Rather than work 12 or 14 hours a day and barely put dinner on the table, you found a way to be at home and provide for your family. But it was a risk. What drew you to this path? Alan: Statistically speaking, 80% of people who make it to retirement age have to keep working to make ends meet. That never made sense to me. And I saw it firsthand growing up. My parents ran
It’s one thing to build a business, and more of a challenge to be at the top – and stay there. How did you build the mental resilience required to do that? Sondra: I had to stretch the limits of my own self-worth. In the early days, $100,000 a year was my mental limit. I didn’t think I deserved to make more than that. I had to work through a lot of emotional blockage to reach my
Sondra: When I’m not thinking straight, I go back to gratitude. I also try never to operate from a scarcity mindset. It will shoot you in the foot every time. People who can’t be happy for other people need to work on themselves. And the truth is that if you operate from a scarcity mindset, you’ll never experience abundance. But if you work from a place of abundance and celebrate other people’s success, it will eventually percolate into your life.
I’ve admired Alan and Sondra Pariser over the years as they have both worked hard to build incredibly successful Melaleuca businesses. Alan has a Corporate Director 7 business. Sondra has built an Executive Director 9 business. They work closely together to grow and manage both businesses. Both are seasoned leaders. Both have a passion for helping others. Both have had to overcome huge barriers to find themselves where they are today. And their journey is far from over. Please study this interview with Alan and Sondra. Pay attention to their mindset. Look for how they cultivate and nurture that mindset. Ask how your thinking would need to change to better mirror that of Alan and Sondra. Let’s start simple: How do you describe yourselves? Alan: I’m a family man. That’s the whole reason why I got into this business, to take care of my family, to be with my family. Very few careers allow people to do that. Sondra: I’m a truth seeker and a truth speaker, and I’m very mission-driven. I want to enhance peoples’ lives and help them reach their goals.
21-year-old – I turned to the thing I’d always been drawn to: self-development – Tony Robbins books, Denis Waitley cassettes, and so on. That has paid dividends. Over the years, our focus on mindset development has undoubtedly been our edge, allowing us to take different perspectives, filter out all the noise, and believe in ourselves. Also, there’s the training. Sondra and I feel like we get the best training on the planet at Melaleuca because we go to Conventions, we go to Standing Executive Leadership Council meetings, we’re invited to Leadership Quest, and we attend ADVANCE meetings.
What are your days like? What’s your routine? What helps you?
full potential. Alan and I did that together. We’ve done some incredible things as a couple, and I’m so proud of that, especially given where we came from. We had the furthest things from loving, perfect homes growing up, but at Melaleuca, we had the perfect environment to grow again.
Alan: The key word for us is routine . If you aren’t following one, you’re following someone else’s. I get up at 5:30 a.m. and look at our Melaleuca reports from the night before. Then it’s right to the gym. By 7:30 a.m. Sondra is taking the kids to school. When she gets home, we get right into it – prospecting calls, or presentations, internal trainings, and so on. We call it when it’s time to get our eight-year-old off the bus. I refuse to schedule anything during that time; that’s how important that ritual is to me. Then one of us picks up our other daughter from school, and we dive into homework, activities, dinner, and bedtime.
If there’s one thing that’s kept us moving forward, it’s showing up, again and again, to continue developing our minds.
Your Assignment Alan and Sondra have accomplished many of their original goals through their hard work. They’ve developed skills that make them better leaders, better teachers, and better mentors. But the struggles they still face each day are no different than yours. So what is the difference? Their mindset. Here’s what I invite you to do right now: Write down something that’s hard for you to deal with – that you find yourself running away from. Now ask yourself, “Is what I want worth tackling that obstacle?” If your answer is yes, you’ve just given yourself permission to do the work and make the changes that will propel you toward your goal.
How do you regain your focus when you get hit with hard times?
Sondra & Alan Pariser
Alan: We all struggle. We’re human. But you can’t lose sight of those fundamental things you need in order to move your business forward: expanding your contact list and making approaches. If you can get the fear out of your mind and approach people, you can get out of any struggle. Focus on the essential things, the central things, that you must do to move forward. That’s a discipline people can meditate on – a mantra they can get into.
a construction business and did a great job providing for their family, but they were constantly stressed, putting in long hours, and there was no end in sight. For me, Melaleuca was a way out, a new possibility. Did I want to go the traditional route or veer off the beaten path? The answer was simple. I knew immediately that it was what I wanted to do.
What has kept you moving forward over the years? Where have you gotten your edge?
Alan: When I was young, I never understood why I was in school. I didn’t understand the actual application. Mindset development was always more interesting to me. When I first got to Melaleuca – an awkward, unsure, insecure
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