“Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” — Joseph Addison

With all of the hype surrounding network marketing, some positive, some negative, some downright unbelievable, it can be easy to lose sight of the fact that networking marketing is a profession much like any other.

Success as a network marketer requires passion, hard work, and knowledge. Here are my Top Five, Must-Read Books for the network marketer and small business owner. (You’ll notice that only the first book in this list applies directly to network marketing.)

Your First Year in Network Marketing

Network marketing is one of the most fun and rewarding businesses in the world . . .

According to Amazon, I’ve owned Your First Year in Network Marketing since June of 2005. It’s been an invaluable resource as a reference and a training tool, both for myself and the people on my team. If you only purchase one book on network marketing, this is the one to buy.

Think & Grow Rich

Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure. –Napoleon Hill

Think & Grow Rich was first published in 1937, the result of more than 20 years of research into what makes hugely wealthy people so successful. When I first heard about Think & Grow Rich, I was skeptical it would contain anything other than pop-psychology drivel aimed at the get rich quick market. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

There are many avenues to great wealth, and the wildly successful all have their own stories, but there’s not a single one of them that will tell you they’ve achieved their success without a definite purpose, big goals, and a burning desire to be successful. If you’d like to follow in their footsteps, I would recommend studying this book.

As A Man Thinketh

A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts. –James Allen

As A Man Thinketh is the one book on this list that I would recommend to anyone and everyone, regardless of their aspirations for success in small business. I have learned more from this little book about the power of thought and its impact on my life than any other book I have read. If you study this short essay closely, you’ll find that it’s source material for many of the most popular positive thinking books that follow, including Think & Grow Rich and the recent, wildly popular book and movie The Secret. While I’ve enjoyed reading other books on this same topic, I’ve not found a single book I value more highly.

How to Win Friends and Influence People

Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language. –Dale Carnegie

How to Win Friends and Influence People is another book that I avoided for many years, assuming that it would teach me how to manipulate people into liking me just long enough for me to profit financially from the relationship. Boy was I wrong! Reading this book has been influential in my development as a person, as a friend, and as a successful marketer.

One of the most important lessons to learn in network marketing is that people aren’t interested in buying into your business, they’re interested in buying into you! Practical application of the principles learned in this book will help you become the kind of person that people want to invest in.

Lower Your Taxes Big Time

Tax evasion is illegal. Tax avoidance is the American way of life. –Claiborne Ferguson

One of the very best reasons to start a small business, any small business, is the ability to save on your taxes every year. One of the biggest hurdles to making sure you’re reaping all of the tax benefits that you’re due are the incredibly difficult to understand tax rules and regulations. Lower Your Taxes Big Time breaks down the confusing tax code into small, easy to understand sections that make doing your taxes at the end of the year much easier and highly profitable. I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of these books over the years (they’re updated each year), and I’d recommend them highly to any small business owner who’s interested in learning more about the tax advantages of owning their own business.

What books would you add to your Top 5 List?

Your friend,

Brian

Always Be Coachable

Being coachable is one of the most important traits of the successful marketer. Why? Everyone comes to network marketing without a clue as to how to succeed. It’s absolutely crucial that you work with a coach, usually the person that sponsored you into the business, in order to learn how to work the business successfully. If you’re not willing to take direction, encouragement, and the occasional constructive criticism, you’re setting the stage for your own failure.

Believe!

Belief is another crucial success principle. After being coachable, it’s perhaps the next most important principle. Believing in yourself, in your success, in your product, and in you opportunity allows you to make it through the difficult times. Without that belief, you’re liable to throw your hands up and quit as soon as the going gets tough. If you believe with all your heart that you will be successful, no matter what happens, you’ll be able to stay focused and stay motivated regardless of the many challenges that you’ll face.

Be Action Oriented, Not Result Oriented

Success in network marketing comes, in large part, as a result of taking daily action toward growing your business. You must take action in order to succeed, and you must take action regardless of the immediate results of that action! (Of course, you’ve got to take the right action, but that’s what your coach is for.) Success is a marathon, not a sprint, and results don’t always come right away. In fact, the results you’re looking for sometimes don’t appear for quite some time! Remember the right action will always produce the desired results. Stay focused on action, and the results will follow.

What principles have been important to your success?

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4. Earn great rewards that will help you grow their business

Promotion Details

This is a 3-month Promotion for April, May and June ..

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• If you personally sponsor 5 new frontline AutoShip Members in 1 month, AND
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God Bless . . .

This weekend I spoke to tons of people from New York, Raleigh, NC, East Orange, NJ, Los Angeles and many other places with people wanting to know more.

