I built my business out of my house where people would come to see me and I’d be at the table showing the plan. I didn’t travel that much at the beginning. I learned to build relationships almost with the knowledge that Zoom was going to come about because we had something called Join.me. When I started working with John out of Canada and we were both in the United States, I built 10,000 people in Canada from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We use Join.me, which was this whole concept of staying in touch in building relationships.

As leaders, you've got to be on the front of change and be adaptable consistently. Click To Tweet

There’s a combination of things that I’m listening to as I listened to all of you. We’ve got a real major issue here. Hybrid is going to be the new norm. Zoom is going to be the way of reaching people internationally. It’s much easier to stay in touch with a company that’s in the United States or keeping people connected and getting more people to the large events. Zoom is going to be a reality of how we do business as they phase into people coming together.

I’m going to be honest with you and John knows this about me, I’m more introverted than extroverted. I don’t need to hug everybody. I remember years ago, when I was working with people, they would not see me but they’d hear my voice because we didn’t have this visual. They thought I was a 5’7 blonde. They had no idea and when I walked in the room, they go, “That’s her?” I learned to stay in touch with people and build relationships. Now, I’m no different.

I have taken our company, which was smart on how they brought in Zoom and were able to almost seamlessly. We didn’t even know that people were not in their homes anymore that were working in the company and make this all work nationally and internationally. You know as well as I do, some of you are doing international when every country has different roles. They have different applications there.

To me, Zoom has been my lifeline. I love it. I’m always on a Zoom call in our company, showing the business concept in many ways and keeping people together. I’m doing a franchise business presentation out of Pittsburgh. I bring the Pittsburgh area and anybody across the country. One of the things that Zoom has done that I love is, in our company, we’ve got fourteen divisions. As a result of having fourteen divisions, we have all these trainers that are training on Zoom calls.

 

Anybody from anybody organization can go to those Zoom meetings for $10, which are very inexpensive and tie into it. You don’t have hotel and airfare. I get more people connected that have never been connected before. Every time we do a major training with the company, they have a fourteen-day free play, which allows people to listen to things that couldn’t be there on a Thursday or Friday.

For me, I like Zoom. There will be time where people are going to start getting together gradually, but they’re scared. There’s a lot going on inside the brain of uncertainty. They want to be with people but they don’t know who’s going to give them COVID. That’s what’s going on. I wanted to go to The Coliseum to watch the football game. That’s why that meeting had 150 people instead of 1,000. People want to be there but they’re still not comfortable yet. I don’t know when that’s going to come about. That’s what I wanted to share.

Joe, it’s the same question. How has it changed? Your business is so international. I know you’ve always had to use technology with all the markets and time zones. How has it changed and what are you doing to forward your business via technology during this time period?

I’ve always been the leader. If you’ve looked over my many years, there have been many changes in how we do the business or how we reach out to people and communicate. In the early ‘90s, we had to dial into a full number to get our information through, and then Fox Broadcast came out. We thought Fox was the most incredible technology ever. As we transitioned over, emailing started to become the number one communication.

I’ve always been that person leading the charge, using as much of the new technology as possible and be one of the first. For example, in marketing, before it was called spam, I was emailing millions of emails out. I was one of the first to use Google AdWords. As leaders, we’ve got to consistently be on the front of that change and be adaptable. I know there are a lot of people in our industry that are not comfortable with that but I’ve always been that person that was very adaptable. That allowed me to explode in business much faster than most people because they were still doing techniques that weren’t necessarily working.

If you look in the last couple of years, what worked months ago with a lot of stuff is not working out. You start to see in the coaching industry where those people are coaching people on reaching out methods and other ways of building the business. Those things are not even working now. That’s how fast things are moving. In the next ten years, it’s going to be even faster.

With the pandemic, all it’s done is sped up the way that we do business. Who knows, a year from now, maybe it’s something else than Zoom. It may involve more AI technology. We’ve got to be very adaptable or else we’re going to be left behind. I’ll give you a good example. Mobile technology and where it’s out the next five years. Ninety-nine percent of the companies in this industry are well behind in mobile technology. Some have created apps, which are pretty good.

