Focus on Your Dreams The Joy of Accomplishment By Dr. Josephine Gross Cherian Mathew is a network marketing leader who heads a global organization of half a million business partners. He started building his team in Bahrain, then expanded into neighboring Middle Eastern countries, and from there into Africa and India. Cherian was born in a small Indian village to a homemaker mother and a father who worked at a semi-governmental organization. Seeing the sacrifices his parents made to give him and his two brothers the best education possible, Cherian felt compelled to succeed from a young age. He vividly dreamed of being able to help his parents move beyond their limited world into a life full of accomplishments. After eleven years of employment in the corporate world and no way in sight to achieve his goals, Cherian finally discovered network marketing, the vehicle that would allow him to realize his childhood dream—and many other dreams. In the process, he made lifelong friends around the world and created many millionaires, some in countries where this kind of wealth can change an entire family’s destiny forever. A New Business Cherian moved from India to Bahrain in 1994, hoping to tap into the wealth of this tiny, oil-rich nation. As one of the top quartile countries on the Human Development Index (a composite statistic of life expectancy, education, and income), Bahrain seemed to be a promising place for a family looking for greater prosperity. However, the cost of living there was so high that Cherian and his wife struggled financially despite both holding well-paid jobs with established multinationals. In October 2000 another expat and former classmate of Cherian contacted him about a business opportunity. The timing was perfect: Cherian had been looking at second job options and he and his wife were open to other possibilities. “I liked the idea of working for myself rather than for another boss,” says Cherian, “so I was eager to hear more.” His classmate, who was working as an accountant for a hospital, had just been introduced to network marketing by one of the hospital’s senior surgeons. Cherian invited them both to his home where he felt everyone would be most comfortable. During the presentation, he figured out that the opportunity could potentially provide him with the extra income he needed. “I decided to join even before they finished presenting,” he says. “The only problem was, I didn’t have enough money to get started.” When his friend asked, “Why don’t you pull out your credit card so we can get going?” he replied, “I need to think about it for a few days.” As soon as the presenters left, Cherian went into action. He cleared out his meager savings and borrowed money from a few friends, and three days later he had gathered enough to cover the start-up cost. Immediately after signing on, Cherian organized a meeting with a close contact and invited his classmate to do the presentation. When his contact let him know he was not interested, Cherian was surprised and disappointed. However, the experience made him realize he could just as easily do the presentation himself. “My upline had joined the business only a couple of days before I had,” he says. “My knowledge and understanding of the business was now almost the same as theirs. Because of my marketing background, I thought I could actually give a better business presentation myself, so I decided to continue on my own.” Cherian made a contacts list of friends, church members, and colleagues, and started calling them. In the first month he made one-on-one presentations to forty-five different people, of whom the first forty rejected his offer straightaway. Every time Cherian heard a “no” he would feel a little upset but pull himself together and, thanks to his wife’s unwavering support, he kept going. “I also believed deep within that this was the way to go,” he says, “that this was a great opportunity, and that the fact that most people didn’t understand it didn’t make it any less valuable. I knew I just had to talk to more people.” Cherian had experience with rejection because his job required him to make sales calls every day. He says, “Out of ten calls, I would close maybe one transaction for the company. I had learned that the only way to increase business is by increasing the number of calls.” Unconcerned about the outcome, Cherian simply focused on his goal of doing two to three presentations a day. At the end of his first month, he had five sign-ups. Speaking at convention in Bahrain. Laying the Foundation Cherian’s drive to succeed started early in life. At age thirteen he dreamt of becoming a doctor. When he applied for college, his academic skills were not strong enough to pursue a medical degree, so he studied law instead. Upon graduating, he was hired by Proctor and Gamble to be their sales coordinator for Kerala. After a few years in sales and marketing, Cherian looked for a change. He resigned and moved to the Middle East to look for brighter horizons. “I was searching for another way to become successful in life,” says Cherian, “but I didn’t know what it might be. My brother had become a doctor and moved to the United States by this time. When I learned about this networking opportunity, I knew I had finally found a vehicle that would allow me to become who I wanted to be.” Out of the five people Cherian signed up in his first month, three were inactive, but the other two starting building the business with him. Applying the same focus and work ethic as Cherian, together they were able to increase their sign-ups. When Cherian received his first commission check the next month, he was so excited he started working even harder. “In addition to my job, I was working on my MBA from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow,” he says. “I had evening classes to attend three times a week. Somehow I managed to balance my eight-to-six job, going to night school, and building my new business.” Cherian says without his wife’s support, none of this would have been possible. “We made a pact to focus on this business as the way to bring the changes we wanted in our lives. Together we had looked at our dreams and realized that to achieve them in any other way would require us to work our jobs for at least twenty or thirty more years. This simply was not an option for us.” Cherian and Jinoo decided to give the business at least five years to produce results. To execute their plan, they split up their roles and responsibilities. Jinoo would take care of their daughter and home; Cherian took responsibility for building the business. “Whenever challenges arose, Jinoo and I came together to remind ourselves of why we were going through this struggle. As soon as we shifted our focus away from our problems and onto our dreams, there was no issue at all. We would recommit to our respective responsibilities and press on.” On those days when he didn’t have an evening class, Cherian would head directly from work to one-on-one appointments. Later in the evening he would give a group presentation for prospects his team members had invited. Most days they would close the evening at midnight with a meeting of key partners who were actively building the business. “Together we would evaluate our efforts and results,” says Cherian. “We would share our experiences, discuss difficulties and challenges, and brainstorm ways to handle them.” Debriefing with his team became a daily activity, taking Cherian’s focus off rejection and putting it onto business growth. His commission checks kept growing each week, and in a year’s time he had a team of about 1,000 people—in a country with a population of only 650,000. Cherian was well on his way to realizing his dream of being a highly successful businessman. And this was only the beginning.
Posted on: Sat, 27 Jul 2013 12:40:22 +0000
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