Leave Nothing To Chance

 

It takes two to tango in relationships to make it work, especially when you bring your spouse into the business. Your business success is sweet when both work and learn together. Today, Ron Forrester and Leslie Hocker, the Network Marketing Power Couple, bring wisdom on bringing your spouse on board in your business and being a power (uber) couple. They also share the lessons they learned along their journey and the value it brings to your business when you help others become more successful. This power duo proves that success can be achieved when you leave nothing to chance. If you are planning to bring your spouse into your business, why don’t you pause for a while and stick to this episode? Get to see how this power couple dances through their success.

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Watch the episode here

 

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How To Be A Power (Uber) Couple With Ron Forrester And Leslie Hocker

Ron Forrester and Leslie Hocker are long-time friends of mine. Leslie is a repeat offender. She’s been on the show before. Everybody loved her so much. I get requests from people as they read the blog. They go, “We want to read more from this person.” You should be honored. You were on the list of people that everybody said, “We want to read more from this lady.” Welcome back, Leslie. I appreciate it.

Thank you. I’m very honored. I love helping people. That’s part of what makes me continue being involved in network marketing.

Everybody wanted to read more. Here we are. We have had the pleasure of having not only Leslie’s husband, Ron Forrester, but a friend of mine from almost the beginning of my career. We’ll talk about that a little bit as we go on here, but let’s get started. What we’ll do is, Leslie, we’ll start with you. Ladies first. Ron is second. Same questions to get started. As a power couple in the industry, how do you divide your tasks and roles in building your business?

I was talking with Ron. One of the most asked questions that we get is, “I want to work with my spouse.” Usually, it’s, “I want to work with my husband.” In relationship marketing and network marketing, the vast majority are women. We’re quite a bit different because we both learned our skills. We got broken in. We learned how to be entrepreneurs, which is not always an easy task on our own. We didn’t start together in network marketing. We met in a company where we both had reached the very top levels.

The beauty of this model is that people get to pick. If you’re in a company and you’ve got a support team, maybe you don’t connect as well with one leader but can connect with another one. We both have the same skillsets, but what we both did was work with the people who reached out and wanted to work with us. We worked in pockets. Ron would build one and work with one organization primarily and I would work with another so that we could double our efforts.

I agree with that and also the fact that while we worked in these pockets, we would come together for a larger event, bring everybody together, go back out again, and bring everybody together. We work well together. Our skills and method of operation mesh with each other, which is unusual. You have to work at doing that.

John, if you are somebody tuning into this and you’re new to network marketing, or even you’ve had some good success or a lot of success and you want to bring your spouse in to work with you, I don’t care how good you are and the success you’ve had, you cannot train your spouse. You have to do the third party. You’ve got to find someone that they connect with and could train them.

One of the worst things that I see happen is when a spouse, man or woman, tries to train their spouse. It’s always ended up in disaster, which is why I started off by saying, “Ron and I didn’t learn together. We learned, found mentors, found people to help us, and got good at what we were doing. We come together as a different experience in network marketing.” Hopefully, that helps people because that is a highly asked question. I get that all the time.

One of the asterisks on this, John, is the fact that when we did come together and she was looking for a mentor, at least I knew what I was doing.

The story is Ron taught me everything he knows. He tells people that regularly. I’m going to let him believe that.

It gives you an elbow going into his ribs there with that comment, but let’s talk a little bit about the industry. Let me set this up for you guys a little bit for our readers. We don’t need to tell everybody. They certainly know they’ve lived the same experiences we all have in the last few years. The world has gotten crazier. We had this little thing called a pandemic. They told everybody to stay home. A lot of us discovered Zoom and podcasts, which was a good thing, but there were a lot of bad things out of that.

