The laptop lifestyle is great, but it takes a lot of work to make it work.

I have a friend who moves from network marketing company to network marketing company like a slightly crazy single girl going from bad boyfriend to bad boyfriend.  Each time she falls in love, she thinks this is the one.

Many of those companies are selling are incompatible highlights packaged together into what becomes essentially a lie.  They talk about all the money that can be made and how little you can work. Both of those things are true, but they are generally not true for the same person at the same time – at least not until that person has spent many many years working to build a base of customers who are buying and downline team members who are selling. 

A great joke that was repeated to me once I'd gotten into the top 2% of my network marketing company is that someone in my role should “dress like a lady, think like a man, and work like a dog,” which is offensive in more than one way, but at least true in terms of the work ethic required to really be successful.  We did not mention this to the rank and file of the company who had not yet really committed to the cause.

Yes, absolutely, there are top people in network marketing companies who get big paychecks.  But many of them are using employee thinking against their potential recruits.  They show you a monthly paycheck for $10,000, and so you assume their claims of six figure income must be true.  But what you don't see is that the month after the $10,000 paycheck they may have received no paycheck at all, but instead a bill.  Depending upon how that person built their business, if they don't have a stable base of people actually selling the product beneath them, their income may fluctuate wildly.

When I was in the top 2% of a network marketing company driving a “free” car, there were months when my “team” production wasn't enough to cover the quota I had to make for the company to make my lease payment for me.  So instead of a paycheck, I received a bill for the lease payment on my “free” car.

And let me be clear, when we talk about “team” production, what that really meant was the wholesale packages the people I personally recruited purchased to start their businesses.  So if I got busy training my people or decided to take advantage of that flexibility that gets talked about so much, I didn't get paid that month.

Now yes, I did have team members who sold and recruited, so there were moments when the business did produce on its own.  But the truth is that if you bring people in with the promise of getting rich quick, they catch on quick and are gone.  The team I built was like a sandcastle, constantly having to be rebuilt due to the lack of a firm foundation.

 It's a shame that so many hustlers find their way into these organizations and that they go unchecked, because IN THEORY network marketing businesses are a great halfway point between being an employee and being a completely independent entrepreneur. So much of the branding (logo, cards, website, mission statement, product development) that soaks up so much of a company's start up capital and time is already done.  If you find a product you want to sell and the market is not saturated with other people selling it, why not take advantage of some economies of scale?

But the fact is if you've started one of these businesses and it didn't work out, the problem likely is not the company, the product, or your upline (although those are all important factors you should research before signing up).  The problem likely is that you have not taken the MASSIVE ACTION required to get the cargo plane off the ground.  And most likely your upline isn't going to be completely honest about how much work it took them to get going, because they don't want to overwhelm or discourage you.

While every now and then there is a unicorn who comes in with the correct energy, support network around them, or other magical juju to get them up and running fast, even those folks eventually hit a wall where they realize to grow beyond their original network is going to take time, money, and effort. 

This is the point where the drama usually comes out (if it has not already).  Something about the process of asking people not just to believe in us but to hand over their hard won cash just stirs up any insecurity a person might have.  And honestly, it is easier to walk away than to look at all that sh!t.

So if you've joined several network marketing companies and not had success, I'd suggest before you sign up for the next business you ask yourself

1) am I ok with this being a hobby and losing money/not making much money?

2) if not, am I willing to work my A$$ off more than 8 hours a day and more than 5 days a week in exchange for building something that is flexible and allows me to have repeat/residual business?

3)if my work ethic matches my ambitions, am I willing to work through the emotional “stuff” that this business brings to the surface? Is my upline going to give me the emotional support I need, or should I work with a therapist or coach?

If you can answer yes to those questions, I'd say go for it.  Just make sure you are learning about business finance and understanding whether or not your efforts are profitable.  Network marketing done right can be a great entrepreneurial and sales training ground.  But done wrong, it can clean out your bank accounts and mess up your relationships, including the one with yourself.

Just starting a business is no guarantee of a solution to your money problems.

If you have money problems, you may have had the idea that the solution will come in the form of a business.  More likely, you'll just recreate your financial issues in a different account.

