Several months ago I conducted a survey to find out what network marketers really wanted to learn, and what MLM training topics would be helpful to them. I discovered an overwhelming number wanted to learn more about successful duplication within their network marketing organization. Some specific questions were asked and I am answering them here.

Q. What is the most important thing that a good MLM leader should duplicate within his or her network marketing organization?

A: A successful action. I know that sounds funny but that really is what it comes down to. You've got to duplicate something that is doable and simple so that it doesn't require an enormous amount of training at each level within your MLM system.

That's not to undermine training, but if what you're trying to duplicate is so complicated that you can't get very ordinary, average people to do it - if it requires you to have just completely brilliant people - then you're going to be limited.

What ever it is that you're duplicating...let's just say that it's a script for making outbound phone calls but this script has got a lot of words in it that the person delivering the script has a hard time with. Not only that, but the person receiving it has a hard time with those words. That's not going to duplicate easily within your MLM business. So that's the first thing - make sure that you're duplicating something that is simple to learn and grasp.

Q: In your own network marketing organization that you built how did you figure out what to do and what to duplicate?

A: While building my MLM business, I learned that the first thing to do is to build a prototype that actually works. When I define the word "work" I mean that you as an individual are able to make a customer happy. And once you make that customer happy you've got to write it out - write out exactly what you did. Then follow your own written procedures and see if you can recreate that same happy customer in another person.

How this worked for me is that I just looked over my product line and what suited me best (my company sold personal care products). I noticed that I was around a whole bunch (being in the Navy) of guys that had bad skin , acne, problem skin. So I first got successful with myself. I had a similar situation with my skin so I used the products and found the best combinations and so forth that got me results.

From that I was able to get four other guys that were in my unit to do the same process. I wrote up what it was that I did and then I showed them how simple it was and that they too could help people that they knew and saw that had problem skin. I ended up with this whole group of rough, tough, macho guys out there selling this mud that pulled impurities out of the skin. That was the way that my network marketing organization began to duplicate.

Q: Did you find it was easy to teach your MLM downline to do exactly what you had done?

A: NO! That's where you have to perfect your system. You have to continually work on your systems to ensure that those systems are in place and are workable. And then this is the part that can get you - once a person figures out how to get success - the greatest seduction, I believe, in all of life is to always want to continue to DO that, instead of TEACH that. Because it seems easier to do than having the patience to sit back and allow that other person to make the same errors and mistakes that you made.

I think that is perhaps the greatest difficulty in leadership. I think that every one of the books that are out there on leadership that's the part that I've always seen that's missing. Having the patience to just sit there and watch and observe, and see people in your group make mistakes but not correct them at that particular moment but...to sit back and say, "Alright is this a systematic thing that I need to change? Or is this something specific to this individual that I need to change?"

I'll give you an example for this. There's a lady in my network marketing organization now, and she has absolutely resisted being a public speaker and speaking in front of more than one or two people at a time. I started off encouraging her to just stand up and do nothing but introduce me. And of course she fought it, and she needed to prepare for it for a week, and things like that. But in the process, I taught her how to teach herself, if you will. In other words, I told her, "Okay, what you need to do is set up a teddy bear or some kind of stuffed animal that you're communicating to and then talk to it."

So, the next time I'm speaking at one of her events, I'm listening to her introduce me, and I walk into the back of the room and no one can hear her back there. Of course, I'm not going to correct her in that moment so I wait and then I praise her. The rule is that you praise twice and correct once. If you ever get those ratios out of order then you're going to have basically a "tucked tail." That's what they call it in the dog training world. When you're training a dog, if the tail goes below parallel to the back, you stop training that dog (because he's starting to feel "whipped") and you praise the dog. So, in a similar way, you praise twice and correct once with people.

With this lady, I waited until it came back around again that she was going to be presenting our team's MLM business briefing. What I said to her was, "Okay, it does you no good to prepare and plan and train yourself if the people can't hear you. And so what I want you to do is to read aloud to your children." She's got two kids and she had already told me that she reads to them every night. I told her, "What I'd like you to do is put them on the other side of the room; don't cuddle up in the bed with them. Be on the other side of the room and you read to them."

She tried that and of course she emailed me back and she said, "That was unbelievable! The kids kept saying, 'We can't hear you Mom!'" She began to figure out, "Oh, okay. I have to project my voice. That sound has to get to the back of the room. Just because the front of the room hears it, it doesn't mean that the whole room hears it."

So this is what I'm talking about. That was something that was specific to that person that I had to assess "Okay, there is something that she needs help with. What specific thing does she need training in?" Then I figured out a way to teach her to do that.

Now, she was just on a radio talk show and she's been requested to come back and be a speaker in this community of events that happens every week. She is becoming that public speaker that she resisted being for so long. And of course, now she ABSOLUTELY LOVES IT. I've seen her speak; she's good.

Being a great MLM leader means developing a simple, workable system and then having the patience to teach others - in spite of the discomfort of sitting through their mistakes. It's not always easy but it can be really profitable for you.