There were a lot of people, prior to 2020, who looked at direct selling with a jaundiced eye. They looked at it, and they said, “That’s good for you. Maybe you make a little bit of part-time money. That’s terrific.” All of a sudden, we know what happened. 2020 and 2021 happen. 2022 still happens. In 2023, we’re almost through it. People are starting to change their opinions. Let’s use a hypothetical. Let’s say there’s a couple who lives in your neighborhood there in Houston. They keep looking over. Maybe they are in the traditional job market, and they’re struggling to make it with gas prices, food prices, and everything else that is up.

They say, “Ron and Leslie look like they have a great life. Half the time, they seem like they’re leaving, catching an airplane somewhere and doing this and that. They seem to have a great life. They work from home. 2:00 on a Friday afternoon, they’re at home. We’re not. Maybe we want to look at that stuff.” The other thing that’s happened is this whole gig economy that’s kicked in, where we’ve got people that are looking for those plan Bs using technology. All that being the case, Leslie, let’s start with you. Why direct selling now?

It’s interesting that you asked that question and also that you mentioned the gig economy because what happened in the pandemic, as we all know, was projected that the majority of us would be shopping online, buying online, and doing eCommerce online by 2030. The pandemic accelerated that. Some companies in network marketing went with it, and some didn’t, truthfully.

Direct sales used to be network marketing and regular traditional business used to be two different worlds. What happened during this process was that they merged because of the gig economy. It’s quite interesting. There are a lot of network marketing companies that have not adapted. They are struggling now. Part of it’s because they haven’t understood that the consumer now is keen. They haven’t understood that they have to provide a model where somebody who’s looking to be part of the gig economy can come on board and make an extra.

Uber, DoorDash, and all of those things, people are looking to make an extra $300 to $500 a month. That’s been a sweet spot in network marketing for a long time. In my observation, I’ve done a lot of research on this in 2022 because people are a little bit different as a result of the pandemic. What’s happened is people are looking for something that they can make that extra $300 to $500, but a lot of companies are stuck in direct sales. You have to come in with this huge pack.

When the three of us started, how much was the biggest pack you ever came in with? Mine was $5,000 to start a business. That’s nothing. I started a Pilates studio. I went to the bank and got a loan for $60,000, which is not a whole lot of money to start a business, but it’s way more than what we do now, where someone could start a business for $20.

The gig economy is people looking to make money online from home, where they can make that extra $300 to $1,000 a month without even building a team. There aren’t a lot of companies out there that create a platform where you can do the customer side and team-building side. You could choose or do both if you help other people, which is what Ron and I love to do. If you help other people do that, you’ll make more money, but there are a lot of companies out there. It’s funny, John, they’re trying to set up affiliate programs. I don’t know if you’ve seen that.

They have their company, and now they’re trying to set up an affiliate program, which is a customer sales funnel. They don’t merge it into the existing funnel. It leaves the whole base confused. It’s the most insane thing I’ve seen. The indication that direct sales have changed is that the gig economy has changed direct sales. Direct sales companies that have not adapted are not going to make it. I predict that several years from now, some of the companies we know as the biggest companies won’t be in the US because the consumer has changed. The consumer isn’t going to pay a $25 fee to be a customer when they can go on Amazon or Nordstrom and be a customer for no charge. It makes no sense the old model with the new model.

I could talk forever about that because I love helping people and making a difference. What drives me is helping others be able to create memories and have more fun and more choices in life.We could talk about that all day long because it’s where I came from. I came from the 8:00 to 5:00 grind. I want to help 50,000 women get out of that 8:00 to 5:00 grind. It’s no fun. I want them to have more fun, have more choices, and create more memories.

Help others create memories, have more fun, and more choices in life. Click To Tweet

My take on it, John, is what Leslie said because I have been a student of this industry for many years full-time. As a doctor of pharmacology, I got involved in it full-time when I was 35 years old. I’ve observed many different impacts on network marketing, traditional sales, and direct selling as you have. What all three of us did in the beginning is impossible to do now. You and I and Leslie were involved in a company where we sold $4,400 packages. That’s what they came in with. We sold many of them a month, but here is the issue now.