I’ve been bothering our management team. We got to get on this mobile technology because in the next five years, that’s all we’re going to have. If you go internationally, if you’re going to China, Latin America, or India, nobody uses laptops or computers. It’s all the phones. That’s how they’re getting online. To answer your question, nothing’s changed for me. I may be using more virtual now than ever before but nothing has changed for me.

Despite the pandemic, there is still no greater tool in business than doing events and meetings. Click To Tweet

Is there any new technology that you see that any of you or your team are using beyond Zoom? Is there something else out there those folks are starting to adapt?

If you look at countries like China and throughout Asia, they’re using a lot of app technology to connect with people. If you look at the Rechat platform, they’ve added incredible amounts of technology there compared to a couple of years ago. In terms of the marketing end of it, I’ve seen a lot of changes.

Karen, how about on your end? What’s happened? How have things changed in your business over this last period of time and what are you applying going forward? I know, once again, you’re having great growth. What are you doing?

I’m a little different than Arlene. I love meetings because I am a huggy person. I love to be able to get in front of people, not necessarily like Joe and on stage, but I build very strong relationships and I’ve probably learned that from you. I built strong relationships with a team. For me, I miss my meetings a lot because I was somewhere every month and to be able to still build a business using Zoom. What we always use is just Zoom.

We had 116 people come in that we did on Zoom. They were brand new people coming over and we did it within 24 hours. We couldn’t have done that and how many of those people maybe couldn’t have come into a meeting or been willing to fly into a meeting, but because of Zoom, you have to be able to be willing to change and leave nothing to chance.

The Zooms have been amazing. We’re getting so many customers every single day. I was talking to someone and it’s like, “We’re getting right at 500 new customers a day.” We couldn’t do that if we did not have Zoom. Do I miss the meetings? Yes, but the technology and being able to roll with it and do whatever we have to do, it’s an incredible tool. I’m willing to do whatever I need to do in order to see the people grow.

If we have to stay with Zoom forever, that’s okay with me. If we don’t get to do meetings, I’ll be sad, but that’s okay. It’s not going to keep our business from growing. It’s going to keep our companies in tune. You feel connected. You may not get the hug, but a hug on the phone and Zooms, I do whatever. The technology we have is keeping us in a growing phase. That’s so valuable to know that a company can grow during a pandemic where we can’t be in front of people as much as Joe is. I love what we do.

Thank you, Karen. What’s amazing is if you look at businesses that have grown during this pandemic, a lot of them have been home-based businesses, similar to all of ours, which is network marketing. There’s been effectiveness, and don’t you wish you were an early investor in Zoom? Obviously. The first time I saw Zoom, I was in Monterrey, Mexico.

One of my distributors down there who speaks English said to me, “We’re going to be on a Zoom call.” I thought it was something like Zumba. There’s a beer called Zumba down there or something. I was like, “What are you talking about?” All of a sudden, we’re on this call and there are like 50 faces. We’re sitting in front of her laptop in a hotel and talking to all of these faces. That was prior to the pandemic and we know what’s happened since.

Let’s talk about your companies. We’re not going to get a specific name or any of that kind of thing because it keeps my show generic. How have your companies or your executive teams, what are some of the things that you’ve seen that they’ve done that have helped you to support your teams? Once again, we have a lot of executives in the industry reading this, by the way. All three of your companies are great companies, growing, and have very smart people running them. I’m sure there are things that you’ve seen them do that has helped you. Joe, why don’t we start with you on that one?

I may be an outsider in my opinions of what the company should be doing. The core message that a company needs to send out is that they can pay on time and have great customer service and good marketing tools, especially for products and with the compliance situation in this world. Let us do the rest. With regards to my company, they’ve spent a lot of money in compliance and bringing out tools that people can use on Facebook and social media platforms, so it becomes duplicatable. It’s very important with that. You’re going to start to see more of that.

It’s become worse in the pandemic, especially since the US government has focused on taking down these messages that you see on social media in terms of claims. From a company perspective, those are the areas that they’ve done well in moving forward. Personally, I’ve always used technology for events and the team.

