002 – Network Marketing

Using Your Power | Going Deeper into Life's Big Questions | with David Andrew Wiebe & Maveen Kaura

What is network marketing? Why would you want to get into network marketing? What are some of its upsides and downsides?

In this episode of Using Your Power, David Andrew Wiebe and Maveen Kaura explore the business model known as network marketing, and what their experience was like.

Transcription: Network Marketing

David: Hi I’m David Andrew Wiebe and joining me as always is…

Maveen: It’s Maveen Kaura.

David: And this is using your power, check this out on using your power.com. And today we wanted to attempt to close a open loop from the first episode in which we talked about, which was what…?

Maveen: Network marketing.

David: Yeah, network marketing. People have positive associations with it. Some people have negative associations with it and pretty much everything in between. Something people are pretty extreme about it to or whether it’s really extreme about building a network lighting business or really extreme against network marketing as a business model.

Maveen: That is very true David, I mean there’s a lot of different people who join network marketing and tons of different peoples experience tons of different things, before we dive right into it, I’m going to ask you a quick question. How was your day, man?

David: Yeah actually we should start there shouldn’t we? So far so good Mav, I guess I have had two to two and half cups of coffee, so I feel pretty great.

Maveen: And that have you had an opportunity to do today?

David: I was in a meeting a little bit earlier talking about one of the community artistic projects that I’m involved. I have the honor of being part of a couple of them one is called, The Question and the other is called, The Listening Room. Very simple names, we like simple names don’t we.

Maveen: Absolutely we do, like Using Your Power.

David: Using Your Powers is a great name. So, I was in a meeting for that. I also did an interview today for another podcast with that I can’t mention here or I just won’t mention here.

Maveen: Kind of hinted at something, I think.

David: Those interviews are good for me to cause I was gets learned new things from other successful entrepreneurs. How about you Mav, what have you been up to?

Maveen: Got up super early today, David, I had an opportunity to start my day off by meditating as I’ve been trying to the last little while. I had an opportunity to do a little bit different things now that more home right now and pursuing different ventures. Got a little bit in to juicing. Not steroids it’s with fruit and vegetables. So just really been making a fresh cup of juice every morning here for breakfast. I actually went for a hour and ten minute walk. I think I covered about 6 ½ km in an hour and ten. So not too bad. Almost at 8000 steps or so now, I got about 2000 to go for the day or more. I made myself a nice Matcha Tea and brought along with me for recording so we could just chat and sit back and enjoy ourselves.

David: Yeah I like the 8000 steps metric, that what I try to keep track of. The last three days and one day think resort 9000 steps I’m pretty sure I’ll make it today but today I mean it’s pretty action-packed day for me after this and to go and play a gig, not immediately after this necessarily, but a little bit later tonight. I’ll be going to play a show with the band Long John Lev, so that should be fun to

Maveen: Just kind of what you said right now you can to be out playing a gig and even when you’re at that gig you be able to get your steps in. And even network yourself. Here is a nice little segue on network marketing. So, why don’t you kind of start that off David.

David: Network marketing. So as we have establish it actually can be a pretty polarizing topic for people. Lets start off with is it a good business model, is a bad business model, is it a inhumane or is it more humane way of doing business? Lets have a debate over that.

Maveen: I mean we could both take both sides of the argument. I think we probably will. I know from some of the books I’ve read, people like Robert Kiyosaki have said that network marketing is a great place to begin if you’re looking to get into entrepreneurship and into business.

David: I believe Donald Trump said the same thing?
Maveen: Yes, and they have written a book together.

David: Multiple books I think.

Maveen: So with that its one key speaker that has mentioned. You know network marketing I believes has probably around since the 50s. Tons of different businesses have come along since then.

David: They have come and gone which is the interesting part.

Maveen: The ones I have gone are the interesting ones because those are the ones, I think, that negative feeling with a lot of people, that network marketing doesn’t work but there are, as we know a lot of network marketing companies out there that do work. Again if you work it, I guess it works.

