“Congratulations Sandeep, with what you’ve just told me, you are a fully qualified member of the Leader’s Club… you’re halfway to diamond!”
“Huh.. uh … thanks!” I offered with a weak smile.For the life of me I couldn’t figure that one out. I had been hanging out with these guys since just a few weeks… and often I had heard them tell me that getting to diamond was a two to five-year journey… that was the pinnacle of achievement for networkers in general… so how could I already be halfway to diamond? Was I really that smart?
“Here, Arjun asked me to let you have these very special tapes when you crack LC.” That was Tharini, Nama’s wife, pulling up from beside the big man, with a bundle of what seemed to be a dozen or so tapes. “Congratulations!” she exclaimed, extending her short enthusiastic hand that seemed to flutter with the whim of her smile.
“Huh.. uh … thanks! But what’s all this about Tharini? All I said was that Asiya has signed up on the continuing education program…” I repeated, wondering what could have got them so excited about this ‘halfway to diamond’ thing. Yes, Mahesh had been goading me on to finish that signup so I qualify for ‘Leader’s Club’ (or LC)… but the rest of the excitement went beyond me.
Nama smiled. Nama is a guy who handled a team of about 1500 people at his job. The ‘Most Effective’ Vice President of his company the previous year. The only thing Nama said he knew, over and above what the other VPs did, were the B-quadrant leadership principles our mentors taught and applied. How to smile the way he did was one of them.
The ability to answer inane questions repeatedly with a patient smile was another. I was really bringing out his full potential! “A diamond just does what you did. You’ve done the LC module yourself. Now you know everything you need to ‘know’. Now you just have to ‘do’.”
The words ‘know’ and ‘do’ were deliberately emphasized. At least in India many people have knowledge but very few apply it. Was he ensuring I sensitize myself to it? Mahesh was overhearing our conversation and chipped in, “Yes Sandeep, diamond is just about enabling others to go LC. About 50 others. That’s all.”
50 others. That’s all? Hmmm… if I did LC in a month, 50 would mean 50 months. That’s the two to five years these guys talk about. And I now have the skills one needs to get there. Now I have to empower others. Hmmm… seemed to make sense.
“Please keep your mobile phones in silent mode. We know your calls are important but so is this meeting.” “Uh.” My thoughts were abruptly interrupted by this announcement. Mahesh and I were entering a meeting hall when Nama and Tharini had intercepted us. It was a meeting of our network marketing team. My first ‘big meeting’ as an insider.
I felt Nama tap my shoulder, “Right Sandeep, see you after the meeting.” Saying so, smiling characteristically, he sped off with Tharini and Mahesh to the front of the hall. I found a place and continued my wonder.
“These are a strange bunch of guys.” Here I was, all by myself, tapes in hand, waiting for some strange meeting to start. There was music… people danced about in the open space around the central aisle. There was noise… no, cacophony. Come to think of it, it was actually a very festive atmosphere. People looked happy. Not everyone seemed rich… but were surely well to do… some stretching their means. The stretch-types seemed to make up for their appearance through the brightness in their eyes. Everyone looked extremely positive. Who are these guys? They didn’t look like salesmen.
Well, I was not a salesman either. I was a brand consultant. Mahesh was an electronics store-chain owner. Nama was a cost accountant who headed an outsourcing division. What was there to sell anyway? Again my thoughts were interrupted. It was the national anthem. Everyone fell silent. We rose.
After the anthem, about half the hall clapped. I didn’t. I asked my neighbor who did, “is it ok to clap after the anthem?”
“Clapping keeps you excited,” he said. “Any harm in staying excited all your life?” Sound logic, I thought.“Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome… I’m Dr. Sudhakar Reddy and I will be your host for this fine Sunday morning. You are here at a Business Building Seminar or BBS, which we actually consider a Brain Building Seminar. The business we are in looks obvious but it is not. It’s simple… but is also as complex as we are. And though it comes in an uglylooking brown paper bag… it is solid gold inside. How much of this gold can you uncover for your family’s security? It is only limited by how much of your brain you can develop. And for this, I am delighted to present to you today’s speaker…” And his voice trailed off in my consciousness because I stayed on with the ‘brain building seminar’ phrase he used.
For quite a while I didn’t hear anything else. It happens with all of us. We stop at some word and stay with it. Missing the moments as they go along. If only we could tune into each and every moment of our lives… we would live so fully and grow so much more.
Like the story of the Zen monk and his disciple. They were walking through the forest when they came upon a stream. A young woman was trying to negotiate getting across, but the slippery rocks didn’t agree with her footwear. Just then the mentor said, “Don’t bother Madam, I will carry you across.” And saying so, he did. Once they were by themselves on the other side, the younger monk couldn’t contain himself and burst out, “Master! What did you do! Zen prohibits us from mingling with women and carrying them around is blasphemy! How could you possibly do that?” And the master replied, “Son I merely helped a fellow spirit across the stream. You are the one who’s carrying a woman in your mind all this while.”