People get their information quickly. One of the things that we had going for us was that information wasn’t all that available. What we did, showed people, and helped people accomplish was the information they had, and they took it and ran with it. We had a system for it. The changes in consumer shops began several years ago. Network marketing companies didn’t pay attention. Those companies that did pay attention and have a customer-based model are doing far better than those companies that did not. Those companies that did not were trying to catch up to how the companies that are doing well now do it. They’re missing the point. They’re doing the affiliate thing.

That separates the opportunity in that company from its distributors, and therefore, it confuses them, and they don’t do anything. When people don’t do anything, companies in our marketplace don’t make it. We are fortunate. Companies that have recognized that the customer model is what to do are making it. Here’s another thing. They’re complying with what the state believes they should be doing. We’re talking about the government. The government is a factor. I believe that the companies that are based on individual product sales are the companies that’ll be here 5, 10, 15, 20 years from now.

The distinction is it’s the same company. It has a customer funnel that’s separate from the distributor or the brand partner funnel.

The difference is any of those customers who decide to buy as a customer can flip to being a distributor without having to buy a whole bunch of inventory like all three of us have. That’s the huge shift, a-ha moment for companies now that’s set up in this industry. This is how they should be set up to be product-oriented, not sales-oriented.

What do you mean?

When I say sales, I’m talking about racking up huge purchases as a sale. Those people have to go and sell that. Let’s ask the question a minute ago. How much did we come in with? At one time, I sold a package that was $147,000 years ago, and this was in 1988, to one man after talking to him for twenty minutes. I did something that people have to do whenever they buy big packages like that. I went to Denver and lived there for six weeks until that product was down in $2,500 increments, and people knew how to move the product. That’s something that now, buying it as a customer or being a distributor and having the company ship that one product, we are well ahead of what the marketplace is expecting. What I told you cannot be done now.

It’d be rare. It’s such an outdated model that it’s fascinating that people in direct sales don’t look at evaluating the business, the timing, or the marketplace. They don’t teach you that in school. You get a pass if you’re reading this and you’re with a company doing all these crazy things because they don’t teach us how to evaluate business in business school. You’re a doctor of pharmacology and you ran pharmacies, but you had to learn how to run a business.

When I graduated college, I didn’t know how to run a pharmacy. I went to the pharmacy. It’s the same thing here. This is the way it happens in any success. What happened when you graduated college? It’s what happened when she graduated college. We went to our respective jobs and didn’t know what to do. Somebody said, “Ron, this is what you do. This is how you do it.” If that hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t have been successful. It’s the same thing here, but you have to have the mindset of what Leslie said to begin with. You have to have the mindset that you want to help people be successful because if you’re focusing on yourself, it’s not the thing to do. If you focus on what can I do to make more money for me, you won’t make it. I’m talking about as a distributor.

 

Back to the gig economy, to have a company that allows you to make that extra $300 to $500 a month, $500 to $1,000, if you recall, we trained for years that this model is a lot of people doing a little bit. A lot of people make an extra $300 to $500 a month or $500 to $1,000, and it still changes people’s zip code. With the price of gas nowadays, they can fill up the truck.

I can put this into a real quick summation. A company now has to have a system in place where people can plug into that system and, within 5 to 15 minutes, know how to make some extra money because they don’t have time to learn a system like you, Leslie, and I did back in the day. Companies have to have systems in place where people can learn it in 5, 10, and 15 minutes, start making money, and learn the rest of it as they go. If they wish to go further, you’re learning the rest of it.

Companies must have systems where people can learn it in five, ten, or fifteen minutes, start making money, and let them learn the rest as they go. Click To Tweet

That’s the key and a huge shift.

It’s funny you guys say that because sometimes you’ll go to something. You’ll see somebody in the front of the room teaching the complexity of the complex. Here’s what happens when you get to the top in these percentages. I sit there as somebody doing this for many years, as you guys do, and go, “Show these people how to make $300 to $500 a month so they can pay their utility bill because it’s gone up at least that much no matter where they live.” Show them how to do that. To your point, Ron, they’ll figure out the rest as they go further because they’ll have the confidence and the desire to say, “The business is working.”

