Steve's Story

I feel blessed to have been born to parents that loved to serve and really valued their relationships with others. If I owe my success to anything, I believe it is witnessing and learning that.

As a young man, I milked cows in the summers, worked with my father in the sheet metal trade and at 15 worked at our family's new music store.

I loved to read and fortunately for me, my father left books lying around that were radically different than the ones I had access to in school. Reading books with titles like "The Magic of Thinking Big", "Psycho-Cybernetics", “How to Win Friends and Influence People"...... my life was forever changed. I learned that “giving up” wasn't an option.

Somewhere in this process I became "functionally unemployable". Besides being an aspiring Rock Star, no employer could offer me the financial future I desired. Commission sales and marketing was the only thing that made any sense to me. Not punching a clock gave me the freedom to do my music the way I wanted.

There was only one problem…..FEAR…..and a lot of it.

- Fear of girls
- Fear of rejection
- Fear of making phone calls
- Fear of what people thought of me
- Fear of anyone not liking me
- Fear of making a mistake
- Fear of failure and humiliation
-Fear of responsibility
- Fear of the dentist…to name a few

There I was, hell bent on succeeding in the two fields (sales or entertainment) that guaranteed I would have to face my fears.

I plunged forward, believing all the books and tapes that said I just had to want it bad enough (have a big enough “why”) to overcome my fears.

To accomplish this, in addition to all the sales and PMA books and tapes I could get my hands on, my life started including:

- Affirmations
- Vision Boards
- Goal Cards all over the place
- Visualizations
- PMA Rally’s
- Self-Improvement Seminars

I wish I could report that I was an immediate success at sales or Rock Stardom, but I can't.

It would be well over a dozen years before I could report anything close to business success. 12 years that included:

- Trying a couple dozen MLM opportunities
- Bending tin again
- Selling signs, advertising and insurance
- A car repossessed while giving a biz opp presentation
- Touring with a band
- A stint at pouring synthetic marble
- Bankruptcy
- A couple of years at a battery warehouse
- Dropping the Rock Star dream to raise 4 children

Watching me over those years you would have witnessed a person jumping from business to business, determined to get what he wanted. I was ultra optimistic and regardless of how tough things were, I would state that “everything was great”. Believing that I could not afford “the luxury of a negative thought” as that was “a down payment on an obligation to fail”. I stayed the course, not realizing consciously that I was jumping around to avoid really facing my fears.

One fateful day in 1984 I accepted the fact that what I had believed and been doing regarding money wasn't working. I had to do something radically different. Taking my biggest risk to date, I took $5000 I had borrowed to save our house from foreclosure and invested it in a training program called "The Future Millionaires Home Study Training Course on Empire Building." The training itself wasn't anything new or earth shattering but the relationships I made as a result of the national and local events changed my "Mindset" ever so slightly and set the stage for major improvements in every area of my life.

Almost immediately the insurance agency I had been struggling to maintain became profitable. We were able to sell the house and get a nicer one. I then created lucrative partnerships with a couple of my new mentors, sold my insurance agency, never to work again…. except from my home.

Never again would I have to miss any of my children's school programs, be kept from coaching their sports teams or attending any of their activities because I was chained to an office.

Still, all this had little impact on reducing my fears, I had learned new ways to ignore them (exercise and staying busy) but they eventually showed up in another form of self-sabotage… severe joint pain, severe fatigue, weight gain….

In my continued search for better ways to handle my fears (with money and health issues now) my life ventured through a multitude of new experiences, including:

- Hundreds of health products…vitamins, minerals, herbs, oils, tablets, capsules, juices, homeopathics, patches, tinctures, cookies, powders, sprays, ointments, flower remedies, electronic energy devices……

- NLP, fine tuning my sensory acuity, mirroring, re-patterning & re-framing

- Listening to and creating subliminal recordings

- Several Experiential Trainings where I pounded on chairs and screamed for hours, walked through love tunnels, sang “The Impossible Dream” with all I could muster, was the brunt of the foulest language I had ever heard, confronted my comfort zones with “stretches”, played the Red – Black game, walked on hot coals and broke target arrows with the soft part of my throat in Hawaii