That, is what being in the NOW is about. That is what living as a spiritual being with a human experience is truly. We are so caught up in looking upon ourselves as human beings with spiritual experiences… spirituality is really the reverse. Oneness lies in being one with the spiritual form always… and yet conducting ourselves in the human form, doing whatever might be required to be done at that moment.
I suddenly realized I’d moved into a different thought stream altogether sparked by the brain-building phrase. Shaking myself back in, I found there was a lot in this environment that I never found in the corporate world. And it all seemed good. Just sitting there absorbing the stray words that came into my brain, I felt I was growing. Brain building. Hmmm…
“You’re next.” “Next??” And sure enough, there was an announcement... “All new leader’s clubs since the last BBS please come up on the stage.” Unsure of what I was getting into, I got up and got onto the stage. Ten or so others were around me. “Congratulations!” said the MC, “please state your name, occupation and one line why you’re onto this project.”
“Aseem and Puja Grover. Mechanical Engineer in the auto sector. I want to be free from my job, become a consultant, and spend all my time with my wife and two-year old son.” “Jayant and Mahi Vashist. Chartered Accountants. We have been practicing 15 years and have not been able to take a single vacation. We want to travel the world.” There were another couple of couples. I meandered my way to the last. “Sandeep Nath. I run a consulting company and I want to learn how to build a system based business.” There were claps. Lots of claps as we stepped off the stage. Now what are they excited about, I wondered.
Just then I caught sight of Nama and Tharini. He hugged me and she had an ear-to-ear smile. Naturally, it reflected. I was all smiles. All charged. All confused… and all confident. Mahesh shook my hand. The meeting resumed. I felt two inches taller.
I don’t remember who the speaker was, but I remember he was introduced as a phenomenal speaker with businesses across continents. Owning large businesses had been my dream too, and that’s why that left a strong impression. I also remember he told us an incredible story. Of Hernando Cortez.
Now Mr Cortez was an infamous conqueror, who in 1519 took it into his head that he would take 11 ships, 500 soldiers, 100 sailors, and 16 horses from Spain to Mexico. Why? There was a huge treasure that lay there, guarded by the Mayans since hundreds of years. Numerous conquerors had died in earlier attempts to get it. But the treasure was real and Cortez realized he would need people of extraordinary commitment to accompany him on this voyage.
So, for starters, Cortez did not just recruit the people to go with him. He laid a vision out for them. He spoke to each family about how great their future would be as they returned with the treasure. He built the dream of how their generations would live in wealth and favor… and the right people came on board.
When they landed on the shore, again he did not immediately embark on the conquest. He laid everyone down on the beach and they shared. They shared the belief that they would go back to their happy families with the riches. They immersed in the thoughts of running their hands through the jewels and the diamonds and the gold and imprinted that deep into their minds.
And finally, the day came when Cortez would tell them the strategy. The brass-tacks. And everyone gathered around expecting directions on who would do what and who would cover whom and etc. But Cortez did none of that. He just said 3 words. 3 decisive words, that in one stroke sealed the fate of their voyage. 3 words that ensured they would not perish like the earlier speculators. 3 words that made the decision. And those 3 words were, “Burn the ships.” If they were going home, they were going home in the Mayan ships. No options!
Burn the ships. What a concept! Burn the ships. What were my ships I wondered? What did I run back to, every time the going got tough? What really limited my potential?
By now, sitting by myself in the hall, I was coming into consciousness of my dream as well. I wanted to have businesses all over the world. I had always wanted that. I just didn’t know how. IIT did not teach me that. Neither did IIM. All they did was made me an expert. And an expert is stuck to his place. Trading his time for money. An expert has no leverage. He is not a B-quadrant guy. And so an expert’s dreams are restrained by what he can do with his own time and money. Which is why, all I could think of – to say from stage – was, “I want to learn how to build a system based business.” I didn’t say I wanted to build an international business. I didn’t even say I wanted to travel the world. I just said what my analytical mind told me I was permitted to dream.
In fact I didn’t even believe that this mickey-mouse operation could result in anything very substantial. Even though the speaker has already walked the path. Even though my own sponsor, Mahesh Raju had.
The fact was, I didn’t know anything about ‘heart’.“The left quadrants are driven by head Sandeep. The Bquadrant is driven by heart,” Mahesh had explained casually while telling me his growth story. And now he was with me again as we were walking back to our cars. “How did you feel about the LC recognition?” he asked.
“I felt great. I had not expected this.”Mahesh smiled. “Hold that feeling. Program your mind to recall it for you whenever you feel otherwise. This meeting has served you well – for life! Now you must finish your bookings for Malaysia.”
