Leave Nothing To Chance

 

If you want your business to lead globally, you need the right team. You need to teach your team the fundamentals, you need to teach them discipline, and you need team spirit. These are things that will rocket your team to success. Join your host, John Solleder as he talks about the power of teamwork with two amazing guests, Joe Garcia and Dan Catto. Joe is a network marketer and the author of Your Best Year Ever. He has trained hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Dan is the creator of a never-before-seen business model – a model that would allow entrepreneurs the global power of e-commerce from the comfort of their homes. Join Joe and Dan as they share what it takes to run a business around the globe and why the right team is necessary. Learn their principles of what makes a leader and how sports helped them in their leadership perspectives. Find teamwork in your business today!

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Teamwork Makes The Dream Work With Joe Garcia And Dan Catto

I have a lot of fun doing these interviews, but these two guys are amazing. They’re amazing business builders. They’re the leaders in your company and our industry. They’re two gentlemen. You’ve heard of them before if you’re a regular fan of the show. That is Joe Garcia and Dan Catto. We’re going to talk about some motivation from athletics. Both of you guys have major athletic backgrounds. That’s dovetailed into network marketing over the years and some of your philosophies to build teams. Dan, Joe, welcome to the show.

Thank you, John.

Dan is in Florida and Joe is in 2 feet of snow in Toronto. You guys have done amazing things. You’re amazing leaders. It’s so funny because I talked to so many people across the world in this great network marketing life that we’re all involved and engaged with. We’ve all been so blessed with it. You two guys, when anybody says, “You mean those two guys? What are they like?” I’ll interview them together and you can see for yourself the chemistry they have and the amazing business they’ve built.

Let’s start with some generic network marketing stuff. How are you guys using technology? We’ve lost that ability of face-to-face contact for the most part because of the circumstance with the pandemic. You guys have a business in every conceivable place in the world that I could think of. I wouldn’t want to get quizzed at risk of one of those games on some of their capitals because you guys are in places most people aren’t even familiar with in some respects. How are you guys using technology to stay in front of this circumstance and grow your business the way you have?

I’ll jump in on this one because Joe is the master when it comes to technology, not just our relationship, but he’s one of the very best I’ve seen inside and outside of this industry. Joe’s going to forget more about technology than I’ll ever know. I’ve learned every day from him about technology and that world of it. Maybe with both of us sharing the story, it can relate to about everybody that’s out there for the person that is not as tech-savvy as a lot of the rest of the world is, someone who is pretty skilled with it like Joe, how it relates to our industry and how you’re able to leverage from it and master it.

The best paraphrases of that would be leveraging from it because it is a tremendous tool. When I got started in the industry in June of 1988, technology certainly wasn’t what it is now, but the tools were critical to building your business. As with any carpenter that’s building that structure, home and foundation, you’re going to need a toolbox and tools.

I was 32 when I got started in the industry. The single biggest tool that we had back then was the telephone. We didn’t even have cell phones. The phone was critical. It was 1988 when they had just introduced cell phones. The phone that we had was the size of a boot. You needed two hands to hold that thing. The point is that we had limited tools back then, which was an advantage because it kept it simple and didn’t complicate. If you complicate, you cannot duplicate. If you’ve only got a handful of tools for your people to focus on, it is a lot simpler and easier. It’s not an easy business because you’ve got to work at it. There’s no question. It keeps it simple in terms of your focus.

I used the phone. With the business, meetings, events, your up line, team and the product, these are all tools that we had. For literature, we had brochures back then. We could photocopy our check back then, but now, you’ll get into a lot of trouble from a compliance standpoint. These were all tools that we used in leverage in the business, but the single biggest tool we had back then was the phone. To fast forward where we are, we’ve got the tools. Joe’s going to talk about this. It has helped me enable leverage because we were able to scale our business.

If you complicate, you cannot duplicate. Click To Tweet

When Joe and I launched the company, I was the first distributor and Joe was the second. We partnered up in the main position, which is the company. Years later, it was right at the advent of what was going on with technology, social media, the internet and all of this stuff. I did not have a computer in my home back in 2001 when we introduced this opportunity that we had with this company that we launched. They talked about a back office. I did not know what that meant. I didn’t have a computer. We did our first meeting with this company back in 2001. John, there were 100 direct sales gurus. These were forced recon, Navy seal, Guerrilla warfare and direct sales machines.

We had some skilled ladies in the room that day. There were 100 in that room in Toronto, Canada. Out of 100 people, less than 10 had a computer in their home. We were still using the phone as our major tool back then when we started. We were limited in terms of all the other tools that we had, but we saw this coming and Joe talked to me about it. In corporate, the president of the company at the time had a computer with a body wrapped around it. He talked about where this was going in the future in terms of technology and how we could leverage technology in our business.

You remember the phrase, “Build local, think global.” You can build local, think global and drive global virtually overnight because of how we can leverage technology. Joe is the master of that. He and I are officially in over 60 countries. We’ve got well over one million distributors on our team and organization. From a compliance standpoint, we’ve built this opportunity for years. We’re going to be talking about how we built so much of it through technology leveraging from it.

