I recently heard my personal friend and mentor Michael Dlouhy talking about his mentor Tom ‘Big Al’ Schreiter building a 100,000 person MLM Downline.  As this started to sink in and I got to thinking about network marketing and the absolute necessity of team work and how being successful is about the relationships.  I mean how could one person keep up with calling and staying in contact with that many people?

Most of today I spent with friends I haven’t seen since moving to a nearby city to fulfill, it turns out, somebody else’s idea of being successful by getting an education.  Now I’ve been educated in many different ways in the course of my life and ‘higher education’ has been more enlightening than most-but for different reasons than one might expect.  Thinking in terms of relationships, my education finally came full circle in a way that has given me purpose, focus, and direction.  A direction I didn’t find in any of my textbooks.

So many times we have the opportunity to change someone’s day, week, or entire life by striking up a conversation at a restaurant, grocery store, or even at the gas pump.  For example, I pulled over to get gas in my motorcycle after spending some time with friends.  I noticed a sign on the car next to me that said, “computer repair.”  So I asked the guy if he had a card because I don’t work on computers running Windows or MacIntosh for personal reasons.  Well, except for my mother of course.  He gave me his card and we started talking.

It turns out that he used to be employed at a company called Dell and had been laid off and now worked on computers, did odd carpentry, and light electrical work-basically whatever comes his way.  Which is just the person I’ve been needing to handle jobs that I can’t take.  I also got to tell him a little bit about my company and about our online trainings at Mentoring for Free.  The conversation lasted as long as it took to fill up my gas tank, which isn’t very long.  But it was long enough to exchange ideas and make a connection, as well as find out a little bit about someone who might become a business partner in the future.

I am not new to the concepts of network marketing as I have done it all my life.  It’s so thrilling for me to know that I will have the time freedom to continue writing, speaking, and possibly raise a family while building a fortune.  My reasons for being alive are to open the conversations I’m supposed to, for the reasons God intended, and I believe for the purpose of passing along all of the love and support I’ve received to get to this exact point in my life.  And I am excited about being able to say when asked, “What do you do for a living?” that I help people find their dreams.  And I am so grateful for the education I have received and continue to receive from My Loving Family-Mentoring For Free.

So this leads me to the obvious question of someone, like myself, who was being dragged under the bus by a company whose management doesn’t even know how to spell M-L-M.  For example, here’s how the training went…

1. Make a list of friends and family

2. Make a list of the most successful people you know

3. Make a list of the people you are afraid to speak to about the business

Now, I know-I’ll wait for the side splitting laughter to die down before I continue.  What, that wasn’t funny?  You mean you heard something similar to this in your training?  Guess what?  That’s not training, that’s what they call ‘leading with the chin.’  That’s definitely a way to alienate yourself from friends and family and while that may be a good thing, usually it is not.  So, did I succeed in my first MLM opportunity? No.  That was way back in August of 2008, I am so very fortunate that I saved myself years of failure and frustration in this wonderful industry by finding what I call My Loving Family.

Now that first company cost me some time, money, and loads of frustration but it also served as a valuable experience.  It helped me understand how valuable a team of professional network marketers can be to someone like me who wants a lifetime of residual income.  Not only do I not want to struggle and alienate myself from family, I don’t want to be drug under the bus by every ‘Heavy Hitter’ in the industry.  You know that I’ve called almost every single person in my upline genealogy and they actually call back and help me to succeed right where I’m at in the process.  My team cares enough about the relationship they have with me that they will tell me the truth as well as point me in the right direction to become a professional in the industry.

Our industry is amazing and many traditional companies are investigating how to restructure to lower costs in these exciting times.  What they will have to keep in mind is that the quality of the relationship with their distributors will ultimately determine their success. I say these are exciting times because as Jim Rhon once said, “After recession comes expansion-not to think so is naive.”  I have been naive about network marketing in the past but I know now that with My Loving Family, I have all the tools necessary to succeed.  Day by day, in every way, I awaken to a new world of limitless possibilities for service and inspiration; sharing this energy with all the wonderful people I meet.  It is a pleasure to say, when asked what I do for a living, that I help people.  I mean, how cool is that?  I have been helped over the years by some of the very best people I’ve ever even heard about.  And they did it without an agenda, they helped me because they had been under that same bus.  There was a time I just needed someone to give me the right words like, “please stop the bus,” and “help people with the right agenda.”  What time is it for you?