NETWORK MARKETING LEADERSHIP MASTERY

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We were happy to have Jennie Bellinger on the podcast to share her knowledge around leadership development, proper mindset, the importance of subconscious values aligning with current goals, and why leaders need to be an example for the behavior they want to see from their teams. What do you want out of life and your organization? This is a great conversation about the path to network marketing leadership mastery.

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Patrick:

Jennie Bellinger, welcome to Beyond the Network Marketing Dream. It is awesome to be with you today. Welcome to the show.

Jennie Bellinger:

Oh, I am so excited to be here. I’ve been looking forward to this all day.

Patrick:

Yeah, that’s fantastic. So, Jenny, I am gonna jump right in. You know, I’d love for you to share with everybody a little bit about your background. You’re focused on leadership development, which at the highest level, for the people who dream of really building a large organization, or for that matter, the enterprise companies, it’s all about finding and developing leaders. And so we’re gonna talk about some of that today, but why don’t you share a little bit of your background with everybody so they know where some of these skills were honed?

Jennie Bellinger:

Absolutely. Well, it all started in the classroom because I figure if you can if you can lead a group of thirty 6th graders. you can lead a group of adults. So I was a middle school science teacher for a number of years and took some time off when I had my oldest child who’s now about to turn 15 and that was around 2008. 2010, I was ready to go back to the classroom except we were in the middle of a recession if you all remember, and what ended up happening was I went through 18 interviews that year trying to get back into the classroom and schools just didn’t have money for a teacher with experience. They were hiring the brand new college grads because they could pay them 24,000, 25,000 dollars as opposed to my almost 40,000 dollar yearly salary and that’s a huge savings for them. So I, after the 18th “no” I finally took the hint from the universe and said okay fine if I’m not meant to be here, here am I meant to be? And two days later, an invitation to a direct sales jewelry event showed up in my mailbox back in the day when we actually got real mail. And I went to that event and walked out with a business. And it just took off from there. So yeah, I did seven years in my direct sales company, hit number one in the world for group recruiting, number three in the world for group sales, earned nine trips, multiple car bonuses, cash bonuses, basically all the, you know, if you were to tick all the boxes for, you know, does she know what she’s doing in direct sales? The answer is yes.

Patrick:

That’s awesome. And then how did the coaching side of things come along? What was the passion for that? And are you still involved in the industry from a building perspective?

Jennie Bellinger:

Great question. Well, I’m not currently involved in the industry at this point in time because of the fact that I am working exclusively with people who are in the industry, because I need my clients to know that I’m never gonna try and woo them over to my company. So their success is my success. If they’re not successful, then neither am I. But that transitioned into coaching. because of my number one group recruiting and number three group recruiting awards that happen. Because when you walk the stage for that, especially when nobody knew who I was before then, and then all of a sudden there’s this chick up on stage who is, you know, getting the number one for group recruiting in the world, people kind of go, who’s that girl? Tell me, you know. And so I had leaders within the same company reaching out to me, asking me how I did it, what happened, what was I doing. And so I started working with them and their teams. And then it transitioned to people finding out, outside of our company. So in other direct sales and network marketing companies, other people started reaching out to me asking me to help them do the same thing. And it just snowballed into becoming my full-time coaching practice.

Patrick:

Awesome. So you engage with me. I’m looking for support and help. And why do most people… I mean you’re a coach in this space, why do most people come to you? Do they feel like they’re struggling, they’ve lost their motivation, they’re trying to generate more income? Like what is it usually that sparks them to be willing to reach out and engage?

Jennie Bellinger:

Great question. It’s usually because they’ve gotten stagnant somewhere in their business. They’ve gotten stuck. They’ve hit a plateau and they just can’t quite seem to get to the next level. They’re having all the skills, all the things they had learned up until now are no longer serving them in the same way because their team has reached such a point that those skills only work so far down in the organization and what they need is that next set of skills to help them move to the next level. And so that’s where I’m working with my clients who are in that leadership capacity, because they are sick of not hitting the next level. You know, they want it badly and don’t know what to do to get there.

Patrick:

And so tell me this, I know you have some principles and fundamentals you work with on those leaders, you know, but after working with a lot of different people, what do you see, like, if you just put, you know, one, two, three, four, what are the main culprits? What are the main reasons that you see consistently where leaders are struggling?

Jennie Bellinger:

Hmm. It oftentimes starts with a mindset issue. So they were used to working with a certain size or a certain set of team members and now their organization has grown to such a point that they haven’t shifted their mindset to move into working with this larger organization and how to do so effectively and efficiently at the same time. The second thing I see happen is there’s a skill set missing. So they, if they can just learn these one, two, or three things, and for every leader, it’s a little bit different depending on where they are in their organizational growth as to what they need to learn how to do. And then with me as…

Patrick:

Okay, what are those skill sets, as an example? Like what skill sets are they generally missing?

