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We all have dreams and goals that we believe in and want to achieve, so why aren’t we? One of the biggest hindrances to achieving long-term success is the lack of performance consistency. That’s why in this episode, Jim Packard and George Campbell will be sharing with us valuable insights, lessons, and other sneak peeks from their book, The Consistency Chain. Jim and George will share their story of success with us and tell us how they found the model of consistency that can help you reach your potential and stop the delays! Jim and George also touches on network marketing, MLM, direct sales, leadership, and more! Tune in now and learn how to harness the key to consistency!
Jim Packard & George Campbell: Comedy And MLM
I am excited to be with Jim Packard and George Campbell with The Consistency Chain. Did you co-author the book or is that one of you?
No, we co-authored.
We believe highly in the 80/20 rule and I wrote about 80% of it.
What’s exciting about the relationship that George and Jim have is you’ll get to hear a little bit of George’s background here. He hooked up with Jim, a big top builder in network marketing. They combined their experiences to not only put the book together but to consult leaders in network marketing as well as organizations to execute at the next level. I’m excited to learn more. I appreciate you sending me the book. I haven’t had a chance to dive in, which I’m going to but we’re going to flush out some of that on the show. It’s great to be with you.
Thanks for inviting us.
George, share some of your interesting background, a different background than the average networker in the industry. Why don’t you share a little bit of that to open up here?
Off the bat, I saw network marketing when I was 18 or 19 years old. I fell in love with it. I cannot express to you how badly I did at it. I was terrible. Everybody was so hopeful. That was the funny thing. “This guy is going to be good.” No. I finally found something I was very good at and that was getting on stage. I did ten years of standup comedy.
For another 25 years, I did a program called Joe Malarkey, The Worst Motivational Speaker in America, which was a standup comedy that made fun of motivational speakers for associations and companies. I had tremendous success with that. I was introduced as the Speaker Hall of Fame and interviewed by Morley Safer for around 60 minutes. That’s a story.
I kept circling back to this one area of my life where I thought, “I should be good at this. Why am I not good at this?” I began four years of research to try and find out how it is that people like me could see the dream, believe in the dream and want the dream. Somehow, I can’t muster the consistent effort to get that accomplished. It’s the most frustrating thing in the world to me.
People being able to see the dream, believe in the dream, and want the dream, but not being able to achieve it, is the most frustrating thing in the world.
You hooked up with Jim and he helped you weave through some of this better understanding of networking.
Yeah. Jim, tell them about your background.
I started at a copier company when I was 22 and I built it to $17 million before I sold it. I said, “What else can I do?” I got involved with network marketing. I’m not going to lie to you, I did extremely well with it the first company that I joined. I was Distributor of the Year. Both my sons were runner-up and Distributors of the Year. It became very easy for me.
I met George at a meeting down in Tucson. My son had invited him to speak as a guest speaker. I’m looking at him thinking, “This guy is funny. He’s good.” Little did I know that he had been on stage as a stand-up comic with people like Jerry Seinfeld. I’m looking at George speaking going, “Don’t I wish somebody like George could be on my team? Wouldn’t that be nice to have somebody like that?” I later found out that it probably would not have worked because he wasn’t as good as he looked. Put it that way.
I’m probably the only person that could have driven Jim out of the business of network marketing. There’s the sheer frustration level.
It makes some sense. You get two opposing perspectives. You put the consistency chain together. Let’s talk about that. Four things individual leaders and organizations strive for are consistency, performance, productivity and dependability. Let’s break that down a little bit. People can go to ConsistencyChain.com. You’ve got a beautiful website. There are some details there. We’ll talk more about that at the end. Let’s dive into the book a little bit, the fundamental principles that you guys teach. Where does it start?
There are three little puzzle pieces that when you bring them together show you a way to look at the picture that you haven’t seen before. One of the beginning was the Pareto Principle or 80/20 principle, which I’m sure everybody’s familiar with. We know in network marketing, the majority of the results are going to come from a minority of people. It’s not even 80/20 in network marketing. What would you guess it is, Jim?
I’d say 95/5.