David: If you have a really good legal system behind you it seems like it’s a business that works and won’t go anywhere, so first of all having that reassurance that the company that you’re taking advantage of is not going anywhere and is going to stick around for the long haul is pretty important consideration. The reason I say that is because I have been to enough meetings to know what we’re talking about.

Like if somebody’s calls me up and says let’s go to this meeting. I’m pretty sure I know what they’re going to say because I’ve been to my fair share of these things not that I’m like super burned out or negative on them or or anything like that. But I think it’s also how a lot of other people feel about marketing as wells. Oh, like I just got this call out of the blues from my friend, what the heck do they want for me?

Maveen: Well its funny, you know we’ve both gone through the same network marketing like we mentioned in episode one. Same company just different time and a different training systems. We both had an opportunity to really sit down and kind of see the ins and outs of how the businesses works. With two different teams, as well, that we were apart of. I mean your experience and my experience although a different times seem to has been the same, as me going know each other and spoke together.

Do you want to get a little bit in how you got into network marketing again maybe not the full story but more into just the immediate part of how you got into it and again maybe little bit of the way.

David: Well believe it or not my first exposure kinda of happen prior to this last occurrence but it was in a different time, different setting, different way. We lived in Japan and my dad ended up joining a business along with some of his friends because that’s really the kinds of guy he is and we utilized the products and I don’t think we did a lot of selling of the product or signing up people to be part of our business. So that was really my first exposure so it happen fairly early on, even as a kid. But when it came time to do it myself that’s what I learned about the same organization that we’re talking about here.And I guess I had a couple of friends sort of approach me because they were very complementary towards me, which might be an indicator somebody that’s try to get something from you. Maybe, Maybe not.

Maveen: Or they see something in you perhaps.

David: That could be it to. So, they showed me what it was and I kind of feel like I seen this stuff before it seems really familiar and I’m not really certain that it’s for me but you know they kept that relationship with me. I ended up going out for the meetings, and normally what happens is they’ll take you through this process, sort of this prolong several week, multi-week or maybe multi-month process depending on how accountable you are and whether or not you dig into the materials that give you, such as CDs or books. Make a decision about whether or not you’re ready. But I ended up saying to them, “Hey, do you have any materials where I can learn about this. So they can came over and handed me a box and I took the box home.

Maveen: So, you were like the perfect candidate for the network marketing business because you wanted and you were hungry for that information.

David: I was that was definitely an searching for something because of the various financial events my life and things didn’t go well. Conversely though I don’t know if those are the best people to get into the business if only because you don’t have a solid financial footing, your going to have a hard time buying the product and keeping up with your product orders on regular basis.

Maveen: Well, especially if your asked to continually reach a certain level within that business. I know based on the team I was on, leadership there would always want to stay at certain levels within the business. Month after month after month.

David: If you do that you probably will be somewhat financially stable before long as you keep hitting those milestones.

Maveen: Well, absolutely but you also look at how much money can you spend each month after month after month. When when you’re only used to spending about $300- $400 on groceries and now your spending $800 on groceries, you know that gets a little tough.

David: Yeah, you are absolutely right, you have to change your habits ins a significant way, so if you’re used to buying meals I guess you would cut that completely just kind of buy those snacks or bars or protein or whatever it is that your business offers. Some networking marketing organizations don’t even offer that, then it’s a whole other game.

Maveen: And again depending on the business, network marketing business that you have gone to, you know we are only talking about one type but heard and seen cosmetic ones, jewellery, telephone. Ones that have come and gone, as well you know, it’s funny with your story the way you got introduced to it. I actually got introduced to a few different times.

Once when I was actually 13 years old. Still young not able to join the business at that time. But it was my next door neighbor. I used to go over next door and play with his kids and me and him would enjoy yourselves and playing all night, whatever, we’d be gallivanting through the neighborhood. You know he was pretty entrepreneurial and said, “hey, why don’t you come take a peek at this little side business I got?” And I’m 13 years old and I had no clue what he was talking about. I went and checked it out and said well there’s about 10 people here in the house, and it was kinda need but I was 13 wasn’t really thinking business wasn’t really thinking anything but what a 13-year-old kid thinks about at the time like play basketball and try to talk to girls, right. That was my life right there.

