Some of the things we've learned aren't true. Plenty of people pass on things that simply don't add up. If you burned yourself on the stove as a child, on the other hand, you learned something you'll remember for the rest of your life. This post is about ignorance. Information and education lead to understanding.
Some people will come at you with negative objections about what you're doing. What's that about? There are of course several different kinds of objections. It can be things that genuinely aren't right, or it can be something they haven't quite understood. If someone tells you that direct selling doesn't work, that supplements aren't needed or that your company is a scam, what do you do? Shift your focus. They're usually uneducated. Be careful who you listen to. You often get feedback from people who don't know. People who suffer from ignorance.
”You don't know what you don't know.” -Jim Rohn
You don't know what you don't know. It's something you haven't learned yet. The people who come with objections, what do they actually know? How educated are they on the subject? Are they people you'd normally take advice from? We all have different people we listen to in different areas. Very few people are masters of every piece of the puzzle.
”The main reason people have financial problems is that their advisors are poor people or salespeople.”
- Robert Kiyosaki
Is it a pyramid?
We could pick a fight with them and say: ”What do you mean by that? Do you think I'd be involved in something like that? Every company is a pyramid! Volvo is a pyramid! Don't you have a boss? Doesn't your boss earn more than you? There you go! You're already in a pyramid! It doesn't matter when you start, you can earn more than everyone who started before you if you sit in more meetings than they have. There are always limits to how money is paid out, so whoever has done the most earns the most! What we do is fairer than your pyramid job!”
Usually that just adds fuel to an argument, and you rarely win a mudslinging contest like that. Remember: the point is to give information to those who want to listen, so more people understand what it is we do. We don't want to argue with people who can't tell the difference between opinion and fact. We want to educate people. Arguing doesn't help. You can't make anyone change their mind. You can add information so that the person arrives at the truth themselves. If you say something, it can be questioned. If they work it out themselves, it's true. Some people don't want to understand. Don't confuse them with the truth. They're not in our target group. We're only looking for people who are looking.
”Arguing with someone who doesn't understand is like playing chess with a pigeon. No matter how good you are, it'll strut around on the board, poop, knock the pieces over and act like it won.”
Empty vessels make the most noise
The ones who know the least tend to be the loudest. Instead of needing to be right in every situation, decide to let it go and focus on talking to people who want to talk to you. It was when I let go of the performance pressure and landed in the fact that all I have to do is educate people that something really happened. At that point you let go of the performance because you simply step into the activity. You educate people about what this is really about so they understand what we do. You'll find the people you're meant to find. Every time you get a questioning objection, think: ”aha! Here we go. Here's a person who hasn't had this information presented to them properly before, and if I can help them understand, that's great, and if they don't want to understand, that's completely fine too.”
Information and education lead to understanding
We often say that we inform the people we'd like to work with and we educate the people who want to work with us. We inform when we present the business, and we recruit people who we then educate. Somewhere along the way we land in understanding, and that's where we're home. After that it's just a matter of duplicating it out to the next person, who gets to work with information and education. It never becomes a chase to be right in every situation. Instead it becomes a genuine interest, an ambition to lead with the information and get the message across. All you can do is add information, what they decide is entirely up to them.
People out there aren't all that well read these days. Most of them don't study much, they scroll past things. If I wrote this far down in the post that I'm going to Bali in March and that anyone who wants to come along for free should get in touch, my phone wouldn't be ringing off the hook until someone started telling their friends, because very few people actually read this far. It doesn't take much to stand out (a mildly provocative blog), but it takes a lot to get through. Instead of deciding to recruit 10 people in a year, decide that you're going to reach 100 people in a year, so that they understand what you do. Then the pressure lifts and you become mentally free from performance.
When you've had a meeting with someone, or even started working with someone, and they come back to you saying they've googled and found all sorts of strange things about health products, about direct selling or about the company you work with, and they don't know what to do, Ray Higdon has a fantastic answer:
”Hey, I'm glad you brought that up. I was thinking you and I should talk about it. If you can't handle people you don't know writing anonymous posts on internet forums, then I don't know if this is something for you. If you value what they write more than what you and I have talked about and what we teach, then I don't think this is something for you. In that case I think we'll have to find someone else to work with. We need people who can stand up for something. We need people we can educate in how to do this so it can be passed on.”
Numbers
Out of 10 people you present to, 7 will find it interesting enough for a follow up. 5 will come along to a hotel meeting and 3 we'll educate into new colleagues. The ones who don't want to join aren't in our target group. Let them go and life gets a whole lot easier.
Summary
Information and education lead to understanding. All we have to do is present it to people so that those who are meant to be on this journey understand what it's about and can become good ambassadors. The others can stay on the platform. The people who are negative, skeptical, the ones who question, who come with objections, the ones you quickly realise there's no point arguing with, let them go. We're looking for people who are looking.
