Sunday, December 14, 2008

Nicole's Commentary 15 December 2008


I just returned back from Hollywood, Florida where our friend, Stacy Straughter, allowed me to see the big event. Stacy is the marketing manager for the national Count Me In Campaign. Count Me In was started by Nell Merlino, founder of Take Your Daughter to Work Day (my mom had been doing this for years.....). Count Me In's mission is to economically empower women by creating 1 million women who own businesses with revenues of 1 million dollars. As Nell explained, 41% of women owned businesses generate revenues of 10,000 or less. 73% of women owned businesses generate revenues of $50,000 or less. Only 3% or 250,000 women owned businesses have revenues of over 1 million dollars. I went to the national event where I got the chance to hear a 2007 winner tell how her business was generating $800,000 last year to just under 6 million this year.
As Oprah says, that was my Ahh-Ahh moment. This is where I realized why network marketing is driven by getting people to the big event. This event showed the potential to grow my company into a million dollar business. I must admit, I did not go to our big event when I first joined but I now make sure my registration is paid for way in advance. For 2008, Count Me In is creating the Make Mine a Million Race (how appropriate for the marathon runner!). Business ownership is not a sprint; it is a marathon. To run a marathon, we must reach training goals along the way. There are three categories for this year's race. The walker is the business owner with the goal of $250,000. The jogger is the business owner with the goal of $500,000 and the runner has the goal of $1,000,000 for 2009. For the $100.00 registration fee, we will receive mentoring and tracking logs so every month we can see how we measure against the goal of 1 million (or $250,000 in my case).
My network marketing business is already preparing me for the challenges of 2009. Robert Kiyosaki talked about how to create business owners in his book, CashFlow Quadrant. The cycle of life is about moving a person through the cash flow of employee to self-employed to business owner to investor. As I transitioned from employee to business owner, I understood that it was necessary to go through self-employed stage. This is where we document all the jobs in the company and find ways to create a team to execute the jobs effectively. The key to execution of any job is LEADERSHIP. Companies live and die on leadership skills of the business owner. If I own the company but I am not setting the guidelines and finding ways to motivate employees then eventually the company will not attract good talent and the company will cease to exist. I feel truly blessed to be able to attend a 2 day leadership retreat where we will study under John C. Maxwell and prepare for the challenges of managing exponential growth in 2009. Leadership is influence and leaders learn how to influence people to perform to the best of their abilities and face their fears (usually of change) that hinder growth (both personally and professionally).
What network marketing does and Newman Networks does and what Deloitte did was invest in people. I made a promise that I will not attend the big event alone. We will create a team of leaders who get trained on leadership. These leaders will be the ones who set the goals to make their business a million dollar business by registering for the
Make Mine a Million Race and plan on attending the next big event. With the system of each one, teach one we will work together because "team work makes the dream work". Nell Merlino had a conversation with the Barack Obama transition team because just as during World War II, when the men left to fight for our country, it was the ladies who put on the hard hats and made the supplies and planes to keep this country moving. As this economic crisis continues, now is the time for the ladies to step up to the challenge and create million dollar businesses which create jobs and will keep this country moving again!

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