In today’s episode, we’re talking about the number one thing that is preventing struggling network marketers and coaches from achieving the success that they want. You might be making this really big mistake, too. This is something that most people don’t realize they’re making, and in some situations, they are actually TAUGHT to do this.

Dun dun dun! What could it be? What is it that is keeping network marketers and coaches from achieving the success that they want?

In network marketing in particular, there’s this concept around duplication and making your processes and your social media duplicatable. Somehow the idea of duplication, which is based around the field of modeling, (looking at what someone’s doing – ok – that’s how we do it, now I’m going to learn how to create my own voice) versus duplication has really become copying and pasting in many situations. I have had coaches reach out to me saying that their stuff is getting swiped. I’ve had network marketers say not only that their downline is not coming up with anything on their own, but people who are their uplines are copying their stuff!

Copying and pasting someone else’s stuff is exactly what failing, cookie-cutter network marketers and coaches do. 

If you’ve been at this for any length of time, you’ve probably already realized that saying the same thing as everybody else in the industry is the fastest way to become more static in an already incredibly noisy and competitive industry. I understand the concept behind duplication and helping people get things off the ground, but if everyone’s stuff looks the same, well then it’s just more noise.

If you as an individual, your team, or people in your client base are always copying off your paper or if you’re always copying off someone else’s paper, then how will that individual ever be positioned as a leader in their industry?

HOW will that individual ever find their voice, their specific mission, or their specific message?

In network marketing, there are some people who sign with an upline and don’t feel aligned with their message. They feel boxed in and believe that they have to simply say what they’re saying, show up the way they’re showing up, train their team the way they’re training their team, and enroll customers the way they’re doing it. And that’s not the truth. 

Let’s look at the people who have been in this game for a while and have made the mistakes that newbies make and model off of what they teach. If you look at six and seven figure network marketers and coaches, the way that they show up is very different from the newbie. In fact, they have people coming to THEM! There’s a reason that certain people are hitting the top ranks every single month and getting the top in sales.

There’s a reason that certain people are achieving more success and it has nothing to do with how many workouts come in your coaching package or how many vitamins and minerals are in your company’s shake.

Can I get an amen?

It has nothing to do with that. On Instagram I’ve seen a very distinct shift in the last year. People went from posting pictures with their shakes and supplements to a real shift to personal branding. That’s a big concept, but that is the secret behind how you grow a brand and how you grow a business that has nothing to do with your company or your products. Your products are not your offer. The reason that the people who have built a personal brand are more successful is because they’re not selling the product. When I say product, that could be your one-on-one service, it could be your coaching package, or it could be your course. Your offer is different. The offer speaks to the transformation, whereas the product, program, or service usually is speaking to the features. It’s got this many vitamins and minerals or it comes with this many coaching calls. That’s not what compels someone to buy. That’s not what gets somebody to bust out their credit card.

For those individuals who are positioning themselves as a personal brand, why is this so powerful? Well because they’re able to easily and effortlessly sell to the point where they really can’t be cloned, copied, or competed with because people are looking at their stuff and they’ve injected so much of themselves in it with their own stories and personality that it would literally make no sense for another network marketer or coach to come in and try to copy and paste it. It would make no sense and it would be so abundantly clear that it wasn’t theirs. The reason that they’re successful is because they create conversation and connection with their audience. 

Someone asked me the other day inside my group coaching program how to create more engagement…

You create more engagement by not giving a sh*t what the numbers are. Just create content that you feel excited about. Create content that you love. Create content that your ideal client needs to hear today.

That’s how you “beat the algorithm” because numbers on your engagement don’t really frickin’ matter. I had a post the other day about an Uber driver that had made a comment about something around an iPhone and people were very polarized by it and were engaging. It had thousands of people engaging with this post. Sure, I got a lot of engagement on that, but I can’t monetize that entire audience. Most of the people who engaged on that, because it got shared very far and wide, are not business owners. They’re not looking to build an online course or they’re not looking to grow a network marketing company. So sure, I hit the algorithm for the moment, but if you can’t monetize those likes then they’re kind of useless.