When I started many years ago, I heard about Jerry with Herbalife. She got a check and wouldn’t even bother to cash even then. I’ll never forget the first presentation I ever went to, where I heard her speak in about 1983. She talked about that check. She said, “I went and put it in the bank. It cleared the bank, and I knew the business was real.” Humanity hasn’t changed in several years. It’s that same thing, to your point. It’s that confidence that I spent 15 to 20 minutes learning a system. I went and did it. I made three sales. I put $150 in my bank account. This is going to work. Tell me more.

When people ask us, what about the compensation plan? I don’t know. I do the work and the money shows up. I don’t get into the intricacies of the compensation plan. The compensation plan is not what’s going to make you money.

 

The one caveat I’ll say is what I’ve observed with the shift in direct sales is that it does have to be a compensation plan that will pay someone who wants to focus on customers and selling the product. There’s not a lot of companies out there that do that. It’s shocking, but it’s fascinating. It’s good to be with somebody. With all the years of experience we had when we decided to come out of retirement and help launch a company, I feel very blessed that even though all our peers told us we were insane, we had the foresight that what we were looking for.

We retired, John. We were building an online for brick-and-mortar businesses on how to do SEO. It’s funny. Think about this. This was in 2011. We were looking for a company that would dropship straight to the consumer to laugh. If you don’t do that, you’re not in business. That was rare back then. For those of you who have only been involved in network marketing and direct sales for a few years, we’re talking about buying those big packages then we had to distribute them to people locally. No one wants to do that anymore, but there are companies that still buy big packages, but that was how I feel very blessed.

We wrote a book on it, but don’t look for it because it’s out of date. It was out of date six months after it was written. I’m thinking about it. It occurred to me what a blessing it was that we did have that business. For helping dentists and local people get clients, we understood that the whole dropship piece and a customer focus was a game changer. Several years later, we were proven right. All of our friends told us we were nuts. Sorry, we were right.

We’ve all been told that before. Let’s make a little segue here because you guys have built a huge business internationally and with younger people. I saw a couple of pictures of you over in Korea. It looks to me like a nice young team of 35s to 40s. Let’s talk a little bit about international recruiting, number one. Number two is getting younger people into the business. As part of that question, how you’ve operated in a market where, the last I checked, you don’t speak Korean? How have you done all that?

I can say hello and thank you in Korean. It’s a team of moms who have never been involved in network marketing and direct sales before. It’s so much fun because, generally, in that market in Asia, it tends to be men. The team is 98% women with children. The answer is the same if you’d asked me several years ago, and that is you have to find a bridge. By that, I mean somebody in your local town, market, or country who speaks both your language, in our case, English and Korean. We knew a couple of people.

We recruited two people, one in Atlanta and one in Houston. Both of those had a big influence in the Asian countries.

They are new people who speak English and Korean.

That’s how we did it. We recommend the ANMP. They asked us to speak on this. We’ll sit in front of those hundreds of people and say this same thing, whereas people will think that they have to go to those countries and recruit. I’ve got news for you. You cannot go to a country or on the street and recruit like you can recruit on the street here with the language that you know and they know. You have to know the culture and the language.

What has been interesting is if you’ve got somebody who’s a bridge to both cultures. It’s important to also know the culture of where you’re at. People are people. They want to connect and build relationships. It’s interesting, John, because the culture in Korea, prior to the pandemic, was not online at all, except for this group of young women whom I met in person and online.

They’d already started doing the online on Instagram. When the pandemic came, they kept doing that, and they thrived, whereas fifteen companies went out of business in Korea. It was exciting to see the bigger picture at work of what I’m saying. There’s one young woman who is making sales of 115,000 in one month of products. She’s thrilled beyond her wildest dreams at being able to do that and make a difference for her family.

There’s something to remember. These products are not that expensive.