The internet has been a massive major tool. The fundamentals have not changed. What has changed are the tools, from websites and social media to all of the things that were so foreign to me years ago. What I did learn is that in life, whatever you find is easy now, at one time was hard. This was hard for me, but I knew they were tools that we could leverage from and be able to scale this business virtually around the world, which we’ve done.

We could talk about how to build leveraging in our industry, the tools that you have from technology and how to build a global business. Much of this does happen over time, not overnight. What a fantastic time it is to be a part of our industry. The planet is our oyster. The recruiting pool has never been so deep and wide as virtually seven billion people. We could serve the world with our opportunities. I get pretty excited about this, but not many people I know inside and outside this industry know more about how to leverage technology and the great tools that we have from technology to scale this business. I’ll turn it over to my buddy, Joe. From your side, what you’ve been doing?

Talking about technology, it all comes down to philosophy. I’ve always had the philosophy to remain humble. For us to connect with people all over the globe with different cultures, we got to remain humble. Number two, we need to get better and educate ourselves every single day. Number three, we got to lead by example. Other than necessity over these last years, we’ve always needed to question in growing a team globally. The first question is how are we going to communicate with them? How do we get our culture out to all these countries? Number two, how do we duplicate leadership? Number three, how do we install the training and these different languages? What methods are we going to use to do that?

By answering those questions, technology is a must and available to us. I remember back in the ‘90s where if we wanted to close a room, for example, we knew there was a meeting going on in Dallas, Texas, we would call into that meeting on a speakerphone and share our story. That was technology back then where we go, “That’s incredible. We could do a speakerphone.” We had a product called the panic dialer that people would use. That had speakerphone capabilities on that. That’s how we trained, developed and supported our teams.

 

On a global basis, to extend that, you got to always remain humble but be on the learning curve every single day. People tend to continue doing the things that made them successful years ago. One of the great things I learned from Dan is that he knew what he was good at doing, focused on that area, and continued to have success repeatedly. Whereas what I was good at doing is becoming more of a jack of all trades getting into these areas. That’s how Dan and I supplemented each other in a very great way as a partnership.

I’m always looking at better ways to communicate. We’re always looking at better ways to train our teams and expand our teams globally. You got to use technology. Dan uses the word leverage. That’s what technology does. It leverages us from taking our business to the next level. A good example of this is in the early days, for us to grow our teams globally, we have to go into these markets first. We had to travel, which Dan and I have done a lot and continue to go back into those markets. That still is a method of operation that we still like to implement. Our leaders and us can do less of that because of technology.

Let me ask a different question. It’s years of the pandemic. It looks like maybe there is good news where it’s slowing down in different parts of the world. Hopefully, that’s going to be the case. We all want this thing to be an old story at some point. The sooner, the better, but we don’t know what’s going to happen. Here’s what we do know has happened. With this situation, people, in my opinion, have become focused on a lot of the wrong things. I mean that they’ll get up in the morning and turn on CNN, MSNBC, Fox, the Canadian Broadcast Network, the UK, the BBC, or wherever they happen to live. They’ll turn into local news and immediately be fed with bad news.

In life, whatever you find easy today, at one time was hard. Click To Tweet

They start their day with that filter of, “Things aren’t going the way that they should be.” They have no control over that, instead of starting their day with self-development, prayer, exercise, deep breathing or any other activity. Here’s my question. In the last couple of years, guys like super successful yourselves have had to become better personal coaches than business coaches. How have you helped your people to focus on what they can control versus all the big picture stuff that none of us have any control over?

There’s so much to share with that. Joe and I recognized this some time ago and we said this back and forth. We had some international issues with markets in Eastern Europe, Russia and Ukraine, stuff that was completely out of our hands, some geopolitical things that were going on and massive organization that we added over there. People back then, similar to what you’ve got, all the distractions and excuses are equal. It doesn’t matter what they are. People are people. This has been going on for thousands of years. The Romans did it.

I said to Joe, “You had to be in charge of the mob.” That’s also what the senators used to say. You don’t rule the mob because the mob’s in charge. If you don’t get into the heads of your people, somebody else will. If you’re not in your kid’s head, the neighbor’s kid or parent will get into your kid’s head. It’s up to you to control and be in charge of that microphone to get to them. We have better leverage than we ever did before. I said, “Joe, we need to get to our people, even if it needs to be daily where we need to feed our people.”

There’s a great book out there by Bob Crisp. He wrote two books that are classics for our industry. One is Raising a Giant, the other one is Feeding a Giant. We’ve known him for years, but when he talks about his book Raising a Giant, it’s raising an organization. He was a triple diamond with one of our industry’s greatest network marketing companies years and years ago. He had learned so much certainly through his successes, but he had learned even more through his failures. We could all learn from that.

In the book Raising a Giant, he talked about you as a leader in this industry wanting to become that leader, that ambassador, triple diamond within the ranks of your organization. It’s not so much getting there. What’s even tougher is staying and going beyond there. What do you do? That came in the sequel, his second book, Feeding a Giant. You need to feed your giant food. If you’re feeding your giant baby food, it will starve and die.

