Is Network Marketing Worth It?
Almost everyone says “No.”
Almost everyone who says “Yes” flakes out.
Almost everyone who joins you ends up quitting.
Almost every company goes out of business.
Almost everyone lies.
Doesn’t sound like a fun and profitable enterprise.
For most, it is not.
So how is it that for some it is?
Are there clues? Are there any secrets? - Yes.
Take it from me if you will. There are precious few Network Marketers who have been succeeding in this profession for as long as I have. I know a few. I revere them. 45 years tends to weed out the weak and reveal some truths.
And I can answer the question, “Is it worth it?”, profoundly, at least for me: “Yes!”
And yet I have failed far more times and far more dramatically and epically than I have ever succeeded.
We tend not to learn much from the euphoria of success. But if we bounce back and are paying attention, we can have breakthrough after breakthrough from our failures.
We might consider our Network Marketing god to be…
Whenever Antaeus touched the Earth (his mother), his strength was renewed, so that even if thrown to the ground, he was invincible. Heracles, in combat with him, discovered the source of his strength and, lifting him up from Earth, crushed him to death.
Success being our Kryptonite and failure being the way to our endurance.
But I digress.
Is network marketing worth it if you get your products for free earning $100-$200 a month? Perhaps. But one can earn that income by doing a million little things without asking your friends to buy your product.
Is it worth it, if you earn $2,000 a month? Perhaps if you find it easier and more fun asking hundreds of your friends to “Just take a look” at your product, enrolling dozens and dozens of them, inspiring some of them to build with you, coaching them, consoling them, training them, and replacing most of them as they quit than say sitting in your car 4–6 hour a day and following your Uber app to the Promised Land.
One thing I have learned in 45 years is that I am often asking the wrong questions or defining a concept incorrectly…like income.
Almost everyone thinks and speaks about Network Marketing income as just income, $500 here, $2,000 there — or even a lot more. What I have learned is income rarely motivates people to do the work and lots of income actually attracts the wrong crowd.
I had an epiphany, a paradigm shift, 43 years ago that gave me a distinct advantage in motivating myself and others. Income or asset income?
What was it about my network marketing opportunity that fueled me with inspiration, motivation, and perseverance, and even had me develop more inner strength and wisdom every time I failed?
Was it income? No. I could earn an income doing a million easier things than network marketing. It was simply Asset Income, Residual Income, and Legacy Income. It was the idea that I could build something once regardless of how long it took me — 4 years or 14 years — and then get paid on my “equity” for decades…actually forever.
I wanted freedom. I wanted independence. I wanted what some people call, FU money. If I wanted to work, I would work. If I wanted to play, I would play. If I wanted to hide, I could hide. And I was inspired to build something that I could give to my “heirs” if I so chose.
I found that when I talked to people about income, I got apathy or greed. When I cast a vision using the math of MLM, exponential growth, the rules that define the network marketing model, the fundamentals of how sales volume is created, and how that turns into equity or an asset, people leaned in.
It is the difference between asking someone if they want to earn an extra $1000 a month or “How would you feel…in your body, in your heart, in your mind if you received a certified letter announcing that you inherited an annuity of $1,000 a month in perpetuity, forever. What would you think about it? How would you imagine spending or investing it? What kind of peace and creativity would it bring to your soul? On a scale of 1-10, how THRILLED would you be?
“I can show you how to do exactly that, even more”.
Leaning in turned into falling in love. And when I showed them the work, many of them felt and continued to feel throughout the journey that, “The Work Was Worth It”.
Which as you might have guessed is one of the “secrets”.
I cast the vision into a Yellow Pad Plan I called The Four Year Career. I used it on a yellow pad, chalkboard, and whiteboard for 25 years. Then I made a movie out of it. Then I wrote the book.
The Four Year Career is responsible for a lot of Network Marketing epiphanies and untold wealth. Click here to learn more.
If you buy into these ideas, then you must also buy into a set of other Clues and Secrets, that 99.99 percent of networkers miss.
- You cannot earn forever income from a company that goes out of business.
- 99.99 percent of network marketing companies ever launched are out of business. That’s right, long-term success is about 1 in 10,000. There have been about 700,000 companies that have launched in the last 80 years. There are only 3,000 in business today. Most of them will go out of business. There are only 50 that have survived past the 20-year mark. Many, many of them are still destined to go out of business.
- And yet most people joining a company are attracted primarily to something new, something promised versus something proven. The “ground floor” has some kind of “Rich” meme ingrained in our brains. Fools gold.
- Ground floor companies, companies with more promises than proof are stupid moves made by ignorant, hopeful people led by sponsors just as hopeful and ignorant.
Sure, every giant was once the ground floor, and without courageous pioneers, there would be no giants. But the process of winning is akin to storming the beaches of Normandy. The slaughter to gain an inch is horrifying. #Respect
In network marketing, we only get paid on product sales, never on recruiting. We only get paid Asset Income, Residual or Legacy Income on REPEAT forever product sales. The only companies that have proven their products will be in demand decade after decade in spite of competition, the economy, technology quantum leaps and seismic shifts in the culture are companies that have proven it. Promises are nothing but marketing bullshit. Hopeful and well intended but…bullshit.
If a product line does not have DOUBLE DIGIT decade after decade repeat customer retention the network marketing company will go out of business.
Do you know what your product retention rate is? Most companies do not even know what their retention rate is. I know. As a strategist, I ask them.
Will your product be in demand 5 years from now? Ten? 50?
Is your company trying to cheat death with a compensation plan, product claims, and income claims that are actually illegal?
Are you in one of those “Dubai” based crypto, “education”, 4% a week Ponzi schemes run by repeat charlatans?
Here is your cheat sheet for Legacy Income in network marketing:
- Fall in love authentically with a product offered by a legacy company that has proven, long-term business acumen and product retention. Proven it. For decades.
- Learn to tell your compelling story compliantly. It is not hard. Making illegal claims is lazy and foolish.
- Ask people you know to “just take a look” every day. Don’t sell. Don’t tell people what they should do. Don’t exaggerate.
- People you don’t know well enough to ask yet, get to know them by being curious, genuinely curious about who they are and what is important to them.
- Be consistent by doing The Work every day regardless of people’s response. Almost everyone is going to say “No.” Learn to be inspired by it, curious as to how they see their truth, knowing that there are always 4 Aces in every deck, and the more people you ask the sooner you flip an Ace. Every successful Network Marketer knows this law in their bones.
- Play the looooong game. Be patient, yet focused. Make your pace be how consistent you are, not how many people you try to recruit or sell. Those who ask one a day out–succeed those who try to enroll 30 a month by a factor of 100 to 1.
- Work on you. Your self-esteem. Your confidence. Your competency. Your conviction. Asset Income in network marketing is worth millions. Are you? You cannot expect to earn millions in equity with an hourly mentality.
What did you learn from this article? Who will you share it with? What changes will you make?
Ready to make your Four Year Career? click here.
