DON’T BE AFRAID TO FAIL IN NETWORK MARKETING
Carmina Mevs
Copyright 2013-2014 Carmina Mevs
How a single mom got rid of her fears and discovered the insider secret to success in network marketing and how you can steal her strategies to build your own success story.
This book is Copyright ©2013-2014 Carmina Mevs (the “Author”). All Rights Reserved. Published in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical or by an information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the Author. For information please contact the Author by email at
Dear Friend,
Are you tired of fighting traffic and rushing home to uncooked dinners, unfinished homework, and a pile of laundry? Are you fed up with not having enough time to spend with your kids and significant other? Does it feel like you have nothing to show for all your hard labour after the bills have been paid? Such are the realities of modern life.
If you know in your heart that there has to be a better way to earn a living, but you didn’t know who to trust and how to do it in an online world full of scammers and empty promises, then this is the most important report that you may ever read.
My name is Carmina Mevs. I am a mom, a corporate manager, and a professional network marketer. I have failed innumerable times at many things in my personal and professional life. I have also failed at Network Marketing. Yet, through the process of failing I have discovered seven common roadblocks that every top producer has to confront and ultimately overcome before achieving his or her goals. Learn from my mistakes, and use the lessons I have learned the hard way, to escape the cycle of fear and failure.
What’s a “Corporate Drone” doing in MLM anyway?
Looking for choices, that’s what!
I had always been a hard and conscientious worker—that is, until my son was born. His birth created a paradigm shift in my perspective. I was unsettled by the idea of leaving him with strangers, yet working at home was simply not an option. It was thislack of freedom,coupled with despair that drew me to the home business industry. But, of course, things did not go as smoothly as I would have liked. Under the pressure of self-imposed deadlines, I jumped from one network marketing company to the next looking for the proverbial golden goose. Finally, burned out, with a garage full of products that I couldn’t possibly consume in three lifetimes, I gave up and swore that I would never do MLM again. Ever!
Fast forward several years later, I landed my dream job in New York City. Good salary, good team—I couldn’t ask for more. Until it happened. One morning, all employees got called into the big boss’ office and we heard the words that every working person dreads: Downsizing. “Cuts” were going to have to be made because the company didn’t meet its numbers. Two hundred people walked into work that morning with a job and left the building a few hours later, without one. I wasn’t one of them.
But no one had seen this coming. I went home that day and pondered on the reality of my situation: I was a single mom with a single source of income, divorced, saddled with a hefty mortgage, and worried sick about my financial future.
Then I remembered there was another way …
Having failed previously with six different Network Marketing companies, it would be an understatement to say that I was sceptical and understandably afraid to fail at it again. Yet I knew that it was possible to earn a full time income in Network Marketing. I wasn’t looking for “gangster money”. All I wanted was some security for my child and me—extra money to invest in his college education and a nest for my retirement. Perhaps more significantly, I was looking for an escape from a career that left me unfulfilled and stressed out. I completed several months of research, looked at compensation plans, eavesdropped on business opportunity calls, and talked to different potential sponsors before I took the plunge. But more importantly, I met the man who would forever change my life and perspective on Network Marketing.
He gave me permission to dream again. He armed me with a blueprint and a plan that would get me to $20,000 a month in three years. And the best part was: NO family and friends, NO home parties and NO hotel meetings. “I will teach you the skills, but they will do you no good until we get to the root of your failures. And the root is fear,” he told me. “If you take a close hard look at every legitimate network marketing company that you’ve been in, you will always find that some people were making a quiet fortune while most, like you, didn’t make a dime. Those top producers have access to the same products, get paid from the same comp plan and work under same leadership as you. So, what’s the difference between you and them?” To answer that question I had to dig deep and answer a bigger, more important question….
Are You Willing to Fail?
Until you accept that “failures are milestones on the success journey” and embrace them as allies, you will not get far in anything you do. “You must welcome mistakes and risk failing by taking action” (Maxwell). That’s the only way you will ever learn, or earn anything of significance. “Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one's better abilities nor ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on ideas, to take a calculated risk and to act”(Maxwell Maltz).
Pat yourself on the back.