- Listening to positive tapes for 14 hours a day & night

- Getting in touch with and hugging my inner child

- Bonding with my male and female nature

- Primal screaming

- Ropes courses, trust falls and leaping from poles 40 feet in the air, blindfolded

- Yoga, chanting and meditating for hours at a time

- Fasting, cleansing & colonics

- Confessing all my “sins”

- Getting in touch with my “guardian angels”, earthbound possessing spirits and “ascended masters”

- Sweat lodge and finding my power animal

- Past life regressions and re-birthing

- Rolfing, Cranial Sacral, Reiki, Kinesiology

- Hypnotherapy, Rapid Eye, Auditing and Releasing

- Brain re-patterning

- Psychotherapy, group, marriage counseling and retreats

- Personality, I.Q., psychosis testing

- Physic Surgery in the Philippines 

- Singing to myself in the mirror... and more

Over 20 years have past since I made that fateful $5000 decision in 1984. Years that included all the above and more:

- Creating large successful organizations in multiple MLM companies

- Lots of new friends as a result of the above and heartbreak over watching less than 5% of the people that joined me in those companies have the same experience that I did, regardless of how much I would try to do for and with them

- The excitement of traveling to exotic places

- New homes, new cars, new toys

- Physical, mental, emotional and spiritual pain and gain

- Unwise decisions, including challenging the IRS which resulted in a 2 ½ year long, very expensive legal battle and 10 months in federal prison for eventually pleading out to: “aiding and assisting in the preparation of a false tax return”. While there, my 30 year marriage ended in divorce, my children struggled and I was unable to be there for them. I could only watch as I lost most everything I had identified myself by. As I was forced to face so many of my FEAR demons head on, this turned out to be the best experiential training I’d ever attended.

- I discovered I could be happy with nothing but myself

In the process I learned some valuable lessons:

- Relationships are far more valuable than knowledge or skills.

- Knowing better doesn't equate with doing better.

- Making yourself or anyone else feel worse, to get them to do better, does not produce long term positive results.

- Pain is mandatory in life, suffering is optional and is created by our opinions. (And… most pain separated by time becomes humor.)

- All things seem to eventually end up working together for good. (And… reminding someone of this when they are in the middle of a challenge doesn't do either of you much good.)

- Letting go of programmed beliefs and assumptions and allowing a deeper wisdom than our conditioned opinions to guide us to what might be beneficial in each situation... always works best.

- It is not about what I do differently but what I feel and speak differently that makes the difference. There are two worlds, one of Abundance and one of Scarcity. The world I see outside is a perfect reflection of the world I feel inside.

By far the best thing to come out of all that has happened in my life is my wonderful companion and sweetheart "Linda", our blended family of nine incredibly diverse children, their spouses and seven of the greatest grandchildren in the world.

Read Linda’s inspirational bio at www.LindaStay.com

Part 6- MLM Myths and Misconceptions that Limit Success

"Being totally honest about yourself and the facts of your business could hurt your business."

If it does, you'd better be changing deals and/or your attitude about yourself. Anything less than "total honesty" hurts more than just your business.

Yes, people will pay a lot for B.S. the first time around.

In business you are working at building residual relationships (and therefore income) and the best way to prevent that from happening is to lie about you or your business. Sooner or later the truth will come out and when it does, watch out for the fallout.

There are generally plenty of good truthful things to be excited about with any company, and there are always plenty of good truthful things to be excited about with "you". Risk being "Real"! You'll find the end result is worth it.

If you ever wonder whether what you are feeling is real, a good way to tell is: “Can others bring you down easily”. If they can, you are most likely believing a lie.

The solution is not to leave what you're doing, but to own and embrace the emotions your current experience is creating in you. There are a multitude of techniques to help you process those emotions and in doing so, you will get to know yourself better. When you do, you'll know the right thing for "you" to do.