 

For example, I’ve got an international or global training site, which I’ve had since 2001 online. Repetition’s another skill I would recommend to all leaders in this industry. If you have a team, you got to put your training online on a platform where your people can get access to it. I highly recommend that. I also have reaching out to marketing sites that I make available in multiple languages around the world from Hindi, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. Those sites are all duplicated in the same format. That way, we have consistency across all platforms.

The training side is very important, especially nowadays. You know as well as I do, John, that back in the ‘90s, the only way you could get training was out there through a videotape, which was cumbersome or going to an event. In 2001, the challenge with training was getting out to 10, 100, 2,000 levels, and everybody getting that access to that information.

I would recommend everyone have that kind of platform available for their teams so they can teach your teams. That way, you’re not spending the time saying, “How do you recruit? How do you get started?” All I do is say, “Go to that training site. You can find it right there. If you have any questions, call me back.” My time is not spent hours training people. I’m sending them to a tool so they can train. That’s how you can build faster teams.

Nobody has done it better internationally than you have.

I wanted to go back to this meeting situation. We all have to look at everything that we do as a tool. We have effective tools. There is no greater tool than doing events and meetings. Why do churches still get involved together? It’s because of relationships, growing their local area, and worshiping like-minded people.

In the network marketing situation, you’re a North American, and we may be advanced because our industry is very mature compared to all the other places in the world. If you go to Latin America, Asia, and Russia, events matter. In North America, they still matter. The companies that are constantly doing events over the years are driving through events. They’re expanding faster. It’s another tool.

However, in the last few years, we haven’t been able to do that. Thank God we have the technology so we can transition. The biggest challenge that I’ve had is in the emerging markets, where 99% of the business is done through events and meetings. As soon as the pandemic hit, I spent all my resources in teaching the leaders to teach your people how to have an online system with training.

The biggest challenge is people not being able to get together in some of those markets. I’ve experienced the same thing you have in that. Has it been a remedy? Has there been something in addition to the Zooms that you’ve come across?

We’ve got to understand that data rates on cell phones are expensive. Not everyone has access to Wi-Fi or has the internet in their home. If they do, it’s still, in some areas of the world, very poor. That brings some challenges there and issues for people that want to build a business. Whereas before the pandemic hit, if they didn’t have access online at home, they would go to the local mall, a hotel, or a Starbucks to get access to Wi-Fi and do their business that way. As soon as the pandemic and the lockdowns hit, that was not possible.

If you look at most network marketing companies globally, their target markets still are over 40. There are a few companies that have hit under that age. If you look across the industry, the average age is still well over 40 in a lot of respects. In those areas, the education factor and how to get online and use back offices, you have to spend a lot of time on that, too. That was another issue. Not everyone had that education factor online.

I don’t know how it’s changed, but I know I was in India a number of years ago and everybody used the internet cafe. You’re right. If you get into some of these markets, it’s not as accessible as it is here in North America certainly.

Keep in mind, I’ve been to places like Russia, where people will travel 50 hours by train to come to meet with me. Here in North America, they won’t even travel 30 minutes to go to a meeting. They’ll make all kinds of excuses.

That’s a good point. Karen, what have you done? Is there anything corporately that your folks have done that you want to talk about?

As a leader, you have to be cognizant of the results and decisions that you make. Click To Tweet

Since all of this, we have developed a new app that we all can send out so that you can monitor who sees it, who doesn’t, and how long they were on. That app that we put together is just our corporate app. Here’s what we are able to do. We’re able to go in there and record our training on that company app.

We have to go nowhere if we don’t want to, except to the app. We have our training, all of the corporate training, the back-office training, the systems training, the follow-up training, and every single thing that you need. If you need PDFs, training, and to hear a formulator talk, it’s in there. You’re in there. It has made it simple for us.

I love it because it’s duplicatable. I’m one of these point-and-click girls. If I have to go into explaining something for two hours when I should have been able to direct that new person, that new person would have said, “I don’t know all that. I can’t do that.” This way, we have the system and the app that we send them to and say, “Click here.” I say point-and-click. If you’re not being able to point-and-click, you’re doing the business wrong.

With the app that your company has, you can put your personalized stuff in there if you’re in leadership so your team gets your messaging and the corporate messaging all in one hub. That’s a great idea. Is that something your company bought off the shelf or is that something that they self-developed?

