Randy Gage - Defcon 1 Direct Selling

The actual number was a net loss of 27.

I decided that those 30 people were obviously too stupid, ignorant, and lazy, and I needed to replace them with 30 new people. Which I did…

Surprisingly, I got pretty much the same result. Again and again, the people I sponsored were too stupid, ignorant, and lazy. Finally, I had no option but to once again seriously examine the way I was attempting to build. It turns out, the problem wasn’t my recruits. The problem was me.

I came to understand that the method I was using to bring people into the business could not be duplicated by most of those people.

And that was a frustrating and disappointing revelation. But it transformed my career. That introspection led me to creating what became the duplicable system that made me successful. How to create that system is not the subject here. (If you’re not familiar with it, you can find it detailed in my last book, Direct Selling Success .) But here was the other vital breakthrough I discovered in this process:

You have a sacred responsibility to those you sponsor. By bringing them into the business, you are committing to be a partner for their success, not just your own.

This doesn’t mean you should make them codependent or do their work for them. It doesn’t mean you should be stacking people under them in the structure to prop them up or qualify them at a higher rank. But it does mean that just like having a child or adopting a pet, there are going to be changes needed in your routine, schedule, and priorities. Every time you enroll a new team member, you are implicitly agreeing to play a part in their development.

When I changed my perspective from believing that the reason for sponsoring someone was so they could make me rich to a belief that I should be recruiting people only if I were committed to being a partner for their success, that really changed the game for me. And it will for you.

Leadership in Leveraged Sales begins with leading yourself. And the building block of that personal leadership is how you conduct yourself with the people you personally enroll into the business.

It’s trendy to talk about servant leadership, but I fear that concept has been misconstrued deeply. Servant leadership has come to mean sacrifice and altruism, but that is not the real concept of this kind of leadership. True leaders understand the virtue of a certain kind of selfishness. Let me explain.

Not because you’re supposed to be selfish, but because discovering the correct path, becoming successful yourself, and then modeling that behavior is the most helpful—and selfless—way to lead your team. You can’t show anyone how to become a specific rank in the compensation plan unless you have attained that rank yourself.

Let’s revisit the wise words of the legendary Zig Ziglar: “You will get all you want in life…if you just help enough other people get what they want.” No arguments from me. But in terms of practical application, what that means in our business is that you blaze the trail first. It’s well meaning to think you should help your team become successful first, but that’s not how it actually works.

You learned in my earlier definition of leadership that the first element is inspiring people to become the highest possible version of themselves. That isn’t accomplished by your remaining static and lecturing your team on why they should grow. If you want to actually inspire people, you do so by modeling the path they will need to follow. Approach your responsibility with the mindset of pursuing your own success, while reaching down a helping hand to your personal enrollees and bringing them along the journey with you.

Once you’re doing this, you’re meeting the first requirement, inspiring others to become the highest possible version of themselves. But what about part two—enabling an environment that facilitates the process? Let’s unpack what that looks like.

A huge part of this involves having the right infrastructure in place: training procedures for team members, tools that help them develop skillsets, events for promoting the business to candidates, and a delineated “ladder of escalation” that candidates are brought through. This infrastructure helps the team handle the mechanics of building the business. I spent a great deal of ink explaining that in Direct Selling Success, so I won’t repeat that info here. The focus of this field manual is to dissect and explain your leadership responsibilities in this process.

As you’ve probably deduced, one of your foremost concerns must always be the duplicability of what you practice and teach. This requires a deft touch and some intellectual nuance. There are many potential problem situations along the way.

For example, once you’re a successful leader, you could easily be working 30 to 50 hours a week running your business. But the business practices you teach your new enrollees to follow must be able to be accomplished in 10 to 15 hours a week, maximum. (Because most people will be entering the business part-time, along with working their existing job and practicing their other family and societal obligations.) Because we work from home, our business has very little separation between work life and personal life, and it can easily become all consuming. Let’s explore an interesting way you could set off a tripwire that harms your people, when you’re simply trying to help them and be friendly: socializing with them.

You might think it would be a great idea to have a regular social event for your local team. It could be something as innocuous as playing laser tag or putting together a bowling league. This can actually be harmful.

Here’s why: The new people in your group will be trying to finesse the adjustment from their normal schedule to finding 10 to 15 hours a week to work their new business. For a lot of people, this will create stress in other areas, often their family life. Their spouse might see the new business as unwanted competition for the team member’s already scarce free time. If the new team member adds another evening a week for social time with your group, this could be the tipping point that moves the spouse from guarded support or skepticism to outright opposition. You can end up losing team members over this.

Often this creates financial stress as well. If you’re a successful mid-level distributor in the business, spending $20 for lunch or $35 on a social event probably means nothing to you. But to someone who is starting out in a tight financial situation and investing in their new business, even relatively minor expenditures like these can become quite stressful. And as your business (and income) grows, the amount of stress you create for your team can become more pronounced. After you’re successful, you might be eating at restaurants where dinner is $500 a person or staying in hotel suites costing $2,000 a night. Trying to keep up with you could then produce a serious threat to their family budget.

You may find that instead of your people getting “fired up” about the rewards of success, they are demoralized because they aren’t traveling in those kinds of circles yet and are fearful about their ability to get there.

Certainly, social connection is a huge part of our business. For that reason, I recommend you build parties or social connection into your regular team training events. For example, as we design the agenda for our two- or three-day major events, we usually make Saturday night a party night. We have a different theme each time (disco party, ’80s night, talent show, superhero costumes, etc.).