It’s not a big ticket they’re doing. It’s fun and great. I love this business because it’s empowering people to have more choices in life, go for their dreams, and create memories with their families. That’s what you see in Ron and me doing. That might be a question you said you wanted us to answer, but I don’t remember the exact question because I barely glanced at it. I’ll bring it up.

Empower people to have more choices in life, go for their dreams, and create memories with their families. Click To Tweet

We’ve been talking about Korea, but it’s the same way in any country. You meet people locally and ask them the question, “Who do you know?” It’s the same thing here. You ask that question. You’ve got a wall behind you. It’s got the title of your book on it, Leave Nothing to Chance. That is a fact. I have a saying that says, “Every question you don’t ask is already a no.” Leave nothing to chance. Ask because the worst you’re going to get is what you’ve already got, and that’s a no. If you ask, the odds of you getting a yes are good.

 

Ron and Leslie’s story is in Leave Nothing to Chance. It’s available in English and Spanish on Amazon. It’s great because I look at those ladies’ faces, Leslie, when I see you over there. Despite the language barrier, I see them looking and saying, “We’ve met our mentor and leader.” We all had somebody or somebody in our careers who mentored us. I see that in those women in how they look up to you and Ron. I see that youthful exuberance in those ladies the way that I saw that in us several years ago.

Let’s talk a little bit about life lessons and all these years in this industry, we have learned a lot. What’s funny is that with people like yourselves who have been successful, everybody thinks you have no problems because you’re successful at multi-level. It doesn’t rain on your house. You don’t get the hurricanes when they blow through Houston.

Your kids are all grown. They get straight A’s in school. They never get a call from the principal’s office. This is the stuff that people think. Let’s talk about the reality of building a business in network marketing while going through life and some of the lessons that you’ve learned. Whether they’re hard lessons or great lessons, we’ve all had our share of both. Leslie, let’s start with you.

It’s called life happens to all of us.

Some people say something different in life, but it’s a clean show.

For us, one of the things that we’ve come to understand is helping others understand that all of us have things going on. All of us have life going on. The most recent was we went on a bucket list trip. We earned a leadership trip to Jackson Hole, where we went whitewater rafting and horseback riding in the Teton National Forest up on the ridge. We went to Kemo Sabe and I had boots but no hat. We lived in Texas for many years with no hat. I hiked up to the top of the Tetons. We had a blast and came home.

 

We’ve been gone for five days so we got a lot to do with the business. We got home and our power was intermittent and not working. The house was 98 degrees at 9:00 at night. No walls were hot. After two hours of trying to flip and work with breakers, we ended up in a hotel with winter clothes because that’s much colder.

We were laughing about that because Ron said, “At least we don’t have to unpack.” I said, “Yeah, but we got sweaters.” That’s beside the point. The point is we worked together as a team. The beauty is I had my laptop and my mobile. I did what I needed to do from a hotel room because life is going to happen. The beauty of being in a partnership is that Ron came here and worked with an electrician to figure out what needed to happen. We spent several nights in a hotel room and we made it fun. This is an adventure.

It is also a benefit of this business. Not the remoteness that Leslie is talking about or the ability to work in any place that you are, but the fact that even during that time, the money still came in.

We’ve had hurricanes where we had no power for three weeks.

The money still came in.

That’s why having an online business is important. With people in other parts of the country or other parts of the world, that’s part of the motivation because we did go without power a number of years ago for three weeks. The business did not go on for local people, but it went on for people around the world. The biggest lesson for me is I’ve shifted my focus. When I first started, it was all about me. I wanted money, success, and freedom. I wanted out of the 8:00 to 5:00 grind. I worked hard. What ended up happening was I’d love to see how much I could affect other people’s lives and I forgot about ourselves.

That’s when our income started climbing.

