Lucille's Blog

!!Lucy’s MLM – Life Happens

Have you ever had a time when you work like hell and have little or nothing to show for it. It often goes something like this.

You get your start up kits.
You work through your upline.
You train.
You listen.
And, you do everything they tell you or teach you to do.
And, nothing!

Sometimes, even, you’re several weeks or months into the game.
And, you’re producing reasonably well… but, always not fast enough for your own needs and wants.

Then, you hit a bump.
You’ve generated no leads for days or even a couple of weeks.

You attend all the suggested (strongly suggested) regular focus meetings to which you are encouraged to bring a potential customer or business building recruit. But, nope! You’ve got nobody.

It gets discouraging. It gets frustrating because you’re doing all you can. People are agreeing to be on the next webinar or at the next focus meeting… but, they don’t show up.

Here’s the thing. It’s called life.

Just as you will have down days, you will also get those days, and they get more frequent the longer you continue just to do the very basic things that we all do and that we all go through to get to those days.

It happens to absolutely everyone in this or, indeed, even in conventional business.

The market has a life of its own. And, everybody in it has their own fish to fry. Just as you get those who don’t show up, you will get that phantom phone call or email from someone with whom you have either planted the seed in a previous conversation or someone who found you online.

As you get more experienced with the help of your upline, it will happen more and more often. Just right out of the blue. And, yet it won’t be truly out of the blue, because you did something some time ago that got that ball rolling.
That’s also part of life.

The keys are:
The Bad will happen and almost always when you don’t want them to.
The Good will also always happen and will happen more often the more experienced you become.
Your residuals will always keep coming in regardless of the Bad times.
Your job is just to keep on keeping on and working through your upline, attend all your focus meetings, keep talking it up by telling your story, and work harder with your own downline because in helping them is re-centering your own focus on possible areas of let down in your own performance.

Stay focused on your goals. Have fun and keep it fun for your downline.

Lucille Bouthillier
Professional Health / Wealth Trainer
www.lucillebouthillier.com

Lucy’s MLM – Recruiting

I don’t know if there is a statistic for this. But, after my thirteen years and growing, one of the realities of this game is that most of the very successful people I know in MLM are people a lot like me. Broke and becoming destitute.
Maybe, it’s just now under those circumstances that reason and purpose for doing anything to get out from under becomes less an option and more the only choice.

Flipping that over a bit, I remember when the first half dozen or so opportunities came my way many years ago, I rejected them all with stuff like: “sounds like one of those pyramid things… that don’t work.”

And, of course, we’ve all heard the stories of so-and-so who we know personally who ended up with a garage load of stuff he couldn’t sell and how it drove him broke. Of course, the rules in MLM have changed so that if that ever did happen, it is legally almost impossible for that to happen today.

The bottom line is that most often people are just very comfortable in what they’re doing without a seeming need to think about the future and their need for ‘residual income’. After all, who needs to retire early or who needs a growing income in their retirement years.

Yes. I know how that sounds. That just says what it told me when I rejected the offers. I wasn’t in any apparent need at that time. All was well in my world. And, all would be well in my world forever.

Today, I am much older and have been through a whole lot… much of it not good.
When I recruit business builders, I look for people a lot like me. And, since I know where they’re coming from, I know I have to jump in and make sure they get every chance to succeed.

Are they just trying to get out of a mess or are they trying to vastly improve their lives? There is a tremendous difference in not just the attitude of running from as opposed to going forward.

Are they coachable? Today with all the tools we have at our disposal, you can recruit and train people all over the world AND have them replicate my training methods when it comes their turn to jump in and help the next person.

Can they be good leaders? Often this question is “Are they people-people”? Can they be empathetic (not sympathetic) while at the same time taking care to grow their business through their recruits.

For example, I don’t care how far down someone is from me, I can spot a trend at any level and will jump in right to that very person and offer them all the help, training, and leadership they need to rekindle the spirit they had when they got involved.

Are they willing to put in the first two years of twenty to thirty hours of frustrating work a week to reach the kind of money all of them can make if they just follow the training?

When I am speaking with (not to) a candidate, the key is NOT to bring them aboard. I position the opportunity and let them decide. The reason: this is not about selling them because if it is, then they may feel that that’s what’s expected of them. And, nobody likes to sell.