By downloading this e-book, you took an important first step—an active step that has already separated you from most people who are stuck somewhere between doubt and confusion and don’t even know it. Let’s identify the 7 key areas where fear is holding you back when it comes to starting and building your network marketing business and, more importantly, let me show you how to overcome them.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page Number
7 Fears that Hold you Back & How to Overcome Them7
Fear #1: Loss of Social Esteem7
Fear #2: Wasting Time and Money8
Fear #3: Not knowing What to Do9
Fear #4: Starting Over10
Fear #5: Making Money From People12
Fear #6: People Joining Your Team and Not Making Any Money13
Fear #7: Losing Out on Something Better 14
Connect with me15
Bibliography16
7 Fears that Hold you Back & How to Overcome Them
Fear #1: Loss of Social Esteem
What will people think?
“You must accept a temporary loss of social esteem
from ignorant people”
Eric Worre
All of a sudden the whole notion of Network Marketing seems to be beneath your social status. The fact is that, whenever anyone deviates from the “normal” path—for example, starting a business, going back to college at age sixty, following an artistic passion, etc.—people assume that these people have lost their minds. Can you imagine what people would think if, suddenly, I renounced my job and became a nun? (Which I did when I turned 19).Everybody has an opinion, but no one is an expert on your life. Your views, wants, and ideas are as valid as anyone else’s. I think one of the reasons that we fear the opinion of others after we’ve joined a Network Marketing company is because, we have “an image firmly planted in our mind of a high-pressure salesperson trying to convince everyone how easily they can become a millionaire if only they and their friends and their friends’ friends and so on would buy and sell vitamins with him.” (Smith, n.d.). But that’s what amateurs do. You have to stop thinking about your business as this little deal you have on the side. You are the CEO of an advertising agency, of a distribution center for whatever network marketing company you happen to be associated with. This business has the potential of earning you millions of dollars, you can even pass it down to your children. Go ask Dexter Yager or Holton Buggs about their little side deals.
For a long time I tortured myself, thinking that the only way to build a network marketing business was through family and friends. I vehemently hated thatpart of doing business but thought that, unless I started by approaching people I knew, I would never be a success. Still, I procrastinated before eventually pulling out my list of contacts, mustering the courage to make one phone call or send one email, secretly hoping I would get a voicemail or that my email would get lost in cyber space. Five was my personal limit. After getting mostly polite “No Thank You’s”, I would retreat and feel like a failure for days on end. Thankfully, I discovered that it was not necessary to begin with friends and family; in fact, it was better not to do so. Mark Yarnell, the Network Marketing legend and author of the classic Your First Year in Network Marketing, is pretty emphatic about this point. He says, “Save your friends and family for later when you are making money”. You heard right, you don’t have to go to your friends & family! Don’t take this the wrong way but most of your family and friends don’t qualify to run a home business. At most, they could make good customers and after witnessing your success they might get curious but I wouldn’t counton it.
Instead, learn to market your products and business opportunity on a greater scale, create your leads, build your marketing funnel and watch your business explode with or without family and friends.
Tool #1: Surround yourself with like-minded, successful people
Ignore the naysayers and find an online community or group of people who share your ambitions. One online community that I rely on heavily for daily motivation and encouragement is NetworkMarketingPro.com. The website features video interviews of ordinary people who earn 1 million + in network marketing. You should take some time~ to see what these people look like (surprisingly ordinary), and hear their message, in order to begin to understand that they are no different than you or me. There’s nothing special about them except that they were willing to, as Nobel laureate Samuel Beckett said, “try again, fail again and fail better”. So go ahead and bookmark that website.
It’s…
Fear #2: Wasting Time and Money
Can you guarantee me a substantial income?
NO.But believe me I have asked the same question myself. Most of us are accustomed to trading hours for dollars, and we feel uneasy about puffing time, money and effort into a project that does not immediately produce a profit. It’s an aberrant mind frame for most of us, but understand that this is the mentality of an employee, not that of an entrepreneur. It’s like signing up for a gym membership and asking the owner to guarantee you a 6-pack.
The only guarantee you will ever get in Network Marketing is that the business model works. It works and has been working for tens of thousands of people around the world who earn $500, $1000, $5000 a month and much more. It is a documented fact that Network Marketing has produced more millionaires than any other industry.
Network Marketing is not on trial.
The real question is:
Can you guarantee your efforts?
Do you find yourself perpetually busy but at the end of the day you’ve accomplished absolutely nothing to move your business forward? While it’s great that you’re taking action, it’s just as important to take the right kind of action. I know your head is full of useless acronyms, but make room for one more: IPA. Income Producing Activity. Any time and money you spend in your business must be an IPA. What qualifies as an IPA? If you’re in business with the intent of making a profit, an IPA is activity that puts you in front of people who are qualified to do business with you.
