Pay yourself first

Pay Yourself First - is the key to becoming wealthy. And you can read that in pretty much any book on personal finance. You always save and invest first and spend later. That’s the only way you can accumulate wealth.

But it’s not just in terms of money that it’s true. It’s as much or even more true for the second commodity of life which is limited - time. You want to pay yourself first in time for yourself - for your own growth, for contemplation, for self reflection and then spend it. That’s the only way to become truly wealthy in life too

The Perfect Platform

Was just talking to somebody who came over and he was mentioning that he had never imagined in his life that he will one day set his goals, fight for them, achieve them and celebrate the completion of those goals. 

And I was thinking, it’s so true. Though we read in almost all books on self growth how important this process is but for the most part in our lives it just remains a nice topic read and appreciated - never acted upon.

One of the biggest blessings of this business is the opportunity it gives us to be able to set our own goals, fight for them, achieve them and celebrate them. Every concept we read, needs a platform to experiment and implement it. And if the concept is people skills, learning human behavior, goal setting, self discipline, mind control and using the subconscious mind, there is no better platform than a business in Network Distribution. I feel blessed all the time to be living such a perfect life.

Material journey - an end in itself or a means to an end...

Set a goal that excites you, that stretches you, that makes you lose your sleep. I had heard of all these and Platinum and Emerald were just such goals. But after that, Diamond started seeming so far, it just got lost. Meeting Naren, I met a man setting big goals for himself – breaking 2 Diamonds and 10 Emeralds and going EDC – building a 15000 sft house and buying a BMW – a man running after his dreams with passion and without a doubt, and in turn inspiring so many others to go for theirs and in the process discover who they are and what they are made up of. 

I never found a purpose in engineering – it never could really play the music inside me. But this business of achieving dreams and inspiring people to be a better them and in turn helping them achieve their dreams, had a profound impact deep inside. I found a purpose through this work – creating a better human being – money and dreams being the medium for the change. I think an inherent purpose all of us carry deep inside – whether we have realized or not – is to become a better “us”. There is an innate calling to move upwards – mentally, spiritually, socially, financially. 

If the foundation be based on principles, values, Godliness and goodness, the journey towards our material dreams can only serve as a vehicle for inner growth; for it is not possible without visualization, peace of mind and the use of an inner strength. And if the foundation is not based on the right principles, the same journey can lead to a spiraling downfall towards frustration and agony. 

Stillness of the mind, peace or its visualization are not what you can strive for after attaining your goals materially. The material goals have to become the means to an end and only then will it happen. A giving heart, acceptance, focus, sharing, hard work are the qualities required to get there. The journey is the reward. And new journeys will have to keep getting created to keep realizing more and more. 

Is the journey to your material goals undertaken in total peace?

Till we keep a distance between our deepest desires of achievement and our desire of a spiritual life, there will always be a struggle. It has to become one – there has to be a blending of the two. Material achievement should become the means to an end – the end being a spiritually developed nature. 

If you want to develop a driving that is the fastest, with the least noise, with the least fuel consumption, least wear and tear to the tires, it will surely require becoming one with the car; and it will require a lot of races to be run, improving upon the previous race each time. 

Just like it is easy to turn the steering of a moving car, very difficult to turn a stationary one so it is with life – each journey will make us a better traveler – for the goal is not reaching the destination, the goal is to become a better traveler. 

Till you understand that all you have will be left behind and will not go with you; what will go with you though, are your character traits and your thoughts with your subconscious – any journey will only be a means to refining your inner self – looking inside all the time as to what you are going through traveling the road and working continuously to change and improvise ourselves. 

But without goals…without aggressive goals, which will strain your inner self,  how do you ever realize more than what you already know?

A Platinum journey needs you to work on the qualities of hard work, a pleasing personality and some charisma, which attracts others.

An Emerald journey requires selflessness, thinking about others’ goals, even if it is ultimately for your own, but hopefully the journey makes you internalize it (and sometimes maybe not…but then the journey was wasted)

A Diamond journey would need consistent, persistent work, internalization of values, visualization, staying positive (keeping away from negative) and self discipline.

But a mega Diamond and CAM journey would require the ultimate “becoming” all ofthe above and not just “trying and practicing” all of it. 

