The Social Selling Sisterhood Podcast Episode 74- Being a Leader in Your Company

This blog post was transcribed using AI

Yeah. Hi friend, welcome to the social selling sisterhood podcast. I am Lindsay Dollinger and I have many titles, high school spanish teacher, dog mom, world traveler and direct seller. I empower women to run your direct sales business is the right way. So you can earn the money, you deserve to live the life of your dreams and travel the world. Now we got that out of the way, let's get started. Hey friend, hello! Hello, it is Lindsay da linger and I wanted to have on here and do a little chat with you about what it means to be a leader in your network marketing, direct sales, whatever it might be a business that you run. Um because I think this is a word that gets thrown around a lot. Um I know I hear it a lot, I'm pretty sure everyone else can agree that a lot of times people are addressed as a leader, leadership can look like a lot of different things to a lot of different people. So I wanted to chat super quickly because I also feel like it almost has a stigma or a certain weight to it that can suppose even turn people off from really experiencing the awesome benefits that are building a team and our leadership because they think that it's going to take so much more time or it's gonna be a lot more pressure or all of the things, so I just wanted to have just a super candid chat um exactly kind of what I view um leadership to be and how I see leadership with the company that I'm in and encourage you hopefully to really step into that role yourself. So one of the most important things, I think that was honestly just more of a mindset shift for me when I ended up partnering with my current company um was that in my previous companies I felt like I was always striving for the leadership role. Like I did have a team under me um that are a team of people that I worked with it. I try not to stay under me anymore because that can I feel like be a little bit too greeting sometimes, but you know what it is and in the in the tree of things, if you are in network marketing, direct sales, that's generally how we are referred as up line, down line, sideline etcetera. So anyway, I feel like I was always like striving for that leadership title. Um My love language is recognition in case you did not know that I love winning the things. Um I'm a very competitive person that is just my nature. I am very much a red um also kind of greenish if you know your color personalities. But anyway, so I feel like before I was with this current company that I'm with um and as I was starting my journey, I was very much like trying to get to that next leadership level and never really stepping into it myself. And I think a huge mindset shift that I had with this company um and that I encourage all of you all to really consider is the mindset of once you have you enrolled or sponsored you ham. My phone's ringing, pause least I can text from my computer which is really fun. But once you have one customer really, once you have one customer but you have recruited yourself, right? So you are a team of one, whether you have sponsored anyone, whether you have recruited anyone, whether you have so many other products, you have recruited yourself, you are a team of one. So because you have that teammate, you, it is up to you to show up for your teammate to show up for yourself. Because let me tell you one thing, if I learned anything in direct sales, network marketing, it is well and a lot of things in life, let's just be real, a lot of things in life. Your health, anything is that if you don't advocate for yourself, if you don't push yourself to really succeed, if you don't push yourself to get better, if you don't push yourself to X, Y. Z. Whatever that thing might be, you're the only one really technically responsible for that. At this point we're grown adults, you know, as parents or whatever that teachers that um what's the word that that falls on on those people as you're growing up? But everyone watching this as an adult, so it's kind of our responsibility to um you know, to show up for ourselves into lead ourselves as a team of one. So I want you to step into that leadership position and start viewing yourself as a leader because you are like, there's nothing that says that separates someone from saying that their leader and they're not a leader, it's a mindset, okay, so step into the mindset that you are a leader and start actually like it. So what does that look like? Um to me, it really looks like showing up and committing to yourself, your customers, and your business, Your team. If and when you get one um and your company, so if all those four things are not aligned, like if one of them are missing, if you are not committed really to your team, you're not involved in the team things, um you're gonna feel out of alignment, I think, and that's been my experience. You know, if you don't have that person supporting you, your silence, supporting you, or you're just choosing not to do, you know, kind of be the team player and do some of the stuff with your team, that's fine. Okay. But to be a leader, I do think that you need to step into that power and show up for your customers, excellent customer service for your teammates. If you do sponsor them, there is this is a totally aside thing. This is a huge pet peeve of mine. If you are going to sponsor someone um, in your company, don't Okay, let me reword this. Please don't sponsor someone into your company. If you're not willing to be a good up line, right, That really, really stinks. So if you don't want to support people, if you don't want to grow a team, then just tell people no, but you'll refer them to someone who would love to help them grow. Um Because I get messages literally all the time from people like at least weekly, if not several times a week. Um saying things like I really need your help with X. Y. Z. My sponsor doesn't do anything, I don't have any resources, I don't have this or I signed up with my and who just does it for a discount and she doesn't know anything about the team, She doesn't even know how to place an order and I'm like, girlfriend, you have to sign up with people in this. Like again, like I said, could be a whole nother video, but who are going to invest in you, who are taking their businesses seriously, so invest, Show up for yourself. So what is showing up for yourself? Mean it means creating a heck of a good set of boundaries you are scheduling in when you're working your business, when you have your personal life, you are turning your phone off and you are sticking to those set times, you have office hours per se. Um And that was a really huge thing for me as I was building the big team that I have now is that I would get messages like almost 24/7 and it was really messing with my mind. Like I was like, Oh my gosh, I'm tied to my phone. This is supposed to be writing me all this freedom. Um, but I was just not having those boundaries. So once I set those boundaries up with my teammates and with my customers, like I'm not going to respond to you within the first five minutes of getting a message is totally fine. You know, certain things can wait. I did a lot for me and my stress level and it was just us. I was putting myself to be perfectly honest. So show up for yourself, get your workouts in be healthy, get sleep right. Who wants to be building a business because you're getting no sleep. Like no, that's not okay. Um, showing up to