Copyright 2006 Donovan Baldwin
Let me begin by saying that I am 61 years old, self employed, and operate a home based network marketing business. With this business, I presently earn approximately 2.5 times the largest salary I ever received during my lifetime.
I am currently working on my MBA, but I earned a BA in accounting in 1973, worked a few years as an accountant (budget development and analysis), got bored and spent the next several years in the U. S. Army. Before I retired in 1995, I started looking for a way to supplement what was going to be a meager retirement income. I began trying out different MLM, network marketing and home based business opportunities, while working full time jobs to pay the bills. I am also a member of Mensa. That is an organization whose only requirement is that you can prove you are a genius.
Now, with all the education and experience I had going for me, and as intelligent as I am, I took the first network marketing opportunity I joined and was making a million dollars within six months...NOT!
HERE'S WHAT REALLY HAPPENED WITH MY FIRST HOME BASED BUSINESS!
Within six months, I WAS making a few bucks, but I had probably spent more money than I had made. The only saving grace of this whole fiasco was that the company I had signed up with offered a service, and that service saved me several hundred dollars, so I came out ahead. However, since I was doing such a lousy job as a network marketer, I quit.
When I quit that first home based business, I had several friends still in it who were making large sums of money. These were ordinary people (NOT geniuses, NOT college graduates, NOT sales professionals, NOT ex-executives) who were receiving monthly checks bigger than what I made IN A YEAR!
To make matters worse, another friend of mine (also NOT, NOT, NOT...etc.) was receiving MONTHLY checks in excess of $1 million from another network marketing opportunity...which I ALSO failed at.
Boy was I mad.
I TOLD MYSELF IF THEY COULD DO IT, I COULD DO IT!
After all, I was smarter than them, better educated than them; I had more business and managerial experience. I would be able to take one of these opportunities and make it pay. Maybe that first company wasn't right for me.
CAN YOU GUESS WHAT HAPPENED?
I failed to produce significant income with one home based business opportunity after another. My friends and relatives didn't just cross the street when they saw me coming, they ran the other way! My friends in network marketing, however, just kept on making money...lots of money!
A 9 TO 5 JOB SHOWED ME THE SECRET OF NETWORK MARKETING.
For a few years, my wife and I became over-the-road truck drivers for a major national carrier, and then an opportunity opened up for us to become truck driving instructors in Dallas, Texas. It was there that I began to notice something I had known but had not applied to network marketing.
I really enjoyed teaching these new people how to be successful as truck drivers. I gave them real information, answered their questions, helped them solve problems, told them stories of life on the road, and always made myself available to them.
Something interesting happened. If I mentioned that having a calculator was important, the next day everybody had a calculator. One day I mentioned that a certain reference book would help them out, and the next day I found out that the company store had sold out of that book a few minutes after I released the class.
IT REMINDED ME OF WHEN I HAD BEEN A SERGEANT IN THE ARMY.
I had been there, done that, and was obviously concerned about the lives and families of my soldiers. They knew that I cared, and if I recommended something they went out and got it. It wasn't just me, either. If one of the other sergeants mentioned something, it was treated with importance and followed up on.
HOW I PUT 2 AND 2 TOGETHER AND CAME UP WITH A BUSINESS THAT WORKED.
While I was teaching people how to plan a safe cross-country trip with an 80,000 lb vehicle, make on-time deliveries and how to arrive in one piece, and be successful operating as if they were an independent business, I started reading everything I could find on network marketing and home based businesses. As I read, and compared what I read to what I was experiencing, a truth began to emerge.
People were happy to buy what I told them to buy if they thought that I knew what I was talking about and was telling them for their own good. Not only that, they wanted to be like me because I had proven my ability to be successful in this profession. On the other hand, if I had shown up in class with a box full of items and started trying to "sell" them to the class, not only would I probably not have been able to sell a single item, but I would have lost the respect and trust of those who had been hanging on my every word.
I'VE SEEN THIS INFO SOMEWHERE BEFORE!
Yes, I HAD seen this concept somewhere before. I had at least 10 books on network marketing at my house, and they all said basically the same thing.
The first thing a good network marketer had to do was establish a relationship which included a genuine element of trust. Everything revolved around that pivot point, and "selling" things was not the most important element. Yes, you needed to know your product, and you had to be willing to articulate what you had to offer, or what your product had to offer in the way of benefits to your friends, but your job as a network marketer was to create, grow, and maintain a broad circle of friends who could trust you and who could respect your opinion...particularly in the area related to your product or service.
That's where successful network marketing begins. One real person creating genuine links of respect and caring to one other person at a time.
You know what's great about that? You don't have to have an MBA. You don't have to have been in management. You don't have to be a genius. You just have to be a real person who likes meeting people and making friends, and you will have learned the first lesson of network marketing success...a lesson which took me nearly 10 years to learn. |
