Will power is great. The only problem is that you eventually run out of the stuff. And a lot of online MLM newbies do just that. They run out of will power and quit the business, which is a crying shame.
The reason it’s a crying shame isn’t because someone has quit your group and now you have lost a business builder. Nope. It’s a crying shame because the online MLM newbie had to rely on will power to build their business.
If you want to do MLM for the long haul, then will power isn’t going to get you there. You still need will power, but the thing that is really going to carry you through is this:
Structure.
The Force of Structure versus the Power of Will
The power of structure is something that I have recently remembered because I have been reading Ramit Sethi’s blog on wealth and finance. It’s really good stuff, and it examines a lot of the reasons that people fail at what they want to achieve.
For instance, why do 95% of dieters fail to lose weight and keep it off? Why do only a small percentage of people sign up for the employer check match for their 401(k)? It is, after all, free money. And yet, very few people take advantage of that.
Why?
This is where the big “Aha!” moment appeared for me. The answer to all of these “Why?” questions is lack of structure, not lack of will power. Basically, Ramit’s message is this:
“If you want to achieve something, set yourself up for success by creating a structure that makes the hard thing easy and the easy thing hard.”
A Horse Training Example
Now this isn’t big news or anything. Anyone familiar with horse training or dog training knows this. If you want your horse to perform a certain task, like move at a pleasant speed rather than going at the speed of light, you have to make going slow easy for the horse, and also make going fast difficult for the horse. This is a problem encountered with a lot of ex-racehorses, or horses who just like to run.
To achieve slower speeds, you offer a carrot and a stick. The stick comes into play when the horse goes into his high-speed mode. How do you apply the stick? You encourage the horse to go even faster than he is already going. Running fast may be easy for the horse, but running faster is more difficult and more tiring. Eventually, the horse will get tired and want to stop. You keep applying the stick by not letting him stop. Instead you make him keep running at the higher speed for a few more circles, until he really wants to stop. You allow him to stop, and then walk him around until he has caught his breath.
Now you try for the carrot. You ask your horse to move off again. If he immediately goes into high speed, apply the stick. Stop, rest, and repeat. Once your horse is willing to move off at a moderate speed, which is bound to happen eventually, you give him a carrot by only making him do one or two circles. Then you get off and he gets to go play in the pasture.
So that is a long-winded example of how the use of the carrot and stick as a way to create structure. I use a horse as an example because it can difficult to communicate to a horse that he must use will power to accomplish something, so we use the structure of the carrot and the stick instead. We humans can use will power, but we shouldn’t rely on it like we do. Instead, we should, like the horse, rely on structure to make the hard thing easy and the easy thing hard in our online MLM business.
How to Create Structure in Your Online MLM Business
So how do you apply the carrot and stick to your online MLM business to create structure so you don’t have to rely so much on will power? It’s not difficult, and in fact, most of the structural pieces that have worked best for me are quite simple. For instance, I blog and write a lot of articles (multiple ones daily). I’ve been doing it for about a decade now. Sometimes I feel like I run out of things to say because, well, I’ve been saying lots of stuff for a long time now. Plus, I do writing for clients as well.
In the past, when I’ve felt I had nothing to write about, I would power through that writer’s block with will. Well, today I’ve run out of that kind of will power, plus I don’t enjoy using that kind of force to “push through “blockages anymore.
Today I’ve set up structures that make writing quite effortless. Here are a few pieces of the structure that helps me write more easily:
1. Set Up Google Reader
I set up a Google Reader account and it receives RSS feeds from my favorite bloggers on all kinds of topics including:
- MLM
- online marketing
- the state of the economy
- stuff from my upline and parent company
- the state of the MLM industry (including who’s growing and who’s failing)
- health topics (since my MLM product is health-related)
- some strange tidbits thrown in for entertainment
This means that I don’t always have to come up with new material … I just open up my Google Reader and voila! Tons of information and inspiration. I can comment on other people’s blogs, get inspired by ideas they are proposing, or, if I’m in a strange mood, use the strange tidbits as a launching place. Having all this stuff at my fingertips makes writing (the hard thing) much easier.
2. Do a Research Day in Bed
One day a week I treat myself to a morning in bed. It’s actually scheduled on my calendar. I get up later than usual, turn off the phone, stay in my PJs, and drag my computer to bed with me. Then I get online and do any research I need to do for blogs I plan to write in the future. Sometimes this means looking up facts and figures. Other times, it means finding just the right quote or right picture to go with a particular blog post. Yet other times, this means scouring the web and other offline resources for topics for my editorial calendars (for both my stuff and my clients’ stuff).
This scheduled time acts as a “carrot” in my online MLM structure. Even though I am working, it feels more like a lazy Sunday and I don’t mind one bit. This “carrot” is how I make the hard thing (research) feel easy.
3. Stash Cheetos, Cigars, and Bubble Bath at the Other End of the House
This part of the structure makes the easy thing (slacking off) hard. I love Cheetos, a good cigar (really), and taking bubble baths. So, to prevent myself from pigging out in the bathtub with a good cigar in hand, I stash all of these items at the other end of the house. In fact, I put them all in the plant room, a room which has a swinging gate with a latch that won’t work unless all the planets are in alignment.
That latch has hacked me off enough times that I won’t go near it unless I’m ready to get mad. Needless to say, the Cheetos, cigars, and bubble baths are now rendered difficult, if not impossible. No will power needed there.
You See What I Mean About Structure?
I’ve taken deliberate steps to make the writing (the hard thing) easy with Google Reader and a comfy morning in bed. And the easy thing of avoidance? Well, the gate to the plant room pretty much makes getting to the goodies difficult if not totally impossible.
All of these are fairly simple structural things I’ve put in place so I don’t have to use will power to do my business. There are a lot more structural ideas, too, but this article is already far too long so I won’t bore you with the details. Hopefully you get the idea.
What about you? Have you discovered some fabulous ways to use structure rather than willpower to grow your online MLM business?
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Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fdecomite/ / CC BY 2.0
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