I am coming up on my first full year of being engaged in a network marketing (or multi-level marketing or pyramid scheme or whatever else you want to label it, not a Ponzi scheme because there's no tangible goods in a Ponzi scheme and Kyani's juice, gelcaps and nitric oxide drops are very real). Anyway, I could put engaged in the previous sentence in quotations because at this point my level of engagement in actively working the MLM program is close to zero.
It hasn't always been. When I first started in it, I was very gung-ho. Put too much time into it, invested too much energy in it and eventually burnt myself out after not seeing very much success while others were getting multi-thousand dollar checks (yes, I've actually seen them, they are real, the money is very real).
It wasn't just the lack of conversion from money outflow to income though that burned me out. Never having been part of a network marketing company before I'd didn't have too many preconceived notions going in. And the ones I did have were, like most people's are when they hear the term network marketing or multi-level marketing, negative. Especially since Bernie Madoff was so fresh in the news and the thousands of previously rich people who's lives he smashed against the rock of greed and unsustainable promises.
I went into it cautiously but was seduced by the lure of the formulas, the seeming ease of it and the impressive successes of others. But the funny thing is that it all felt so forced, so staged, so driven by baser impulses that I found that I really didn't have much of a taste for it. Sure, it can be very, very easy money for some people but so can selling piece of shit cars for some people but that ain't me. My inner skeptic overcame my outer adherent.
At this point, or maybe even paragraphs ago, you might be asking yourself why I'm still involved with Kyani at all. And my reason is pretty simple. In the near year I've been using the three products I have not been sick once. My job as a computer tech in elementary schools exposes me to pathogens nearly constantly and I did not get sick once. Also, the Nitro FX makes my bike rides substantially better because of the improved circulatory benefits of the stuff. Before I started using Kyani I was getting sick every six weeks or less. In one stretch I bounced from one flu to the next for over a month, losing work days and feeling like utter crap.
Yes, I know this sounds like a sell job but honestly I'm not trying to sell anyone. I've tried selling people on Kyani and that doesn't work, at least not for me. So, instead I'm going to tell my story and see where that gets me.
It works. Plain and simple. My health is, thankfully, pretty good all the way around. But it is better taking Kyani. I stay with the company not because I like the business side but because I value the health benefits of the products themselves. And I recommend them to anyone who wants to feel better. Would I make a few bucks if someone tried it? Yep, but that's not really why I'd want someone to sign up and try it. I want people to give it a try because it can make a big improvement in your life if you suffer from chronic pain or diabetes or asthma or any number of other things.
And if you do try the Kyani products and they don't work then the company will give you your money back, minus shipping and I'll give you that if you want. Seriously. The worst part about writing this stuff out is knowing how it reads, knowing how quickly eyes glaze over and attention is diverted to some shiny widget.
But if you had a way for someone to not be in pain all the time, if you had a way for someone who's hands and feet tingle constantly from diabetes, if you had a way for someone to breathe more easily, stand up more easily, not ache then wouldn't you want to do every damned thing you could to introduce that possible solution them?
Which brings us around to the cult aspect of network marketing and probably the main reason I'm not more active in the company anymore. The practice of working a network marketing business is to play to psychology, to play the prospects like instruments and get them singing by the end of the meeting. There's psychology in every aspect of the meeting, in every aspect of the invite and in follow ups and introductions and everything else. It is the selling that is distasteful to me
And the edification aspect. That is a huge part of the process, to edify your upline, to talk them up, to psychologically weaken your prospect before they've even met your upline. The whole thing felt and feels forced and unnatural and more shysterish than an honest desire to help other people feel better and live better lives. Especially once you get to know some of the people in your upline and realize that some of them aren't laudable in any way and some are downright sleazebags. In fact, there are a couple of people in my direct upline that I wouldn't stop to spit on if they were on fire.
So there's a little glimpse into the pros and cons of network marketing from a grunt in the trenches. I love the products and loathe the business side of it. I can deal with it though because I know that people who use the products will feel better and lead more complete lives.
I like improving people's lives, its part of why I find technical support so gratifying and it is one of the main reasons I was drawn to network marketing in the first place. But all of the fluffy BS stuff? I can do without it.
Showing posts with label networking marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label networking marketing. Show all posts
2.22.2010
6.01.2009
Due Diligence by the Unemployed
I may be off base here, I may be just plain crazy but it seems to me that someone who doesn't have a job but has a family to feed, a mortgage to pay and bills stacking up would be interested in exploring every means of providing income. Well, let's qualify that, any legal means. This means someone who's been a manager taking positions far below their usual station and pay. This means someone who's used to a six figure salary sometimes having to settle for making half what they made before, sometimes, oftentimes, much less than that.