David: Yeah that’s me at 13.

Maveen: Yeah so again I saw the plan at 18, I was pretty much in the exact same place now just headed off to college. But, when I saw it again at 22, I saw it with different eyes. I was actually introduced to it by a really close friend of mine. She had said talk to my close friend. I had trusted her and I got into it because she trusted them. I asked them about 100 questions before I got in. Not as easy as you did because you were hungry for it. I was still pretty skeptical wanting to know, what are these guys would take for me. But I trust her, so I said let’s give it a shot and I ended up being in that network marketing group for almost five years.

David: Yes about the same for me. The interesting think about your story is if you meet the people that are totally honest and integrous. Integrous is not a word but it’s word but it’s a word they like to use. A person of integrity. The point is the other quality of person that you meet oftentimes is quite good even though you might find out later that they aren’t what they appear to be, sometimes.

Maveen: You know what that is very true and that was in my case is as well. There is a reason what had happened on that team. If what had happen, on the team did not happened I probably still be in that business probably to some sort of capacity. Probably at some sort of level but you know not one get in somebody else’s story. Things do happen and unfortunately one of the rules is don’t cheat on somebody else’s wife, well unfortunately one of those rules got broken. You kind of have to walk away because how can you trust people like that?

David: Yeah, well I think that’s what they mean when they describe leadership because of such huge emphasis on leadership if you are not the kind of person that can properly represent not only your business but yourself, like really, everything is interconnected in away, then to tie it all back to personal development, right?

Maveen: Absolutely, well you said personal development and that is something I was thinking about. What you said, you would ask for some books you asking for theses audios. You actually took the initiatives. Most people, I’d say probably 99% of the people don’t take the initiative to find out more information. They are kind of force-fed that information. Take the CD home give, it a listen and give it back to me to couple of days. You know I am going to follow up with you. But you were the other way you wanted to get that information. I was the other way. I was like sure I’ll listen to the CD. Sure I’ll read that book. Really not trusting what was going on because obviously I was so new to it. Where you were really hungry for that.

David: If this thing is so good why waste time bringing me to all these meetings and I found out later that they want you to attend every meeting and it’s not just like four times a year as sometimes they say. Those are your major conferences which are going to eat up all major weekends. Really its weekly commitment sometimes two or three meetings per week of at least two hours if not more because you know most people are kind of hanging around with their upline long after the meeting has ended.

Maveen: Absolutely! In my experience we had the Sunday phone call meetings. We would go out. We would be networking during the week and we are gathering phone numbers. Then on Sunday’s are calling people. You’re at your upline home, if that’s a politically correct term I can use, It’s the only word I know. Then on Wednesday we were at our weekly meeting. Then your top leaders, the guys who’s kind of teaching everybody, he’s calling impromptu meeting. “Hey come join us, we are all at this restaurant. Whoever can make it.” You’re out there spending $30 -$40 on a meal and not even noticing all these little things. You’re right, they have you there. You’re at this meeting you’re not networking, you’re not growing your business but your growing your association. Not bad but if that’s the only thing you’re doing you’re not going to see the best results.

David: You’ll just keep showing up to meetings and soon realize that there are people around you growing their business. Meanwhile your kind of just sitting there watching them grow it.

Maveen: With the respects the audio, do you remember how many audio CDs you were listen to on a daily or weekly basis?

David: Well I think I listen to at least one. Early on I’m sure it was probably three or four audios per day and as time went on it was a little bit less.

Maveen: Oh, not more? Why is that?

David: I think because we have these steps that were supposed to follow as far as keeping plugged into the system so we could learn how to build a business in a very niche and specific way.

The daily obligation was almost like you got to do one audio per day, right? Sometimes I would you like to put in a 15 minute audio and call it done.

Maveen: So you’re looking for the shortest ones with the quickest stories on them.

