Janet Metzger, Business Strategist and Network Marketing Expert, is driven by her desire to help others achieve success by focusing on simplicity and consistency, and by always getting your head right first to stay motivated and clear.
We learn about Janet’s journey from corporate executive to expert in network marketing, where she now mentors others in achieving their business goals. She explains her simple and structured success formula, which includes building consistent daily habits, practicing gratitude, and focusing on personal development. She emphasizes the importance of simplifying business processes, staying accountable, and helping others uncover their own “Why” to stay motivated. Her approach offers practical strategies for entrepreneurs and network marketers to create disciplined routines, maintain a clear focus, and grow their businesses while aligning with their personal goals.
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Get Your Head Right First with Janet Metzger
Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint podcast. And my guest today is Janet Metzger, a business strategist and network marketing expert. Janet, welcome to the show.
Thanks so much for having me, Steve. I appreciate it.
Oh, it’s great to have you. And I really want to start with my favorite kind of millennial/Gen Z question, if you may, which is what is your personal “Why” and what are you doing in your business to manifest it?
Okay, wow. My personal “Why” is I am officially retired from the corporate world, but I’m not very good at not doing anything. So one of the things I absolutely love to do is I love to travel. And I have it all booked. I will hit all seven continents. I’ve been to all 50 states and it’s not cheap. So I want to earn more money to do it. But I like to continue to be able to help people. So when you own your own business, you have the benefit of time freedom, but yet you still have to work. So that’s my “Why” is I want to be able to travel around the world and have a good quality of life with my husband, family and friends doing whatever the heck we want to do whenever we want to do it. So that’s my “Why.”
That’s great. And I’m just reading a book which was written by a millionaire investor and he’s talking about the joy of life is really in the small things of your connections with family, friends, and noticing the small details of life and the small joys of life. So that’s very much in line with that thinking.
Absolutely.
So, I mean, you have been not just a network marketing expert and business strategist, but you’re also mentoring people. You also are a health, wellness, and wealth coach yourself, and you’ve seen a lot of successful tricks of the trade. So what is your personal success formula that you like to teach your clients and maybe you also practice yourself?
Okay, wow, that’s a big one. I think where you have to start is you have to have a process in place. And I think in business today, we tend to make it way too complicated. And my first career in network marketing was in the cosmetics industry. And I had a saying is, it’s only lipstick. I mean, come on, it’s not that complicated. So I like to keep things very simple. And I like to have a three to four step process. These are the things that I do consistently on a daily basis. I've always said you have to have your business plan, you should be able to write it on a napkin. That's how simple it should be. Share on X So I’m very, very structured. I still set an alarm, even though I don’t have to, I get up at a certain time, and I have a process of everything that I do. And I’m not going to say Saturday and Sunday, but I am going to say Monday through Friday. So I literally go to work. And I think that’s part of it. I mean, I treat it as a job in that I got to be here at a certain time. I’ve got to show up at my desk. I’ve got to do meetings at a certain time. So I’m very, very structured. But yet today, you know what? It was a nice day. And I took the dog for a walk at at about 11 o’clock. And that’s the beauty of owning your own business. But I was also in my office at six o’clock this morning. So structure for me is critical. And you have to develop that habit. It’s not something that you wake up and all of a sudden you’re an expert in your business. It takes time to develop the habits. But in fact, it’s about 87 days on average to develop a habit, not the 21 days that everybody thinks.
Wow. Okay. So you say you have to have a process, you have to show up. I mean, Woody Allen famously said that 80% of success is showing up. I’m talking to my kids about this idea and I hope they get it. But yeah, you show up, that’s big. You build habits. James Clear talks about atomic habits on how you can build your habits and can stick one on another one and kind of build your little system of habits for long-term success. What else is key in your process?
