Healthy Business » positive

My First Recruit

wbhawkins — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:43:06 +0000

It's about who you know, like and trust

It has been about two weeks since I started working on my new business in earnest and I have learnt a lot already. It’s not easy but when it works (and it does work), it is the most satisfying feeling to experience success. My first success has come in the form of my first team member.

My team member is running his own business already and wants to run his Forever Living business in parallel to his vending enterprise. We worked together in a former life and we got on well. He had looked at the business five years ago but had not known anyone in the business to understand what it was really like.

He got in touch with me after I emailed him asking if he knew anyone who was looking for an opportunity to start their own business or to earn some extra income. He called me to catch up and my up-line manager, Cora, and I took him through the details of the business.

This business is really built upon people who know you, like you and trust you. I’m looking forward to working with my new team member again and helping him to reach his goals. This business will enable him to work around his existing commitments while he develops his retail sales and his own team.

I have now planned to run my first ‘product launch’ next week in conjunction with a new, local spa who have offered me their ‘relaxation room’ (which is fabulous) to show people our range of health, nutrition and well being products and presents.

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Who gets network marketing?

wbhawkins — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:31:16 +0000

It's a rational business decision.

Building a business is a tough thing to do. You need not only a good idea (which, to be frank, is the easy bit), you need to know how to execute your idea so that people know about it, understand it, feel comfortable with it and ultimately decide that your business idea, service or product is something that they will buy from you. When you have been in business for a while, you get to know what questions to ask about a business before you commit to it.

For instance, some years back I was keen on buying into a franchise which is a yacht brokerage. I was looking at selling other people’s yachts, boats and dinghies. With a franchise, the key commitment that the franchiser is looking for is the fee that you pay to buy into their ‘proven’ system. Before I was going to do that, I did some market research into the ‘area’ which would have been my allocated territory.

My research showed me that the market was not for yachts and boats in the centre where they suggested was the best spot, but was, in fact, the inland waterways. Inland waterways are a totally different market to yachts and so, I concluded, I would be better off starting my own business selling barges, cruisers and narrow boats rather than investing and borrowing £90,000 to get into the franchise for yacht sales.

A few years later, I started my own business in live, online learning training IT professionals around the world through the internet. In short, everyone thought the idea was great, but the business struggled and I ran out of money to be able to carry on with it. I lost quite a lot of money in the process but I learned many lessons.

When it comes to starting a network marketing business, I could immediately see that the idea is good, the business is proven, there is a ready and untapped market in the UK, there is no franchise fee to worry about, I believe in the products, I have all the right skills and experience to be able to make it work and I can start it part-time and work it around my other commitments.

This week I spoke with an old business friend of mine about the business with the help of Cora, my sister-in-law, and presented the business over the internet. My contact was very open about the business and was keen to understand the details. He had come across the Forever Living business five years ago but had not pursued it because, amongst one or two other reasons, he had not known anyone in the business to understand why people were so positive about it.

Furthermore, he had spent several years working in the food industry marketing health food products, so he understood the market well. His main enthusiasm from our presentation was the fact that over half of the business’s revenue comes from one aloe vera drink. As a businessman, he understood the business model and knew that the business model is not some wacky scheme but that network marketing is a proven business strategy. His enthusiasm for the opportunity was based on rational thinking and experience.

The plain fact is that people understand and enthuse about this networking business for different reasons. Many because they believe in the products. Some because they can also see the opportunity. Others because they see how it can help them achieve what they want to achieve in their lives which ordinary jobs can never provide on their own.

All of them see it for what it is, which is an unconventional business which helps people. It is honest, non-pushy, high quality and enables those who want to change their lives change them for the better. If you don’t believe it, then that’s fine.

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Why people are suspicious of network marketing

wbhawkins — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:26:26 +0000

People are prepared to accept the grind of life but not that there is an honest alternative

It’s a funny thing, the human mind. It’s prepared to accept and reject the most bizarre things sometimes.

For example, some people have faith in their god. I admire that because it shows that people are strong minded and they believe in something. They will have moments of doubt about their beliefs, of course, but they fall back on their values, their faith and their community to help them keep on track.

In our working lives, we are educated, trained and conditioned to work in a routine that revolves around our societies working in a routine which, in general, a day which starts at about 9am and finishes at about 5pm.

To get to our places of work or study, we all set off at about the same time and try to get through an infrastructure which cannot cope with the numbers of people who want to get through a space designed for fewer numbers. This is why traffic jams occur at the same time and place each day, and which many people just sit through because they think they have no other alternative to this routine. People accept this bizarre waste of time and only feel able to express their exasperation by honking their horn or swearing at other people in the same jam.

And yet, with small adjustments to your daily routine, you can travel the same way to work in much less time, be more productive at work and feel less stressed by simply, say, working from home for an hour in the morning when you would normally be in the car thereby missing the ‘rush hour’. Try it. If you have a job which allows a little flexibility then ask for it. It will change your life in a small but significant way.

