Here’s 4 habits to cultivate that will help keep you on the road to success.

Success Habit No. 1 - Don’t let anything stop you from achieving your business goals. It’s easy to come up with excuses for why you aren’t doing as well as you'd like. You don’t have enough time to book another party or to create your downline newsletter or contact another prospect - what with your family commitments, your full-time or part-time job, and social events. But the real truth of the matter is that you DO have control over your life and your time, and if you make your business a top priority you WILL be successful.

Success Habit No. 2 - Write Down Your Goals. It’s been proven over and over that people who write down their goals, achieve more. You need to know where you’re going before you can get there. But just writing down your goals isn’t enough, you have to remind yourself of them daily. So write them down and read them every day. Stick them on post-it notes and put them on your bathroom mirror, inside your car. Write them on 3 x 5 cards and read them throughout the day whenever you have a spare moment.

Success Habit No. 3 - Practice Effective Time Management. Time is easy to waste, but if you get in the habit of practicing time management you can save your energy for the things you really want to do. Make a list of your daily activities and how much time you spend on them. Eliminate the obvious time wasters like watching TV, chatting on the phone, or volunteering too much. Devote your time and energy to what is important to you. Don’t let others use up your valuable time.

Success Habit No. 4 - Keep An Open Mind and Take Risks. Sometimes we are resistant to new ideas and ways of doing things. You might think to yourself — that’s OK for her, but I can’t possibly do that. But the truth of the matter is that you really CAN do new things, if you TRY. So what if you aren’t successful at first. Just keep on going and do it again. Keeping an open mind and taking risks by trying something new helps you grow personally and professionally. Invest in yourself by taking a training course, reading a new MLM book, or trying a new prospecting technique.

Practice these 4 habits on a daily basis. If you slip up, that’s OK, just get right back on track the next day. Have fun and dare to try something new!

Linda Locke, Editor

Computers, the Internet, Chat Rooms, Bulletin Boards - it’s all the craze. But how can you use this technology to support your existing downline in your multilevel business? I’m sure you’ll agree with me that the more you support your downline the longer they stay, the more they sell, the more they recruit and the more money everyone earns. Here are a few ideas on how you can use this new means of communication to increase your support.

Bulletin Boards

The most popular service, America Online, offers electronic bulletin boards that you can access for your specific MLM company. One area with many of the well-known companies can be accessed by using the keyword exchange, then click on home & careers and click on careers board. Once you are there, you can choose browse folders and find the company you represent.

A few of the BB’s (that’s techno-talk for bulletin board) listed there are Cookin’ the American Way, Country Peddlers, House of Lloyd, Pampered Chef, Tupperware, Partylite Candle, Longaberger Baskets, Avon Representatives and Mary Kay.

How can you use this when supporting your downline? Promote the BB in your newsletters that you distribute to your downline. Post informational material on that companies’ BB, such as upcoming product introductions, company history information, stock histories and customer service contact numbers. Brag about downline members on the BB, listing their achievements and quotes from them on how they did it. It gives your downline members a chance to meet other representatives from around the country and exchange ideas with them, too. Another area on AOL where you can find lots of other MLM companies is at keyword mlm.

Chat Meetings

Organize a chat meeting to be held at a regular time and promote it in your newsletters and personal contacts with your downline. For example: there is currently a weekly Avon Representatives chat meeting every Thursday night from 9:00 - 10:00 p.m. EST. Instructions on how to enter the chat room are posted on the Avon BB as well as in many of the newsletters of the people attending. It is not unusual to have between 15 to 20 representatives attending from all over the country. Some are just starting out in Avon, while others have been with the company 15 or 20 years and up. All levels of achievement are represented as well — from part timers to multiple national trip winners. They share ideas, frustrations, selling tips, product information as well as build friendships. Just think what a valuable asset this would be to your downline members!

Online Newsletters

Collect the online addresses from your downline so you can e-mail them an online version of your newsletter. This can be different from your regular paper newsletter if you feature articles about being online and promoting your online support activities. You could also include a log of the recent chat meeting (logging chat meetings to your disk is easy), and a run down of the other upcoming online events. A good way to network with the other company representatives you meet online would be to include them in your e-mail newsletter. Just like with your paper newsletter, it doesn’t need to be fancy. Being consistent is more important. Set a schedule for yourself and stick to it.

Special Chat Events

Especially if your downline stretches from coast to coast, a special chat event, hosted by you, can bring your group together. For instance, set up a specific date and time and chat room name and advertise it to your downline and on the BB. Make sure to tell what the topic will be and how the meeting will run. Perhaps you would like to have a special chat event on how to find recruits and spend the first 20 minutes giving your ideas and the next 45 minutes taking questions from the attendees. You could set up a special events calendar with different chat topics and alternating session times and days. Be creative and jump right in.

Would you be proud to have you for a sponsor? If the answer is NO — start planning today to improve your level of support. Take a look at the possibilities available to increase that support online.

Lisa Wilber has been serving customers and recruiting new representatives for Avon Products since 1981. She is an eight time Avon National Honors Trip earner and holds the title of Senior Executive Unit Leader, Avon’s highest MLM level. With over 1,000 representatives in her downline, her group sales during 1996 topped $2.9 million. To reach Lisa, write to: 174 S. Stark Hwy. 17, Weare, NH 03281 or call 1-800-258-1815. Lisa’s e-mail address is LWilber@aol.com.

