The Turning Point In Your Business

Thanks for sharing. It's nice to hear about success stories that took a while.

I'm not sure if this counts, but I feel like my big breakthrough in business and in life was when I quit my very very comfortable, yet dissatisfying, Federal Government job in Canada. I "had it made" in the eyes of everyone around me, including my family...but deep down I was miserable and unfulfilled.

We had a freak snow storm in April one year and I said that was it. I started whiteboarding to change my life. I told myself if I was going to be miserable, I was at least going to be miserable in a much nicer location!

No where on the planet was off limits in my search. I contacted a couple people I knew living overseas and asked about their experience. Narrowed my wish list down to 5 countries or cities. Researched them and figured out if my online business could sustain a quality of life in that new destination.

I ended up finding a great opportunity to move to the Caribbean. I've been here for over 5 years and LOVE IT!! I wish I did it 10 years sooner. It wasn't easy to leave my security behind, but it also wasn't near as difficult as I had planned it out to be.

TLDR: my breakthrough was more about getting pushed to my psychological limit of life and having the confidence to rely on laptop income. The pain of staying the same was greater than the pain of change.

I think it's difficult for anyone to have success if that ratio is not in your favor....that breakthrough only comes after persevering through the heartaches and failures.

A friend of mine introduced me to an MLM company, but it took me nearly 6 years to really understand the full leveraging potential of this business model.

I knew a lot of people, so making sales wasn't difficult at first to this "warm market". I was taught to first sell the products, then approach customers to offer them the business opportunity. The products are quite good (health and fitness), but relatively few customers ever wanted to build a large business beyond their immediate contacts.

I soon began to realize there must be much more to it, after seeing some very impressive money being made, and I wanted a whole lot more. As I got to know the top earners through business meetings and conventions, I approached the ones who were actually living the lifestyle that I wanted, and who consistently showed up on top of the leader boards month after month and year after year.

One such person, very high in my upline, was rather impressed with my ambition and began mentoring me. He took me out on his networking events and offline prospecting (fishing) trips. At first I balked at using such "old school" methods (my thoughts actually were "primitive"), but he told me to just "watch and learn".

He never once mentioned the MLM company by name or any of its products while prospecting. "You are the brand and the product," he would say, "not the company." And, "Always dress and act like you have a priceless gift to give ... because you do."

Within one month, we went to new car dealerships, real estate offices, chambers of commerce, gyms, business conventions, trade shows, and even movie theaters to "network" and collect leads. This he called "farming within networks".

What he did was find a common "pain point" for these targeted business-oriented prospects - their sales were lost mostly because customers either couldn't afford products or didn't qualify for financing.

His solution - call those "lost" customers and offer a systematic method to qualify for a loan, or immediately increase their monthly income. He offered to pay for each referred lead he sold, plus a residual "bonus" which would be negotiated later.

The "method" is to leverage the US Federal Income Tax code which allows substantial tax advantages for home businesses. His advice was to start a home business, and receive an immediate reduction in income tax witholding from their employer in the first month, based on annual estimated business deductions, averaging $200-$500/month. This would be like getting a pay raise of up to $500 per month.

[DISCLAIMER] Consult tax advice from a competent professional, specializing in MLM/home-business income tax.

When asked "what kind of business should I start?", then and only then is when the MLM company gets mentioned. He also went back to the lead source and offered a one-time "referral fee", or a "monthly cut of the action" (sign up as the sponsor).

After more than 20 years in MLM, I never forgot that, and because of the recent new home business income tax act, this method actually works better now than ever before.

I have yet to find any affiliate program that pays out on more than 1, maybe 2 levels. That cannot compete with getting paid on many levels in network marketing.

A common technique used by many top MLM professionals that I know (including myself) is to promote an affiliate program on the front end of a marketing campaign, then use the MLM business opportunity as a back-end offer. Sometimes it's called a self-liquidating offer, to offset the cost of promoting the primary program.

An affiliate program used in this way as an SLO is also particularly effective for silently by-passing the loud and often belligerent self-anointed anti-MLM crusaders that patrol social media and forums. I teach this to my own MLM downline and many are quietly recruiting with exceptional results, even right here on the WF!

"Don't tell them anything, until you can tell them everything."
- Richard Devos, Amway cofounder

Thanks for shearing these story ..great

oh thank you for text My big breakthrough with my blogging business took me around five years. This is when I really FOUND MY VOICE, learned what made a blog post really stand out, and started using email marketing to grow my business.

thanks you for this fourm ...this is really halpful my business.

Motivating story. Thank you for sharing it. But, being a newbie to the business market, I don't have any success or failure past to narrate here.
But I would like to know something in detail about email marketing and blogging. Thanks in advance, chuckholmes.

Hi Chuckholmes, Im a newbie. So, I don't have any failure or success stories. I wish to know more about blogging and email marketing. Could you please help me out in that. It will be very helpful for me.