Network Marketing Pro Podcast: Building Million-Dollar Relationships with Tom & Denice Chenault

Denice and I was featured on the Network Marketing Pro podcast with Eric Worre, one of the most respected voices in the network marketing industry.

Over the course of our conversation, Eric, my partner Denice, and I talked about our journey to building a million-dollar network marketing business and, more importantly, the mindset shifts, daily habits, and people-first philosophy that made it possible.

In this article, I’ve recapped the key topics we covered, linked to the full episode, and included the complete transcript below for anyone who prefers to read along.

Whether you’re brand new to network marketing or a seasoned professional looking to sharpen your approach, I think you’ll find something in this conversation that resonates, from how we structure our days to why we believe loving people is the real business strategy.

What We Covered

This episode goes deep on the principles and practices behind sustainable, long-term success in network marketing. Here are some of the key themes:

• The “Coffee Shop Conversation” framework: how we approach prospecting not as a pitch, but as a genuine, curiosity-driven conversation designed to understand what someone truly wants and needs
• Personal reinvention as a business strategy: my own journey through sobriety and how the principles of AA directly parallel what it takes to build a lasting network marketing organization
• Daily routines that drive results: the morning ritual I’ve followed for years that keeps me consistent, connected, and focused, even as a self-described introvert
• Working as a couple and building a team: how Denice and I divided responsibilities based on our strengths, and how we teach our team to duplicate the same relationship-first approach

Watch Now

Watch the full conversation below, or click here to watch on YouTube.

Full Transcript

Eric Worre: Welcome to Network Marketing Pro. My name is Eric Worre, and today I’m excited to have a million-dollar earning couple, Tom and Denice Chenault. Thanks for joining us.

Tom Chenault: Thanks, Eric. Thank you.

Denice Chenault: Hello Eric, thank you.

Eric Worre: I appreciate it so much. You guys are two of my favorite people.

Denice Chenault: Aw.

Eric Worre: And I’m excited to hear some of your story. I think success leaves clues. I think the reason why we do million-dollar interviews and not six-figure interviews is because people can get to six figures a lot of different ways. They might be in the right place at the right time, or have some strategy that works for five minutes but then doesn’t work long-term. But once you get to a million dollars a year, the principles start to even out. It’s like the common core fundamentals tend to show up more and more and more. So, I’m excited to learn from you today. Let’s just kind of start by maybe giving me a little bit of your background. You know, how did you come up? How were you raised? Let’s start with you. How were you raised and what was your family life? You know, were you born an entrepreneur or did you become entrepreneurially minded? Tell me.

Denice Chenault: No. I actually grew up in the mountains of Colorado. Both my parents are teachers. I have one younger sister. And no, I mean, there was—I had no idea about any sort of entrepreneurial anything. And in fact, my dad really wanted me to become a teacher. And so I went to the University of Colorado. I did change my major to education for one semester, and I just knew in my heart of hearts that it was just too limiting. There was something about it that just wasn’t going to work. And then I actually remember telling him, “I think I’m going to go into real estate,” and he about had a cow. He was like, “Why am I paying all this money for you to go to school for just, you know, to go into real estate?” So I guess that was kind of the first “aha” around, you know, I didn’t want to do the normal nine-to-five sort of thing.

Tom Chenault: You weren’t very well trained. Tell him about the budget conversation you and I had.

Denice Chenault: Well, that was the thing! So, you know, my parents both being teachers—I grew up in a fairly affluent community and I also grew up riding horses, hunters and jumpers, which is a very expensive sport. And so, you know, whatever—I helped earn my way into horse shows and everything. And then when Tom and I met, I said, “Well, we better have a budget.” And he looked at me and he was like, “Budget? We just need to make more money!”

Tom Chenault: We are not cutting back, we are making more. It was a war.

Denice Chenault: It was—I didn’t even know what that looked like. It was cool.

Tom Chenault: We have a budget now.

Eric Worre: Yeah. There’s a combination of two, right? I was a “out-earn your expenses” guy. That’s exactly what people in network marketing do—”let’s just make more.” But at some point, if you just keep digging a hole, you put more and more pressure on yourself.

Tom Chenault: She was right. We have a budget now. I mean, we make some okay dough, but we have a budget because she’s the boss.

Denice Chenault: The checks are in my name, just so we’re clear.

Eric Worre: Nice, nice. Super fun. So that was kind of your upbringing, just kind of this war between traditional paths versus non-traditional paths.

Denice Chenault: Yeah, and I think that the big “aha” moment for me was probably reading Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad. And that was a real turning point and really opened my vision to what’s possible.

Eric Worre: Right, right. How about you, Tom?

Tom Chenault: My whole life story probably boils down to “Tommy could have been anything.” You know, it started early—just not stuff, you know, like the mayor or the valedictorian or whatever it was. I’ve always had all the potential in the world, and my intentions have always been incredible, but my outcomes always got hijacked by a bottle of Wild Turkey. So it was horrible. Oh man. So everything I did, it just started out just really, really well, but most of the time I sabotaged my success. And that was forever, till I was at least 40 years old.

Eric Worre: So you kind of went between opportunity and sabotage?

Tom Chenault: Constant. Like so many people. Yeah, I wrecked everything. I mean, I had so much just laid out for me and people just wanted to help me so bad, and I was always my own worst enemy.

