10 Cautions to Network Marketers, Business Owners and Independent Contractors

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10 Cautions to Network Marketers especially successful one…And I mean successful in dollars.

While I know the scriptures say, The Lord gives us power to get wealth (Deuteronomy 8:18), it is for the LORD’s purposes – not for us to consume it  upon our own lust – being greedy and just to buy stuff for our own pleasure.  (James 4:3)  

Be grateful for the help: we don’t succeed without others

1.  Be Grateful For The Help  

It takes people to build a good and successful business that is producing income especially for the one on the top.  

Don’t forget that it was people buying your products or service and other business builders doing their part to help build “your” network marketing business or any business really.    

Customers matter!  Workers matter!  

Sales Rep matters!  Independent Contractors matter!  

King Uzziah in 2 Chronicles 26:16 “when he was strong, his heart was lifted up to his destruction:  for he transgressed against the LORD his God and went into the temple of the LORD to burn incense upon the altar of incense.”  As this king was strong with help and his name was getting known all around, he was starting to show signs of being prideful.  

Stay Humble

2. Stay humble.  

Don’t get the big head.  

Don’t forget that you had to learn the business one step at a time whether you were spoon fed the information or you learned it through hard knocks.  Sometimes, when we get to a certain position, we are so far from the beginning that we might genuinely forget those baby steps.  

Share this with a single mom

3.  Be willing to Teach.  

While remaining teachable yourself, be willing to share some of the steps you took to become successful.  Journaling has helped me to remember steps I took before I overcame an obstacle.  Before I was on the other side of the beginning of a learning curve.  We should continue to learn and develop our craft, our salesmanship or “share-man-ship”, being able to better share and share in a more efficient and succinct way.  

We should share in a way that is not begging or pleading.  Sharing genders relationship versus hatred for the next time they see you… if they only think of you as a salesman.  Be ever learning and also ever willing to teach.  

King Uzziah did not “get it” until judgement happened.

2 Chronicles 26:18 And they withstood Uzziah the king, and said unto him, It appertained not unto thee, Uzziah, to burn incense unto the LORD, but to the priest, the sons of Aaron, that are consecrated to burn incense:  go out of the sanctuary; for thou hast trespassed; neither shall it be for thine honour from the LORD God.    

If you go back up to verse 13 and 15 you will see that King Uzziah “had an army of 307,500 men…to help the king against the enemy”  And “he made in Jerusalem engines, invented by cunning men…and his name spread far abroad; for he was marvellously helped, til he was strong”.  

This king was rocking it!  

But he didn’t listen to the still small voice or the louder voices of the priests…

Verse 19:   “Then Uzziah was wroth, and had a censer in his hand to burn incense”  

(He didn’t put it down)

“And while he was wroth with the priest”,

(who were speaking truth to him),

“the leprosy even rose up in his forehead before the priest in the house of the LORD, from beside the incense altar.”

(where he stood in sin)  

Obey that still small voice of truth you hear.

  • Don’t forget where you came from!

 4. With that, Don’t forget where you came from.

That can be humbling–so don’t dwell in it.  I am cautioning you to not forget your humble beginnings in a way that when you meet others coming up in the ranks, you are reminded, hopefully not painfully reminded, of where you started.  

I can remember talking to someone about the business and hearing them say how they can’t sell anything.  I used to think that I could not be salesman.  

Yet we all sell:

We sell ourselves to our new best friend.  

We sold ourselves to our spouses before marriage.  

We even sold ourselves to our kids, most of us,

after they were born.  

It is about sharing who we are and when we get comfortable with sharing ourselves and our products or services, we might forget how it was when we first started.  So no. 4 is Don’t forget where you came from, good or bad, because sometimes bad situations forced you to do good and to become better.

Be Teachable

5. Be teachable.  

We have mentors all around us whether it is people or situations mentoring us to be better or at least giving us the choice to be better.  

CHOOSE TO BE BETTER.  

Take the Lessons to Heart!  

Take the words of encouragement to do good, to heart.  

Learn from them.    

When I was struggling to learn how to sell and then share, I had wonderful, successful people around me but they did not always seem to understand my struggle.  I had mechanically done all the right things.  

– I had my list of 100 names, still do to this day.  

– I was making the calls,

– knocking on doors physically,

– setting appointments,

– giving samples with my business cards and flyers,

– had my  name and phone number labeled on the samples,

– attended the home meetings,

– went to the hotel meetings,

– kept product stock on hand,

– listened to that business’s webinars and 

– I network with other industries.  