The point I was going to make is there’s a balance. I stepped back and had to ask, “What’s the most important for me?” Family is important. Ron and I had a conversation about the biggest focus for us, which is creating memories. I realized that that’s what we’re doing for other people but we need to do it for ourselves. If we travel for an event or business to an interesting place, we stay an extra day or two. We take the time to create a memory for ourselves that we can carry with us. We had our grandson and one of our daughters in. We went to AAA baseball team and the waterpark. That was fun.

We went fishing every day.

It was funny because it’s about being able to do those things. Work went on it. We shifted from spending more time on our business to spending truly in the cracks of the day, like driving an hour to the waterpark. That was some time I could spend in the car doing a little bit of work. At the end of the day, the lesson is helping others be able to create more memories and remembering to do that for ourselves. What are some of your life lessons?

Help others create more memories and remember to do that for ourselves. Click To Tweet

One of the most important life lessons I have learned is something I touched on a few minutes ago. I have been in my life, and I no longer am a big introvert. I would rather be running from you than talking to you. When I say wealth, I’m talking about wealth in families, friends, and money. The friends thing is important because I learned something in a few years of my life.

In 1972, one of my mentors, who was a billionaire, passed away. He was 42 years old and had a heart attack. There were only thirteen people at his funeral. I’m one of them. In 1985, another man who happened to be a family friend passed away. This man and his family were far poorer than ours. I don’t mean to say I was poor. I was wealthy and loved. I never lacked clothes that I needed or food that I had to have, but things that I wanted, I didn’t have. This man and his family had less than that, but he did anything and everything it took to put food and clothes on his kids and the table. In 1985, he passed away from a heart attack.

The little town I grew up in was 4,000 people. There were 6,000 people that turned out at his funeral. The highway patrol had to come in and route traffic. That’s a big life lesson because the way he got there is what we’ve been saying all along. It is being of service to people and helping to change their lives because that’s what he did. That was a big life lesson for me.

As Leslie said a few minutes ago, early on, it was like, “What can I do for myself? I wanted $500 extra a month.” Five months into this, I had a check for $500. I have to say I made the best decision of my life that day. I looked at that check and said, “This works.” It is similar to the story you said about the $0.19 check. I said, “This works. I’m going to stick around and see how far I can take it.”

I did not limit myself. This is a life lesson for me. There are no limitations. Expand your mind. Think bigger sooner because I sit, stick around, and see how far I can take it. You’ve observed how far I’ve taken it. We’ve had a tremendous life because of it. Not only in money, the money comes as long as you are of service, but the experiences, what it amounts to is you will not be forgotten.

 

We could stop there, but along that subject, I have to tell a story. I don’t remember what year it was, but my father was sick and was dying. Ron and I had become friends in a company. We were cross line to each other, but we both joined the company. It’s still in business, but we never talk about specific companies on the show. It’s a good company. They’ve made a good recovery through the years.

I sold insurance after my first company had some problems with the FDA. I got an insurance business, and I was having some good success with it financially, but I didn’t like it. I liked part of it, but I wasn’t jumping up and down about going to work every day. I was vacillating between, “Do I get back in network marketing? I don’t want to get back into network marketing.”

My father passed away during the interim. Ron was on the phone with me constantly as a friend. As a friend like, “How are you?” I’m not talking business. I call and see how you are. We have two-minute conversations at the time. I was out of network marketing. I never thought I would do it again. I thought, “The insurance business is serving me.” I was getting all of, not all, my licenses, but my professional stuff like ClU designation. I thought, “I’m going to stay in that.” That’s a legitimate business.

I was pretty much out of the business. You and I had conversations where you said things to me like, “Who are you going to help in the insurance business in terms of financially? Who are you going to help to mentor? What are you going to do with your life?” That stuck with me, and it got me back moving again. I don’t remember how much you remember back then, Ron. It’s so long ago now. I appreciate that, my family, and the people I’ve worked with around the world. Let’s talk about that a little bit. What did you see in me that I didn’t see in me necessarily as somebody in this field and this role that eventually happened?