When these journeys become the end we lost the purpose of our visit to this planet earth – they have to remain a means to an end, which is stillness of the mind and thus becoming one with the universal energy.

Subconscious - counselling at its best

We can run the business in 2 ways - with the conscious mind and with the subconscious mind. Whenever I’ve tried to run the business with the conscious mind, it’s not just very tiring but very confusing as well. 

Once you are decided on your goal and it has penetrated into the subconscious it’s very easy to achieve it. All you need to do is sit quietly, relax, breathe normally and let your entire body loosen. And there is no need to think of anything - your subconscious will just fill your conscious mind with ideas, with reminders of things crucial which you didn’t remember and so on and so forth. All you need to do is write them down and keep acting on them as they keep coming. The ideas keep coming sequentially and it’s just amazing how they will get the entire jigsaw puzzle to fit in perfectly.

Learnings from leading leaders

It’s easy to work with weak people but there’s no glory in it. Only when you work with leaders do you get a feedback that helps you expose your own blind spots- the things you don’t know that you don’t know. And here are some learnings over the years that I journalled to keep in mind - which means that these are the things I am working on still...it’s a process which might take a lifetime to assimilate:

1. Communicate - the only way to lead leaders is to stay in communication with them. 

2. Leading leaders means you must admit mistakes that you do - you cannot assume that strong leadership will not notice your mistakes and it’s always good to take them in your stride and move on. There is no loss of face in admitting you messed up that particular time.

3. Leading leaders means you are principle centered. You have to be fair towards people and cannot take sides.

4. Leading leaders means that you are loyal to people who are loyal to you - you cannot be opportunistic and bend towards your profit and benefit. The only way to have a long term relationship with leaders is to work with WIN-WIN.

5. Leading people means that you are not “telling” them what to do but “leading” them to the right thing by developing their own thinking. You give a man a fish you fed him for the day, you teach a man to fish, you fed him for life. 

6. Leaders like to be treated nicely - they don’t like being bossed around. And so when you lead leaders, you treat them like you’d like to be treated - “nicely”

7. Leaders are always trying to find opportunities to make emotional deposits in other people’s accounts because they know that’s the only way they can withdraw at a later point in time when needed.

Follow Through

Everybody wants to learn the art of doing the follow up because that is the step that helps bring people into the business. But one has to understand that follow up is not a one time activity. What is more important is the follow through. 

When we sponsor people we actually don’t sponsor them - we just sign them up. It takes them a few weeks or months to really get ‘sponsored’. In fact the moment they sign up, they suddenly start evaluating everything around them trying to justify whether they made the right decision or not. And more often than not, negative attracts us more than the positive. Our mind wants to find reasons not to have to put in the extra effort and go uphill. This is the time when we need to do a follow through. 

Every time I meet people after I sign them up, the first question I have for them is “Do you have any questions?”. And almost always they do have questions which all revolve around some feedback or hearsay they got from the people around them. Each time I meet them, I have to treat them like prospects and empty their mental garbage. At the same time I give them CDs/Books to help protect further garbage from coming in. And in the matter of a few weeks itself the prospect turns into a real “downline”

Beginnings

When we went to Manipal/Renuka’s place in the US after finishing Emeraldship, one of the many gifts that Taru got was a scrapbook with beautiful quotes from Renuka. But that was not the best gift. The best gift was an advice that came along with the notebook. She said that the best thing we could do was to write down things that we are doing in our business - for years later they will be relevant and will help the future generations of leaders that we will create. 

And we did it - we noted the turning points of our business in this notebook - accompanied with beautiful pictures and quotes that it already had. 

And here is one of the first entries from it, dated 5th November, 2004:

“ Got Arpan/Nidhi, Manoj/Priya and Akash/Shilpa together and it wasmagical - we played some videos including our Emerald recognition video. With 20STP club Manoj opened 5 personal kits in the last month. They talked about how they did it and he said that he does the whole plan like a story of how he met me and got impressed and how successful I am and what a privilege it is to be able to associate with me - creates an aura around Ankur Gupta and that’s what goes and creates a magic result. Build the business around a person and not around a meeting. We’ll have 100 people from these 3 IBOships and break 3 silvers here for sure”

And how amazing, in just a few years from that night, all these 3 couples are going to start Emerald qualification in a few months. It’s just about keeping on keeping on and not giving up - having the patience and the faith that things will work out.