Tim Marks explains why LIFE Leadership is moving to the front of the pack in the super-successful personal development field. Orrin Woodward, Chris Brady, Tim Marks, and Claude Hamilton spearheaded the launch of LIFE and it has a promising future. Here is Tim's article.
On November 1st, 2011, eight business partners and friends, spearheaded by New York Times best-selling author Orrin Woodward, launched a brand-new company called LIFE. I was blessed to have earned my place amongst these men, and together we flipped the ignition switch on a nearly two-decade dream: a company that would not only offer a life-changing business opportunity, but would market life-changing products.
Results speak for themselves: in our first year of business, our products through LIFE and LIFE TRAINING sold a combined total of $53 million. As well, we give a financial incentive for people to change. We for those individuals who build a thriving community, great financial rewards are around the corner. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that we have achieved early success. First and foremost, we have a high-performing team of business leaders and a thriving business community. These folks could sell ice cream cones to Eskimos. But we’ve been saddled in the past with clunky, overpriced products that would thrill your great-grandmother but were decidedly not “red-hot” or “cool” in any way, and still managed to break sales records. With LIFE, we went a decidedly different direction. Our LIFE products, including the books, CDs, DVDs, and seminars created and delivered by LIFE fit by definition within a niche industry that has best topping the best-selling charts for years: the self-help industry.
A decade ago, the global economy was in pretty good shape, but my personal economic situation was a disaster. I had over 33 rental properties and my property manager had behaved in an unfortunate way with how she managed the books and the money. I was caught holding the bag and faced crushing debt. But I had discovered an amazing author and Christian motivational speaker, Zig Ziglar, when I stumbled across his audio cassette titled Goals. That tape opened the door to my changing the way my mind thinks. I devoured every book and cassette from Zig I could find, and even had the opportunity once to shake his hand and get his autograph. I owe so much to that man and am so grateful he captured his positive message in books and tapes that I might one day stumble across and begin to change my life.
I believe so much of the success of the self-help industry is stories like mine: people who have had success point backwards in time saying, “My life was changed when I read Greatest Salesman in the World, Think and Grow Rich and Dale Carnegie books.” However, there is a downside to the self-help industry that the LIFE business has worked diligently to address.
First of all, a lot of the stuff on shelves at your book stores is written by authors who aren’t walking their talk. For one example, I know of a best-selling relationship book whose author has been divorced multiple times! This is not true in the LIFE business. All of our authors and speakers have been vetted through a very simple formula: results. If someone hasn’t done it, they aren’t teaching it from our stage.
Secondly, the self-help industry grants the average guy on the street access to wisdom from successful people they might never meet, (which is a positive thing,) but with no follow-up action steps to guide them, the reader is left floundering as to what steps they should take! You might buy a great book from a successful author who gets you pumped up, thinking, “Yeah, I can DO IT!” But in the next breath, you are caught wondering, “Do what, exactly?!?” Our books, CDs, DVDs and seminars leave people feeling motivated, but with the critical element of a GAME PLAN. We have a franchised strategy that gets repeated over and over called POWER PLAYER. LIFE combines the “One-two” punch of motivation with clear action steps to follow through on.
Third, the self-help industry is HUGE. When someone walks into a bookstore, they might be overwhelmed, thinking, “Where do I begin?” The LIFE business solves that problem by having teams of leaders scour the landscape for the brightest, most powerful, most credible advice captured in print or audio, sending the best books and CDS out each month in our SUBSCRIPTIONS. This saves you the time of sifting through a riverbed of silt looking for the golden nuggets of wisdom. Our leaders save YOU time so that you can get busy on learning to be a leader.
And fourth, the self-help industry promotes too much of the “self” in self-help. Because the average person doesn’t have access to a mentor, they really are left to fend for themselves and figure things out through trial-and-error. Our LIFE business brings that critical component of MENTORSHIP, when high-performing protégés can earn access to mentorship with the people who have massive results. Mentors can trouble shoot with you as you attempt to apply leadership wisdom in books to real-life situations with all of the variables involved. If a protégé can’t humble themselves to follow the advice of someone more experienced, they are in for a long and painful journey. As a leader once said, “If you are too big to follow, you are too small to lead.”
Folks, the self-help industry is booming, just like the food industry is booming. But just because you can eat something doesn’t mean you should. By combining results-based teaching, a strategy of Power Player, the specific selection of books in our subscriptions, and application under the guiding hand of a mentor, anyone can take the LIFE products and create the LIFE they’ve always wanted!
God bless, Tim
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