Hey Guys!

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-I actually have tried another mlm a few years ago, before I joined the one I'm in now. My husband and I had just finished our Bachelors and we were on a little bit of a high. We had two daughters at the time, who were about 2 years and 6 months old, and we had finished our degrees with no debt. So we were feeling pretty good. It was a ton of work, my husband had been in the Army Reserves while in school and had been doing the ROTC program. So he had just become an Officer for the Army and we were just feeling accomplished and excited that we were done and could move onto the next thing.

But it wasn't a totally victory yet because the next thing in life for us was actually a very intense 22 month Masters program for my husband. So we were moving for school and he would start his program in a few months. And I remember there was a night a few days after graduation and we had already moved, we went from Idaho to Utah. And we had spent the whole day getting our new basement house situated, got the kids to bed and we sat down on our old hand-me-down couch and did a deep dive of what our expenses would be like for the next 2 years. We had some money coming in from my husband being in the Army Reserves, and he was smart and had some scholarships and a stipend, but it was not enough for a family of four to live off of.

I tried to put on this confident, we can do this, rice and beans everyday will be totally fine, face on, but deep down I knew it was going to be a long 2 years and I really needed to figure out a way to bring in some money. So I actually looked into what it would cost to put the girls in day care, even just a few days a week, but the rates were so high that for the entry level job I'd be able to get it wouldn't even be worth it to work. But I kept looking. Nothing too intense but I read ever single article that would come up on Pinterest on how to save money or how to make money from home. But there was a constant nagging that I needed to do something.

In the mean time I had actually become a customer of an mlm. I won't say which one because I don't mean to bash any particular company. But my husband's cousin was in it and we were really enjoying the products, and seeing real benefits in our lives. Of course, conversations turned  toward the business and all of a sudden I found myself on the phone talking about signing up. I was a total sucker for the pitch:  I'd get to help people, I'd get a discount of prices, and that kicker line of "can you imagine having 500 + more dollars coming in every month" I was FLOORED at. I know $500 probably doesn't seem like a lot to many of you but for our situation that would be like getting mana from heaven! That would have meant we wouldn't have to take out Student loans, which while they were our saving grace I REALLY hate debt. It would have kept us from having to use food stamps which was a huge hit on our pride and our stubborn side.

So I convinced my husband that we should do it, and I just dove in. I did all the classics. I wrote a list of all the people I knew who I thought would benefit from the products, then sent the same fairly generic message to all of them. I post on social media pictures of me with the product, or just the product with a "you should do this too!" Type message. I honestly tried, and I'm not bashing on my cousin, or the company or anything. They are just doing what everyone else is doing, but that's what everyone has done since the 90s. But I REALLY didn't like feeling like I was hunting for people ya know?

It just felt like a lot of pushing and chasing. It never seemed to end. It was honestly so discouraging. I was seeing other people be successful and it just wasn't happening for me. 

I would bet that if you're listening to this podcast you've probably experienced similar things. You've grown tired of the hunt for people to join and then not live up to the potential you see in them. You've had the thoughts of "Man, I know she could have been great" or "it would have been amazing to have her do this" or "how come they can't just do these few things?" You've probably been there before and maybe even been that person, and honestly, that's totally ok.

That first mlm experience was a really big dud, and while the MLM I'm in now I have had MUCH bigger success with selling, the recruiting has been the same. Luckily it only took a few months to realize that I was being asked by my upline to do the exact thing I had done before. I'm sure you guys have heard the saying "The definition of Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expect different results".

I realized that so many of these tactics that we were taught by the upline, by the company, they were all really old. It's all very very very old tactics.

Have you ever been in a phone store when someone comes in with a phone that's even just 5 years old? What about 10 years old? I don't think it's always a snooty reaction but I mostly think it's a "you do know how much better the options are now right?"

But it's the same with MLM, its the same with marketing, it's the same with business in general. With how incredibly different technology is today than even ten years ago, why on earth would be still be doing the exact same things with our businesses.

Yet for every mlm out there the main tactic across the board is "sit and write down a list of 15-20 people, then reach out to them continunously until they buy the product or join your downline." OR the slightly newer one of "do parties on FB and have your host add as many people as possible and spam everyone with posts about the company. But that's how we get damaged relationships, that's how we become the person that everyone avoids at social gatherings. That's the person that everyone unfollows on FB right?

