The advent of the internet has brought to the marketplace an entirely new breed of entrepreneurs… and with the new breed, while we are certainly still in the infancy of a new dawn of economics, has brought with it it’s own unique set of problems, as well as a whole new range of opportunity for the savvy business builder. However, I would like to address a SPECIFIC debate within the realm of the aspiring Network Marketer, and it’s that of the question:
Is it even POSSIBLE to create an ACTUAL seven figure residual income entirely online in the MLM industry?
I might surprise a bunch of you who are regular readers of my blog… but here goes:
The answer is… NO. It’s not.
“What???” Now before you high-tail it out of here, or contact the FTC and file a complaint that I’m telling you to go build a business by attacking your broke friends and warm market with the prospecting spear head, hear me out.
It’s important to understand what we’re doing, and not doing when we’re building a business online, and it’s also important that if we have a long term goal of passive wealth, that we not ignore the facts and the reality of both what exists and what doesn’t in our industry.
What DOES exist in our industry, and has existed for more than sixty years are thousands of people earning seven figure incomes who built their incomes almost entirely through business networking and warm market prospecting. What DOESN’T exist is ANYBODY who has created the same brand loyalty, RESIDUAL wealth, and leverage through ONLY the internet, or ONLY through any other kind of advertising.
In fact, most of the people I know online who make a lot of money make massive amounts of cash selling affiliate products, coaching programs, websites, and systems, but their ACTUAL residual income from a legitimate Network Marketing company is less than $10,000 per month. In fact, MOST of them have a residual income of less than $1,500 per month. (These are the top dogs, people)
Well, that’s cool, because they can still make fat amounts of cash selling their programs. In fact, the other day I saw a promising program online for sale called:
“How To Make Butt-Loads Of Cash Selling ‘How-To’ Courses To Network Marketers Without Ever Actually Being Successful In Network Marketing Yourself…” (I’m kidding, of course… sort of)
So where’s the disconnect? Why is it that people like Randy Gage are creating residual incomes of a couple of hundred thousand a month while the top dogs online jump ship from deal to deal looking for the magic bullet? (a whole new blog post is coming on that one…)
The answer is probably more simple than you would think, and it’s something that we need to address… Think about it like this:
Normally, for the last 60-70 years when you would get started in a Network Marketing company, your upline would give you some kind of advice like this:
“Talk to EVERYONE, your neighbors, your cat, the grocer, the local police department, illegal aliens, etc…. your goal is to SPONSOR no matter what, just get out there and TALK to people”
So when you get started, that’s exactly what you do… Now, this might not make you rich (really it depends how influential your sphere of influence is and how good you are at positioning yourself) but what it DOES do is get you sponsoring in your first week.
Compare that with what happens online. You get started and your sponsor tells you:
“Ok, you need to learn how to market yourself before you’re ever going to be successful… so set up your blog, set up your autoresponders, create a capture page, hire an article writer, learn how to be a guru, spend 4 hours a day chit-chatting on facebook, set up 14,000 affiliate accounts, and then FINALLY you’re ready to START….”
The problem is, that stuff takes so long and is so complicated, that MOST people will NEVER start. They’ll quit before they do anything. (Where in the traditional methods, the quitters still quit, but before they do they sponsor 5-10 people). What online marketers also tend to be quiet about is the fact that to be successful in online marketing, you CAN’T copy someone else, you have to learn how to be ENTIRELY unique. It will take most people six months to learn how to do if they are extremely aggressive.
As a result of this disconnect, distributors who build their businesses completely online have GIGANTIC frontlines and almost zero duplication in their teams, and they have the highest attrition rate of any business building method that exists. So what do they do? They assume that MLM is dead, duplication can’t happen, and so they jump to a program that doesn’t require anyone but themselves to be successful, hence the advent of ‘Top Tier’ programs.
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The flawed philosophy of doing that is that people in traditional Network Marketing have incomes that completely trump top tier programs, and a way better quality of life. For example, in my last company, there are about 10 distributors with six figure monthly residuals, and about a thousand with healthy six figure annual residuals. Most of those people could drop dead and still make seven figures a year. Can you do that in a top tier program? No. You have to keep producing and selling $20k packages like a dog for the rest of your life.
So what’s the solution? It seems as if I’m harping on internet marketing as a way to build your business. I’m not. I just want ALL of us to realize that IN ADDITION to learning how to build our business online, let’s START sponsoring and building a team before we’re gurus, and get our teams doing the same thing.
Don’t ignore what’s worked for 70 years to try and build something that can’t be built. I think that if Network Marketing is going to have a future, we need to have a war cry, that we learn to EMBRACE traditional methods and get people STARTED doing something simple that they can IMMEDIATELY do, and then they can learn whatever marketing method they want as they go along.
I think a good war cry would be to simply talk to five people a day about your opportunity, no matter what.