It’s even harsher in network marketing. We started to look at what is the thing that separates these people that are the high-performers from the people that want it but are not producing in that realm. We looked at all the things they had in common. Intelligence is equally present in both groups. We all get the same training, ability, skills and education. It’s all the same until you get down to the key factor. What we’ve figured out is that the high-performing 20% do what needs to be done when it needs to be done on a relentlessly consistent basis. The 80%, people like me, know what needs to be done but we don’t do it and we don’t do it consistently.
I don’t want to be the devil’s advocate here but I agree with that statement when it comes to the leadership principles and the people executing at a high level. In building an organization of hundreds or thousands and making millions myself, I discovered that the production though, 60% to 70% of that production came from the middle of the pack.
Most of those people wouldn’t be around in a year. They’d be in and out. They weren’t going to be successful people. How do you then balance that? If you know that you’ve got these top 5%, they’re the ones that are in it for the long haul. They’re going to produce with you. Does that change then your methodology with that information into how do you go to the next step? What’s the benefit of identifying that top 5%? Parse that out for me a little bit, would you?
The great thing is the top 5%, you don’t have to find them. They identify themselves. They just perk off. The challenge with what you were talking about is that 60% of your production comes from the people in the middle of the pack but those people are only going to be there for a year. We run into the challenge of churn, which puts an imposition on the top 5%. Instead of leading, they’re constantly on the treadmill of recruiting.
We reach a stage where we take our top 5% and we’re introducing burnout. Especially since you can take 60% of the people below them that have everything that they need to succeed. What if we could help them become a little bit more consistent so that their returns were a little bit higher and they would want to stick around longer because there’s both positive?
What if we could just help people that have everything they need to succeed become a little bit more consistent? So that their returns were a little bit higher so that they would want to stick around longer?
When you go to a convention, that’s never stressed. At the convention, you have the top leaders addressing the top 5% or top 20%, whatever you want to call it. The 80% get unfed. We approach the 80 percenter, trying to take a certain percentage of those and make them successful with a new way to measure success.
How is that? Let’s talk about that.
The second piece of this puzzle and I am going to telescope this down because it’s a 50 or 60-year longitudinal study that tracks people from 5 years old through their 60s. What they found was 20% of people are making these long-term decisions in a part of their brain and 80% of people are making short-term decisions in a different part of their brain.
One of them is the ventral striatum and one of them is the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is if you tell somebody like Jim, you sit down and explain to him, “If you do this, you’re going to get this.” It doesn’t matter how hard it is. It’s like, “Is the reward big enough?” If the reward is big enough, then I’m going to do what it takes to get there. He’s demonstrated that time and time again.
If you present that same argument to me and I’m making my decision in the ventral striatum, which is a much more primal part of the brain, it’s not thinking long-term, it’s thinking on what we call the ESP Matrix, which is like, ” Is it easy? Is it safe? Is it pleasurable?” For me, it’s building a network marketing business. I’m an introvert, which people don’t understand because I’m on stage.
It doesn’t matter. Trust me. Is it easy for me to get on the phone? No, it is not. Is it safe? No, it is not because they could say no. They can make me feel bad. I could get rejected. That’s not safe. Is it pleasurable? Did you listen to the first two? No. You can make that same argument to me about the long-term benefits that I’m going to get from pursuing this course of action.
My brain is going to say, “That sounds wonderful. I understand what you’re saying. I’m not going to do it today.” Don’t get me wrong. I’m going to do it tomorrow but I’m not going to take action today. It’s always tomorrow and you keep pushing your success off in a distance until finally, the business you’ve been talking about is something you used to be in at one point. You quit.
A lot of this is awareness. We’re aware that consistency is critical. We’re aware of our internal motivators and drivers for the vast majority of people, especially if you’re a leader. You got to get down to brass tax. How do we circumvent these built-in 100,000 years of behavior that’s built into us? How do we help that 80% average person get through it?
See what we’ve been doing. We talk about the prefrontal cortex. You’re making these arguments for ABC, trying to sell me on ABC and then, we’re going to a part of the brain that’s only interested in ESP. What we’ve been doing traditionally in the network market is we’ve been trying to help people build better ABC proposals. That’s ridiculous because it doesn’t matter. I’m not thinking about that.
