3 Strategies to Create Summer Momentum

Episode Summary

Here's the truth: if your income has been stuck for months—or longer—and you're working harder than ever, nothing has gone wrong. But something does need to change. And it's probably not your effort.

In this episode, Rachael Bodie breaks down what she calls "management mode"—the silent income killer that looks like leadership but quietly stalls your growth. She shares three specific strategies to help you stop carrying your team and start building real momentum, so you can make summer your best season yet.

Why You Should Listen: What You'll Learn

Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing When this is missing, it looks like spending your days putting out fires, propping up downline volume, and dragging people along—while your own pipeline dries up. You'll learn why slipping into management mode is the most common reason six-figure leaders plateau—because once you get back to personal production, momentum follows fast.

Pre-Decide Where Your Time Goes Before the Week Starts When this structure isn't in place, it looks like a reactive schedule that gets hijacked by your team's needs, your kids' activities, and whatever comes up first. You'll learn how to audit last week and map out your building blocks in advance—because playing offense instead of defense is what separates leaders who grow from leaders who burn out.

Make Your Personal Production Visible When this habit is missing, it looks like running training calls and sharing scripts that nobody actually applies. You'll learn how to bring your team into your real-time building process—because seeing you do the work, sharing what's working, and modeling the behavior creates more duplication than any training call ever will.