David: That’s not how it was early. I was obviously super enthusiastic about this business and what it could potentially offer me and it wasn’t long before I found out that the way I was thinking about building a business has not really encouraged. Which is online, through personal connections, through blogging, through email list or social media. A lot of that was not looked upon well and you probably would run into some legal issues with the company, as well if you started doing this kind of things.

Maveen: I know as you said, they have a certain system they want you to follow. They have these steps laid out and if you follow all those steps you see success. But in an ever-changing market as we know, computers, email, blogs, YouTube there are so many different medias out there now people are able to get information as quick as they want. If someone is out there looking for whatever you have why would you not utilize those media to talk about those businesses, those network marketing businesses? So I fully understand what you’re saying.

David: I think like anything else there are people that tarnish the reputation of business. There’s people that are absolutely great and there’s people that really kind take advantage of the system. Probably in the 70’s and 80’s what they would do is fax. People would be in a network marketing company. Then they would they would find a different opportunity. They would fax all of their friends and say, “hey I’m joining this new thing. I think we should all go over here,” and pretty soon whoever signed up for, that organization is completely wiped out and gone and they don’t have that income coming in anymore. I think of those kinds of things happened a lot it’s not that they don’t still happen but that’s probably one of the reasons why we’re encouraged to build it in a very particular way and I feel like the companies also on the lookout for people who are growing too fast and they will probably put an end to whatever it is you’re doing.

Maveen: I think you’re right. The term pyramid comes to mind when your speaking to me. I think you’re right at the term pyramid really got associated to network marketing in the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s. As these companies are growing and you know it’s interesting some the companies out there, especially ones we joined, it’s a billion dollar company and it’s still has that same negative connotation to it. You know I’m which is very interesting to me that people would think $1 billion company is a pyramid. Now, it’s interesting there’s two sides to it. The company side of it which is the product side of it actually not appear pyramid. But the tricky part is when you get into the education side of the business. The system side of the business that I found was the part that more people would get negative to, not the product. There are two completely separate sides.

David: We can also look at it another way, which was often how it was described in the network marketing context, which is that there is no business that’s not a pyramid.

Maveen: Yeah, that’s true in the government.

David: Any any company you look at the CEO makes the most money and one else in the company can make as much money as the CEO. Then you have the vice president and have managers or however your company set up.

Maveen: It’s funny soon as the sales guys start making more than their managers guess where they get to go? They get to move up ladder or they get to move off the ladder.

David: Exactly, sometimes if you ruffle too many feathers or move up the ladder too fast you get fired. Then again that’s not very different from what we just describe. If you move up the ladder to fasten in network marketing, you might have some eyeballs on you.

Maveen: Well and good and bad eyeball. I mean there are people that are moving quick in network marketing. They are moving up that ladder and up that point scale.

David: They get more bonuses or trips and all that kind of stuff.

Maveen: They get talked about and edified and there really not doing much. And they are being continually edified even though they don’t have a team or what not because of past performance not on current performance. And I think at any time you look at a network marketing it needs to be part of current performance not past performance. I mean just like if you’re working in a job, they are always looking at what you did this month not what you did two years ago for the company. There’s parts that are not treated the same, I found, when I was there.

David: Well I guess that’s part of the system in a way. You’re supposed to be able to get to this point where you have complete freedom in your life. To me that’s not being completely truthful because if you’re out every night working for your business that is still a form of work. It’s still an obligation, it’s still a place to be. They say well if you don’t want to grow your business you don’t have to do that, but now you’re kind of feeling guilty for not doing it so you just go out night after night after night continuing to build your business long after the point where your “FREE”. Whatever that mean to you.

