A couple of weeks ago, I got a little ahead of myself. In it, I reviewed the products & system created by Mike Dillard of Magnetic Sponsoring. Maybe I should have given a “what led me to that discovery” post first.
It’s been since October of 2005 that I got started my current Network Marketing (NWM) business. And for the longest it was a struggle to be successful with it.
Now, don’t get me wrong. The company I’m with is fantastic. It’s a Five Pillar Company! (Contact me if you want to know what that means – no strings attached.) It’s so simple and such a “no-brainer” that others who’ve struggled in NWM have finally found the success they were only able to dream about before.
So why was it such a struggle for me to find that same success?
Relatively speaking, my entire experience with this company has been successful. After YEARS of absolute failure in other home businesses, I was finally, actually, making money! But still not enough to start addressing the debt we’d built up just paying the living expenses over prior hard economic times. And every time something unexpected happened (and it will – that’s life), it made that debt grow. Bit by bit.
I knew there had to be a better way!
If you’re in NWM now, or ever have been, then you know the drill. Make a list, bug the devil out of every one you know, buy leads (of questionable value), and tear up the phone lines! (Check here for why you don’t want to waste your money on leads.)
Now, I’m not shy, and am definitely not afraid of the phone or whoever is on the other end of the line. So, I’m good at dialing leads, setting appointments, doing presentations, all that stuff. But my results still weren’t what they should have been.
So I started wondering… I KNOW this works, and I see it work VERY well for others. Why not for me?
My support team could only help me with what they knew. Although the “old school” methods (warm market lists & leads) that they taught actually do work in my business, they weren’t working for me. As a matter of fact, those who were able to reach the bigger incomes faster, did so by working with their warm market – even if they’d never, ever been in a NWM business before!
I’d been utilizing training available from independent sources for a year already, and I knew all about posture and personal growth. I knew that if my prospects became my customers and/or business partners, they did so because of their belief in me and my ability to help them succeed, too. So I knew the thing I was marketing wasn’t so much my company or my products as it was Me, Myself & I. I like to think I was good at that, but looking back now, I know I wasn’t.
So…
Why wasn’t it working for me?
Thing is, I’d also had a short gig as a web designer and website promoter in the past. That experience taught me some skills that got results. I needed those kinds of results in my new business. So I had an idea that there had to be a better way: a “marriage” of those marketing methods and NWM.
So I’d had this concept dancing around in my head for a LONG time that there had to be a better way for people like me. There had to be a way to “marry” the strategies that I’d long ago learned and implemented for designing and promoting websites, with Network Marketing. It required a better system than was being provided by my support team. AND it required online marketing skills that were most likely more modern and advanced than I had learned back then. That meant learning those new skills, AND training others on my team to utilize them, too. I may have had the smarts to figure it all out and create it, but I certainly didn’t have the time. I was working so hard at building my business that I didn’t dare risk my slowly building pay check to take time off to figure that out.
Besides, I couldn’t possibly be the only one who was thinking the same thing! Surely someone was working on such a system, if not implementing it already. So I started searching, and ended up stumbling on 3 very good systems at the same time. If these don’t sound familiar to you already, you’re going to start seeing them all over the place from now on:
- Mentoring For Free
- Magnetic Sponsoring
- Renegade Networker (and Renegade University)
As I suspected, the Internet had changed over the past 10 years and the skills I had were almost obsolete. I had a lot of learning to do as far as online marketing went. I learned. I implemented.
I am successful. Finally!
Here’s an analogy for you – my husband gets credit for giving it to me. I use to drive a 1989 Chevette that I’d paid $1600 cash for back in … never mind, I can’t remember and you don’t need to know. I drove that thing until it was on its last days. Then in 1997, I bought a 1994 Ford Ranger – you know… those cute little green trucks with the bed liner, chrome wheels, and sliding rear window that you saw all over the place? I HATED having to take on a car payment, but I just couldn’t depend on the “Vette” any more. And I LOVED my truck! That was an investment that needed to be made, and I never looked back.
Well, as much as I hated investing yet more money into my business, that was an investment that needed to be made and I’ll never look back.
So, if you’re like me and you’re just is not gonna make it using the old school NWM methods, I know how you feel. If you’ve got a failure is not an option attitude, you MUST invest in yourself and your business. Learn these new strategies. In all these systems you’ll learn that the reason you’re struggling isn’t your fault. It’s the methods that you’re using.
I’ll be discussing each of the above systems in upcoming posts.