Eric Worre: So was there a trigger that typically caused this sabotage to happen? Because for me personally, I had my own battles with self-worth. And so I didn’t know—I was so ambitious that I wanted the ranks and the levels and the income and all that stuff, but I would sabotage by pulling back, I would sabotage by disconnecting from the team, I would sabotage by being inconsistent. And all of a sudden I was back in the struggle which I was familiar with. So I didn’t realize that I was sabotaging my success through that. But there was no conscious thing. But was there—when it got hard did you step, did you go to the bottle? When it got good? You know, because you’re very open about your struggles with alcohol. What was it for you?

Tom Chenault: I think I drank when it was boring. I think I drank when it was really, really hectic, and I think I drank right in the middle. So I just liked to drink all the time. And you know, that was a problem. I didn’t differentiate between any of it. And the more you do that stuff, the bigger your ego gets and the smaller your self-esteem gets, and it becomes this horrible inner war when people are giving you all these accolades and you’re hearing how great you are and you just know you’re this piece of garbage on the inside. You just cannot believe it.

Denice Chenault: But I think the story around your two brothers sort of set that path for you.

Tom Chenault: Well yeah, I had one brother that was very, very ill. I mean, incredibly ill. He finally died at age 35. He had tutors all the way through his life and just a real struggle, and my parents had no dough and just keeping that kid alive and with doctors was a battle unto itself. And then my little brother was born—when he was born 60 years ago, he weighed one pound, six ounces. And he was—so he was in an incubator and my mom literally disappeared. So we had one brother that was sick, I had a sister that was just a girl, so I was invisible. So I had to just hustle just for any attention. I had to hustle, I probably had to lie and steal and manipulate, and I was just this “gone” kid because I was relatively normal and that’s probably where that whole thing came from, Eric. So it was pretty crazy.

Eric Worre: So you kind of sabotaged your life up until age 40? Or about age 40.

Tom Chenault: Oh, I accomplished huge stuff, but it always blew up. Yeah, I was a stockbroker, I was an airplane salesman, I was incredibly successful as a restaurant manager.

Eric Worre: Was it a secret, this challenge that you had, or did the world know? Or just maybe your family knew?

Tom Chenault: All the world knew! The only one that didn’t—there was only one person, me, that didn’t know. Everybody else, I had so many people I’d say—after I finally got sober, I had so many people I’d say to them, “Why didn’t you tell me?” They said, “We did!” You know, I just couldn’t hear it. So that was crazy.

Eric Worre: So at some point—I mean the only reason why I’m spending a little time on this is number one, I know it’s important to you trying to help people who may have a similar situation with addiction, with any kind of sabotaging behavior. And I know there’s a lot of people listening or watching that struggle with this or have loved ones that struggle with this. What was the turning point?

Tom Chenault: My other—my friend. I took my friend to treatment, you know, which is rehab, and they tried to keep me. So I made a commitment that I was not going to drink during the 30 days he was in rehab. And I lasted about three. And once—I’ve got the kind of personality that once I realized I had a problem, there was no stopping me. I plugged into AA and that was in 1987—wait, yeah, September 28th, 1988. That’s when it started and I’ve been sober ever since. And so has my friend. So we both made it. Which is exciting, yeah.

Eric Worre: Good stuff. So what were the changes that happened after you started this process?

Tom Chenault: Everything. It became—you know, I had to fall in love with myself and start living life on life’s terms instead of hiding behind the bottle. So everything shifted.

Denice Chenault: And your marriage.

Tom Chenault: Which marriage? My first marriage went away. Not by her fault, by mine. I wrecked that woman, I wrecked that marriage. I got two great children out of it and, yeah, tough stuff.

Eric Worre: Well, I’m going to come back because there’s some correlations between learning how to live a sober life and learning how to build a network marketing organization that we can talk about. Absolute parallels. But talk about your first—when were you first introduced to this concept of network marketing?

Denice Chenault: In my first marriage. And I don’t even remember how we met our sponsor, but it was—I was probably in my mid-20s. And I just remember thinking—it was a nutritional company, it tasted horrible—but I loved the concept.

Eric Worre: The concept of the product or the concept of residual income?

Denice Chenault: Geometric growth, residual income. Yeah. And the guy that—our sponsor was somebody that lived half a state away and so we didn’t know him very well. And so it was the sort of typical “sign us up and then dropped us.” But then—and so I sought out different avenues of training and I remember going to a lot of, you know, sort of interesting personal growth seminars around it. And I thought, “This is really cool.” And then I kind of did what the typical networker does and I was excited and I went out and I was trying to share it, and I got turned down. And I think that my self-worth was such that I couldn’t handle that. You know, and I thought, “Well, this is—I can see how this can work, but it just can’t work for me.”

Eric Worre: For somebody. It’ll work for somebody.

Denice Chenault: Yeah, but not obviously not for me.

Eric Worre: It’s not traditional, there was no support system, there was no supervisor to correct you and move you forward, there was no training program or anything unless you sought it out.

Denice Chenault: Yeah, and I think that if I would have had, you know, okay, step one, do this; step two, do this; if I would have had a coach and mentor, it would have made all the difference.

Eric Worre: Well, and without the structure. I mean we just lack structure in the entrepreneurial world. Period. Any entrepreneur doesn’t come in and there’s no manual for an entrepreneur. You gotta be a self-driver versus fitting into a system. And sometimes shifting from that employee mindset is challenging. And people join and as soon as it gets hard, they take—they go “I didn’t know it was going to be hard, I didn’t know I had to do it all. I thought there was going to be more structure.” Tom, how about you? What was your thought the first time you saw network marketing?

