Invest in Your Business by Recognizing Others
Hi! My name is Coach Jimmy and I am coming to you live from Dallas, Texas and in the past nine and a half years, almost nine and a half years, I have built a business by taking care of my fitness first and I really truly believe that those two things go together. Before getting started on business, I was a three time college dropout, I was a 100 lbs overweight, and I found myself living back at home with my parents in my early 20s. Things weren’t going well, but over the past nine years, I have learned some things and been able to transform my life. I have been able to bring my wife home from her job, we have been able to get out of $60,000+ in debt, and really create a life of our design and it is my passion, specifically, this year to create this streaming series to teach what I have learned and every morning I want to come and give something of value.
Today we are talking and we are titling this thing, “You better recognize.” and what is it about? It’s about recognition and we are talking about why it is important to take the time to recognize in the small things. If you really are trying to build an online business whether you are in a network marketing situation, whether or not you are marketing your own products, you’re writing that eBook, you have that online course, whatever it is that you are doing, you are going to need people around you to help you along. Maybe you are venturing out and you have a spouse that may not be completely on board that you’re having to how to keep at bay. Like, “Hey, sweetheart, be patient with me. We are getting this thing up and running.”
Maybe you are in a network marketing situation where your success is really determined on team building. That the biggest amount of your success is going to come not only from your own actions, but then having others duplicate that within your business model to take you along and trust me, I have done my business by myself and I have done my business in tandem with some really hard working, business minded people that shared my vision and it’s so much more fun and it’s so much more rewarding to do it with a group of people.
In order to do that, there is a skill set that I was terrible at earlier on because I got really frustrated when I would go out and do the work and bust my tail and other people wouldn’t work as hard or wouldn’t be as disciplined as I would and I felt like it was me with this vision for this mission in my head and I was dragging behind me like just a pile of dead rocks.
I don’t if you have ever felt that way in trying to get a business venture off the ground and you are like, “Why don’t these people work like I do? Why don’t these people see what I see? Why don’t these people see the opportunity? Why don’t they get it?” and it can be so very frustrating.
So, sometimes we are really blessed that the people around us are our business partners or our spouse or our team do get it immediately and they jump on board and we just have people that just want to sprint with us, but that’s really, really rare.
So, what can we do to help move that momentum along?
What can we do to push that along?
Share Your Vision
Well then, number one. It’s about sharing your vision. So recently…so you need to help other people see your vision. This happens a lot with spouses. Okay, all of a sudden your head is in your phone or you are trapped in the office, you are working on this thing that you have a real passion for, but you never took the time to explain to your spouse what the vision is. Why you are sacrificing time together in order to do this. So that’s number one. Setting an expectation.
Same thing with your teammates. So right before the end of the year, I had a big business goal that I wanted to hit and I had attempted to hit this goal on my own kind of dragging people along with me. Funny thing though this particular goal is not one that I could achieve by myself. It was a recognition goal that took a team of people to do with a minimum of fifteen people to do. And you think it’s hard getting one or two people to go all in and work with you. Think of trying to get 15 people all working in one direction. It’s a little bit like herding cats a bit.
So what did I do? So in the past, I had worked individually with fifteen people and it had fallen on it’s face. So what did I do? I actually reached out to about 18 people and I gathered them together, I huddle them up, we all got on a Zoom video call, and I painted a picture of why this goal was important. Why I thought was important for the entire team. How would it benefit everybody involved. Not just something that was individual to Jimmy achieving something and checking something off a resume, which is how I had attacked it in the past.
So step number one when it comes to recognition is just does everybody know why we are in this? If you are going to take that trek, if you are going to…you know if you are a fan of the Lord Of The Rings movies, if you are going to take this long trek, does every body know why we are on this path? Does everybody know why it’s worth it? Because we are going to hit rocky grounds, we are going to hit hard times, and I need to know, are you going to be in this with me when this sucks?
So number one is identifying what is the goal? What is this mission? Why are these people coming along with me? Then you as the leader, and where this comes in of a recognition this whole so ‘you better recognize’ thing, is you need to start recognizing the little steps. The little steps you see in the people.
So if you are talking about a team okay we have asked to go out and maybe it’s prospecting, maybe we are trying to find new customers, or we are trying to find a new goal or new teammates, new business members to join us on our team, and you have that group and somebody said, “Hey, I went out and I sent these emails or I made this social media post or I talked to these people in my network.”