They bought it. There’s a company that sells that system. Every network marketing company has used them from one time or the other. It works great because it’s point-and-click. It’s duplicatable. I love when a brand-new person doesn’t have to feel like they have to know everything. You simply send that to them and let them forward that to their prospects. It makes your job so much easier and increases business.

Arlene, how about on your end? Is there anything the company’s done or senior-level leadership’s done?

At the very beginning of the pandemic, I noticed that everybody didn’t realize how the company was going to transition this whole thing. It was so seamless. We had no idea what they were doing behind the scenes. In fact, we had no idea when we were calling distributor services that everybody was home and how they interfaced all that. I find it much easier dealing with my company through this craziness. It seems like anytime I have an issue, they get something done much quicker than they did before.

As a company, we’ve always been a training and teaching company. Inside our back office, we have an entire learning center. That learning center takes a distributor from base one to all the way up every avenue of what they need to learn point-by-point. If you go into it and utilize the tools, it’s appropriate. We have this internationally in every language.

Every tie-down that can be done is beautifully done. It’s seamless. I’ll tell you the truth. We have regionals going on in the Northeast, everywhere. The fact is that we can tie into all of those, buy $80 tickets, and have anybody in our organization tie into a whole different region because there are so many trainers training so many divisions that it keeps people connected. In our back office, we have downloads and support materials that are unbelievable. We have training systems.

I’m building an entire medical online of people and doctors coming into the business because they need this new ancillary income of supplementation. We have a whole Facebook training for them. We have a whole division of that. We have all this specific training for them. They break it down into all the different areas where we have specialized training in every single area.

We have a whole other area in our company where all the 200 trainers like myself can get on and do different types of training where people can pipe in. You go into that backend section and you can see all the training trying to keep people connected. They’ve done a beautiful job. Also, we have two new apps. We have one that’s called Shop Local, where we can do live presentations on whether we want to show the plan or show a certain division of products. It’s amazing.

The other one is an app that converts where we can send out samples from the company. There’s a drip that connects them. Before you know, they’re buying the product. We’re all about buying products and keeping people connected that way. Plus, in this app, we can also have different divisions where we’re showing the business and different products, and you can email these to people. It’s done beautifully. That was all, once again, bought by someone who comes on and trains us from another company.

The commonality I’m hearing here is that apps existed before COVID, but the apps are becoming a big deal based on the three of your comments and my own experience, too. We’ve gone to an app. Everything’s an app.

That is just the tip of the iceberg. What we can be able to do with our mobile phones in the next couple of years will blow you away. These apps are very basic and great, but the technology is going to change dramatically and what they can do.

Joe, it’s a great bridge to my next question. There are 70 million people in the United States alone that are participating in the gig economy. They’re driving Uber or they’re doing whatever things they do with their phone. Again, to your point, there are about 7 million people roughly that are in network marketing-serious spaces. When we look at that, that’s 10%. How do we get to that other 63 million people with our companies, products, and opportunity?

It’s something that could be our next question here. Because of what’s happened, it’s driven all of us, especially old dogs like myself that have been doing this forever, to look at this technology and say, “I’ve always ‘worked’ from home. Yet I spent 200,000 miles a year on airplanes and living in hotels.” I don’t know how I was ever working from home but when I was home, I was home. Otherwise, I was living in a hotel.

What this has driven us all to do is to look at this business from that standpoint of, “We are part of the gig economy with what we do. We’re in the supplement business, the skincare business, the haircare business, the health nutrition business, and the network marketing business.” All those things are big umbrellas. At the end of the day, we’re part of the gig economy.

To that point, Joe, I’d like to ask you this question. Let’s start with you on this. As things get back to “normal” whatever that means, if and when we get back to normalcy, how are you going to adjust your business at a personal level? I know you’ve traveled more than I have over the years. What are your plans? If tomorrow the government said, “You can go to Vancouver and Timbuktu and do a meeting,” are you going to do it? How are you going to change your thinking to prepare for that?

