It’s Just Step by Step
John Haas, National Consultant
CONGRATULATIONS to John who got promoted to National Consultant on January 9, 2014.....
When Ray Montie introduced Ambit Energy to him in December 2007, John Haas didn’t find much he could object to. Electricity and natural gas are “unconsciously purchased and habitually used.” There was no product to sell. He was impressed with the people in it, including Ray and his sponsor Brian McClure. He was impressed with the compensation plan and he could see that Ambit Energy had a proven system.
There was just one thing he wasn’t absolutely sure about.
“Ray and I got involved in a previous opportunity a little after it had peaked. We got in on the downward side, so we realized what ‘timing’ meant. When Ray contacted me this time, he asked me how I’d like to get involved in the deregulation of energy, only this time, get in at the beginning. That’s what I needed to hear.”
Taking small steps…
So the “logic” was there. Overcoming his final objection, he joined. Then, he says, he just had to figure out where he fit in. Like most Ambit prospects, John felt he was never one of those guys whose goal was to get rich quick, or even get rich at all. On the other hand, he did know that his family needed a change.
Living in North Massapequa on Long Island, John was on rotating shifts in New York City as an operating engineer. That meant he had an irregular schedule, with different days off each week, and rarely two days off together. But to make ends meet, John felt he had no choice as the shift work provided the extra money needed to pay the bills. As you can guess, however, John had to sacrifice any hope of “quality time” with his family.
“Every year I would tell my wife, ‘next year will get better.’ Every year I would tell my kids, ‘next year we’ll go to Disney World.’ Well, next year never seemed to come. And I knew that if I kept doing the same thing over and over again and expected a different result… like they say, that’s the definition of insanity. I knew that if I wanted to get something different, I had to do something different.”
Based on his circumstances, John made the strategic decision to take small achievable steps.
...to really big things
Setting an initial goal was easy when he joined the business in winter. At the time, he was driving a 20-year-old car “with little or no heat” on a daily 80-mile round trip commute. He gave himself a year to replace his current ride with a reliable new one. He was looking for a basic car with a heater that worked. Thanks to Ambit, however, John had to set his next goal a little sooner and a little higher than expected. Just five months in, he drove out of the dealership in a new Mini-Cooper.
Ahead of schedule, John set his next goal. His shift schedule also meant that he rarely got to celebrate a normal holiday with his family. In fact, he hadn’t spent an entire Thanksgiving or Christmas with them in five years. His modest goal was to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas of 2008 at home. Sounds simple enough, but it meant he had to replace his shift-work income with his part-time Ambit income.
Check off another one. In October, about ten months in, he walked in to his boss’s office and removed himself from shift work. It was done. “I got my life back,” he says.“That Thanksgiving and Christmas, I got to spend the entire day with my family, just like everyone else, for the first time in 5 years.”
Next goal? Make it to Executive Consultant by Ambition 2009. You guessed it – John promoted on September 1 and he was able to walk on stage in Dallas a few days later as a brand new EC. His next goal is to replace his wife’s income, and allow her to “retire,” by December 2010. If his track record is any indication, we’re not betting against him!
An emotional connection
Hand-in-hand with “fitting in,” John says, is establishing an emotional connection to your business. In other words, you have to have a solid “why.” This became clear to him one night after putting his daughter to bed. Like most new consultants, John had been experiencing some setbacks in his early efforts. He didn’t quit, he just stopped. “I don’t believe people quit this business,” John says, “they just stop doing it. They forget why they got in, and they just let it die. That’s what I was doing.”
As he watched her sleeping that night, he says, “I imagined myself having a conversation with her, saying ‘I know you’re working hard in school, you’re doing well. You keep doing that, but I quit. This was just too tough for me. You may not be able to go to the college you want to go to. You’ll just have to settle for what we can afford.’ That helped me re-identify why I was doing this business.”
Empowering your team
John thinks he has such a strong team because he’s focused his leadership efforts on creating independent Consultants, not dependent ones. He doesn’t feel his job is to train consultants; it’s rather to empower them. It’s not about doing things for them, it’s about providing them the tools to be successful. Is that hard to do? Not at all. John feels he’s just emulating what Ray does, who emulates what Brian McClure does. In turn, John’s core team are emulating that empowering behavior throughout their organizations.
Advice for new Consultants
See the above paragraph and get empowered. Be coachable and plug into the system. In particular, John says, attend every event that you can. “Do what you have to do to get there,” he says. “It’s no coincidence that the most successful people in Ambit are at all these events. They’re not at these events because they’re making money. They’re making money because they’re at these events.”
Then he advises leaders to help their new MCs get that first check. Once that happens the new MC doesn’t just think Ambit works, he or she knows it does.
“Stick with this,” John says. Those that are part of this Ambit generation, he believes, will reach financial freedom. In just the next few years, he says, “…the Top 10 Income-Earners at Ambition will all have two commas in their checks.”