Business Building Corner

New graduates are completing one chapter of their lives and starting another, perhaps the most important of their lives. This transitional period can be stressful in a person’s life, and how it’s handled often tends to be a precursor to how future challenges are faced. The same holds true for networking business builders who are advancing in rank. The question is: What’s the next step?

Before graduation, most students take the time to reflect on their knowledge and abilities in order to plan for the future. Many high school graduates will have applied for college, college graduates may have applied for graduate school; and others in both categories will be searching for job opportunities. Whatever the case may be, there’s a pretty significant lifestyle change that takes place.

Network marketing business builders usually go through a similar process of contemplation. Most have had some experience in a corporate or retail setting, felt some level of disgruntlement, and consciously searched for an alternative to the proverbial 9 to 5 job. Taking on something new and different can also be stressful, since there are inherent differences in the network marketing business model from that of a traditional company or retail front:

• Everyone starts from scratch in network marketing, whereas in a company or retail store, there are entry levels, middle management and executives.
• In network marketing, everyone gets paid depending on how much sales volume and how many sponsorships are achieved in a given period of time. In traditional companies and stores, people are compensated according to pay grade, job description, educational background and past experience.
• In network marketing, each Independent Business Owner is the boss. The IBO is wholly in charge and accountable for the business. In traditional companies and retail stores, unless you are the owner, you report to a boss or possibly, multiple managers. Once you’re hired, you can be promoted for any number of reasons, just as you can be fired. In network marketing, we have mentors who are called our “upline,” and we are their willing “downline.”
• There is no guarantee of a paycheck in network marketing. If we don’t put in the time and effort, we don’t get paid. If we do, the pay off can be enormous. In the traditional business model, pay is not necessarily linked to performance, and the reality is that often, a small group carries the majority.
• People move on to better jobs, get fired, laid off or quit. This turnover in the traditional business model requires the training of new hires or replacements. In networking, we are constantly training new recruits and teaching them how to do the same with their new downline. Our goal is to consistently add to our group. This duplication is what brings networkers the highest rewards and is what rarely occurs in traditional business.

Therefore, it is clear that network marketing does not buy into the boss/employee model. Nevertheless, there is a hierarchy, and that is based on rank advancement. Each time we succeed in fulfilling the requirements of a particular rank, we advance to the next level. That is, we graduate. In certain respects, it’s exactly like school. We start off in kindergarten, learn the basics, and graduate to elementary school. In each grade, we are tested and move to the next level, year after year. At the fifth or sixth grade level, we go through a formal graduation ceremony. We pass into middle school, go through another graduation, then to high school and hit a major milestone. We may go to college and graduate again, another big milestone.

Advancing from grade to grade and through various graduations occurs in an established timeframe. In network marketing, there isn’t a set timeline for graduating from rank to rank. Advancement depends on how much sales volume and how many sponsorships we can achieve. We are on our own individual timelines. The qualifications for rank advancement are similar to school: the higher up we go, the harder the qualifications but the larger the rewards.

In school, everyone is constantly working towards the big milestone graduations. In network marketing, we work for organizations, our teams and ourselves. When we succeed individually and as a group, we rank advance. At each new rank, we take a deep breath, review the new qualifications, put together a new game plan or use the existing one with minor alterations, and take advantage of the momentum to achieve even more. There is no ceiling or cap to what we can achieve in network marketing, and there is no job in the traditional business model that gives us as much control over our destinies. The next step is one closer to a bigger goal.