Why High Achievers Struggle with Consistency (and How to Finally Fix it)

Episode Summary

Here’s the truth: if you’re struggling with consistency in your network marketing business, nothing has gone wrong. This is a normal part of growth—especially for high-achieving leaders who are building at the next level and realizing their mindset and systems need to evolve.

In this episode, Rachael Bodie breaks down why consistency isn’t about discipline—it’s about how you think, how you handle discomfort, and the systems you have in place. She walks you through the mindset shifts and simple frameworks that help you take consistent action, build momentum, and create sustainable growth in your social selling business. 

Why You Should Listen: What You’ll Learn

● Stop Letting Perfectionism Slow Your Growth
When you haven’t developed this skill, it looks like overthinking your content, hesitating to reach out, and waiting until everything feels “right.” You’ll learn how perfectionism is actually self-protection—and how shifting to progress-based action creates faster results, more conversations, and stronger recruiting in your network marketing business.

● Fix the Real Reason You’re Inconsistent
When this is missing, it looks like starting strong, falling off, and making it mean something is wrong with you. You’ll learn that inconsistency is an emotional tolerance problem—not a discipline issue—and how to manage your thoughts so you can follow through as a leader.

● Use Process Goals to Build a Predictable Recruiting System
When you’re only focused on outcomes like sales or sponsoring, it looks like inconsistency and frustration. You’ll learn how to set and track process goals—like conversations, invites, and follow-ups—so you can create duplication, depth, and sustainable income growth.

● Take Messy Action to Create Momentum and Duplication
When this skill is missing, it looks like procrastination, analysis paralysis, and stalled growth. You’ll learn how messy action builds confidence, speeds up learning, and models the behavior your team needs to duplicate in a growing organization.

● Build Simple Systems That Support Consistency
When you don’t have structure, it looks like guessing what to do each day and relying on motivation. You’ll learn how to create minimum baselines, track your activity, and implement simple systems and structure for scaling your team.

● Break the All-or-Nothing Cycle That Keeps You Stuck
When this shows up, it looks like falling off track and waiting for a fresh start. You’ll learn how to anticipate obstacles, stay consistent through busy seasons, and approach growth in a way that actually supports long-term success in social selling.

Resources Mentioned

● Apply for a Free Mini-Session so we can connect 1:1, review your goals, and talk through opportunities for business growth.
 👉 https://www.rachaelbodie.com/mini-session

● Social Selling Leadership Edit (Free Email Series)
 Weekly insights on leadership skills for network marketers, recruiting systems, duplication strategies, and sustainable growth.
 👉 https://www.rachaelbodie.com/leadership-edit-email

● Instagram – Daily leadership insights, social selling strategies, and behind-the-scenes mentoring
 👉 https://www.instagram.com/rachachelbodie/?hl=en

● Elevate for Social Sellers – Facebook Community
 A space for social sellers focused on mindset, systems, and sustainable growth
 👉 https://www.facebook.com/groups/elevateforsocialsellers

