Starting out in the Insurance and Investment Business at the ripe old age of 20, it took a while for me to get my feet under me and actually start making some money. It turns out that giving financial planning advice to 40, 50 and 60 year-olds, when you're in your early 20's, isn't a recipe for fast success. But I learned a lot during those lean years, in a lot of different ways.
So, fast forward to age 29, I'm finally making a good living and I developed a small, but growing client base of business owners who have placed their faith in me and my advice. I was also divorced by that time and had joint custody of my 7 year old daughter - supporting two families.
It was at this time that I met Network Marketing for the first time.
The person that introduced me to Network Marketing was actually one of the leading real estate agents in Illinois (and in the country for that matter), for the company he worked for.
So, why would someone so successful already, SWITCH to a career in Network Marketing and give up his Very Lucrative Real Estate practice? In a word...Control!
He made lots of money, but he had very little control over his time. What he saw in the Network Marketing Business Model, was the ability to replicate (or potentially even increase) his current income AND make this NEW source of income Residual (repeating) - instead of having to recreate it every single year like he had been doing, ultimately allowing him to take back his life. You see, this guy understood the concept of Network Marketing and the benefit of hard work. He knew that if he applied the same type of effort he applied to building his real estate business, he would be able to build a successful Network Marketing Business as well.
To this day, I can't remember if he prospected me or I was prospecting him for a financial planning appointment. But that doesn't matter. What we ended up discussing was his business opportunity in the Network Marketing space. He explained to me everything I just pointed out about his history and the success he was currently having in Network Marketing. He then went on to explain to me how this whole Network Marketing "Thing" worked. What it was and what it wasn't...and what the potential could be.
Even though I was finally having success in my own business, I just really caught the vision that he was showing me. It just made sense...a lot of sense. Being in the Financial Planning Business, I understood numbers and complicated concepts (not that Network Marketing is all that complicated) and therefore, I developed a healthy and realistic view of what I might be able to do with this business model. I didn't have any negative, preconceived opinions about it and so I signed up and got started!
BUT, and there is always a but...(right?).
Things really didn't work out for me in the beginning, having had a couple of very disappointing events early on. Yet, I still had a big monthly "nut to crack", being a single parent, so I did what most people do in this business....I gave up completely, before I even really got started. Basically...after those first couple of failures, I was scared to death to divert any time away from my Insurance Business, to do anything else where I'd be starting up all over again. In my mind, that was just not going to happen.
As for the guy who recruited me, he was awesome. He offered to help me figure things out and he offered up words of encouragement. But in the end, I was done and nothing he or anyone else could say was going to change my mind.
By the way, that guy left that original Network Marketing company, even though he achieved a significant amount of success with them, for another company in Florida, where he went on to become one of the Network Marketing industry's highest producing distributors.
MAYBE, just maybe, I might have given up.....just a little too soon?
Anyway, the concept of Network Marketing never left me. Every 3, 4 or 5 years, something would happen that would make this idea come back into my consciousness. And I would think about it, really think about it, for a couple of weeks and then I would ultimately discard it....over and over and over again. Until......
The end of 2016.
You see, during the many times that the idea came back to me, I thought about all the positives and about all the negatives. I thought about Why the idea worked and Why it didn't. Ultimately, I came to the conclusion, believe it or not, that the thing that made this whole business work, was also the reason it didn't. And that reason....PEOPLE!
Let me explain, because I know JUST how ridiculous that must sound to you!
Network Marketing is about LEVERAGE. All of the distributors involved are not only responsible for developing a relatively small, but loyal customer base, they are also responsible for creating teams of other distributors (people who want to be in business for themselves too), who go on to develop small but loyal customer bases of their very own and ultimately their own teams of other distributors, and so on and so on and so on.
So there's the Leverage...it's in the people. People who desire to build something Significant and Meaningful for themselves and their families, by finding, coaching and helping other People who want to build something Big and Important as well.
And that's an incredibly positive and empowering thing. Actually, it's all quite Amazing and even Beautiful, when you think about the potential reach that this type of business model has. Especially when you represent a really great company, with truly effective products, that also has an International Presence.
HOWEVER, here's the problem:
Since almost ANYONE can join a Network Marketing company AND because there's RELATIVELY LITTLE COST involved to do so AND since you're YOUR OWN BOSS and not ACCOUNTABLE to anyone else, lots and lots and lots of people get all excited and then they "Sign Up", mostly because it was just so easy to do so. Basically, in most Network Marketing companies, there's either no barrier to entry or it's relatively very, very low.
