Defining your goals, writing them down and having them always present in your line of sight and your consciousness allows them to act as a magnet, pulling you closer to them. Comparatively, you leading by example, leading from the front and showing your team how it’s done by your own actions, draws your team towards production. Acting like that same magnet and in the same manner.

That’s why when it comes to leadership, the best place to start is with the bottom line, which is: you, doing what it is you’d want others to do. The speed of the leader will always determine the speed of the pack. But as a leader, what determines your speed? The answer is simple: What you know and what you do with what you know. To gain as much knowledge as you can, consistently set greater goals, and always raise your personal bar higher and higher. When you make that choice, you lead yourself. Leading others naturally flows out of that.

• Leadership is the challenge to be something more than average.

Leaders learn to discipline their disappointments. As with all things, it’s not what happens to us; what happens to us happens to all of us. It’s what we choose to do about what happens to us that makes the difference in how our lives turn out. Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond to it.

Leaders develop many qualities over time; to be strong but not rude, kind but not weak, bold but not a bully, thoughtful but not lazy, humorous but not foolish, humble but not timid, proud but never arrogant.

And where do you acquire these traits and abilities? It lies in your own growth. Work on you harder than you work on anything else, meaning your personal growth and your level of activity. There are a ton of books that will instruct you on becoming a leader and what a leader is. But nothing instructs like life and experience gained through doing!

That’s why I prefer to teach, rather than preach. Speeches are great, but they don’t motivate the un-motivatable. However where you can make an impact over those can be influenced is through your actions. Leadership organically comes from that.

The following phrase is one that should define your philosophy, your behavior, and your activity in this business: “If my team did what I did today, would I be making any money?” You’ll never build a successful business by spending your time in the rear view mirror, looking behind you constantly to see what’s going on, what others are doing or not doing, and slowing down to manage. This is not a business of management; it’s a business of leadership. Ours is a business of leading by example so others can see how it works and come to understand what they need to do, what it’s going to take, and what is expected of them in terms of activity, attitude, and ACTION! And they learn that from watching you! It doesn’t grow by you calling up your team everyday and asking what they’ve done, it grows by you leading the way and inspiring others to take action through your own actions! That’s why our feet face forward; it’s the direction we’re meant to go to get to where we need to be.

Always operate from the understanding that:

• You are the model of what you are building. Be what it is you’d want your team to be, model the behavior & activity you’d want your team to model.
• At every turn, in every situation, at every level, always stay unwaveringly faithful to the process of duplication. Duplication is what allows your efforts and the efforts of your team to multiply exponentially. Duplication, and reaching the level of success you desire in this business go hand in hand. They are inseparable.
• Your organization, your business will be a mirror image of what you do and what you don’t do. (How do you get someone else to do it? You do it!)
• Know that, as a leader, Communication is going to be your #1 tool and its imperative for you to plug your team in! Your #1 job as a leader is to get people plugged in so that you can have a fast growing, low maintenance team. Teach system dependence and become more of a mentor, and less of a facilitator. Never end up doing for your Brand Partners what they can easily do themselves. Instead, guide them through a process of system dependence that will serve them if they decide to stick around and build a team in this business. The idea is to LEAD, not manage.

Baby-sitting just creates a team of babies. They never grow into their greatness. They crawl through this business and eventually…out of it. You as a LEADER must become a great model, understanding that there is a HUGE difference between sponsoring someone, and spoon-feeding them. Create a GROWTH environment, not a Kindergarten.

Mentor those who DESERVE it, not those who merely DESIRE it. Your ultimate goal is to create a non-stop success machine and a business that will one day thrive without you being there. The only way you can do that is to replace yourself. We are all looking to replace ourselves. The fact is that you’re going to need 4 or 5 more of you. And I can’t stress this point enough…that’s going to come from producing, not managing. That’s why I’m always encouraging my team to stay in Phase One, because you’ll find them faster if you spend more time looking for them. Good people are found, not changed.

And when you find these people in your group, mentor them for greatness. Not by totally building it for them, but by totally supporting them in all phases of their business and most importantly, their growth. Choose people who have really stepped up to the plate and have proven that they’re SERIOUS about building their business.

You go to the people who are going to make it happen anyway without you being there and pour gas on them and always point to them because they’re the ones who are taking action, plugging in, and following the system and they are the ones who DESERVE your time. Time is too precious a commodity and one that we don’t get back. Whether it pertains to prospects or distributors on our team, no one has time to waste with people who waste our time, that way we can have more time to spend and more time to GIVE to the people who deserve our time.

That’s what a leader is and what a leader does. So become the example of what you want your team to be, and when you do that, you’ll turn around to find a whole lot of people following you. You’ve become worthy of being modeled, and when that happens…you’ll automatically be a leader in this business.

The legacy of heroes is the memory of a great name and the inheritance of a great example. – Benjamin Disraeli