 

It’s happening now, John. I have not traveled or done an event since the beginning of the pandemic. As the leader, there are consequences to everything that we do. I sent you an article about a company that had their convention in Las Vegas. They had over 10,000 women show up. It became a COVID hotspot and now twenty plus of these women have passed away.

They went from this incredible convention with lots of excitement to trying to drown out the voices on Facebook complaining why they’re having an event without the COVID protocols and everything else. As leaders, that is the worst-case scenario. I don’t know how you’d overcome something like that. There are lots of consequences to our decisions.

What I’ve been recommending is around the world, we’re doing these little events. They’re very strict on their protocols and social distancing because we’ve got to have a responsibility and leadership. Moving forward, I’ll probably wait until 2022 before you see me on the stage anywhere. I’m taking it day by day and month by month because things are so fluid.

Again, we have to be cognizant of the results or the decisions that we make as leaders. If I headline an event and it becomes like that event in Las Vegas, I don’t know how you would deal with something like that. That is tragic. My heart would be broken from something like that. There are so many consequences. I always tell people this is an incredible industry. If you name it, we all have gone through everything in the book. We could write thousands of stories in a book of what we’ve gone through.

2020 has provided us with many more new experiences. We don’t have a history on it. It’s brand new what we should be doing in this area. I am more cautious than I see a lot of other leaders. That’s where I’m standing. In the next 90 days, by early 2022, we should see things starting to move in the right direction. If you look at countries in Latin America, Asia, Russia, it’s a mess that’s going on. That may take another year for these countries that catch up.

Let me ask you another question on that, Joe. Give me your average day, Monday to Friday, not weekends necessarily. How many Zoom calls roughly per day are you doing?

Every day is a weekend for me, John. I’m a master of habits. From the beginning of my career, I’d been doing the same thing over and over again. Technologies have changed throughout the years. I’ll get up in the morning and work out an hour of personal development every day. I haven’t missed a date for years. I schedule time for my personal recruiting and my personal reaching out.

Frankly, I don’t want to sound arrogant here but I could have retired years ago and still collected a major residual. However, as a leader, I lead by example. That part of the business is critical to continue to grow your business, as we all know. I have been doing these things, the same scheduling, the times I visualize, and the times I do my affirmations, I’m setting that every day.

All success is simple disciplines repeated over time. Jim Rohn is the one that first said it. Before that, some of your friends, Larry Thompson, maybe he started that. It all is simple little disciplines repeated over time. I’m sure Karen and Arlene can say the same thing. It’s these habits that we have to create on a daily basis. The greatest habit is you got to share the product and the business and you got to teach people to do those two things. That’s it. Those are the consistent habits I’ve done over the years.

Arlene agrees with you.

I’m listening to him and Karen, and I’m like in another world. I love being around people that make things happen and that consistently change people’s lives. I know that our company says, “Share the product, share the opportunity, and get people connected and trained.” That’s always been the base but he said something that’s important.

All five of us, including my cat sitting here, are consistently consistent in what we do in our life. Our patterns are very similar or we’re always doing things constructive to build our own self, build it around our own lives, and take care of ourselves, physically and spiritually. Also, the most important thing is changing someone else’s life. We’re involved in a pandemic or a plan-demic. I haven’t figured this one out yet. The reality of what he said is, I don’t know if this is going to play out a year from now. I don’t know when it’s going to play out.

I’ll change with the time that I feel comfortable changing. I’ll always lead by example. I’ll always be the person who’s on the frontrunner of everything. One of the things you were talking about within Zoom, we find that people don’t even respond to emails anymore. What we’re doing is text marketing and we’re text marketing what you were talking about, John, and asking people to evaluate a business concept that might change their life or bring some value to it.

We’re connecting to people because they’ll look at and read the texts, and at the same time, respond or not respond. That’s why I have so many Zooms going on because there are so many people looking for something in their life or some value, whether it be supplemental or replacement income. A lot of people have lost their businesses. They’ve lost their way. It’s a real intermix of what’s going on and I’m playing it out to see what the next technology is that I have to lead into and set the example for my group. It’s simple as that.