Maveen: I agree, and you’ve put your money into. You’ve invested money into buying your business licence. You’ve investing money into the products. Your first month maybe $300 to $400 investment into your business and now if you’re sitting at home and not doing something you do feel guilty as well. You spend all this money and there’s no invest back. So after that first month. Why do you buy product again? On the second month, because you’re asked to buy that product so your leadership team and everybody above you, in that so-called not pyramid, that they tell us it’s not needs to get paid as well. So as those points are required they’re getting paid but your maybe not in the best situation. So now you feel guilty if you can’t buy a certain amount products. Your being pushed to buy them. It’s a vicious circle after a while especial if you’re if you’re still trying to get comfortable in it and there’s pushing you. Again on the flip side, I imagine teams where people are not being pushed they are guided to through the process a little different. I would hate to say every team is the exact same.

David: I have heard of team structure that are structured different or they encourage you to build your business differently then perhaps we were encouraged to do. Honestly if we started talking about it there probably would be some differences between your organization and the organization that I was a part of.

I think we can agree that it’s the same way in any organization, in any community, any church that nothing is perfect. There is no perfect organization just maybe a good fit for you and if you can find that fit within network marketing I’m pretty certain you feel confident, you would feel good about what you’re doing, you feel like, “This businesses is really good it works for me I make some extra money, this is great.”

Whereas if you find your in the wrong environment rubbing off on the wrong people or just people that don’t work or understand how you work. They don’t work like you then you begin to encounter some personal issues which is something you know you can face and deal with or you leave that business and choose not to be up to be a part of it anymore. Which, I don’t think is unreasonable choice, I just think it’s made to sound like you’re a complete loser if you don’t continue in the business. That’s often what I heard.

Maveen: It’s funny you say that and I start thinking about counseling, you supposed to go to your upline to counsel and talk to them. In some cases it’s not a bad thing. It’s always a good idea to brainstorm or mastermind with somebody and throw those ideas of each other. I know me and you do it all the time. Once a week to two times a week sometimes once a month you know whenever we have the time we do, we go for a quick coffee and we mastermind. That’s not a bad idea but as soon as I started thinking, I want to buy a house. And the person is tell me NO don’t buys a house.

David: That a blanket council that they probably have stored up in their repository. Their library of their brains are going, buying houses absolutely bad decision 100% of the time when for anybody that doesn’t can’t afford it.

Maveen: And even if you’re working. And looking at the Calgary market. We both know how the Calgary market is an was back in back in 2001 to 2005. Houses were pretty cheap to buy if you look at what the market is today.

David: That’s exactly when I bought.

Maveen: Yeah and probably a couple of a 100 thousand dollars you bought house. Now you’re you get house for 600,000+, depending on size. Now through that counsel, good or bad advice, in my opinion it opportunity to lose a lot of money because if you’d bought a house for $100,000 – $200,000 your mortgage may already have been close to being paid off, versus buying a house on $600,000 and now you’re having to use the next 25 years, if your regular job to pay for that. If you’re in direct marketing that want to reinvest your mortgage money, that you’re putting in your own investment, back towards the business.

So a little bit different. I found it very interesting when I had 20 year old and 18 year old kids trying tell me that. I was like, “do you guys even understand economics?”

And really what is being taught because, sure it’s better in my opinion to have your own versus take somebody else.

David: Well that’s probably a future topic for a podcast unless you want to dive into it?

But I totally hear what you say those are the kinds of things are often being brought up. You were supposed to be ultra conservative in how you spend your money because they wanted to make sure the consistency was happening. And I get the reason why they want to make sure month-to-month the sales are happening with all of their downline. And that way you have a stable business on your hands that’s fairly predictable and it’s the same thing with usingyourpower.com. For example we started making several thousand dollars a month, we don’t want to take a pay cut we want to continue to grow the business. Now, we understand fluctuation and we hand might have good months and not as good months but overall as a trajectory from like year-to-year we want to be a growth curve. So it’s the same with any business. That’s why you’re advised to be conservative, delayed gratification and honestly those are very good sound financial principles but if you’re thinking you want home, gosh you’re in the wrong business.

Maveen: Absolutely, now there’s some good advice I came out of that.

I’ve seen people by $50-$60,000 cars and they only make about $30,000. Not buying that car was good financial advice. I think there’s a lot of a great financial people out there like, Dave Ramsey, who mention that. Don’t over extend yourself. These are great financial advices that can be learned through direct marketing but again it’s knowing who you get that information from and really trusting that information when it comes to you.