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Social Selling Leadership Podcast, the show for six-figure network marketers ready to scale with alignment and simple systems. I'm your host, Rachel Bodie, network marketing expert and industry veteran. Each week you'll learn the strategies and systems top leaders use to enroll high-quality recruits, create duplication in their downline, and lead with confidence. Let's dive in. Well, welcome back to the show. So I know many of you are a part of my free community over on Facebook, Elevate for Social Sellers. And when you come and you join the community, you may have noticed that there are some questions that I ask. And one of those questions is what's your biggest challenge in building your network marketing business? Which, by the way, if you have a free community, that's a really great question to ask because you're able to leverage that information to serve your audience in marketing. And if you're not in the Elevate Free community, head on over to the show notes because we'd love to have you as a part. But I want to share with you one of the top answers that I receive is consistency. Consistency as being a challenge. So today's podcast, we're going to talk about how to be consistent. But the starting point is to create awareness around why you're not consistent. And I want to talk about specifically why high achievers struggle with consistency. Because this is something that I see in a lot of top network marketing leaders and in a lot of my clients when they first come to me. So I wanted to like, I want to start by sharing a story about my experience with 75 Hard. If you guys aren't familiar with 75 Hard, it is this program where it's pretty intense where you do, there's all these different things that you need to do every day for 75 days. It's like two workouts a day. One of them has to be outdoors, it's dieting, eating really clean, uh, drinking, I can't remember how much water like a couple gallons. Something it's it's intense, is the point. And as a high achiever, as someone who's super disciplined, I loved the idea of a challenge. And over the years, I have tried this at least four times and I didn't finish. And I think that's important to name as it relates to this whole conversation of consistency, because every time I quit, it wasn't just quitting the program. I made it mean something about myself. That I lacked what it take to follow through, that something was wrong with me, right? And reflecting back, I realized why I always had a hard time with it. Because 75 Hard encourages an all or nothing mindset. Now, like most things in life, if it works for you, keep doing it. But I don't love the idea of something when you mess up, you have to start over and go back to the beginning. Right? This is the polar opposite of what we need to do to succeed in our business. You know, progress is progress, you know, whether it's an inch or a mile. And your road to success in your business, or really with anything, is paved with failure, right? You want to double your rate of success, you double your rate of failure. So when you are in this kind of 75-part mindset, or when I was, it was this whole idea of if I wasn't perfect, then I'm losing. And I love what my former boss John used to say, John Maxwell. He said, You're either winning or learning, right? He even wrote a whole book around it. Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn. So I think this is a really good segue into our conversation around consistency, uh, specifically the very first reason why you aren't consistent. And I see this with so many high achievers, and it's perfectionism, and it can be really subtle. It's having this ideal of show how you show up in your business that you have to get it right. Instead of approaching your business with the compounded fact in mind. So it sounds like this post has to be really good, or I have to get the onboarding right, or I'm gonna fail my team, or I need to show up today and share something really valuable. And these beliefs, these stories sound really good, but they actually slow you down. The reason this shows up is this idea of self-preservation, right? We are protecting ourselves against potential rejection or failure. And the reason that we do that is because what will make it mean, right? If we post and it flops, or if we bring on a new uh team member and they quit, we're gonna make it mean something about us. We'll make it mean people don't want to hear from us or we're not a good leader. Or, you know, maybe it's you or telling yourself you have to say the right words to invite someone to the business so they reply back and they don't ghost me. Otherwise, you make it mean that you're being salesy and pushy. The other thing that happens with this get it right mindset, this perfectionist mindset, is overthinking, which way slows you down. So I want you to think about there, there are two different ways to approach hitting things done in your business. The quickest way to create results, to enroll customers, to recruit team members, to mentor people to success for duplication. Number one, you make a decision. Secondly, you take action and implement on that decision, and then you evaluate. Okay, so here's an example. Let's say your decision is I'm gonna enroll five team members this month. Okay, that's your decision. Now you're gonna take action and implement. So you're going to show up and talk about the business and your stories. You're gonna do a post inviting people to a business opportunity event. You are going to work from the list and send out one-on-one invites, bold invites, inviting people to the event. Okay, so that's your implementing. Then you're gonna evaluate your results. And you're gonna look at what worked, you're gonna celebrate what worked, you're gonna look at what didn't work and how, which what can I learn here? What can I do differently? This is the fastest way to results. But when you're in a perfectionistic mindset, here's how this slows down. Instead of that process I just described, make decision, implement, evaluate. This is what happens. You make a decision, and as you go to implement, you overthink, worry, second guess, question, procrastinate, go reorganize your house, do laundry, pretty much doing anything but taking action. So you slow down implementation. So yeah, that slows down potential failure, but guess what? It slows down your success too. Okay, I call this being in