According to the American Heritage Dictionary, focus means “to direct toward a particular point or purpose.”

Now, in order to direct something, in this case, your network marketing business, toward a particular point or purpose, do you think it might be a good idea to know what that point or purpose is?

I thought you might. . . . → Read More: Focus On This]]>

What Is Focus?

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, focus means “to direct toward a particular point or purpose.”

Now, in order to direct something, in this case, your network marketing business, toward a particular point or purpose, do you think it might be a good idea to know what that point or purpose is?

I thought you might. So, what is the point or purpose you’re shooting for?

What’s The Point?

The point, or purpose, in the beginning is to achieve some initial success, if you don’t have that, you probably won’t stick around long enough for anything else to matter.

After that, your purpose becomes learning the business of network marketing so that you can build towards your goals and help others build towards their goals.

In their book, Your First Year In Network Marketing, Mark Yarnell & Rene Reid Yarnell say “The key to building a successful business is to stick with one system long enough to allow it to work.”

So Why Is Focus So Important?

Without focus, anything can knock you off the path. Another company, another recruiting system, another leader that you think has a better idea, or even the latest email you got saying that with the XYZ method, John Q. Public made $42,000 in the last 15 minutes. The possibilities are so huge in network marketing you might be tempted to swallow this and go off on a tangent only to discover a month later that you’ve wasted the last month.

You want to stay on a consistent path, otherwise those people you sponsor to work with you get confused and lose their focus (why, because you’re their leader and you lost your focus). Stick with one plan, follow it religiously and others will follow it too.

Put Your Blinders On

Mark & Rene call all the possible distractions and divergences that you might possibly encounter in your first year “the scatter bomb.” They warn you to put your blinders on so that you can stay focused and not get distracted. When you’re working in a traditional business, your boss ensures that you don’t get distracted or he fires you.

In a network marketing business, you are your own boss, so learn a system, put your blinders on and do that system consistently.

Otherwise, you’re going to get distracted, lose your focus and give up on your dreams; and I want you to have your dreams come true.

Consistency

Once you’ve got a system that is working for you, you have to follow that system. Whether you have 3 hours per week to devote to your new business, or 30 hours per week, when that time slot that you’ve allotted for working your business arrives, you had better be out there doing whatever your system requires.

Busy-work

Network marketing requires a flow of people to talk to or promote to in order to find people who want your product or your business opportunity. That means that when your “business” time arrives, you should be doing what you do that gets you that flow of people.

Reorganizing your email address book doesn’t do that. Reading a book on leadership skills doesn’t do that. Putting together and printing a full color one page flyer to hand out doesn’t do that. (Handing that flyer out to 40 or 50 or 100 people does.)

In other words, whatever time you have allotted for your business, make sure to keep the main thing the main thing, whatever you’re doing to attract people to your business or your product; that’s what you should be doing. Whether it’s handing out flyers, or handing out business cards, talking to people one on one, blogging, doing surveys, whatever you do to approach people, make sure you actually do that and not the easier to confront things that don’t put you in front of people.

Fit the other things in wherever you can.

The Slight Edge

I would be remiss not to mention at this point one of the key success strategies. Jeff Olson devoted a whole book to this called “The Slight Edge – Secret to a Successful Life.”

In his book, he outlines his philosophy as the difference between simple disciplines done every day vs. simple errors in judgment. The simple disciplines are easy to do and easy not to do. But done consistently over time, the simple disciplines add up exponentially just like compound interest.

A couple of examples, let’s say you decide to go on a diet, you’re going to cut out snacks and junk food and eat only three nutritious meals per day.  Are you going to notice any difference the first week? Not likely, but I promise you if you do that every day for a year you will notice a difference. If you get inconsistent on doing this, will you notice that you’re getting worse right away? No, but keep it up for a year and see where you’re at.

Let’s say you decide to talk to one person every day about your business. Are you going to sponsor anyone the first week? Probably not. But I guarantee you if you keep doing that every day without fail, you will start succeeding. What’s going to happen if you skip a few days or a week, are you going to notice any huge change in your sponsoring? No, but over time are you going to have less happening in your group? Absolutely.

I encourage you to read this book to understand the importance of simple disciplines done consistently.

How Do I Find A Company To Work With?

One of my purposes in starting this blog was to give my readers information on what to look for and why.