Before I started my first business, I definitely believed starting a business would solve my money problems.   After all, the main problem I thought I had was “not enough money”, and we all know entrepreneurs make lots of money, so starting a business should solve my problem, right?

What I found instead was that starting a business has costs that have to be funded personally until the business starts to bring in cash, and the bad habits I had in my personal account showed up again in my business account.  That shouldn't be surprising, but for some reason it was to me!

If you underearn and/or overspend in your personal account, you will likely do the same thing in your business account.  If you have a deep-seated scarcity consciousness, you will not feel like you have enough even if you do earn lots more in your business.  What's needed is an understanding of what is driving your behavior so you can change it. This understanding and these changes are the most powerful work I do with clients.

For me, it still seems like magic when I do my own work in this area.  While we don't teach this in school or talk about it in society, the truth is that we can change the money scripts we were given.  We can work through emotional memories, which has the result of sort of “compressing the file” so it takes up less of your mental cycles.  We can pull and change individual beliefs by working directly with the subconscious mind so that you don't constantly sabotage ourselves.

In order to resolve our money problems, this is the deep work that is necessary for growth.  If you are ready to make a change in this area, schedule a call so we can work together.  I look forward to working with you.

A photo from the screened in porch of our former  “Sweet Home, Alabama”.

We purchased a lake house as a way to get my husband, Darren, to unplug and relax so he could come back re-energized to work at our consulting company, STS.  And while it did serve the purpose of getting him revitalized so we could bill out more of his hours, in truth, most of the time the place sat empty and was more of a drain than a help for our finances.  So how did we turn the situation around, and what lessons can we take from that experience?

1.) Turn liabilities into assets.

Whenever possible, turn the things that cost you money into things that earn you money. 

Let's say on a whim you decide to buy a giant tortilla making machine like the ones they used to have at On the Border (am I the only one who remembered those things?).  While you have piping hot fresh tortillas whenever you want, most of the time the thing is off and you are just making payments, because how many tortillas does one household need?

In this scenario. the tortilla machine is a liability (and likely the source of some fights with your spouse).

Now, imagine that you decide to rent the machine out for parties. Or you keep it running 24×7 and package up and sell the tortillas. Suddenly, that machine has shifted from a liability to an asset.

If you are willing to work through your own resistance, nearly every liability you own can be turned into an asset.

You can rent out your car, your boat, your spare bedroom – nearly everything you own through the sharing economy.

If times are tough, thinking about what you own in a different way can radically shift your financial situation.

2.) Turn expenses into business expenses​.

Technically we learned this lesson with our IT consulting company, but with the vacation rental there were whole other categories of expenses we could write off.  If we went out to eat while staying at the vacation home and then wrote up a review of the place for our visitors guide, that meal sounds to me like a business expense.  If we had to fix up wear and tear on the property, those repairs were now business expenses.  Basically everything we did associated with the vacation home became a pre-tax expense that we got to write off against the rental income.  While the process of renting the house out did create some expenses we otherwise would not have had, there were definite expenses we would have had either way that now were business expenses.

Now, I'm not a CPA, so take what I'm saying as inspiration and talk to a professional to understand how to apply this to your situation within the boundaries of the law.  We don't want to mess with the IRS.  But whenever possible, paying for life in a pre-tax way is a great hack.

3.) Plug into an existing marketplace.

When we decided to rent our our lake house, I made up flyers, posted on Facebook, and emailed people I knew.  Not a lot of activity was generated that way.

If you can, plug into an existing marketplace.  If you make hand made goods, people are more likely to find you at a booth at a holiday fair than at home in your spare bedroom.  Etsy already has traffic – your brand new baby website does not.  No one is looking for you if they don't know you exist.  Whenever you can, plug into an existing marketplace to boost your traffic and revenue. These sites will likely take a bite out of your revenue, but this is a cost of doing business and for getting leads you wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

This, by the way, is what network marketing companies are doing TO you, not FOR you.  They are hooking into your existing network of friends and family.  Yes, occasionally someone may come to their site and get directed to you, but for the most part, you are the sales and marketing for those products.  Copy their model for yourself by plugging into other people's networks whenever you can.

Hopefully these tips will help you think differently about your money and increase your financial successes.