Jennie Bellinger:

Yeah, so it’s understanding the different types of leadership that exist, right? So leading a group of, for example, 20 people is very different than leading an organization of 150 is very different from leading an organization of 500, a thousand, 3000, 10,000, 15,000. Those are all different skill sets that they need in order to have that leadership reach down, and understanding the types of leadership that show up with all, for example, for the leader of the 15,000 group…

Patrick:

And what are those skill set differences between 50 and 500 and 500 and 5,000? What specifically would be a set of skill set differences?

Jennie Bellinger:

Right. So, it’s learning how to communicate and connect with people who are six, seven, ten, fifteen generations down. How do you work that influence? Because anybody who pays attention to John Maxwell knows that leadership is influence. So learning how to communicate and connect and influence those people in your organization when they’re not your direct downline, or third downline, or fifth downline. Some of the other skill sets that they’re needing to work on are really the… the processes and systems that they need to have in place that are duplicatable for the entire organization. Because if they’re trying to teach everybody to do what they did, and it involves doing all of these things that, for example, they were willing to invest in a $150 a month tech platform, or they were willing to invest in this other thing, that other people are not willing to do, or they just aren’t there financially to be able to do that. So what are the systems and processes that they can put into place that are completely duplicatable from the person who just started their business today, all the way through the people who have been with them since they started their journey in network marketing?

Patrick:

Gotcha. Okay. So, so talk to me then about the coaching process. Like where do you usually begin with the average person? Is there a system or a process that you walk them through? How does that work?

Jennie Bellinger:

Oh yeah, well the first thing I always do with all of my clients, regardless of which program they come into, is I do what I call a deeper than DISC assessment because I need to know who I’m coaching. So they go through and this assessment not only shows me what their DISC behavioral styles are, it also shows me what their values are, their subconscious values. These values were established, 95% of them were established by the time they were 18 years old. So they don’t even know that this is what they truly value, until I’m able to explain to them what their report means. And then the third piece of the deeper than DISC also talks about how, or shows me how they make decisions because it shows me how they receive and perceive the information that is coming into them from the outer world and from inside their own head. So then once I know how they show up in the world, once I know what they value, and once I know how they make decisions, I know who I’m coaching to be able to be the best coach for them. The second process that…

Patrick:

Is…

Jennie Bellinger:

Go ahead…

Patrick:

Go ahead, yeah?

Jennie Bellinger:

Oh, I was gonna say the second thing that I do with my clients then is a vision casting. So I sit down one-on-one with them, either on Zoom, or in person, but a vast majority of my clients are from around the country and around the world, and do a vision casting session to understand what it is that we’re trying to get to, because as a coach, I am their GPS. Now, by having their deeper than DISC, I know where we’re starting. By having the vision casting, I know where we’re going. And so then as a coach then I can help guide them through that journey to get them from where they are, to where they wanna be, and helping them understand all of the things along the way as to why we’re having to recalculate the journey, recalculate the way to get there. And then it’s just through a combination, moving from there, of weekly coaching and consulting with the leader to help them with their own leadership understanding, teaching them, training them, and also then helping to coach and consult with them on their team and what they need. I then provide training for their entire organization once a month, so I’m training, so now the leader doesn’t even have to think about what needs to be done, because they know I’ve got the training covered for them. I then go through, I train their leaders, so then for their top 25% of the leaders in their organization, I’m training them on leadership. So doing the people development. So now again, this top level leader who’s hired me can sit back, receive the training with everybody else, participate with them, be in it instead of having to be running that leadership training with them. And then I’m also coaching their top four leaders for them. So this frees up the leader to be able to do the other things that they need to in the business, because they know that I’m handling all of those things for them in the interim.

Patrick:

Do you tend to learn a lot from deeper than DISC, when it goes to the vision casting… Does that change a great deal about how you help them cast that vision, based on that deeper than disc survey?

Jennie Bellinger:

Absolutely, because what’ll often happen is, especially from that values piece, what’ll end up happening is they’ll, and this happens, I don’t care if somebody’s been in direct sales for 20 years or network marketing for 20 years, 25 years, or if they’ve been in for a year. Oftentimes during that vision casting session, what comes out is what they think I want to hear. But because I’m their coach, I don’t care what they want. So if what they’re saying, what they think I want to hear does not align with the values that showed up in their deeper than DISC, I’m able to see that pretty quickly and go, okay, tell me more about that. Why do you want that? And once we really start digging in, we figure out, oh, maybe they didn’t really want this thing. They were saying it because they thought that’s what every leader should want, right? So it really does help inform the vision casting because it does help me understand, like, what really matters to them and to help them create the vision that actually fulfills what they value.