a low value cycle. Meanwhile, my client has already posted on story, she posted on her feed, and she reached out to invite that person who's on your chicken list and she recruited them. And by the way, this is someone who could have said yes to you. And what for those that don't know, a chicken list is just people who you want to invite, but you may feel afraid to, right? It's like recruiting up essentially. So here's the thing if this resonates, it you don't have a consistency problem, you have an emotional tolerance problem. You're avoiding discomfort, which by the way is the reason why I have a coach, why I love one-on-one coaching, accountability, right? There's nowhere to hide. You have someone who has your back, but also challenges you to follow through on the things you want to do, you need to do, but you're avoiding. So, one of the best practices for breaking this all or nothing pattern, this perfectionist pattern, is adopting this mindset of better is better. Better is better. So instead of trying to get it right and try to do it perfectly, you're just focused on progress. You're focused on messy action. You're focused on the next small action, knowing that over time, when you continue to show up and do the do, that leads to the big results. And actually, you know, this mindset is the thing that has got has helped me get into the best shape of my life. Um, you know, going through a perimetopause, whoa, baby, it was, I don't even have words, you guys. I mean, the hot clashes, the mood, the fatigue, the weight gain, the mild depression. I mean, it was it was not good. And I found myself trying to figure it out. So I just pushed harder. I over-exercised, I over-restricted, which by the way, led to a rebound of overdoing it just about every weekend, you know, overeating junkie food and drinking too many margaritas. Instead of pushing myself harder, I was, I pulled back and I focused on better is better. So instead of these crazy hour and a half, you know, intense workouts five times a week, I started training weight training three times a week for 45 minutes. Instead of overdoing HIP cardio, I started walking. Instead of telling myself no sugar, no gluten, no flour, because for me that wasn't sustainable. I said, you know what, I'm going to aim for 30 grams of protein per meal, and I'm gonna allow myself to eat the foods that I love in portions that are reasonable. And and this approach of better is better helped me lose, gosh, I'm 27 pounds. And I feel free in my body and how I eat and how I exercise. And again, I think how we do one thing is how we do many things, right? That the these kind of habits of how we show up can roll over into our business. And this is why, by the way, personally, I'm not a fan of a 90-day run and these unsustainable pushes in your business. Because how you get there is how you will be once you're there. Okay, and I don't mean you don't work hard, of course you have to work hard. I mean, it took me seven years to hit seven figures in my network marketing business. But in my second business, my coaching business, it took me three years. And I was working hard, but I was doing it in a way that was aligned, that was balanced. Um, actually, I created something I called the success standard. I probably need to do a whole podcast on this, but it was a combination of mindset practices and action to step into the seven-figure version of myself, but in a way that was sustainable. Because in my first business, there was a burnout multiple times. I know a lot of you can relate to that. So that's um that success standard, what that looked like for me was daily mindset work and doing what I call intentional belief building, which by the way, I have a whole podcast episode on that, episode 12, income producing thoughts. One of my standards was posting to social five times a week. I did a weekly live in my free community elevate for years and one email a week. So these were like the standards of hard work, but not from a place of hustle and grinding and uh graspiness. And that allowed me to hit seven figures in less than three years. Because those activities over time compounded. So this goes mad to better is better, right? What you do matters. What you do today matters, but also what you do every day, right? Successful people do the things that seem to make no difference, but they do them over and over until the compound effects kicks in. I am so I found myself a little bit on a rabbit hole. I was ordering some new books on Amazon, and uh it was recommended to me, the book by Kobe Bryant, Mamba Mentality, which led me to find one of his last interviews. And if you don't know, he is really known for his self-discipline, his hard work. And one of the things he talked about was the simple math of success, is that he was just willing to do the things that most people were not willing to do. Right? He was willing to show up every day in practice versus his competitors were maybe practicing five times a week. And by the way, if this is something that you want to know more about, there are two books that are really good on this process, on this mindset, the slight edge and the compound effect. And actually, as I'm saying this, Atomic Habits is really good too. I used to gift the Slight Edge to all my new team members as part of our onboarding process because it was such a powerful mindset shift for them to really understand the importance of the long game. Now, from a tactical standpoint, this better is better mindset, and how do you do this? Well, one of the ways that you can practice it is instead of just setting and celebrating the outcomes, the results, how much money you're making, how many people you're recruiting, how many new customers, you want to set and celebrate process goals, right? So you're not just committing to the result, you're committing to being the person who's taking the action to create that result. And you're celebrating those actions. And over time, those actions come out. I shared this on a previous podcast. I call this process pride. Right? So maybe you're sharing, hey, I went face to camera on my stories every day to build a relationship with my audience. And then 30, you know, 60, 90 days later, you have a much more engaged nurture audience. Or you're gonna celebrate that you're doing five one-on-one reach outs to the business daily from a place of service. And next thing you know, you are recruiting exponentially more than if