For more information, go to www.AlansMLMTips.com and sign up for the “7 Days, 7 Insider Secrets” email newsletter. It’s a free newsletter that will give you more ideas on what to look for in a network marketing company.

Quote

Every day do something that will inch you closer to a better tomorrow.  – Doug Firebaugh

It seems like every book I’ve read says you should begin your network marketing career in this fashion:

1)    Find a great company with a wonderful product

2)    Find an awesome sponsor within that company who can mentor you to success

3)    Go to work with your sponsor

4)    Learn the ropes

5)    Make money while you . . . → Read More: Network Marketing – The Chicken or the Egg?]]>

The Books Say The Egg

It seems like every book I’ve read says you should begin your network marketing career in this fashion:

1)    Find a great company with a wonderful product

2)    Find an awesome sponsor within that company who can mentor you to success

3)    Go to work with your sponsor

4)    Learn the ropes

5)    Make money while you learn

6)    Find others to duplicate these steps

That would be the egg.

But The Chicken

Might look like this:

1)    A friend or relative tells you about the company he’s working with

2)    You sign up because you like the product or the company or your friend

3)    You don’t know what to do and neither does the person who signed you up

4)    You tell a few people about it and nobody else is interested

5)    You quit

Or maybe like this, which it did for me:

1)    My brother tells me about the company he’s working with

2)    I sign up

3)    With the help of my brother’s sponsor, I sign up someone

4)    That person makes several sales

5)    I get excited and try to repeat steps 3 & 4

6)    Number 3 runs out of warm market to talk to and loses interest

7)    I move on to another job and while not losing interest, don’t network market for several years

8)    I read books, I start and run my own traditional business

9)    I sign up for another network marketing company and fail

10)     I keep running my business

11)     I read more books

12)     Etc.

The Reality

I’m guessing that most people reading blogs about network marketing or home businesses or work from home jobs have experienced some version of the chicken scenario; jumping in and trying to figure it out.

The ones who persist through the failures and keep learning eventually discover that there is a reason most books give you the first version, i.e. the egg: you increase your chances of success by doing things in that sequence.

It doesn’t mean the chicken is wrong, or the pig or the cow or the bull moose; if you keep your eye on the goal, you’re going to get there. (For more on the goal, see my earlier post “Why, Oh Why.”)

I want to help you speed up the process.

What Do I Do If I’m already A Chicken?

Keep going! The only thing that can stop you is if you quit. If you know where you want to go, you can get there. As Jim Rohn once said, “working hard on your job makes you a living, working hard on yourself makes you a fortune.”

The difference between the first chicken who gave up and the second chicken (me) is that I didn’t give up. I kept working on myself, reading books, finding mentors, etc.

If you’re already in a company and you’re happy with the products but not so much with your sponsor, find a mentor, read a book, learn how to talk to people. Develop the skills and attitudes you need to attract people into your life, whether mentors, teachers, or business partners.

What If My Company or Product Isn’t So Great?

Hey, it happens. The initial hype can generate enthusiasm for a company or a product that isn’t that good. Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water! Find a better company/product and go to work.

Not only will your attitude be better, your honesty with yourself and your prospects will improve and so will your results.

For more info on how to pick a company or a product, see my post called Five Things To Evaluate, or go to www.AlansMLMTips.com for free emails on how to pick them like a pro.

Another Quote

“Would you like me to give you a formula for… success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You’re thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all… you can be discouraged by failure / or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because, remember that’s where you’ll find success. On the far side.” – Thomas J. Watson, founder of IBM

You may wonder what a corny line from an old cops and robbers show is doing in a blog about network marketing. (If you’re younger than 40, you may wonder what a cops and robbers show is.)

Network marketing, contrary to popular belief, does not have to be a . . . → Read More: Be Simple – Be Yourself – Pass It On]]>

Do What I Say and No One Gets Hurt

You may wonder what a corny line from an old cops and robbers show is doing in a blog about network marketing. (If you’re younger than 40, you may wonder what a cops and robbers show is.)

Network marketing, contrary to popular belief, does not have to be a sequence of bad experiences, broken promises, over-hyped products and dreams that you’ve given up on. While that may have been your results, it doesn’t have to be that way.

Know before you go, do your due diligence and learn what you’re getting into. To know what to look for, go to www.AlansMLMTips.com and sign up for the free newsletter. In other words, do what I say and no one gets hurt.