The alarm startles my husband and I out of a deep sleep. It's 5:45 AM, an unnatural time for rising. My husband Stephen is due to ship out at 0700 hours, and after reluctantly rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, he begins getting ready for his journey. I observe his routine: Showered and shaved, uniform pressed, shoes polished, briefcase packed. I rub the sleep out of my eyes too, and pad down stairs to get the coffee pot going for him, and to make him his breakfast. I am sad to see him go. He's not going far, so perhaps it's silly for me to be melodramatic. In fact, he'll be back this evening. He's starting a new job today: "Manager of Accounts Payable" for a billion dollar international corporation. He'll be supervising 64 employees and spending twelve hours a day away from home.

After two months of unemployment, we are grateful for the job offer that came Stephen's way. This morning, I find myself apologizing to God. "Please don't think me ungrateful, since I know there are lots of people who would give their right arm for a job like this. But all the positive self-talk and my attempts to achieve an "attitude of gratitude", doesn't remove the hitch in my throat as I watch Stephen pull out the driveway. I will miss him around the house.

As I work out of a home office, my husband's unemployment of the past two months has given us an unusual amount of time together. I've become accustomed to his movements in the house, to the companionship of a friend to share the ups and the downs of my day, to the five minute neck rubs and the laughter and the natural intimacy that forms from hours a day spent together in the same space.

I know what's ahead, because we've been there before. Entire days get reduced into single sentences and paragraphs: "What happened at work today, dear?" "Nothing much, just a bunch of meetings." During the day, I force myself not to call him at least a half dozen times. "We can catch up later," I tell myself. "Don't bother him." And then later, when he asks, "So what happened for you today, hon?", I will reduce the thousands of moments of my day into a summary paragraph, just like he does.

It's not that we're unusual. This is the way most married couples live their lives, catching up in moments of a day, summarizing their lives in brief descriptions for one another. The sadness I feel on this day is because I've tasted the difference. I've spent days and weeks with my husband and I both home during the day - for a period of time when we were both self-employed, and for two segments of our life together when my husband was between jobs in the corporate world. Was it always nirvana spending time together during the day? Of course not. We fought more, and occasionally got underfoot of one another. But we loved each other more too, in our daily actions. No matter how hard you try not to, you and your spouse will drift apart to some extent if you are apart twelve hours a day.

Entrepreneurial life means constant adjustment, and my husband and I will get used to this new routine, like every other change we've encountered. We'll shift into making "quality time", and I'll make more of an effort to romance my husband when he's home. Distance from each other isn't always bad. But I'll tell you something. If we were to luck our way into a pile of money, I would still write, and speak, and coach, because it's what I love to do. I'll be a home-based entrepreneur for the rest of my life, regardless of our income. But in a heartbeat, my husband would quit his job and come home with me, getting underfoot, giving me unsolicited advice, taking up space in my office.

Azriela Jaffe is the founder of "Anchored Dreams" (www.isquare.com/crlink.htm), and author of "Honey, I Want to Start my Own Business, A Planning Guide for Couples". For a free online newsletter for entrepreneurial couples, email jaffe@lancnews.infi.net.

We’ve all been asked this question while networking. And how do you answer it? Some experts recommend that you answer with a question, “Do you like sales?” If the person responds affirmatively, then you can say, “You’ll love this.” If the person responds negatively, then you can say, “You’ll love this!”

This certainly sounds like ambiguous doublespeak, but in truth, networking is both like and unlike sales. Network marketing involves the movement of product; therefore it is sales.

After all, no commissions are paid out, unless sales have been been made! I know. I know. We are “sharing.” Right. A product is purchased. This involves sales. Period.

However, in traditional sales, the transaction is completed once the product has been purchased. The salesperson moves on to his or her next prospect. This is very unlike networking. In networking, the product purchase is just the BEGINNING of a long-term business relationship, which involves sponsoring and teaching the business of sponsoring and teaching. This is NOT anything like sales. Who makes the most money in Network marketing? Statistically, TEACHERS, followed closely by housewives and engineers. Salespeople, then, are not even in the top three!

Why? The traditional salesperson, not adept at networking, will sponsor, sponsor, sponsor, sometimes as many as 100-200 people. And often it happens that people are dropping out as fast as they are joining.

Teachers will sponsor enough people to get 5 serious people about the business and work with them so that they each also each get 5 people serious about the business, and so on. By sponsoring 5 people into their organization and repeating this process twice, they have 155 people in their organization, with much higher retention!

So, then, is this Sales? Yes, products are moved in the process of building an organization, so sales take place. But are we on to a new sale after we complete the first one? No. We build long-term relationships with our customers and business builders. Are we calling on strangers to get them to purchase a vacuum cleaner to replace the one in their closet which actually still works? No. We are working with high-quality consumable products that people need and use on a daily basis (usually). Do we handle, retail, or stock inventory of product. Not usually. Do we even work with other sales types? Not usually. Most of the people we work with are non-sales types who desire an extra $500-6000 a month. Maybe “You’ll love this!” as an answer for both sales and non-sales types isn’t so ambiguous after all.

Diane Hanson is a freelance writer and network marketer, who still has no concept of sales but LOVES network marketing! She can be reached at PO Box 472, Circle Pines, MN 55014. Voice 612-785-0305. Fax 612-785-0808. Email kitty@bitstream.net.