Following Unsuccessful People

[Jack Swave]

I said before that I'm in the Amway business. Now this isn't a business post. What I want to know is under what conditions can I follow unsuccessful people? In network marketing the persons above you are called uplines and those below are downlines.

Now on my team I see about 7 persons who have been in business for 2+ years and they claim to be my coaches yet there is one major problem. They are all still broke . When I go to prospect with them , we walk the whole day and sell probably 2 bath soaps for $5 each. Yet I end up losing money because after all that walking I buy $5 lunch and bus fare is $6. Kind of a time waste. Even my uplines / coaches don't seem successful
They want to instruct me to not to ask anyone outside the business for any advice . If they knew I was asking intelligent guys like you on a forum it would look bad. I'm not even to talk to my family about the business . According to my uplines " family and friends will be negative and push me down ".

I call that bs. Last night I spoke to a girl who has been in business for 3 months and she gets so much in detail training. I was amazed and now I'm thinking " well my team is wasting my time. If they haven't been decently successful how are they going to teach me to be successful? Two years and still at 150 points.

I told my upline I'm taking a break from the business and he seemed angry for me saying that, which is the wrong way to act . It turned me off. He kept telling me what I'm saying makes no sense . Now I'm considering switching to a more successful team. Should I? It would be kind of disrespectful to my team but I can't sit down learning from people who can't do it themselves. Besides all that I don't have any say in the business. Every opinion I make is disregarded. They claim I'm not ready. What should I do?

Bubinile

 

[trashKENNUT]

Bubinile,

I told my upline I'm taking a break from the business and he seemed angry for me saying that, which is the wrong way to act . It turned me off. He kept telling me what I'm saying makes no sense . Now I'm considering switching to a more successful team. Should I? It would be kind of disrespectful to my team but I can't sit down learning from people who can't do it themselves. Besides all that I don't have any say in the business. Every opinion I make is disregarded. They claim I'm not ready. What should I do?

What exactly have your upline done for you? If the answer is very little, then it is time to leave. Business is Business. Dating is Dating. An analogy, Sure, in an ideal world, you and some guy will be good friends dating the same girl but this is reality. Most people think for themselves. If you were to appear beside some guy and he don't know you yet, he is going to get that girl that you both like.

Sure, If you meet more humble people like Chase, he definitely be more socially savvy but most people aren't Chase. Most people aren't Chase. Most people will throw you under the bus ten times compared to Chase who will probably do less.

Zac

 

[Jack Swave]

What exactly have your upline done for you? If the answer is very little, then it is time to leave.

He has done very little. I've been to around 20 meetings and everytime they talk about the same thing. When I go out to prospect with him, he spends the whole day talking to strangers and not making any head way with any. I see a lot of things wrong with my uplines approach : head down, shaky hands and general bad body language. What I see is they are bringing people into the business and not being adequately trained and what happens is people get fed up quickly. A common thing is that to get people to join " the barrier to entry is high ". Who wants to be ignored and tested rigorously? No one so they leave and my team is back at square 1 talking about how they need serious people.

Bubinile

 

[Rage]

I can tell you pretty objectively, that MLM/amway/pyramid schemes are a failed business model and don’t work dude.

It is grade school math:

Send me 500 dollars, and then after, for everyone else you can get to send me 500 dollars, I’m going to send you a check for 150 dollars!

You’ev alluded to as much, and seem to be losing money in what you are doing already? People have already mentioned it but the sensible think is to RUN the other way and get out of this crooked business that leaves the masses in it penniless with empty fake smiles to complement their empty bank accounts.

You mention your upsells/downsells being dissatisfied and displeased with you even beginning to think outside of the box. Of course they will be so, because there is a cult like nature to MLM and anyone who isn’t going with the plan, is sort of straying from the cult.

Succeeding WIth MLM

Likely you are a rationalist who doesn’t want to just quit because so many people say that this is a failed business model and won’t work, and cant work.

Which if you are still in it for this reason (and wanting to figure out that answer or disprove it yourself) is respectable. Id suggest to just get out of it, not even wait to break even (and just accept you learned some valuable life lessons and business lessons about how you cant make something out of nothing) and then go get a real job or something.