Tom Chenault: Oh, I’ve been a candidate for it forever. So everybody wanted me in it, but again, like sobriety, I wanted no part of it. And I’ll never forget one day, I’m like—I quit drinking and I weighed about 400 pounds. I was purple and I thought, you know, somebody’s going to want the “Great Tom Chenault” and I was unemployable. I mean, I could not get a job anywhere. McDonald’s, nothing. And I opened up a newspaper and it was love at first sight. A little piece of paper fell out and it said “Unlimited income opportunity,” which was pretty good, but the other two were the ones that hooked me: “No background check, no credit check.” I go, “I’m home!” And it was on. And so I just called that guy on the phone and I said, “Sign me up, man, we are dancing.” And the rest is history.

Eric Worre: Really? True story. So you were just like—you became open when your options ran out?

Tom Chenault: Oh, there was—that was the last house on the block by a long shot.

Eric Worre: Interesting. Do you think—what I’m seeing is there’s two schools of people in network marketing. One school are the people who went, “Well, the traditional world just doesn’t fit for me, I’m not comfortable there.” They’re very entrepreneurial by nature, they’re rebellious against the system. That’s one side. The other side is people who, if they walk into a room and there’s 20 doors of opportunity, they don’t have very many doors. Right. So they have this or they have, you know, working in a restaurant or whatever. That was me, you know, as a young man. I didn’t have a college degree, I didn’t have all these opportunities, I didn’t have all these skills, so I didn’t want to go back to the restaurant when it got hard in network marketing, so I stayed. And then there’s the third group that just say, “You know what? This makes sense to me and I think the economic models are changing in the world and I’m going to choose this as a career path.” And it’s interesting how it’s kind of shifting because I think in our generation a lot of people came in and said, “You know, we tried all this other stuff and we weren’t as happy as we are, but now more people are just kind of logically coming into network marketing.” You know what I mean?

Tom Chenault: I like trying to tell people that what I do is I rewrite history to make myself the hero. So I act like, you know, when I’m having a conversation—”well, you know, I analyzed the industry like all these guys say and, you know, I chose this.” Nah, not with me. It chose me and I had no other choice to feed my family. I had to get to work and I thank God that I was that against the wall, because otherwise I would have figured out a way to wiggle off the hook. I was so low that I had to do this.

Eric Worre: That Garth Brooks song, “Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.”

Tom Chenault: There you go, that was it! That’s true. True story.

Eric Worre: You guys are currently earning over a million dollars a year. That’s big money. Big, big money.

Denice Chenault: Coming from a teacher’s daughter.

Eric Worre: Yeah. Over a million dollars a year with no employees, no big office, no huge infrastructure, you don’t have a warehouse full of inventory. That’s the Holy Grail for most people, it’s just unbelievable. Here’s what I want to know. How many people in your company are earning over a million dollars a year?

Tom Chenault: Lots. That’s the thing.

Eric Worre: A year?

Tom Chenault: Yeah, there’s a—I don’t know the number.

Eric Worre: What’s “lots”? Like a few, five?

Tom Chenault: No more than—I could think off the top of my head ten.

Eric Worre: Okay. About ten. Now there’s tens of thousands.

Tom Chenault: Correct.

Eric Worre: What makes you so special? You know, why—what do you do that’s different from the tens of thousands of people that got involved and aren’t earning what you’re earning? There has to be some clues there. There has to be some things that lead you to be able to enjoy this type of result that other people could learn from. What do you think they are?

Denice Chenault: Well, first of all, we never quit. You know, it’s 18 years down the road. And we made a decision. We decided that, you know, we are going to learn this industry. And we’ve put in a lot of time and a lot of effort not only through events and trainings like what you do, Eric, but also personal development. And we decided to really take it on and learn it because it’s that important. And you have the responsibility of your downline to learn it so you can teach it and train it.

Eric Worre: Yeah, but I—the audience has got to go, “Come on. ‘I didn’t quit and I learned some skills.’ That was the difference?” There has to be some other stuff because there’s other people out there that didn’t quit and learned some skills too. You know, what—there’s got to be some little “something.”

Tom Chenault: It is. It’s this coffee shop interview that we do. We are—every day I interview two people and I three-way one with my upline. Every day after all these years, that’s still what I do.

Eric Worre: And tell me what that means, interviewing two people?

Tom Chenault: That means I interview people. I’m a radio guy, so I understand the power of interviewing and asking great questions, which I do. And I have a conversation with somebody and I find out where they are. And they tell me what they love about multilevel marketing, they tell me what they don’t like about it, they tell me what their life looks like, what their money looks like, what their health looks like. And I make sure I find out what they don’t like. And then I wait a couple days and I call them back and I sell them what they told me they wanted to buy, and I don’t ask them to buy what they said they hated. And that’s the secret to our success. And I am not intimidated by big people in industries away from network marketing or big people in network marketing because I know we’re just human beings and I know that if I interview them enough I’m going to find what’s missing in their life and I am going to become committed to helping them fill it with me in it.

Eric Worre: How do you set these interviews up?

Tom Chenault: I say, “Hi Eric, how’s it going? What’s going on with you?” and I find out even somebody like you—

Eric Worre: So do you call it an interview with them?

Tom Chenault: No, no, never.

Denice Chenault: Conversation.

Eric Worre: You say, “You know, hey, I’d like to interview you”?

Tom Chenault: No, no, no. She doesn’t even like that word. In fact, we changed it for a while.

Denice Chenault: We changed it to “coffee shop conversation” because she thought it was too intentional, the word “interview.”