Responsibility

John M. Fogg, author of The Greatest Networker in the World, says that there is a front and a back to everything. In network marketing, this means that along with the front side of the freedom offered, comes the back side of responsibility.

If you want to have time and money freedom, you have to be responsible for your time and money, for those around you, your company, your sponsor, the business partners you recruit to work with you, how you present your business, product or service, and how your business partners present your business and product/service.

Through duplication and leverage, the responsibility that you take for those around you turns into freedom. Freedom of who to work with, freedom of when to work, freedom of not having a boss to dictate your schedule, freedom of being in charge of your income, the freedom to fit your business into your life instead of fitting your life into your work or business.

Growth

You would be hard pressed to pick up any book on network marketing by any author and not find some mention of personal growth or personal development.

We all come to the start of our career in network marketing with certain skills already learned and others that we haven’t learned. In order to grow our business, we have to grow our skills and our attitude. This was as true in my brick and mortar business as it is in my network marketing business.

Part of responsibility and part of duplication and leverage is helping our business partners grow into what they want to become in this business. To help them grow, we have to keep growing ourselves so that we become the leader that can help them become who they need to become.

”You can have everything in life that you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.”  – Zig Ziglar

Be Simple

If you’re just getting started in network marketing, you probably think I’m off my rocker. BE SIMPLE, what the hell’s he talking about? I have to learn all about the products we sell, I have to learn the do’s and don’ts of this company and this industry, I have to be familiar with what I can and can’t say, I have to know all 42 objection handlings (42 is a made-up number, your company may have more or less), I have to know when to close the deal, there’s 40 gajillion things I have to know to do this business, how can you say “be simple.”

You’ve probably heard the old saying, KISS – keep it simple, stupid. It’s an old saying because it’s got some truth to it. There really is power in simplicity.

In order to utilize leverage, you have to have duplication – duplication of the successful factors of a business – promote, get others to promote; sell, get others to sell; recruit, get others to recruit; lead, get others to lead. What’s the best way to get others to duplicate the success factors? Keep it simple.

Be Yourself

If you have an awesome sponsor, you’re going to be sorely tempted to imitate him or her and do exactly what they’re doing. There’s nothing wrong with that when you’re getting started, you have to start somewhere, and you will learn a ton from them. But don’t become them, you are not that awesome sponsor; you are yourself, a unique and amazing individual.

In this business, we have the freedom to develop and discover who we are and how to present our product, service or opportunity in the way that feels right and true to our own selves. Be true to yourself and people will listen to you.

Pass It On

Just to hit on the last part of my title. To succeed in network marketing, you have to pass it on. If you’re being yourself, and keeping it simple, when you pass it along, people will listen and some will act – those are the ones you’re looking for.

Not everyone is going to “get it,” not everyone’s going to act, but the more you pass it on, the more will say yes and the more your business will grow.

Set A Good Example

Follow like you’d like to be followed.

Lead like you’d want to be led.

Talk to others the way you’d want to be talked to.

Do unto others the way you would want others to do unto you.

Help others find their path to success.

Never give up on anyone unless they tell you to.

Where Does The Simplicity Start?

Good question, some people would say it starts with being a great recruiter or an amazing salesperson or having a great story. I think it starts before you sign the agreement with the company you’re going to work with.

Do you think people would be more likely to sign up for a business or a product if you’re uncertain about your facts and where the company’s been or where it’s going? Or if you had certainty that your company is awesome and the product is a proven winner? Obviously, if you had that certainty, people would be more likely to trust you and want to do business with you.

How do you get that certainty? Know your company, know your product, know what to look for.

The best way I’ve found to know what to look for is the email series called “7 Days, 7 Insider Secrets” email newsletter. Go to www.AlansMLMTips.com and sign up for this free email series.

HUMOR

Great Truths That Little Children Have Learned:

1) No matter how hard you try, you can’t baptize cats.
2) When your Mom is mad at your Dad, don’t let her brush your hair.
3) If your sister hits you, don’t hit her back. They always catch the second person.
4) Never ask your 3-year old brother to hold a tomato.
5) You can’t trust dogs to watch your food.
6) Don’t sneeze when someone is cutting your hair.
7) Never hold a Dust-Buster and a cat at the same time.
8 ) You can’t hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk.
9) Don’t wear polka-dot underwear under white shorts.
10) The best place to be when you’re sad is Grandma’s lap.