Too many people in network marketing sell you only the optimistic and sunny side. I’m the ultimate optimist but I also know there are a few things that I have repeatedly seen in the industry that consistently cause people to fail. I’d like to share fourteen of those things to help you avoid them in the future.

1. Failure to take action: I suggest people setting up their own daily standard. What is it going to be for you? Is it introducing one person you know to the opportunity? Five new people? Ten? That will usually be congruent – or should be – with your goals, but either way, it’s important to set up your daily standard. The first thing I see go wrong with people is their failure to take action in compliance with that standard. I suggest you periodically go back and review what you committed yourself to do. 

2. Tendency to second-guess the system of your particular company: If you absolutely knew you could not fail no matter what by following your team’s system, wouldn’t you do it and do it full steam ahead? I recognize that everyone is good at something. You are probably highly skilled at something –maybe something as a career, or some degree of education in a field. Well, I know this industry very very well. There is absolutely nothing in the process that I teach by accident. There’s nothing being done that has not been carefully thought out and considered. There are so many things that I’ve tried out along the way that I found simply do not work. Don’t second guess the systems being taught – they work.

3. Failure to utilize the tools that have been provided for you: If you are deciding that you’re going to use something else other than what your leadership team is teaching and providing; or if you’ve decide that rather than presenting the business as you’ve been taught that there are other ways to do it that are more effective, then I have one simple piece of advice – do it in addition to what is taught, not instead of. 

4. Incorporating new ideas prior to having preliminary success: If you want to branch out, great! There will be plenty of opportunity after you’re making enough money at this that you consider every hour to be the best time that you’ve got. Please do not incorporate new ideas prior to achieving preliminary success.

5. Failure to understand the funnel: I refer to the funnel quite a bit as I describe the
business. When I direct someone to a preliminary message to review our business, I am putting them into the top of the funnel. When I put somebody in the top of the funnel, they don’t immediately come out the bottom of the funnel. It takes time. Sometimes it takes quite a while. In my own case, the average length of time from when I approach someone to when they join the business is 120 days. There are some people who join me immediately, right now. There are also some that watch, observe and wait to see my success. I promise you that there will be some people who will wait to see if you’re still in the business 6 months, or 9 months, or 12 months from now before they take action. They don’t want to get involved in some business and find out that you weren’t really serious about it. All different personality types look at our business. Some people join immediately. Some don’t for a year – it’s all OK.

6. Unrealistic expectations: Sometimes people have unrealistic expectations. Remember that your entry fee into most network marketing companies is very small. Mine was $4000. The time commitment that you make, the time that you spend in this business is your principle business asset. Until you’ve invested a big chunk of that asset you can’t reasonably expect to have a big return coming out of the bottom side. This is a business that builds upon itself and builds and builds and builds. That’s one of the things that I love about this business – I don’t start every month at zero. I start every month exactly where I ended last month, and then I build from there. And at the end of this month, I start at a new level as I begin next month. Please be realistic in your expectations. Some people make $2000 or $3000 their first month. Nobody, however, builds an ongoing residual income stream that takes on a life of its own in 30 or 60 or 120 days; that is just not possible. It takes a few years to build an income stream that takes on a life of its own. It takes a few years to establish an organization that is so fundamentally valid that if you step aside the income continues. 

7. Inconsistent activity: The problem that I see frequently is inconsistent activity; people who engage in the right pattern of activities but don’t do them steadily or consistently. My observation in this business is that it is a daily activity business. And again, daily for you may mean 5 days a week, or six, or seven. However, it’s easy for me to do this business today because I did it yesterday. It will be easy for me to do it tomorrow because I did it today. If we let a week or two or even several days go by without being consistent in our activities, it gets difficult. It’s like you’re starting all over again because the momentum has been lost. It is absolutely imperative that you become consistent in your activities.

8. “I’ve run out of people to talk to”: When you build the business correctly, you truly have an ever-expanding growing group of people to introduce the business to. If you’ve run out of people to talk to I would suggest to you that you need to go back and cross check whatever system you’re following, because following it correctly creates people who are observing your success. Visit the Sizzle, Sift & Burn training at www.maxteam1.com for more information.

