Today’s post may blow you away. In this post I share EXACTLY why twice in my life I chose Network Marketing and why I continue to stay in this profession.
The truth is with my ability to do online marketing, I COULD choose any other profession, but let me share why I think this is the best profession for me.
A Little Vulnerability…
I hire a lot of coaches OUTSIDE the Network Marketing profession. The reason why is there are a lot of VERY strong online marketers and coaches that are NOT in our profession and about two years ago one of them asked me…
“When are you going to get out of that rinky dink Network Marketing profession?”
And it honestly screwed me up a bit. Not because I cared that they thought it was rinky dink but the fact that maybe I was thinking too small or maybe I wasn’t playing at my highest level or had allowed myself to be comfortable. He thought I should be more in real estate or in the more widely accepted profession of being a sales trainer.
I honestly struggled with that for the last two years, in the back of my mind, wondering if I should be thinking bigger. The truth is, I realized I am exactly where I am supposed to be with the help of one of my coaches (love ya Lisa Sasevich!) let me explain why.
First, Why I Chose Network Marketing..Twice
**Warning: There are probably A LOT of grammar issues in the below text, this is a transcription of the below video that I thought you might like to read as well as see the video if you wanted.
I want to paint a picture for you. I had worked my way up corporate America and I was working a decent amount of hours. I know some people worked way more hours than I did, but working long hours, making a decent income. I was making not a bad salary. I read a book. I read a couple books, actually. I read “Building Wealth,” by one of my coaches Russ Whitney. I read “Rich Dad, Poor Dad,” and it really hammered the whole concept of residual income and passive income, of which I had none. I had zero. I was working and slaving away, and if I stopped showing up, then they would stop paying me. I read this, and I thought, “Holy cow! Wow, what if I could get my residual income high enough to cover my bills? Wow, that’d be really sweet.”
I had some friends that were doing real estate and so I got into real estate. Me and a partner started buying rental properties, and in my area, the only rental properties that would actually cash flow were lower income properties. We were going into pretty rough neighborhoods, not the nicest neighborhoods, a lot of drugs, lot of crime, lot of violence. We were buying these rental properties, and pretty soon being threatened by drug dealers. We had all kinds of interesting scenarios, but we kept doing it and we actually built up some residual income, which was great. If it cash flowed, and those of you who are network marketers, I want you to understand this. If it cash flowed $100 a month, we would buy it. We would take money out of our home equity line and we would put a down payment on it and we would commit to, the lowest we had was a $30,000 mortgage, the highest was, I don’t remember off the top of my head, probably $600,000.
Peanut Butter on the Walls
I want you to think about that, network marketers. For $100 supposed passive income, we would take on minimum, $30,000 worth of risk. That sounds like a winning game plan, right, network marketers? Some of you are beating yourself up because you only have $100 residual. I want you to just keep in mind what we would do for $100 residual. We would go there, we would collect the money, we would get chased. I literally had two high-speed chases of me getting the hell out of dodge, because I was being chased. We had people trash the place. Had one time where they smeared peanut butter all over the walls, then they proceeded to knock holes in every single wall. They took a sledgehammer to the toilet, destroyed it. Water everywhere. Sink removed, peanut butter holes in the walls, and they were gone. Oh, by the way, they hadn’t paid in two months.
I’m not saying that real estate isn’t a good profession. I’m not saying that it’s not a good investment. I’m just saying it is not low risk, it is not low overhead, and we never got to the point where it was actually passive. We never got to that point. We were very active. We had to show up, we had to fix things, we had to fill vacancies, we had to call contractors to fix the holes in the walls. It was never actually passive for us.