Celebrate the Small Wins Too
Regardless if it was successful or not successful, you need to make sure that you appreciate the effort. Oh my gosh, you need to celebrate the baby steps like they won the Super Bowl.
You need to celebrate the baby steps like you’re going to celebrate when you hit this big goal, like you are going to celebrate the a giant things because a lot of these people that are coming on with you, you’ve painted the picture, they think they see what’s possible, but there are still so doubts in their head. They don’t have the confidence you do. They don’t see it as clearly as you see it and so they need that pat on the back. They need that pat on the bum saying, “Great job, that’s awesome! Thank you for doing this!” They just need that encouragement and the reassurance that what they are doing is right even if they aren’t seeing results yet.
It’s like somebody is starting a fitness program, right? Hey, that first day that they are doing a program like INSANITY or P90X or 21 DAY FIX or something like that where that next day you are sore, but you don’t have any abs the next day or the jeans don’t fit any different. So you need to go like just applaud them that, “Hey, you did it! Hey, you made that better food choice.”
They just need that encouragement and the reassurance that what they are doing is right even if they aren’t seeing results yet.
If this is something where it’s a spouse who you are trying to get on board with you, when they give you that extra time, they give you that extra 30 minutes to lock yourself in the office, they give you that power hour through lunch to go work on your business or work on that Ebook or work on that thing that really is vision that you have described to them, you didn’t just go lock yourself in the room and they don’t understand why this is important to you, and you have asked, “Hey, I need for you to give me a little time. I need a partnership here.” When they do that, like you need you need to give them a little more attention.
Maybe the spouse need a little “Thank you,” time, if you know what I mean? Thanks for letting me take some time away from this, I am going to make sure that time back together is quality. You know what I am saying. Specifically you ladies that are taking time away from your husbands, like go say, “Thank you.” We will leave it at that. But you need to let people know that you appreciate them helping you right? So “Thank You” time. Absolutely, who doesn’t need some more thank you time in their life?
So you need to make sure that they understand that you appreciate their efforts and the fact that they know that you are putting in the same efforts. So I am going to go back to the analogy of the team, so for me and my team hitting this goal, I would come to them and tell them daily what I was doing. You know it wasn’t just me being the Taskmaster and cracking the whip. It was, “I am in this with you. I am putting the effort in as well.”
Pick Others up When They’re Down
What worked really well for us is we put everybody in a private Facebook, not a group, but in a group message. You could do it in a group text. You could use an app like Whatsapp, which is an amazing group text. When literally we were in contact throughout the day talking about our efforts, our struggles, and what went well, what sucked, this person told me no, this person seem really interested in joining my team and just ghosted on me and disappeared.
Which is, I think is one of the…it’s so easy on social media to be flaky these days. You know people that show interest. You’ve probably been there, you have a customer or somebody that wants to join your team or somebody that wants to get involved and support your business in one way shape or the other and you have had some conversations and it looks like the little momentum and then they just disappear. It’s really frustrating.
And so you need to tell those people that, “Hey, it happens to me too. It’s okay. You haven’t done anything wrong.” Because a lot of times, those people that are in this with us, they get frustrated because they feel that they’re not doing it right or they did something wrong and it’s really important for my team to know. People tell me no everyday. My inbox is full everyday with someone that’s, “Jimmy, I want to join your team,” and I send them the information to get started and they disappear on me and I had taken the time to like personally messaging them back.
Let Them Know They’re Not Alone
So I need to let them know…so that’s a different form of recognition is just saying I empathize with you. “Hey, I get it. I have been there with you, it happened to me too.”
You know that’s a huge part of recognition is just letting them know that they are not…because what will happen is that they will beat themselves up, they will pull themselves away from the group, and they’ll waste a lot of time beating themselves up and feeling guilty. You can control that by letting them know that’s normal. “Hey, people are going to tell you no. People are going to disappear. People are going to aggressively be a jerk in some situations and that’s about them. That’s not about you.”
So then we got to continue to recognize people as we go along. What can we do? Great, and its level of recognition it’s those baby steps to gain that momentum and then it’s been forward enough to go, “Great, you started doing this. The bar is going to raise a little bit. Can I get you to go here with me? I am going to raise my bar here.”
Anytime I encouraged or challenge somebody to raise the bar, I am always letting them know that I am raising my bar too. “I am going here. I am going to talk to twenty people today. I am going to set up three group calls. I am going to reach out to fifteen people on Instagram today. I am looking for business partners as well.”