You were a young man, John, who did not give up. When I was nineteen years old, I learned that Winston Churchill said in 1946 at the Oxford commencement exercise that he was invited to speak. He came in on stage in his overcoat and at his Brawley and his rubbers on. It was raining like the dickens. The stage manager said, “Let me take these for you.” He said, “No, that’s okay. I’m going to keep them. I’m not going to be here that long.” He stood up in front of that group of young men, and this is his whole speech, “Never give up.” He walked off the stage. That became my watchword.

I saw you not give up. You weren’t giving up on network marketing. You weren’t giving up on your life. You were moving ahead and not stopping. You simply needed some direction because I could tell, at that time, that you were having those thoughts about work. I’m holding my chain here, but I could tell it. I knew that in the network marketing thing, there would be challenges every day that would keep your life interesting.

That’s what happens. Life has been interesting. We have these issues and ups and downs. People will call us and say, “I quit.” If you said, “This person is going to make it,” that’s down, but it’s an adventure and excitement. It’s new things happening every day that’s not the same thing over. I know what it’s like to be over and over as a pharmacist, going in and filling prescriptions, talking to a doctor, listening to the patient, and telling me the same thing over and over.

They did not listen to what I had to say to them. He handed me a prescription that was full of germs every day, and I knew that I did not want to do that. This is a timeframe that you and I are talking about. I know what was happening to me, and I knew it was happening to you. I could see in you the same thing I saw in me. I wanted you in this experience in life. I got to tell you, you have, haven’t you?

I have. It’s been a journey. Thank you for that and it’s been a remarkable journey. There are times that I think, “The insurance business would’ve served me well financially but I could not have served the people that I’ve served if I had stayed in that business.”

I have to jump in because I stopped myself from sharing a life lesson as we went through this. The life lesson is what you and Ron were talking about. It is that all of us are one event away. The fact that Ron asked you, “Who are you helping?” It is because everybody is one life event away from a potential crisis. The reason I say that is I said we came home to no power. The part I didn’t say was, I’m thinking to myself, “What if I didn’t have a business to fall back on that I could spend thousands of dollars to fix and have air conditioning? What if I didn’t have that?”

 

Knock on a desk. You’d have to go into debt.

The ability to help people navigate life by giving them a vehicle to where they can fill in when the crisis happens, as you and I both talked about, and as you’re saying, John, travel, spend time with family, reach their goals, and dreams if people choose to take it that far. In the worst case, know that they have something in addition to your job that you can pay for the crises that happen in your life. They all happen.

Can I connect some dots in a minute, John, with a personal story?

Yeah.

When I moved from North Carolina to Texas in 1993, I’d been out of pharmacy at that time for seven years, working in this industry and making some seriously good money. My brother said to me, “Go down there and get a real job.” This is not the end of the story, but I said something to him. I said, “I can’t settle for it.”

The key to having success in this business is someone who you knew you didn’t want to settle for.

In 2010, that same brother called me. This is after the 2008 debacle of the economy and the housing. My two sisters and my brother are all successful in their own businesses, but they’re traditional businesses. He called me and said something to me. He said, “Dad has to go to the hospital. Somebody is going to have to be with him day and night. He’s going to have to be there for six weeks. We can’t do this because our businesses have us locked down. We have to be there. All you need is a phone and a computer. You can do it from anywhere in the world. Can you come and stay with him?” That’s what I did.

That’s what we try to get across to people. What we want people to have is the ability to make better choices for their lives. If they simply broaden their minds and realize that to be successful in anything, you have to follow a simple system. It takes time. You can’t do it overnight. When people tell you, “If you got to do this for six months, you’re going to live in the mansion instead of the trailer park, and wear the furs instead of denim, and drive an automobile instead of a car making $10,000 a month.” You have to realize, “That person is challenging every belief system I have, and it can’t possibly be that.” If you look at the title of your book, Leaving Nothing to Chance, what if it does work? Can I depend on myself?