Tom Chenault: And I said, “No, let’s make it interrogation!” I swear, because I want to know. But people want to talk about themselves. And if you do it in conversation whereby your entire agenda, if there is one, is having them feel better about having met us than they did when they got there and leaving feeling better about themselves than they did when they got there, we’ve done our job. And that way we don’t have to look at every human being we meet like a prospect. Our job is to look at them and see where can we contribute to their lives.

Eric Worre: So how do you set up these conversations?

Tom Chenault: “Hi!” You know? Be interested.

Eric Worre: I mean, but no, just practically. Do you text them, do you call them, do you just meet them and set up a time to have coffee? Is it at Starbucks? Where is it?

Denice Chenault: Some of it is all that. I mean, the other day it was so funny because we pulled up—we were going to lunch and I was driving. We pull up, Tom goes, “I’ll go see if they’re open.” He jaywalks across the street, he goes into this restaurant and I park the car. I park the car, I go up to the light, wait for the light. So I literally walk in probably seven minutes later, and by the time I get in, he says, “Denice! This little couple that’s sitting here, they are moving to Chile, they’re University of Colorado graduates in ecology, and they’re wanting to get married in September.” I mean, all of this—

Tom Chenault: Working at Whole Foods. I mean, I know everything. I just ask questions.

Denice Chenault: All that took place in probably less than five minutes.

Eric Worre: Is that natural? Have you done that your whole life?

Tom Chenault: Well yeah, because I’m a Myers-Briggs introvert. I am scared to death of people.

Eric Worre: Yeah, that—because I’m an introvert person too. I’m a situational extrovert.

Tom Chenault: Me too! Exactly.

Eric Worre: So for me, doing what you just said every day, I have to really be in a state to do it.

Tom Chenault: It’s the best offense.

Eric Worre: I have to be in a state—a right state to do it, because sometimes I just want to guard my energy and hide. So I tended over the course of my career to recruit in bunches because I would get in that state for 30 days or something, but I couldn’t hold it every day. You know, every day walking into a coffee shop meeting a stranger, every day in the elevator meeting a stranger—ugh! I have to really get prepared for it, me personally. But it sounds like you’ve trained yourself very well to be in that state.

Tom Chenault: The more I ask about them, the less attention’s on me. And it’s the best defense in the world for me not to have to pull the curtain down on me. I pull the curtain down on them before they can do it, and that’s an introvert’s absolute secret weapon. And yeah, it’s cool. It works.

Eric Worre: So what’s the combination of meeting strangers versus texting people that you know or calling people that you know in order to be able to set up a time to get together and go have coffee or something?

Tom Chenault: I am the best friend you’re ever going to run across. And she’s nodding right now. And we’ve had conversations about this because I, whenever I go anywhere, I try to think of some friend I haven’t talked to in a long time that I can just call and touch base with. And almost all the time it’s somebody from a long time ago and I know what’s going through their mind: “It’s Tom Chenault, he’s looking for bail money,” because they remember me from the old days. And they cannot believe I’m just calling to check in on their life, which is the coffee shop interview, which just has me live in what’s going on. And when I hang up the phone without trying to sell them something, without trying to convince them of something, just the fact that I called and loved them, they usually look at their spouse and say, “I think Tom Chenault’s drinking again,” because they just can’t believe it. Yeah. It’s huge. I’ve learned a long time ago a leader in our profession becomes incredibly good not just at telling stories but asking questions.

Eric Worre: Yeah, that’s the whole show. So it sounds like you’re incredible at this. You drove the car and went and parked.

Denice Chenault: Yeah.

Eric Worre: Now how much do you do this when it comes to this coffee shop conversation?

Denice Chenault: All the time. I mean, it really has become—I wouldn’t even say that it’s a skill, necessarily. It’s more just about being inquisitive. And there are times, you know, I mean certainly I’m on the airplane, I want to put in my earplugs, you know. I mean there’s definitely times where I don’t reach out to people. But you know, I mean it really just is about being inquisitive about another human being. And some of the best people we’ve met are taxi drivers. You know, and so it’s become really easy for me as well.

Eric Worre: So the process is you set up a time, whether it’s your warm market, people you meet, whatever. You connect with somebody and you just have conversations, you ask them about them, see how they’re doing, right? And you find stuff out, but you don’t necessarily have the conversation about your business right then and there unless it’s super wide open.

Tom Chenault: Unless it lays itself out. Otherwise, the greatest thing you can say to somebody is, “I’ve been thinking about you, and I have a product that might work for you.” A couple days later. It takes the agenda out and now somebody’s—all we want, all I want in my life is having somebody think about me. That’s all I care about. So I know that’s like the human condition, and when we do that and then we say on the three-way call, if it’s product-driven, we send them to a tool. And if they’re not going to be building a big business, we usually do the same there, like a video. But if it’s somebody big, I just say, “Man, I was talking to my partner about you and he wants to talk to you,” and it opens up that three-way call. It’s just network marketing 101.

Eric Worre: So you have the conversation, you ask a million questions, find out about them, no penny drops, no agenda, no pitch. And then a few days later, if you feel—I’m sure there’s some that you haven’t called back and thought that there was a fit, maybe there was something—

Tom Chenault: Something.

Eric Worre: And then you call back, “Hey, I was thinking about you, I’ve got a solution that might be for you, might not, let me share it with you.” And over the course of that process, I mean, how many people do the two of you recruit over the course of a given year?

