Paula Pritchard is a legend in the network marketing industry. Paula Pritchard was the first single female in the United States to reach the status of Diamond with Amway. She has been in the network marketing industry more than 25-years now and she has built teams with more than 200,000 distributors. Paula Pritchard has risen to the top ranks of several different companies to include Amway, Herbalife, NSA, MXI and Jeunesse.
Her book Owning Yourself: Learn How to Create an Income Long After Your Work is Done is a tremendous book that would benefit any network marketer. My friend sent it to me in a book swap and I really enjoyed it.
Top Paula Pritchard Quotes
What I want to do in the rest of this blog post is share some of my favorite Paula Pritchard quotes from her book. Each quote is in bold and italics. After each quote I will provide my own two cents. The quotes are listed in no particular order.
# 1: You will find that the fundamental principles of network marketing do not change.
This business is based on fundamentals that have not changed for the past fifty plus years. Those fundamentals are prospecting, inviting, showing the plan, following up, getting a few customers and helping your team do the same thing. There is no need to over-complicate things, reinvent the wheel, or make things difficult. Even with the internet, the fundamentals have not changed.
# 2: The best business will always be the one that combines high tech and high touch.
By all means, leverage systems and tools to grow your network marketing business, but don’t neglect the high touch. Get good at building relationships and friendships with others. Don’t neglect the little things. The little things are what count the most! Ultimately, this is a relationship business. Long-term relationships equal long-term money!
# 3: Learn from the people who are where you want to be.
Find a mentor who has already achieved what you are trying to do and follow their lead. Never get advice from someone who isn’t qualified to give it to you. I always tell folks to be careful who you listen to because you might end up just like them. Ultimately, you should find someone in your upline who has achieved the success and income you desire and humble yourself enough to follow their lead.
# 4: Network marketing demands a lot, but it gives a lot in return.
In the beginning of your business building efforts you will do a lot of work and not earn very much money. It takes time to build your foundation for success. This applies to any new business, not just network marketing. You may even question your sanity from time-to-time. However, if you stick with it, stay persistent and consistent, and build up your team, you can eventually work MUCH less and earn a rock solid residual income.
# 5: Some of us are so busy making a living we don’t have any time to make any money.
Don’t confuse making a living with making a life! If what you are currently doing in life isn’t giving you the rewards you want, you must change. It’s true; insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting something different to happen. If you build your business right, you will have the time and money to live the way you want to live.
# 6: If your group doesn’t excite you, you’ve got the wrong group.
If you have to motivate and babysit your group to get them to do something, you are working with the wrong people! You aren’t a boss or babysitter. Your job is to find self-motivated folks and work with them.
# 7: The only difference between you and those at the top is that they have heard more nos.
The people at the top ranks in your company are not an overnight success story. They have had more no shows, more rejection, and more disappointments than you. That’s why they made it to the top. You don’t succeed your way to success, you fail your way to success.
# 8: People want to follow people who know where they’re going.
Everyone wants to follow a leader. You don’t need to be a top earner to be a leader, but you do need to have a clear vision about where you are going and WHY you are doing it. You should know who you are and where you are headed. Act like a leader and you will attract other leaders into your business. And remember this: If you talk about the products you will find customers. If you talk about the business you will find distributors. And if you talk about your vision and why you will attract leaders.
# 9: The only thing you can control is how many people you talk to.
You can’t control who gets in, who doesn’t, who quits, or who builds it. You can only control how many people you expose the business and products, too. Work the numbers and everything else will work itself out.
# 10: The discouragement in network marketing comes when your expectations are unrealistic and you lack the understanding of how important it is to hang in there and let the numbers work for you.
So many folks get involved in our industry with a lottery mentality. They’ve worked in a job for years and are broke, yet they expect to make instant and easy money in our industry. MLM is a business. It takes time to build a profitable and successful business of any kind. I tell everyone don’t expect to make any money your first year in business. If you don’t have realistic expectations, you will get frustrated and quit.
# 11: I also learned that you could not control what they did – you could only control what you did.
You can’t make your team do anything. You can try, but it’s typically a waste of time. In reality, you can only control your own thoughts and actions! Stop worrying about what your team is or isn’t doing and lead by example. Focus on your own actions and inspire others to greatness (by what you do).
# 12: I would work with those who deserved it not demanded it.
You want to work with the people who are PRODUCING. I can’t stress that enough. If someone isn’t producing or at least trying to produce, don’t work with them one-on-one. By all means don’t abandon them, but work with those folks in a group setting. Save your one-on-one time for your producers.
# 13: Success doesn’t come from something you say or do in one day.
Rome wasn’t built in a day. Good things take time, normally much longer than you expect. It takes time to lose weight, to build a fortune and build a successful marriage. The same holds true in MLM! It will take you several YEARS to become successful, if you are persistent and consistent. It’s definitely not a get rich quick type of thing!