David: I had one upline mentor who was not loosey-goosey he was just a little more lenient or open to suggestions and ideas and so when I brought him to the fact that I don’t have a car anymore, is there anything? What would you suggest? And probably most upline people are you go tell you forgot the car. Now you’re going to take transit every single day, until you can afford a car.

Maveen: Spend about 2 hours getting where you want to be, and missing everything you possibly can get to.

David: I was on transit for couple months. That was more than enough, thank you very much. He actually advised me, basically we tell you not to go into debt, but here’s the thing, there’s good debt and bad debt card. A car is one of those things that if you have you can go and teach more. Which is one of the things I do is teach guitar, you can go and have more people and have more meeting. It’s going to get easier for you to get from point A to point B, so I don’t see why not. So, I did go in to debit to buy car at that point.

Maveen: Sometimes you have to, but again you don’t have to have a $30 -$40,000 car. You can buy yourself a $3-$5,000 vehicle, just make sure you get from point A to point B.

David: I think I was actually only a little bit over $2,000, and I think the previous owner did not have a whole lot of confidence in the car. But it’s a VW, it’s a tank man and it keeps on running. It still runs and is still the car I have today.

Maveen: What year is it again?

David: 2000.

Maveen: It does not matter long as you can get from point A to B right now while, we’re going our business. I know you, you have been growing your separate business for a long time. You know it’s about making those little sacrifices and that is something I learned from network marketing. Making those sacrifices where they’re needed. You know you can’t sacrifice everything. Myself I’m married right now. If they were saying don’t take a vacation. You know it’s very tough. Try to explain that to my wife if she wasn’t a part of the network marketing. Oh, sorry honey we can’t take a vacation to the places you want to go. We haven’t “earned” it. Try to explain that to your kids, sorry kids we haven’t earned the trip yet because we are only at a certain level in this business. That can get very tough on your marriages as well.

David: Well that’s interesting because I had a girlfriend at the time, when I was in. For part of the season I was in network marketing. That was one of the things she brought up. If you’ve you’re dating anybody else, I doubt they would be understanding as I am because they will be whining about you missing their birthday or not coming out to family events.

At the time you know you’re so deep into the business your like no-no, I’m just gonna build this thing and then we’ll worry about birthday parties later.

Maveen: Just to switch topics for second. Do you have any memories of your direct marketing days, David?

David: Yeah, it’s still somewhat fresh in my mind, what specifically should I address here?

Maveen: Anything you want. Anything that stands out. Maybe take about some nice memories. Nothing too negative something that positive about some of the people perhaps. Maybe experiences you had. Maybe if you had not joined, maybe you would have never had.

David: One of the things I would have never gotten had I not been a part of network marketing was, how to manage my personal finances. Up until that point I made tonnes of mistakes and I made another major mistake while still in the business but that’s what finally cause me to get control of my finances.

I did meet great people, I feel like more than anything I was just really excited, oddly enough, not to many people are excited about the product when they first see it. I was excited about the product. I thought this is some cool stuff and people see me using it and I’m continually using it on a daily basis. I’m interacting and we are doing things maybe they will want to buy a cases of their own, why not.

Maveen: I’m going to tell our listeners a story on how I met you. I think it’s a perfect place for it. I was selling homes at the time and you had come in to the show home I was working in. You told me you were you in business and you were just kind of looking for new place to live. I had kind of seen you holding this can. This particular energy drink can, is only available through one line of business. I kind of knew where it came from because it was something I’d tried and sold. I said ok your part of some business. I know okay, okay I what your thinking, and what your going to ask me. So, I just waited in and I let you go through the home. When he came back, I asked you, what you thought about the home and what your thoughts were and actually a bit more about what you did. The whole time I just waited for the pitch. Here comes that pitch, because your thought to ask me that pitch. When is he ask me that pitch.

David: Are you keeping your options open?