Many of my leaders globally use Zoom. I get on their training when they ask me. I use all platforms, WeChat video, WhatsApp video, KakaoTalk, which is Korean and Japanese, and LINE. I got all these apps that I’m using to connect with people. Typically, the first time I will always do just a voice call because if you get on a video call the first time with someone, not everyone is very comfortable. It’s a little rude if you don’t ask. I see a lot of people are pushing themselves. Usually, the second time, to build more relationships, I’ll get on a video. There are so many other platforms I use for training.

Karen, it’s the same question for you. What are you going to go back to, if and when we can go back? Joe and Arlene have the same opinion on this. It may never be “normalcy” again. This may be the new norm, what we’re living. To that question, how many Zooms per day are you doing? What’s your day like? How are you building your business?

Every single day, I’m either on a conference call or a Zoom. I do have some groups that prefer to be on old-time conference calls. I have more people on the conference call every Monday night than our company calls have on Zooms in the middle of the day. I’m like, “How does that happen?” I’m on at least three a day. Do I always show up? No. It’s like every day is the weekend. It’s a holiday.

All success is just simple disciplines repeated over time. Click To Tweet

Honestly, through all of this, I got tired of hearing myself because I was consistent over and over again, showing up because I didn’t want people to feel left out. I didn’t want them to feel disconnected. I busted my butt to make sure that we all stayed in unity and helped each other. We have at least three every single day our team does. I may not be doing it but our team, as a whole, does at least three a day.

Let me ask you a funny question here. I was talking to another friend of mine in San Diego. We were doing a Zoom together. Do you find yourself combing your hair and brushing your teeth like you would if you were going to a meeting with people and doing those normal bodily functions to get on a Zoom call and you go, “Nobody can smell me?” Do you find yourself doing that? This is from a funny standpoint because I think a lot of people are. Do you find yourself doing that Karen?

Every single time. That’s the beauty of being versatile. I don’t always have to show my face. I prefer to. Corporate called and said, “So-and-so showed up. Can you hop on?” I’m like, “I just got out of my swim spa. I’ll do this whole cub. I will not be live.” He said, “I don’t care.” By that time, I get to have that picture. It works.

What Joe had said about doing the same thing over and over again, I have still made the ten-penny rule since 1999. I do it myself. I teach it. If people are starting to not make money, I go right back to what we started with because it works. Always being consistent and showing people something that’s simple and duplicatable, that works and helps people to live their best life. I’m in love with what we do.

I have a funny story. My business partner Dan has been in the industry since 1988. He’s always been afraid of technology. A number of years ago, when we did the video calls, it was all done through Skype. Skype was the first technology, if you remember that. He called me up after one of those first calls he did with this team. They were all women. He goes, “Joe, I have a quick question for you. If I can see them, can they see me?” I said, “Yes, they could see you.” He was completely naked. He had underwear on and hair all over the place. I started laughing. Those women did not say a word for the hour.

I created this concept called the Zoom-tacular when this thing first started. It’s a Saturday event about every six weeks or so that we do. To your point, Joe, there was one fellow. He didn’t realize that you couldn’t be naked on a Zoom call with your camera on. He got up and left his computer, and everybody was looking at him. I’m in the middle of speaking, so I don’t notice it. All of a sudden, my phone starts blowing up with texts about, “Tell the naked guy to sit down and not move.” We’ve seen a little bit too much of people’s home lives that we won’t want. Arlene, on that end, do you find yourself doing that, too?

What we did was we had someone put together a Zoom etiquette. It’s on a blog and we send this out to people, brand-new, and anybody who’s getting on any of these calls so that they know prior to it. We had the same thing happen at the very beginning. We didn’t get to see everybody’s tuchus. The reality was people have no clue what people are looking at. I too, like Karen, have one of those pictures you can put up if I’m not dressed properly because I can’t get dressed and get this makeup on every second and in between all the Zooms that I do. I do 4 to 7 a day because we do so many combinations in training and do presentations.

Women are a lot different than guys. One of our masters is baldheaded. I said, “That is so easy. You can do a Zoom, take a washcloth, wash your face, wash over your head, throw on a t-shirt and you’re done.”

I’ve made it easy now because I had these shirts made. If I ever do the show, I got twenty of them in the office here, so it’s easy.

