Jack and Julie Silva

Jack and Julie Silva’s Millionaire Training Story

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Julie and I met Larry Thompson in 1987 through a conference call. At the time he was vice president of Herbalife and we had just joined the company as distributors. Larry was talking about how you could take these nutritional products to the marketplace and change people’s lives. Well, at that time in our lives, I was working about 12 hours a day selling Cadillacs and Julie was my inventory control manager at the dealership.

 I wasn’t earning what I felt I was worth, and Julie was open for opportunity.  I never will forget that first conference call with Larry because we got so excited when he said, “You’ve got to fly to Chicago, and we’ll meet you there at a distributor workshop” I couldn’t believe we were going to Chicago to this business meeting.

The only other time I ever had been on an airplane, I was five or six years old.  I couldn’t remember much about it and now, I’m 25 years old getting on an airplane, going to Chicago to be trained by the Larry Thompson. We were excited because we were now business owners and we believed we could make this business work. 

Going to that meeting in Chicago changed our life. I was an athlete growing up and Larry just came across to me like Vince Lombardi the great football coach. He spoke my language and I felt honored to be in the same room with this man. There were many other successful distributors at this business workshop. It was very exciting for us to be there.

That’s when I got my hands on The Millionaire Training tapes, and they became a staple in my daily routine for growing our distributorship. 

I took The Millionaire Training seriously. It gave me the courage and the confidence that I could do this, and it gave me the fundamentals, the foundation, and a new way of thinking that I never thought before.

For example, I didn’t realize procrastination is one of the biggest business problems people have. I procrastinated in a lot of things and I had my weaknesses that I knew I had to fix. I had to change some old habits and replace them with new habits like doing the things you don’t want to do first, just get them out of the way, don’t put them off until later which opens the door for procrastination. 

I can honestly say, I don’t think I would have made it if I didn’t become a serious student of The Millionaire Training every single day in those early days.

As a kid, I was always setting goals and making plans. So, when Julie and I worked every day, we had our goals and plans.  We would compete with each other to push each other.

I didn’t have a problem with that one, but here’s what I didn’t understand about goals and plans. I was taught you had to write them down and check them off.  I had a problem writing them down and checking them off. I struggled with that until Larry said, “Listen, a goal is something you have to have. And, if you have to have it, no matter what, it’s yours. It’s just a matter of time until it happens,” He said. “You don’t have to write it down and look at it every day.”

A goal is something you have to have, and Julie and I had to be successful. We had to make it happen. So, that really made a huge difference for us. But the reality is a goal is just something you have to have and if you have to have it, it’s yours. It’s just a matter of time.

In The Millionaire Training I also learned about communicating with feelings and not words. See, I didn’t do well in school; I didn’t have good English. I was concerned when I thought it was the words that were important when talking with people. When I learned it’s how you feel about what you say that is more important than the words you use, that was huge for me to understand.

The Millionaire Training also helped me tremendously with not just putting a plan together but also following through on my plan.  It taught me about holding myself accountable. If you talk to enough people every day and stay consistent, then you’re going to be successful.

The Millionaire Training laid down that framework for us. Julie and I had to stay inside of that framework to be successful.  We had to stay very consistent at talking to lots of people every day. If we had operated outside of that framework, we would not have made it.

Our first year we became one of the top achievers in our company. Our fifth year, we achieved the top 1% and still today, 30 plus years later, Julie and I are among the top 1% who are most successful in our industry. We thank God every day for the opportunity and for meeting the great people that we have met along the way.  

I only can imagine where we would be without The Millionaire Training. It’s made our life greater than we could have ever dreamt being able to provide stability for our family all these years. Julie, and I have been married for over 30 years since our beginning in Herbalife together. We have a great life truly living the dream as they say. 

I can tell you the most important thing we have done is to recruit lots of people into our business. You’ve got to bring in new people, front lines every month and you have to develop a good retail customer plan. 

Of course, you feel bad if someone doesn’t make it in your business, but I never got wrapped up in feeling really bad if a person didn’t make it as a business owner. It’s not our responsibility for others’ success because we are all independent distributors. Our responsibility is to bring in new customers and recruit new distributors who do the same as we do. We lead by example and that’s how we’ve always done it. We have been there when our people needed us. Be there when they call you, be there for them when they reach out to you. 

We never brought our problems to our people. We would listen to others talk about their problems and always say with compassion, “Okay, now let’s talk about your business plan this week. What’s going on?”

Today I will do video room meetings with distributors and I’ll do one-on-one calls with distributors. I’ll even go out into the streets with them and teach them by example. We’ll go out and talk to people and I’ll show them how to talk to people about the products. There are only a handful of things you need to say about your products. We show them what to do until they can do it. If they don’t do it, I just go find someone else who will do it and will talk to people.

I don’t spend too much time trying to convince people to do what I do. I spend most of my time finding people who believe in what I am sharing with them and that is my best advice for you, too. Thank you, Larry and Taylor.  It is a privilege for Julie and me to be a part of this amazing story.