Maveen: So I asked you what do you do. You said you were an entrepreneur. So this is slowly growing towards direction. So I said what type of entrepreneur are you? A you said you had a home based business. I said okay, that right in the same line I would tell people, so I’m just waiting for the pitch. Funny thing is at the end of everything you never asked me if I was interested in having my own business. Instead you told me you did podcasts. And at that time I had really started listening to podcasts quite a bit. Lots of different speakers and I was really interested in getting to the point where, I’d love to have my own podcast. It was interesting you right at the right time for me to meet the right person where we could do this joint venture today. But the whole time you never did ask me and to this day you still have not asked me.

David: But your right about that. That was another significant moment obviously because we are podcasting together that was another significant thing that happened while I was still in that business. You know I love to say that I’ve made tons more friends and met more people, the problem is, yeah I did need some beautiful wonderful people in the business. But once you’re out of the business, what reason do you have to interact with unnecessarily? Because, now they’re still building a business. You don’t want to interrupt them building the business. And they have no reason to contact you because you’re not building the business. So this whole friendship idea, I’m sorry to say is superficial and not real. Not any more real not than any other friendship is out there.

Maveen: There is different story on both besides spectrum, and you’re right if there still in the business and you’re not, your right they don’t have really reason to contact you because there’s no benefit for them and unfortunately, if you’re trying to pay scale, it’s all based on benefits, product buying and communication with each other. Especially if it’s your upline and/or downline as well. So if you’ve walked away.

Now just to give you flip side to that David, I still have a couple friends from when I was in network marketing. Now they were never in my direct line of sponsorship. They were my cross line, as they call it, but these guys are still some my best friends. I was actually just out in the Shuswap in British Colombia, for my friends 30^th birthday.

They showed up and I drove out 6 hours just to spend some time with them. Those are the long lasting relationships. Funny thing is they are not in the business. If they were in the business, I agree with you man, we would not be friends.

David: Yeah I think that’s a big part of it. Some of my upline mentors are no longer actively part of the business which actually means they’re still getting the income that they work so hard to build but they are no longer building the business. Some people choose to do that to where they are not always going to meetings they just build it to a certain point and say here you know we’re not going be involved in this as heavily anymore. And it may not even be a permanent arrangement they might choose to join back in somewhere down the line. That’s possible really for anybody who’s been apart of it. If you leave on a bad note obviously they are going to question you and go why are you coming to join us back in. See the problem with all this dialogue is I know it. I’ve heard it. I’ve heard all of it and I know it and they can’t put those tricks on me. Nobody can to an extent any maybe that’s empowering too but I’m just I need to feel excited about what I’m doing to proceed with it. I do get a lot of opportunities. I do get a lot of people contacting me for different things not just network marketing and if I don’t feel excited about it if I don’t feel like is genuine and true and real I know that I’m probably just throwing money away.

Maveen: Couple of quick questions. I’m pretty sure we are getting close to the wrap up of our show. I wanted to ask you, couple things, What were maybe two or three positive things you took away? Also, two negative things, I don’t really say negative, but if there was something negative that you took away what was that?

And perhaps I’ll share mine as well after you.

David: It’s really hard to summarize this whole topic and we could even come back to it in the future. I think we’ve established that for some people, especially if they don’t have business experience, this is a really great business to be in and I feel like that’s one of the first positive things I took away, which was long-term mindset. It takes time to build the business. You have to see five years ahead, 10 years ahead and not just see one day ahead or one weekend ahead, as we tent to when we are in a five day work week. We pretend there are 2 days of freedom and five days work. In reality, you have to life your life as if you have seven days a week, always, if you’re going to be in business. So for me that was like a really important realization. That’s kind of how The Music Entrepreneur came about. As well I realized this mentality is not thought in music. You need a long term mindset and obviously a lot of financial principles like delayed gratification, being conservative with your money. That kind of stuff was very significant and important to me.

I don’t even know that The Music Entrepreneur would exist if I hadn’t gone through this process of learning what it meant to build a business and I guess what I mentioned earlier which is that I’m a much better manager replace finances now. I am very conservative. I don’t take huge risks at this point although I do take calculated risks.

