My MLM Story.

Jen

The network marketing business was first introduced to me by my mother, who has always been my inspiration for creative financial thinking. She was introduced to network marketing by chance through an online investment group. When she first came to me with it, I was not inventive enough to respond with anything other than the typical narrow minded responses that most family members will give you. “Oh not another million dollar idea that will probably lead no where,” or “What new crazy fad are you on about now, Mom”? Despite my inner doubt, I eventually concluded that she was after all, my mother and I would be a total idiot of a daughter if I did not support her in her endeavors. So I allowed her to drag me along to one of those company overviews that most top of the food chain uplines host. This was all to “support” her, I called it. This led me on an entirely different path than expected. I came home feeling completely empowered and changed. Now, I’m not a sales person, oddly enough. And that was the first thing that threw me off about this whole “marketing” idea. But, I liked the product so much and was inspired so much by our upline’s presentation and leadership that I knew I wanted to be involved heavily in my mother’s new frontier.So I began my quest to salvation and financial freedom. I mean, this was simple, according to my upline, so I don’t see why it wouldn’t be for me.

Turns out not so simple.

They told me I should approach my friends and family first. I created this huge list of people I planned to solicit. Well, the first problem with this for me is that I care too much about the opinions of other people. So, naturally, when I tried this method, I was timid and nervous about what they thought. And that came right through in my pitch. “Well, like I got this product and uh, I don’t know it seems like a really good idea to make money”. Yeah that went over great. My confidence was just beaming from within. Or not. I suddenly felt bad for my poor Mom who had to pitch to me for the first time.

The thing is I think marketing to your family and friends can work out just fine. That is, IF you have the personality for it. Well…I don’t. I care too much about what the people I care about think. My mother, on the other hand, does not worry about what people think as much as I do and does have that “personality”, and that is why I strongly suggest reading her posts.

About now was the time I thought I should market to my cold market, just like my upline told me. I mean what other option do I have now that I’ve already spent the past three months hitting up every person I knew?

So out into the wilderness I went from every professional and business person I could muster up. “Check out my juice!” I gave out bottle after bottle after bottle. And everyone was like, “Oh this is pretty sweet and my leg feels better…but 40 bucks!?!?” Then of course it was time for me to swoop in with my “business opportunity” speech, since they already believed in the product, but just figured out it was kind of expensive. “Yeah….blah, blah, 3×3x3×3x3×3 = ???, blah, blah….”. Then I would hear something along the lines of “Let me think about it,” which, of course, meant they weren’t going to ever “think about it” again. I found this out by calling them up afterwards to see how their “thinking” was coming along.

Now the problem with this is most people are not entrepreneurs. It takes either a certain type of person to think like we do or a person open enough to learn the way we think. I’m sure if you look around in your life today you will see there are tons of businesses. But I’m fairly certain that if you take a second look you would realize there are one hundred times as many employees. I’m also certain I could go to every single person I had pitched my product to and try to explain to them the advantages of being your own boss. However, out of 100 people, only a small percentage of them would bite on my ideas – a very small percentage. And, out of those 5 (on a good day), the chances of one of them wanting my vehicle of making their own money is even slimmer. So now I have not only given away a financial education to 100 people, most of whom have no interest what I am talking about, but I have also spent over 100 hours of my time for practically nothing.

1 person who gets

3 people who get

3 people who get

3 people = 27 people

Now if all 27 people get

3 people who get

3 people

I would have 243 people on my team.

Most people give up now. But I’m stubborn and probably a little insane. At this point I would even venture to say spiteful, because I’ll be damned if some juice is going to get the best of me. Around now was the time I needed to do some deep inner searching for answers. But while that was going on my mother came to me with a better idea and started implementing ideas from our direct upline. His inspiring leadership led me to a new way of thinking. What if I could pick out the 5 people out of that 100 that already were business minded, and show them my business model? What if I could even make them come to me before I went to them? And so was the start of our online marketing campaign.

-Jen