Richard Bravo
This interview is based on a response Richard Bravo made on Betternetworker.com to a forum post entitled:  Is $350K a month too much too expect?”

The response required, in my mind, additional clarification to really get it straight in my head how and what I need to do to accomplish his suggestions.  I saw in his words the pure gold of growth.

The interview (in part):

ME: You stated that anything was possible but the actual question was is it probable.  You supplied a formula to work through to achieve the end goal.  My question for you, Richard, is it better to work out a plan for a smaller goal such as your desired lifestyle and then focus on the bigger dream after you’ve achieved the first one?

RICHARD: I think it’s important to start with the 30,000 foot view, a bird’s eye view where you can see “the big picture.” Identify precisely where you want to go with a certain level of detail.

Think of it like planning a trip. If you wanted to go from Manitoba to New York for instance, you’d have to plan to make it all the way to New York, not just half way and see what happens from there right? So looking at the big picture and what you want to achieve not only identifies your final destination, but it also gives a view of where you need to go from your starting point … What is the next step.

ME: What about spontaneity?  Aren’t you taking the fun out of life but having everything so clearly defined?  What if I choose to stay in Toronto for an extra day or two and it throws the schedule out?

RICHARD: Along the way you’re going to have a connecting flight in Denver or Chicago. These are milestones on your trip.

So one milestone may be to make it from Manitoba to Denver. That’s the first leg of your journey and knowing that allows you to plan how to get there. Once you’re in Denver you can hang out and see the sites if you want, or you might find a different route to the next milestone. Or maybe you take the train or a bus, or rent a car to get to the next destination. You might even change your mind about New York and decide to go somewhere else all together. So spontaneity is still in play.

The Roman army used mile markers, or milestones to assist with troop movements. If these markers were buried or removed, it was very easy for a patrol to get lost and fall prey to enemy forces or they may fail to reach a specific location to offer support to another regiment.

So knowing your destination is so crucial to getting where you want to go. You can work backwards and reverse engineer the whole thing to identify where those milestones are.

When you work backwards you can move forward.

ME: Excuse me?

RICHARD: When you have the end goal in mind, identifying milestones along the way helps you focus on what it will take to get there, step by step.

Your milestones should include specific income levels for example and be broken down into how many “hops” or connections it will take to get to your end goal. How exactly you get from one milestone to the next is where the engineering comes in and most likely will be in a state of flux. But you can utilize things like systems and processes to help accomplish each goal and bring some order to the whole process.

ME: So you start at the end, work your way backwards, then move forwards?

RICHARD: Yes. The $350K number is the final destination for instance, then you work backwards from there, setting your milestones, move forward towards them from your starting position … Where you are now.

ME: On another point you stated: “The point here is modeling.  Identifying people who have done what it is you want to do.”  Don’t you get overwhelmed with information overload?  In the process of identifying who you want to model you’re following this person and that one and before you know it you’re overwhelmed with information and staying clearly focused becomes a problem.  Would you agree?

RICHARD: Yes.  That’s one of my biggest problems.  I’ll get frustrated some times and my wife will pull me away from the computer and we’ll go and sit on the deck or go for a drive and talk about our focus. We’re uber geeks so even on the deck it usually involves a laptop and mind map software in a mini power meeting. But just by talking it through she manages to pull me back to focusing on the plan; the milestones and what is really important to do right now to reach the next mark.

She completes me. I know that may sound cliché but it’s absolutely true. I’d be lost without her. She’s my partner in life in every sense of the word. We’ve been married for 15 years now and working together side-by-side for 10 years.

But yeah, this is where having the milestones really takes precedence. You have a map to fall back on when you get lost. It puts things into manageable chunks which helps alleviate some of that overwhelming “overload” feeling you get at the 30,000 foot view.

ME: You have, in my opinion, an incredible business sense.  A solid focus on the fact network marketing is a business and what people need to do to get into that mindset of treating their opportunity like a business.  Where did you learn that?

RICHARD: It probably started with my older brother.  I went to live with him in Hollywood when I was about 17.  He was an entrepreneur and we did a ton of different types of jobs together.  Hollywood is one of those places where you learn to hustle. It taught me very quickly that no one is going to give you anything. If you want something you better be ready to go get it. If you don’t, there’s 100 people in line behind you that will.

Another big influence was being in Amway. I had a killer business education there. I never made any money, but that was my own fault; I had no idea what I was doing. But we absorbed every audio tape and CD we could find and went to every function there was. We hung with the top dogs like Dexter Yeager, Randy Haugen and Curtis Hall and just soaked up everything they said.

It wasn’t something I really knew was in me until then and once I was bit by the entrepreneurial bug, I was hooked.

I’m still a student though. I’m constantly reading and trying to grow my knowledge base. I read all day; blogs, books, magazines, video, audio, everything I can get my hands on.

ME: So your article “7 steps to Start your own home business like a pro” was based on personal experiences and not copied out of some book?

RICHARD: Yeah … a combination of things I’ve learned from my mentors and my own personal experiences.

ME: Thank you Richard – I appreciate you and the time you took today with me.

Richard of course, thanked me.  Gracious as always and I hung up the phone with an understanding of what I needed to do to attain that $350/month mark.

A thank you is insufficient Richard but it’s all I have to offer.

Thank you !

Onwards to success,

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