J U LY / AU G U S T 2013
Happiness Pays!
Shawn Achor
author of The Happiness Advantage
Michelle Gielan
host of CBS News’ “Happy Week”
Manage Your Online Reputation 10 MLM Commandments Building in Russia
CONTENTS
PERSPECTIVES 5 LEADOFF
The Science of What Goes Right
John David Mann Doing the things that make you happier don’t just make you happier. They also make your life—and business—work better.
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SPECIAL SECTION Networking University Faculty Recommends: Summer Reading List
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WORDS OF WISDOM About Happiness Memorable quotes by Ayn Rand, Dale Carnegie, Paulo Coelho, and others.
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OUR TIMES – PART 1 What’s your secret to happiness in business? • Sarah Fairless Robbins, Compete Only with Yourself • Dr. Sven Goebel, Be, Do, Have • Donna Imson, Blessed Through the Storm • Nobuhiro Kaneko, Do What You Like
DEPARTMENTS 17
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July/August 2013
18 PROFESSIONALISM Ten MLM Commandments Jean-Philippe Hulin A simple ten-point list of do’s and don’ts for long-term success in network marketing.
20 LEADERSHIP Don’t Be the Naysayer Curt Wang Six tips to reject or redirect bad ideas in a thoughtful, positive, and more collaborative way.
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CONTENTS
FEATURES
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NT INTERVIEW The Happiness Revolution A distinguished researcher and highly engaging speaker, Shawn Achor has garnered a well-earned reputation as one of the world’s top authorities on positive psychology and its impact in the workplace. Michelle Gielan, who with Shawn cofounded the Institute for Applied Positive Research, worked as a network news anchor for two national news programs, but left at the height of her career because she realized she was telling negative stories and wanted to find a more positive way to reach people. Shawn and Michelle see network marketing as an ideal playground for spreading happiness.
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MASTER NETWORKER Shine Your Light Bob and Betty Ann Golden are one of the happiest couples you will ever meet. Having been married for forty-three years and living in Las Vegas, the Goldens love to go see shows, attend parties, and meet new friends. After parties or any time they’ve had a meaningful encounter, the Goldens like to follow up by sending a card, and this is exactly how they built a thriving network marketing business and ongoing residual income. Over the years, the Goldens’ heart-centered and authentic communication style has created sustained, organic business growth.
40 MASTER NETWORKER Focus on Your Dreams Cherian Mathew is a network marketing leader who heads a global organization of half a million distributors. He started building his team in Bahrain, then expanded into neighboring Middle Eastern countries, and from there into Africa and India. Born in a small Indian village, Cherian dreamed of being able to help his parents move beyond their limited world. After eleven years of employment in the corporate world and no way in sight to achieve his goals, Cherian finally discovered network marketing, the vehicle that would allow him to realize his childhood dream—and many other dreams. 48
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MASTER NETWORKER Success Times Two Mary Barber and Sara Whiteford are identical twins who started building their network marketing business almost four years ago. Based in Marin County, California, they are happily married and count five children between the two of them. In their previous careers, Mary and Sara were food writers and culinary consultants who sold over a million books and were featured on national television shows as well as in prestigious newsstand publications. Yet, it wasn’t all joy and glory being stars in the publishing world. When a friend introduced them to a business based on leverage, collaboration, and paying it forward, the twins jumped in with all four feet. Networking Times
CONTENTS
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OUR TIMES – PART 2 What’s your secret to happiness in business? (Continued) • Sara Marble, A Full Life • Joseph T. Bismark, Feed Your Soul • Thomas Tidlund, Happiness Is a Verb • Onyx Coale, Our Duty and Purpose
DEPARTMENTS 64
INTERNET MARKETING Keep It Clean Scott Allen Online reputation management is a growing issue for all kinds of businesses, but network marketing faces some unique challenges.
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COUNTRY OVERVIEW Russia: The Largest Territory in the World Jeremy Cosnefroy The relative stability of its currency and the rising purchasing power of its population make Russia a prime market for direct selling.
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RESOURCES 68
JUST FOR FUN Word Puzzle
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LIFETIME MEMBERS Description of Lifetime Loyalty Leaders program and members list.
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DEPARTMENT AND OUR TIMES SUMMARIES Overview of articles in this issue.
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THE CLOSE Happiness Is the Key Margie Aliprandi Building a network marketing business compels you to discover your purpose, then live it; to find your authentic self, then be it.