To see this 11 Part series from its beginning go to: http://stevestay.blogspot.com/2009/04/myths-and-misconceptions-that-limit.html

or Click Here to go to Part 7
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In his first dozen years in MLM or Network Marketing, Steve Stay experienced what most people would call "total failure" and give them every reason they needed to give up the dream. But that wasn't part of Steve's script as one fateful day a shift happened inside him and the way he experienced the MLM industry dramatically shifted as well. Within three months he was a top earner in the industry. Discover more about Steve's honest take on his 36+ year personal MLM journey at: http://stevestay.blogspot.com/2009/01/steve-stays-mlm-story.html

Part 4- MLM Myths and Misconceptions that Limit Success

"To succeed you need to model yourself after someone who has been successful."

Depending on the level and type of "Success" you want, in trying to become like someone else, we cast aside that which makes us most valuable. You'll find that those who are experiencing "True Success" are just being themselves. They're "Real". The decision to trust my instincts and just "be myself" was one of the hardest things I've ever done. There are so many people out there reminding us of how we should be "acting" if we want "success". But the results I've now experienced from just "being me", makes life and success much easier.

To see this 11 Part series from its beginning go to: http://stevestay.blogspot.com/2009/04/myths-and-misconceptions-that-limit.html

or Click Here to go to Part 5
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In his first dozen years in MLM or Network Marketing, Steve Stay experienced what most people would call "total failure" and give them every reason they needed to give up the dream. But that wasn't part of Steve's script as one fateful day a shift happened inside him and the way he experienced the MLM industry dramatically shifted as well. Within three months he was a top earner in the industry. Discover more about Steve's honest take on his 36+ year personal MLM journey at: http://stevestay.blogspot.com/2009/01/steve-stays-mlm-story.html

Part 3- MLM Myths and Misconceptions that Limit Success

"To succeed, you must believe that your business is better than all the others."

How many times have you been on a conference call or personally heard a distributor putting down other opportunities by representing their opportunity as: “the one and only”, “better than all the others”, “the last great one to come along in this lifetime”, “the one all the top leaders in the industry are flocking too”…. or participating in the war of “the old way of prospecting, that starts with making a list of 100 people” vs. “the new way of attraction marketing, where you only talk to those that contact you” ?

What a tragic attitude fostered by far too many in this industry.

One of the wisest things I learned was to run from the "ours is the one and only" zealots. My association with them was usually short lived as they ended up being the first to jump ship to the next new "one and only", attempting to drag their existing downline, even those they hadn’t personally sponsored, along.

With that said: The business is certainly much more fun to build if you feel your program is the best one for "You" based on your own individual criteria. You will find that when you Totally Accept you, you will allow others to have their own criteria regarding what's best for them… and you will be excited to help them discover their own criteria… even if it doesn’t result in them joining you in your opportunity.

Some people find they love sharing tangible products like skin care, candles or nutritionals. Others are more attracted to services like legal services, discount health care or energy. Some people like to share with family and friends and talk face to face, where other love perfecting their marketing skills through print advertising or the utilizing the internet. I know very successful networkers that love to cold call list or even go door to door.

We are all unique and I hope you will learn to enjoy, celebrate and encourage that uniqueness.
Both methods of prospecting (old and new) are alive and working very well. They are just two different but effective ways to build. Both take concentrated committed effort (over a longer period of time than just a couple of months) to mature into a successful business.

If you find yourself feeling a need to put down another person, opportunity or system, step back and take a look at yourself to discover what it is that you are really putting down about yourself.
There are an abundance of reasons to be excited about any legitimate network marketing opportunity that you should never need to put another down to make yours look good.

