What results do you expect?

What results do you expect from your opportunity? Why?

In every business opportunity there are a few things that are true.

1) It doesn't matter what opportunity is as long as it is a valid opportunity and not some scam.
2) You can put as much time and faith in your business you want, if nothing is happening, nothing is going to keep happening until you change something.
3) Most of what you need to make it in your opportunity is common sense.

Why do you need to know this? Because in every opportunity there are the rah-rahs that will tell you to just hang in there and it will turn around for you. They're wrong! They're just repeating what someone else told them. Something has to change in order to produce different results. It's the way of the world. If everything got better just by waiting, wouldn't our homes look better after 10 years of neglect instead of worse? Wouldn't our cars get better with age instead of getting less efficient and all banged up? Wouldn't our bodies get better as we grow older instead of worse?

It is complete insanity to continue to do the same thing, the same way, and expect different results. Nothing gets better with time including business. You have to work the business. You have to find ways to overcome challenges. You have to learn new technologies and tools as they come along. Even if your business opportunity is doing well now, stop working it for a while and see if it is getting better and better each day. Never happen. If it was that easy everybody would be self employed and we'd all be making millions of dollars every year.

The people who rise to the top are the ones that have worked the problems and have come up with solutions to overcome them. They're the ones who not only have faith, but they understand the importance of action. Faith without action is meaningless. One goes hand in hand with the other. In business you have to be willing to keep on going even when the future seems uncertain or even impossible. You have to be willing to trade pain for rewards.

Make no mistake about this...in business, you will experience pain. The pain of rejection. The pain of failure on some level. The pain of inadequacy. The pain of not wanting to put in the effort on days when you are tired, discouraged and feel like relaxing instead or working. The pain brought on by fear of the unknown.

This pain can be overcome. But it can not be overcome if you don't change something that you are doing. And you have to change the right things. I know, been there, done that. I started a software distribution business where I bought expensive software from a company that wrote it and distributed it to companies that needed it. I had to train them in using it. I had to set the software up and configure it to work correctly. I was trained by the parent company. I did everything that they told me to do. I advertised, called prospects and leads, I mailed postcards. I drove all over the US doing presentations and sending out quotes. And I still didn't make it. Why?

Because I didn't change the right things. I should have been changing the way I came up with prospects. I could have added other products to my line to have different offerings for current customers. I should have researched different ways to reach new customers more effectively. I should have looked towards people who were doing it right and learned from their successes. Instead I became a creature of habit. Working the business and having faith that things would get better when the market got better. The market never got better. The business never got better. I ended up closing the business and working for someone else for over a year before I jumped back in and started researching what my next opportunity would be.

This time I'm a changed man. I'm going to spend less time beating on prospects. I am going to spend less time buying and calling leads. I'm going to work very hard at getting prospects to come to me. I'm learning to use all the tools available to increase my chances of success. I will still have faith in my opportunity. But I will back up this faith with action. Even when I don't feel like it. I will not expect things to get better on their own. I will observe successful people and learn from their successes.

I will not continue to do the same thing and expect different results, and neither should you.