Average is the sum of a list of numbers divided by the number of numbers in the list.
– Average household income
– Average weight & height
– Average career results
– Average………. (Fill in the blank)
The most common trait in life, I hear, is the average. I have never liked the word average, and when anyone tells me I am average, it drives me nuts.
Right now, every person I talk to who has a baby says he/she is above/below the average for height and weight. I know it is only a guide, but who really wants to be average? (If you care, Penelope is under the average for both of these.)
Taking average actions will deliver average or below-average results, yet people wonder why they are unable to get ahead in their business.
For example, we have a network marketing business, which I started in 2009 (Kate in 2000), so let’s talk about average actions and average results in this business.
When I started my business, I had no idea what I was doing. I previously ran a small business before but not a serious business. You know, it is like saying you want a kid as opposed to actually having one – two completely different experiences.
When I started my network marketing business, I was working 70 hours per week at Philip Morris and attending classes all day on Saturdays for my MBA. I made over 50 calls per day for weeks. I traveled to every event for our company in the United States. I traveled to Florida multiple times to learn from my mentor about building a business. He was so gracious to open his house to me.
I was laid-off from Philip Morris one month after I started my business, so I went all in. I held meetings at my house, I met people at restaurants and coffee shops, and I put out hundreds of signs in North Carolina, Florida and Arizona with a number for people to call if they were interested. (Ask Kate about our first date.) I hung over 1000 door hangers on front doors in Florida. I stood outside of Target in North Carolina and asked people about which supplements they consumed. I tried anything and everything to create interest in my business.
I was green, I was new, I didn’t know any better, but I had the hustle and desire to never work for anyone else again in my life. The fire was burning hot.
I decided to take the biggest leap and move to Florida. I moved into a house with my mentor and my buddy. I sold my house in North Carolina and gave up everything, loaded up my truck with clothes and a ladder. I drove down I-95 to start this new adventure with new roommates. I lived in Florida for 8 months then decided to move to Arizona to learn from another one of my buddies about building a business. Then 8 months after that, Kate and I started to travel the United States for 10 months. We spent 6 months in the Hamptons (Eastern Long Island), then we moved to Maine, got married and had our first child.
Oh yeah, and we built a multiple-6-figure business over the past 4 years, which is well above average.
When I was starting out, my income was far below average: right around $8,350. I had the fire, but I also had a rough couple of years when I was beginning to build my business.
I will never forget sitting at a table in San Diego at an internet marketing event. There were six of us including myself: three of them made over $1million per year, the other two made multiple 6-figures per year, and me – who cleared around $35,000 that year.
I asked myself when I left, how the heck did I end up here?
I have never believed in taking average actions in anything in my life because I never considered myself average.
Those unusual actions I took along the way, many of them described above, allowed me to travel the world with my wife-to-be Kate for 1.5 years. I paid off $132,000 of debt in 6 years, I haven’t been back to work for someone else in 4 years, and I am able to stay at home every day with my 7-month-old daughter.
This happened for me and thousands of others, so please start to take those unusual actions.
When you think about your business, are you taking unusual actions? Or are you taking average actions?
Are these actions producing the results you desire? If not, what can you do differently?
Create your desired results with your desired actions.
