When ‘Quitting’ is Not the Same As Failing

When ‘Quitting’ is Not the Same As Failing

I watched one of my favourite videos about MLM or network marketing today to remind myself why I should keep on being a network marketer.

In the video Tim Sale’s challenges the idea or rather the statistic that 95% of all MLM businesses fail in the first five years. Interestingly when I started network marketing this very statistic was quoted to me. I was told that to be a success I had to make sure I avoided being in the 95% that ‘failed’.

Tim gives the example of him and his wife deciding to learn golf. They spent a lot of money on getting the correct equipment and getting lessons. They then went to a high class golfing hotel looking forward to a great golfing week-end. As it turned out the weather was hot and humid, Tim played less well than he expected and ended up not enjoying the experience. When he got home he threw the golfing equipment in his garage and never touched it again.

Now we come to the crux of the matter. Did he write to the instructor to complain, or write an article claiming that most people ‘fail’ at golf? No, and the reason why was because he knew he had ‘quit’. He had expected to get quick results and when he failed to get them he quit.

This is the single biggest lesson new people to network marketing have to learn. Yes there are some people who take things like Pay Per Click and Google Analytics like a ‘duck to water’. As such they can wrestle the monster known as Google Ads to their advantage and drive huge amounts of traffic to their website.

However if like me the learning curve was too steep whilst it sucked a hole in my credit card account you have to either stick with it or see if there is another way.

There are other ways using social media, social networks, article marketing and Blogging to get people interested in you and then potentially your business opportunities. I happen to be more comfortable with these approaches so I use them, however that does not mean quick results. These are still crafts that have to be learned and they are not learned overnight. Here we come to the real reason for the 95% drop-out rate for network marketing, people quit they don’t fail.

So before you consider a career in network marketing decide if you are a quitter or a ‘stayer’? This is the single most important question to ask and be honest with yourself about. If you decide you are a ‘stayer’ then make another commitment – to personal development.  Bob Proctor puts it very well, as do many other success coaches, you can only attain greater wealth in proportion to the extent you develop personally. In fact this is the reason for another seemingly inexplicable statistic, 95% of all lottery winners end up back at the income level they were at before they won within 5 years. The reason? They spent their money instead of learning how to be wealthy, and there is a real difference between being wealthy and being rich. You can get rich by ‘dumb luck’, to become wealthy you have to learn about wealth and how the wealthy stay wealthy.

So in the end it all comes down to one thing if you are going to be successful – training. With thanks to Tim Sales for inspiring me to write this article.