your team again, we talked about this. So if your team has team meetings, if they like my team has power hours, someone leaves a power our several times a week. Uh, so we provide those for people to hop on. Like if you're a leader, you can't expect people on your team to do anything that you're not doing so. And generally as a rule of thumb, results wise what you do, people on your team who like the team that you have built generally will produce about half and same thing kind of goes for your customers. So, um, and so if you're a health and fitness company, for example, and you're just showing a picture of you drinking a shake once a week. You know, you can't really expect your customers to be necessarily drinking your shake every day if you're not even letting them know that you're drinking years every day. So the same thing for my team, I don't expect them to have any more amount of parties or any more sales or anything like that, then I'm willing to have. So if I'm not willing to put in the time and the effort, why would I think that other people would be willing to do the same? So that has always been a rule of thumb for me as a leader as I show up, how I would love to see other people show up, but I don't expect it because when you start expecting other people to do things, it has fan, it never works out right. So your team will generally do about half of what you do. So if you want them to show up at power hours, you gotta show up with power hours. If you would love them to be more involved in your team events or atmosphere, then you have to be more involved. Um So you know, it's just kind of a trickle down effect. So show up for your team, show up for your company. What can this look like? This can look like being on, you know, virtual events, um wrapping your company in a respectful way in a way that follows your company's policies and procedures and just like being a good icon um of that company and showing up for your own business. So like I mentioned scheduling your posting scheduling time when you're gonna work your business because if you treat your business like a hobby, you're going to get hobby results. But if you treat your business like a business you're going to get business results. Um I just have a couple more leaders are teachable and coachable. Most true leaders who are growing their business, who have a sizeable team who have really got it together and are treating their business seriously. They have a coach, I will tell you that they 100 have a coach and they are investing in trainings like all the time. Um I really find it hard, like really hard to believe that you're able to grow a sustainable business without being teachable and coachable. Like it would be like pure luck in my opinion. Um You are intentional leaders are intentional, so you put some thought into things, you plan things out that goes as part of the planning and taking your business seriously. Is your intentional intentional about the things that you are doing? Um you push your team to be the best version of themselves because you're pushing yourself to be the best version of yourself, you're showing up is that role model and you are transparent, transparent. So the last thing is transparency. Um I think that's really important because I think also stepping into that leadership role, we can kind of put on this like very serious, you know, this is a business and blah blah blah. Um and so even from teaching being a teacher, we are taught, you know, basically you can't share emotions, you can't share your feelings and thoughts about lots of things, like there's so much restraint and what we can and can't do, but yet we're supposed to show up and be good role models. And it's really hard to be a good role model. Just going to be honest, it's really hard to be a good role model when you are restricted by some of the things that you can share and I won't go further into that, but being transparent with your team because we are all adults. So when you're having a bad day, like I have had people before um in my daytime job um complained that I shared with the kids that I was in a bad mood that morning because I woke up late for school. It was like a thing and I'm like how is that wrong? That I said that I was in a bad mood, I didn't yell at the kid, you know? Anyway, but I feel like being transparent is a very, very good thing with leadership in your business, with your direct sales company because I can tell you right now when I'm up front with my team and I'm like I am sleep deprived or I had surgery and I'm feeling like crap um can someone step up for me tonight and do X, Y, Z or um I'm really striving for this goal. I want to know how I can support all of you, like just sharing as much in being human I think is so, so important to being a good leader in direct sales. So super quick recap leadership. Um you are showing up and you are committing to yourself, your team, your company and your business. You are teachable. Coachable. You are being intentional about what you are doing to grow your business, which most likely are the things that you learned from from your coaching things. You are pushing your team to be the best, best version of themselves because you're pushing yourself to be the best version of yourself and you are transparent about all of this, right? So like I share with a team that I have a virtual assistant who helps me do end of month graphics and helps me do shout outs in X, y, Z. I have boundaries. Um I let you know, I just and that that's the thing, I'm letting people know, I don't do all of this alone um and that's me being transparent because I don't want anyone to think that I am doing it all alone and then putting you know, putting me up on this pedestal where well Lindsay works and does all the things and has time to do this and has a podcast and I can't even X, Y, Z I don't want compared because that's not fair because I am hiring someone who is helping me with a lot of that stuff. So being transparent again, um can help show people that, you know this is a journey and this is what it looks like. I hope this is helpful to you. You know, like I said, I just I think the term and the leadership gets bounced around a lot. Um there are a lot of people who I think are referred to as leaders because of their rank. And I just want to tell you Ranking leadership, they're not the same. They're not the same at all. I have people on my team who can be who are way more of a leader and don't even have any team under them, but they show up, they support our team, they're there for their customers. Their intentional, they're teachable. Coachable. They're transparent through all these things um than people who have teams of like 10,000, right? So I want you to think about this as you are growing your business. Hopefully, maybe you're considering starting a business. Um But all of those things are if you're intentional about him, um and you know, leaders make mistakes, leaders learn and evolve as they're going along. You know, that's definitely been my journey as well. Um But they're all totally doable and you don't have to have a massive team to be a leader. You can start being a leader today. Have a great rest of your day. Tomorrow is friday. T. G. I. F. Um If you got some value out of this, please share this with a friend who would like to hear it. Let your teams know this because I would love to see more women in leadership, doing direct sales, network marketing and social selling the right way. Bye bye guys.