Making Your LIST

Do you have your LIST started yet? Do you even know what your LIST is? You're about to find out! Your LIST is simply every person you've ever known by name... written down. It is estimated that the average adult knows about 2,000 people by first name. You might find that hard to believe. But it's true. You might not be able to just rapid-fire name them off. But if you thought about it and had tools to help jog your memory, you could probably come up with many more than you're thinking of right now off the top of your head.

You might wonder why you need a list. You're not alone. In fact, most people laugh (if only to themselves) the first time they're told they should make a list of every person they've ever known. And most people fail to achieve their most basic goals, let alone their big WHY for being in business. But the ones who have built huge businesses did a few simple things that led to great success because someone who'd already accomplished great things told them to. In other words, MAKE YOUR LIST.

You should include on your LIST every person you know by name. It doesn't matter how well you know them. It doesn't matter if you like them. It doesn't matter if they hate you. It doesn't matter if you think they're too good to be in your business. It doesn't matter if you think they're too bad to be in your business. It doesn't matter if they don't yet know, trust or like you. It doesn't matter how far away they live from you. Everyone you've ever known goes on the list. You'll find out that you are not going to talk to everone on your list. Don't think about that for now. Don't think of people you are going to talk to, that's not what this is about. Think of EVERYONE.

Need a place to start? Grab a pen and a tablet and write down everyone from about 16 to 98 years old. If you're in a relationship, then every one of these categories will double. Start writing down everyone in your immediate family. Write down your children if they're 16 or older. Step children. Parents. Grandparents. Siblings. Aunts. Uncles. Cousins. Cousins living nearby. Cousins living in other time zones. Cousins living in other galaxies. Cousins you think, “They'll never get in my business.” Yep. Those cousins, too. When you're finished with this portion of your LIST, you should have every single living relative 16 or older in your family. Now write down the same folks from your significant other.

Move on to current close friends. Every close friend that you have right now. It doesn't matter that you live thousands of miles apart and only talk by phone. Now move on to all the besties you've ever had. Think back through every grade of school. Who was your best friend in each grade? College? Who were your dorm friends? Put them on the list. Put every name of every person you can remember from every grade of school. Even if you don't know their last name, put their first name on the list: Julie from community college. You can find and fill in details later. Every job you've ever had. Every roommate. Every house you've ever lived in. Every sports team you've ever played on. Every hobby you've ever had. Who were your best friends in all those areas? When you're finished, write down the same list of your significant other.

Move on to current acquaintances. Facebook might be a good place to start. Write down every facebook friend you have. Write down everyone you currently work with, play with, live near, and talk to on a regular basis. Every single person in each of those categories. Every co-worker. Every recreational activity acquaintance. Every neighbor. Write down every parent of all your children's friends. If you don't know their names, write “little Johnnie's mom and dad” and find out their names. Every coach. Every teacher. Every person who serves you in some way. Your mailman. If you don't know you're mailman's name, write “my mailman,” and find out his or her name. Every person who sells you anything. The checkout people at every store you visit regularly. The people at the bank, bar, barber, brewery, winery, and gas station. Your mechanic. Your doctors, dentists, hair stylists, chiropractors, and pharmacists. Every elected and non-elected government worker you know. Everyone you know from church, PTA, clubs, sororities, utility companies. Every other person you come into contact with for any reason whatsoever on a regular basis, write them down. Now do the same for your significant other. Then do the same for everyone in every one of those categories from your entire past and the past of your significant other.

Move on to every friend or acquaintance of every family member you can think of them ever having. These aren't your friends and acquaintances. You just know them through your family members. It might be, “my sister's friend from zumba, Stacy.” Stacy goes on the list. Do the same for friends of friends as well as family members. When you've done that, do the same for your significant other.