Patrick:

How often do you find, I’m just curious, like going through that process, how often do you find that they have a set of values that doesn’t support their vision or what they say their goals are, or is it cognitive dissonance where they are incongruent, they’re not living the values that they say, you know, and I’m sure that the DISC survey helps you, the DISC report helps you weed through what they say and what they actually do, but at the same time, it doesn’t stop people from having cognitive dissonance, where they truly have a set of values, but they’re not living out those values.

Jennie Bellinger:

Yeah.

Patrick:

And that creates a whole different set of problems. How often is it one or the other? Values that don’t support, or not living out the values they have.

Jennie Bellinger:

It’s a little combination of both, honestly. And in terms of how often it happens, I wouldn’t say that there was complete and utter disregard for what they value. Usually, when there’s not an alignment between their vision and what their values are, oftentimes, it’s just because things are just slightly off-kilter. So to use as an analogy the door and the window that you have behind you, things are set up, the frosting on that glass is set up in just such a way that you can kinda see what’s going on behind the glass, but things are misaligned on purpose to make things fuzzy and blurry. And so that’s what ends up happening,  because when they’re not completely aligned and lined up in the right way, that creates that blurriness. And that’s why they don’t know which way to go and they’re flying by the seat of their pants and their leadership and trying to figure things out a bit at a time, because they just haven’t gotten things in alignment. So sometimes going through the vision casting and me re-guiding them based on what I know they actually value, actually helps them get such clarity that it shifts how they behave moving forward. And the coaching becomes that much more powerful. because now they are leading from a place of complete and utter alignment between their values and their vision.

Patrick:

You know, my mom was an entrepreneur growing up and there were certain sayings that she said, you know, that frankly didn’t serve me at all in building an organization. They seemed positive in some ways, things like, you know, “if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right”, which is not always true, right? A hundred percent… or “if something needs to be done right, do it yourself” which is a… terrible philosophy for building. And I found over the years that there’s a lot of people that simply, if they write down their goals, and they write down their values, and they write down their purpose, that those aren’t really congruent. Like if you threw 10 people’s values, goals, and purpose in a hat, in a perfect world, you would be able to go, oh, this person’s goals line up with this person’s values, lines up with this person’s purpose. You know, if one of my objectives is to backpack through China, but American patriotism at all cost is one of my values, I’m pretty much gonna run into some problems. Right? If I wear it on my sleeve, it’s just not a good idea to backpack through communist China with that kind of attitude. And I found that in networking where sometimes people just had to say, I have to create a new set of affirmations, and create a new set of values, if I really want to keep this goal in this purpose. Right? When it’s a lot of people, times wouldn’t even have a clarity of purpose. So how do you deal with that incongruent nature that so many people have between what they say they want and what their actions and behaviors say they want? You know, Aristotle said your action speaks… I think he said, yeah, your action speaks… No, he said… he said, “Excellence is not an act, but a habit. Therefore we are what we repeatedly do”.

Jennie Bellinger:

Yes.

Patrick:

Right. So how do you, how do you get these people to say one thing and what they do is completely something different?

Jennie Bellinger:

Right, so it’s a matter of really, again, going back to that deeper than DISC assessment that I do with the client to show them, you thought your values were this, because I do a values exercise with people who haven’t done the assessment to help them begin to explore what they believe their values to be, but it really takes somebody being willing to dig in and really figure out what their true values really are. Because like I said, a lot of people go to what their brain wants to… wants to spit out what they think whoever they’re talking to about this wants to hear. So, you know, for me as the coach, what I’m then doing is going, okay, tell me why that value matters to you. Where did that come from, right? Whereas when I’m doing the, when I have the deeper than DISC assessment, it’s their subconscious value based on how they answered questions that they didn’t know was going to show me these things, right? So being able to then help them get into alignment by them fully understanding, here’s why you do things, because what you value informs why you do things, right?

Patrick:

Right, yeah.

Jennie Bellinger:

Behaviors are just an outward representation of what matters to you. So what I’m doing when I’m going through and helping them with this is helping them see, well, you thought your values were this, here’s what they really are based on the assessment that you took, right? And then we’re able to then show them, here’s why you’re showing up the way that you are, despite the fact that you thought your values were this. So shifting them from what they thought it was to what they really are, because it’s subconscious. I… I wish that every single time I asked somebody what their values were, it completely matched up with what they really are subconsciously. It’s just not the case, because humans are programmed. Our brains are programmed to survive. Survive, survive, survive. Our brains are not programmed for thriving. So people who are in a leadership position have gotten to a point where they’re well past survival, but they’re still not knowing how to shift from survive to thrive. And so by taking that time to work with someone like me, if not me, fine, find another leadership coach. That’s great. But shifting that brain pattern, that thinking, that thought process, that understanding of who they truly are, because once they get into full alignment, the people who follow them, are truly following that human being because they are in alignment. They are authentic. They are really in alignment with who’s on their organization and anybody who’s not aligned will fall away. So if they’re looking to attract people who want to do the business because they want to help others, then they’re going to attract those people. The people who they’re wanting to attract who are doing it for a purely mercenary reason will fall away, because they’re not aligned. Or they’ll find a different leader. They may stick on their team, but they’ll find a different leader who’s more mercenary.

