Richard Branson and the Piggies
My nine-year-old daughter’s school reading book is a biography of Richard Branson.
A good choice for year 4 – but there’s something about this Heineman Profile by Bob Alcraft which is irresistable for network marketers as well. Dotted throughout are Branson quotations and every one is a nugget. I’ll offer just a couple:
“My general philosophy is, if you decide to do something, throw yourself into and and do it well. And enjoy it as much as you can.”
And how about this:
“The one secret of our success is people. If you can find the right people, look after those people, motivate those people, you can achieve pretty well anything.”
Now isn’t that exactly what we’re about in this business? Isn’t that what I set out to do every day with the Piggies – find the right people.
Yesterday morning was devoted to the Win-a-Mini stand in the garden centre using the new system our company has designed for showing people what we’ve got. For the second day running someone signed up on the spot – and, of course, all the people who didn’t sign up got a Piggy. But I don’t know whether it’s the fact that a garden centre on a weekday tends to attract older people or it’s just the luck of the draw, but hardly anyone said they were interested in earning extra income.
And besides, I still had about 30 cards left at the end of the day so I popped down into town to shift them: “Have you had one of these… I see you’ve got children, have one of these they’re brilliant… Excuse me but we seem to be the same sort of age, I found this fantastic…”
And suddenly a woman looked at the card and said: “Hmm, Make Money – Save Money…”
“Are you interested in money?” I asked her.
“Certainly that’s why I’m in business.”
It turned out she was a business coach: “Right. Do you have ten minutes now? What I suggest is that I buy you a cup of coffee and show you what it’s all about.”
And so we went into the coffee shop and I made my mistake.
What I should have done – and what I would have done until the company introduced it’s new “skills” system, was give her a 30 second explanation of what the company does and then take a piece of paper and show her how the money works.
But instead, I was so excited by my new “skills” that I showed her the benefits of signing up as a member rather then a distributor.
And that’s what she wants to do!
Of course being a member is good – and she will be the 11th of the 12 I need by December 14th in order to claim my £200 bonus under the company’s current promotion.
But that’s not quite what I set out to do…
And so I thought it would be good to end with another Branson quote to illustrate the point – but I couldn’t find anything appropriate in the book.
Now would Richard Branson give up and end one a lame note? Certainly not – he started out wanting to be an editor. He would Google “Richard Branson Quotes.”
So that’s what I did – and this is what I got:
“Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.”
I don’t really have a great deal to express in reply, I only this minute want to comment to say great work. It seems like you have put a lot of effort into your post and we require much more of these on the net these days.