In being teachable, my husband always told me that if I couldn’t get the necessary lessons to look elsewhere.  To go higher, is what he said, to my higher upline.  

So my “higher” was in Network Marketing meetings that hosted a variety of businesses.  These meetings were sharing business principles that worked for many businesses.  Personally, I was not interested in going higher,  above my upline’s head, to find a mentor.  

It was in the network marketing meetings for any business that I hit my stride and overcame the hurdles in that learning curve.  I began actively sharing, selling products and recruiting.  

It was in the general networking meetings that I learned about relationship marketing or relational marketing.   Network marketing meetings ended up providing me with my best clients.  

Get a Mentor

6. Get a mentor.  

A word to the wise, your upline might not be your mentor so don’t expect them to be.  They can be if they chose to and have the ability and time to mentor you.  

Time and again, I have seen my upline not be my mentor.  I did not realize this was even a possibility that the person who recruited me was in fact, not my mentor.  

That was my issue:  I was looking and expecting my upline to mentor me.  They share tips and went on calls with me as the “expert” showing me the ropes.  But it is not the same as being a mentor.  

My current business mentor is not in my business.  She does not have any attachments in a monetary way to my success or failure. What she has suggested to me is that I spend more money on character development through books and seminars than spending even more money on attending networking meetings.  I have nothing against BNI’s, Grotto meetings and the like.  They work swell for some people.  I find for myself that I do better in business as I do better personally.  

So I ask you, in the bible, who was King Uzziah’s mentors?  Was he listening to them?  Kings normally have many advisers.  But as a king, if they think they “have arrived”, and are no longer humble, they might not listen to trusted advisers or trusted friends and workers around them.   (Look at the lives of King Solomon, Nebuchadnezzar,  and King Saul.)

Keep short accounts

7.  Keep short accounts and be honest.  

If you mess up, get back on track.  I think King Uzziah was repentive because after he got leprosy in his head, he ran out of the temple from doing what only the priests were to do.  (2 Chronicles 26:20)  

Make it right with people who work for you, who work with you and your customers.  

Do it quickly.  

Try not to have a long list of amends to make; keep the list short and take care of it quickly.  If I was King Uzziah, I think my heart would have been beating so fast in doing that wrong thing.  Maybe his pride really had deceived him.  I would have been ashamed of myself.  

I have had to apologize for missing a meeting because it was not on my calendar.  Now I strive to make sure that does not ever happen again.  My motto became:  “I work real well with my calendar!”  

I try to deal honestly with people and fairly so that there isn’t something  that creeps in subtly since I am already working at being honest in transactions.  When I tell someone I’m going to do something but I forget, I ask them when I realize I probably forgot to do something.  When they tell me what I forgot, I can get right on it.  

Keep short accounts.

Build your good character

8. Build your good character.

I think if King Uzziah had had a humble spirit before he was famous, he would not have presumed to do the priest’s job.  

In building good character, it help keeps you from temptations to do the wrong thing or make wrong decisions.  

I have a rule about the opposite sex:  I stay within a certain number of inches from them when talking.  I watch their signals and words to make sure we are only talking about business and nothing undercover.   I have a stance of, we can work together if it is only work.  I am not “looking” for a personal buddy.  I only want to have a strategic business alliance.  I can talk for hours with the opposite sex and not be drawn to them no matter how nice they are because my position is about business.  How about you?  

If I have to tell them to back off, I will.  Will you?

If I have to stay away from them because the chemistry is too strong, I stay away.  Would you?

Build your character so that you can let things go by you that in the long run might cause more problems than it’s worth.  

Build your character that you can stay true to your own core values.  

Sometimes we set boundaries but can’t or won’t enforce them  We need to be willing to enforce our boundaries, if need be.    Build your character so that you can set boundaries and keep them.  In building  character, I read books or listen to audio books, regularly.  

I have a business mentor that always challenges me with good materials.  My mentor is someone who I would aspire to be like but in my line of business.  

I also have a community that sometimes speak hard truth to me and helps me to see things from a different perspective.  

Being a praying Christian, I pray about most things if not all things.  I want to say that I pray about all things but I don’t know if that is true.  So I will keep short accounts here and say that I pray about most things.  

Invest in yourself!  

Whether it is keeping your word to yourself about your eating plan, exercising, reading plan, daily activities and so on.  Part of having good character is keeping your word to yourself.  So King Uzziah should have stuck to doing king stuff and let the priest do the priest stuff.  

Is there something in your life that you need to get in order?
The right order?  