So that is something I am looking for you know in 2016 right now is I am looking for higher quality business minded business partners. So maybe I am sharing with the group, “Hey, this is how I am looking for people. This is where I am finding new people that maybe already being business minded and maybe what we do would compliment what they are already doing.”
Be Their Support System
But the recognition is good because they may not have that supportive spouse, they may not be surrounded by people that are happy for them. I see it all the time in weight loss. You would think the spouse or the people around them, the people at their job are like, “Oh, girl! Man, you lost 10 pounds! You look awesome!” No. People are bitter and cold and just mean sometimes and the minute you start improving yourself, all that’s doing is putting a mirror up in front of all these miserable people showing them that they are not doing something and you know what it’s easier to do? It’s easier to tear you down than it is the celebrate that.
They’re going the tell you, “I am tired of your business posts. I am tired of you talking about this all the time. I am tired about your health and fitness. I am tired of you talking about your ebook. I am tired of you talking about that product that you are working on.” Why? Because they ain’t got shit going on in their life. They are just going to be trapped in the cubicle 9 to 5 life the rest of their lives and until they decide to change, no matter, I don’t care if it’s your sister, that’s why on social media they created the block button. It really is! I mean it’s just the way it’s going to go.
People are bitter and cold and just mean sometimes and the minute you start improving yourself, it’s easier for them to tear you down than it is the celebrate you.
So back to recognition, every time you set a bar up and somebody crosses it, you need to have something special in mind. Maybe it’s a phone call. Do you realize that recognition doesn’t have to cost you anything but maybe time? In this day and age, do you know how rare it is for somebody to pick up the phone and just voice to voice say, “I am proud of you. Thank you for working hard.”?
We are so quick to text and message and whatever and that’s great, but I am going to let you know that this goal, that I was talking about that my group hit and we did hit it on Christmas Eve and some of you are here on the stream live right now and I really appreciate your hard work and I go out of my way to continue to trying to recognize you is we are going forward as well.
Verbal Praise MATTERS
Do you realize that out of all of that, not from my group, but like people that I felt like probably should have given me some recognition, some people in my organization, do you realize I only received one actual telephone call? One actual telephone call that whole week that we hit this huge milestone. A milestone that just not very many people have hit in the history of our business. I think 40 or 45 out of 400,000? I got one phone call. I got a couple of texts. I got some nice mentions on Facebook, but there would have been…a picked up phone call goes a long way.
So before you think, “Oh, I have got to buy him some gifts that I don’t have or whatever,” but just a voice, just, “Hey, I am proud of you. Thank you for your hard work.” It goes so so so so far.
Then you are going to have those people that goes above way above and beyond, way above and beyond and maybe you didn’t have anything to do with their success. Maybe you’re not having anything to do with their success. They went off and did this on their own. You still need to recognize that.
So this last week, I had four people on my team that hit a big milestone. They got invited to a very elite conference of people that had hit this milestone. I wasn’t involved in that. I wasn’t involved in this conference. I wasn’t speaking, but I took a 24 hour, whirlwind trip to Los Angeles to go recognize these ladies, give them gifts, take them out to dinner because even more than the gifts, I know that they’ve told me that my time and the fact that I was willing to go out there to recognize them and just to spend time with them meant a lot. Even if it was just the one night and so time is really valuable.
Time is just really valuable and if you can find a way to give people extra time, maybe that’s a lunch, maybe that’s a dinner, that person that you need to recognize is local. Back to the spouse thing, maybe that’s a date night where there are no phones. It’s going and doing something that your spouse enjoys doing that maybe you don’t. Maybe they are really into golf or maybe you go see a movie with them that you don’t really care about. You do something in servitude of them and that they enjoy that maybe it doesn’t mean much to you, but I will be honest, it was disappointing to me that some of the people that I was looking most forward to just a, “Hey, great job,” that maybe I got a text and that just seem really lazy to me.
Then it made me look at myself, I am like, “Okay, am I reaching out and investing my time into people that they are busting their tail for our team and for our vision.” It is. It is so generic. It’s the equivalent of those flipping group texts that you end up in like on Thanksgiving Day or Christmas Day where you realize this one person texted fifty people, “Merry Christmas!” Like, that’s lame. Make people feel special.
