Don’t we hear the strangest quotes on Facebook sometimes? Yesterday I was reading someone posting a quote suggesting that only lazy people view people up to something as “obsessed”. I thought it was a little severe to be honest and I’ll share with you why.
The last Network Marketing company I was with prior to the one I am involved with now, the word ‘obsessed’ came up a lot for me. You see, I really do feel that there is a fine line between really loving what you do and then allowing it take over your life to a destructive level. Last week I attended a Meet Up and met a Network Marketer who told me that he was staying at the Meet Up until late because he had a team call to be on at11pm and then had to be up at 5am to be on another. The first point that struck me was “wow, that is dedication”. But what came out of my mouth was “be careful not to burn yourself out.” And I am sincerely hoping that he really got the message.
Once upon a time it used to take me around half a day just to take care of admin and be on the team’s communication system. I would sit on those calls for around 3 hours a day listening to other people share testimonials, little wins, promote upcoming events etc etc. All stuff that – quite frankly – I could read from an e-mail or could be put quite succinctly into a quick vimeo video. But no, these things used to go on and on for hours and I quite literally would be harangued if I didn’t listen to all of it. All I wanted to do was run my business – make the calls, send out the information, do the follow ups. I began feeling resentful as I felt as though I was spending a significant amount of my time on these calls and reading e-mails and on the training site. I saw it as overkill.
One of the main reasons I left that particular company was a lack of integrity. Something that is extremely important to me personally. I feel it is very difficult to transform the image and stigma of our industry unless we operate in integrity at all times. We are professionals, so we need to act like professionals. Calling me up after surgery when I’m in recovery telling the hospital that “it’s urgent” to find out when I was returning to my business isn’t operating in integrity. Instructing a Hotel to conduct a “wellness check” on our room without our permission because we weren’t answering her calls whilst overseas definitely is not operating in integrity. Calling me on a Sunday afternoon and leaving a message on my voicemail demanding to know why I was “ignoring your upline” is not only in plain bad taste, but again isn’t operating in integrity. And the final nail in the coffin for me was telling me an upline mega-wealthy distributor was flying in from America to do a special training for our group in Sydney and then turning up only to find he wasn’t even in the country – again lacks major integrity. So needless to say I left that company. I will never bag the company or its products, however the way people operated – bullying, threatening, demeaning, placing conditions – just isn’t the way I want to see Network Marketing move forward. In fact, I want to see this kind of behaviour stamped out completely. It’s my mission to conduct myself the exact opposite.
Yet I see this happen over and over and over again. Organizations (note that I said that instead of companies) basically use stand over tactics to pressure people in their team to market and do the calls and if they aren’t doing the deal then they “won’t work with them”. “I won’t help you” was a familiar sentence I heard often. Network Marketing is built on the premise of you win – I win. It’s everyone helping everyone else to succeed so that they do too. It’s the purest and most honest commission there is and yet people are manipulating it for all of the wrong reasons. This high pressure has to stop. Your business is not going to die if you miss that one conference call. That one webinar because you’re getting married. That one event because your child is in hospital. Remember the reasons why YOU got started in this industry to begin with. I’m guessing it has something to with time freedom and life balance. Working your business 7 days a week, over 12 hours a day with no breaks (unless you’re attending a company sponsored event) is the quickest way to exhaustion there is. Doing calls up until Midnight because you have team in the United States and getting up at 4am because you have team in Europe is just plain madness in my mind. You are not giving your team your best by being sleep deprived and working yourself into an early grave. This is not a traditional bricks and mortar business whereby you need to be doing this. It is entirely reasonable and definitely possible to build yourself a little nest egg by working 2 – 3 hours a day, 2 – 4 days a week for 3 – 5 years of your life. That is what attracts most people to our industry. If you told people up front that they would need to be team calls at 11pm and then again 5am and have to do training for 2 – 3 hours a day on top of calling prospects and following up customers, I’m sorry to say but most would say “no thanks”. Most people work jobs and don’t work those kinds of hours now so why would they trade what they are doing now for more hours and less pay initially? It’s not exactly sexy is it?
Now I fully appreciate many of you reading this are very passionate and GOOD! I bloody well hope so because we need more of you. However, I preface this with a warning. Be careful not to burn yourself out. Don’t get up at 4am and stay up until Midnight working with your US and UK teams. Delegate your leadership to do that for you. No-one expects you to burn the candle at both ends to train them. Believe me. And people will do what you do. If they see you burning yourself out, they will opt out. And fast. You want retention so remember that everything you are doing is being watched by everyone in your group. If you want people to stick around, make it fun. Make it simple. Make it time leveraged. Longevity and engagement in your team depends on it.
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