Tom Chenault: Lots and lots and lots. I think we still lead—we’re way up there on the list of—I guarantee one—you know, like we operate our life like brand-new network marketers all the time. We’re always reinventing ourselves. So it’s a lot.

Eric Worre: 20 a year? 40 a year?

Tom Chenault: More than that, yeah.

Eric Worre: 50 a year?

Tom Chenault: 50 a year minimum.

Eric Worre: One a week? Something like that.

Tom Chenault: Maybe two a week. Yeah, it’s one to two a week.

Denice Chenault: Well, I mean and the thing is that it shifts from becoming a numbers game. You know, and you’re collecting friends—we’re collecting friends. And you don’t have to blow through a hundred contacts. Right.

Tom Chenault: There’s something out there called contact mapping, and we have coined the term, believe it or not, because we’re so one-dimensional in multilevel marketing and in any sales of anything that we only look at a person for what they’re worth to us in the form of what we’re trying to sell them. And so I map everybody. That’s—I talked to you earlier about somebody that is really interested in that, but the reason is mapping people, you never know when you’re going to come back and have something that you can help somebody with or somebody that can help you with something. And with our phones today, the minute I leave somebody—and she’ll tell you this—I grab my phone and I speak into the notes in the phone everything that happened in the conversation, including the Lexus or the Corvette or whatever it was they want to buy, because then I can go back and key-search that word and I can actually find the people that are interested in what I might need that day or need some help with. So it’s just—I map everybody because I don’t want to be agenda-driven. And if I’m going to really truly be who I’m saying I’m going to be and be a person who wants to contribute—somebody calls me up and wants to know something, I’m probably not going to know the answer, but I’m going to guarantee you I’m going to know somebody that’s got the answer. And people always come to me because they know I’ve got that kind of database. It’s cool. It is over-the-top cool.

Eric Worre: I like to—in training, I like to tell people that our goal is not to get a customer, not to get a distributor, our goal really should be education and understanding. If we can help to educate a person to the point that they understand what it is that we have, that’s our job. And if it fits, then fantastic, join, and if it doesn’t fit, fantastic, no problem. And the other side is I do a little exercise at trainings where I just tell people to think about somebody they’re grateful for in the room while they’re sitting there in the room. And I want you to call them right now and I want you to tell them that you’re grateful and I want you to tell them why you’re grateful and don’t tell them this was an assignment. Greatest gift of all time. And they do it, tears are flowing most of the time, they hang up the phone, the whole room—you know, a thousand people do that—and I say, “What was the last time you got a call like that?” Never! They just—they can’t remember. So having a conversation where you’re really interested in a person allows people to let their guard down and connect as human beings.

Tom Chenault: So many times I have conversations with network marketers like this and I know their dog’s name, I know their children’s name, I know their health, I know their mom and dad’s health, I know their money, I know what their dreams are, I know what’s going on in their life. And at the end of the conversation, I always say, “Let me ask you this. Other than your family, is anybody in your network marketing business—do they know you as well as I know you, and I’ve only known you for 30 or 40 minutes?” And the answer is almost always no. They’re blown away. And they realize they did all the talking at that point. But then I say to them, “Let me ask you this. Do you know any of your leaders like I know you?” And it’s horrible for them because they have to admit no. But that was a tremendous teaching moment for them right then where they realize they’ve got to go deeper because if I’m going to be successful in this business, my leaders need to know that my eyes are popping open at 2:00 in the morning thinking about their problems. That’s the secret to this business. And that’s our secret to this business. And if we can correlate that where those people know that we are absolutely with them through thick or thin, they’ll walk over coals with us and for us.

Denice Chenault: And we teach people to do that, to do the coffee shop interview by interviewing their upline. You know, and so it’s a very safe exercise to go, “You know, what are your strengths? How can I use you appropriately with three-way calls or whatever?” And so if you go and interview three or four of your upline success members, then you know, you have that basis to be able to then go out into the world to do it.

Tom Chenault: Another thing that’s great about teaching that trick right there—if it’s called a trick—is that once you interview your upline, you find out you know the perfect arrow to pull out. You call me about weight loss—well, really I’m not your guy. I can help with the business, but I’m probably not like Jack LaLanne here. You might want to call Denice. But they didn’t interview us, so they’re just throwing it up there. Use your upline like a sword too is all I’m saying.

Eric Worre: So you talk about part of this process—third-party tools. Whether it’s a three-way call, you have your interview, you follow up that you might have a solution for them, and then you bring in tools. You bring in whether it’s a video or whether—you know, everybody has—what I like to tell people is tell your story and do the thing, whatever the thing is in your company. There’s a play the video, listen to the audio, look at the workbook, follow the flipchart, get on a three-way phone call—whatever that thing is. So you use three-way phone calls and you use tools. What’s the value that you see that third-party tools offer to this process?

Denice Chenault: It makes the process so that anybody can do it. And just as long as they know the appropriate tool, just like what you were saying, whether it’s a video or a CD, a meeting—a meeting is a tool in addition, a three-way call—you know, that takes them out of the middle of it and they don’t have to know everything. And I think that it’s all about the actions. And so many times we get bogged down into wanting to know all the information. That takes that piece away.

Tom Chenault: Have to have them take—you have to get the personality out. It’s great for me to be able to do this, but if I can’t teach you to do it, it’s useless because otherwise I’m a Fuller Brush salesman. I might as well be knocking on every door in Longmont. And so it has to be something that we can give away. Give away, connect, link, three-way call, something. Anything that’s not you. It could be the product experience, it could be all kinds of stuff can be third-party, right? And we’ve got so many people that are better at what doing what we’re doing than we are at this point. We’re just literally obsolete, Denice and I.