I think the other thing that’s key in my process is that I do a lot of personal development. Because as I’m helping people grow their businesses, grow their confidence in themselves, I have to practice what I preach. So part of my process every single day, and this is every day, is I start every morning when I come down to my office, I start out with, I’m going to show you, it’s sitting right here. This is the first thing that I do is I start with my gratitude journal. And I write in it every day. One of the things I learned many, many years ago when I was traveling all of the time, I was gone four nights a week, is I had to find what is good. So every day in my gratitude journal, I write things I’m grateful for and also three things that went well yesterday. Sometimes you have to really, really dig when you own your own business. I remember when I was traveling all the time, I would go to a hotel and it’s late at night and I was so happy because I could get a diet Pepsi, not a diet Coke. Sometimes you have to really dig, but I think that’s really important. But also go in with eyes wide open and do the analysis. What went well? What could you do better? What are you going to stop doing? But I can do that because I only focus on one to two things at a time. I keep it really simple. You can only do one or two things really well.
Yeah, my dad always used to tell me that you can only ride one horse with a single ass.
I’ve never heard that one, but yeah, I always say is don’t be like my dog and try to chase two or three squirrels because you’re not going to catch any of them. So I tend to go very, very focused.
Yeah, yeah, that’s having to say a lot of no’s, that’s part of the success as well.
Right, right. So what I do is I really do my own personal development. I’ll do 15 minutes a day. I’ll do my gratitude journal. And then I get my head right. And then I can share whether it’s on social media or talking one on one with people on the phone or zoom or whatever the case may be. But I got to get myself right before I can help any other person. And that is not a one and done. I have to do it every single day.
Yeah, that’s a good reminder. I used to do a lot of, get up 4 a.m. in the morning and I did a couple hours of reading and writing and do all sorts of different things. And I felt like by 8 a.m., I felt like I’ve done most of the work that day. But that also impacts your social life in the evening, right, if you get up very early, then you have to go to bed early, which means you miss out on the evening activities.
Yeah, I’m not getting up at four in the morning. I mean, I’m old enough that I don’t need to do that. But I also remember when I was young enough and I’d come home at that time. So not doing it. Yeah.
OK, very good. So tell me a little bit about what is a network marketing expert do?
Well, I think the expert comes in from a number of years of experience, but everybody heard of network marketing in some shape or form. It is not anything new. It’s not a new concept. Actually, network marketing started in the 1880s with a company that everybody has known of. She probably sat at your mother’s kitchen table, and that was with Avon. So I worked with them for 17 years at the corporate level. And what a network marketer does is basically they represent a company and they sell their products. They learn about their products. They share their products with family and friends and potential customers, as well as building a team. So with my years of experience, one of the things that I have learned in network marketing, it’s a little bit different. When people have a job, they have a boss, right? They have a boss that they have to listen to, that they have to do what the boss says. When you are a network marketer, you’re an independent contractor. You can do as much as you want or as little as you want. And one of the skills that I’ve developed over the years and I teach people how to do it is how to inspire people to do something. You’re not their boss. You have to inspire them when you can’t fire them. That’s a learned skill that comes over time, but it all starts with finding out what their “Why” is. So it’s just my years of experience. I’ve kind of been there, done that, seen it, know how to help people, know how to read people. I do a lot of studying in the industry and the industry has changed a lot. I’m not gonna claim that I am an expert in social media network and social selling. I’m always learning. I have mentors that help me with it. But the fundamentals of the business, which is working alongside people and helping them to achieve their goals and dreams, that will never change. To me, that’s the best part about the business. So I’m an expert because I’ve had a lot of experience. I’ve run humongous businesses. I ran a $100 million network marketing business. It was big, big business, but at the same time, you get to that grassroots level and you work with the individuals. So I’ve just seen so many different things and I know how to pivot quickly and help others to pivot.
Wow. Okay, that’s, people think it’s a big skill, especially valuable nowadays when the pace of change is accelerating and you have to learn to pivot a lot.
You do.
So going back to this concept of inspiring people to do things, and you said first you have to find out their “Why.” So what’s the next step? If you know their “Why,” then how do you use it?