In this current economic climate, employers hold all the cards and can make seemingly unreasonable demands of prospective employees. It is, simply, a buyer's market. Unless you strike out on your own and start up your own business. But there are major risks in doing so and the gamble can be too great a risk.
But, if someone you ostensibly know and trust to not be a complete idiot says that they have something worth taking a look at, would it not behoove you to take a look?
Just as the unemployed person almost has a duty to check the Help Wanted ads everyday and apply to any new jobs that reasonably align with their skills and experience, someone without a job should also be open to other opportunities. Now, I'm not talking about donating plasma, sperm or becoming a human guinea pig for science experiments. I'm talking about legitimate opportunities.
In my family's case, this opportunity is network marketing. Which is, as I'm learning, a curse to some people. People see network marketing or multi-level marketing and immediately dismiss it as a pyramid scheme.
But what is a pyramid scheme? One where all the money and power flows upwards to a highly select few at the top. Most corporations are pyramids with CEOs and Boards of Directors making many hundreds of times the incomes of the grunts at the bottom. The military is a pyramid with privates at the bottom and generals at the top.
Any network marketing program worth its salt isn't a pyramid scheme. I could start working at McDonald's and bust my ass for twenty years and there's still almost no chance I'd become one of the company's top earners. In network marketing, this isn't true. In network marketing, it is very possible to reach the upper echelons of power and income through effort.
And yet, some people hear the words network marketing and they sneer because they think they know what it represents. They are almost invariably wrong and have pre-judged the business opportunity based on partial knowledge and bias.
This post might sound like complaining and that we are having trouble getting to where we want to go with our Kyani business. I will admit that overcoming the stigma of network marketing has been more difficult than expected but the underlying reality is that we are moving forward, we are signing customers, we are signing distributors and we are making it happen for us.
This post is more a response to some friends we've known for a very long time who are ignorant of the workings of network marketing, who are unemployed and yet still refuse to even consider network marketing as a possibility, as a solution to their money troubles now and into the future. Because that is what we are doing. We are building a strong structure to bring in money now and down the line. Our efforts build upon themselves and each month we keep with it, we climb higher and higher into the structure.
Salespeople I know have no such structure they build, they start each month at ground zero and have to produce for that month. At the end of the month, the meter resets and they start at ground zero again. Its a grinding cycle without end.
Network marketing is, to me, a way out and a way up. We are going to succeed with or without those friends. It just irks me that someone who should be willing to investigate any and all legitimate means of earning a living would so cavalierly dismiss network marketing without even knowing what it is and how it works.
The proof will be in the pudding and we are definitely planning on showing them the checks we get as our income starts to rise from these efforts. Maybe they'll change their mind when they see some pudding, maybe they won't. Either way, we are going to make this work as I do not plan on going back to work full-time for anyone else ever again.
The opportunity is phenomenal, the products are absolutely the best quality available and the timing is incomparable. It is the perfect storm of opportunity and we just wanted to share it with our friends who were also suffering economically as we have been.
And, even with a mere eight working days left before I am laid off from the school district, I am more optimistic about our future than ever before. Because of network marketing.
In this current economic climate, employers hold all the cards and can make seemingly unreasonable demands of prospective employees. It is, simply, a buyer's market. Unless you strike out on your own and start up your own business. But there are major risks in doing so and the gamble can be too great a risk.
But, if someone you ostensibly know and trust to not be a complete idiot says that they have something worth taking a look at, would it not behoove you to take a look?
Just as the unemployed person almost has a duty to check the Help Wanted ads everyday and apply to any new jobs that reasonably align with their skills and experience, someone without a job should also be open to other opportunities. Now, I'm not talking about donating plasma, sperm or becoming a human guinea pig for science experiments. I'm talking about legitimate opportunities.
In my family's case, this opportunity is network marketing. Which is, as I'm learning, a curse to some people. People see network marketing or multi-level marketing and immediately dismiss it as a pyramid scheme.
But what is a pyramid scheme? One where all the money and power flows upwards to a highly select few at the top. Most corporations are pyramids with CEOs and Boards of Directors making many hundreds of times the incomes of the grunts at the bottom. The military is a pyramid with privates at the bottom and generals at the top.
Any network marketing program worth its salt isn't a pyramid scheme. I could start working at McDonald's and bust my ass for twenty years and there's still almost no chance I'd become one of the company's top earners. In network marketing, this isn't true. In network marketing, it is very possible to reach the upper echelons of power and income through effort.
And yet, some people hear the words network marketing and they sneer because they think they know what it represents. They are almost invariably wrong and have pre-judged the business opportunity based on partial knowledge and bias.