If you are rebuked, take it well

9.  If you are rebuked, take it well.  

Examine the situation looking for the truth.  I was recently rebuked for not following the leader.  I was told what  to do in front of others.  During a break, I talked to my leader and let them know that I was trying to follow their lead and their cues.  But they had not always noticed that.  So now, I am more aware to follow their lead so that they can catch me doing so.  

If I had taken offense especially on a day when I was not feeling good, I could have quit or given up.  The character built in me was to never quit–let them fire me.  I was not going to leave my position.   For a few minutes, I had to ponder the situation when I realized I had been watching for their cues, for their leadership “over” my position.  Do you ever sit back and take inventory of the situation before reacting?   Sometimes rebukes or corrections come from more than one person.  I’ve worked in an office where there were too many chiefs, you might say.  

When you are an independent contractor, you still have someone to report to.  And there is always a chain of command though sometimes your equal will try to send directions your way.  This is an opportunity to speak up if you have directions from the chief, head boss or leader, to make it known that you don’t need to hear the same thing from another equal or to hear contradictory directions from someone’s opinion.  

Ever get that?  Where someone thinks they know better than the boss?  Maybe that isn’t the job for them.  

I know people sometimes are just trying to be helpful.  So be cautious to not take offense when a rebuke or correction might be well meaning though misplaced.  

Take it well.  

Consider the situation.  

Then speak up once you know the truth.  Or repent if you are in the wrong.  It came to pass…this too shall pass and it will be another lesson in building your good character.  Last but not least…

Success is not always measured in money only

10.  In giving 10 cautions to network marketers especially successful ones, meaning dollar wise, learn that success is not always measured in dollars.  The world system views much money as success and it is a level of success… but what happens along the way to your supposed great success?  See the 10 questions below to ask yourself.

Are you a failure because you did not become a millionaire like Bill Gates as you worked on your business?  

Are you a failure because you don’t have a chain of stores and just your one or two?  

No!  

Be very careful not to label yourself a failure because the world has decided for you what success it.  

Are your bills paid?  

Are you not in foreclosure?  

Can you afford your current lifestyle?  

Is your family still happy with you?  

Do you have balance in your life?  

If you are a Christian, do you still have a good relationship with the LORD?  

Did you burn bridges to get to this level of success?  

Are you still liked by your peers?  

If you can say yes to all of these questions and have lots of money, Bravo!  If you can say yes to all of these questions and the doors of your business are still open, would you not call yourself successful?  

I want to encourage you that there are many measuring sticks to success…not just dollars.  Dollars is just one way to measure if you are successful or not.  

Another measuring stick for success is obedience.  Did you obey that still small voice guiding you, speaking truth to you?    Did you obey that whisper to share something insightful with your potential client that really might help them while you laid aside closing the deal for a few minutes?  

Success has been measured so much in dollars that some people  will not even talk to you unless you have achieved a certain amount of wealth.  Have you heard of these circles?   I have had people close to me wonder why someone would listen to me if I am not as rich as another.  We all have experiences that we can share.  And our experience can be wisdom for someone else who has not traveled as far as we have.  

Dear Network Marketer, Business Owner, and Independent Contractor, if you are only in business for money and nothing else, you might want to stop reading here.  Money is a great motivator but it should not be the only motivator.    

So remember these 10 steps that can help you to succeed:

1. Being grateful for the help in building your business because of customers, reps and business builders

2. Staying humble so you can handle success.  

3. Being willing to teach what you have learned…there is always someone who knows less than you.  

4.  Not forgetting where you came from in how Your journey started

5.  Being teachable  

6. Looking for your mentor if you don’t have one  

7.  Keeping short accounts

8. Building your character  

9.  Being rebuked and taking it well.  

and

10.  Success is not always measured in dollars.

These are 10 cautions to help you choose to succeed as you do them and do them well.  I hope this has been a good reminder of what to do and what not to do.  I hope you have the opportunity to share this with others who are up and coming.

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Many people could add their stories to a few of these points from good and bad experiences.  The point is that we all have learned some things from our experiences.  

My name is Nek’ka Migel.  I am a grateful believer in Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior.  I would love to hear from you, possibly adding number 11 and 12 of cautions you thought of sharing with Network Marketers, Business owners and Independent Contractors.  Feel free to add your comments in the comment section or send me a private message.   

It has been my pleasure writing this.  For a one to one consultation, please click here.   

Sincerely and

In Christ name,

Nek’ka Migel    

Choose to Succeed Referral Marketing

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