My Motivation Kept me Broke.
I heard this on a training call from one of my Senior Business Associate’s recently and the more I considered this idea, the more it actually made sense. Having been involved in 4 direct selling companies in over 25 years’, I certainly have seen the good, the bad, the ugly and the just plain illegal!
One of the things I did observe is this notion of “promoting from event to event”.
Now initially I rather naively thought that this meant to get your reps excited to join you at events. But in reality I learned that it’s a very clever ploy by a lot of companies to keep you spending money.
The Broke Life
Now don’t get me wrong – I absolutely LOVE going to company events. Historically I have attended hundreds of them – both locally and overseas. It is a bit like a car battery isn’t it, the car won’t run without a battery, and most network marketers won’t run without motivation.
But there is a key distinction between inspiration and motivation. Allow me to explain.
What is Inspiration and What is Motivation
Inspiration is usually involved in empowering others while motivation is always an external thing.
The more clever companies will combine both. So what distinguishes between the two? For instance, you listen to a guest speaker who has a very powerful story of overcoming incredible odds. You are able to relate it to your life experience and thus it inspires you to work smarter.
Motivation is usually internal. It’s your company’s Founder sharing a new product, a new technology, a new system and reps will typically come out of an event wired based purely on motivation. They can’t wait to get back home and put into practise the new ‘stuff’ they have learned from the company.
The problem with this type of motivation is that it isn’t long lasting. And what I have learned over time is that the more often a company’s events are, the more the company wants to keep you spending money. Every event you will see something new – new people, a new product, a new way of doing business. And everyone has to have it.
The fundamental problem with this is that typically these types of companies will have a very tiny profit margin.
I am Motivated yet I’m Broke
The last company I decided to leave well over 15 years’ ago was exactly this way. The margins were so miniscule – you quite literally had to have hundreds of customers to make even half of what would be considered a half way ‘decent’ income.
What I learned at a live event overseas was that the company disclosed how many in the company were actually earning any money.
They declared – I thought rather recklessly – that only a certain level and above were considered ‘profitable levels’ and that 0.001% of all reps in the company were there. I mean, really??? I came home and crunched the numbers (as you do when you spend some years working in insurance). I figured that my chance of succeeding with this company was so against me that it seems quite futile to continue on.
But yet this company had weekly online events and monthly face-to-face events. Because they needed numbers – they needed a LOT of people purchasing regularly and the only way they could ever achieve that and offset their distribution attrition rate was to keep the current reps spending and spending and spending. And how do you do that? By keeping them motivated.
I’ll admit at one stage with this company I had multiple credit cards and most of the time they were on their limit and that was how I lived. That was my broke life, and that was how I was trained to operate. Being broke.
It was so unbelievably backwards that I just couldn’t believe it. And yet tens of thousands of people every single day participate. Now there is nothing fundamentally wrong with this – most people won’t have worked this out. And even more tragically, it’s the same with training (and that’s a blog post for next week).
Now I’m not asking you to leave your company.
What I am suggesting you do is ask yourself how often are you going to company events and spending money?
Do you buy ever single new gadget, product, service, fad, promotional thing that the company produces? Some companies have an absolutely astonishing line-up of kitchy promotional stuff that really, doesn’t bring in any new business at all (I still have a bathroom bag which I personally love because it’s very purposeful and handy – but the logo is so dark no-one would ever see it).
You need to think critically about this stuff and not just blindly go along with whatever the company and upline tell you. Remember – you are an entrepreneur. You get to choose at every moment.
Feel free to share this with your teams. Don’t get caught up in the allure of being constantly motivated. Do not let your motivation keep you broke.
How do you think Tony Robbins is so successful after all?
It’s not necessarily his content – it’s his ability to motivate you. But motivation never lasts.
Read autobiographies of people who have achieved great success over enormous odds. Find the rags to riches tales. Avoid the “ra ra ra” events (you know what I’m talking about).
Inspiration is longer lasting and way more impactful and definitely more likely to keep you focussed and on track. Motivation will wear off like a painkiller after you’ve had surgery – leaving you desperate for more. I know where I would prefer to be.