In February of 2006, someone shared with me network marketing and said, ‘Hey, check this thing out.” I’m like, “Okay, I’ve heard bad things about network marketing, I don’t think so, man.” They showed me that there were people making some serious money. Their overhead, for that company, was $250 a month. $250 a month, no contract, no drug dealers, no high speed chases, no insurance liabilities. If someone slipped and fell at a home meeting, they weren’t sued. Oh, by the way, the person that they introduced me to was making $8,000 a month. Their overhead, $250 a month. They were getting juice. I won’t go into the name, but they were getting juice, 250 bucks juice a month, and I’m like, “What do you do with all that juice?” They said, “Ray, if I wanted to, I could pour it on the lawn.” I’m like, “Got it. Okay.” They’re like, “If I want I can just uncap it and I pour it out, who cares? I’m making 8,000 a month.” I’m like, “Got it, all right, makes sense.”
That is what changed my mindset about network marketing because I had been a real investor. I had been a real entrepreneur. We had over $1 million in debt and we’re making less than this person, who had a $250 a month overhead that could pour it out on the lawn, making $8,000 a month passively. Very different.
That’s why I chose to get inside network marketing. The second time I chose network marketing was July of 2009, where I had lost it all in real estate. I’d lost it all. When the market changed, you know all those low-income rental houses? We used to be able to rent them for, some of them were two-bedroom, pretty nice places we were able to rent because of the demand for $800 a month. That dipped to $500 a month. I’m not a mathematician, but if you’re making $100 at $800 a month, and it drops to $500 a month, I think mathematically, that’s not a good idea. Not a good idea. All of a sudden instead of making a little bit, we were now losing a lot, because many of them were now vacant.
The market changed. We got our butts kicked hard. I was at a point where I was in personal foreclosure. Not only had I lost my investments, not only had I lost the money that I had made, but I was in personal foreclosure, my own house, and the thought of me starting to buy more real estate sure didn’t sound great. The thought of me buying a franchise didn’t sound great. The thought of me going back to a job didn’t sound great. I looked at the lowest risk, lowest overhead way to possibly create residual income, and that’s network marketing. That’s when I rejoined network marketing and got serious about it and built up an impressive little bit of business there. We became the number one income earners in that company, earning over $1 million in commissions, doing over $50,000 a month, and that is the two times and two reasons that I chose network marketing.
Why I Continue to Choose Network Marketing
Now let me blow your mind. Get ready for mind blown. So far have you gotten value from this? Feel free to share, if you have.
Why do I continue to choose the network marketing profession? This is an important question. Folks, I can tell you right now that I can hold my own when it comes to marketing with anyone in any niche. There are people that are smarter, but I can hold my own. If I went back into real estate, I assure you, I would destroy, I would dominate everyone in my local area. I believe I can go into any profession and crush it with my online marketing and content creation skills. I’ve chatted with the best of the best in real estate marketing. I’ve chatted with the best of the best internet marketers, affiliate marketers. Why do I continue to choose the network marketing profession? This is going to open your eyes.
I want you to think of, only a few of you know some of the names that I’m about to give. I want you to think about online marketing. Who is the best of the best of the best in online marketing? You could argue Frank Kern. You could say Ryan Deiss. You could say Perry Belcher. There’s a few names, Russell Brunson, for sure. You could put him up there. You can name a lot of those types of people, infinitely skilled, and let me just assure you, every person I’ve mentioned is more skilled in online marketing than I am. I feel that I can hold my own, I can have conversations with them, at least, but they’re better skilled than I am when it comes to online marketing.
Before I give you the answer that is going to blow you away, let me share with you my vision. I believe that me and my wife will go on to create a $100 million coaching and training company that is related inside the network marketing profession. I believe that. The reason I believe that is I believe for a couple of things. One, supply and demand. I think network marketing is one of the most in-demand professions that exists when it comes to education, coaching, and mentorship. I believe there’s so many network marketers that want and desire to improve their lives, to get better educated, to get better mentoring, to get coaching products and education products. I believe the demand is there. Not only do I believe in our value, but I believe we will continue to invest, to continue to raise our value. I’ve got to update my numbers now. We just stroked another check for some coaching, so we are now, we’ve invested $264,000 in coaching in the last two years. Why? Because we want to continuously raise our value so that we can help and impact other people. $264,000. That’s crazy. Someone once said, “You can buy a house for that.” Yeah, you could. Or you could impact 10 million people. See what I did there? With that $264,000 in investment, I believe over the course of our lifetime, we will impact 10 million people on this planet. That’s what I believe.
