A Lesson That Cost Me Lots Of Money And 9 Months Of My Life!

If I said it once, I’ll say it a 100 more times...Network Marketing is literally guaranteed to drain you personally, financial and push you to the edge of your sanity. I don't say this to scare you, but as a friendly warning. There's a missing piece to the puzzle and it's not even your fault.The marketing system is a blueprint, a manual, that tells you exactly how to correctly market each company's products. How this system operates ultimately decides whether or not you make a profit.Well, the system seemed simple enough. All I had to do was recruit two people and help them recruit two more. How hard could it be to find two people who want to make money in their sleep?I followed the marketing system's instructions to the letter:My first day, I was instructed to write a list of the names of 100 people that I knew, from my hair dresser to my university supervisors and my ex bosses.A "memory jogger" was provided to help me come up with all the names.This is going to be your first problem.Even if you're really confident and have no trouble approaching your friends, family, bosses, and colleagues--step #1 is where the system breaks.Every distributor you finally manage to enroll will frustrate you to no end. Why you may ask? Because average people aren't as confident as you are. They are afraid of the next step where they'll have to actually try to sell to the people they write. You'll tear your hair out trying to convince them to write that list.At first, I trusted the correctness of the system and depended on my two people to recruit two of their own.All I can say is “don’t hold your breath.”Without a list of names, they couldn't do the next step of selling. And they couldn't make any money either.One way or the other, you'll eventually run out of potential customers. You have three choices to continue building your business:1.            Find more customers of your own2.            Find customers from the list of people your new recruits know3.            QuitI wasn't ready to Quit. When I failed to get customers from the people my recruits knew, I spent months trying some humiliating things to find my own customers. I went to book stores and approached people out of the blue. I put my business card in network marketing books hoping that someone would be interested and call. I started going to different salons to have my hair done and told everyone about the amazing opportunity. Forward 12 months, and I looked down a trail of dollars spent on products, sales tools, and training. I saw my dreams of lifestyle and comfort taunting me in the distance. In that time, I transformed from this geeky introvert whose best friend was a computer, into a recruiting machine.I have read every book my sponsors recommended, I wrote my goals, I made a vision board, I watch The Secret monthly, attended seminars, listened to sales training CDs. I changed my personality and became a social animal for the sake of success. I could fill books telling you about the low lows that I had and the hardships I overcame.But at the end of the day, although what I learned helped me enroll many distributors, few stuck around longer than 3 months.Why should they stick around and keep buying products they have no interest in? They enrolled with me because they wanted to make money and they weren't.Not everyone has the patience or determination to work as hard as I did for a lifestyle free of financial worry. The winners were rare.And that was my second problem. My downline refused to grow without me--I was working harder and harder and spending every cent of the tiny scholarship I was receiving at the time just to keep my business running. I spent all my remaining energy on motivating my team, literally preaching to the deaf. They even stopped answering my calls until I gave up on them.Exhausted and frustrated, with members of my downline dropping off one by one, I stopped.I took off 3 weeks to analyze why it was so hard to enroll distributors and keep them around. And when I discovered the answer, it blew my mind and filled my pocket with cash.