Every year in December I like to take some time to reflect on past year. January is the beginning of a new year and it is a time to set goals. I’m not one for New Year’s Resolutions. People usually don’t take those seriously, however, I am a firm believer in setting goals and making action plans to achieve those goals.

I generally begin by thinking about the different things that have happened in the year to this point but also in the years prior in my network marketing career. Reflecting on both the good things that happened and things that weren’t so good. I don’t spend much time on the things that weren’t so good but just enough time to take note of anything I learned or ways I could get a better outcome.

Not only is it important to be regularly analyzing things and improving as we go, it is also important to celebrate the successes of the previous year. Celebrating is really important because it sets a success energy that attracts more good things.

Three Reasons to Reflect on and Celebrate Success:

1. We train our subconscious to be aware and open to success and abundance.
2. We give our subconscious and conscious mind PROOF of our success and progress.
3. It builds self-esteem, confidence and belief in our abilities.

Some things to include in your reflection:

Any successes large and small. Even the things you consider small. Some of these small successes are stepping stones to larger successes.

New things you learned – This is a huge one that people often forget to include. Reflect on all the training you have taken, books you have read, videos & audios and live events you have attended, anything that has been good for growth in your personal development or business skills. Really celebrate this one knowing that training and personal development is the biggest success secret of network marketing professionals who earn full time income.

Don’t forget the things you learned by trial and error. Like when you began learning to write a blog or make a video.

There are lots of things you can add to your list. I recommend writing down your reflections. If you have been following my training for any length of time, you should have this done from previous years and have saved them. If so, take out some of your past years reflections and look at the progress over the years. This is really fun.

Reflecting on the progress you have made builds confidence. When I look back on the shy girl who was terrified to be a leader, I am amazed at how far I have come. It always gets me choked up as I write and reflect on how I have changed. Network Marketing is the best business for personal growth.

After you have finished reflecting on the previous year, you can make a plan of action for the next year. What will you do to increase your business? How will you improve on your marketing skills and what will you do to implement. Think about where you want to be at the end of 2012. Write that down. Then make a list of all the things you plan to do to get there.

Writing all of this down is very important. It helps you have a direction for the year. Keep a copy of both the reflecting of the previous year and the plan for next year. It is really empowering to look back at the things you have accomplished in the past and how far you have come, especially when you have the notes for several years. You can see your growth over the years which is such a confidence booster.

Here we are again starting another December. This is the 14th December in my primary network marketing company. Very early in my network marketing career I saw the need to keep momentum going through the months that most people let their business activity slow down or even come to a complete halt. One of the biggest times some go inactive is through the holiday season.

Slowing down your business activity during the holiday season is a HUGE mistake.

1. Smart, professional network marketers know that December is actually the month you should be picking up the pace and getting ready for the best time of the year for business.



This is the time many are thinking about increasing their income and are making goals for the new year. This actually starts on the 26th of December but January is a HUGE month for attracting new distributors. People go online and start searching for business opportunities. This is another reason you are insane if you aren’t learning how to improve your online marketing skills.



2. While so many network marketers are snoozing in their business, it is much easier for you to get noticed, especially if you have been learning attraction marketing skills.



3. Most people are more involved with social events and getting together with friends and family. This can present all kinds of opportunities to share your products or the business. Have you prepared a very brief “30 second commercial“?

If you slow down or stop business activities for large blocks of time, you backslide. If you are serious about building a successful network marketing business, you will be consistently working through ALL months. This is the way we make progress. Some months we make small steps forward and some we make large leaps.

To be a successful, full time network marketer it is crucial that you build belief. You want the freedom that lifestyle can bring. That amount of success will never come if you don’t believe. You need belief not only in yourself and your ability to get there but you also must believe in the network marketing industry.

Here are a few ways to build belief:

1. Using the Products – You must believe in the products or services you are offering otherwise, you’ll never be able to have belief in the industry or your ability to build a business.

Let me tell you, a great product experience can work wonders in building belief in your ability to sell it. My product experience is the reason I am in the network marketing industry today. Use the products. You’ll have great stories to tell and STORIES SELL!

2. Attend Events – You should be attending as many events as you possibly can. Whenever you can get together with other distributors you can learn from each other. Not only learning but energizing each other.

3. Listen to audios and videos – There are loads of audios and videos put out by your company, your upline and other network marketing trainers. Serious network marketers are listening to these trainings as much as possible. The more you listen, the more you will be able to speak up about things that will help other people.