In raising that organization, Joe and I identified a couple of things, certainly the leadership that you have around you internationally and globally connecting with them in that inner circle. That’s a leadership training that we get into and having that bond with that inner circle of that leadership. We can get to our people in terms of database a lot more efficiently than we ever did before. We have to get into the heads of those people, to the minds and the DNA of all of our people through a daily feed.

We do it on our WhatsApp and Facebook. Our people are getting fed every single day and it’s something. Joe is a master and an absolute ambassador. One of the greatest students, if not the greatest student I know in the industry, that’s including my mentors. He has helped us with that, with our organization in developing that culture. Your culture is not developed overnight. It’s developed over time. It’s what you’re feeding your people every single day. Joe talks about this on the other training. You got to have a good in, good out, junk in, junk out. You need to keep them on a daily steady daily diet. If it’s 5, 10, 15 minutes, you’ve got to feed them.

 

It’s like your child, body, and spiritual mastery you’re trying to develop, as well as a relationship with your spouse. If you’re feeding your spouse negative stuff every day, you are going to have a not-good relationship. It’s Life 101 when you think about it, but it goes back to your first question, John, about what we are doing with the tools and social media in terms of technology and how we leverage from it. You need to feed your people and have a steady diet of that every day. Joe and I can go to our organizations from South America to Eastern Europe, India, Asia, all around the world in the over 60 countries that we have an infrastructure in.

Joe knows exactly what we’re talking about because we’ve got some big stuff that’s going on. We’re going to have to deal and address that where it is going to be positive. That particular organization deals with adversity even though it’s a smaller country relative to some of the demographics of the larger countries. They deal with it better and more efficiently per capita than any of our other markets because of leadership and how they communicate with their people regularly.

They’re feeding their people positive stuff. Business, personal development, all of it are a steady diet of positive stuff that’s being ingrained into their team. That overtime is what develops the culture. You do not develop a culture within 24 to 48 hours. You can’t develop a relationship in 24 to 48 hours. That is developed over time. Over time, the greatest organizations do these things, which is driven through a system, tools, events, recognition, and that steady communication is what develops that culture and that’s the fabric that holds this volunteer Army together forever.

I could keep going on that because there are some great examples of that in these giants of companies that have been for many years. They’ve got distributors that have been still with that company. Some of these distributors haven’t made that much money but they’re with that company for a reason more than the money. There’s a whole lot to that. Joe, a little bit more of your thoughts on this as well.

There are four leadership principles that Dan and I go by. Dan talked about a couple of them and these leadership principles answer that question in a specific way that will help people grow their business long-term. If you look at the industry, there are a lot of great marketers. They can come into a company. In 1 year or 2, they can knock it out of the park. You consistently see that after two years, their teams fall apart and go onto the next deal. They’re good at marketing but where people fail is in leadership. You look at politics, religion and families. It’s all about leadership.

There are four areas of leadership that I abide by all the time. The first one is we’ve got to lead by example. Dan and I constantly ask, “Where are you going to retire?” Dan and I have big dreams and visions. We know that we need to lead from the front. We need to qualify for all the trip promotions. We need to continue bringing new people into the business and training them. We need to show people with our feet rather than our mouths. I was on training by an industry leader and he was training on some stuff that I knew that he was not doing himself. Over time, you get to know people. Dan has a saying, “Time will either reveal you or expose you,” especially in leadership.

The second rule that I have is you got to always follow through with your promises. You can do something right for ten years with an organization or a team, but there goes that trust and that team if you break one promise. Within months and days, that organization will fall apart. I remember, several years ago, Dan and I were in Hawaii and one of our Russian leaders asked me to come to their city, Komsomolsk, Russia, which is in the far Northeast corner of Russia. Do you think Canada’s cold? That’s minus 50 on their better days in the wintertime.

As a leader, if you don't get into the heads of your people, somebody else will. Click To Tweet

They asked me to come in and I said, “Why don’t we do a promotion? If you hit the promotion, I will come.” We had the promotion where it was high enough that she’s never been able to attain that volume before. She said, “Joe, I can do it.” One hundred and twenty days later, she gives me a call, “I’m in Hawaii. Joe, when are you coming?” I go, “What do you mean?” “We did the volume. When are you coming?” She wanted me to come in November of that year.

I’m looking online, working with my travel agents to get to Komsomolsk and no flights are going into Komsomolsk. The nearest airport was Hebron. The airport closes in November that year because it gets too cold. No jets can fly it. That meant I had to go to Korea, transfer from Korea to Hebron and then get on a ten-hour train ride to the North of Russia. That would take me 40 hours of travel time to do a weekend event and training for them. There was a part of me that said, “Joe, you can’t do it. It’s going to be too tough on your body. It’s a long way to go for three days.” I made a promise that I had to go and sure enough, I did.

It was a brutal ten-hour train ride after flying first class. I ordered a ticket, a first-class cabin on that Russian train. I walked in and there were four people in that first-class cabin. I thought, “What happened here? Is this the best they could do?” For the first class cabin were four people. It took 10 hours at minus 40-degree temperatures to get all the way there. That was an incredible weekend that I had there. Always follow through with your promises. As leaders, we tend to want to share with people. Companies do this all the time, what they want to hear rather than the truth.