Maveen: absolutely, smart.

David: How about you, Maveen?

Maveen: There’s a couple things I definitely took from it. One thing is I’ve definitely made some lifelong friends. In that because we’re not in it anymore. Not that I talk to them every single day but like I said earlier I had an opportunity to go up to the Shuwhap for friends birthday and I was there. I made that really important to me. These guys took care of me when I was not there. They were not only they were just about the business they were really about getting to the who I was as a person. Funny thing, like I mentioned they weren’t in my direct line of sponsorship they were on the other teams that my upline had.Very interesting for me in that regard I never was really into studying and learning prior to that when I was 22 or so. Still in that same, I’m 22. I like to party and all that kind of stuff but when I got into the network marketing, reading is something I really started picking up on. I really started digesting audio as well.

On certain days I would probably digest maybe 1 to 3 to 5 CDs a day. Just trying to get that positive mindset and really understand what it took to build the business. In the end, I found that it really is pure heart and emotion. It’s really nothing to do with those CDs definitely helpful they really do give you pointers on how to deal with people but if you’re not really excited to do the business, you can listen to all the CDs you want they are not going to do anything for you. The biggest thing that I got out of it was, really wanting to podcast.

I was listen to these CDs and how people are being motivated and I said, I’ve always had that within myself. Always when I sit with people, we’re going to talk, I’ll motivate them and give them some sort of insight and how they could be better. And the things that they can do, the steps they could take, and I said I can do this as well. So that really impacted me in a positive way. Saying I can do what I’m being taught.

David: Yeah I think I share a lot of those things with you to. Definitely reading studying, the people I met definitely some great memories but you know it may not be applicable or relevant my life right now. Is that it’s very hard topic to summarize even just in this 40 minutes or so podcasts that we have been doing. We can’t tell you whether or not network marketing is something that you should or shouldn’t do. If you believe that you’re the kind of person that’s a go-getter, that you can talk to anybody, that you can develop your people skills and leadership skills to the point where you’re not afraid of any kind of social situation or confrontation then I think there’s huge potential and huge upside for you in network marketing.

If you are a creative person, I know some creative people that have built their freedom with network marketing and are able to do whatever they liked by day.

Conversely, I also know great people, like me, that probably would have a very hard time building a proper skill set in that kind of business. And I still believe in my personal capacity to build a business. I can build a business. I don’t need anybody to tell me that I can or cannot do that and I can still build a systematized business that allows me freedom. I want to 100% percent believe that. I have a skill set. I just need the people and the resources and the time to do that.

So what do you believe? What you’re your values? Those are some the things that are going to factor into whether or not you choose to join. It doesn’t necessarily hurt to experience it but like I said earlier specially for people that are maybe new you business you get a lot of the fundamentals and there.

Maveen: David you said it very well and it is the choice of the person looking to get into that business. I think you’re right the person does have to understand what they’re about to get into. Do your research. Understand the team your about join. Understand how that team dynamic is. See if you really fit in that team dynamic.

I mean, like you said, even when you have multimillionaire mentors out there like Robert Kiyosaki and potential presidential candidate Donald Trump, saying that network marketing is a great start and they would join if they had an opportunity. They would join it as well if they were not at the levels they were today.

There is some sort of truth in that as well. When you hear mindsets from people that have something and build something from ground up. Some people say Donald Trump haven’t but you know what he has still’s been able to maintain it.

If you understand what you getting into and what you’re looking to take out of that network marketing, for myself, I took out the fact that I don’t want to work for somebody for the rest my life. I do not want to own my own business, kind of like yourself. I found the right venue to do so, about 10 years later, but I did find the right venue to going to and now is just about working venue.

David: That’s right! That’s awesome! And that’s how we’re choosing to use our power. so I how will you use your power? Check us out online at usingyourpower.com

The post 002 – Network Marketing appeared first on UsingYourPower.com | with David Andrew Wiebe & Maveen Kaura.