Eric Worre: Some people are very resistant to the three-way phone call. They get nervous about it. So it’s like, “Hey, listen, get that person and just connect me and introduce me and let me help you.” And they’re like, “I don’t know what you’re going to do with my contact, what’s going to happen with this process, I’m—you know, they’re so unfamiliar because they haven’t done it.” How do you help a person go from being resistant to it to being accepting of it?

Tom Chenault: It’s really pretty fun the way that I finally figured out how to do it. I make people build their list like everybody does, but then we do mock conversations of that interview and that—so with that first 10 people, I say, “Let’s go through what we’re going to say.” And we literally practice it, and then they think I’m going to throw them to the wolves and I go, “Now we’re going to call those people together.” And they just flip out because they finally realize that their brain turned on to see how they would have done it, and now they’re going to see how I did it with that person, and everything shifts.

Denice Chenault: And it takes away that fear of the unknown. You know, they don’t know what to expect, they don’t want to be embarrassed, they don’t want to lose a relationship, and so it takes away that unknown.

Tom Chenault: And we teach people to fire their brain and hire their heart. You know, and just once they see that they don’t have to be like the Encyclopedia Britannica, they just got to love like crazy then love more, everything shifts for them and they realize all they really need to be is their best self. And that’s, you know, they can’t be Tom, they can’t be Denice, they can’t be Eric, but they can be an unbelievable them if they just give themselves the power to do that and permission, and that’s what we’re good at showing people how to do.

Eric Worre: Tell me about events. As you build your organization, do you build small events, lunches, home events? Is it more one-on-one? Is it small groups? Is it hotel meetings? What is it?

Denice Chenault: It’s one-on-one to our weekly opportunity meeting. We have an office. We do it in an office because we’re cheap. We got tired of paying for the hotel every week. And then we do a monthly Super Saturday—kind of a training day. Four hours. And then that funnels into a quarterly rally, which is a regional event in our area, and then a yearly convention. So yeah, totally use the event system.

Eric Worre: Do you guys use home parties?

Denice Chenault: We do as well. I mean our platform is such that you can do it either way, and I really think that when we look back on our business where we’ve sort of maybe gotten a little stagnant is when people stop doing the home meetings.

Tom Chenault: And we are introverts, so having that kind of deal is a little tough on us. So she just read a book and put it on my desk to read on how to have mastermind dinners—like a potluck on a Sunday night and invite people over and do all that stuff which is—it’s like people, you know, and that feels for me that’s more comfortable than—

Eric Worre: Well, I’m an introvert too, so home meetings made me break out in hives. To drive to somebody’s home, come in as a stranger as a presenter to a bunch of other strangers was something that I was very nervous about. What got me to finally do it was somebody said, “Eric, it’s not about the one that you’re doing.” Because I wasn’t seeing enough return to go through the pain personally, right? As an introvert. So they said, “Eric, you do one, but if you do the one and you tell the story on the one, you can get a thousand to happen on a weekly basis within your team.” And then I had leverage. So you go through pain—no, you just go through pain with that one time yourself, tell the story, you can get a thousand people to do it. I went, “Oh, okay. Fine. Good, good, good.” You know, I’ll let’s get it to that stage. I’ll go ahead and do the one, I’ll go and do the blitz, I’ll take one, I’ll suffer that one—

Tom Chenault: Yes! Yes! Because eventually it always ended up nice and eventually it always ended up comfortable and you met new friends, but the drive—the drive there, walking up to the door—oh and not the drive there, but that little guy riding on your shoulder with you, that guy’s the guy you can’t stand because he’s like, “Oh they’re going to hate you.”

Denice Chenault: In some ways we’d pray that nobody would show up. You know? “Oh good, let’s just—we’ll just hang out with the distributor and have a little snack or something.”

Tom Chenault: But what people need to know is even an Eric Worre and a Denice Chenault are petrified about stuff. Sure. And that’s what’s so cool.

Eric Worre: That’s why I needed to recruit in bunches. Because I could only get my energy to—you know, but it worked for me. Bring in 20 people quick, and then work with those 20. Now we get the camaraderie and the fun stuff that I love. You know, the training part, get them going, get them competing with each other, get the ranks moving—all that stuff was really fun.

Denice Chenault: That’s why I think it is fun to hear other people’s experience because I’m not the one that could stand outside, you know, the hotel room door and hold a product and go—there’s no way! I can’t do it. But I also had a mentor that said, “You know, look, be really clear about everything you do and say because people are watching you.” And at one point I said, “You know, what about these stickers on the car? What do you think?” And he goes, “You know, for the most part, people don’t want to drive around with big old stickers on the car.” And so that was a really good lesson for me to really be aware of everything I do and say, that people are watching me and following it.

Eric Worre: Fascinating. How do you guys handle working as a couple? How does that work?

Tom Chenault: We did it. It was great. It was brilliant. This was my idea and I’m taking credit.

Denice Chenault: Your idea? Okay, let’s hear it.