What consistency chain is, if the part of the brain that’s making this is deciding it on, “Is it easy? Is it safe? Is it pleasurable,” why don’t we make an argument to that part of the brain that makes it look easy, safe and pleasurable? Instead of trying to fight this thing, why don’t we sell it? Why don’t we break this down to the point where it’s like, “I could do that. That sounds easy. I’m going to do it this way. That’s cool. I don’t think I’m going to get hit on that. After I do it, I’m going to feel great.” All of a sudden, it’s the activities. Instead of fighting nature, we’re going to lean into our nature and use it. What used to be an obstacle is not going to be a benefit. We’re going to launch from that.
One of the challenges is we tell everybody, “There’s no money in your comfort zone.” That’s true but that doesn’t mean we should push them out on the edge of the cliff when they’re brand new and tell them to jump because they’re out. I always try to share with the organization that 90% of the training happens in how you got me started.
What I’m saying to myself is, “Do I want to do what you did to me? Am I comfortable with that? Does that make sense? Have you freaked me out?” That guy may get through the numbers and it’s raw but he doesn’t understand he’s exponentially creating more difficulty. It’s because he recruited three times more people but his methodology is such that none of them want to do what he did. What did you end up with? Nothing. Talk to me about how you teach. What is that? Knowing what you said, how do we navigate that? What are you going to teach me? What methodology can I use that is more comfortable, that is easy, safe and pleasurable?
First of all, if I was going to sponsor somebody and I bring them into my organization, I’m going to assume they’re all an 80 percenter. I’m not going to assume that they’re a 20 percenter. I’m going to treat everybody as an 80 percenter until that person proves me right or wrong. That’s the approach that I’m going to take to bring somebody in. I’ll let you go ahead and take it, George.
Treat everybody as an 80 percenter until they prove you wrong.
Let me say this real quick because as people hear this 80/20 thing, there’s going to be 4 out of 5 of us that are going to identify as 80%. As a person, who is this and understands this, we’re not talking down. We’re not trying to shame or blame or do anything. We’re making the case. There’s nothing wrong with us. We have to have a little bit different psychological approach to get to the places we want to get to.
If you’ve been in network marketing, bouncing around, can’t make it work for you and haven’t made it work for you, there’s a path. Don’t feel bad. Don’t quit out of shame and history because we can change our history going forward. If we’re fighting this ESP, Easy, Safe and Pleasurable, what we have to do is break this down to the point where we do the action on a consistent basis that is right up against the edge of easy, safe and pleasurable. In network marketing, for instance, we talk about joining the 21 Club.
That’s reaching out to two people or talking to one. It’s as simple as that. Reaching out to somebody is sending them a text like, “I know a lot of things have been going on in my life, as I’m sure your life. Let’s get caught up sometimes.” It’s reaching out. It’s building that relationship that you referred to, Patrick. It’s establishing and building a relationship. That’s what we’re doing with the 21 principles.
Daily. Every day two and one, right?
2 or 1.
Reach out to 2 or talk to 1 because, in the beginning, there are going to be people who are talking to somebody like, “I’m not ready to talk to somebody.” “Okay. Cool.”
I haven’t heard of it before, which is crazy. If I were sitting in an audience and I heard you say that, do I put that into my text and save it and then start sending that out? Are you teaching those individual steps? Are you going that far in your methodology?
We offer different examples. For old friends, it’s like, “Bet you have cool things. I’ve got cool things. Let’s catch up.” If I’m on LinkedIn and I see somebody with the same university that I did, I would say, “I saw you went to so-and-so. When were you there?” It’s a personal connection that you can generate.
How are you helping them transition? They do that and we’ve all seen the bloody transition. It feels like a bait-and-switch. You met with me. You chatted me up. We met for coffee. We’re having this great catch up and then I’ve got the dollar sign on your head. At some point, I have to create this transition.
To some degree for some people, that’s almost worse than calling straight away and saying, “Are you keeping the options open? I’m starting a business. Probably not a fit for you but I wanted to get you something. If I sent you something, would you take a look?” It’s almost worse to meet them, spend 45 minutes and build rapport and now, I’m supposed to tell them why I did this.
Jim and I have very different theories about this. My theory is I don’t want to sponsor anybody that doesn’t have some degree of interest in me too after I’ve expressed interest in them. There’s that aspect of it. Jim, what’s your theory on this?
If you listen with genuine interest, what you’re going to say next comes naturally. It happens that way. I’m looking at the little chart that I’ve got. I’ve got 1,321 consecutive days of reaching out to 2 people. By doing that, I have people call me every single day and I’ve developed a relationship with them. At some point, if I feel my product is right for them, I’ll mention it to them but I don’t force-feed it to them.