4. Attend Conference Calls – Listening to and even participating in conference calls is another awesome way to build belief in yourself and the network marketing industry. Conference calls are a great way to learn more and polish up your skills.

There are a lot of conference calls you can access, especially if you are using any of the training on the internet. It is impossible to be on all of them. Usually these conference calls are recorded so you can listen anytime.

5. Read Books – I know, you already know reading books is important but I am always amazed how few books people actually read. That is one reason why I put my reading list online a while back. It’s not even the full list. I just went through books I have in my office and ones I could remember.

6. Subscribe to Newsletters & Blogs – There are loads of blogs and newsletters that you can benefit from. It is particularly important to subscribe to all upline newsletters you can find.

Also subscribe to newsletters and blogs on marketing, personal development and things related to your company. I also recommend subscribing to industry journals like Network Marketing Times Magazine.

7. Talk to someone who has done it – Find someone in your upline who has achieved what you are wanting to achieve. Talk to them. Learn what they did to be successful. Not only what they did but notice their mindset.

8. Affirmations – I have been a firm believer in affirmations for a long time. The words you use have power. You raise or lower your energy and belief by the words you use. You can even program yourself and your habits. You can change things you don’t like.

Affirmations can be effective in helping reprogram success habits. Add EFT to your affirmations and watch the changes you can make. I never do affirmations without adding some EFT. It’s powerful. Give it a try.

9. Visualization – See yourself and feel what it feels like to achieve success in network marketing. Spend a little time each day visualizing and getting comfortable with various aspects of your business.

These are just a few things you can do to build belief. I’m sure there are others I haven’t mentioned.

There are actually more than 7 secrets to success in network marketing. Well, let’s get real. They aren’t really secrets but to some distributors, it is as though they are.

Here are seven of the more important things that all successful network marketers know and apply. If you are not aware of these and focusing on them, you will have a tough time achieving any level of success.

1. Having a good Self Image – Having a good self image is important. If you don’t, it makes everything a struggle. You may find it difficult to maintain any success that you achieve because something in the self conscious says you aren’t good enough so it begins to put the brakes on.



That is why I started Esteem Power Newsletter. It is centered around helping network marketers raise their self-esteem of self-image.



2. Know Your WHY - This is another crucial one. If you don’t know why you want success in network marketing, you WILL NEVER have any success that amounts to anything.



Your WHY has to be really strong and MUST be emotional. I can’t stress that enough. If you don’t have a really strong WHY, you won’t do what it takes to get things done. Network marketing is an industry with a really high failure rate. I have heard percentage rates of failure in the 90s. I don’t know the real numbers but I know they are high.



The failure rate is not because network marketing doesn’t work. It does work. I am a living example that it works and so are several in my downline and upline that are full time network marketers.



The failure is on each individual who does not do the necessary things. Failure is because people don’t do the work, both on themselves and their business. They don’t study, they don’t learn, they don’t apply what they learn and they don’t do enough marketing. It’s really simple.



3. Believe in Yourself and the Industry – This is HUGE. YOU MUST, YOU MUST, YOU MUST BELIEVE! If you aren’t 100% confident that you can do this, you may as well pack it up and settle in at the JOB.



There are lots of ways you can build belief. Hmmm, I think that will be the focus of my next blog post.



4. Visualize Success – You MUST see yourself reaching your goals. You should actually have goals written down, then daily visualizing reaching those goals. Every night before going to bed visualize goals I want to achieve. I try to get as detailed as I possibly can. What I am wearing, who I am talking to, what I am saying, I visualized myself getting awards on stage. I visualized all kinds of scenarios where I could see my check and others could also see it and be impressed. My favorite was going into the bank to deposit the check and the bank teller wanting to know how I get all these big checks.



I had so much fun when I got to that point. I loved handing the bank teller my check for deposit. Some of them were around for several years and observed my checks growing. That’s one thing I miss now that our checks are direct deposited.



Anyway, think up all kinds of ways you can visualize success. It’s fun and you’ll be amazed how it helps you get there faster. As you are visualizing, keep reflecting on your WHY.



5. Take MASSIVE Action – This one seems like common sense to me. If you don’t take action, NOTHING will happen.



You must make a plan and then WORK YOU PLAN! I see far too many distributors sign up who seem to think that all they have to do is join and their business will build itself as if by osmosis. Sorry to burst anyone’s bubble but that’s not how business of any kind works.



Actually you need to take appropriate action. Some people fiddle with this and that doing “business tasks” and are not really doing action that amounts to making progress.



ACTION, ACTION, ACTION!! Every morning ask yourself, “What can I do today to MOVE my business forward toward the realization of my goals?”