When we look at people who are successfully building a personal brand, what is it that they’re doing? They’re not showing up with vanilla cookie-cutter content, saying what everybody else in their bubble is saying, or saying what every other health coach is talking about. A lot of times my newsfeed will be flooded with whatever company has a new release, a new product, a new program, or a new supplement and all the sudden that’s all errrryone wants to talk about. It just becomes more noise and we scroll right past it.

I’m sure you’ve either seen this or you’ve been a part of it, so hopefully this is giving you more clarity and more understanding. I’m not sitting here just saying not to do it. I’m trying to help you understand how it’s not going to help your engagement, how it’s not going to attract new ideal clients to your inbox, and how it actually positioned you as a novice newbie coach because that’s what all the other newbies are doing.

You can continue to throw up all of the vanilla cookie-cutter stuff on your newsfeed or you can get a little bit uncomfortable and develop your own voice and start positioning yourself as a personal brand because YOU have something to say. 

Now here’s what happens when people recognize that. They say, “You’re right. I need to step forward and I need to start sharing my own mission and message.”

What happens when people finally make that decision?

They say, “I’ve been holding myself back! I’ve been playing small! It’s time to step forward and own my truth. Own my voice!”

Well then…  oh my gosh, what if I fail?

What if people don’t like me?

What if people judge me?

What if some people come out of the woodwork and try to tell me that I am wrong?

Throw tomatoes at me through the computer screen??

Someone asked recently, “What if I DO fail? Can someone just give me some encouragement?” I love my my tribe because they were all very loving and saying to keep pushing through and that it’s just like a bump in the road. You’re 100 percent going to fail. It’s not a matter of what IF you fail. You’re going to fail and if you want to achieve any level of greatness and significance, you’re not just going to fail once, you’re going to fail multiple times. Like over and over again. Not only in the beginning, but at each level.

New level, new devil. There’s going to be new things for you to work through, new things for you to understand, and new problems for you to solve.

The difference is that successful coaches will tell you that as they’ve gone through their journey, they no longer freak out about the failures because they actually see that the road to failure is exactly what led them to their success. If you’re not failing, that’s a very clear sign that you’re playing small. If you’re not having failure, you are still inside your box of comfortable. It’s an illusion and you can choose to decide that you don’t even have a comfort zone. What if you made that a belief, that there is no such thing as your comfort zone? That could be cool. Try that on for size. 

If there were no failures in my life in business, I wouldn’t be sitting where I am today. I wouldn’t have what I have today. I wouldn’t be able to speak to the things that I’m able to speak to because I would be boring! People who live in a little perfect world with no failures, no challenges, and no struggles don’t have character. In order to get through to the other side, we must grow. Somebody who has no challenges doesn’t experience growth.

For example, if I were to hand you a million dollar business tomorrow, would you know what to do with it? Or would you freak out, panic, and sabotage that business? Most people wouldn’t know what to do with it. Let’s say this million dollar business has team members, employees, thousands of customers, three different offers, and one-on-one services. Would you know how to run, manage, sustain, and market for a business at that level? Probably not. Most of us wouldn’t unless we are in the process of getting close to that.

A lot of people are complaining and saying they want more customers, but they’re not actually preparing the backside (not the butt!) of their business to prepare for that. One of the things I’m referring to is the infrastructure of your business and the other side to that is the inner work for you…your mindset as a leader.

So if you’re trying to avoid failure because you feel like somehow if you fail then it makes you a failure, or if you fail it makes you not good enough, or if you fail it makes you stupid, well, guess what? You are the bottleneck in your business right now! You are the reason why your business is not more successful because you are preventing yourself from experiencing that next level of growth. The only way you’re going to grow to the level that I know you want to get to is by making a few mistakes.

I have an integrator who does project management. I have some people who help with social media and blogs and Pinterest and Instagram and customer support and all of those things. I could not do that on my own. In getting to that level, there’s going to be failures, there’s going to be tensions, and there’s going to be conversations that are uncomfortable that you have to have. If you are not growing and making yourself uncomfortable on a regular basis, you’re not just staying stagnant because there’s no such thing as stagnant.

