Part of the guide: Personal Brand
Thinking back now over the last 7 years since I first joined the MLM industry, it’s funny to think that life could have ever been different. What I wanted to do, is rather than just give a blatant promotion to join MLM, give you some insider information AND discuss the positives and negatives of being involved in the Network Marketing industry.
The truth of the matter is that MLM is a great industry to join, and it’s a great profession to be a part of if you treat it right. There are some misconceptions, however, that are important to understand if you do decide to join Network Marketing.
First, let me just share with you that I joined the MLM industry part time in 2002, and I had an absolutely miserable experience attempting to be successful at it all the way from 2002-2007. Not only did I not make any money worth mentioning, but I managed to chase away all but a few of my loyal friends and it seemed that I was worth less financially after 5 years of struggle than I was when I joined MLM in the first place.
Taking a look at the surface of my initial experience, most people would think that I would have been better off if I had thrown in the towel and quit for good (in fact, a lot of well intentioned people encouraged me to.) However, looking at my life style now and what I’ve been able to accomplish proves that it was the right decision to stay in the MLM industry.
Why can I justify joining MLM after 5 years of failure? Well, let’s take a look at a brief comparison:
I’m a college dropout. In fact, I went to one year of college and then I decided I wanted to be an entrepreneur and I just quit.
The average household income for someone who’s a high school graduate without a college degree in the USA is $25,900 per year. At the same time, the average household income for someone with a professional degree is $109,600.
Well, I fall in the earlier category, and last month while I’m hesitant to disclose my exact earnings, my profits from my MLM business online were in excess of $28,000 for the last 2 weeks of the month.
(As a quick disclosure here, not everyone in MLM does that well. I worked REALLY hard last month for that money, and I DID NOT ‘Get Rich Quick’).
So looking at the numbers, does that mean that you should join MLM? Well, let me tell you the TRUTH how I see it. You might join a Network Marketing company and fail miserably for your first five years AND the statistics show that most people will experience a certain level of failure before they have any kind of significant MLM success story. So rather than asking if you should JOIN MLM, maybe you should ask:
“Are you willing to do WHATEVER it takes to learn the skills you need to learn to be successful in the MLM industry as a PROFESSIONAL who treats their business like a business?”
Are you willing to do that?
One of my friends in the industry, Mark Yarnell wrote a book in the 90’s called ‘Your First Year In Network Marketing’ where he shared some interesting statistics.
The statistics show that although 95% of distributors in the MLM industry fail, that for those of us who stick with one company for 10 years or more and actively participate in their business (meaning that they work at it at least part-time), that 95% of them reach the top of the company’s pay plan.
What does the top of the pay plan look like? It varies from company to company, but in most companies it is A LOT more than the average person with a professional degree makes on an annual basis.
So the question of the day is not ‘should you join MLM’ (You’d be stupid not to)… instead the question of the day is ‘Are you willing to treat your business like a business? Or are you going to jump on the latest deal and then quit before you ever really start?’
If you’re a part of the latter group, I’ll save you some money.
Quit before you start and stick with a job. For the rest of you, though: DREAM BIG. This is an industry with HUGE potential that is just waiting for leaders like you to step out and take charge of their future, and to the DREAMERS I invite you with this challenge: Are you going to let the statistics of QUITTERS stop you from taking charge of your future? Or are you going to join us at the top and LIVE your life the way you demand? You decide my friend. I’m GLAD that I stuck with it, and I’m happy to be free.
So do intelligent people join MLM companies? Well, it sure was intelligent for me, don’t you think?
You have been paid late before
You have watched the number on the dashboard not match the number in your account. What is different now is simple: it settles on a public contract you can check yourself, not a dashboard I control.
Read the contract →Most participants earn little to nothing. No income is guaranteed. You can verify every payout on the public smart contract.
Comments
Rick Herbst, September 29, 2010
Thanks as always David for your straightforward approach and clearing the noise out of the equation. I have watched you win a BMW in MLSP to replacing an income from a previous company in a week, to becoming literally a visionary entrepreneur that has made an amazing contribution to changing the face of commerce in our country. You rock bro!
r.v.krishna rao, September 29, 2010
I’ve started in a company just recently and there are times I love it, and there are times I am totally frustrated. I believe in reaping what you sow, so all I can do is keep at it and believe that my hard work will one day pay off. It’s not easy with a family and trying to push yourself more than usual. However, the winning part is always worth it.
Darryl Delong, September 29, 2010
Great tips David. MLM is just something you have to keep working at. I finally found success in MLM and built my own website and lead capture system for all my downline!
John Parker, September 30, 2010
David, your story is incredibly motivating. It’s great to see someone who’s been through the ups and downs of MLM and come out successful. Thanks for sharing your insights!
Emily Rogers, September 30, 2010
I’ve always been skeptical about MLM, but your experience and honesty are making me reconsider. It’s clear that treating it like a real business is key. Thanks for the inspiration!
Michael Brown, September 30, 2010
Your comparison between traditional careers and MLM is really eye-opening. It’s easy to dismiss MLM as a get-rich-quick scheme, but your success proves otherwise. Keep up the great work!
Sarah Williams, September 30, 2010
This post couldn’t have come at a better time for me. I’m just starting out in MLM, and it’s been tough. Your advice on persistence is exactly what I needed to hear. Thank you!
Chris Johnson, September 30, 2010
David, your success in MLM is truly inspiring. It’s clear that this isn’t a path for everyone, but for those willing to put in the work, the rewards are there. I’m motivated to keep pushing forward!
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Most affiliates earn little, and that is disclosed up front. The difference here is not a promise about what you will make. It is that you can verify every payout yourself, on a public contract, in about twelve seconds.
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Five years of failure before it turned around, is the part I keep coming back to. I’m two years in, working nights, and ‘just stick with it another three to five years’ isn’t advice I can act on without knowing what changes at year three that didn’t happen at year one. The post doesn’t say. It just says believe.
Strip out the anecdote and the actual claimed model is: input is years of consistent part-time effort, throughput is an unspecified process of skill acquisition, output is reaching the top of a pay structure that varies by company. The failure rate cited is high. The post frames that as evidence for persisting rather than evidence about the process itself — a high failure rate with the same instructions repeated to everyone usually means the instructions are missing a variable, not that people quit too early.
Tomas’s missing-variable point is the one worth sitting with, and I’ve watched three different companies run this exact framing over thirty years — cite a high failure rate, then attribute it entirely to persistence rather than to anything about the training, the upline structure, or the market the person happened to enter. We called it ‘weeding out the tire kickers’ in one company, ‘sorting the wheat from the chaff’ in another, always with the same underlying move: never once was the failure rate treated as data about the system, only as data about the individual’s character. A statistic that’s always used to explain away the same conclusion regardless of which decade or which company produced it isn’t really a statistic anymore. It’s a script.
‘You’d be stupid not to join’ is doing a lot of the persuading in this post that the actual argument isn’t doing.