Now, if you’ve learned how to generate leads and you want to talk to five people a day from your leads, cool. If you haven’t, prospect every day while you’re learning to market online. Who should you talk to? Anyone that you can practice with. You could meet people through business networking, social clubs, you could talk with people and build relationships on facebook, pick up a newspaper and look for social gatherings and just get out there and network, learn how to meet people in coffee shops… anywhere.
Mike Dillard’s famous book ‘Magnetic Sponsoring’ got us all focusing on learning the ‘Marketing’ of Network Marketing, but what about putting the ‘NETWORKING’ back in network marketing?
Why not market your business online at a coffee shop, and then just build relationships with other people that hang out? My first successful organization I built almost entirely through people I met in coffee shops (before the online days). I wasn’t pushy, and I didn’t go to the coffee shop dressed like an Amway distributor. I just made a lot of friends and as a result, I sponsored a lot of people.
Do I want you to abandon building your business online? No. There are things you can do through marketing that there is no possible way you can do in any other way. You can sponsor 40-50 people a month into any company like clockwork by learning some clever advertising. But do you want people in your team to HAVE to learn to be a marketing guru to be successful at all? I’m just telling you that if you want long term residuals, don’t ignore the traditional methods in your pursuit for online Guru-Hood.
Did you get burned out trying traditional methods? Maybe you were acting like an idiot to your friends, or maybe you never learned how to do it in a way that works. Maybe instead of bashing the methods that have created REAL residual income, you could just learn the skills that can enable you to add the most powerful leverage building technique in existence to your business.
I might lose some of my following for saying some of the things I said in this post, and if that’s the case, so be it, but I want you to know the truth. It’s time for the online community to wake up. If you’re not going to embrace reality, maybe it’s time to join a top-tier program and rip off strangers for the rest of your life.
I’m holding a new war-cry all of you. Talk to five people a day. If you have leads, great, but if you don’t, learn to prospect until you do. Learn to reach out, connect with people, and build relationships with people you haven’t met.
Don’t be an idiot and hang out in an elevator in the local shopping mall with a huge grin on your face and corny business cards, learn how to NETWORK. Isn’t what we’re doing to build relationships? I want you all to know the REAL marketing skills that will let you sponsor 40-50 people a month, but BEFORE you have them, you can build relationships right now. There’s a world of people who are hurting for change, who are trapped in a race of 9-5 slavery. Let’s go out and teach them the truth of economic freedom, and be a Hit-Man to the machine.
I appreciate all of you, and I encourage all of you to enter into a new era of Network Marketing with me, let us go out and set the world on fire.
Your Friend In Prosperity,
-David Wood
P.S. Be sure to leave your comments on this one. I’d like to hear how many of you think I’m full of it, right on, etc.
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Wow! You tell the truth, brother. I love your perfect mix of approach. Keep the great info coming.
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Thank you David, Very informative – a good reality check.
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Hi David I must say I have enjoyed listing to all of your training well done excellent info.I am one of those people that built a MLM business the old way, after 12 years I had 24 6 figure and 1 7 figure income earners I had over 75,000 distributors in 10 countries I also built a training company.I have ventured down the internet path for generating leads,I believe we need to have a balance and after 23 years in the MLM industry one does develop a lot of knowledge.The one skill that stands out in the industry is learning how to build relationships and I believe it can’t be done with a computer and anyone that wants to use only the internet will have limited success.
People have emotions and an important part of that part of the human being is touch and I have found after 23 years of building leaders we are building an extended family.You imagine having children and not being able to connect with them on an emotional level from the first few years.So we would all like to find leaders who have experience in MLM but I prefer to build new leaders as they prove to be more loyal.Keep up the great work maybe we can meet one day I live on the Gold Coast of Australia.
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Phil Reply:
June 12th, 2010 at 1:29 am
Hi Bryce…that is probably the wisest comment I have heard in recent times regarding network marketing. Thank you for coming out & saying it & saying it so well. There are so many now saying things like “the old fashioned & traditional methods are dead, they don’t work any more” or similar. I think this is simply displaying their lack of skills, lack of knowledge of their business & total lack of leadership as they mostly are really just repeating what some other dummy has told them.
Having said that I think the internet can be excellent for generating leads…but you still must build real & proper relationships & that can’t be done from behind a computer…although it can help. So I think you’re right Bryce…balance is the key.
The fact is that it is the relationship aspect that builds a stable biz. No relationship = no commitment & in this age “opportunities” come & go all the time on internet & people will quit one today for what they think is a better one tomorrow. If you’ve built relationships & your people know, like & trust you and you’ve helped so many of them move toward their dreams, they’ll be far less likely to leave you when something else comes along. If you’ve built it on the internet, multitudes will leave you so fast when something better comes along you’ll wonder what happened. It is the relationships that will bring stability & longevity.