Sometimes we make promises we can’t keep, so you have to always be careful with that, especially on a global market, because it will kill your business. You can do something right for ten years, make that one promise that you don’t go through and you’re in trouble. The third one is where Dan has been the best at. I first met Dan on June 23, 1993. Dan was one of the speakers of that super Saturday. I’m sitting in the back of the room with my brother. I saw that everyone gravitated to Dan. I was like, “What’s this guy all about here?” I realized what Dan’s secret sauce was after a little while. He made people feel good about themselves all the time. He was a master at that.

With me, I learned from the best in this area. Everyone we speak to, no matter what rank, nationality or background they have, may feel like they’re the most special person in the world. That’s why we return all phone calls, messages and text messaging platforms. If you allow one of those things to slip, it’s like that seed that gets bigger and bigger. It becomes out of control and there goes your business. It’s attention to detail in that area. Dan is the master of making people feel special about themselves. People want to know that they’re important and that’s how you maintain a long-term organization.

Over time, you cannot touch over 1 million distributors, but any relationship you have is integrity at its core. Your integrity has got to be at the core of the brand that you built. You could take years and years to build that brand but lose that virtually in ten minutes. Warren Buffett has said the same thing differently. You can take years to build a business but lose it in a few minutes, which compromises your integrity.

The fourth leadership principle is integrity. That is the most overused word in the industry of network marketing. Everyone says it. I remember flying into seeing a seminar. Dan was there. The president of that company must’ve shared the word integrity 100 times during his 45-minute speech. I turned to Dan and said, “This guy has an integrity issue.” Sure enough, 30 days later, he was founded embezzling funds from the company and the board kicked him out of the company. Integrity is the most overused and difficult word in this world to comply with because there are so many pressures in extending and exaggerating the truth, but integrity is critical.

 

To answer your question, John, go back to number one. Dan mentioned the word consistency, leading by example. Every single day, Dan and I were feeding our teams. We don’t take a day off in feeding our teams. We’re constantly feeding our teams and our leadership around the globe. We hit them with all platforms in technology. It takes 5 to 10 minutes to do that. Consistency in that area is critical. What will happen is the simple disciplines repeat over time. You say it over and over again. “Repetition is the mother of all skill.” That’s all part of successful disciplines and that consistency. Dan and I are the most consistent in simple disciplines.

This is the first time we’ve ever done this together and it’s fun. I hope we can do it a bunch of times in the future because you guys have so much to share. You guys aren’t only successful, but you’re significant because you’ve helped so many other people become successful. That’s a gift that you have brought to your organization. How have you developed a culture in your organization? Sixty countries are multiple for everything, multiple languages, religions, ethnicities, time zones and weather.

How have you brought all that together to make everybody feel like they were part of this remarkable team of 1 million-plus distributors around the world? What are some of the tools you’ve done to make people feel they’re part of it, whether they’re speaking Russian, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, or whether they live in a cold place, a warm place? How have you brought all that together to make these folks feel like, “At the end of the day, we’re part of this important team?”

It comes back when we have done leadership training and talking to organizations or leaders looking to develop their organizations over time. We’re not too much different when you talk about scale than what other companies have done in traditional business in terms of scale. Not even so many companies but organizations, the military, take the Roman Catholic Church and most corporations and companies that work globally and internationally. For them to be successful over time, there are certainly some consistent characteristics that you’ll have with those models and organizations around the world.

I’ll address a few because this is what we’ve done with ours. In us scaling our business, I go back years ago to use this as an example. I’ll try and keep this as simple as I can in how we built this. When I got started, if I sponsored someone or I had business outside of my area code, I thought I went to Mars. I was walking around, beating my chest and all of this. Eventually, over time, your business does naturally start to scale. I’ll share how that will evolve with you, especially in this world.

At its core is a system. For our industry and for someone that wants to scale their business, it is very important to be with a company. There are two ways that you can build your international and global business and how you go into that market. I can talk about this because this is what Joe and I have loved doing over the last decades as we’ve scaled.

The system will evolve around three things at its core in our industry. Tools, events and recognition are the three pillars to the core of your system. Make sure that your teams have tools to build with the company or you as a leader of your organization. You want to have a recognition program that they’re driving in terms of their IRP, International Recognition Program. There has to be a recognition program that your people can drive towards. They’ve got tools to build their business, recognition programs, and events.

We have global events, annual events, semi-annual events, quarterly events and monthly events all in our leadership training. If someone wants to build that particular market, they’ve got to build around that system in that model of events. We get on the same page with corporate. Joe and I regularly communicate with corporate because they’re putting their corporate events together. We dovetail and finessed around those quarterly events that we’ve got in semi-annual events and annual events that we have globally.

It takes work, but it’s fairly simple when it comes down to if you have your system. The system is at the core. It’s pretty straightforward in how we build that. There are two things that it doesn’t matter where you are in the world. People got to want to love your products, no matter where you go. In our business, no matter where we go, it doesn’t matter. It’s pretty simple for Joe and me. As we drive our business, everyone’s going to love our products.

Number two, no matter what country and market you go to, everyone wants a better way of life. That’s at the core of what we talk about all day long. We’re talking about our products and opportunity. For people that are reading this, your products or service in your company and opportunity, you want to have that on a global scale. If you’ve got a product or service that only works for your country, I don’t know if you’re going to be able to scale globally and from an opportunity standpoint.