you're just waiting for those people to come to you. So again, process pride is all about committing to and celebrating the actions that are gonna help you create the results, not just the end results. And this actually expedites your progress because you're focused on who you're being. Okay, another thing that prevents consistency, this is such a big one, is you set a goal, but you don't anticipate or plan for obstacles. I think this is the perfect time of year to talk about this because we're in spring right now, we're in spring break, so my kids are home and we're going into summer. And for a lot of network marketers, summer is can be a slump, right? If you're not intentional. So you, what I see all the time is what I would call like fantasy land planning, right? You don't plan for the time and space you need to plan for to show up in a way that's necessary to hit your goal. Um, and it's easy to not plan for a busier season. But here's the thing: it's so you can set a goal. Setting a goal is simple, right? Setting a goal is passive. It feels good, it doesn't require action. But my guess is that you've probably set a lot of goals in the past. You've made a lot of commitments. You said you're going to do and you're gonna go all in and tell yourself it's gonna be different, only to cave and go back to old habits. So why does this happen? This is so important to understand. A lot of can make it mean that something's wrong with you, right? That you're flawed, that you don't have what it takes, that you just can't seem to follow through. But really, the biggest stumbling block with consistency is judging yourself and beating yourself up. Okay. And here's what I mean: you don't plan for reality. So maybe you don't time block at all, or maybe you time block and you try and uh plan three days worth of activity in three hours. Ask me how I know about this. I've learned my lesson over the years. And then because you don't accomplish all the things that you set your mind out to, you judge yourself. And when you're in judgment, it kills curiosity, doesn't allow you to get curious to figure out why this is happening. You make that ping-ponging, that back and forth, mean that something's wrong with you. And this is a lesson I learned long ago from my boss John. You know, he talked about this difference between decision making and decision management. A decision's easy to make. You can say, yeah, I'm gonna make 30K, or my goal is 30K months by the end of the year, or my goal is to enroll five team members this month. But when it comes time to follow through and do the work to achieve that goal, that's when it gets real. And this is true for any goal, going back to the fitness conversation or saving money or you know, any business goals. And that's because it requires you to show up differently and get out of your comfort zone. And it's the discomfort we feel that makes it hard to follow through. Okay, so this is where you need to choose what you want most over what you want now. And and what does this look like practically? Well, when the alarm goes off, your brain's gonna tell you, it's no big deal. Five more minutes. I'm gonna hit snooze, you won't fall back asleep. Right? Or when it's time to sit down to invite, you're like, oh, I'll do it tomorrow. I'll do it later. So you have to be prepared to talk back to your brain. You have to have reasons why you're committed, why you're determined, why you're going to follow through, who you want to be. Okay. So, in other words, this is what I want to underscore here. The only reason you lack consistency is because of how you feel when it comes time to follow through on what you said you would do. And the reason you feel a feeling is because you're you have a thought. Remember, the think, feel, act cycle is always at work. You think a thought, a sentence in your mind, I'll do it later. You feel an emotion, you probably feel relief. And then the action you take is you don't follow through. Right? But you have to remember those thoughts, those stories are always optional. So the way to get more consistent is to greet, is to start to create curiosity around what we're thinking and how we're feeling when we don't follow through. So, for example, if your brain is like tells you we'll do it tomorrow, say back to your brain, that's a that's a lie. That you said that yesterday. And this is not going to move you closer to who you said you want to be. And a lot of times, too, this is impacted by all or nothing thinking. When we sit down to work and you think, I don't know where to start, or you know, I'm behind. I should be further along. And so you feel overwhelmed. And then an overwhelmed line, you know what it does? It shuts down, it freezes, it spins in confusion, it compares. And then the result you create is you just prove your thought true, right? You just get more behind. So I want to talk about some best practices to help you as a high achiever, as a direct sales leader, to develop consistency. Number one, this is, oh, I love this one. And I use this in fitness too, by the way. Create a minimum baseline. A minimum baseline is something that you're going to do no matter what. This is like a comehill or high water. I'm doing this thing. So I recommend doing this for your income-producing activities. And you want to set the bar, I don't want to say set it low, but you want to set it at a place that you're gonna do no matter what. Because two invites in a week is better than zero invites, right? Now, again, what you do here, uh, the uh the quantity of activity you do is gonna be commensurable with your goals. So if you have really big goals, you're likely gonna have to do more activity. So, for example, it'd be like no matter what, I will complete X this many new conversations a day, or I will uh invite this many people per week, or I will do these many follow-ups uh each week, or I'm gonna show up on social and post on stories six times a week. It doesn't matter what it is, but it's about committing to it and then following through to develop self-trust. And then once you do it, you celebrate your progress around the actions you did take. I call this my ta list, okay? You know what a to-do list is, of course. Well, I call it like ta-da, like ta-da. So I think we do this now. Oftentimes at the end of the day, I will go back through my day and I will write down what I did accomplish. And I don't just do it for my business, I do it in all the different