It’s easy to promote pizza, but what about lima beans?
“There’s only one good, reason to go to work in the morning; to save the world.”
Dominoes, Pizza Hut, and McDonalds have it easy; everyone likes them regardless of the side-effects. Thus, they sell billions even though it’s bad for you. On the other hand, many of us sell lima beans. It’s a metaphor for selling something that is good for people, but almost nobody likes (Ironically, I like lima beans).
I have a whole lot of respect for those of us who successfully sell lima beans. We have literally succeeded in selling mass quantities of something almost nobody wants – even though everybody needs it.
I became well known because of how quickly my first practice reached numbers that were at the top of my profession. It was certainly not because I had magic pisiformis. Instead, I was fortunate to understand what it took to get my life-saving, albeit lima bean message, to the masses. It was the word, “Trust.”
For people to be open to new information, unlearn old information, and follow your recommendations; they need to trust you. Along the way of building trust, I not only quickly built a million-dollar business but a million-dollar life.
Everyone has a mission that is important—even if they don’t know it. I discovered that the key to trust was switching from a promoting-myself mind-set to promoting others as a chance to support someone else’s mission.
Join the Co-Mission
If you can bring your mission to support someone else’s mission, you co-mission. When you co-mission, you also trans-mission—together you transcend what each of you can do on your own, making a far grander difference than each of you could have imagined possible.
When entrepreneurs are struggling to draw in new business from their community, there is a good chance that they’re not doing anything to deserve it. Your trust-building, co-mission job is to serve—period. Nothing more, nothing less. Go into organizations with a heart to serve and to take care of your community, and it will take care of you. While, yes, strategically you hope to gain from the relationship and ultimately there has to be fair exchange, you need to be sincerely pleased with the service you are providing.
Co-mission example
A church I partnered with had me help with stacking and unstacking chairs for the small, mobile services they held each week. After all, I had said to them, “I’m ready to serve you even if it means stacking chairs.” To be perfectly candid, I had my doubts about my own sanity in being a chair-stacker. Yet, one Sunday they asked me to give the sermon to their 56 members (22, if you didn’t include children and staff). I suppose as a result of seeing my heart was to serve them and that I really cared about the church and its people, the power of co-missioning caught up with them that day. It was the only time I have ever spoken when 100 percent of the audience signed up for my offer.
Remember, I’m Selling Lima Beans!
Keep in mind when I share these success stories that I’m not offering something people are generally waking up in the morning and deciding they really want. I use my wellness businesses as examples because they are the most difficult to sell. If it were pizza, doughnuts, Viagra, or how to get rich fast advice I was offering, then being on a mission wouldn’t be that important. Everyone wants junk food, sex, and money. If you can learn co-mission, you’ll sell 10 times what people want but don’t need or finally sell what no one wants but everyone needs.
THE KEY TO SUCCESS; Make your net-work
My friend Dr. James Davis, author of Making Your Net Work and founder of the Billion Soul Initiative, says, “Those who are not networking soon won’t be working.” There is one fact evident in the success of the local business woman or man: the greater the relationship the leader of a business has with the leaders of other businesses, the more potential there is for success. Networking is ultimately relationship marketing, which works best when it’s not marketing—it is saving lives outside through co-missioning.
It is a crowded marketplace out there and marketing can get expensive. Yet, relationships are free—and when you have successfully co-missioned, you build trust and networks that make any promotion you invest in more fertile with the possibility of exponential growth.
Get on mission! You build friendships, change communities, and are totally virus-recession-president proof. You’ll succeed in any environment or economy.
Need help radically growing your practice and building your network?
Have fun saving the world
Dr. Ben