When it comes to network marketing or ‘team marketing’ people dismiss it as ‘pyramid selling’. Their perception of network marketing is one of innocent or vulnerable people buying a stack of products from the top of the ‘pyramid’ and desperately trying to sell it to people lower than them in the pyramid. That could not be further from the truth.

Network marketing is a distribution strategy which cuts out the traditional route that products take to reach their market from the manufacturer such as agents, distributors, wholesalers, sales people and retailers and which provides a greater share of the profits to the manufacturer and the distributor.

Part of my working life in a traditional business involved me persuading wholesalers to buy a large amount of products of which I would only accept a small amount of their orders to be returned to our business if they did not sell it. My customers had to make a calculated risk on how much they thought they could sell to their customers knowing that mistakes in purchasing would cost them a lot of money. Far from being vulnerable, my customers in that business were very astute and had a lot of market knowledge which enable them to forecast their sales and, therefor, their purchases.

This is the vital factor for why pyramid schemes were so bad because innocent and naive people bought products, such as water filters, about which they had no information about the real market for these products compared to highly skilled and experienced buyers in professional companies.

In good network marketing companies, the manufacturer supplies all of its distributors directly at the same price at all levels of the team. Products are ordered by the distributor when a customer orders and pays for them. Anyone who has any business sense knows that this is good business. No stock is held by the distributor. Cash flow is good because no money is tied up in unsold stock. Distributors are rewarded for training other people in their teams who sell products as a consequence of the training. It’s a business, remember, and products need to be bought and sold.

So, why are people suspicious of network marketing? It comes down to two things. Firstly, the bad experiences of people who were scammed by pyramid schemes in the 1970’s still linger in people’s conscience. They have a blind reaction to something which was made illegal nearly thirty years ago and they have no desire to seek to understand how network marketing works.

Secondly, we are conditioned to believe that there is only one honourable way for businesses to work because this is how everyone else is carrying out business. People are more prepared to put up with the grind of their daily routines than they are prepared to get into a business which will allow them all to achieve all of the things that they dream about doing with their lives rather than what their employers allow them to do. People are prepared to take huge risks with new business ventures which fail more often than they succeed, and which run the risk of them losing their health, wealth and families than they are to get into a business which has no financial risks and which has a simple, proven business model.

So, if you are suspicious about network marketing and you think it is nothing more than a shoddy pyramid scheme, then I suggest you do two things. Firstly, contact me so I can show you what a good, honest and ethical business I am part of and running. Secondly, come along to one of our events and meet other decent, honest people I work with who will never put you under pressure to enter a business which you don’t first understand.

When you have done this, then you might grasp just how amazingly good network marketing business can be for anyone who is prepared to persist with a simple, proven business which changes people’s lives for the better.

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Why people in network marketing are so happy

wbhawkins — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 21:29:14 +0000

Being happy is encouraged

From the outside, people you may know who run their own network marketing based businesses probably appear to be highly enthusiastic about what they do. You might even think that this enthusiasm is evangelical in its fervour. I have heard that some people think that people in network marketing are “brainwashed”. They are keen, effervescent and highly motivated.

To many people, this enthusiasm seems odd. Our culture sometimes discourages people from being overtly enthusiastic about their work. Occasionally, I hear people comment about anyone who smiles a lot. “What’s wrong with him or her?” “Why are they smiling all of the time?”

I have just started my own network marketing business and I did it for very good reasons. I have spent many years working in large or medium sized businesses which include the British Army, Microsoft, and Hewlett-Packard. Much of my business career has been disappointing in terms of the level of the leadership, management and enthusiasm. I have had moments of great fun in my working career but I can count the number of years where I was truly happy at work on one hand.

Most of the rest of the time was miserable. I was expected to work hard and be grateful that I was working in such a well-known business. Or the business had employed me to do something which turned out to be impossible to achieve because they had not appreciated just what was needed to make it feasible. Sometimes, I was given a target to achieve to which a bonus was payable when it was achieved and exceeded only to be disappointed when, at the last moment, it was denied to me despite having beaten my targets. Working in corporate life became increasingly dissatisfying and my morale was often low.

Contrast that to the network marketing business I have joined and started, Forever Living. The team of which I am part is full of enthusiastic people who love what they do. They like their products. They enjoy helping other people and they enjoy the support and enthusiasm that the business they work with shows towards them.

But, more importantly, having talked to lots of successful people in Forever Living, I began to realise why they are so happy. The products and the company are excellent, yes, but there is more to their enthusiasm than meets the eye. I realised that the reason they are so happy is that they are very clear about why they are running their independent businesses. They run their businesses to help them achieve their dreams which might be a great holiday each year, financial independence, putting their children through good schools, international travel or just having more time with their families. They are happy because they make the choices about their lives and what they want to do with them.

Contrast that with traditional businesses or workplaces which provide you with a way to get through each month and which are often filled with people who care little for you. I know where I would rather work.

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