Anita Roddick, one of my favorite leaders

I have the utmost respect for Anita Roddick who built The Body Shop from a tiny little business to a leader in the world. She was focused on building a business which would allow women to make good money and control their financial future. Her death has been a blow to the company.

Here is what made her so great:

"But if you can create an honorable
livelihood, where you take your skills
and use them and you earn a living from
it, it gives you a sense of freedom and
allows you to balance your life the way
you want."

Great quote from Thoreau

"I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings."

— Henry David Thoreau
American Author and Philosopher

The Pyramid of Success by Coach John Wooden

It has been a few years since I ran across this Pyramid, but it is a perfect model to follow in building this or any other endeavor in life. Coach wooden taught his players skills on the basketball court and off. He never told the team "Let's go Win this Game." He always told them to go out there and do their best. He said that if each one did their best, then it was a successful game. He is widely acknowledged as the best basketball coach ever, and I would say the best coach ever, period.

Basically, here's how it works. Each level of the pyramid is dependent upon the level beneath it for support. So you need to develop and focus on the skills from the bottom level of the pyramid up. I will take more time with each one in subsequent blogs; but here's the list in order. Note that the skills and competitiveness are at the top. Taking control of ourselves is first.

1. Industriousness
2. Friendship
3. Loyalty
4. Cooperation
5. Enthusiasm
6. Self-Control
7. Alertness
8. Initiative
9. Intentness
10. Condition
11. Skill
12. Team Spirit
13. Poise
14. Confidence
15. Competitive

Relationship Marketing

Network marketing is all about relationships and becoming the person others would like to join in business.  Sure, there are skills you have to learn to use the internet to build your business and take it beyond just your local area, but the largest part of any home based business is creating relationships.

Learning to understand others' personalities and how to best help them is a big part of that. Mentoring for Free offers free training in many areas, especially in understanding personality types using Colors. There is also a CD available.

Most people agree that they would want to work with someone who could bring more laughter and joy into their lives.  Let's learn how to do that for others.  Even if we can only do it for a minute, or an hour, or a day.  

Our emotions are our indicators of whether we are in alignment with the things we want.  When we are sad or frustrated we are not doing something that is in keeping with our deepest desires. So when we are having fun creating our home based business, we are on the right track. And when we get others to laugh and have fun when we interact with them, they see that that they can achieve those things that are most important to them while building a business with us.  That is what we want, isn't it?

WE are our most important product.  People want to know if they can do this business, and they want to know if we can teach them how to do it. A big part of that is whether we can help them enjoy doing it.

Debby Riddick

http://DRiddick.bigmlmtruths.com