# 14: Everything you do should be duplicatable.
You want to keep things so simple that even an eight year old could do it! You need something that everyone on your team can “potentially” do. If your system is too hard or too complicated, your team won’t do it and your business won’t grow much.
# 15: You never want to convince anyone to get involved because then you’d have to convince him or her to do something, and that’s work.
What you are looking for is self-motivated people! I cannot stress that enough. Your job is to FIND self-motivated people, not try to motivate unmotivated people.
# 16: Success is the number of times you tell the story or show the business.
Measure your success by the number of people you share your products and business opportunity with each month. That is the true indicator as to whether your business is moving in the right direction or not.
# 17: Approximately 96% of the population needs to be told what to do. Studies show that only 4% of us can work on our own, with just a little supervision.
Most of the folks on your team have never owned a business before, so they have no idea about what to do. One of the best things you can do with your new team members is to give them simple assignments. You don’t want to boss them around, but you do want to point them in the right direction (if they let you).
# 18: I believe you will only build a business as big as your vision. If your vision is small, you’ll build a small business.
Successful people SEE things before they exist. It’s true, what you think about is normally what you get. Think BIG. And then roll up your sleeves and get to work!
# 19: Look for people just like you with enthusiasm, excitement and vision.
Your job is to look for folks with certain qualities. Ideally, you want people who are goal oriented, positive minded, entrepreneurial in nature, hard-working, think highly of themselves and want more out of life.
# 20: Amateurs convince; professionals sort.
It’s not your job is not to convince someone to buy or join. Your job is to work the numbers and let the numbers work themselves out. You want to FIND people, not sell or convince people. You can’t turn a rock into a diamond, but you can turn over enough rocks until you find your diamonds.
About the Book
Owning Yourself is published by Sound Concepts. It was first released in 2011. It has 140-pages and is available anywhere books are sold. You can order a copy on Amazon.
Final Thoughts
In summary, Owning Yourself: Learn How to Create an Income That Continues Long After Your Work is Done by Paula Pritchard is an amazing book. Overall, I give it an 7 of 10 and highly recommend it others. If you haven’t read it yet, you should order a copy and study it.
After reading the Paula Pritchard quotes I listed above, which one is your favorite and why? Leave a comment below to tell me what you think. I look forward to hearing from you.
Chuck Holmes
20+ Year Network Marketing Professional
Top Earner & Top Recruiter
Email: mrchuckholmes@gmail.com
P.S. Learn how to grow a successful network marketing business. Secret tips, training, and practical ideas. Free training delivered by email.
This has some great nuggets of wisdom within its pages. I cannot narrow it down to any one favorite quote. Some of the ones that seem to hit me are:
You cannot control what they did, only what you did. This is so true. We cannot make others like our robots. The only people we can change is ourselves.
Success is not completed in one day. It takes days, months, even years to find success and it is something we always need to keep trying to build on.
She put some great things in this book. Thanks for sharing some of it with us.
Yes, this is really a wonderful book.
I’m a sucker for learning, so the idea of learning from people who are where you want to be is spot on for me. There is no way you can achieve success on your own, so it is best to learn what you can from people who have been where you are and are currently at a place you hope to be. They have so much wisdom to offer and are generally very willing to give it freely so long as they know it will be appreciated and used. I know I have mentors that I consult and watch and they have helped me greatly when it comes to navigating through the process.
Everyone needs a great mentor. I find most of my mentors through books. I also have several real world mentors.
More quality quotes from a successful business person who has years of experience to impart to the masses! I spot a few parallels between Pritchard’s “Owning Yourself” and Gabi Steiner’s “From Person to Person”, such as the emphasis on long term vision and building lasting relationships with people who share that vision and want to realize it. These seem like ideas that hold true across nearly all successful MLM businesses, and are probably some of the reasons Pritchard found such great success with Amway!
You definitely need vision and long term relationships. Without those two things, nothing else really matters. Great connection!
This advice in invaluable and clearly comes from years of hard work and success in MLM by Paula Pritchard. It’s obvious she is an asset to AMWAY and has a wealth of knowledge to share with those working to build their MLM team. So many of her points compliment and support each other so it’s hard for me to select a favorite but I think her point on finding a solid mentor is excellent advice. The formula for MLM isn’t new but is best taught by someone how has spent time in the trenches and learned the tools of the trade through experience.
To the best of my knowledge, Paula is no longer in Amway. She is a tremendous leader in our industry though!
I did some research on Paula. She was a Diamond at Amway and in the 1990’s she moved to NSA then Herbalife and finally Qurom. NSA stands for National Safety Associates and was hurt when OJ Simpson who was a spokesman was considered to be a murderer. We all know about Herbalife and Qurom went into bankruptcy.
Paula is now with Xocai. which sells healthy chocolate items. The main company is MXI Corporation.
I thought this may tell you that Paula is still successful in other MLMs.