Have you ever wondered whether the average person can really make it big in network marketing?
If you plan on building a large successful network, read: BEACH MONEY.
The excerpt below is from a book called, "The Numbers Don't Lie" by Jordan Adler After ten years and eleven companies, I had nothing to show for my time, energy, and money, but boxes of training manuals and some old, stale, expired nutritional products. I had given up on the network marketing industry forever.
And then I met Russ. Russ was a young multi-millionaire in the network marketing industry...he had made megabucks in the industry at a young age. We never went into business together, but I was intrigued by his massive success. We met through a mutual friend at a cafe, and he invited me to his home and learn some of his secrets. I was told to look for a giant fountain framed by tall palm trees. I pulled into his circle drive. I had never been inside a home like this one.
The oversize entryway was framed by four large white pillars. I was with my friend Dale. We rang the doorbell. The door was big and it appeared heavy. It opened slowly. Russ was dressed in Bermuda shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. His home must have been 10,000 square feet. The next 30 minutes changed my life forever.
He brought us to his home office, which was lined with many framed photos of his family including his wife and kids standing on beaches in many parts of the world. There were tall bookshelves filled with hundreds of personal development books.
The conversation soon turned to business. I told Russ my story. I needed to know how Russ did in five years what most others failed to accomplish in an entire lifetime. He said, "In the business of recruiting, you'll need to be prepared to recruit 20 to 30 people. It doesn't matter if you are in real estate, financial planning, insurance, or network marketing. You must recruit 20 to 30 people to start with. One third of your recruits will do absolutely nothing. One third will do a little. And one third will make a good income. Usually, one of them will build a group of thousands."
He told me that he had seen many people unsuccessfully try and change these numbers. He watched as many newcomers tried to motivate their slower-moving distributors by holding workshops and trainings. He said, In the end, some will do it and some won't. All the energy and time you put into trying to get your weaker team members to grow is time wasted. You are better off using that time to help your motivated distributors and to recruit a few new people to get started in the business. To prove his point, he challenged me to find a successful real estate broker and ask him or her how many recruits it takes to find one big hitter. In almost all cases, he said, the answer will be 20 to 30.
He then challenged me to join a good company and go out and recruit 20 to 30 people. He said that I would never have to work again! This was a little tough to believe, but I trusted him and was definitely willing to give it a try. I don't know if what he said was actually true, but I do know that I believed him at the time, because he possessed the lifestyle that I wanted.
I had never in my life recruited anyone for anything. But I knew that if I would consistently meet with three or four people per week, I could certainly sponsor one per month. A two year plan sponsoring one person per month would give me somewhere between the necessary 20 to 30 people.
So I joined my 12th network marketing company. I was still working a job in management at the airline and had a staff of six trainers working for me. I had very little time to build a side business, except for my lunchtime.
I formulated my plan. I would use three lunches per week to show my business plan to potential recruits and customers. I would learn a very simple, 20 minute, one page opportunity presentation, and I would schedule three appointments per week. My goal was to show my business to three people per week (12 per month) and recruit about one person per month for 24 months. This would put me in the range of 20 to 30 recruits and I would never have to work again, according to Russ!
About the time I met Russ, I was living in a 1950's block construction three bedroom rental home with two roommates and a dog. My portion of the rent was $200 per month. I was driving a 1987 Jeep Wrangler with a smashed front end. My possessions consisted of only a small professional wardrobe, the jeep, a $700 hang glider, a bed, and an end table made of two cinder blocks and a piece of plywood. My annual income at the time was under $20,000. Each month was a struggle to pay my bills. During this time, I had never used a computer or owned a cell phone.
Month after month I would do a balancing act to avoid having overdraft charges at the bank for bounced checks. I had a philosophy: My goal was to make sure that the amount of the checks I had written never exceeded the amount that was in my account at that time. This was a really good theory.
If I could figure out a way to earn more than I spent, I would be in good shape. To this day, I have never balanced a checkbook. So month after month, I would have multiple overdrafts due to my rough miscalculations. In fact, there were many months when I received three to twelve overdrafts on checks that had bounced. One time I went to the bank and the teller took my bank card and wouldn't return it.
I needed a way to track my progress. I drew a three foot wide by four foot high grid on my bedroom wall and subdivided it into 100 squares. The top promotion position in my company was Executive Director (ED) and I needed to sign up 20 customers to qualify for all the income. I also read that if I could complete 100 opportunity presentations, I would be on my way to financial freedom. So I wrote ED at the bottom of the grid as my goal. At the top of the grid I wrote, Find 20 to signify acquiring my 20 customers. With my current situation, I was pretty stressed out, so I wrote "Have Fun" at the top of the grid as a reminder not to take things too seriously.