Every category above is meant to jog your memory. Don't make the mistake of thinking you're making a list in order to have people to pester about your business. There might be some on your LIST that you can't wait to tell about Jamberry Nails. So you have no problem putting them on your LIST. But now you're already mentally qualifying who gets put on the LIST and who doesn't, as though you've already made millions of dollars and know how to decide what's the best practice. Don't qualify. Just write.

You might be wondering the purpose of wasting time writing down a bunch of names of people you barely know. You might think pre-qualifying the names would be a mark of efficiency. But not everyone on your list is going to be approached about your business at all. Some of the people on your LIST will go on to be your customers. Some team-members. But many will just be a name on the page who you never put effort into contacting.

Then why put it on the LIST? The LIST does more than give you people you already know to talk to about Jamberry Nails (people you already know are called your 'warm list' as opposed to 'cold contacts'). Every name of everyone you write down on your LIST is a person. And those persons are interrelated to other persons, who are interrelated to other persons. Some say only six degrees of that interrelatedness is all that stands between you and every single other person on the planet!

When you write down the names of people, you get to thinking about people. And our business IS people. When we read through the memory joggers and write down names of people from them, we get to thinking about how all those people relate to one another in a network. And our business IS networking. Working on the LIST is a great way to open our minds to a world far bigger than what we've been living. Just writing down the names of people will eventually cultivate in our minds consideration of others and compassion for them.

Now, you might be thinking, “I'm not writing down all those people! This is stupid!” But everyone who has ever made serious money in this kind of business, has made some kind of a LIST. If they've made a mental one, they've probably made mental money. If they've made a condensed LIST, they've probably made a condensed paycheck. If you've not built your business empire, don't mock the best practices of those who have already built their business empires. And all of them say to make the biggest list you possibly can using the kind of memory joggers seen above.

In fact, as a new consultant, the LIST is the most important work for us to accomplish. Now we'll discover why. It has to do with the marketing strategy of the company we signed up with. Jamberry Nails does not distribute through traditional retail outlets. This is why the company falls under the concept of direct sales. They sell directly to the consumer without paying a store chain as the middle man.

There are many such direct sales companies selling billions of dollars a year in products. They have different marketing models and business plans. A direct sales company could pay a team of sales representatives to sell for them. Thy could divide up their entire marketing area into territories, set a commission rate, and let the sales team run with it. They would basically have a staff of salespeople as employees. Under that model, if the salespeople want to earn more money, they have no choice but to personally sell more products. That is not what Jamberry Nails chose to do.

Jamberry Nails has built personal sponsoring of new consultants into their compensation plan. This means that Jamberry Nails is not just a direct sales company, though it is that. It is also a network marketing company. Network marketing is just an alternative method of bringing goods to market. Not only does Jamberry Nails pay commissions to us to distribute nails to customers, they also pay us commissions and bonuses based on the sales volume created by new consultants that we bring into our business (sometimes called a team).

This is why the LIST is so important. If we're going to build big businesses is network marketing, then we're going to have to be good networkers. We can't have a network marketing business without a network of people. Jamberry Nails could put millions of dollars into advertising their product to make people aware of it. And they could put salespeople to work distributing it. Instead, they've chosen to compensate us as the advertisers and the distributors. Jamberry Nails pays us for our personal sales. But they also reward us for our LIST.

Imagine how many LISTS that Jamberry Nails has access to because they pay us for the total sales volume of our team-members. That method of marketing will likely result in millions of people being made aware of our awesome products. So it makes sense that those of us with the biggest LISTS will end up being more valuable to the provider of our products because we will be giving Jamberry Nails access to a bigger base of future customers and party hostesses and consultants.

Obviously, our LIST will be a work in progress. We'll learn how to manage our LIST in a future post. We'll always be adding new people to it as we meet them. From here on out, everyone we meet, under every circumstance, will be written on the LIST. For now, start making your list. Use the memory joggers above if you need help. If you start with those closest to you currently, you might end up with a couple hundred people in an hour or two. That'll be a great start. Then, maybe devote fifteen minutes a day or whatever you decide until you exhaust your current network.