This post might sound like complaining and that we are having trouble getting to where we want to go with our Kyani business. I will admit that overcoming the stigma of network marketing has been more difficult than expected but the underlying reality is that we are moving forward, we are signing customers, we are signing distributors and we are making it happen for us.
This post is more a response to some friends we've known for a very long time who are ignorant of the workings of network marketing, who are unemployed and yet still refuse to even consider network marketing as a possibility, as a solution to their money troubles now and into the future. Because that is what we are doing. We are building a strong structure to bring in money now and down the line. Our efforts build upon themselves and each month we keep with it, we climb higher and higher into the structure.
Salespeople I know have no such structure they build, they start each month at ground zero and have to produce for that month. At the end of the month, the meter resets and they start at ground zero again. Its a grinding cycle without end.
Network marketing is, to me, a way out and a way up. We are going to succeed with or without those friends. It just irks me that someone who should be willing to investigate any and all legitimate means of earning a living would so cavalierly dismiss network marketing without even knowing what it is and how it works.
The proof will be in the pudding and we are definitely planning on showing them the checks we get as our income starts to rise from these efforts. Maybe they'll change their mind when they see some pudding, maybe they won't. Either way, we are going to make this work as I do not plan on going back to work full-time for anyone else ever again.
The opportunity is phenomenal, the products are absolutely the best quality available and the timing is incomparable. It is the perfect storm of opportunity and we just wanted to share it with our friends who were also suffering economically as we have been.
And, even with a mere eight working days left before I am laid off from the school district, I am more optimistic about our future than ever before. Because of network marketing.
5.15.2009
Why I Got Into Network Marketing
Like many people, I hear the words network marketing or multi-level marketing and cringe just a little bit. The connotations raised by MLM's are not especially positive. I was deeply skeptical and pretty strongly opposed to the idea before I'd even learned about the opportunity. Just as I'm sure your eyes rolled a tiny bit when you saw what this blog post was about.
So what changed my mind?
Timing.
Let's hypothetically say that you could go back in time and join Amway in the first two years after it launched. Would you? Would you do it knowing that those people that did join early on are multimillionaires now? I know I for damned sure would.
The company that I've joined up with is in the same position but with many notable improvements. Things that make the concept a lot less dissuasive. Like no paperwork, no keeping an inventory, no selling, no huge list of products and no massive start up costs.
Other things that have helped me make the leap into network marketing: Timing, the backend financial support, the products themselves, the support system and the compensation system.
The timing refers to where this company is in its growth cycle. It launched about a year and a half ago and is growing at an incredible rate right now. In three to four years the number of distributors will go from around 25,000 now to 500,000 or more. Getting in now means getting in ahead of the massive growth.
The back end financial support is an investment of a half a billion dollars by two families that were already rich before this all got started.
The products are the best I've ever used, are focused on health and wellness which is going to be growing from a $400 billion industry now to a trillion dollar industry in the next few years as the baby boomers continue to age. What does that mean? There's a freakin' huge opportunity to capitalize on that movement and the desire to stay active later and later in life.
The support system is huge because there's no way I'd be able or comfortable taking on this opportunity on my own. Support means there is always someone there to help you out, always someone there to answer your questions, give a presentation to prospective new distributors and always someone there to lift you up if someone's knocked me down.
And that's one thing that I'm developing a thicker skin about. There are always going to be people that deride network marketing without ever bothering to take a closer look at what they are deriding. They call them pyramid schemes which is actually not even really true.
Take a look at any corporation, that's a pyramid. There's a CEO who has a staff directly under him with more staff under them and so on down the line until you get to the grunts in the trenches who do the real work. Look at the military, look at the government, these are classic pyramids where all of the power and money is concentrated at the very top and the worker bees who do the actual work are at the very bottom.
In a properly sorted out MLM, there is a real possibility to achieve the top positions by anyone in the company. There is a real capability to surpass others through your hard work. That isn't a pyramid scheme.
Some people look at MLMs and think of Bernie Madoff and his ponzi scheme of economic doom. The difference there is that Madoff traded in lies and took money from new people to pay off others, there was nothing produced and nothing consumed except new investors' cash.
An MLM moves products, there is a concrete chain of accountability and it is a disservice to dismiss an MLM as a ponzi or pyramid scheme.
The last and most compelling reason is how this company compensates its distributors. This company returns two thirds of every dollar brought into the system to its distributors, most other MLMs hover at around fifty cents on the dollar. One of the most impressive aspects of the compensation is something I've not seen or heard anywhere else, its a matching check. If the three people you personally sponsor in the program earn $1000 each through their residuals, the company will match that and send me a check for $3000. If I have five people making $2000 each in residuals then I make $10,000. No bullshit, this is huge and powerful.