If you listen with genuine interest, what you’re going to say next comes naturally.
Your approach, Jim, is you’re leading with the product, which is a much easier transition sell-proof. “Let me lead with the product. You can try it. I can get them a sample. I can tell them about the product,” which is a lot easier transition. That’s how you would coach it versus jumping straight to an opportunity to join my pyramid. We wouldn’t use those words but that is what you hear sometimes.
Trying to find that 1 person out of 20. Trying to find 1 or 2 people that are going to build a business is a lot more difficult than trying to find a few people that want to try it and then become customers and then they can become distributors.
The other psychological aspect of this is you’re folding a funnel. One of the fears that people have is, “What am I going to do when I run out of people to talk to?” You’re reaching out to two people a day. The reality is you’re never going to run out of people to talk to. We’re taking one of the psychological fears and putting it on the back burner.
One of the biggest challenges in network marketing is you don’t know what your team is doing. You have no insight. The average distributor is so shocked that on one side they’re so shocked with those 2 conversations a day or 5 days a week even. We’re only talking about 40 conversations a month. They’re shocked that such a so low number can create such great results. On the other end of the spectrum, they’re also shocked that they do so little and think they do more. They talk to the same 8 people 7 times and do 7 times 8 and they think that was their number of exposures.
Our system is to talk to two new people every day. You can do that. Even if you wait until 11:00 at night, you can text somebody. You can do it for 7 days too, not 5.
You get them through this simplicity and they have a methodology. They come out and say, “This is what I’m going to do.” Does that bring us to dependability in those four steps?
We believe it does because the baseline of everything is consistency. We saw a definition of success in network marketing is getting a large group of people, which is recruiting and doing a few simple things, which are based on training consistently. What we’ve seen throughout the industry is that companies are good at two of those. We’re building two-legged stools and wondering why people keep falling.
How do you get them? They say you can manage what you measure and inspect what you expect. As a leader that you coach, how do you get them to be able to inspect it? That’s one of the hardest things in networking that they don’t know, as leaders, what their teams are doing. What’s your methodology for coaching the leader on how to have that level of transparency or accountability?
Keep in mind that in the 21 system that we came up with, some of those people are going to do 5 a day and some are going to do more than 5 a day. We’re trying to attract the 80% that don’t know how they’re going to sponsor somebody. We just want to start them. They’re not necessarily going to finish there. They’re going to start there. You can intensify it later on. You can bring up the numbers later on, which you’re going to do but we’re trying to appeal to that 80% that want it but just don’t know what to do. They’re not going to do a 100-day blitz.
Jim, I’m on your team in my third month in the business. You reach out to me. You have a conversation about the 2 and 1. I say, “Jim, I’m doing it.” I’m talking to way more people than that. “Jim, you wouldn’t believe it. I’m talking to so many people. It’s crazy everybody I meet.” You say, “Patrick, how many was that last week or last month?” “It’s a lot more than two. I don’t know exactly.” What do you say?
You need to chart it.
This gets back to the real colonel of this, which is the chain, the third part of this whole thing. It goes back to Jerry Seinfeld. How did Jerry Seinfeld become the highest-earning comedian in the history of the world? He decided that what he was going to do was be a better comic, which is an interesting concept. We’re not going to have time to get into how better works for people like me where traditional goals have failed us.
He decided that the fastest way he could become a better comic was to write jokes every day. He got a calendar. He wrote jokes on the first day and put an X on that calendar. He wrote jokes on the second day and put an X on the calendar. The genius Seinfeld, the reason why he got paid $800 million for the syndication rights to his sitcom was he did not see two Xs on a calendar. He saw two links on a chain. This is easy because it never gets any harder than day three. It’s one simple rule, “Don’t break the chain.”
When I first came across this idea, I thought, “I wonder if this would work for me.” I took an area of my life that I’d never been consistent in, which was working out. I said, “I’m going to work out every day.” I worked out on the 1st day, the 2nd day and on the 3rd day, I made a chain. I kept adding links to the chain. For someone who has never been consistent at anything in their life, doing something that’s relatively hard, working out, I put together a chain of 531 straight days.