To see this 11 Part series from its beginning go to: http://stevestay.blogspot.com/2009/04/myths-and-misconceptions-that-limit.html

or Click Here to go to Part 4
----------------

In his first dozen years in MLM or Network Marketing, Steve Stay experienced what most people would call "total failure" and give them every reason they needed to give up the dream. But that wasn't part of Steve's script as one fateful day a shift happened inside him and the way he experienced the MLM industry dramatically shifted as well. Within three months he was a top earner in the industry. Discover more about Steve's honest take on his 36+ year personal MLM journey at: http://stevestay.blogspot.com/2009/01/steve-stays-mlm-story.html

Part 2- MLM Myths and Misconceptions that Limit Success

"People fail because they picked the wrong MLM Company, Product or Pay Plan."

First off let’s deal with the words “FAIL” and “Wrong”. It’s arrogant and judgmental to even use them. There is no way for us to know what any decision will really lead to for ourselves, let alone another.

"Timing" should probably be part of the above list also. It’s a fact that some companies go under, some products end up being "snake oil", some pay plans are more difficult than others and trends can help or hurt you, but the Only reason people experience “Success” is because they are ready to.

This is an industry that will eventually teach you that it is all about finding the right "You". It is what network marketing, "The Perfect Playground" is best at and is the reason most people get nervous and run from it. They aren’t ready for that discovery yet and that’s OK. When you do find the right "You", it doesn't matter much which opportunity you choose because you'll choose the one that is right for "You".

The fact is, when you own and totally accept what's inside you, it doesn't matter what's outside you.

Click Here to go to Part 3
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In his first dozen years in MLM or Network Marketing, Steve Stay experienced what most people would call "total failure" and give them every reason they needed to give up the dream. But that wasn't part of Steve's script as one fateful day a shift happened inside him and the way he experienced the MLM industry dramatically shifted as well. Within three months he was a top earner in the industry. Discover more about Steve's honest take on his 36+ year personal MLM journey at: http://stevestay.blogspot.com/2009/01/steve-stays-mlm-story.html

Part 1- MLM Myths and Misconceptions that Limit Success

by Steve Stay

After years of stumbling in the network marketing industry, I eventually learned a few things that turned it around for me. I assumed everyone else knew these things and that I was the only "Slow Child Playing" on the block. However, the difference between the size of the checks I was generating and those of the masses was more than I could ignore. Most had the same first class training materials. They had been taught all a person would need in regards to product, prospecting, closing, attitude, goal setting, etc. Yet most of the people didn't experience the success I did, and it wasn't that they weren't trying hard enough.

So I kept asking myself, "what exactly is it that I am doing differently?"

One day the thought occurred to me that maybe I had been asking the wrong question. That it may have nothing to do with what I had been Doing but what I was now Believing.

I started asking people some basic questions
about their Success Beliefs, beliefs that had
sabotaged my success so many times.

The problem was wide spread and picking up speed. Everywhere I looked I’d witness people getting excited as recruiters flashed big checks in front of them, telling them how, by combining a great company with a simple turn key system, they can also have checks like this showing up in their mailboxes. Add a few stories about so called "average" people, like them succeeding, and they jump in. Then about as quickly as they come in, a large majority fall out. The few that stick may make it financially worthwhile for the recruiters, but once I realized how damaging these tactics were, I could never go anywhere near recruiting that way and knowingly perpetuate this tragedy.

Are you, like the majority of people in network marketing, overwhelmed, stressed out and disappointed with your experience?

Do you ever feel like you were recruited to play basketball only to find the floor covered with ice, the hoops replaced with floor nets, instead of a ball there's a puck, and everyone else is wearing padding and gliding along on skates looking to pound you into the wall?

In this 11 Part series, I am going to share my take on what I feel are 10 Myths and Misconceptions that limit your Network Marketing Success.

Click Here to go to Part 2
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In his first dozen years in MLM or Network Marketing, Steve Stay experienced what most people would call "total failure" and give them every reason they needed to give up the dream. But that wasn't part of Steve's script as one fateful day a shift happened inside him and the way he experienced the MLM industry dramatically shifted as well. Within three months he was a top earner in the industry. Discover more about Steve's honest take on his 36+ year personal MLM journey at: http://stevestay.blogspot.com/2009/01/steve-stays-mlm-story.html