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July/August 2013
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OUR TIMES
Stephanie Goetz, Cary, North Carolina In addition to providing residual income, network marketing brings me an exponential amount of happiness through the people I work with, through travel, learning, and all the experiences my business brought into my life. The more delighted I became with this newfound gift, the more I wanted to share it with others and the more others asked me to tell them about it. When you find something that allows you to leverage your professional strengths around the needs of the important personal parts of your life, it truly is the beginning of a new kind of happiness.
Jodi Hennessy, San Diego, California Network marketing has been my chosen path for about thirty years, although I believe it chose me. Without the struggles of building a business, I would not have gone deeply enough within myself to attain the happiness and spiritual awakening I have received. The secret to happiness is persistence and follow through; not letting me talk myself out of awakening to the miracles that are within me; knowing that even in the darkest moment, I can push on. Being happy is what makes us attractive, thereby allowing the Universe to open up and let success pour in.
Lisa Hemmeter, Boulder, Colorado Happiness is plugging into my passions and living them every day. It is no coincidence that my business tends to grow when I’m settled into that sweet spot of contentment. Some days, happiness is simply looking at the spectacular mountains while hiking. Other days, it’s cooking a beautiful meal, relishing the smells wafting from my kitchen. Spending time with family and friends brings me the greatest joy of all. Network marketing allows me to choose happiness every day: to work when and where I choose, and best of all, with whom I love.
Gary Washburn, Cameron Park, California Happiness is a choice. Everyone experiences trials, problems, failures, and defeats. No one is exempt. Some choose to be happy. Some choose to complain and blame. Choosing to be happy is just a more fun way to live. And when my network marketing business produces a good residual income, I have the opportunity to share my blessing with others, which makes me even happier. It’s no more complicated than that.
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Networking Times
LEAD STORY
The Happiness Revolution
A Conversation with Shawn Achor (The Happiness Advantage) and Michelle Gielan (CBS News), cofounders of the Institute for Applied Positive Research By John David Mann 22
Networking Times
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ike millions of others, the first time I became aware that there was such a thing as positive psychology—a “science of happiness”—was in 2006, when I read a news item about some Harvard professor whose course on happiness was packing in hundreds of students. The press dubbed the class Happiness 101 (it was actually called Psychology 1504), positive psychology became “the happiness revolution,” and the rest has become some pretty remarkable history. Starting with the work of Martin Seligman and his colleagues in the late nineties, positive psychology—the proposition that scientists study what goes right in the human condition, rather than what goes wrong—sprang up virtually overnight, generated an avalanche of new research on the roots and impact of happiness. Soon school systems, Fortune 100 corporations, and the U.S. military were all creating happiness programs, governments were floating proposals to begin measuring GNH—“gross national happiness”—and the New York Times bestseller list was flooded with new books about the science of happiness. One of these, The Happiness Advantage, was penned by Shawn Achor—one of the creators of that Harvard class that triggered so much national attention. Shawn is that rare scientist who is both a distinguished researcher and highly engaging speaker (his TED talk is justifiably one of the most popular ever), and has garnered a well-earned reputation as one of the world’s top authorities on positive psychology and its impact in the workplace. Michelle Gielan, who with Shawn cofounded the Institute for Applied Positive Research, worked as a network news anchor for two national news programs, The CBS Morning News and Up to the Minute and was a correspondent for The Early Show. Michelle left the news business “at the height of her career in media,” as Shawn puts it, “because she realized she was telling negative stories and wanted to find a more positive way to communicate to people.” Today she works with Fortune 500 companies on ways to raise employee engagement and drive success. One more thing: Shawn and Michelle are extremely bullish on network marketing as an ideal Petri dish for spreading the “positive social contagion” of happiness.—J.D.M.