When we started our company and opportunity years ago, the product that we initially started with had global appeal. When you’re building a global business, make sure that your product is beginning and end of mind. If you want to build a global business, make sure your product has global appeal. Your opportunity, for the most part, should have global appeal.

To have global appeal and maximize your comp plan, make sure that it has global appeal. For us, we were able to do that because, through the compensation plan that we have, it had a mass appeal that you could sponsor someone. It didn’t matter what country they were in, that person could sponsor someone in another country, who could sponsor someone in another country. They were all connected through technology, through our model and system. They got paid seamlessly around the world. That’s from a global standpoint.

You can do something right for 10 years, but if you make promises you can't keep, you will kill your business. Click To Tweet

I do a training called Billions & Beyond within my organization in how they get to scale our business internationally and globally. That’s having that global appeal in terms of the product, compensation plan and opportunity. You also need to be able to support that through the training. Joe has talked to you a little bit about that for our readers. We get to them through every social media platform and it’s translated. I don’t know how that works, but I know that it works.

I’m going to answer that question differently since you’ve given all the incredible insight and wisdom. I was thinking about this a couple of years ago when I was doing a roadshow in Peru. I was doing four cities during that week. I was up in Trujillo, Peru, which is in the Northwest corner of Peru. It has very similar weather to New Mexico and Arizona. The local leaders there took me to the Lost City of Chan Chan. The city was founded in 1984, buried under dirt. It was massive.

As we went into the burial grounds of these Kings and Queens at that time and that civilization, nothing was there. Everything was taken. That made me think, “Why from Mexico down to the tip of Argentina and Canada to the US that we’re on the same side of the planet? We have the same similar resources founded outside of the locals, the natives by Western Europeans. Why is there so much difference in prosperity and abundance?”

John, you’ve probably been down there and you can see it. Prosperity and abundance are different in Latin America compared to Canada and the United States. I thought about it. When I was in that burial tomb in Chan Chan, it came to me. In the beginning of Western European civilization into Latin America, when the leaders and explorers went into that market, primarily the Spanish, a little bit of the French, Dutch and Portuguese, they went looking for wealth. Anything they could get their hands on, like gold, silver, diamonds, would take it by brute force and send it back to their motherland.

Whereas in Canada and the United States, the settlers came looking for a home. This is why we celebrate Thanksgiving. Generations later, you see the consequence. Latin America is still trying to catch up from the foundation of the building of society down there outside of the natives. I’m bringing that up because the foundation of culture is our responsibility, Dan and mine. The culture that we have created is that Dan and I are super nice guys, very kind, always up, and a lot of fun hanging around. In 1996, I was invited by the number one sales trainer in the world to their home at a party. It was an incredible party. There were lots of successful people there.

That sales trainer was the same person when he was up on stage than off stage. He was acting all the time. He could never be himself. Dan and my superpower are the guys that are up on stage, doing the training and have been around for decades. We’re the same guy when we’re in social situations to when we’re on stage. You see this a lot in our industry, where leaders on social media are always wearing their best clothes every day, trying to set up a brand that they’re not. What happens over time within your organization is they start to figure out, “This guy is not who I thought he was.” We’ve all been in those cases where people that we thought were certain types of people, but when we got to hang out with them, we go, “I want nothing to do with this person.”

What happens in network marketing is all about building relationships. When they surround themselves with Dan and me, they know who we are 100%. We’re the same guy on social media. We are 100% committed. We’re the Leonardo DiCaprio on that Titanic telling everybody that ship is not coming down. If you look at our history, no matter what is happening in our organization, we don’t quit. We’re always sending out that energy.

We did a webinar. We’ve got another one coming up in the Russian language. There’s a Chinese one that’s going on. We’ve committed all the leaders on the training events to all these trainings that we’re doing in multiple different languages. They’re the same type of people that Dan and I are. They’re good, very kind and committed. Some have been with us for many years at the top level. That’s very unusual in our industry. Dan and I were watching the event. I thought, “We duplicate ourselves in so many ways.” They have so many of the same traits. We’ve been through so much adversity and they’re still here because the culture that we’ve developed was the foundation of who Dan and I are.

 

It goes back to one of the great books by James Allen. “You attract what you are, not what you think you are.” You guys are great guys and you’ve attracted a great team because that’s who you are. It reminds me of a story I shared on the show. When I first moved to Dallas, there was a little gym I was training at on Saturday mornings. I’m working out and somebody says, “Zig Ziglar is pulling into the parking lot.” There was a hair salon next to the gym. He always called his wife the redhead. Nobody’s around.

You and I would know Zig Ziglar because of the world we live in. The guy who drives a truck or the school teacher doesn’t know who Zig Ziglar is. We watched Zig get out of the car, walk around the other side, open the door, take the redhead by the elbow, walk her to the door of the salon, open the door, she goes in and gets her hair done. About an hour later, here comes Zig back in his caddy. We watched him get out of the car, go back to the door, take his wife by the arm, walk her back, open the car door, put her in the car, close the door, get back in and drive away. It’s the same guy, whether the camera was rolling or not. It was a great life lesson for the other guy that I watched this with and for me.