Patrick:

Mm-hmm. So what, I’m curious on this front, you know, that through the things that we do at RapidFunnel, you’ve identified so often that if we can simply double the number of times the story gets told within an organization that you’re going to double sales and recruiting, this changes people’s lives because it comes with the money. How do you deal with that reality that the story still has to get told in terms of executing. You know, as you’re helping them communicate and be better leaders, you know, so often you find leaders that go into management mode and the reason their business has stalled is they simply are no longer prospecting themselves. They’re not following up. They’re not committed to the core behaviors necessary and as a result they’re not passionate about teaching those fundamentals. So now you’ve got this double whammy. Not only are they not creating any momentum or width to the organization, they’re relying on the same two, three, four lines of business that have now moved away from them, right?

Jennie Bellinger:

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Patrick:

And then there’s no width and they’re not creating momentum, or respected within the organization, because clearly they’re in management mode. How do you navigate some of that? Or at least that’s our belief. I’ve never seen anybody make good money or advance their business if they weren’t involved in any of the core activities.

Jennie Bellinger:

You’re absolutely right. And this shows up and I’ve already referenced John Maxwell once before, but he talks about something in The Five Levels of Leadership, which is something called “The Law of the Lid”, which is the leader is the lid of the organization. Meaning what the leader does in the organization is going to be reflected by everyone who is below them. In about… very few people, and by very few, I mean one in a thousand, one in 5,000 will surpass a leader, right, who’s really leading. I mean, really, really leading, right? One in a thousand, one in 5,000, like I don’t remember what the number is in the book, but everyone else below that is generally only going to do anywhere from 25 to 33% of what a leader does in their own business. So if a leader is not recruiting every single month and then they’re complaining that their team isn’t recruiting, guess what? That’s why, right? Because if they don’t see you doing it, they’re not going to do it. Your team is only going to do on average 25 to 33% of what the leader does. So… by making sure that, if the leader wants more production out of their team, they need to be doing more themselves. And whatever system they create for themselves in order to recruit more, in order to tell the story more, in order to sell more, whatever their goal is, which is most leaders are probably doing all three, then they need to be doing more of that in a very easy way and showing their team members how to do it. People who are in the organization know if the leader’s doing it or not. Because they see it in the company announcements of the top 20 leaders in the country this week. The top 20 leaders in the country this month. And if you don’t see your leader’s name there, you know they’re not doing what they say they’re doing. And leadership is not a “do what I say, don’t do what I do”. You know, very, very much like being a parent. If you want your kids to grow up to be good human beings, guess what? You get to be a good human being to be a role model for that. And the same, it’s literally no different in network marketing.

Patrick:

That’s awesome. Well, Jenny, if people want to reach out and find you and access the coaching that you’re providing, what is the best way for them to do that?

Jennie Bellinger:

Yeah, they can check me out at badassdirectsalesmastery.com. That has my podcast available where people can go listen if they wanna listen to the podcast. I have all of my coaching information there. I have free resources available for people. So if people aren’t quite in leadership yet, but they wanna get there, I provide lots of resources in order to help people get there because it’s my belief that information learning should be free.

Patrick:

That’s fantastic. So badassdirectsalesmastery.com and we’ll put it in the show notes as well, so they can reach it directly and everything’s right there, that’s awesome. Any closing thoughts? It was so exciting to have you on the call and leadership is, I mean at the end of the day, it’s our ability to lead that really dictates the check and of course people can get to a certain level by doing activity, but they’re never going to get to the highest level without being able to teach other people, to take their minds and their hearts to an entirely new level. And clearly that’s what you’re focused on and doing a great job of. Any closing thoughts to the audience here?

Jennie Bellinger:

I think what it really comes down to is just really understanding, you know, what do you want out of life? What do you want out of your organization? What do you want out of your business? And if you are recognizing that leadership is what is holding you back, because you’re flying by the seat of your pants, you’re not taking control of how you’re doing things or why you’re doing things and understanding that purpose, then let’s have a conversation.

Patrick:

Awesome. I love it. Thank you so much for taking the time today.

Jennie Bellinger:

Absolutely. No, thank you for having me here, I’m really excited to get to do this!

Patrick:

Bye everybody.

Important Links

• Badass Direct Sales Mastery Website
• Badass Direct Sales Mastery Facebook
• Badass Direct Sales Mastery LinkedIn
• Badass Direct Sales Mastery Instagram
• Jennie Bellinger YouTube
• John Maxwell: The Five Levels of Leadership

About Jennie Bellinger