It’s only because we want to continue to raise our value. Let’s put some pieces together. One, network marketing is very in demand to learn and get educated. There’s a lot of people that desire education, coaching, mentorship, info products, etc. Number two, we believe in our value and we believe in the value that we will continue to grow. Now comes number three. This is the mind blow. You name the best of the best in any industry.
If we know that there’s a big demand in the network marketing profession, I think it’s over $120 billion industry. If we know that there’s a lot of demand for good training, coaching, masterminding, mentoring, info products, etc. Number two, if we believe in our value and the continued growth of the value, and if we tie that into our vision, the vision, what drives me, is impacting people. Money is a result of that drive. We make money, we make good money. But that isn’t, “I must make money.” It’s, I want to impact people.
If all of those are true, if I want to impact people, if there’s a big demand in this profession, we believe, and we believe in our value to deliver and help with that demand, then network marketing makes the most sense, and here’s why. I’ll give you an example. One of the best internet marketers on planet Earth, Ryan Deiss. I was at his traffic and conversion event last year, and I’m going again this year. Amazing event. It’s fantastic. Really good. Really, seriously good. There were about 3,000 people in that room, I believe. It may have been a little bit less, it was definitely not more than 3,000. Let’s say 3,000. Great. I want you to realize something. We have coaching clients in all different companies. Just last month, I heard of a company having 27,000 people at their event. The month before that, I know I have a coaching client, they had 20,000 at their event. Next month, I’m sharing the stage with Tony Robbins, Kiyosaki and Bob Proctor at Eric Worre’s event, and they’ll have 10 to 12,000. I’m only talking the U.S. and I’m talking two companies and a generic event.
You name me a profession that gets 10,0000 to 20,000 people every month to some event somewhere. You name me that profession. Is it real estate? Name me the guru. Name me a guru that gets 20,000 people to their event. It doesn’t happen. If you want to make an impact, this is the place to be. This is the place to be. I’ll tell you something special. I just got asked to speak at the MLM legal event with Jeffery Babner, Mike Sheffield, one’s an attorney and one’s more of a software consultant. Shout-out to my boy Robert Proctor, Multi-Soft in Cape Coral, Florida. He made the introductions, and I’m now talking with different companies to possibly start providing training for their organization.
We’re in network marketing, but I don’t publicly market our company. We publicly market our training company because we serve a lot of clients and out of respect for them. As a trainer, if my goal is to impact more lives, then network marketing is the best platform you could possibly get. Name me another guru, name me one, that gets 20,000 people to their events. Then name me that they do it every month. Doesn’t exist. Not in real estate, not in internet marketing, not in you name it. Not in sales. The only thing that you could throw out there would be politics. Does Trump get 20,000 people at an event? He does.
Network marketing, if your goal is to impact other people, this is the place that I chose. It’s the place that I continue to choose, and it’s the place that maybe you should choose, too, to really stick to.
There’s my rant. There’s why I chose network marketing in two different stages of my life. It’s why I continue to choose network marketing. I realize that if I wanted to, I could launch a real estate marketing company tomorrow and it would take me a little bit of time, but I could surpass what we’re currently doing in the network marketing profession. I have no problems with that. I fully believe that. But I won’t because I believe that the platform, the profession of network marketing has the capacity to impact more lives than any other profession out there. What other profession has 20,000 people show up a month just in the U.S.? Next month, we have the company we’re involved in. They’re going to have an event, they’ve got 16,000 people going. Same weekend. Same weekend as Eric Worre, he’ll have 10 to 12,000. Name me another profession. Sales, nope. Internet marketing, nope. Real estate, no. Generic entrepreneurship, no. None of them.
Hope you got value from this, if you did feel free to share.
I appreciate you guys so much. Have an amazing day.
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