Now, due to that ease of entry, so many people join, but most of those people don't actually even try to LEARN THE BUSINESS to any extent or how it all works, let alone how to relay or explain the business model to anyone else. And because the person who introduced them to the business in the first place, probably doesn't know much more than they do, most of those new people start having difficulties almost immediately! Some don't even get out of the gate. Now, if those people do get lucky enough to sponsor two or three people into the business themselves, just out of pure enthusiasm, those new distributors are at risk of failing right away as well. It can really become a vicious cycle.
This truly can be a business of the blind, leading the blind to more blind people to lead!
It's because of this lack of knowledge and understanding, in addition to not really treating their new business like an actual "real" business, that most of those people fail.
On the other hand, this is also a business of "Enlightened Self-Interest", or what I like to refer to as "INTERDEPENDENCE"...where we all need and help each other, in order to make things work out successfully for ALL of US! So, when new distributors view and then approach their brand new Network Marketing Business within this context, they are much more INTENTIONAL about learning the business (and their products), acquiring a core group of customers and then building their own team of distributors...who they then Lead, Coach and Train to have their own successful businesses.
This is truly knowing that, "I can't be successful, really successful", unless the people I introduce to the business actually build successful businesses themselves. AND...if someone is smart enough to understand that concept, then they probably already "get" that this is A REAL BUSINESS and as such, they also "get" that there are things to learn and things to apply, in order to make it a successful business.
In Other Words, YOU DO HAVE A VOTE IN THE MATTER. The people who make it in this business, especially those coming out of other successful careers, weren't just lucky....They were absolutely INTENTIONAL about it. They had to be. They had something on the line.
Make no mistake about it, there are countless people who have Intentionally Created successful businesses in this industry. And brand new people do it all the time as well.
Yet, there are no guarantees in any business, let alone a start up. Your approach to the business is critical, whether it's Network Marketing or any other business model. And since I committed to following this path, I've also committed to that theme of INTERDEPENDENCE. Educating and working with those I sponsor into their own Network Marketing Businesses, so that they can be successful by finding and then helping other people to be successful as well.
To that end, I developed certain strategies that I believe will help everyone have more success and more fun in building a lasting Network Marketing Business of their very own. (For some examples of this, see "I Reverse Engineered Key Parts of this Business" on the Home Page)
Finally, This Time Around, I was not recruited into this business by anyone or any company. It all came about from my own INTENTIONAL thoughts and actions over the last few years. But when it came time to actually launch my business, I needed a Company and I needed a Sponsor within that company to work with. Although the Network Marketing company you partner with and the products that it sells are INCREDIBLY important, I believe that your sponsor (referred to as your Upline or your Recruiter) is even more important. Vitally Important.
So with that thought in mind, I set out to "Recruit the Recruiter", so to speak. I was looking for someone with many years of Successful Experience who could not only be an asset to me, but to the people I sponsored, as I built my team and they built theirs.
The person I wanted and picked to work with is Dan McCormick and the company he represents is Nu Skin Enterprises, International.
Dan is 57 and he has been in the Network Marketing Business for 37 years. He's been incredibly successful over the years and is very well known, both inside Nu Skin and within the industry itself. He has a wealth of knowledge and experience, which he shares every Saturday morning, on his "Mastermind Training Circle" Facebook page (10:00 am CT). He's done that for the last 17 years in a row. (Yes, I know that Facebook hasn't been around for that long, but before Facebook, he did it via Internet Radio)
You should know that Dan wasn't all in at first, because at this point in his career, he really doesn't have to work with "Some Guy" he's never met, from a city 1,700 miles away from his home in Southern California! This could prove to be more work for him than it's worth.
But it was my INTENTION to bring one of the best of the best to the table, for the benefit of the team I INTEND to create. As of October 26th, 2019, after having dinner at Fisherman's Restaurant, on the pier in San Clemente, California, Dan and I agreed to work together and now I'm officially an "Interdependent" Distributor with one of the best Network Marketing Companies out there....
Nu Skin Enterprises, International.
Below is a link to the replay of his Mastermind Taring Circle class from the morning of October 26th, talking about our up coming meeting later that evening. I had no idea, until about a week later, that he even discussed this idea with anyone else at that point, let alone him sharing it with his Facebook audience. In addition to that being a "pretty cool surprise" for me, I'm sharing this part of the story with you, in order to demonstrate the Power of INTENTION, which we ALL of us have inside of ourselves and that we ALL need to use more regularly, in order to make any of our businesses aspirations successful ones.
Thank you so much reading all this. I hope it wasn't too boring, but I strongly feel that it's important for you know exactly how all of this came to be in the first place.
Now having said all that, the MOST IMPORTANT STORY OF ALL is yours...and I would love the opportunity to help you write it! At least to help you get it started!!
Ed Milewski
View the replay of Dan's Mastermind Training Circle class from 10/26/2019 here.