9. My Spouse or Partner is not supportive: I hear a number of people who are challenged because their spouse or partner is non-supportive. If you’ve not taken the opportunity to get together with your sponsor or a member of your up-line with your spouse to present the business to them and show them what this could mean in your life, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if you’ve got a spouse that is non-supportive. If you’ve failed to recognize that your partner or spouse is in fact your most important prospect, then it doesn’t surprise me that he or she is relatively non-supportive. Then I would just urge you to make that a project. 

10. “I don’t have time”: When someone tells me that they don’t have time, what they’re telling me is that this business is not important enough for me to set aside something else. It’s not important enough for them to take some of their non-productive time that they’re using somewhere else and put it into this process. Fact is, we all have 168 hours weekly. If you knew, like I now know, that an hour spent here will eventually develop more leverage and more wealth than anything else you can engage in, you find time.

11. “I don’t have the financial resources”: Well, if you don’t have the financial resources to start,
that is screaming at you that you have to start. That means whatever your job, your career, your vocation – it isn’t getting it done. It’s not happening for you and so you need to do something differently. If you find yourself in that type of a financial pinch, where the tiny start up investment of this business stands in your way, then I would urge you to become resourceful and realize that you need to do something different because it’s not getting the long-term results that you want for you and your family. Invite a partner to join you and fund it or get a short term loan from a friend or family member. When following the correct pattern of activities taught by your leadership, your return on investment should be between one week and 10 weeks – that’s short term.

12. Failure to take ownership of your business: You need to take ownership of your business. I would ask that you set a goal sometime in the relatively near future at which point you view your business as your business. If you’re viewing your business as part of your up-line’s business or part of your sponsor’s business, you have not yet taken ownership of your business. You know it’s your business when you’re effectively conducting private small group presentations and/or three way phone calls for the benefit of those people whom you’ve recruited in the business. So, when you’ve become a valid part of the up-line, when you no longer think of yourself as somebody else’s down-line, but you think of yourself as somebody else’s up-line. Pretend you’ve invested an enormous amount of money in it rather than just a tiny amount.

13. Becoming emotionally involved with someone else’s decision: Sometimes people allow their attitudes to go sour when one of their new distributors quit who they had such high hopes for. I’ve simply learned that I can’t become emotionally involved with anyone else’s decision. I can only become emotionally involved with my personal decision. My personal timing is the only one that I know. I don’t know the dynamics of the consequence of what’s going on in other peoples’ lives. I always remind myself that network marketing opens its arms to everybody. There is no barrier of entry here. We welcome everybody. That means your group will wind up being a microcosm of society. It will look like the world looks. Ask yourself a few questions: Is the world full of people who are doing whatever it takes, no matter how long it takes, to accomplish huge things? People who will walk through any barrier or obstacle in order to succeed? Or is it in fact more full of people who are just willing to take what they get? People who whine about life but they’ll just take what they get. My observation is that there’s more of those people in the world than there is truly success-driven, motivated people who are willing to do what it takes to succeed. You’re going to have a handful of people who will succeed no matter what you or I do; and you’ll have some people who will drop out no matter what you or I do.

14. I feel like quitting: Sometimes I have people say to me, “Chris, I feel like quitting.” Well, if you feel like it let’s just go back and take a look at this entire pattern of activities that we’ve described. Let’s look at all that your company has to offer and all that the industry has to offer and determine what part of all of that you’re having a hard time with? What part of it do you feel is just not the very best that you’ve ever seen? And then let’s have a discussion between you and your sponsor, your up-line, and a national leader in the company and address those issues because you stand at risk at this point. If you feel like quitting you stand at risk of missing what may be the finest opportunity that has every come into your life. And it would be an absolute tragedy if you let it slip through your fingers.
I have spoken so many times about wishing the barrier of financial entry to the industry was larger. In some respects I mean that because if you had to invest $250,000 in this business, if in the first 90 days you didn’t have exactly the kind of start that you wanted to have, you wouldn’t quit.

When I opened a Realty Executives franchise in 1996, it cost over $70,000 just to open the doors. I remember my first few recruiting calls going miserably. If my barrier of entry was $300 or $1000 or even $3600, I could perhaps walk away from that. In our business, because the barrier of entry is so small I see that tendency among people, if the money doesn’t fall out of the trees in the first 2 or 3 months, they say, “I’m going to quit.” Act as though your financial investment was huge. And if your results are not like those being experienced by others, cross check your activities against the suggested process and make corrections.