Shawn, how did you get started in this positive psychology, and I was fascinated. These whole happiness thing? scientists were looking at the same questions I Shawn: I fell backwards into happiness research. I was at Harvard Divinity School, taking classes in Christian and Buddhist ethics and studying what causes us to wake up in the morning and find meaning in our lives. Since I was also doing some teaching in several courses in the psychology department, I was approached by an instructor there named Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar. Tal had taught a seminar class in a new branch of science called positive psychology, and he wanted to see if we could take this subject matter to a larger group of students. I’d had no idea there was such a thing as
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was asking at the Divinity School, and validating a lot of what we had been learning in religion. I started studying the Harvard population and found that when people viewed the world through positive lenses and were doing certain positive habits, their success rates were significantly higher and they were much better able to navigate through difficult times than the other Harvard students. We started trying these ideas out in the workplace and found the same observations magnified everywhere in the world. Since then I’ve gone from teaching a few
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MASTER NETWORKER
Shine Your Light Bob and Betty Ann Golden: Life in Technicolor By Dr. Josephine Gross 30
Networking Times
First Encounter
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ob and Betty Ann Golden are one of the happiest couples you will ever meet. If you spend any time in Las Vegas where they live, you actually might run into them. Having been married for forty-three years, the Goldens love to go see shows, attend parties, and meet new friends. On their Facebook profile you can see them surrounded by rock stars, magicians, and other top performers, laughing and having fun as they always find something to celebrate. After parties or any time they’ve had a meaningful encounter, the Goldens like to follow up by sending a card, and this is exactly how they built their thriving network marketing business and ongoing residual income. Could it really be that joyful and simple? The Goldens believe that happiness is a choice, and that wealth and success are 80 percent mindset and 20 percent mechanics. They’ve trained themselves to see everything in a positive light, approaching every relationship from a place of innocence and viewing all challenges as opportunities for growth. Bob and Betty Ann are known for constantly reaching out to see how they can make others’ lives more wonderful. Over the years their loving and authentic communication style has created sustained, organic business growth. In 2009 they earned their company’s Distributor of the Year award, in 2010 they reached the top level of Eagle in their company, and today they serve as master trainers and advisory board members to help their company expand internationally.
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Bob and Betty Ann were first introduced to network marketing in 1978 by their cousin and business partner who had invited them to a presentation at his home. “I immediately liked the fact that success in this type of business was predicated on how well you were able to help others,” says Bob. “The philosophy of paying it forward felt totally different from the dog-eat-dog business mentality I was used to.” Bob and Betty Ann got involved just so they could learn more. Attracted by the company’s educational programs, especially in the area of personal development, they tolerated other aspects of the business they didn’t particularly resonate with, such as having to fill sales quotas to re-qualify for their position each year. “Discovering Napoleon Hill, Og Mandino, Zig Ziglar, and other classics really expanded our thinking,” says Betty Ann, “as did attending the company trainings and hearing all the different motivational speakers.” Bob and Betty Ann did as they were told: they shared the products and opportunity with friends and people they met through their other businesses. “At the time I had a chain of automotive centers in the greater Los Angeles area,” says Bob. “Betty Ann was a stay-at-home mom and later worked as a realtor. We started doing network marketing on the side.” Working the system, Bob and Betty Ann climbed up the ranks in the pay plan until a few years later a number of family issues diverted their attention and their business fizzled out. In October 1995, the Goldens were introduced to their second company, which sold telecommunication services. Because of their first experience and their ongoing commitment to personal development, they reached the top level in this
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MASTER NETWORKER
Success Times Two Sara Whiteford and Mary Barber: By Dr. Josephine Gross
Do What You Love
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ary Barber and Sara Whiteford are identical twins who started building their network marketing business almost four years ago. Based in Marin County, California, they are happily married and count five children between the two of them. In their previous careers, Mary and Sara were food writers and culinary consultants, and today they still own Thymes Two, Inc., a San Francisco-based food consulting and cookbook authoring partnership. North Carolina natives, the twins have been cooking together since they were five years old. Their passion for food led them to Peter Kump’s Culinary School in New York, followed by stints at La Varenne in France and in four-star restaurant kitchens. Authors of eight cookbooks, with over a million books sold, Mary and Sara have been featured on NBC’s Today Show, Live with Regis, San Francisco’s Bay Café, and the Food Network’s Cooking Live Primetime. They also authored numerous articles and recipes for a wide variety of publications, including Bon Appetit, Food and Wine, Fine Cooking, and Health magazines. Yet, it wasn’t all joy and glory being stars in the publishing world. When a friend introduced the twins to a health product and a business model based on leverage, collaboration and paying it forward, the twins jumped in with all four feet. Today they are happy and grateful to be working with their best friends in a positive environment, offering people healthy nutrition and growing a global network marketing organization.
