44: My Low Information Diet...

Hey, what's going on, everyone? This is Steve Larsen, and you're listening to Secret MLM Hacks Radio. Here's the real mystery. How do real MLMers like us who didn't cheat and only bug family members and friends, who want to grow a profitable home business, how do we recruit A-players into our downlines and create extra incomes, yet still have plenty of time for the rest of our lives? That's the blaring question, and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Steve Larsen, and welcome to Secret MLM Hacks Radio.   How you guys doing? It's been a little while since I've published, and I apologize for that. A combination of the holidays mixed with a lot of the stuff going on. I have been, and this is not to beat my chest or anything, but I've been recruiting a lot lately, and there's been a lot of my time and attention focused elsewhere. Also, what I was doing this morning is sitting back and thinking through what's happened, what can I tell you guys about that's been going on.   I have this funnel, this sales funnel that automates. It's been automating a lot of my recruiting, about 75% of it. There's still a last 25% that I haven't finished almost totally automating. It won't be completely automated. It'll be like 95% automated, but what ends up happening is somebody goes through, and they say, "Hey, look, I want to join your downline," and then they go through and ... See, last episode, I talked about getting material for my auto-closing script. What I do is I let the market tell me what I should be saying in that script. Does that make sense? It's what you should be doing too in your own MLM.   Today, what I wanted to tell you a little bit about, though, is what always ends up happening every time I see a new person in MLM come into this world. It's the cycle. It's the same thing that happened to me, honestly, until I realized what was going on. It kind of goes like this: Now, imagine with me, you just heard about MLM, you just, for the first time, you're bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Let's say you've never done anything else business-wise at all, ever. Your only perception at that time is whatever your upline has told you about. Whatever ... I think a lot of you guys agree, and a lot of you guys know that, kind of my take on how MLM recruits. I feel like they're very, I would say I feel like they're stuck in the '90s. There's still very much the friends and family thing, which is a marketing tactic. It is a method. Not the only method, but for some reason, since it is an easy method, it is the only one is typically taught. Does that make sense? Anyways, let me go back to the story though.   It goes like this. It goes like this: You're brand new. You're just barely starting out in business. You're barely starting out in MLM. You don't know, let's say you don't know much. You're, go back to that spot where you're like, "I want to get into this. I am excited about MLM. I really want to make this happen," but as you go and you start moving down the path, you get excited, which is natural, of course. You get excited, you accelerate, you start consuming vast amounts of information, whether from your upline or you're buying books and tapes and CDs and you're learning from other greats.   Whatever it is, you're learning and learning and learning and learning and learning. You should be, and that's great, and you're drinking deeply, but all of a sudden, what ends up happening is, this tends to be the thing that happens in almost every single person's head as I've noticed it. What always happens is usually someone will start reading a book, and then they'll go to book number. They'll take 10 things or some lessons from book number one, then they go on to course number three. Then they go on to CD track number three. Then they go on to presentation or live event number four.   What they do is they end up creating this map in their head of everything it takes to be successful in this. Everything it takes to be ... What they start doing is they start creating these massive checklists inside their head. That's fine, that's great, that's dandy, but ends up happening is the person starts to experience overwhelm in a huge way. It starts to become crippling. They start to get analysis paralysis.   As they're accelerating, as they're on this upward trajectory, eventually, they start leveling out. They level out just a little here and there, and their progress slows because they think, "Oh my gosh. I gotta have X, Y, and Z done. I need to have this, this, and this done. I need to have one, two, and three done. I gotta have these things. Look at all the pieces here. Look at all the players there. Oh my gosh. This, this, this," and then they actually, they corner themselves, and they paint themselves back into a corner of complete paralysis because they've, there's too much to do in their perception. There's too many things to get done in their perception. How do you protect against this?   This is the same thing when I first started learning marketing in general. I was super excited. For years, I was studying, not just studying, I was literally, I was building businesses. It seemed to be in these three-month cycles. Since I'd never done it before, I was practicing and practicing and practicing by actually starting companies. If I hit a wall here, I found something that was more lucrative or better here or there, whatever, I would move on to the next one, and it was like these three-month cycles that I was in.   I was telling somebody the other day, I was like, "Yeah, I'm like a seven-year overnight success story of figuring out what didn't work and eventually stumbling on the amazing things that do," but I started learning, studying, drinking deeply. As I was doing that, I remember one day, it was in college. I was riding my bike home. A peddling bike, not motorcycle at the time because we didn't have enough money for another car. I was riding my bike home, and I was thinking to myself. I was listening to a podcast of somebody. I think it was the Pat Flynn Smart Passive Income Podcast. Love that podcast. Totally got me running and stuff, which is great, but what I realized is as I was biking home, there was this moment of frustration. I remember talking to myself, and I talk to myself a lot, but I remember talking to myself, and I was saying, "Why isn't any of this working?" That was my big question. "How come I can't seem to actually get off the ground with this?"   It was frustrating. It was maddening. I actually, it literally made me mad about it because I was like, "Man, I'm seeing these other people. I know the business that they're in. I know what I would do if I was in that scenario. How come I can't do it to my own? Oh, wait. It's because I don't have a business. Oh, I don't have a business. How many times am I actually asking for someone's money online? Oh, I don't even have a credit card form that's up. Why am I getting mad about this?"   I had to stop. I remember at that exact moment, I did something that was, it's honestly the key, I feel like, to being successful when you're brand new, or even experienced. There's an element to this, but it really helped me, it helped clear the noise in my head, thinking that I had to have this done and this done, remember this strategy, remember that, remember this piece over here, remember this over there, remember this, all these things and all pieces and all these gurus, which is great, which is great. You should learn, which is awesome, but if you don't have a business in the first place and you're not learning for a problem that you actually have to solve, what are you learning for?   What I did is I, on purpose, cultivated what I call a low-information diet. It's actually from Tim Ferriss. It's a low-information diet. Now, I'm not telling...