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, 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. Welcome back to the show. So today, here in the South, down in Atlanta, it is the last day of school. And so we're heading into the summer, and we booked this most incredible vacation. I found a five-star all-inclusive in Mexico. So we leave for that next week. There's just so many fun things happening. And my husband, Matt, said to me yesterday, he's like, Oh my goodness, I just had a moment. After today, we're gonna have two high schoolers. And I told him I wasn't having a moment until you brought that up. So it's just it's a fun season, it's a season of change. But you know, heading into the summer, um, I was thinking about what to share on this week's podcast. And if you are a draft sales leader or a veteran network marketer, you already know the drill with summers, right? There is this narrative that summer is a sober month, people are distracted because school's out, kids are in camps, and everyone's at the pool. But I want to offer a completely like different reframe today around summer because summer can actually be your best season. It can be one of the best times of your business. And I have a client who proved that. So my client had been in network marketing for over 10 years. She was earning six figures. Her income had been stuck at the 13 to 15k a month mark for what she told me seemed like forever. And so we got on a mini session and we were talking through what was going on. And she was telling me, you know, I just feel stagnant. I feel like I've been stuck with recruiting and duplication for a while, and like I just can't stay here anymore. The slump. So on that call, they typically ask like diagnostic questions to figure out like what's going on. So I was asking her, okay, how many people have you added to your network in the last 30 days? Or, you know, how many people did you invite from your customer base, you know, to the business opportunity? And she didn't know. And that's this is really important to name. She didn't know, not because she wasn't busy, she was actually exhausted, but it was because she was in her team's business every single day. So she was dragging people along, putting out fires. Uh, in her business, she even had a placement suite. So she was placing people under people in her downline to prop up their volume. And the thing I want to share is that it felt like leadership, right? But it was actually the thing that was keeping her stuck. And this is what I would call management mode. And if you're heading into summer, I need you to hear this. So today I want to share with you three strategies that are going to help you not to just, you know, survive summer, but really to have your best months of the year and create serious momentum. And the first strategy is the foundation that everything else is built on. You want to keep the main thing, the main thing. I learned that from my boss, John, John Maxwell, years ago. And the main thing when it comes to growth is your personal business, your personal production, sales, and recruiting. It can be so easy, especially as a leader who cares, to slip into management mode. And it looks, it looks good. You're like, what does my team need? Right? And but what happens is you start to show up for everyone else's business at the expense of your own. You know, being overly available, putting their business before yours. And I want to be clear, you know, creating an environment where your team can succeed, of course that matters. That's real leadership, but there's nuance here. There's a line. And when you cross it, when you focus too much on, you know, putting out fires, dragging people along, essentially doing the work for them, you're in commateaux every single time. And I don't say that to scare you. I say it to encourage you to take action now before you have to go into a rebuild. Because if your personal business is coming in second, it's not a matter of if you're going to hit a slump. It's a matter of when. And so, what does this look like? Keeping the main thing to me thing. That looks like constantly filling your funnel, right? Never hanging your hat on one person on your current team. You always focus on that next yes. Uh, having a clear process to convert customers to team members so nobody falls through the cracks. Growing your cold market, or you know, knowing exactly who is your ideal team member so that your content uh speaks directly to that person and positions you as the go-to. This is so much more important now because we are in a trust recession and people are more discerning. It looks like, you know, intentionally sharing your story. So for my client, her wake-up call was her paycheck. Uh, you know, after being in the business for over a decade, it hit the lowest it had ever been. And when and after we talked, we we traced it back to this. So we started working together, and the shift she made was she stopped pulling her team and she got relentless on her own business, specifically growing her network and outreach. And by the end of our uh that particular month, she had four new customers. The following week, she had four new team members. And I'm not, I don't mean not pipeline, she had signed four new team members. And her words to me was, I feel proud. I feel proud of what I've created, I feel proud of how I have been showing up relentlessly. People were ready to say yes, they were just waiting for her to ask. And she was so busy managing her team that she had taken her foot off the gas. So that's strategy one. Now, strategy two is heading into the summer, especially, is to pre-decide where your time goes before the week starts. I think summer is can be really dangerous because the schedule feels like it's never the same, you know, week to week with kids and camps and vacations and activities. If you don't decide in advance where your time goes, the week decides for you. So I look at like two different or two very simple things. The first thing you can do here is audit your last week. So look back at the previous week. How many hours did you actually spend building your personal business versus managing it? And what I would add here too is not just managing it, like how many hours did you actually spend building versus busy work? You know, lead watching training, scrolling for info, making graphics. These things are fine, but these are not the things that are gonna move the needle in your business. So once you evaluate and audit what's going on, pre-decide before your week starts, maybe the night before, not the morning of, map out when are you building? When are you available to your team? Not the same blocks, right? This isn't just time management. This is playing offense instead of defense. Reactive leadership is what is going to burn you out. It's exhausting, it's ineffective. Uh, I was just having a call with another client on this this week where she was in tears actually, because she was feeling like she's burnt out because she was reacting instead of being proactive. But proactive leadership is what actually moves the needle. Um, and this is what I share with my client. Like communicate that to your team. You could say, hey, listen, going into the summer season, mornings are for my business. I want to model that for you guys because it's really important that you do the same. And I'm gonna