Finding a Better Way One day in August 2009 Mary and Sara’s common friend Lila Steinle came over enthused about a nutrional product and business opportunity. “Lila is a Harvard grad and was captain of the Harvard LaCrosse team when they won the national championship,” says Mary. “She is a total health fanatic and brought us a sample bag of a raw food she had just discovered. She said she wanted Sara and me to be her guinea pigs because she wanted to make sure the product had the same integrity she felt the business model had.” “Coming from a business background, Lila was drawn to the idea of creating passive income,” Sara adds, “and she wanted us to give her the thumbs up on the product. Lila knew we were working on our latest cookbook, called Super Charged Smoothies,
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and how committed to health we were.” The product consisted of a in blend of chia seeds, At luau Hawaii. once considered the miracle food of the Aztecs. Since the twins were already using chia seeds in their diet, they were happy to test Lila’s brand. After one month of consuming the product daily, the twins were noticing undeniable health benefits. “We felt high on life with more energy, increased mental clarity, and better sleep,” says Mary. “I actually had a health issue that was going to require a surgical procedure but resolved itself after adding this new blend of seeds to my diet. All I could think of was, how can I share this food with as many people as possible?” Sold on the product, the twins went to a business presentation by Lila’s upline, Katie Fredricksen. A Stanford grad, Katie was already earning $7,000 a
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MASTER NETWORKER
Focus on Your Dreams Cherian Mathew: The Joy of Accomplishment By Dr. Josephine Gross
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herian Mathew is a network marketing leader who heads a global organization of half a million business partners. He started building his team in Bahrain, then expanded into neighboring Middle Eastern countries, and from there into Africa and India. Cherian was born in a small Indian village to a homemaker mother and a father who worked at a semi-governmental organization. Seeing the sacrifices his parents made to give him and his two brothers the best education possible, Cherian felt compelled to succeed from a young age. He vividly dreamed of being able to help his parents move beyond their limited world into a life full of accomplishments. After eleven years of employment in the corporate world and no way in sight to achieve his goals, Cherian finally discovered network marketing, the vehicle that would allow him to realize his childhood dream—and many other dreams. In the process, he made lifelong friends around the world and created many millionaires, some in countries where this kind of wealth can change an entire family’s destiny forever. 40 40
Networking Networking Times Times
OUR TIMES
Judy O’Higgins, Sedona, Arizona Each day I decide to be happy, just because I’m alive and life is a grand adventure. One exercise that helps me remember this is to make a gratitude list every morning. Being happy actually leads to greater success in our business. When was the last time you wanted to partner with someone who was angry or depressed? Me either! If you want to attract new business, be joyful. We all can have a bad day, but when we step back to see the big picture of our blessings (no boss, no commute, no 9-to-5, no overhead, no inventory, and no limits to what we can earn), how can we not be happy?
Mikaële Holzer, Mill Valley, California Passionate about what I do for a living, I’m incredibly happy to wake up every morning and offer my services and products to the world. The secret to a happy life is making the decision to embody the spirit of happiness in daily life. Once that decision is made, we tend to become magnets for amazing opportunities, experiences, and other happy people. When things get challenging, choose to look at all the gifts in your life, be grateful, and count the blessings that already exist, and you can remain a happy person through it all.
Summer Flaherty, Phoenix, Arizona Network marketing has brought happiness to my life in so many ways. First of all, I get to spend every day hanging out with my eighteenmonth-old baby and working alongside my best friend: my husband, Travis Flaherty. Our business has given us the financial means to spend our summers in the beautiful mountains of Utah and take amazing trips throughout the year with our five children. We have fun together and create lifetime memories. A family that plays (and prays) together, stays together! Happiness is everything in this business. People are attracted to light, love, and happiness; it’s contagious!
Susan and Todd Stuart, Atlanta, Georgia Before we found network marketing, we had a good life. Susan was a partner in a law firm, and Todd was an engineer running his own company. We had two beautiful children and a home that we adored. We were happy. Network marketing taught us that happiness is a journey (not a destination) and that there is always more happiness to create—for yourself and others. We learned that happiness emanates from the inside out and not from a bigger home, a faster car, or a larger bank account. Our network marketing business has given us the means to give back to others, which today has become a key component of our happiness. July/August 2013
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DEPARTMENT SUMMARIES
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LEADOFF The Science of What Goes Right John David Mann The field of positive psychology has produced an avalanche of new research. Exactly what have we learned in the past fifteen years? First, that happiness is available. Our level of happiness (much like our brains and nerve pathways) is far more malleable than we thought. We are not so hardwired—by genetics, upbringing, or past experience—to a fixed range of mood state as science insisted was the case just twenty years ago. What’s more, the factors that can make us significantly and lastingly happier are not the big things we might expect would make the difference, but the little things we so easily overlook. Page 12
OUR TIMES-PART 1 Sarah Fairless Robbins, Comparison is the death of contentment. Focus on your calling and you will experience true happiness and freedom— in business and in life. Dr. Sven Goebel, The path to happiness lies in personal growth. Becoming someone with personal mastery and excellent relationship skills is what drives success. 70
Donna Imson, The Beatitudes describe the heartbroken as blessed. One definition of “blessed” is blissfully happy and content. Talk about raising the happiness bar! Nobuhiro Kaneko, We all have the freedom to choose to do our favorite things, but most people seem too busy doing something they really don’t want to do. Page 18
PROFESSIONALISM Ten MLM Commandments Jean-Philippe Hulin What does it take to create long-term success in network marketing? This article provides a ten-point list of do’s and don’ts, including: Adopt the T.I.E. philosophy: Truth, Ingenuity, Empathy; Don’t feed your ego-meter: the more you say or write I, me and my, the less interesting you are to your prospect; Think big: congratulate everyone sharing any progress, promotion, or anything positive about network marketing in general; Be prepared: you must know without hesitation what to say and what to do in any situation. Let go of any jargon: take an honest look at how you present your opportunity and get rid of every single non-vernacular word.