In the network marketing biz I am involved in (which I might add is a true residual income biz & truly is genuinely recession proof…many make those claims today…few really are)to the best of my knowledge every one of the very successful big producers that I have met or know anything about have built their biz primarily without the internet & using mostly traditional methods…& many have built them fast. So to say that doesn’t work is just plain stupid.
So well said Bryce, I appreciate your honesty.
And I am always on the lookout for experienced professionals or otherwise who want to build an awesome business & future for themselves and their loved ones. Message me
I’m from the Sunshine Coast Bryce, so not at all very far from you
Phil´s last blog ..They Called Me An ‘Evil Genius’…
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Great post, I have been thinking about this a lot lately. The truth is that the internet is a tool. It doesn’t matter if the relationship in online or belly to belly it is still a relationship.
The best thing about online recruiting is the efficiency provided by the internet. Rather than driving all over the place doing home meetings to groups that may or MAY NOT be receptive or even polite, I can hold a webinar with 5 times the attendees and only be exposed to the folks that get it. Rather than being distracted by the guy in the back with his arms folded, frowning, like he didn’t know he was going to a business presentation.
The internet is only a tool, you still have to make the connection. IMHO it is a lot more efficient.
Hope this adds to the discussion.
–Jeremy Reece
Jeremy Reece´s last blog ..Turning the Wheel
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This is making me to rethink the way to make business.
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Great Stuff David, Right on Money with that interview you did with Mark Yarnell some time back. I am very new to online marketing, but I do know the best way to develop your people skills is to go out there and just meet some people, make new friends, and have some fun. Just image how many people we pass by everyday, who are just waiting for someone to share an oppty with them that could change their life.
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Hi David,
Good advice and I very much agree that the “relationship” is so important. I built an organization of 20,000 distributors in the 90′s. I first build a local group and then to make them “stick”, one thing I did that was very effective was to hold parties at my house where it was actually “forbidden” to talk about the business at the party!! That was pretty radical, but the best way I found to bring people “closer” is to have fun together in a social atmosphere literally becoming friends. It unified the group together and created loyalty to the small group within the much larger (company) group. They never thought of shifting companies because of the “value” of the network itself. I think it is tribal and it goes to all our roots to be part of groups. Some people literally drove hundreds of miles just to hang out with the guys and gals. Later, I held huge parties with rock bands, catering, etc. at various spots around the country as my group expanded.
It was a lot of fun, created incredible loyalty and it drove tons of product volume and distributor growth.
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When I go to the airport I always see those guys with there handouts and cards and dvds. There in a tie and try really hard to play it cool. But at the first hint of an objection you can see in their face that their falling apart inside. One can master this skill and become very successful, don’t get me wrong. But when most people are starting out, all they think about is getting their first few sales. Making money. Firing their boss. All the things they used to sell themselves into their business in the first place. So it makes it really hard for most people to not look desperate. Your prospects will pick up on this in seconds if you don’t have the confidence in yourself and the detachment from your prospects. Learning how to do this when you are distracted by true feelings of pressure and desperation isn’t as easy as hanging out in a coffee shop. The second you start pitching, people are smart enough to know you are just there to get leads. Then you look like the guy chasing down people with a dvd. We retreat from that which chases us. Animal instinct. I know there are plenty of high paid networkers that have built their business completely offline. But there is a reason. They mastered that skill, they sharpened that tool until it was so razor sharp it can cut anything. I would say some people are born with this tool already sharp. And it doesn’t take much for them to master it. But for others they are not born so lucky. They just have a longer learning curve.
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Great post David. When I first learned about internet marketing I was drawn to it because people are now coming to you. The reality is that attraction marketing is more of a principle and a mindset regardless of the method. When I first learned about it of course I was drawn to it. I thought, cool people will come and join my business on auto-pilot. The truth is while some may do that, not everyone will. Weather online or offline I have learned that the basics are still a fundamental part of your business. However now your posture and your position is more attractive and therefore the possibility of better results.
Scott´s last blog ..Ooops! Not Done Yet
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What I’m reading is that you have to have a way to teach your team how to recruit in such a way that they can teach their team, etc. Because it’s so difficult to get people to recruit in the traditional fashion, i.e. offline, why can’t MLSP be used for that purpose? When you identify the people who want to build a business, you still end up building a relationship with them, don’t you? Can’t that be taught?
Thanks,
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hom Reply:
August 31st, 2010 at 12:53 am
Well said Joe, I agree.
hom´s last blog ..How to increase your current leads for free through social media…
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Grace Reply:
September 2nd, 2010 at 10:16 am
Yes, I think you can certainly build relationships online. Everyone is just different I think. I would much rather learn to gain people skills and begin building an empire online. Then, automatically, confidence is gained. I would be much more ready for “networking” outside once I’m comfortable. But that’s just me.
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