Mahesh’s timing was perfect. At every meeting, book the next one. And your activity will move flawlessly. Basil Harris, our mentor in Australia, was coming to Malaysia. He was calling his Indian, Singaporean and Thai teams to Johar Baru (JB, Malaysia) for an LC-and-up qualification meet. “And yes, this meeting will be very important for you to imbibe the system,” Mahesh continued.
He always chose his words carefully. Another learned skill of network marketing. ‘For you to imbibe the system’ he said. Not for you to go diamond. Not for you to be free. Not for you to have an international business. Just for you to imbibe the system. Just what I was looking for. Who else but my upline knew me that well?
“It really is a mickey-mouse business you know. Malaysia will show you that.” We laughed. It was a joke we both knew. Mickey Mouse was one of the largest entertainment businesses of our times… appreciating that was a matter of perspective.
*****“I am happy you made it.” Nama had his standard clichés but they still sounded nice. Especially after an overnight flight to JB. And I reflected that no one else in my life took the trouble to articulate such words. My wife certainly did not. She hadn’t come with me to Malaysia either. She didn’t share my dream. She didn’t bother with these people. But she still loved me dearly, however strangely she might have shown it.
“Arjun came in last night”, continued Nama as he led me into his room. We hadn’t been able to get the same connection from India so Tharini and Nama had preceded my arrival and checked in a few hours earlier.
It was a classy hotel. We took rooms in it so the conference could be residential in nature. One wall of Nama’s room overlooked a sprawling lawn, lush with tropical greenery, recently washed in early summer rain. I took a place in the corner of the room so I would not be distracted by the magnificence of nature and could focus on what he had to tell me about Arjun.
All I knew was, Arjun was his upline; a 32 year old karate black belt who had been financially free since six years. He’d worked 3 years at a famous multinational bank in Mumbai after his MBA, but his freedom was far too precious for him to want to continue… and network marketing had been his escape route… in spite of a 9 to 9 job. As a management student he had had the good fortune of coming under the tutelage of Basil Harris in Australia. And he’d followed Basil’s footsteps - and the B-quadrant training system - to be free and stay free ever since. He was younger than all of us. And richer than most of us. Very sharp. Very confident. Very humane. He confessed to me later that he hadn’t always been like that. “This business teaches you life,” he’d mentioned in passing, with a naughty wink.
But Nama was excited too, to be in the midst of people even he had only just heard about till then. “Sam Star is also here Sandeep”, he gushed! “He is quite a talented guy… a versatile actor, trainer, ex-corporate executive… he’s ‘fun’ in human form.” Sam was also on Basil’s team, in JB from Australia.
“That’s too good Nama… I have heard Sam Star on an audio tape earlier. ‘Self image and goals’ was its title… in fact I’ve heard this tape about 15 times or more.”
“15 times? You’re not serious!” Nama screeched playfully. He knew that 15 was the norm for any serious player in the network marketing industry. And this confirmed to him that I was one.
“Nama, Sam touched two areas very dear to me. One was my own self-image. You know I am a page-3 type of person, and I was very concerned about true and false imagery. His talk helped me resolve that.”
“Hmmm, and the other?” By now Nama had finished putting his clothes in the cupboard and was looking out of the magnetic window, which had been further magnetized by Tharini’s presence in the garden. Would he at all be listening to me, I wondered.
“The other was a story he narrated,” I continued, reveling in it myself. “It was of the border area between two of the fragmented east European nations. Evidently they were at peace but the snipers would often take pot shots at each other to entertain themselves. And keep the medicos busy. At other times they’d stroll past the border post and exchange cigarettes or booze. And during one such friendly exchange, one of the soldiers shared the marketing plan. And it went over the border… are you with me?” I paused to check.
“Absolutely! And as I remember it, the business grew and grew and grew thanks to the system. And when there was a call to arms, the soldiers wouldn’t shoot at each other, right?” smiled Nama.
“Bingo! Because they represented teams that were creating wealth together… Why would anyone shoot a brother who was at the post only for a few days… set to retire beside the lake with his family thanks to his passive networking income?”
That ignited Nama’s mind all right. Jumping into a chair beside me he flipped a few things around on the side table as though he was searching for a paper to write on. Sensing that, I reached for my pocket and pulled out the airline ticket which was one-side printed. He grabbed it with a sparkle in his eye.
Laying it on the table, Nama said, “Sandeep I don’t know to this day if Sam’s story is real or made-up, but I can see it as real.” Nama drew what seemed to be a map with two countries on it. And then a body of soldiers and laypeople on either side. And then, with a frenzy, he began to draw lines across the border and within each country, to depict how people who understood the marketing plan would network with each other just so their sons and daughters… the soldiers… would develop an income source that would take care or them in death or retirement.