categories and the values in my life. So for my fitness, for connection with my family, for faith, for luxuries, one of my values, for uh growth and purpose. And it creates so much pride and I feel so accomplished for what I did do. Okay, so then you so you jot this down. Here's the number of new people I did start conversations with, or the number of business fights I did send. Now, one of my clients came to me, knowing that she wanted to recruit more, but she wasn't really invited to the business. So we worked through this mindset block. We created a process to invite. So she did, she implemented my signature recruiting process. So she knew what to say, she knew what to invite to. And the result was she went from a recruiting slump to enrolling three team members in our first few weeks of working together. So this is the power in leaning in to this process. And we set minimum baselines for her. Number two is tracking your activity. This is gonna help you develop consistency. If nothing else, it's just gonna be a dopamine hit to check a box. Okay? How many of you are like, you'll just write something down to cross it off your list? If you do that, we are kindred spirits. So the reason why tracking is so important, tracking your business activity, I mean tracking everything really. Um, again, could do a whole other podcast episode on this, but tracking your activity reveals your truth. You might tell yourself, gosh, I feel like I did so much, I feel like I reached out to so many people, I feel like I started so many new conversations. And then you go back and look at what you actually did. And when you track, you're able to look at the holes, figure out where the gaps are, because you can't manage what you don't measure. Okay, instead of trying to get it right, one of the best practices to developing consistency is commit to messy action. Because messy action creates momentum. Right? Consistency is just created when you're willing to feel uncomfortable and to keep taking action anyway. You know, one of my favorite thoughts, I'm I can feel the fear and do it anyway. I can feel a resistance and do it anyway. You don't allow the discomfort, you don't allow the awkwardness, you don't allow the uncertainty to stop you. Right? You don't look at those things or at fear, you don't look at it as a stop sign. You actually make discomfort mean you're doing it right. We need to think about that. All of us want to achieve these big goals, but in order to do that, we have to become something different, which means we have to get out of our comfort zone. So discomfort means you're doing it right. Another thought that I love here is I used to say to myself all the time, I'm willing to feel any emotion for the sake of achieving this goal. Okay, number four, best practice to develop consistency. Anticipate obstacles now, before you're in the heat of the moment, and pre-decide how you will handle them. Right? The worst time to uh think about what you're gonna have for dinner is at six o'clock when you're starving and you're already looking in the pantry. And the same thing is true for planning for your business, right? This is not about doing it perfectly, it's about taking committed action despite obstacles, despite robots. It's gonna be busy. Things are gonna happen, unexpected things, right? But if you if you break your commitment, even when you anticipate, Agnostical, you can use it as an opportunity to choose curiosity over judgment. Right? Our inclinations, so many leaders I work with, they just want to move on to a new month. When they don't hit a goal or they're they're not in like a place where they want to be, they don't want to look at the numbers. It's like, let's move on, let's fresh start. You know, I don't want to look back. But if you don't evaluate what happened, you're doomed to repeat the same patterns. Right? So looking back and evaluating is so key. Okay, last one. Create an environment that spurs on consistency. So if you want to get up earlier, put your phone in the bathroom. Put it somewhere where you have to get up and walk across the room. If you want to be more consistent with your income-producing activities, host a power hour every week or an action 30. There's built-in accountability. Ask yourself, what are ways I can set up my environment to show up as the person I want to be? Now, this obviously is not a magic bullet. It's not going to take away the times when you're going to feel tired or discouraged or frustrating or frustrated. Um, you're you're gonna have challenging days. That's totally normal. It doesn't mean anything's gone wrong, but just remember how your brain is wired, right? Our brains are wired for efficiency. They're wired for survival, not success. So as you're learning this new way of being, what you're doing is you're rewiring new neural pathways. So when things don't go according to plan, be curious and compassionate and tell yourself, I'm gonna have my own back no matter what. So if you're a six-figure network marketing leader and you know your business isn't duplicating at the level it should be, this is the exact work I do. Because at this stage, it's not about working harder, it's about fixing the systems that are capping your growth. So inside my private one-on-one coaching, I help you become the mentor your dream team is actually looking for, consistent, coachable, empowered. So you can build a business that scales without you being attached in the middle of everything. You know, most leaders at your level, they don't need more motivation. They need better systems, and that includes a system for managing your mind. So if you are over trying to figure out on your own, guessing, you know, throwing spaghetti at the wall, and you want to identify what's actually capping your growth, you can apply for a free mini session using the link in the show notes. Okay, we'll look at your systems, your goals, and map out the top three shifts you need to double your monthly income. Okay, guys, have a beautiful rest of your week, and I'll see you guys next time. Thanks for listening to the Social Selling Leadership Podcast. If today's episode resonated, be sure to follow the show so you never miss an episode. If you want to go deeper into what I teach here, join my free email series, the Social Selling Leadership Edit. It's where I share all my best tools and strategies. Just head to the show notes for the link and all the details. I'll see you next time.