BUT

if you’re not quite there yet, here is a guide for you on how to make money in the MLM business.

Whatever you choose in the future good luck; all this is coming to you from a positive sentiment and having been in your situation before in the past (albeit not as deeply tied into it).

From http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/Multi- ... keting.htm

What One Must Be Willing to Sacrifice to Succeed in an MLM

Now I am not saying that you can't get rich or make a lot of money from MLM's. You obviously can, and some people do. However, if you are considering joining one or investing your time and money in one, you should keep in mind that there are several things you must be willing to sacrifice in order to succeed. You have to be willing to:



1) Live and breathe the MLM business. Only those that do tend to succeed and truly profit. It has to come before everything else consistently.



2) See all your family, relatives, friends, and acquaintances as business prospects. In order to make it, you have to both sell some of the products and recruit a certain number of downline or business partners as well, which creates pressure on you to recruit anyone you know. So of course, you'd better hope you have a lot of contacts! Unfortunately, this leads to alienating a lot of people from you, because those who are not interested will feel uncomfortable around the constant pressure and persuasion from you. In effect, you begin to see others in terms of how useful they are to you and your MLM. Thus you start preferring to spend your free time with prospective new MLM recruits, rather than your friends and loved ones, which alienates them from you even more.



3) Pay several hundred dollars a year to go to required local and national business seminars and conferences. These usually contain nothing but hype, motivation speeches, testimonials, and new improved methods of selling and recruiting. In other words, you don't TECHNICALLY really learn anything new at these required business seminars. Your upline will not tell you this of course. If you ask them what you will learn, they will just say "It's a great seminar that will help you succeed in this business! Just come. You'll see! Do you want to be your own boss or not?" (very irritating for someone like me who wants specifics) The REAL purpose of these required business seminars is to keep you motivated and inspired with staying in the business, and collect some extra revenue in the process as well. After all, the turnover rate in MLM's is very high, and would be even higher without these large scale rallies and seminars. This is sad though because most people in MLM's (look up statistics for Amway distributors on the internet from independent sources) don't make that much and these fees alone sap up most or all of their profits.



4) The odds are bleak in that there is a 97 percent failure rate. But even if you were one of the lucky ones at the top who made it, it is inevitable that more than half of your downline must ultimately fail. (explained below) This is the heart of the problem with MLM's, because this fact alone makes them shady scams in my opinion. What this means is that even if you succeed or create a profitable downline, it will not be smooth sailing from there. The residual income you are trying to generate will never be stable, because people are dropping out all the time, which must happen due to basic math and market saturation.



If you're willing to accept all of these consequences and have no problem with it, then perhaps you are the right person for this type of business. Personally though, I don't admire people who live and breathe only one thing and are obsessed with it. People like that are not interesting and don't have much diversity, and plus it's not mentally healthy to be obsessed with just one thing, no matter how good it is. (I don't deny though, that being obsessed with something to the point of living and breathing it greatly increases your chances at succeeding at it.) I also don't like people who only like you if you're part of their MLM. It demeans a true friendship and is so wrong. A true friend likes you for you, not for how you can benefit their business or not. I thought that the person who recruited me for an MLM was a real friend, but he turned out to lose interest in me as soon as he realized that I wasn't going to be a serious part of his MLM operation. That was a real disappointer and a lesson to choose your friends wisely. I also would feel ripped off to be required to pay for expensive seminars that don't teach you anything new knowledge-wise, except to keep you motivated to stay in the scam, and also profit the organization on the side. I also would not feel good knowing that I'm making money off the failure of the majority of my downline, which is a mathematical certainty once you understand the system nuts and bolts of how MLM's work. It would make me feel like I was part of a scam.

 

[trashKENNUT]

Bubinile,

He has done very little. I've been to around 20 meetings and everytime they talk about the same thing. When I go out to prospect with him, he spends the whole day talking to strangers and not making any head way with any. I see a lot of things wrong with my uplines approach : head down, shaky hands and general bad body language. What I see is they are bringing people into the business and not being adequately trained and what happens is people get fed up quickly. A common thing is that to get people to join " the barrier to entry is high ". Who wants to be ignored and tested rigorously? No one so they leave and my team is back at square 1 talking about how they need serious people.