Tom Chenault: Here we go, see? We got a piece of paper and we said, “What do you love to do, Denice?” and then we said, “What do you love to do, Tom?” and we wrote down everything we love to do. And then what we wrote on the bottom page: “What do we hate to do?” and we wrote all that down. And then on looking at that piece of paper, everything that we had in common, I gave to Denice so she does exactly what she wants to do every day, I do exactly what I want to do every day, and then we made that the job description of a personal assistant. And we said, “Here’s what you do if you want to be paid by us—you have to love to do this.” And we have a woman that works for us now that does all those things, so every day that we work, it is absolute party time because we outsourced what we don’t like to do, which is the beautiful thing about multilevel marketing—you find somebody that loves to do what you don’t want to. And that’s this woman, and Denice and I just—our hair is on fire every day. And then I watched a video and this guy said, “Invent your perfect day like your best vacation and live your life like that.” And for some reason that resonated with me and I did it. And so I live every day the perfect day for Tom Chenault. And I get up, I’ve got this routine that is killer for me, and I’m done by 10:30 in the morning and I’ve worked as hard as anybody I know from 6:30 in the morning to 10:30 in the morning and I’ve covered it all because I invented it and I live into it. No matter where we are in the world. I get up, I do this thing called the “Hair on Fire” call, which is this rally call for three, four hundred people on this call. And I leave my house, I get up about 6:00 in the morning, I kind of pray a little bit and think until 6:28, I take my vitamins, and then 6:28 I walk out my door, I go up to the corner where it’s quiet, get away from the houses, turn left, open up my mouth and start talking loud for 10 minutes—just light these people up. And then I keep walking to my AA meeting which is a mile and a half away. And on the way I listen to spiritual stuff or a book, listen to your stuff, all that. And then I get there, I do my AA meeting for an hour. And it is great because there I really, really get to help people and I get reminded I’m not nearly as hip, slick, and cool as my paycheck is trying to tell me I am. I leave there, I walk to another place, have a cup of coffee, and on the way there I call my leaders before the competition does. So I’ve got all those guys—they’re better than I am, so I just tell them I love them, see what kind of problems I can solve for them. By the time I get to that next coffee shop, I grab my cup of coffee, I walk another half mile, go through a workout, you know, the little circuit at Planet Fitness. And then I leave there and walk home, and then I do my follow-up on all the people I’ve interviewed. So my actual follow-up that we never do because we never have time to really be diligent about follow-up—I’m walking, so all I have on is a headset so I don’t have Facebook, I don’t have any of the garbage that could distract me. And I cross all of that stuff off the list. I show up about 10:00, she’s done all her morning ministrations or whatever you call them—meditation is the word I wanted! But anyway, so she’s in a great mood and we’ll go have breakfast or something like that. But the mechanics are all out of the way, Eric. Everybody’s called, I don’t have to worry about that, so I can go invent the day as powerfully as I want to and it’s done, it’s in the can, my hair’s on fire, I feel good about myself and I usually take a nap.

Eric Worre: I love that. How about you?

Denice Chenault: I wake up about 7:00, it’s really quiet, and I use that time to meditate like Tom said, and then I usually read for like an hour and do some Pilates or go to yoga, and by the time he’s done, I’m done and then we invent the rest of the day together.

Eric Worre: And how long have you had this process?

Tom Chenault: Two or three years, at least. Prior to that it was chaos all the time. I am a train wreck. I mean I am so ADD that if I don’t have something like that etched in stone, even if I plan on doing it, I forgot I did.

Denice Chenault: Well let me just say that when Tom used to do the radio—because he is a little ADD—he’d be on the radio and I would listen, and it was kind of like watching grass grow. It was a little boring because it was all about numbers and the stock market. And so I would be listening as I’m getting ready in the morning, and this woman would call in and she’d say, “Oh my God, I just lost everything in the stock market, I lost my house, I lost—” and Tom, he’d be on Facebook or something, he’d say, “Alright, very, very good! On to the next caller!” And I would be like, “Oh my God, you didn’t even listen to that lady! You didn’t even listen, she lost all her money and you said ‘very, very good’!” It was horrible!

Tom Chenault: I don’t know what happened, why—

Denice Chenault: Well okay, so my point is that for you to be on the road walking and not to have Facebook and a computer and everything else in front of you has—that was actually a huge shift for you. And other than the traffic noise, which people have to deal with—wind blowing in traffic because I’m on my headset—but it really has been a great shift.

Tom Chenault: And what’s so fun is the other day—I don’t know if you saw that—I walked up to a corner and I look like a bum and I had a headset on and a scarf and I’m at the corner and I walk over to a homeless guy and I’m going to give him five dollars and he goes, “Get out of here, dude, this is my corner!” Yes! But that’s a compliment to me! I don’t like being hip, slick, and cool, those are my people. And I hate to say it, but that’s not the first time that’s happened. People are always giving me—because then somebody else because I’m so old they told me I would be—if I just would bend over 10 times a day it would help my balance and my flexibility. So I started carrying a trash bag and picking up trash. And that was keeping my brain working, and as I was doing that I was going down Main Street in Longmont and because I’m so obsessive-compulsive, I decided to really, really make my block clean. So I’m like crazy about it. So people are driving by giving me money because they think I’m again one of those guys! They pulled over and handed me 20 bucks and I take it to the AA people. Out of the county jail slicker on the back, very cute.

Eric Worre: Oh my god. I like that routine! Talk about—share a few minutes about the correlations that you’ve found between your journey with sobriety and your journey with network marketing.