It would all be for naught if the products were crap though. You can't polish a turd (which isn't actually strictly true since I saw the Mythbusters episode where they did, in fact, polish two turdballs to a rather high luster but you get my point).
So, if you've made it this far and you're wondering what the name of the company is then I'll tell you. Its called Kyani. The opportunity is real, the money is real and the company is going to be a massive success either with or without me or you. I definitely don't want to look back in four or five years and see people I know in the company making rather comfortable livings while I sat on my hands and didn't take the plunge.
And, last thought for this rather long post, there isn't failure in a network marketing program, there is only success and those who quit. I don't plan on quitting.
If you are interested in finding out more about this company and the opportunity then you can email me or leave a comment with your email and I'll contact you. I wouldn't be putting this out there if I didn't think it was an awesome opportunity because I know that I'm risking alienating what few readers I do have with this. But I'd be remiss if I didn't offer the opportunity to you all.
So what changed my mind?
Timing.
Let's hypothetically say that you could go back in time and join Amway in the first two years after it launched. Would you? Would you do it knowing that those people that did join early on are multimillionaires now? I know I for damned sure would.
The company that I've joined up with is in the same position but with many notable improvements. Things that make the concept a lot less dissuasive. Like no paperwork, no keeping an inventory, no selling, no huge list of products and no massive start up costs.
Other things that have helped me make the leap into network marketing: Timing, the backend financial support, the products themselves, the support system and the compensation system.
The timing refers to where this company is in its growth cycle. It launched about a year and a half ago and is growing at an incredible rate right now. In three to four years the number of distributors will go from around 25,000 now to 500,000 or more. Getting in now means getting in ahead of the massive growth.
The back end financial support is an investment of a half a billion dollars by two families that were already rich before this all got started.
The products are the best I've ever used, are focused on health and wellness which is going to be growing from a $400 billion industry now to a trillion dollar industry in the next few years as the baby boomers continue to age. What does that mean? There's a freakin' huge opportunity to capitalize on that movement and the desire to stay active later and later in life.
The support system is huge because there's no way I'd be able or comfortable taking on this opportunity on my own. Support means there is always someone there to help you out, always someone there to answer your questions, give a presentation to prospective new distributors and always someone there to lift you up if someone's knocked me down.
And that's one thing that I'm developing a thicker skin about. There are always going to be people that deride network marketing without ever bothering to take a closer look at what they are deriding. They call them pyramid schemes which is actually not even really true.
Take a look at any corporation, that's a pyramid. There's a CEO who has a staff directly under him with more staff under them and so on down the line until you get to the grunts in the trenches who do the real work. Look at the military, look at the government, these are classic pyramids where all of the power and money is concentrated at the very top and the worker bees who do the actual work are at the very bottom.
In a properly sorted out MLM, there is a real possibility to achieve the top positions by anyone in the company. There is a real capability to surpass others through your hard work. That isn't a pyramid scheme.
Some people look at MLMs and think of Bernie Madoff and his ponzi scheme of economic doom. The difference there is that Madoff traded in lies and took money from new people to pay off others, there was nothing produced and nothing consumed except new investors' cash.
An MLM moves products, there is a concrete chain of accountability and it is a disservice to dismiss an MLM as a ponzi or pyramid scheme.
The last and most compelling reason is how this company compensates its distributors. This company returns two thirds of every dollar brought into the system to its distributors, most other MLMs hover at around fifty cents on the dollar. One of the most impressive aspects of the compensation is something I've not seen or heard anywhere else, its a matching check. If the three people you personally sponsor in the program earn $1000 each through their residuals, the company will match that and send me a check for $3000. If I have five people making $2000 each in residuals then I make $10,000. No bullshit, this is huge and powerful.
It would all be for naught if the products were crap though. You can't polish a turd (which isn't actually strictly true since I saw the Mythbusters episode where they did, in fact, polish two turdballs to a rather high luster but you get my point).
So, if you've made it this far and you're wondering what the name of the company is then I'll tell you. Its called Kyani. The opportunity is real, the money is real and the company is going to be a massive success either with or without me or you. I definitely don't want to look back in four or five years and see people I know in the company making rather comfortable livings while I sat on my hands and didn't take the plunge.
And, last thought for this rather long post, there isn't failure in a network marketing program, there is only success and those who quit. I don't plan on quitting.
If you are interested in finding out more about this company and the opportunity then you can email me or leave a comment with your email and I'll contact you. I wouldn't be putting this out there if I didn't think it was an awesome opportunity because I know that I'm risking alienating what few readers I do have with this. But I'd be remiss if I didn't offer the opportunity to you all.
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