I needed something different to get me where I want to be. After my husband finished his masters program we moved about an hour north of where he went to school for a residency at a Hospital. He had gone to school to become a chaplain in the Army and he needed experience to be able to become an Active Duty Chaplain so he found a year long residency and it paid, well . And we were a family of 5. But we were actually making it work and even putting everything extra towards paying off all the student loans. But our cars were starting to get old and sounding clunky, our clothes were looking old, and we started to get to the phase of our marriage when we needed to start replacing some things. We were taking each expense at a time and handling it however we could but then there was a day when my husband found out that because of a change in how the Army processes some paperwork he wouldn't be able to start working as an active duty chaplain until close to January. And we were planning on it being early September. So now all of a sudden we are trying to figure out how we were going to cover at least 4 months of expenses. That night was so stressful. We knew we both were capable and hardworking so we'd figure something out but there's a quote in the moving "Becoming Jane" and it's Jane Austin's father and he says "Nothing destroys the spirit like poverty." That was how I felt.  After years of being poor penny pinching students I didn't want to do it anymore.

The next day was grocery shopping day, and I typically make my list a few days before I go, but I made a really silly mistake of not revising the list after hearing the news that we were going to have this unemployment phase. And I had my three kids with me and I was just on edge that day and I just went in "List following" mode, let's get this done as quickly as possible so I run around the store with my three rambugious girls and I get to the check out line and this store doesn't have baggers so when it's my turn I take the chart all the way to the end and start bagging as the cashier is scanning everything. I go back to pay and when she said the amount I just got really choked up and started to cry. I was so flustered by how crazy my kids were being that morning and just still flooded by the change in plans that I couldn't even think clearly to have some of the extras taken off the bill so I paid for the groceries and just was all teary the walk to my car.

It was such a miserable feeling. I got in the car and texted my husband just feeling so bad about how much I had just spent and promising not to do it again and headed home and the WHOLE Drive home I just kept having the same phrase playing in my head. SOMETHING HAS TO CHANGE> YOU HAVE TO DO SOMETHING NOW. So I did. I got my crap together, found a mentor, Stephen to teach me how to make my business an actual business instead of just a hobby, or side hustle. I NEEDED REAL income. I didn't have time to waste anymore on chasing people who didn't want to be a part of what I was building. One of my favorite quotes right now is from a brand strategist and just awesome person, Alison Faulkner, from The Alison Show. And she says that You should only invest yourself in people who invest in you. So I'm applying that to my mlm. I'm not going to spend all my time asking every single living person I know if they are interested. I'm being smart, I'm using marketing tools, and I'm bringing people to me who WANT it.

***This whole podcast is how to work MLM without going to family members and friends, without going to events and word barfing all over every person who stops for a second at your booth and then they leave feeling like they were smothered.

I really want to share with you everything I've been learning because it is seriously BLOWING me away. Basically what I'm doing is I'm using sales funnels, which is essentially just a series of webpages that take your customer through your sales process online. It's magic though.

Because it's online I can literally go to sleep and wake up to sales or people wanting to be on my team. I especially love it because, like I said before, I have three little girls now and surprise, not only do they want attention, but they get sick, they have cute little dance performances, stuff comes up, ya know? But it doesn't matter, because the funnels are always working.

Do you see why I'm so excited about this for all my fellow moms out there?!? This is HUGE! For years I've seen these ads post up with someone, almost always at the beach, saying something like "Love my job that lets me work wherever I want and lets me play at the beach all day?" I always thought those were either just a big joke or if it were real it was just for people who had an insane amount of tech knowledge but now as I'm building this for myself, I'm realizing ANYONE can do this!

It's really important to understand that I'm not taking the person or personal aspect out of the business though. That's not what I do at all. MLM is a serious relationship business, all businesses are. I'm still very much involved with my downline, I'm very involved with my customers and take care of them. All I've done is I've learned how to go and create automated funnels, automated recruiting funnels and funnels that sell my MLM products. It's used in thousands of other businesses, why not use it in MLM?

So if this is interesting to you this podcast is for you and I'd actually would really love to hear what you guys think about all this. It would be awesome if you could go to iTunes  subscribe and leave me a review. I'm really interested in hearing your feedback, so let me know!