Let’s have a little fun. We talked about a lot of serious stuff in the world. We all have a common background in athletics. I find that so many people that I interview both male and female that are successful, don’t have to have an athletic background to be successful in network marketing. I do find that there are a lot of us that have been involved in athletics at a high level or fairly high level. Joe, let’s start with you. You’ve got a lot of hockey background. You love sports still. Talk about how you’ve applied some of the things that you learned as a youth playing hockey at a high level. How you’ve applied some of that over to your business life?

At the age of fifteen, I was a very accomplished soccer player. I had to decide if I was going to proceed in hockey or choose the soccer direction because my goal was to get a scholarship in the US. The college university programs up here in Canada, like the athletic scholarships, are not the same. I decided I was much better at soccer because, at hockey, I was 5’8”, soaking wet, 110 pounds at the time. I was not going to make it to NHL. They weren’t even going to look at players my size.

I decided I was going to make it happen in soccer. At the age of seventeen, I was playing on a traveling team, one of the best teams here in Ontario. At the end of the season, the coach gave me the Most Committed Award. I was at every practice, no matter what was happening in my life, every game. He had asked me to go up and talk to the team, say a speech. All the players were riding me. Joe has nothing better to do.

At that moment, I realized I was an outlier. I tapped into the secret to success. All these kids didn’t understand my commitment. I was willing to work harder, faster, stronger, take more time, whatever it took to get me to reach my goal. In the mid-‘80s, schools in the US were not recruiting kids up here in Canada. I started a right to colleges in the US. I sent them a little videotape of me playing and writing to over 100 schools. A couple of schools responded and I ended up getting a soccer scholarship with that commitment and sending it out.

That’s what taught me a lot when I got involved as an entrepreneur. When I started, my number one goal was I was never going to quit. I was not even thinking about quitting. I knew that this was the vehicle. I never gave myself a chance to even think about quitting because I knew I would not be able to live with myself if I did that. That’s what athletics taught me at the age of seventeen. It’s with that experience and how I took my personality. I took it to the next level by creating action. I was able to manifest, so it taught me a lot.

Never give yourself a chance to think about quitting. Click To Tweet

How about teamwork?

Playing in a sport involving teamwork with different relationships, I was always the best player on the team, which has another dynamic attached to it. Remaining humble and letting other players excel was something I enjoyed doing even as a kid. That’s what network marketing is all about. Dan and I no longer need to lead from the front because we put our team on the front. For example, in these events that we’re doing in January, he and I are taking five minutes. We’re giving our all-stars all the time and energy.

Dan, what are your thoughts on that?

I learned a little bit from Joe. I’ve heard some stuff from Joe that I had not heard before. Remember, we’ve been together for many years, so we hear a lot of the same stories over and over again. We love hearing, that’s for sure.

Do you remember that time we were in Asia where we were gone for about a month and away from our wives? You turned to me up on stage and said, ” Joe, I miss my wife.” While I’m talking, he’s whispering in my ear. I said, “Dan, I miss my wife too.” Dan turned to me and said, “Joe, you’re looking pretty good to me.” We like to have fun, but Dan loves to have fun.

Here’s a comment on what you were talking about with Zig. I’ve heard that story before and that resonated with me. John, I may have heard that story from you. That story relates to this and it is a law. What you practice in private, you’re rewarded for in public. It’s a little bit to Joe’s point in what we do. In terms of our organization and the leadership on our team, they get to know who we are off stage.

I remember at the very beginning when I got started in this industry. Your mentors, coaches, the guys and ladies that you’re listening to, you couldn’t wait to meet them. Weren’t you disappointed if they weren’t what you thought they were or they weren’t walking their talk? It’s in terms of you being a good person. It brings out the best over time. The best will continue to not just survive but thrive here.

I was born in Toronto. I grew up overseas. To some degree, in my early years, I lived in Africa for five years. As a young man growing up, I grew up in Canada. The experience that I got from sports that I’ve been able to use as a reference to our business and what we do in our industry was I played three sports that I was passionate about. Hockey was number one.

I played minor hockey and the top level of AAA. I played junior and college hockey. A lot of guys that I played with went on play at the NHL and the Buffalo Sabres. John Tonelli is one of your heroes, John, with the Islanders. I remember him getting the winning goal in the All-Ontario Championships back when I was twelve years old. There were lots of NHL players that I played against over the years. I played quarterback, free safety and both ways. I played high school and college basketball. With all of those teams that I had played with, some of them are better than others, some of those teams that won championships.

There was one constant that was with every one of those championship teams that I played on. I played on one that won the Provincial Championships as a young guy when I was playing hockey when we won the Provincial Championships. The one constant was similar to our industry. Three things were taught to me years ago when I got involved in the industry that was in the book by Vince Lombardi that I read. Vince Lombardi is one of the arguably greatest coaches in NFL and football history in the United States. He’s talking about the key to having a successful team that’s going to win that championship.

He said three things. Number one, you need to teach the basics like the game of football. I remember a movie about Lombardi wherein he held up that football in the change room when he talked to the team’s players. It is very basic. The fundamentals of the sport are the same thing as the fundamentals of our business. When we teach our business, we talk about the fundamentals of our business. We share the product, opportunity and promote events.