I held my lunchtime business meetings on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. After each lunch, I would write the date in one of the squares on the grid. My plan was to fill the grid and become an executive before the grid was full. Each week I could see at a glance if I had done my three presentations. If I missed a few I held myself accountable to make them up the next week.
As I filled the grid, my business started to grow. I would average about one new recruit per month. Some months I would recruit one, some months two and some months none, but I focused on sponsoring one new distributor per month. I also looked for opportunities to have meetings for others on my team. In the beginning, I was often the only one willing to do any work, so it was usually just me.
I would set up appointments with people I knew. I would show them my business plan to see if they were interested at all. About one in eleven would want to sign up with me, usually a few weeks after our initial appointment. It took a lot of patience, because there was very little money to be made in the early stages of my business growth. At the end of each appointment, I would give the person some literature to read, and I would follow up a few days later. I learned to have faith that everything would work out just the way it was supposed to.
I wasn't working lots of hours at my business, but giving up my lunches for two years with no guarantees was a test of my belief in myself and my opportunity. After 24 months, I fell just short of my goal to personally sponsor and train 20 to 30 new distributors - I had 19. But something great began to happen. Jackie, my 16th recruit, discussed our opportunity with her friend Judy. Judy was a mother, a student, and a secretary. She told me that she would never speak in front of a group but she was really excited about our program. She began to build a team from the living room of her home in Albuquerque, and in a matter of a few months she had about 15 personal recruits. Her team began to grow. And it grew. And grew. And my checks grew. And grew! Within two years she had over 12,000 people on her team and my income skyrocketed!
I had never experienced anything like this. The money came in whether I worked or not. But my checks were small and never exceeded $200 in a month for my first eight months. During my first two years, my income was a healthy part-time income. In my 24th month in the business, my income was about $2,800. I then experienced something that I had heard about and read about called momentum. My checks rapidly began to grow. By the end of my 33rd month, I was making over $34,000 per month! I was making twice as much money per month as I used to make per year at my job!
As my income grew, I began to pay off my $36,000 in credit card debt. I got caught up on all my bills; I bought a home in the pine forest of Arizona, purchased my first luxury convertible automobile, and bought a cell phone!
My dreams were coming true. I was being asked to speak at conventions. People wanted my autograph at events. This was really hard to understand. Just a few months earlier, I was buying macaroni and cheese to keep my food expenses down!
In my 15th month in the business, I realized that I was going to make a career of it, so I resigned from my airline job. I was a middle management trainer with a small staff. When I told my boss my plans, he seriously questioned my sanity and tried to convince me that I was making a bad decision, but I reassured him I was making the right choice. In fact, when my income hit $20,000 per month, he decided to join me and became a full-time network marketer with us! I built this business in the old days before the advent of the Internet. I did not even own a computer at the time. Today we have tools and technology that can accelerate the growth of any business, but the fundamentals of business building have not changed.
I speak from experience. It would be easy for young, high-tech entrepreneurs to say that the old-school fundamentals used to work, but that today a higher-tech model is needed for fast growth and retention. Don't get me wrong, technology is important and can streamline the process of growing and managing an organization. But the fundamentals of building relationships do not change.
In the past three years, I have broken records in my network marketing company using the fundamental principles of business development.
With over 2,000 active distributors, I became the number one money earner without using any Internet strategies. I built my business from scratch, one person at a time. I have personally sponsored 122 people in 145 weeks and built a team of 20,000 distributors in less than three years. My income has grown from a few hundred dollars per month to over $100,000 per month with a consistent residual check that exceeds $50,000 per month.
I did no advertising or purchasing of leads. I did no e-mail auto-responders or mass marketing. I was not given a downline or paid to come over to my new company. I am proud that I started the same way as any other new distributor.
I cannot take full credit for this growth. I have attracted many great leaders into my organization. Most of them had little or no network marketing background. I can say that they all have a strong entrepreneurial drive. I see many young entrepreneurs struggle with the fundamentals of growth in a network marketing company. Their biggest problem is leaning too heavily on the Internet and technology to build the business. Many will completely abandon the basic principles for growth and trade them in for automatic systems designed to scoop people up in mass quantities. They expect the technology to do the work for them. Inevitably they are baffled by how to attract a group of loyal entrepreneurs and keep them for the long haul.
Here are some points to consider:
- You must have a plan and stick to it for 18 to 24 months.
- You can build serious income on a lunchtime schedule.
- Usually your big income growth will be tied to the work of one or two people.
- To find the one or two, you must sponsor and train at least 20 to 30 people.
- Sixty to 90 percent of the people you show your opportunity to will probably be uninterested.
- Technology will not replace the fundamentals of building a successful business.
- Regardless of how financially tough your situation is, you can turn it around in 18 to 24 months with a consistent plan.