Make People Feel Appreciated
Really I like…at the and of this, make people feel special and appreciated. Let them know you appreciate their hard work. A hand written note in the mail means a lot. A phone call means a lot. A small gift means a lot. It’s important because what is going to happen is there is going to come a time in your business or something else is going to come up where things are going to go bad, really bad, and you are going to need to ask them a favor or you are going to need to ask them to step up or you’re going to say, “Hey, I really need you right now.” If you have never taken the time to recognize them, if all you have ever been is the Taskmaster and all you have ever been is the raise the bar, raise the bar, raises the bar, but you have never taken the time to say a thank you, when like your back is up against the wall and the shit hit the fan and you really need them to step up, what are the odds of them like going out of their way to help you more if you have never taken the time to say thank you before now? Before that time?
And so in some ways you are building equity with these people in recognition and you are building equity with them and it’s just so important. It’s so important to recognize the baby steps along the way and then the big milestones. Make it a big deal. Like I said, I flew to Los Angeles, so this for me there was a lot of cost involved, flying to Los Angeles, getting gifts, a night out, and dinner and stuff like that, but it was important to me, because they deserved it, because they worked their tail off.
There is going to come a time where things go really, really bad and you’re going to need to ask them for a favor. Do you think they’ll go out of their way to help you when you’ve never taken the time to say ‘Thank you’?
Let’s think about this just from an investment standpoint. Do you realize your time investment can affect your bottom line? It totally can. Your time investment can affect your bottom line and whatever it is, whether it’s customers getting hand written notes or it’s recognizing your team, because think about this. I flew out there and so in my situation I am in a network marketing situation where the work, the efforts of my team do affect my financial future and the efforts of their team and so on and that’s what I love about my business is that it really is truly a team effort.
Receiving Praise Keeps People Motivated
Do you think that my going out there investing time in them…do you think that is going to affect their efforts going into this year? Yeah. I think it probably will. Do you think it will affect their efforts if there is some drama and something goes really wrong and there is a real crisis in their business this year, do you think that they will trust me to not quit or to not bail? Do you think that they would give me more time and listen to me a little longer than they would had, had I never taken the time to invest in them to recognize them?
So in some ways, this investment of my time was an investment in my financial future and in the security of my family as well. Because if our time together, they learned something in our chit chats that helps them progress their business forward they have a more lucrative…their team continues to grow, they have a more lucrative 2016, then that helps me and my family too. It’s not the sole motivator for why I went out there, but let’s just talk dollars and cents.
If you…let’s go at a customer and say you’re not in network marketing situation, let’s say you have products and your customers get an extra high touch point from you. Maybe all your customers get a live video Zoom call with you once a month or once every couple of months to ask Q & A. That extra time invested, they get that hand written note, and they get access to the Facebook group where you pop in once a day to answer questions and to take care of them.
Do you think those customers are going to stick around longer and continue use your products or do you feel like those customers…the next time you have the next Ebook or whatever you produced you you feel like they are going to buy from you the next time you have something? But if the only time they ever hear from you is, “Oh, buy this. Just work harder. I need you to do more.” Eventually, you’re going to hit deaf ears. You are going to hit deaf ears and it’s going to be like…you all know those people. The only time I hear from them is when they need something or the only time I hear from this person is when they are going to sell me something.
Like don’t be those people. Invest. Invest your time. Like I said, it doesn’t cost you anything monetarily. Time is an asset and I totally…if somebody is going to give me their time, specifically if it’s somebody I am looking up to or I can learn from, that’s huge. That’s so huge that I so appreciate somebody investing their time in me and remember that the next time a mentor or a business partner takes the time to answer that private message, to answer that email, to text you back, to give that phone call, appreciate that from them.
Recognize those people also because the other thing that I have found and I will wrap up with this is that the person at the top, the leader, the person with the vision, it’s lonely there a lot because not a lot of people tell them thank you. Not a lot of people tell them good job. Not a lot people encourage them because you just assume they don’t need it and it’s so easy like you just really assume like, “Oh, they have their stuff together. They know they’re awesome.” and it really…it goes the other way as well.
So recognition for the people you are working with, for the people that you need to support you, and take the time to recognize those people that are investing their time in you as well. So you better recognize! Master recognition and you are going to build an amazing business with an amazing team and have just an amazingly productive and rewarding year and I thank you so much for joining me.
My name is Coach Jimmy. I ask you to leave a comment and let me know how you are going to recognize somebody today. I look forward to talking to you next time. Take care.