Tom Chenault: First of all, Denice and I never get invited anywhere because is there anything in the world for any kind of party than a recovering alcoholic multilevel marketer? I mean no one invites us anywhere! Let’s—invite us someplace, will you please? But second of all, yeah, it’s exactly the same. And God’s got such a great sense of humor—He put me in the two toughest businesses in the world. Because try to get somebody to stop drinking until they’re ready and there’s no way in the world with all the evidence—their job’s gone, their marriage is gone, their money is gone—but it’s everything but the alcohol. And so when you go to an AA meeting, you walk in the door and you just don’t—you’re scared to death and here’s all these people and you think that they’re going to—something’s going to happen—and you sit there. And the meetings normally—I’ll never forget my first meeting lasted like 11 hours. And I walked in and I looked at my watch and it started at 7:00 and like five hours later I looked at my watch again and it was like ten after because the meetings were like an eternity. And finally the meeting ended and I said, “Well, what do I do now?” and they said, “Well, just come back tomorrow.” I go, “What?” They go, “Yeah, just come back tomorrow and don’t drink between meetings.” And I go, “What? You’re not going to teach me anything?” “No, just come back tomorrow.” And then when I came back tomorrow, I said, “Okay, so I came back tomorrow,” and they said, “Well you need to go to 90 meetings in 90 days.” I said, “I don’t have time for that!” They said, “Well you had time to drink.” So then I went out and got drunk, crawled back in the door, said, “I’ll do 90 meetings in 90 days.” Then they said, “You have to read this book.” I go, “Well, I’m not going to read that book, I’m too smart for that.” I didn’t read the book, I went out, I got drunk, I crawled back in the door—”I’ll read the book, I’ll do 90 meetings in 90 days.” Then they said, “Well you need to have a sponsor to read the book with.” Well, I’m not going to tell some sponsor my secrets! So I went out, got drunk, crawled back in the door—”I will do the 90 meetings in 90 days, I’ll read the book, I’ll have the sponsor.” And they said, “You need to do these steps and tell this sponsor all this stuff.” So I finally did all that stuff, I went to the 90 meetings in 90 days, I read the book with my sponsor, and I finally got graduated—I went through the 12 steps and I said, “What do I do now?” and they said, “Well now you’ve gone through the work, now go teach other people to do the same thing and you’ll stay sober.” Which is exactly what multilevel marketing is! What do you do? You walk into a multilevel marketing meeting, it’s completely Chinese, you think you’re smarter than everybody else there, you don’t read all the books, you don’t stay in the system, you don’t follow the plan, you decide you’re smarter than everybody else, you fall off the lane, then you come back into the lane again and all of a sudden it starts to work and you start following the system and then what do they tell you? “Well go, if you’re going to be successful, go teach other people.” They are identical, which is such a gift for Denice and I because we already learned it through Alcoholics Anonymous and now we just go teach people multilevel marketing very much the same way and it works like a charm.

Eric Worre: How fun does it feel to help somebody?

Tom Chenault: Oh my God, it’s our whole life. I mean saying we would do this for free is 100% true because we have and we would do it again. And I was thinking about starting over, just this morning believe it or not. I would have no problem starting over. I would have no problem. I know that I could do it at age—and I’m not a young guy—people are retiring at my age, but I am 100% convinced that with the skillsets that we’ve got right now, God forbid we ever had to start over, it would be absolutely a piece of cake because it’s about the human beings we’re taking with us and we could find them. That’s the name of this game, is just work on you. If you’re as great as you think you are at all that stuff on that side of the systems and all that, and all of a sudden you start changing yourself and all of a sudden you start becoming the best you that you can be, everything’s going to shift. And as you’re good—the company’s going to follow you if you get big. So just work on you, I promise you. It’s the best, most fun adventure you will ever have because you’re going to learn to do that yourself and then you’re going to teach your team to do that with themselves and you’re going to create a better planet as a result of that commitment to yourself. I did it, it wasn’t easy, it was the hardest thing I ever did look in the mirror, but I’m telling you I am so thankful I did because I wouldn’t have gotten her and I wouldn’t have gotten this life that I’ve got and most importantly I wouldn’t have been in love with myself and today I can honestly tell you I am and it’s a great feeling. Thank you.

Eric Worre: This audience that’s listening or watching is searching for something. They want to have purpose, they want to have meaning, they want to have income, they want to have freedom, they want to have contribution to other people. Why don’t you start, and then you finish, look into the camera and give them your best advice.

Denice Chenault: My best advice is just to love people. And you know, when you love other human beings, when you ask the questions and you’re really truly there listening on a level of no agenda, really wanting to know their story, wanting to serve them in the best possible way, then you open up a level of relationship that doesn’t go away. And so even though somebody may say no today, you develop the relationship to the point where they will remember you when something maybe goes wrong and they’re looking for something. And they look for you because you’ve developed that relationship. And when you come at it from the standpoint of all heart, you just can’t lose. You know? It’s just—it’s all about service. And that’s what Tom and I are really, really good at.

Tom Chenault: 100% this is my advice. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Spend all that same time working on reinventing you. If you can do that you’re going to win this. That system that your company’s got that you think you can do better—forget about that. Here’s what I want you to do. Go take a quick look in the mirror and make the same commitment to doing the reinvention of you that you want to do on your company’s systems and things like that. You’re going to create a better planet as a result of that commitment to yourself. I am so thankful I did. Today I can honestly tell you I am in love with myself and it’s a great feeling.

Eric Worre: Tom, Denice, thank you guys so much. I enjoyed this. Hold on, hold on, we’ve got to finish. We’re not done. That’s our show. Pay it forward, share it around with the world. Ladies and gentlemen, our wish for all of you is that you decide to be a network marketing professional, that you do decide to go Pro, because it is a stone-cold fact that we do have a better way. Now let’s go tell the world! Everybody have a great day! Bye-bye.