By Jordan Kemper
Being Able to Make a Bigger Difference
My passion has always been to help people, and I believed that I could do that best by becoming a doctor. In fact, I successfully took the MCAT, and was a premed student at Wheaton College. After more than 200+ hours of interning with medical doctors, I found myself questioning whether the medical field was the right fit for me.
That same year in 2006, my mom’s physician recommended her some supplements to use from a network marketing company. She had a unique product experience, and her impressive results led her to begin encouraging the family to take a look at the company. The physician, Dr. Hryszczuk, shared his insights with me. The information caused a paradigm shift for me, and the idea of preventing, rather than attempting to alleviate disease captured my attention and imagination.
Making the decision to work within the supplement industry to help people to better health wasn’t popular with my peers, but I was convinced that I could make a bigger difference to more people this way. You can imagine the heat that I took!
Soon, I became even more inspired. I realized that everything is interconnected. I want to help people win their health back because, if your health isn’t good, your work life will suffer. This affects income, and then relationships suffer. Then satisfaction with life and even spiritual well being spirals down, which leads to depression and affects health.
This understanding helped my business and income grow, but my focus was not on myself. As a single guy, the income was great. However, my focus was on helping others win back their health and create financial freedom for themselves, using a solid network marketing company as a vehicle.
In doing so, I have found that my own success has grown exponentially. Now, I have both time freedom and financial freedom to help even more people succeed in their own personal goals.
Time and money are two things of which everyone wants more. More time and money lead to wealth, less of them leads to stress. If you have stress, and you want wealth, I can think of no better opportunity than network marketing.
The People are MORE Important than Your Opportunity or Products
At the start of owning my own business, I really struggled. I was a 22 year old with a big vision and lofty goals, but wasn’t finding the success that I wanted. Everything changed with one comment from a mentor of mine, “Network marketing is about people so learn more about people than you do your product, line or service!” This changed everything. I realized that what was important to me, may not resonate with someone else. My focus shifted to identifying needs. You find those needs by asking better questions and honoring people.
As I began to honor people in my business, I started to honor people in all areas of my life. I started to create better habits. Knowing that people are tired, busy, bored, confused and sometimes ignorant, my question was always, “How can I make this person’s life better today?” Maybe my business opportunity or products would bless them, or maybe just a friendly smile and a listening ear was what they needed.
I became a master of listening to needs, asking questions and talking in terms of other peoples’ interests. These principles come from Dale Carnegie’s book “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” As I started to apply these principles, I started to make other people feel special and important. Every relationship started to improve because my focus shifted intentionally to serving others.
30 Minutes a Day… EVERY Day
Almost six years after starting my business, one thing has remained the same; I am committed to personal development. Add up 30 minutes per day over six years, and that’s a lot of books, seminars and audios! Building a business will not take years of college, or thousands of dollars of tuition, but it will take consistent time and effort. Developing a going-back-to-school mentality can be helpful.
One huge business mentor for me has been Robert Kiyosaki. Early in my career, I read a quote from him that said, “If you want a solid future, you need to create it. You can take charge of your future only when you take control of your income source. You need to own your own business.”
I get it. Life is tough. The question is: What are you going to do about it? Complaining or moaning won’t secure your future, and neither will blaming corporate America, Wall Street, the government or even your parents. One of the biggest reasons that people choose to build their own business is to get away from having someone else tell you what to do and when to do it. We don’t like our lives being controlled. We want autonomy and freedom. I too desired freedom, but I realized that to gain financial freedom, I would have to fight.
Doctors traditionally make more income than your average employees. Why? Because they go to school and spend big money to develop skills that the average person doesn’t have. I quickly realized that I must follow suit. I must gain skills in network marketing if I too desired a bigger income. It is well known that the marketplace pays for value, and the only thing that determines your value in the marketplace is your skills. Building a successful network marketing business isn’t easy, but when you are working your business because you truly want to, you will work hard to gain new skills and are free to run things as you see fit.
Win Or Lose, There is Always Another Game As you go about building your business, you will experience a huge range of emotions. There have been days where I’ve felt extreme joy and days where I wanted to punch the wall. I would often question my own ability to succeed. Am I not smart enough? Do I Iack education? Am I too young, too aggressive? What’s my problem? Daily, I would experience an emotional roller coaster.
I remembered back to college football days. Win or lose on Saturday, there was always another game. You have to be quick to forget your successes and failures and focus on the next task. As I applied this life principle to my business, I started to see more success. I focused on solely controlling the things I could control, and letting go of things outside of my control. I could control my time spent in personal development, my phone calls, my number of presentations and follow-ups, but I couldn’t always control peoples’ responses or even the responsiveness of my organization. I simply lacked leadership skills in this area.
As I began to study more of Jim Rohn, John Maxwell and authors like Brian Klemmer, I realized that I needed to develop more emotional intelligence. I began to channel my energy and time in the right direction. I began dealing with my prospects and leaders with a better attitude. This is what I refer to as being “even keel” in your business.
This attitude poured over into my personal life. We all have good and bad days: car problems, relationship issues, unexpected bills, canceled flights!! The list can be endless. The truth is that life throws us curve balls all the time. I began to change my attitude – “Control what you can control, and let go of what you cannot control.” This makes life much better!
All Good Things Require You to Swim Upstream
If I could leave you with one solid tip, remember that “successful people often fail, but they never quit.”
Yes, owning a business is hard. All good things are upstream. The privileged life is only offered to those who demonstrate hard work, consistency, belief and highly developed skills. Can you really walk away from the benefits of a network marketing business? Would you say goodbye to continuous cash flow, breaking the time barrier by creating leverage and tax protection? If you can let go, then quit. Owning a business is not for everyone. There is absolutely no shame remaining an employee or even a small business owner.
Honestly, when I feel like quitting, I go for a ride with Jim Rohn. He reminds me that “profits are better than wages…” Who are your personal leaders whose messages speak to you and give you confidence? Get with them!
I encourage you to pick up an inspiring biography of someone you admire. No one accomplish anything without a significant personal battle. Simply put – nothing worthwhile comes easy. Nothing.
Ask anyone who enjoys time and financial freedom if the challenge was worth it. We’ve all been discouraged, all of us. I wanted to quit many, many times, but quitting was never an option.
Finally, ask God for help. He cares about you. What matters to you matters to Him. Guess what? Or better, Guess WHO might even be the very source of the precious dreams of your heart?
Jordan Kemper is a 3 Star Diamond Director from Chicago, IL and is the Founder of OneBody International and can be reached at Jordan.Kemper@OneBodyIntl.com
For more information: http://teamonebody.com/