I wanted to ask you a question. I’ll be the interviewer. We hear this new term, Zoom fatigue. What do you think about Zoom fatigue?

Like a lot of things, it’s a good excuse for people to find a way not to work. I’m old school. To your point, you mentioned a lot of things earlier that we’ve all done in the old days with the fax machines, fax blasts, and everything that we’d done before that and since that, in terms of technology. I find it to be an excuse, “I’m happy to be fatigued at home.”

I’m a gym rat, as you all know. I don’t find an excuse. COVID should not have been an excuse for people to gain weight. It should have been an excuse for people to lose weight because you’re home. Walk around the block, take the dog for a walk, and get some exercise. I find it to be an excuse. Having said that, I’ve mellowed in my old age to some degree.

I used to take off on people if they said something like that. Now, I’m like, “You be on whatever you can be on, but here do this. Make sure that you make it count.” If you’re looking to be on one Zoom a day, make sure you’ve got a prospect with you. Make sure that Zoom means something. Monetize that Zoom and put money in your account with that new customer or distributor signing up. That is like, “This is your business. This is your future.”

Let me ask this last question. Karen, we’ll start with you on this. I mentioned the numbers I’ve been given, I don’t know if they’re 100% accurate. There are 70 million people in the gig economy doing something. Whether they’re driving Uber, working for their local restaurant, delivering food, non-Uber, or whatever they’re doing participating in this “gig economy” which relates back to, once again, technology.

There are 7 million people roughly in network marketing as we speak. That leaves us an incredible universe of 90% or 63 million people roughly that are looking to support their income and make that extra $500, $1,500, or $2,500 per month. How are we going to get them? What’s your strategy? Karen, we’ll start with you here.

I started a new group on Facebook and it features single moms. I’m like, “Look at how many single moms are out there struggling even more so than before.” I personally have targeted something that I was extremely passionate about. I’ve even changed some things on my profile so that it helped other single moms and dads be debt-free. You find where your heart is and you start focusing on that.

I got eight new people to reach out to me from that group. You have to find your passion and whatever your passion is during this pandemic. The pandemic doesn’t matter if you keep your heart right. When you love people and you truly want to change people’s lives, I’m telling you, we have no limit. I’m the most blessed human being on planet Earth. I’m glad that I was a single mom. I learned so much and I learned a lot from you. I thank you for that.

Thank you, Karen. Arlene, it’s the same question. How are we going to get those 63 million people to look at our great industry and become aware of it?

What we’re doing is I’m taking specific people that have the skills to follow through and work with me consistently. We created this text. That’s fantastic. I have this one gal that had 600 people that she has sold custom blending of our makeup line. She’s talented. I said, “Take this text. On Monday morning, text five people. You already have a relationship with them. They’re going to respond that they’re looking for something they want to evaluate.” Out of five people she texted off of her list, three people already we booked appointments for to start showing the business concept.

I’m getting people to recreate their list. Don’t prejudge anybody because you don’t have any clue what someone else is going through. I don’t care if they’re driving a Mercedes, they might not be able to afford it. They live in a million-dollar house, they may not be able to afford it. You don’t know what’s going on. Go to their list, text five people a day, and book the follow-up of these calls. Who’s going to respond is going to respond. I’m going to be so busy this 2021 because we’re going to get to people and their people. That’s how we’re doing it.

Go to your customer base because you already know that they like your product and they can make money. That’s a great idea that Karen’s got with the single moms. I knew some single moms that did pretty well in this business. Two of them are on this line. Joe, it’s the same question. How are we going to get those 63 million just in America, by the way, not even counting the rest of the world out there?

First of all, in the network marketing industry, we got to stop teaching our people to go after other network marketers. That’s the first step. Over the last several years, I have seen organizations topple because of these recruiting tactics. Most of the time, it doesn’t end well. We have to understand as leaders, if we teach this, we specifically target other people in other companies. It’s going to happen to you. It’s the law of karma.

If you don’t want that to happen to your business, start teaching people the methods that Arlene was sharing, reaching out to new people. If someone is not happy with their company and they want to join your company, that’s fine. If you’re specifically targeting and tearing down other people’s businesses, that’s not cool. I have never done that in my history. I don’t teach it. This is why it has rarely happened to me over the years.