Basically, I ask questions and let them talk. After all, it’s their story, not mine. If it’s going nowhere, then maybe this is just not their time… just as it wasn’t when people tried recruiting me. Although, upon thinking back, most recruiters were really trying to sell me on the opportunity. That’s likely why they didn’t succeed.

When you recruit, most recruits are terrified. It is critical that you honor your word and not just help them but also to stay in constant touch such that they keep things in perspective. I can’t tell you how many times a new recruit organizes an opportunity meeting of a dozen or so people from their warm list and nobody shows up. Look. It happens a lot. And, it’s discouraging or demoralizing. In fact, it’s just the way it is. It’s that in real time. And, it’s that way for webinars online.

Conversely, when they get that first customer or recruit, it’s time to celebrate. In celebrating it’s not about the past and it’s not about the future. It’s about now. Insist on the celebration. Take part in it. If it includes a recruit, let them join in. Because, you want them to do the same when it’s their turn for someone in their own downline. And, it will be! I’m a strong believer in my team. I’m proud of all of them. And, you should be, too.


Lucille Bouthillier
Professional Health / Wealth Trainer
www.lucillebouthillier.com

MLM / Conventional Company Comparisons

After more than twenty years in conventional business and thirteen years in MLM, I have this to say.

What do these companies have in common besides being well known, credible, and very successful? Coca Cola, Microsoft, AT&T, IBM, SHARP, Texas Instruments, Gillette, Colgate-Palmolive … all distribute at least some of their products very successfully through MLM / Network Marketing channels.

All businesses are MLM where MLM is simply the structure. Where the difference occurs is where conventional companies’ version of MLM is generally you get paid for what you produce and your time, effort, knowledge are leveraged into profits for the company. No matter how successfully you do your job, generally you get just a paycheck. Even bonus checks do not reflect the added value of your time, effort, and knowledge.

In the traditional MLM that we all think about, your time, effort, and knowledge is leveraged through the marketing channel that you create and from which you and the company share the profits most often equally.

In the traditional company, when you can’t work, are laid off, or retire, your paycheck stops. In MLM, done properly, you are not only paid as your ‘downline’ continues to feed a portion of the fruits of their work back through you as it does through themselves as they grow their own downline.

Similarly, in the traditional company, your management gets paid from your effort and therefore strives to manage your work within acceptable norms of management which include NOT training someone so well that they might take your job. In MLM, and this becomes more your work as your own downline grows, your effort is more to training and motivating and encouraging your people to be even better that you are. They make more. You make more.

In the traditional company, there are only so many management jobs available to be filled. And, therefore, everybody else just have to wait their turn.

In MLM, there is no such thing as having too many people working below you and below themselves. In fact, quite the opposite, The more the merrier.

In Multilevel, the greatest activity you will ever develop is the ability to pick up the phone to someone several levels below you, someone you absolutely don’t know personally and likely living on another continent and offering them help, guidance, and training all online and to where they can succeed no matter where they live. Notice: You can work the world while you’re doing this all from your home.

Look at the job postings and the requirements demanded just for your application submission. And, if the criteria are not awesome for even basic job entry, look at what they are willing to pay. In most MLM downlines, the average person would not meet any of those job requirements. Yet, they will earn more after five years of the same effort as the employee who does meet those requirements AND will continue to earn long after that person has had to leave that job.

In the traditional company, marketing budget restrictions always raise their ugly heads. In MLM, the marketing method is word-of-mouth. Word-of-mouth is not only cheaper it is testimonial-based usually amongst people who have established personal rapport and credibility amongst each other.

There are no racial, religious, cultural or other sadly restrictive barriers in MLM. Every man and woman almost anywhere in the world can join, put in the effort, and make more money than they have ever imagined.

Success / failure rate between both versions of the business. They are pretty much the same. While MLM got off to a rocky start, some of very large and very successful with several over 25 years of rock solid reputations.

In conventional businesses, so many have shed jobs at the rate of several millions opting to go offshore. Some have been multi-billion dollar scams. Many have had to be bailed out by the federal governments. And, many others scam their clients while paying themselves multi-million dollar bonuses. There are good and bad in both models.

There are several keys to deciding which conventional company for which you want to work. And, there are equally criteria in selecting your MLM. I’ll go into them next time.

Lucille Bouthillier
Professional Health / Wealth Trainer
www.lucillebouthillier.com