You didn’t beat yourself up over a lousy workout. You didn’t break the chain.
No. The result is the link. The result is not somebody saying yes or no. It’s none of that. It’s outside of that. I’m building my chain. We have ways for people to see that graphically. When I had a solid year on my wall of calendars with nothing but solid links the whole way through, I was prouder of that wall of pieces of paper that I wrote on than the statue that I had for being in the Hall of Fame. It meant more to me because I thought, “If I can do this in this, there is almost nothing I can’t do.”
Isn’t that crazy? When you ask people about the greatest reward and they look back at their life, it’s always when they lived up to the expectation they had of themselves. You did the thing that you committed to and look at it with such esteem. It’s a powerful motivator if we’re aware of it.
If you’re looking at a different way to measure success.
The thing that makes us attainable is we’re not asking people to work out for 531 straight days. That’s crazy talk. Nobody’s going to do that. All we’re saying is just today. Today is the only day we have to work out because today is the only day we have to work out. We’re not projecting forward or looking past. We’re just today. “This is the only day I have to win.”
This is where the better thing comes in because I wanted to be healthier, stronger and fitter. Those are all kinds of better terms. I would come back from the gym and look in the mirror with complete integrity and say, “You’re stronger, fitter and healthier.” I wasn’t waiting for something off in the future to happen before I could feel good about myself. I wasn’t putting off that feeling. I was getting it every single day. That is addictive. It makes you want to show up the next day.
George, I came from the other end of the spectrum. Played college ball and all that. I knew what a good workout was. I had stopped being consistent because none of them were good enough. I couldn’t do the full thing and finally, I’m working out every day. Even still, I’m like, “That was pathetic.” In the morning, I must have done 30 or 40 squats, 35 or 40 bench presses and some stretching stuff. It was maybe 8 minutes or 10 minutes of stuff. You know what? It was awesome. It’s crazy how it changes your mindset.
Scott Adams, the cartoonist, uses different verbiage than we do but his definition of working out when he first started was driving to the gym, walking in and signing in. That was it. If he did that, that counted. The reality is these actions that we start have momentum. By the time you get to the gym, you walked in and sign in, you’re like, “I wouldn’t be watching TV but at least I can watch it on a treadmill.”
These actions have momentum on their own. We’re trying to get people past that first little speed bump. That’s all it is. It’s not a mountain. It’s a speed bump. It’s keeping us from moving. We want to help them get past that psychologically and then be like, “I am doing this. This isn’t as hard as I thought. I could do this.”
Jim and George, it’s been awesome. I enjoyed it. I’m excited to get into the book, The Consistency Chain. How do people reach out to you? Who should reach out to you? I can see why every distributor and rep should read the book. You guys also do a lot of bigger events with companies and leaders as well.
The Consistency Chain is a great place to reach us. You’ll get to talk to Jim, which is what everybody wants to do anyway.
That’s what George wants everybody to do.
Go to the TheCCForNM.com, The Consistency Chain for Network Marketing. I’m going to be able to buy something better than that and then we’ll direct people to that. That’s got all our specific stuff for a place to order the book. We love to talk with leaders. My heart is in the people in the background. Jim talks to the first three rows and I talk to everybody at the back. Those are my people, the people that want this thing and can’t figure out why it didn’t happen for them. Those are the people that we want to meet.
Gentlemen, thanks so much for taking the time.
You bet. We loved it.
It’s our pleasure. Are you kidding me? It’s awesome.
Important Links
About Jim Packard & George Campbell
Jim Packard is the person you wish you had sponsored into your opportunity. Sign him up and then just get out of his way. But, as he became Distributor of Year of two different network marketing companies, he noticed a problem: Very few people were able to duplicate his Success.
He shared with them his personal formula. The same plan he used to turn a $500 investment in a traditional business into a $17 million dollar a year company. The same strategy he used to appear 25 times on the Home Shopping Network, selling over 1 million units.
In other words, he shared his secret. And for the vast majority of people in his organization, it did not work for them. Like other leaders, Jim was frustrated and confused by this.
George Campbell is the guy Jim would have HATED to sponsor. At first, things look so good. George is a Hall of Fame speaker, former stand-up comic, and author. He has a large data base and social media following. He has (apparently) everything it would take to build a business. He was also someone who had tried network marketing.