To succeed in anything, you should follow a simple system. That takes time. You can't do it overnight. Click To Tweet

I have found in my business and my experience that this is where people need to examine themselves. How much confidence do you have in yourself? That’s the cutting edge. This is what I saw in you. You had confidence. She has confidence. I know what I can do. Whenever you can pull out of somebody, you can do this. All you have to do is follow a simple system, and you’ll have the same success as those who put the system together.

That’s how you graduate high school and college. You followed the system that people had put together successfully before you went there. You did it. t is the same thing you did at insurance in making money you did. Somebody did the system, you followed it, and you made the money you did. There’s no difference in what this is and what anything is. It takes time, and you’ve got to show up.

The worst day in our business is the day when somebody calls and says, “I quit.” They don’t quit on me or the company. They quit on themselves. There’s a fellow up in Toronto, Joe Garcia. I’ve interviewed him a couple of times. Joe’s got a great statement. I said, “What do you tell people?” He says, “I tell them to fall in love with their dream. If you’re not in love with your dream, you’re not going to stick around.”

That’s what we’re all saying here. You said, “Show me what you can do for you. Not for me as your upline, the company, or the owner. What can you do for you and your family?” Let’s wrap up here with a couple of final thoughts. Leslie, what would you tell all these people reading? What’s your advice? You’ve been doing this for a long time. You’ve been doing it successfully. You’ve been all over the world. You’ve had amazing experiences. What’s your worst?

My advice is two things. It is to find somebody to mentor you. I always laugh about how uncoachable I was for the first six months when I got involved in network marketing because I’d already had success in Corporate America. I’d already reached the executive level at a young age. I knew more so I wasn’t coachable. Be coachable and teachable. Find somebody who does want to mentor you, not sign people up and slap them on the wall.

The other is to look at the company you’re working with or evaluating and see if the culture fits you. Compensation is important, but if a company legitimately is going to stay in business, they’re going to pay people to do that, and you want to have products that are unique. The culture is important. We have been blessed to be in a unique position because, John, in a lot of companies, you have tribes and people fighting. If you can find a company that has a culture of people helping people, making a difference, and leaving the world a happier place, people will gravitate to you if that’s you. If it’s not your culture, don’t go with that company.

Culture above everything is what is going to create longevity. It’s like you said, “Fall in love with your dream. Find people that will work with you to help you get your dream, not their dream.” I will say that for many years, I have looked for people who have a little bit of entrepreneurial spirit and want to make a difference. They want to make a difference for themselves, family, and others.

If you’re looking to build a team, those are the two key things that I found people that are successful. Even if you’re selling products or you’re someone who wants to make a difference in someone’s life with the product that you’re offering, that goes a lot further than selling ice to Eskimos. I couldn’t do that. That’s not my MO. I learned that about myself a long time ago. The last thing that I would say is that you and Ron talked about confidence. I want people to know that if you’re sitting there thinking, “I’m not confident in myself.” Courage is a learned skill. I was a shy, introverted human who fell in love with helping other people. It helped me, and I got over myself.

What she said is something I was thinking about a minute ago while we were talking. It is don’t take yourself seriously. If you take yourself too seriously and think, “Look what I have done,” that’s when you start declining. My life lesson is to never quit on myself, the opportunity, and being able to share with people. The fact when somebody quits, you’ve got to remember that no one single person makes your business. That one single person is not going to take you out of the business if your dream is big enough and you are thinking, “What am I going to be able to do to help people and family?” I have a motto. Whenever I’m on stage, I end it with, “Think bigger sooner.”

Don't take yourself too seriously. If you take yourself too seriously, that's when you start declining. Click To Tweet

Everybody, you can see why Ron and Leslie are a power couple. You guys are terrific. I appreciate you both so much and continued great success and health. See you at the top.

Thank you, John.

Thank you.

Thanks, guys.

 

Important Links

• Ron Forrester – LinkedIn
• Leslie Hocker  – LinkedIn
• Leave Nothing to Chance
• Joe Garcia – Past Episode