6. Learning From Mistakes – It is a fact of life. There will be mistakes, lots of them. In the beginning you are learning. You are learning about your company, learning ways to market yourself and your business and just getting the feel for what fits your style of business building.



This is one that makes me kind of sad. I want to see people experience the freedom of working from home but I’ve seen far too many distributors give up way too soon because the things they did to promote their business didn’t work as they planned.



You have to keep trying and testing until you find what fits YOUR style. There are marketing techniques that fit most anyone. I am an excellent example. I was very uncomfortable approaching strangers and I was not into harassing friends and family. I had to test all kinds of marketing and THAT I DID!



Lots of marketing techniques I tried were abysmal failures, some I spent a lot of money on. In the beginning I was broke so free and really cheap was all I could do. The point is, you have to keep trying and testing methods to promote your business.



Think of each mistake or failure as a lesson. Learn the lesson, make the adjustments and KEEP PROGRESSING!



7. Celebrate Abundance – Be on the watch for anything that is progress. Celebrate progress. Celebrate abundance. Celebrate when you learn something that will grow your business.



Celebrate success in others too. I have a silly fun thing I do with a few of my team members who use MSN Messenger. There is a thing they call a “Wink” that you can send a little animated sequence to someone on your list of contacts. Whenever I see an abundant thing happening in their group, I send a special abundance “wink.” Watch the video below to see what I am taking about.

“Every day you spend drifting away from your goals is a waste not only of that day, but also of the additional day it takes to regain lost ground.” — Ralph Marston

That statement says a lot. Every day we let go by without doing something that moves us forward toward our goals we are actually back sliding.

In your business, much like when you are in a boat, you are moving in a direction toward your destination. If you stop moving forward you will find yourself drifting, but if you are drifting, you are moving along with a current. The current is not moving towards your goals.

Consistently working at making progress and always moving forward is imperative if we want to reach our goals. There will be down times where we aren’t moving as effectively or as fast as we do in our peak times but we must still be focused on doing something each day that makes forward progress. If we don’t do that, we will never reach our goals. We will always be trying to catch up.

Successful marketers are in marketing mode every day, everywhere. We don’t build our business in spurts, working for a little while, then neglecting our business for days or weeks.

Decide what you are going to do – Set Goals
Work consistently toward those goals every day.
Those goals should become good habits.

You will get there if you are consistent.

There is an expression “Success Leaves Clues.” That’s a really powerful statement. You can look at any successful person and see clues that reveal how they were successful. That is HUGE for anyone that wants to be a successful FULL TIME NETWORK MARKETER!

We all started with the dream of being full time in our network marketing business. We had the intent to build our business so we can have freedom, both time and financial freedom. When you are just starting out, it can seem like an overwhelming task ahead of you.

One of the best ways to learn how to do something is to watch someone who has already successfully done what we want to do. So, your job is to find network marketers who are successfully full time working from home. Not ones who make a big blow but network marketers who are DOING IT. You can easily find these people online. Some are very well known.

So how do you learn from these successful people? First you could do a Google search and find any audios, videos, articles, etc. Subscribe to their newsletters and their blogs. I search a bit and find as much as possible that I can follow. Then, when their newsletters and blog posts come in, I read every word, listen to audios and watch videos. I have several that I have following been following for years. This will always be the case because no matter how successful I am, I can always learn more.

The day you stop learning is the day your business will begin to deteriorate. You want a growing business? Study other people who are truly successful. What are the patterns that are visible with the various successful people you know? What are they writing about? What are they talking about? What is their posture like?

Watch how they speak, how they act how they write, follow them on Facebook. I have a special “Don’t Miss It” list set up on Facebook so I don’t miss a thing they say. I check in once a day to see what is being said by the ones I put on that list. A few examples I have on my list: Network Marketing Pro – Eric Worre, Michael S. Clouse, Art Jonak and any upline leaders in my company, Frank Kern a marketing expert, Michael Losier law of attraction master trainer. There are others I subscribe to but I don’t necessarily read every word they say.

When you are studying these people, focus not just on their marketing but their words and their mindset. Remember Success Leaves Clues. The best way to learn is to study those who have done it.

These days social media is a really big means to build your business. Are you keeping up with what is going on in marketing? Have you noticed that almost every business has a Facebook page? Are you taking note what the successful marketers are doing in social media? You can learn a lot by watching how people use social media. There is a right way and a WRONG way. Don’t just run around yelling “Buy my fruity juice!” Learn the correct way to use Facebook to build your business.