That’s the first step, because what has been happening the last several years, you start to see it in Asia and other markets, when you open up these new markets, they’re going after other network marketers. All I need is that one leader that sees the vision and wants to switch over here. In the US and Canada, that’s been happening for many years. What is happening is you’ll see companies grow and then a new company grows because they’re taking it from that pool over there.

 

Targeting new people, per se, is just shuffling decks in the industry. That’s the first thing. It’s been my philosophy since I got to that conscious level. That’s number one. Number two is we don’t need to go after those 60 million. It’s going to happen naturally if we continue to teach the right thing. My personal success in starting someone in the business is because I’m brutally honest with people. I’m not setting up improper expectations. I show them not just what they need to hear, but also the truth.

The challenge with our industry is because we’re selling, we tend to exaggerate. Exaggeration does not bode well. You’re building your business on the sand. That’s the second thing. In implementing your culture in your organization, tell the truth. You may lose people but tell the truth. Set up proper expectations and you can leave the hype at the front door.

Again, that’s natural. You see that a lot in all other professions. As human beings, we tend to exaggerate. The third thing is moving forward. We have to understand as network marketers, we believe it’s the only way. It’s not the only way. We have to embrace all these other industries and technologies.

We have to understand what our competitors are doing, if we see that as competition, and think outside the box. Every day I’m asking myself, “How can I do this faster, better, and quicker?” In 2001, up until that time, my success was due to I wanted it more than anybody else. I worked harder than anybody else. I was willing to travel than anybody else. I just did it. Within a year, that answer came to me. With or without me, that became exponentially big in my business.

Those are the areas I would recommend. We’ll tap into those areas because in the next 10 to 15 years, we’re going into the golden age of network marketing. There’s no doubt about it. We still get a lot of bad press. A lot of it is our fault because of the way that we share the business and the way that we’ve set up improper expectations. The next 10, 15 years is the golden age of network marketing. Not just in the United States and Canada, but all over the world.

The things that Americans and Canadians don’t understand, and it’s important to understand this, is someone that’s making $200 a month in Russia, Asia, or Latin America, that’s a full-time income for them. Think about that. They sell a few products and now they can support their families. They can make more money selling than they do in their factory or retail jobs.

These are the markets that network marketing is changing very quickly. They’re catching up to the United States and Canada. China tied the US in 2019 as the biggest network marketing country in the world. In the next 10 to 20 years, great things are happening for the industry. We’ll still get that negative press but we’re in the golden years, for sure. What we can do now compared to years ago is unbelievable.

The greatest habits are sharing the product, sharing the business, and teaching people to do those two things. Click To Tweet

I couldn’t agree more. This has been a fascinating interview. First of all, the name of our show is LeavingNothingToChance.com. We’re on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and a number of other different podcast networks. You also can go to the archived shows on LeavingNothingToChance.com. The names of our books are Leave Nothing to Chance and Moving Up: 2020. They are available on Amazon in English and Spanish.

I have to thank all three of these remarkable, successful, and beautiful people for sharing their wisdom. Joe, I could not agree more. We are in the golden age of network marketing. Many people want and need an opportunity. When all of these things collide, for lack of a better term, with technology and people are recognizing that there are companies like the ones that we all represent and others that friends and colleagues of ours represent that have great products in a business opportunity associated.

Let’s point this out and not forget this. All those other gig economy things are great, but where’s the self-development? How do you grow the person not just the business? The money is one issue. How does that person grow? They probably don’t, realistically, with the other things. In our industry, it’s all about growth. Once again, thank you, everybody. Joe Garcia, you’re great as always, my friend. Thank you so much. It’s much appreciated. Arlene Lowy, thank you as well, my dear friend. Karen’s already gone, thank you as well. You guys were all remarkable. Continue great success. Once again, thank you so much.

Important Links:

• Arlene Lowy – LinkedIn
• Joe Garcia – LinkedIn
• Join.me
• Rechat
• Spotify – Leaving Nothing To Chance
• Apple Podcasts – Leaving Nothing To Chance
• Leave Nothing to Chance
• Moving Up: 2020