It was between 1986 and 1987 that I joined a traditional multilevel seller company to share my time with my couple in the same activity. For those of you who know this kind of systems, it is common to remember that the foundation of their success, in this kind of companies, was personal growth and people’s motivation.
Definitely a partner who does not participate, is annoying, since between conferences, seminars, product launches, sales meetings, training and public relations work groups, too time consuming. Therefore if the couple does not participate, it may be grounds for divorce.
To motivate people to participate in couples, there are a lot of periodic travelling options on a really low cost, always in paradisiac places. They offer prizes in the travels too, to increase production.
Once, my wife got to the fixed goal “thanks to his work team” and won an all paid trip for two people. So I decided that the second person should be me (she was ok with this), like a second honey moon, a five stars hotel, what else can you ask for? There has to be recognized that it is a good “hook” to wear the companies t-shirt, for some people travelling is just trying out what it’s like to live a life that is not common and psychologically you feel like you owe something to the company.
In short to keep traveling free, I decided to support my wife a little more.
Of course she also made me pay, undertaking to accept to accompany her to all weekly meetings of presentation and business training. I cannot complain about my wife, and sharing with her is something very important to me.
On the other hand, I tried to look for the half-full glass and I could take advantage of some positive experiences and learn about fields that I didn’t know anything about before. Our organization overpassed the 400 members and started to become a really interesting business. To summarize everything, we came to a seminary where Are assigned new positions as “Directors, executive committee members”, we had more capacity, not more experience (me at least, she was really participative) along with the title came the responsibility to give a conference inside the seminary with a duration of 40 minutes about a specific topic.
It was programmed for the third night of four, after the company’s president participation and its very best speaker, a guy that was really charming, native from Spain. I was really calm although it was an important event, because my wife is the one that will have the responsibility of the conference, not me. And the worst happened…
In the morning of the third day, my wife started feeling some flu symptoms, it started really severe and got worst with the pass of the day, her temperature came up to 39 degrees of fever at 2 P.M. even with the best effort of the doctors.
They were thinking about cancelling the conference, but my wife didn’t want to and she told the president that I’ll take the compromise. At the beginning I thought she was just raving because of the fever, but this had already passed because it was 4 p.m. now and with the medicines she was starting to look better but not enough to perform that event.
I talked with my wife and told her that I wasn’t ready, but she told me that I was because we had prepared the entire conference together and I knew every word of it because it was related to me. She finally brought me down, when she said that I was starting to feel comfortable with my current position of participating but letting her the hardest part, but we were a team, a couple, that we both were directive members and if any of us could not face it in any moment the other would face it in his position. What could I said? She had me against the wall, in that moment I realized that with that convincing power she had, the organization title and the 400 distributors she really deserved it, and I needed to do something too to deserve it.
I get out of that room with firm steps, with my chest high and the posture of a warrior convinced to fight his best war, but when I got to the hall I fainted (no, that’s not true hahaha!) but I almost did, my legs bended, so I went to the room, let my brave posture and asked my wife to review all the points of the conference because I had temporal amnesia and I didn’t even remember the title.
It was 8 p.m. and there was one more hour for the conference to start, I sat behind the stage asking myself how I got to that situation. For some moments I heard the lecturer that was exposing in that moment and I remember to think that it was really boring, he was talking about time management, I remember, I remember as well how I was thinking that I was going to do worst.
For some moments I listen, others I was rambling in my head, I was really nervous and I was trying to be calm. 1,200 people in that room justified my nervousness.
Suddenly, I inadvertently, the president came to talk to me, he was exposing after I did, as I said, an incredible lecturer too, and we looked me in the eyes and told me: “You don’t have an idea of what you are going to do” and… he was right. Then he told me: “Don’t worry, they don’t know either”. Finally he said, can I give you some advice? Sure, I told him, although in my mind I was thinking of telling him to do the conference for me.
Don’t look at anyone in the eye, try to walk continually, don’t get static, use your arms to talk, play with the keys in your pocket if that calms you down, but do it discreetly, don’t make them think you are doing something else. If you don’t believe something, don’t say it, people always notice sincerity first, if they trust you, they will buy you any crazy idea you have. No one knows what you are going to talk about before, if you make mistakes, people won’t notice it, unless you tell them, take the road again, fix it and go on, no one will know- and above all things just remember to have fun so they will have fun too. I couldn’t even answer; they were announcing him to give his conference.
In that moment I thought: “This guy has all figured out… and it’s from Galicia, why not me? Of course I replied myself immediately, because he has experience, capacity, personality and so much more characteristics that I didn’t had. But it calmed me down anyways.
I tried to calm down and started to listen to his conference to distract myself. He moved like a fish in the water and seeing him reminded me every advice he told me, and I realized that he followed them just the same way.
Then it happens… in the middle of the conference I heard a phrase he said that changed my life and I will remember it forever, and it said: “Never go to sleep thinking something is impossible… because the noise of someone else doing it can wake you up!!!”
It shocked me, so much truth in just a few words. We are our own worst enemy and the easiest to beat, we know our weakest parts, but also the strongest ones and we have to take advantage of them.
We set our own limits, who else?
Immediately and as if by magic, several lights were turned on me, while that phrase echoed in my head. Immediately, I also came up with a phrase to use in the conference and I’m currently using and is:
“You suffer because you want to…
You live because you wish it…
And you die because there is no other way, it’s your decision!!!”
I wrote it down in my notes for the great final.
The perspective of the moment I was living had changed drastically and I was analyzing that quote many times. Coming to that moment to me was impossible, but there it was, by that, it was not impossible to making the conference end well.
Thinking of this was the reason the slogan I use for all of my companies was born, a song to life:
“The possible it’s already done…
The impossible, we are making it…
And the unthinkable, we will achieve it!!!”
And it’s a reality, if you analyze it, 500 years before going to the moon, this was something “unthinkable”, 200 years before it was “impossible” and in 1969 it’s a fact.
Having excused my wife and commenting about the beginning in the business is how I started my dissertation.
The words flowed naturally, I was really expressing what I was thinking and I was not looking for acceptance, I didn’t followed the script, I played with words, I got excited with things I was saying and made fun of myself with some work experiences and telling some joke in the middle to keep the attention of everyone and keeping the atmosphere in the salon. An unforgettable experience, I had enjoyed it and that was really important, and amazingly, the audience enjoyed it too.
My wife came to me with tears in her eyes, hugged me, and told me in the ear “I knew you could do it, I’m proud of you” like an idiot, but I started to cry too. I didn’t realize she was in the salon, I thought the entire time that she was sleeping in her room.