be available at this time at 10 a.m. at 11 a.m., whatever the time is, it doesn't matter. But what you're doing is you are modeling what it looks like to prioritize your personal business. And that's not a boundary that hurts your team culture. That's a boundary that shows them what you want them to do, right? More is caught than taught. So your people are gonna watch what you do and they're gonna emulate that. And I'm coaching you guys from a place of experience, right? Everything that I share is things I've been through in my own life and my own business. And I was um, I recently did a keynote at a company convention, and I talked about this major regal season I went through. I was about three years into my network marketing business. This was back in like 2019. I was doing about $25,000 a month in income. And one of my top leaders left. We had a whole blow-up at convention where she there's mean girl behavior, which is just not my vibe at all. So I had to have a crucial conversation with this leader, and she was really upset. She ended up leaving, leaving, and she took people from her downline with her and just trying to manage everything, manage the heartbreak, honestly, because I poured so much into her, go managing my team. I took my foot off the gas for several months, and I was in a rebuild season because I had slowed down on recruiting and my income for the first time started to go backwards. So what I did was I reestablished boundaries. I let my team know, hey, I'm gonna be working my personal business in the morning after my God time and my workout, and I'm gonna be available after 11 a.m. Eastern for calls, for messages. And that year, I went on to increase my income and I set myself up to hit $50,000 income months the following year. So this works. It's that whole uh that mantra, speed of the leader, speed of the pack. And you know, that principle that doesn't pause for summer. People are still gonna be watching what you do. Okay, strategy number three: making your personal production visible. This is a huge duplication strategy for your team. And this is the one that most leaders miss. So when you shift back into personal production, don't just do that privately, share it with your team, right? What you what you're posting uh in stories, share what you're doing and why to help them and challenge them to duplicate that. Talk about how many invites you sent, or shared a conversation that went well, or one that didn't. And this isn't again as to a report, but this is a model. You're saying to them, hey, come with me. This is what building looks like. Watch what I'm doing. See that it's not all sunshine and rainbows all the time, see how I overcome an objection. That this is really what duplication is about. It's about telling them what to do and why, showing them how, giving them actual examples they can see, and then inviting them to take action. And once they do, hey, say, hey, share it back in the chat, share it back uh in the DMs with me. And that gives you an opportunity to give feedback. This is how you create true duplication. And honestly, you guys, this transparency is gonna do more for duplication than any training call you'll ever run. Because here's the thing: most of the time, your team doesn't just need more information, they need to see someone they respect doing the thing. They need to see those examples and then they need feedback. You know, I was doing a call uh earlier this week where her leader was sharing with me that, oh, you know, I'm just, I feel like I'm doing all the things, but it's not working. So we popped over to her Instagram. We're looking at her Instagram and I audited it, and it just was not clear. When you landed under a page, it was vague, vanilla. I didn't really, I didn't really understand who her ideal person was. I didn't see off the bat what transformation she was offering. So being able to give that intentional feedback was really uh powerful. And in terms of, you know, this model, I actually saw this duplication process, making personal production visible with one of my clients. So one of the things that she came to me with was she wanted to increase personal recruiting, but she wanted to work on building a recruiting culture on her team. So we launched a bold recruiting challenge, okay, for her entire team. So we made it optional, but in order to be a part of it, the requirement to participate was to be a for this group, you've had to make a minimum of two bold offers to the business opportunity every week. So reaching out and inviting people in to uh experience the business to take a look at the business opportunity. Now, because she was in the trenches alongside her team, she was able to share word for word what was working. Okay, so she was able to show them, hey, here's how I'm offering third-party tools. Or here, in this case, I leveraged a voice note, and this is what I said. Uh, in one case, she took her team on the full journey from connecting to someone in her full market, prospecting that person, inviting that person all the way to hearing a yes. And this particular person she enrolled, this was about, oh gosh, maybe two to three months ago. She's a leader in the industry who came over and she is blowing the doors off. So this is how you duplicate, not just another training, not just another script. You are being a leader, doing the work in real time and bringing your team along for the ride, right? You become the proof of concept. And listen, summer, when everyone else is coasting, this is the best possible time to set that pace. So back to the story that I open with, my other client. She didn't just survive the months after we started working together. She rebuilt her pipeline for customers and team members. She went from a slump, she was recruiting maybe one a month, some months none, to consistently enrolling four to five team members a month, onboarding them, and creating duplication out of the gate. Now, we did implement a marketing system, a recruiting process, but a huge part of her success was a refocus on her personal business as that engine for momentum. Again, it's that speed of the leader, speed of the pack. So if as I'm sharing this, if this episode, you know, it felt like I was talking to you, I probably was. So if you want to talk about what it could look like to work together this summer, I want to invite you to apply for a mini session in the show notes. Uh, and this is a conversation where we'll look at your business together. I'll do this diagnostic to look at, okay, what's preventing you from achieving your next level? And if it makes sense, we can talk about what it would look like to work together one-to-one. So the link is in the show notes. Take a look, and I'll talk to you guys next week. If you're a six-figure network marketing leader and you know your recruiting and duplication systems need a revamp, this is exactly the work I do in my private one-o-workers. I help established leaders become the mentor their dream team is looking for so that growth becomes duplicatable, scalable, and sustainable without the burnout. If this episode resonated, you can apply for a free mini session using the link in the show notes. We'll look at your current systems and goals, identify what's actually creating the ceiling in your business, and map out the top three shifts that will position you to double your monthly income.