What I’ll do is I’ve got my notebook, I write it down, and my role is to constantly remind them. So for example, I had a call with a team member today. I always start with, tell me what went well. I always focus on the positive. They immediately go to the negative. I said, no, tell me what went well. So there’s always recognition involved. The next thing is, is this still what you want to do? Do you want to take that trip to Antarctica? Yep, I still want to do it. Okay, so when are we going to do it? So I constantly talk about the “Why,” and then we develop, I give them options. It’s kind of a buffet. There’s all these different things that you can do. We’re going to pick two to three things that you can do that you select, because it’s got to be theirs, not mine, that you select that you are willing to do and you agree that you’re going to work on them consistently. So what are the two or three things you’re going to do? And that’s when I start to become an accountability part. But what I have to do is I have to narrow it down because there’s in our industry we call it shiny object. Oh, I can do this, I can do this, I can go here. No, just do this. It’s fundamentals. You have to really practice the fundamentals. So I let them decide what they want to do. And then my role is the accountability. So to me, I think that’s a big part of it. And I also help them to find what’s going well. Because when they say, so tell me what you’re proud of, what went well, and now tell me, I’ll go, great, that is awesome, let’s do that again. So if they verbalize it, they internalize it.
So essentially, you do the same thing as you do in your personal daily practice. You think about your purpose, you look at your gratitude journal, you write down what went well, right? You’re building your motivation, and you’re refining your attitude to make sure you’re positive and you can impact people positively then you can project this out, you can inspire people and help them do the same thing, help them prioritize and then check up on them and see if they did it and encourage them if they did it.
Yeah, and not only see if they did it but then we start to tweak it and we start to refine and you know we talk about the wins. I think the biggest challenge, quite frankly, in any business is people are so worried about five years down the road. Okay, let’s talk about the wins that you’ve got now. Little wins add up and they’re really, to me, I always look at them as the mile marker. If I want to drive from where I live in Wisconsin to California, I’m probably going to run into a detour. But I’m not going to give up, I’m just going to go a different way. And when somebody has their own business, sometimes it’s too easy to give up. Ah, what the heck, I’m not going to do it. So my job is to help them to find the detour, we’ll go around it, and then it’s a win. So it’s a lot of, I always say, take my belief in you and in the process and borrow it until you have your own.
So let the person borrow it from you until they have their own.
Yeah, borrow my belief in them.
I love it. Okay, now keep on talking, I’m just taking notes.
I wrote myself a note too. I think the other thing that’s really important is consistent action. I had a mentor many, many years ago, and he always used to say, be boringly consistent, boringly consistent. And that’s why it’s narrowing it down to the one to two to three things at the most that you can do on a consistent basis. And I think that’s really, really important. In today’s day and age of social media, people get sucked in and they spend too many hours. I have a calendar here, for example, about what I’m gonna do for my posting for the month of October. And it’s got two things per day. That’s it, two things per day. Once I’m done, that’s it. I’ll go back in, I’ll check to see any comments and I’ll respond, that type of thing. But this is my social media for the month. And that’s how I work it. Because if I tried to, sometimes people will say, well, you need to do five or six or seven or eight times a day. My gosh, that’s all you’d be doing. And the fact of the matter is most people do this on the side. They have five to 10 hours a week. So my role, my coaching, my mentoring, what I practice is I don’t want to work all the time. I’m retired, right? So what can you do in 30 minutes a day? And do the things that will help you to get closer to your “Why.” Don’t do stuff that you’re busy being busy. No, just do the things that will make you money. That’s what I say. What’s going to – if you do this, will this make you money? If the answer is no, then why are you doing it?
Okay, so social media makes you money. I’m very jealous.
It doesn’t make me money. No, honestly, social media doesn’t. I have said you’d ask me this question when we talked the first time. Social media is the start. The conversation is the art. Everybody talks about attraction marketing, it doesn’t matter what business you’re in, and people think that if you post, they will come, okay, they will buy. People expect them to buy, you know, if you’re a coach for example, you think you’re just gonna go and you do a post and somebody’s gonna hand you over 5,000 bucks? No, I have to have a relationship, so it just peaks interest. So that leads me to thinking about when you are posting, you’ve got to look at it, what is your objective? I have one objective. This is my KPI when I am posting, is I’m trying to see how many conversations, how many live conversations can I get? That’s it. I still have to do the talking and the mentoring and listening and seeing if it’s a good fit for everybody, whether it’s in my business or somebody wants coaching on the side, which I do a little bit of that still, but I focus on my network marketing business. But all I wanna do is I’m looking for people that are looking and they’ll pop up and then my goal is to get a conversation. That’s it, just conversations. That’s what it’s about.
