Welcome to McDonald's.  May I take your order??

Okay, so I’m going to have to thank Bear aka, my mom, for this one too.  Man this lady taught me so much growing up and I didn’t even know it!  So let me tell you about this one.  This is especially important to those of you who are starting your own business and have a fear of feeling small.  It may be a true tale or it may not be.  All I know is that it was Bear’s truth and in our family that becomes fact!  Now let’s begin.

We lived on a beautiful street in a small town in Central California.  All of the people living there had done pretty well in life.  I mean, we were rolling with some fancy pants!  Well one day, one of the fancy families moved out and another fancy family moved in.  The mom and dad were young and gorgeous.  Their four kids were beautiful too.  They had fancy cars, beautiful clothes, and they even had sparkling personalities.  In other words, I found them very interesting and I admired so many things about them.  I’m not gonna lie, I kind of wished my parents were as cool as them!  So what did these people do for a living that allowed them to walk around this world so awesomely?  McDonald's.  They owned some McDonald's.  Wait!  What???  McDonald's??  That’s not that cool.  Okay, so they owned a lot of McDonald's I guess, but still.  You can get rich by owning some funky McDonald's fast food joints? You have to remember I was young and didn’t know much.  My dad was a doctor.  Jobs like his were how you gained respect and success!  That was my first introduction into the entrepreneurial world and how lucrative it could be.  You see, my dad worked about 100 million hours a week and I saw Frankie G cruising in and out of his house at all hours of the day.  How come he wasn't working like a dog like my dad??  But honestly, that isn’t the lesson I’m talking about right now.  Let’s talk about those darn kids of his!

For those of you who don’t know, according to Bear, you can’t just go in and buy a McDonald's.  No matter if you have the cash or not.  Those are the Golden Arches' rules.

• You have to work so many hours/years for them first
• You have to work the drive thru
• You have to work the graveyard shifts
• Be the fry cook
• Run the front registers
• Become the night manager
• Become the day manager
• And every other position that they have.

After all that, you can finally head off to Burger University.  Then, and only then, are you allowed to actually purchase a franchise.  So, the real story of Super Cool Frankie G is that he was, at one point, the nerdy, pimple faced kid working the drive thru!  He was frying up delicious fries in that god-awful polyester uniform.  He was that guy who thought he was super cool because he was the manager now and he got to boss all the other teen employees around.  All the men that I personally wasn’t all that attracted to growing up...am I right??  But you know what?

He had a vision and a goal and he knew what it would take to get there and he put everyone else’s opinions in the trash and he went for it and created and incredible life for himself and his family!

That was a story Bear told me with gusto!  She was so impressed with the fact that he did all that to get where he was.  That was the part she admired, not the fact that he had all the stuff now.

One other thing that you probably don’t know about McDonald's is that your family can’t just inherit your franchises.  Frankie G worked all those years to build lucrative businesses and he couldn't put them in his will for his four super popular supermodel kids?  Nope!  Well he could, but they would have to rise through the ranks like he did before they could take ownership of any of the franchises that he willed them.  Do you think any of those four fancy kids were willing to do it?  Yep, you guessed it.  Not a chance, NOT A SINGLE ONE!

They were way too cool to work at McDonald's! 

I did see them there working there from time to time because they were serving out some punishment, but it definitely wasn’t because they were on a mission to fulfill their dreams of being the godfather of McDonald's in the Central Valley like their dad!  That part of the story my mom told me with a look of disgust on her face.  According to Bear, those kids were not being the smartest kids on our street at all.  Let’s think about this as adults now.

If you were set to inherit all of your parent’s wealth, what would you be willing to do to make that happen?

Especially if your three siblings were absolutely not going to do what it takes!  Okay, even if they were and you were only going to get one quarter of it?  My butt would be in that drive thru window so freaking fast!!  I would go through the whole shame of people talking about me.  They could even make up rumors that I must be doing pretty poorly in life if I was working at McDonald's!!  Maybe even the rumor that I was doing so bad that my dad had to give me a job!  But you know what I would know?  I would know what I was working for.  I could see my future.  I knew I was learning the ropes so I could run successful McDonald’s franchises too!

Now back to you.  You know what you are working for.  You know what is at the end of the road for you because you have seen so many others rise to the top of your company.  You know it can be done and you know that you can do it, so why are you so afraid to appear small as you start your climb?  My mom’s stories about the Frankie G family always popped in my head as I was building my Arbonne business.  Yeah, I wasn’t super excited about doing home parties.  No, I wasn’t particularly thrilled about selling products.  But I had a vision of leading a huge organization full of incredible people and how was I going to lead and mentor these people if I had no idea how to do what it was I was asking them to do?  If I had no experience of the situations that they were encountering?  If I had no idea how they were feeling as they were experiencing this Social Marketing industry?

You see, the only way to successfully lead is to have been or still be in the trenches with them! 

Once I understood that, I looked at (and I still look at) doing the things I don’t want to do simply as this.  I am doing this, so I can learn how to do it, so I can then teach it.  It is so simple if you just switch that up in your mind!  Now I look forward to doing a home party, a one on one presentation, a virtual event, etc.  You name it and I am game!  I am excited to learn so I can pass on my knowledge and be a killer leader.  I don’t care what anyone thinks because I want a certain kind of life that Social Marketing allows me to have and no one is going to deter me from that!

So, what are you going to do?

Are you going to be too good to do what it takes and pass on inheriting your fortune?  Or are you going to slap on that headset and be the best damn drive thru person that people have ever experienced?

Thanks Bear for another lesson that you taught me as you raised me. You always keep it real, fight to keep us humble, and always tell it like it is.  Muah!