We’re made of energy and we’re always moving, so if you’re not moving forward… where are you going? 

These failures are not just at the beginning of business. There’s so many people buying into this illusion that when you hit six figures, everything’s easy. You hit a million dollars – poof! You don’t have to make hard choices and the business just runs itself. That’s not the reality.

The reality is that it’s a constantly growing, evolving, and shifting thing that needs love and attention.

As a novice coach, when we’re trying to avoid failure, we’re not growing because we believe if we do fail it makes us a failure. Once we shift and step into this other level of thinking, which is really the CEO, we begin to see how failure is so necessary in moving us towards our desired end result. Then we are able to pass that message on to our team of employees, network marketing team, or clients. Before you can step forward as the most powerful leader and start sharing your message, sharing your voice, and owning it unapologetically, you have to get on board with recognizing that that’s all part of the process. 

Right now you might be hearing this saying, “Sure Jen, that sounds good. I’m going to try failing. I’m going to try not freaking out about it.”

I don’t want you to just try it… I want you to accept and understand that it is a part of the process and I want to encourage you to fail faster.

When we say fail we all have different interpretations of what that is. For a newbie coach, they interpret failure as the end of the world. When you’re a little bit more seasoned and you realize you can pick yourself up, then we can start to be more aggressive and more excited about how quickly we fail. When we look at six, seven, and eight figure entrepreneurs, the one thing that I’ve noticed across the board is that those individuals don’t waste a lot of time getting into the story of, “Well what if this doesn’t work? What will that mean about me? What will people think?” They just go, “Great, let’s execute. Let’s do it. That’s part of the vision. I know what our vision is. I know what our outcome is, so let’s go after it.” 

If you are at a place right now where you’re feeling stagnant, I’m going to invite you to set the intention to fail a little bit faster, and if you’re still feeling a little queasy about the idea of failing, why don’t we reframe it? Because every time you fail, you’ve overcome a challenge and you’ve come out the other side still living and breathing. What if that challenge was actually an opportunity for growth? You can choose the way you want to perceive it and interpret it.

If you have big goals and you want to achieve great things, I would encourage you to try on the beliefs of the high-level CEO.

If you’re wanting to get out of the cookie-cutter, copy and paste templates, and you just want to be able to wake up knowing what you want to talk about on social media, feel confident in your message, feel clarity in what you’re creating in your business, and actually make sales, then I want to invite you to come check out my free on-demand masterclass. You can go to heyjencasey.com/masterclass. I break down my entire three-part Pitch to Your Niche method where I walk you through exactly how to speak to your ideal client avatar at a high level so that you instantly stand out to them online, and everybody else who’s still doing the cookie-cutter nonsense falls away.

They see and hear YOU and you’re able to really build this beautiful infrastructure for your business so that you can easily and effortlessly make sales and have people coming to you. Seeing how you show up online and being like, “Girl, I want to be in your energy. I want to learn from you. I want you to coach me. I want to be part of your team. I want to be part of this community that you’re building.”

Soooo if you want to make that happen in your business, that’s exactly what I’m gonna be breaking down for you in the free masterclass. 

Pass this on to somebody who is willing to hold you accountable to what we talked about today. Pass this on to somebody who’s going to make sure you are stepping outside your comfort zone and doing something that feels frickin uncomfortable. I challenge you to share something on social media today that maybe you’ve never shared before. Maybe a story or a post that you were kind of afraid of people not liking it or it not getting engagement. I’m going to challenge you to not listen to the likes or look at the comments or anything like that, and to just share something that you feel compelled to share.

Our job as content creators, as influencers, and as thought leaders is not to babysit our content. It’s to create, so go and create something!

Be the creator. If you’re an influencer, what are you influencing people to do?

If you’re a thought leader, what are you encouraging people to think?

If you’re not creating things that are compelling, that might stir the pot a little bit, or challenge somebody’s beliefs and you’re just doing this copy-paste stuff, are you really making the impact that you want to make?