Terrible. In network marketing, there's only a few that actually walk the walk. It's the same everywhere.

Zac

 

[Chase]

Bubinile-

Read The Millionaire Fastlane, by M.J. DeMarco. He has a pretty scathing takedown of MLM / Amway in there, plus discusses how you can actually make money.

Sounds like he's got about $10MM more than anyone on your team, anyway.

As for following unsuccessful people, how many All Stars does the guy who can't play basketball train, and how many New York TImes bestselling authors does the guy who can't read and write train? It's the same with folks who are unsuccessful at business; their track records are equivalent.

Chase

 

[Jack Swave]

Rage and Zac thanks for the awesome replies. I'lI definitely keep your points in mind. The best thing network marketing has done for me is challenge me to be a better person in order to make money. I now have a bigger motivation to cold approach girls . Rage I agree with you, most people lie about making money . I do believe that saturation eventually takes place .

As for following unsuccessful people, how many All Stars does the guy who can't play basketball train, and how many New York TImes bestselling authors does the guy who can't read and write train? It's the same with folks who are unsuccessful at business; their track records are equivalent.

Chase

Thanks for your advice too Chase . Could you clarify though... You think I can or cannot learn from unsuccessful persons in Amway/ network marketing ? Reason why is because this is a duplicating business. Blind cannot lead blind. I see my uplines showing bad body language when approaching . I don't want to copy wrong else I'll be penniless like them.

Also I found a new group of people who are very successful. One lady who is 2 uplines from me who I can get personal training from is making $9,000 US a month . And her husband makes more . And they have been with Amway for just a year . So I don't see why I should take advice from my previous group who introduced me to the business and are broke after 2 years in. I don't want to be a " sell out ". Business is business though. Should I switch to the more successful team? If I do my previous team might have me off . How do I handle the possible future hate ?

Bubinile

 

[Tim Iron]

I did MLM in 2010 - 2011, the company I was with is GNLD. In my opinion, Multi-level marketing is an intelligent SCAM... yes scam!

My up-line kept talking about bringing people into the network instead of telling me how to sell the product. And GNLD products are over-priced, they are more affordable options in the market.

If you are going to do MLM, then at least follow the successful team and understand how they do it, in other words abandon your broke team and move to the winning team!

I said before that I'm in the Amway business. Now this isn't a business post. What I want to know is under what conditions can I follow unsuccessful people? In network marketing the persons above you are called uplines and those below are downlines.

Now on my team I see about 7 persons who have been in business for 2+ years and they claim to be my coaches yet there is one major problem. They are all still broke . When I go to prospect with them , we walk the whole day and sell probably 2 bath soaps for $5 each. Yet I end up losing money because after all that walking I buy $5 lunch and bus fare is $6. Kind of a time waste. Even my uplines / coaches don't seem successful
They want to instruct me to not to ask anyone outside the business for any advice . If they knew I was asking intelligent guys like you on a forum it would look bad. I'm not even to talk to my family about the business . According to my uplines " family and friends will be negative and push me down ".

I call that bs. Last night I spoke to a girl who has been in business for 3 months and she gets so much in detail training. I was amazed and now I'm thinking " well my team is wasting my time. If they haven't been decently successful how are they going to teach me to be successful? Two years and still at 150 points.

I told my upline I'm taking a break from the business and he seemed angry for me saying that, which is the wrong way to act . It turned me off. He kept telling me what I'm saying makes no sense . Now I'm considering switching to a more successful team. Should I? It would be kind of disrespectful to my team but I can't sit down learning from people who can't do it themselves. Besides all that I don't have any say in the business. Every opinion I make is disregarded. They claim I'm not ready. What should I do?

Bubinile

 

[trashKENNUT]

Everyone,

Not MLM/network marketing is everything bad. Please... You must know your stuff. I have bought mp3 that was cheap but lasted like so many years and it was a China company. Basically, know the price, know the thing that you buying, know everything.

Then you can manage your risk just as anything else.

Zac