 

Lombardi said the second thing to have a successful team that’s going to win that championship is the disciplines. It’s those disciplines of the fundamentals, repeating those disciplines and good habits that you develop over and over again. Simple disciplines repeated over time are a success. A simple error in judgment repeated over time is a failure. It’s instilling those disciplines of the fundamentals. Mastering the basics over a consistent period will lead you towards success. In the first few months of the business, that was taught to me, mastering the basics over a consistent period. Lombardi said, “If you don’t have numbers 3, 1 and 2 don’t matter. You’ll never win that championship.” That number three was team spirit.

We’re talking about the team or organization. It comes back to our business. In those early days, I heard from my mentors about burning desire, willingness to work, and being teachable. That hunger, burning desire and team spirit are critical. When Joe talks about the fun that we have in our business, we have a lot of fun when we get away, but we get it done. Lighten up and your sales will brighten up. If you want to have a lot of fun, go away on a trip with Garcia.

Joe is Portuguese, but he’s got Latin in him. One of the last big events that he did in Peru, the place went ballistic. Joe’s a global ambassador. He’s the top distributor in our organization, but there he is in Peru. When you get into Latin America, they love to cha-cha-cha. I love their fun. When you go to Brazil, you have all of this fun. There’s a carnival atmosphere when Garcia is on stage.

He’ll be doing a 3-hour training, but every 20 minutes, he breaks into some Latin dancing and the place goes nuts. You got to see the videos and pictures of this. It’s all part of the culture and joy. Most people achieve to be happy, but when Garcia goes out there, he happily achieves. He sets that standard and example down there. It’s a perfect example. We’ll have so much fun and joy in the business by watching Joe do a training. It’s a ball, a blast and a lot of fun.

Let me make a point. I don’t have this question, but I got to ask you this. You’re in 60 plus countries, so that’s probably 20 to 25 languages. You guys have a business in 60 plus markets with 1.5 million distributors around the world. How many languages do you speak besides English?

I speak three languages, John. English, Canadian and American.

Joe?

He’s Portuguese. Joe speaks a lot of Spanish. I’m speaking on behalf of Joe, but I am telling you, I’m down there. They call him Jose Garcia. It’s not Joe Garcia. Joe, you speak a lot of languages.

When you’re traveling, you go to China and Russia with the Cyrillic, you need to know where you’re going. When you’re doing so many pieces of training and events over the years in different languages, you pick up some of the languages.

When I’m saying English, Canadian, American, I jokingly say that. I can carry it in Russian, Spanish, Italian, French, not for long, but I can carry it for a bit.

I want to make a point here because we have a lot of new people that read the show. Guys like us are old-timers. We’ve been doing this since Ronald Reagan was the president, in my case. You guys have a business in 25,30, 40 different languages, yet you only speak a couple of languages yourselves. That’s a point I want to make to people. Network marketing is a business that doesn’t let your lack of speaking a language hold you back from building a business in markets where other people speak the language. They’ll figure it out from your English or whatever language that you’re speaking.

Going back to your question on technology, that’s been a game-changer for us. Google Translate is very good. There are other apps like Babbel that you can pull up with a great translation. This is how we have been able to use that technology to even drive our business. For most of the day, I don’t even speak English. I’m not writing in English. That has been a game-changer for our business in terms of driving it. Whereas before, there was a time when we had to get translators, send it to them, and ask them to send it back to communicate.

Now, it’s instant technology. Our leaders globally are learning from that and doing that. Sometimes what happens is people say, “I speak English, Russian or Chinese. How can I sponsor people in other markets to use this technology platform that we have?” Moving forward, it’s very simple. For example, I’m on here. One of our Russian leaders has asked me to speak to a gentleman who’s also a prospect who wants to interview me for his latest book on Top 100 Entrepreneurs. It’s all in Russian. I got it in English, so I’m able to communicate with him very quickly.

When I started in ‘83, I lived in New Jersey. You signed a guy up in New Jersey, your next-door neighbor and you sold them a distributor kit out of your inventory. He got his product, but then you took that application and you mailed it to Los Angeles. You hope there was somebody there at the home office that then took that application and put it in. Now, you pick up your phone and then the person’s in the business, their credit card and the product’s out the door. It’s changed so much.

I got to thank you both, though. I want to do this periodically with you. You guys are so good at what you do. You help your business, but you’re helping my business and countless other businesses in the industry with your knowledge. Let’s have real quick closing thoughts. Joe, why don’t we start with you and then we’ll go to you, Dan?

We’re going into the golden age of network marketing in the next years, especially in the emerging markets. We’re always teaching to build locally and think globally. A lot of people ask me, “Joe, how in the world did you build all over the world?” I never looked at Canada as one country and the United States or Russia as another country. I look at the world as one country. It’s been such a blessing. When I changed my mindset and how I looked at the world, everything changed for me. In the next years, we are moving into the golden age of network marketing compared to when you started in the ‘80s and Dan and I started in the mid-‘90s where it’s night and day.