Just today Danny from Texas contacted me through text to chat wanting to know more and was so excited with the possibilities that he signed up with two cases of BluFrog immediately! Congrats to you Danny! I can’t wait to hear about your successes in Southern Texas!

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Have an amazing weekend and we’ll be chatting soon I’m sure!

Become genuinely interested in other people.
Smile. (i.e. Have a sense of humor)
Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.
Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely.
The Golden Rule puts it even more concisely: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
It is this attitude of beneficence that truly puts the “social” in social media and should be an ethical standard to which we all adhere. The trouble is many of us (me included) tend to focus largely on ourselves and our own interests rather than others. That is a strategy for social media failure if ever there was one.

Following are success stories from three people who have come to exemplify this attitude in their use of social media to build business relationships.

Charles Lauller’s LinkedIn Strategy

Charles Lauller, SVP of Sales for Bizzuka, who is professionally and personally a very generous individual, learned this lesson the hard way with his initial foray into the use of social media for prospecting and lead generation.

Charles is an avid LinkedIn user who pro-actively connects and networks with others on a daily basis. His first attempts proved fruitless, however, because, to quote Charles, he focused on “pimping Bizzuka and its products.” He quickly learned that no one had an interest and changed his tactics to something that, frankly, was much more of a comfortable fit, that of expressing sincere interest in learning about others and offering help.

That altruism turned things around. “Eventually they run out of things to say about themselves, and start asking me about my business,” says Charles. The result is he gets between two-five warm leads per week which, according to him, is about the equivalent benefit of making 200 cold calls. “And no one slams the phone in your ear either,” quips Charles.

I asked Charles to outline his approach to building business on LinkedIn and he said:

Drop all of the bogus I’m pimping me and my company bologna.

Be yourself. Honest, sincere, authentic (assuming that’s you) But, whoever you are you will likely attract individuals like yourself to your network.

It’s cliche, but “seek first to understand,then be understood.” I always (when seeking to expand my network and connect with people) learn about them from their profile, and ask how I can help them. I’ve found that when I continually ask others how I can help with recommendations, referrals and/or introductions, they usually want to reciprocate.

Amber Naslund Keeps it Real

Altitude Branding principal and fellow Daily Fix blogger Amber Naslund is another person who understands and employs this “how to win friends” ethos.

This giving attitude has made Amber a rising star. For example, her blog, The Brand Box, routinely garners as many as 30 or more comments per post. Keeping things real is her key to social media success.

“I wish I could tell more people to be real, and quit trying to be everything to everyone,” says Amber. “There will always be critics, detractors, and folks you don’t click with. But you’ll reap far more rewards by investing your time and energy in those that you DO connect with and figuring out how you can be helpful to them. Give first, and often. Getting happens naturally.”

While not stating it explicitly, Amber pays homage to both Carnegie and the Golden Rule. “The funny thing to me is that these social media tenets aren’t new. They’re basic, common sense fundamentals of communication and customer service,” shares Amber. “I think we’re remembering them more than we’re inventing them. It can be as simple as treating others the way you’d want to be treated yourself.”

Beth Harte is Not About the Numbers

Beth, a marketing consultant and Daily Fix contributor has, like Amber, also gained quite a bit of attention lately. Though she admits to not having a plan for social media engagement early on, Beth says “it’s not about the numbers AT ALL. It’s about the people I meet and the conversations that I have or are privy to learn from.”

In keeping with the theme of focusing on others, Beth shares these ten guidelines:

Be real, honest, authentic, transparent (it’s what customers/prospects/the community wants)

Provide valuable content, conversation, help, information, etc. and your community will raise you up

Be accessible. Your community (customers, prospects, etc.) want to know that they can have a conversation with you, that you will talk back and answer questions, etc.

Generate conversations that others can join and invite others to participate

Listen to other people and their opinions (You just might learn something)

Ask questions. Usually you are asking what others have been thinking

Help other people including your competition (perceived or not) and have conversations with them. Most customer problems/challenges are industry problems/challenges.

Put other people first

Listen to your community and learn

Surround yourself with people that are smarter than you (hat tip: Mack — he said it best)

Conclusion

While it may sound trite or cliché, this “do unto others,” “give and it shall be given” ethic of reciprocity is universal. Every religion from Buddhism to Zoroastrianism contains some version of it in their tenets, and Carnegie certainly understood its implications for business.

As you grow in your apperception of how to make social media work as a sales and marketing tool, try putting it into practice and see if you don’t experience the same benefits as Charles, Amber and Beth. You never know until you try.

What are some ways you’ve seen this “give first” attitude work in social media marketing? Please feel free to share examples from your own experience and that of others.

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Please feel free to contact me at any time!

To Your Success!