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Chapter

16

Finding Your North Star

Shannon Anima

I

went back to the grocery store last week and asked for a refund for some

cheese I bought and later couldn’t find in my grocery bags. The store

cheerfully refunded my money and apologized for their error. As you can

probably guess, I found the cheese this week moldering beneath some

leafy greens in the bottom of my refrigerator. This is not a big moral

dilemma, just a small one: Shall I bother to own up and return the $6 to the

grocery store?

Not a big thing, but life tends to be made up of the small choices that

accumulate and create a clear path of action (or nonaction) when the bigger

decisions come up. I’m talking to a potential customer for my networking

enterprise and she is ready to purchase some products; do I point out that

the package plan is a better bargain for her, if it doesn’t benefit my business

as much?

In some circles, network marketing has a bad name, and sometimes

there are individuals and companies that deserve that reputation when

their core values are lost to greed. Ironically, it is often the snake oil sales-

man advocating virtue and good deeds who has a rationalizing explanation

for dishonest maneuvers in business. In business, as in the rest of life, the

guilty seldom own their selfish choices and are adept at shifting away from

responsibility.

If my name and my integrity are associated with the network marketing

industry, I want it to reflect honorable ideals. I am constantly in a state of in-

quiry about my own motives and intentions in my business. It can be an awk-

ward balance at times to avoid being immobilized by indecision while

questioning motivation. It’s a follow-the-heart kind of intuition that will help

to hold you to your right path, while refusing to inculcate the rhetoric of

every presenter and company official.

At 3 A.M. in a hotel room after a sumptuous celebration buffet, my hus-

band and I were offered a very lucrative opportunity to work closely with a

top earner in our company. Although we were very flattered as neophyte