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LEADERSHIP Don’t Be the Naysayer Curt Wang When it comes to gaining influence, remember the law of reciprocity: the more you support others, the more they will support you. If you want people to adopt your ideas in the future, you need to be collaborative yourself and support their ideas, or at least to show respect and a willingness to listen before weighing in. If you don’t, you may find that your initiatives will increasingly fail to receive full and fair consideration. The key is to learn how to reject or redirect bad ideas in a thoughtful, positive, and more collaborative way. This article offers six tips to avoid being perceived as a naysayer. Page 58
OUR TIMES-PART 2 Sara Marble, To be happy on a daily basis is an amazing recruiting tool. People are drawn to my business because they see me fulfilled in everything I do. Joseph T. Bismark, Once we understand who we really are, and we focus on taking care of the needs of the soul and the body, we will find true happiness. Thomas Tidlund, Being happy does not mean that your life is perfect. It means that you emphatically trust God and believe Networking Times
DEPARTMENT SUMMARIES
He has great plans for your life. Onyx Coale, Happiness is not attached in any way to money, but an abundance of money can add to your happiness, allowing you to express more of your life purpose. Page 64
INTERNET MARKETING Keep It Clean Scott Allen Online reputation management is a growing issue for all kinds of businesses, but network marketing companies and distributors face some unique challenges. A whopping 88 percent of top network marketing companies have negative results on the first page of a Google search for their company. No other business sector comes close to that, even those notorious for customer service issues and billing problems, such as mobile phone, cable TV, and utility companies. It’s not that the negative isn’t there for them—it is; it’s just not showing up on page one of Google. This article offers twelve steps to protect your reputation online. Page 66
COUNTRY OVERVIEW Russia: The Largest Territory in the World Jeremy Cosnefroy Since 2000, the Russian economy has shown consistent growth and set the ground July/August 2013
for a free market economy, facilitating the development and success of direct selling and network marketing. Other driving factors for growth in this business sector are the constantly increasing number of companies that are opening in Russia, the development of the population’s purchasing power, and the relative stability of the Russian currency. According to WFDSA, the direct selling sales volume equals around 4 billion U.S. dollars turned over by 4.5 million salespeople. This article features some other key facts about the Russian market.
Answers to the Word Puzzle
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THE CLOSE
Happiness Is the Key Margie Aliprandi We all want love, connection, expression, growth; we want to matter and make a difference; we want adventure, joy, freedom, and financial abundance. Network marketing puts all of the above within the reach of any aspiring entrepreneur. But our business asks something of us first. Success depends on our willingness to banish disempowering beliefs, step out of our comfort zones, cross new frontiers of interpersonal relationships, intensify our courage, patience, tolerance and perseverance, remain self-motivated, and lift ourselves up by our own bootstraps.
(Over, Down, Direction) 1. MALLEABLE (1 , 2, SE) 2. ACCOUNTABILITY (3, 20, N) 3. SPREADS (5, 7, NE) 4. PERFORM (8, 7, E) 5. CARDIO (1, 8, N) 6. MINDSET (6, 11, SE) 7. DEFAULT (14, 11, S) 8. MAGICIANS (15, 5, S) 9. LIKEMINDED (6, 10, NE) 10. LIFEBOAT (14, 16, W) 11. MOSCOW (8, 17, NE) 12. CULINARY (8, 18, NW) 13. MONEY (4, 15, SE) 14. BLAMING (13, 1, SW) 15. MANTRA (2, 13, E) 16. BLESSED (14, 10, W) 17. COMPARISON (4, 11, E) 18. BE-DO-HAVE (2, 8, N) 19. AUTHENTIC (9, 2, SW) 20. PERFUME (15, 19, NW)
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