I didn’t set out to become an affiliate or network marketer.
In fact, when I first discovered this business in 2002, I wasn’t looking for an online business at all.
I was looking for a job.
A couple of years earlier, I’d gone on disability because I was losing my eyesight to a condition called retinitis pigmentosa. At the time, I was living on my own, couldn’t drive anymore, and was receiving $928 a month in disability income.
I was pretty good with money, so I made it work. But “making it work” meant things were tight.
There wasn’t much left over for going out to eat, having fun with friends, or dealing with an unexpected expense. At one point, I even canceled my satellite TV and cell phone just to cut expenses.
After about nine months of not working, I was also bored out of my mind.
I needed something to do. More importantly, I needed a sense of purpose.
So I took a part-time job working a few midnight shifts each week at a department store. It gave me another $200 or $300 a month, but I knew that wasn’t the future I wanted.
My eyesight was going to continue getting worse, and I wanted to find something I could build regardless of how much vision I eventually lost.
So I started working with a career counselor.
And that’s when something happened that completely changed the direction of my life.
I Was Looking for a Career. I Found a Business Instead.
My career counselor had me using a career-finder website to research different jobs I might be able to do.
While I was on that website one day, a pop-up appeared advertising the opportunity to make a few thousand dollars a month, be my own boss, set my own hours, and work for myself.
That immediately got my attention.
I’ve always had an entrepreneurial streak. I never particularly liked being told when to work, how to work, or what somebody else thought my time was worth.
The idea that my income could be determined by what I was willing to build instead of an hourly wage sounded pretty damn good to me.
So I entered my information on that pop up website.
That decision introduced me to my first sponsor in network marketing.
And fortunately for me, he taught me one lesson almost immediately that would shape the next 24 years of my life:
If you want to build a business, you need people to talk to.
He never told me to make a list of friends and family. Instead, he taught me how to generate leads online and connect with people beyond the people I already knew.
Back in 2002, the methods for doing that looked very different than they do today. But the principle hasn’t changed.
And my sponsor was relentless about keeping me focused on it.
I’d start analyzing the compensation plan and want to understand exactly how much I’d make at each level.
He’d tell me I was focusing on the wrong thing.
I’d start digging too deeply into something else.
Same answer.
Focus on generating leads.
Because without people seeing what you have to offer, none of the other stuff matters very much.
Six Months Later, Everything Looked Different
I started my first network marketing business in September 2002.
By March 2003, I was earning more than $5,000 a month.
I quit the part-time midnight job.
Originally, my goal had simply been to earn enough that I wouldn’t have to scrape together money to pay my bills anymore.
Once I saw what was possible, though, I started thinking much bigger.
Over the next several years, the business changed my financial life.
I bought a larger home and eventually paid it off. In late 2007, I bought the home in the country that I wanted.
In 2010, I had my first six-figure year. In 2011, I had my first multiple-six-figure year.
And I’d set myself a pretty ambitious personal goal: I wanted my home paid off by the time I turned 40.
I turned 40 in January 2015.
In May, I paid off the mortgage.
I’m proud of those accomplishments, but not because I think owning a particular house or reaching a particular income makes somebody successful.
What mattered to me was what the money represented.
Choices.
I knew what it felt like when a friend asked if I wanted to go somewhere and I had to think about whether I could afford it.
I knew what it felt like when $928 a month had to cover virtually everything.
I wanted to get to a place where a broken furnace wasn’t a financial crisis and where going out to dinner didn’t require checking whether there was enough money left over.
For me, making money was never just about watching a number in a bank account get bigger.
It was about freedom.
Then Things Changed
My story isn’t a straight line that goes up and to the right forever.
Beginning around 2011, I started experiencing health problems that eventually became serious enough that there were periods when I could barely work at all.
At roughly the same time, the lead-generation strategy that had worked so well for me during the early years was becoming less effective.
The Internet was changing. Social media was exploding, and I never really made the transition to a new traffic source.
For several years, particularly as my health became worse, I largely rode the business I’d already built.
And that’s where I learned another lesson that I think every online marketer should understand:
Build an email list.
Because I’d built my own list instead of simply sending people directly to a company website, I still had an audience I could communicate with.
Even during periods when I wasn’t able to work much, that list continued producing sales and income.
It kept doing that for years.
But an email list isn’t a magic ATM.
If you stop putting new people into it, eventually people stop opening, email addresses disappear, interests change, and the list becomes less responsive.
That’s exactly what happened to mine.
And when I eventually started working more again, I made a mistake that I now see other marketers make all the time.
I Started Looking for the “Right Opportunity”
Instead of rebuilding my lead flow, I started looking for the opportunity my existing list would respond to.
Maybe this company would be the one.
Maybe this product would convert better.
Maybe this compensation plan would finally get everybody excited.
It’s an easy trap to fall into because finding another opportunity feels easier than doing the work of building a new source of targeted leads.
There’s just one problem.
It doesn’t solve anything.
Eventually, I found myself relearning the exact lesson my first sponsor had drilled into me back in 2002.
The opportunity isn’t the magic bullet.
If you’re constantly jumping from company to company while nobody new is entering your world, changing opportunities doesn’t fix the underlying problem.
You need people to talk to.
You need a way to turn those people into an audience you own.
And you need a system that continues bringing new people into that audience.
Twenty-four years later, I still believe lead generation is the single most important skill an affiliate or network marketer can learn.
I just had to learn the same lesson twice.
What Freedom Means to Me Today
My definition of success has changed over the years.
When I was younger, financial freedom meant having enough money that I didn’t have to worry about the bills.
That’s still important.
But today I think about freedom much more broadly.
Freedom is not having someone else decide when you can take a vacation.
It’s being able to say yes when a friend calls and wants to grab dinner or take a weekend trip.
It’s not having somebody else decide what an hour of your life is worth.
It’s having choices.
And I’ve become increasingly interested in building the business itself around that same idea.
I don’t want to create a business that technically allows me to work from home but requires me to be chained to social media every day to keep it alive.
I want lead-generation systems that can continue working after the initial work has been done.
I want content I create today to have the potential to bring someone into my world next week, next month, or even years from now.
I want residual income that continues arriving from work I’ve already done.
Because to me, that’s what a home business should ultimately provide:
More control over your money, your time, and your choices.
If You’re Building a Network Marketing Business…
There’s one other lesson I’ve learned that I think is especially important for network marketers.
Generating targeted leads is a huge piece of the puzzle.
Building your own email list is another.
But there’s also the math behind how you’re getting paid.
Network marketing can be an incredible model for creating long-term residual income and leverage. But the economics of many traditional compensation plans can make generating meaningful income in the early stages much harder than people realize.
That doesn’t mean you have to abandon network marketing.
There may simply be a better way to generate cash flow on the front end while you’re building the long-term residual income on the back end.
I’ve put together a free guide that explains the numbers and shows you why simply building a bigger team may not solve the income problem—and a different way to approach it.
If you’re struggling to turn your network marketing effort into meaningful income, I think you’ll find it worth a few minutes of your time.
Click the button below to get the free guide and see the numbers for yourself.