And what’s your metric from conversations? Do you have like a conversion metric that one third of the conversation have to have some kind of a next step or do you have anything like that?
Yeah, I don’t know. That’s a really good question. And you got me thinking I need to do that again with a new business. But what I do tend to think, I do think in thirds, that’s how I’ve always thought. So one third are going to say no, one third are going to become a customer, one third are looking to possibly join the business. So I do like to think in thirds. And I always say no harm, no foul, because a lot of times in business, a lot of times in everything, it’s not, no, it’s the timing isn’t right. I always say, if you woke up this morning and you won the lottery, you know, won $40 million, and I reached out to you and said, would you like to earn an extra $5,000 a month, you’d go, I don’t need that $5,000 a month. Okay, bad timing. But if you woke up this morning, and you went to go start your car, and it’s dead, it needs a new battery, the tires are bad, and I reach out to you saying about an extra $5,000 a month, they’re going to go, oh, now I have the problem, now I want to talk with you. So that's why the consistency is so important, and maybe not now, but when they need you, you always want to be top of mind. That's why that consistency of constantly showing up is so important. Because you never know when. Share on X
That’s true. Okay, so final question. What is the most important question that entrepreneurs, business owners should ask themselves?
Am I in alignment with this? Does this feel good? Is this what I want to do? Because if it doesn’t feel right, chances are it isn’t right. Not the question that most entrepreneurs ask is, how do I do it? The how will come, but you’ve got to, am I excited about this? Ask yourself, am I excited about this? If you’re excited about it, that’s going to help you through those difficult times. Yesterday, I had a call with someone about a potential product I was going to purchase, and I wasn’t excited. And I just said, no, it’s really not for me. And they went on and on and on. And I just said, thank you very much. But this was a good one to say, because it just, I’m not in alignment with it. How can they argue with that? I’m not, you know, it just doesn’t feel right to me. So I just ask, am I excited about it? Because when you own your own business, there’s nobody telling you, you have to get up. There’s nobody saying you have to show up, that you’ve got to get out of your pajamas. You’ve got to want to do it. So if you’re not excited about it, and it’s not about your results, it’s are you excited about the idea?
About the process.
Yeah.
You have to love. I think it’s a sports coach who said it, that it’s not about wanting to win, it’s about wanting to prepare to win.
That’s right.
The process of preparing to win. So that’s great. I agree. I don’t think it just applies to entrepreneurs, business owners. I think it applies to employees of companies as well. If they don’t love it, then they’re probably not going to be able to perform extraordinarily in it. So they’re going to be mediocre, and then the career is going to go nowhere.
So, absolutely, absolutely.
So, try to look for something that they can love. And then it’s going to be so much easier.
You’re not going to love every day. You’re not going to love everything. But if you, in general, if you’re excited, if you wake up last night, it was the middle of the, it was like 4 o’clock in the morning, my mind was just going a million miles an hour. That’s because I was excited. That’s different than your mind going a million miles an hour and you’re worried and this and that. So I focus on the activities, not on the results, because the results will come if I do the right activities.
That’s right. Okay, so that’s a great way to finish this conversation. So if people would like to learn more about what you do, about how to get involved in network marketing, perhaps, or they need your advice. Where should they go and how can they connect with you?
Well, probably the easiest way is you can find me on Facebook. I use Facebook a lot. I have a Facebook group with about 800 members called the Network Marketer’s Den and I can be found in there. But it’s simply Janet Metzger. I am there. I can if you want to put it in your notes or whatever, but that’s the best way to do it. But I am very, very active on there and I respond fairly quickly, not 24/7, because you have to set the boundaries, but that’s the best way. But in my Network Marketer’s Den, we do a lot of teaching, training, answering questions, and it’s a strong community.
Wow, 800, that’s pretty strong. So, Janet Metzger, business strategist and network marketing expert. So check out the Network Marketer’s Den on Facebook, or check out Janet Metzger’s LinkedIn profile as well. You can find her there as well. And if you enjoyed the show, then please follow and subscribe on YouTube, and on Apple Podcasts, give us a review and keep listening because we come with a couple of exciting entrepreneurs every single week. So thank you for coming, Janet, and thanks for listening.
Thank you. Take care.
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