Everything else is busy work. Examples of IPA include talking to a prospective buyer or team member, generating leads, or doing a presentation. Examples of non-IPA include training, idle chit chats on Facebook, and talking to distributors or customers who are already in your business. Basically, you needto budget for your business. This includes a time budget and a money budget.
Tool #2: Time and Money Management Formula
Here are the magic numbers for time management:
80-19-1
It means:
8o% of your time should be spent in IPAs (Income Producing Activities, i.e., talk to people, talk to people, talk to people. Get it?)
19% team building, e.g., helping your new team member get started, following up with your customer, etc.
1% in problem solving
Let’s assume that you took an honest look at your schedule and determined that you have 10 solid hoursa week to dedicate to building your fortune. Here’s how you would spend those hours:
* 8o% or 8 hours of IPAs
*19% or 1.5 hours of training a new team member (your personal development time is not included here) or following up with customers. Outsource your training! You don’t have to know it all and do it all. See Tool #3 for another free resource
*1% or 6 minutes of problem-solving. What can you do in six minutes, you ask? Six minutes is just enough time to tell your team members or clients experiencing issues with their commission check or order to “Grab a pen and paper and write this number down”. Be quick and decisive about directing people to your company’s customer service line. You may feel obligated to solve everybody’s problems but, considering that you will end up calling customer service anyway, why not empower your team and clients to do it themselves?
Your time is valuable.
Here’s another set of magic numbers. This is the money management formula: 70-10-10-10
Think of your money in percentages, not in dollar amounts. What the formula above indicates is that:You should live off of 70% of your salary. These are your everyday and necessary expenses. Next, put 10% in a savings account that you should forget even exists. Consider tithing 10%, or giving it to a reputable non-profit organization. Finally, the last 10% should go toward investing in your business and potential fortune. As a side note, I host a monthly money management class online; if you’re interested in that final nudge to wake you up about your finances.
Be sure to sign up for the next one at
Fear #3: Not Knowing What to Do
It’s fair to say that most of us don’t want to embarrass ourselves. We don’t want to look stupid. While I can sympathize let me be candid with you: before you can be great at anything, you’ll have to be good first; before you can be good, you’ll have to accept the fact that you’ll be mediocre, and before you even get to mediocre, you will suck at it!
Honest to goodness, nobody cares how poorly you delivered that presentation or fumbled through the entire call! I say this with a lot of TLC: You’re not half as important as you think. People don’t carry around a ledger of your most embarrassing moments to relive them in their downtime. Take it from someone who, in some dimension probably holds world records for legendary blunders and faux-pas. But you know what? I’m still here, and I’m still standing! I took risks and I learned. As my long-time hero Arnold Schwarzenegger wouldsay, “What’s the point of being on this earth if all you want to do is be liked by everyone and avoid trouble?”
When I joined my first Network Marketing Opportunity, I had no clue what I was doing. What’s a comp plan? I have an upline? Wait. . .I’m a downline!
—those terms don’t even exist in the English dictionary! All I understood at the time was that I was supposed to drink some pricey shakes and eat some fancy protein bars, (I had some baby weight to lose anyway), wear a big button everywhere I went, and tell everyone I knew about my miracle products that were going to make me rich overnight!
There’s a saying in the industry about new distributors. We call them “ignorance on fire”. It can be a good thing, to some degree, but it’s mostly a bad one from my experience. Ignorance on Fire means that you go around harassing your friends and family about your new deal, turning your Facebook wall into a billboard for your company’s product line and blasting update emails that no one reads. What youdon’t know is that your friends and family secretly hide your status updates from their news feeds and automatically filter your emails and trash them.
For the love of all that is good, please stop interrupting people’s lives with your sales pitch! Stop begging for attention in an attempt to sell them something. Instead learn to market professionally and appropriately. Once you master Attraction Marketing, you will no longer be doing the chasing. You will no longer get rejected. You will be the one saying “no thanks”. I know it’s hard to believe right now, but I’m going to ask you to suspend disbelief for a minute and hear me out. The Direct Selling Association statistics revealed that in 2013, the U.S market experienced a record high in Total Direct Sales numbers. The annual sales peaked at $32.67 Billion—that’s in the U.S. alone! At the end of 2013, i6.8 million people were part of the network marketing salesforce, which, by the way, is only 13.8% of U.S households (we have a lot of work to do). So you see, there are plenty of fish in the sea, you just need to know where to cast yournet. The good news is, all of this can be learned.