Simple disciplines repeated over time equal success. Click To Tweet

People are much more educated. When you involve people, people do screw things up and take the industry, but that’s in every industry. What will happen over the next years? Things are moving very fast. My message to all of you is if you want to double your income, grow your awareness. Attack your business by growing your awareness, then you’ll end up figuring out the rest. When you ask me questions about technology, my answer is, “I grew my awareness saying, ‘I can do this. This will allow me to get there faster, better, quicker.’” It’s really important to grow your awareness.

I started the industry 45 minutes a day. I shared this in an India video that I sent off to our Indian marketing team. In 1996, I wanted to double and triple my business. I thought, “How am I going to do that?” My first thought was I needed to recruit up. I was still in my twenties. I needed to surround myself with successful businesswomen that were in their 40s and 50s. The second thing I did was based on chance meetings.

I went ahead and called a person on my chicken list. He was a rabbi of an Orthodox Jew. He invited me into his home. I walked into his library. I was very nervous sharing the business because he was very successful. He was coaching rabbis all over the world. He was the go-to person. As I walked into this library, you should have seen the massive amount of books that he had, religious texts that were 2000 years old and more. I was overwhelmed.

One of the messages that he gave me that day was, “Joe, look at all these books. I’ve read them at least once and I continue to read them because I need to stay on top of my game and grow my awareness.” That’s when I clicked and said, “I should go up to an hour a day. If I’m half as good as this person, I’m going to have a great life.” I started working on myself a minimum of an hour a day, every single day and I haven’t missed a day. As I grew my awareness, I was able to figure out things. It’ll come to you. That’s my message to all of you that are reading.

When I got started this industry decades ago, I was not dealing from a position of strength when I got started in the industry. I was broke at the time, living with my parents on government assistance. My wife had left me. I was going through a divorce. I’ve been in the hospital for two months with a thing called Colitis and Crohn’s disease. I was at the lowest point in my life. It was hard for me at that time to think beyond the dark cloud that I was in. I was so fortunate that I would break into the cloud back in 1988. That sunlight that came and showed through was this industry and an opportunity.

In that opportunity within the industry, there was a mentor. There was more than one overtime that I connected with initially. All of this started with a thought. Every great achievement starts with that first initial thought. That thought will evolve and grow into a goal into a dream and, ultimately, a vision. What do you want for yourself, your family, children and your community? What is your vision? I’ve always believed that the work will be easy if the vision is clear. If the vision isn’t clear, the work will be pretty hard. You want to be crystal clear on your thought and vision of what you want for your team, organization and family. Be very clear on that.

They talk about depth of vision. The true depth of vision is not just seeing a tree on with that little seed in that acorn but being able to see the forest. One of the greatest communicators of the last generation, Helen Keller, was born without sight. She couldn’t speak and was deaf, but she became one of the greatest communicators in American history. One time, she was asked, “Is there anything worse in life than life without sight?” She replied, “Sight without vision.”

In your quest for all the people that are reading, be crystal clear on what you want and where you’re going. If it’s 5K HD clear, the road will be that much easier. If it isn’t clear, think about any road that you’re going, especially in Canada with the weather conditions. If you don’t have those wipers on, that ride will be much tougher. Be very clear on what you want and where you’re going.

Listening to you guys, it’s no wonder the success that you’ve had and you brought to other people, not only on this continent but throughout the world once. Joe, Dan, thank you so much.

Thank you. It was a pleasure.

Much blessings to your family, John.

Important Links:

• Joe Garcia
• Dan Catto
• Raising a Giant
• Feeding a Giant
• Babbel

About Joe Garcia

Joe started his Network Marketing career in 1993, his Global Organization has entered into more than 60 countries and over 2 billion in accumulated sales . His travels has taken him to more than 60+ countries around the world training hundreds of thousands of people. He has a passion in helping people increase their conscious level and help them believe God really does not make junk!

 

 

About Dan Catto

In 1988, after 10 years in the Corporate world and 2 years of owning and operating an Import/Export business, Dan started a Direct Sales Business. Dan’s vision and passion pushed the Sales Organization to grow to over 100,000 distributors in more than 30 countries with sales exceeding $100 million.

In 2001 with along with key partners and a new technology call the internet, they embarked on a never-before seen business model. A model that would allow aspiring entrepreneurs to grab hold of the power of e-commerce and Virtual Franchising to empower themselves to build a global business from the comfort of their home. All of this with little to no previous experience and minimal start-up costs compared to a traditional business.

Action speaks louder than words. What started in 2001 as a vision has turned into a business model spanning 70 countries, is publicly traded on NASDAQ and has done more than $2 billion in sales. A business that continues to be fueled by cutting-edge, Nobel-prize winning products and a customer/distributor base of well over one million worldwide. Yet in all of this, Dan says “We’re just getting started!”

As passionate today as he was on that first day in 1988, Dan continues to be a massive influence and source of knowledge. Through his experiences and successes, Dan has an endless well of skills and stories he happily shares in his legendary trainings. He is a mentor, coach and friend to developing entrepreneurs of all ages, across all markets.

Through all his success in business, Dan lives by his consistent beliefs that contribution, serving and giving back are life’s greatest rewards. By simply listening to Dan you will feel that belief and understand why there is so much more still to do!