The Big Hairy Arm

Let's say you loved to plant and grow beautiful flowers.

You separated a part of your backyard and through many hours of hard work, prepared it for your flower garden. You then carefully planted rows of different flowers. Over the next couple months you spent time every day in your garden, watering, fertilizing, and weeding.

Finally, one day the first fruits of your labor, a sprout. Then another and another. Soon, you have a beautiful flower garden. You love them all, but there is one particular flower that is unique. You have never seen anything like it. Your special flower. So, you pay extra special attention to that flower. One day, you are gazing out your window, admiring your special flower, when suddenly a big, ugly, hairy arm reaches through the fence and rips your special flower out by the roots. To your shock, your special flower is gone, leaving only a hole.

So, what does this have to do with network marketing?

It illustrates what happens in peoples lives every day.

You see, we all have people in our lives that we are afraid to contact. We think that they won't be interested - they are too busy, make too much money, or wouldn't be interested in "this type of business." Those people are represented by the special flower in the story above. Those people may turn out to be very special distributors, but if you don't make contact with them, the big, ugly, hairy arm will come in a rip them out of your network marketing life. The big, hairy arm represents a distributor from another company or even a distributor from your own company.

Now let me tell you a true story. Many years ago, I was just getting started building a network with a very prominent company. I had made up my list and was actively contacting them. Then I arrived at a particular name. This person owned 7 Domino's franchises and was pretty well to do. I was consulting for him and we had become casual friends. We also had a high level of respect for each other.

I kept looking at his name and thinking, he's not going to be interested - he's too busy, makes too much money and wouldn't be interested in "this type of business." Then one day I saw him at the athletic club. He told me that we needed to meet to go over something new. I thought it was a new marketing project, but was shocked to find out that he had sold all 7 of his franchises to do network marketing full-time!!! He was furious with me that I had not told him about my network marketing business, as he would have joined me instead. I've kicked myself ever since! But I did learn a lesson that contributed to my tremendous success in network marketing - never make the decision for someone else!

Now, you can learn from the big, hairy arm story, and from my experience. Don't preclude people. Contact everyone. Even if you don't think they will be interested, let them make that choice. You don't know who will and who won't. You definitely don't want to find out that your brother or sister are in another network marketing company or worse yet, that they are in your company, but under someone else. So, tell everyone about your business and then let them decide if they are interested or not.