It didn’t happen.
Nothing happened. I had no distributors and no customers for my first year and ten months in the business.
Fortunately for me, I stayed in the business. Not because I had vision or persistence. I stayed in the business because I was naive and I didn’t know that I could quit. I just thought that you signed up, and that was it for life. Clueless would be a good description of my start in network marketing.
I was frustrated, and didn’t feel good about myself and the business.
But I often think of what would have happened if my sponsor had given me different expectations. What if he had said:
“Big Al, you know nothing about the people business. You studied mathematics and science in school, not people. So it will take you a while to learn how to do this business, but I know you can learn. You learned how to drive a car, you learned high-level science, so you certainly can learn the skills of how to do this business.
“So let’s get started now. For the first few months, I just want you to use the products and get some product experience while you are learning. You will attend the meetings and the trainings. And maybe set a few appointments so that you can see me present the business. Don’t worry if the people at the appointments join or not. I just want you to see the process.
“And then, after about three months, we will be ready to get your business started. We will launch your new business then, when you have finished reading these books on goals and attitude.”
Hmmmm. I do know that I would have felt a lot better during those first three frustrating months. I would have expected to just be learning, not producing big results.
Now, I am not saying that we should start all of our distributors this way. But we might consider something like this when we start a new distributor who is as clueless as I was. This would give us three months to get the new distributor associating with more positive people. Three months of personal development. And no pressure to produce big results during those first three months.