Fake It Till You Make It?

Have you ever heard, “Fake it until you make it?”  Here’s a better way… that actually works. It doesn’t matter how much you hope, dream, or read your goals.  If you don’t carve out space and make the time to do contributing actions (toward your goal)… you’ll never get there.

Start small.  Start slow.  Start simply.  But start.  

Even if you’re only doing one lead per week.  

Those small contributing actions will snowball into more and more, and the momentum is what will carry you through to your goal. 

Can you Fake it Till You Make it?

Here’s the situation: You dream of a better life. You write your vision and your desired state. You think about it all the time, day after day, but you don’t execute it. Something is holding you back. 

You don’t know what it is, but something is holding you back. You don’t really believe you can do it, but you don’t want to let go of the dream.

I want you to get this idea, because it’s really important. If it hasn’t happened to you, you will find people who it’s happened to. You have to do contributing actions to get to your dream.

A vision with no actions taken toward the vision is a delusion. It’s a pipe dream.

If you’re faking it, you’ll never make it.

To answer your question: no, faking it doesn’t make it at all. It never will. I hate to tell you that, but it just will not work that way. How do I know this? 

From Zero to $150k Per Month… What Changed?

Because this guy is me. This was Hawaii in 1988, about six months before I would move to Washington DC and join network marketing. Five years from this date, I would be well over $150,000 a month in income.

What changed? I had tried different things, and I knew the feeling of failure. And I felt it in the beginning in network marketing, I felt this phenomenon of having a dream but something holding me back from it.

What happens here? What should you do?

Number one is quit listening to whatever it is that’s causing you not to step forward. Just quit listening to it. Just quit.

When You’re Scared to Make the Jump

Have you ever stood on a cliff and everybody else has already jumped off into the water? You’re thinking, “Man, I don’t want to do it, but it’ll be fun. I want to do it. I don’t want to do it.” Then at some point you just go.

The first time I jumped out of an airplane with a parachute, of course it was a bit frightening, but everybody was already going forward and they were successfully landing.

I remember the resistance that I had, but I said, “All right, I just have to trust this.”

I just went forward and went out the door. I had to stop listening to my resistance.

There was another time that I was sitting there and it was maybe my fifth jump, and I was about the third man in the stick. 

The guy in front of me who was going to be be the first guy out, the jump master pointed him to go, and he jumped out, and everything was good. The next guy jumped out, and everything was good.

Then I got up there and I was freaked. All I saw was the parachute rolling around me like a cigarette, and me not being able to cut away or do anything. That’s what I saw. 

I knew I was having a premonition and I knew I was going to die. I just knew it. I just knew it. I tried to stop in the door, and as any jump master should do, he just put his foot in the center of my lower back and kicked me out the door. Well, I knew I was going to die.

But I was surprised when I looked up and I saw the risers above me and I thought, “Hmm, wow. What was that? What was that all about? I imagined the whole thing!”

So I want you to get this idea that this current state identity can be wrong, as the desired state identity can also be wrong, but you are the one who’s running this thing.

That’s the main thing that I’m going to share with you before I give you the details of what happens here.

Start with One Lead A Week

Quit listening to the current state identity, and just do one lead a week. Just one lead a week. It’s really minimum. It is a contributing action.

What happens when you do a lead a week? You’re no longer faking it, and you know that.

When you are faking it, you know that. It doesn’t matter what anybody else knows out there. You may seem like you’re rocking it, but you know you’re faking it. That’s the only person that matters.

If you’re doing one a week, at least you know you’re not faking it. It’ll take a long time to have success with this at that rate, but you’re doing contributing actions.

Contributing Actions: Moving into Your Desired Identity

That’s what I did when I started. Once I did a lead a week for a couple of weeks, I thought, “I’m still alive. It didn’t kill me.” So I added more and I kept adding more and more and more quantity of leads. That is how I walked my way out of this.

You’ve not attained your vision yet, but you’re not faking it. You’re moving into your desired identity. This is key. You moved out of the current state identity and you moved into the desired state identity. You’re moving into the identity. I’m not saying you have the end result that you want. I’m saying that you’re moving into the identity.

When you make no contributions toward this desired identity, you’re faking it. It’s a pipe dream. When you make contributing actions toward it, you’re moving into the identity.

That is the fundamental shift that has to occur. You’re moving into your desired identity and carving out the space.

Earlier videos that I’ve done were having to do with carving out the space and driving the new actions into that space.

Somebody says, “I don’t have time.”

“You don’t have time for one?”

Somebody says, “I don’t have time to exercise.”

“Really? Everybody exercises. As soon as you wake up in the morning and you stand up and walk to the bathroom, that’s exercise. So are you saying you don’t have time to do that too?”

It becomes an excuse. This current state identity is a creative person. This person will give you all kinds of excuses – just keeps dealing them out. It’s you, and it’s messing with you.

Yeah, you can exercise. If it’s only 15 minutes, or 10 minutes to start with. At least you’re moving into the new identity.