“See Sandeep, people across borders want the same things. They want their families close to them, peace, and money to live comfortably. They just have to understand that network marketing is providing all of this through its simple plan,” he said, looking towards me for a reaction.
“I can see the peace that network marketing can create. And the camaraderie for personal growth is serious. I’ve experienced that energy in the atmosphere at my first meeting itself boss,” I avered.
Happy with the response, Nama continued, “And you know what I believe? I believe spiritual organizations that seek to support their monks and students will also embrace network marketing as part of their lives very very soon.”
“Why is that?” I asked, genuinely baffled by the connection.“Two reasons at least,” Nama said without a blink, “one, because they otherwise scramble about for sponsorships to run their institutions… that’s a waste of time and energy… and the money is lying on the table once they network together with their families and town-dwellers. They just need to understand that.” He paused to let it sink in. “And two, because as you will soon see, successful network marketers and spiritually elevated beings are on the same wavelength!”
The love. Affection. Trust. Hope. Faith. I had experienced these first-hand. “Successful people in network marketing operate at a higher vibration and that’s infectious, isn’t it” I asked, knowing the answer already.
And humbly he said, “It is! So shall we go downstairs and meet them?”The two days of the conference just whizzed past. So much sharing. So much knowledge on relationships, discipline, work ethic and specific issues. Wow! And so much recognition. Happiness. Bliss. It was overwhelming!
The one thing of Malaysia I will carry with me for life will be the sight of new emeralds and new diamonds recognized there. Single burka-clad women literally jumping, screaming whistling on stage. Celebrating freedom from the bottom of their hearts. Connected as one being… from body to mind to emotion, thought and spirit. Vibrating in oneness. Burka, veil and all. Dancing. Ecstatic. Free. Not one, not two, but dozens. Dozens of frenzied women who knew – like Arjun and Cortez – that there was no looking back. And what was behind was very humble anyway. Most often it was a oneroom tenement and six kids. And a resolve to change things through a vehicle called network marketing and a mentor. These ladies shook me up. I imagined such ladies would also be in Pakistan. Such aspiration… such energy existed everywhere. Nobody had yet tapped such enormous human potential and resolve. Our business had not even entered that part of the world. But it would. Maybe from the border. Maybe from the convention halls. I didn’t know. All I knew was someone would be needed to plant the seeds. And that someone would be me. A decision was made. A real dream was born. Post-Johar Baru I was a changed man.
Through the trip I learned more about Basil. A former tycoon of South Africa, he was forced to restart life at 37… moving to Australia due to the uncertain business climate back home. He knew nobody – except a close circle of new acquaintances. And they shared the network marketing principles with him.
Using that vehicle Basil, Leone, and their 2 kids under 10, settled into their freedom in 38 months. It had been 29 years since then, and their growth had been continuous. With or without their active involvement. Of course, they had always been involved with mentoring. Passionately. Basil’s focus had always been on relationships. He understood early on that network marketing was fundamentally a people activity. And if you can get this one people-activity right, you will get every other people-activity right.
Nama leveraged those very principles to manage the large team of young outsourcers at his workplace. Mahesh built 40 stores for his electronics retail business; that’s 40 teams of people working on a shared vision. In their company I quickly learned that network marketing was not a business actually. It was a way of life.
*****“If you can get this one people-activity right, you will get every other people-activity right. Networking is not something you ‘do’. It is something you ‘be’.”
– Sandeep Nath*****
In the late nineteen-eighties, Basil, Leone and a handful of diamonds from a few countries teamed up with Jim Dornan to form the system for training people in professional networking. Jim was an extraordinary visionary. With his wife Nancy, he transferred their vision to many across the planet and taught common folk like me to become visionaries. The couple was enormously duplicated and they stand at the pinnacle of vision building. But it wasn’t always that way for them either.
Jim and Nancy started their business to explore personal freedom. To have a 20-hour work-week. And they enjoyed exactly that kind of life for a few years. But a financial tsunami struck with the birth of their second child, Eric. This little soul needed a dozen surgeries in his first year just to survive a congenital condition of spina bifida. Medical bills drove them to explore the ceiling on their little network marketing business. And they didn’t find any!
30 years later their business has grown to billions of dollars. Eric did good. And thanks to their inclination to invest their time and money on it, the game of ‘power-soccer’ (played by the likes of Eric on wheelchairs) came to be recognized as an international sport.
“They continue to mentor and influence lives directly and indirectly. Their significance is felt across entire villages in Africa where they are taking care of AIDS orphans, and in India where they’ve set up the largest school for resettling street children. Besides this they are lighting up lives with their many books, talks and snippets on leadership, attitude and courage,” an introductory note read.
I didn’t know any of this when I started. I never could even have guessed. All I knew was, I would explore. And let the skeptic in me rest for a while. And boy, have I been grateful!