Every Action is a Vote Toward Your New Identity

That’s the fundamental difference between this concept of you’ve got to be this new identity before you can attain this desired state you want. You don’t get the money the day that you become that new identity. Way back when you break through the barrier of the current state identity and you take off that chain and you start doing contributing actions towards the desired state identity is when you move in to the new desired identity.

Here’s why:

It doesn’t matter how much you hope, dream, or read your goals. It doesn’t matter how many times you do that.

Each action you do is a vote toward your identity (old or new).

If you do nothing, it’s a vote for the old. If you do something, then it’s a vote toward your new identity.

At what point do you think that you become this new thing that you want? At what point do you think you do that?

It’s a gradual thing. And everybody tells you, including myself, that you are in your current state, and you have to be that desired state before you can do the actions to get you there.

You say, “But I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t feel confident. I don’t feel comfortable.”

But nobody’s ever said it the way I’m saying it now:

You have to become that. This is going to be a journey. If you never take that one step, that’s the problem. You have to take that step, and keep taking that step, and taking that step. Each action you do or don’t do is a vote toward your identity, old or new.

New Identity: If You Do This for 90 out of 100 Days…

If you work out 90 days out of 100 days, you are a person who works out. That is logical. You’re not an athlete. You’re not going to win any gold medals, but you have changed. You are now a person who works out. That’s your identity.

That is what I’m trying to explain to you here. It’s really, really simple.

It doesn’t matter how much you hope, dream, or read your goals, if you don’t carve the space out of your daily routines and make the time to do contributing actions, then the old identity wins.

If you just keep your same schedule, it doesn’t matter how much you hope or dream at all. That’s the fundamental here.

This is the pipeline. It’s not scary. It’s quite simple when you do it.

Start and move just one lead a week across the pipeline for 90 days out of 100 days, and you are a network marketing professional. You’ve moved into the identity.

If you do something for 90 days out of 100, you have changed already. You have become the identity that you needed to become. No, you’re not a millionaire yet. You may not have even made any money yet. But the difference is that you’re moving leads, and that is the identity.

The actions of the pipeline embody the identity of this desired state that you mocked up and put there. If you’re doing them, you’re doing the identity of this thing that you desire, so you’re moved into the identity.

For those of you who have been following me all along, this first step is “I am,” and that’s an identity. “I am (an identity).” “I am a networker.”

Taking the actions of the pipeline is what “I am a networker” is all about.

Whether you earn hundreds, or thousands, or millions is all based on quantity of leads.

If you just start moving one a week, that’s fine. When you realize that you didn’t die, move two a week for as many weeks as you need to. And then three, and then one day you’re going to say, “Why don’t I just do 10 a day?”

It’s going to hit you that way, because you’ve moved into this new identity.

I promise you, this is how it works.

The Elevator (Too Shy to Talk to Anyone!)

That’s the way I had to it. I was the shyest guy you’ve ever heard of. I remember in this little town in Southern Maryland where I started, I couldn’t talk to anybody. I would just nod. I could tell a waitress what I wanted to eat, or go into the post office or something, but that was pretty much it. I couldn’t just talk to people.

I remember that I said to myself, “I have to be able to talk to people. I’ve got to change this.”

And so I just did this little gradient growth. I went to an elevator in a mall that was near where I was. It was a small mall, but it did have an upstairs. I would ride that elevator and wait for somebody to get on, and I would just nod. I would just say hi. And if I was freaking out, I would push the button and get off on the next floor.

I literally am not making this up. I’m telling you, I was scared to death of talking to people. I don’t know what I was afraid of, but whatever it was, I could defuse a bomb, but I couldn’t stand in an elevator with somebody without my skin crawling. It would freak me out.

So I just decided that every single day I was going to do that little bit. And so I would go and get in the elevator and ride it up and down for as long as it took for me to confront enough people until I realized I didn’t die. That’s what my journey was like. That’s why I say, “I promise you, this is the way that it is.”

So don’t think that all of a sudden, somebody jumps out of the sky and just, bam, can do it all. No, it doesn’t work that way. There’s a journey.

Let the “Desired State” Identity Pull You

Let this happen. Let it pull you into that uncomfortableness and just say, “Okay. I’m trusting it. I’m going forward.”

That is really the secret that I have to tell you. And there aren’t any other secrets.

Be the “desired state” identity. The “current state” identity is holding you back, so stop being that identity.

I’m not saying give everything up. I’m saying that anything you really, really want, along with your non-negotiables, is part of the “desired state” identity. Just leave the “current state” identity as a shell.

The “desired state” identity is trying to pull your body to make the change. Let it happen.

Let me know the difference between faking it and becoming it, for you. I want to get your words of how you understood the way that I described it, because I worked a long time in trying to recreate how that experience was for me.

We have a network marketing power Telegram channel, if you want to meet up with the group there. That way people can ask me questions and I’m able to reply back. Thank you. I really appreciate you. Need help with your message? Here’s my training for what to say and how to say it. If you don’t have a team or haven’t recruited anyone (or less than 10 people), this is THE course you should get – Network Marketing Training Course