Episode 005 – My Network Marketing Story Of Failure And How You Can Learn From It

[00:00:30] Hey, this is Steve Fisher and welcome to episode number five of the Residual Millionaire Podcast. I’m excited to be with you today and I’m actually going to share a Facebook Live that I did on my Facebook page at http://Facebook.com/SteveFisherPage. If you haven’t liked that page and followed that page, I encourage you to go do that, because I do go live there very frequently and I have a lot of different [00:01:00] material and content on there that I share only on that page, so I want to encourage you to follow that page and I hope you get a lot of value out of today’s podcast. I share my network marketing story of failure and how you can learn from it. I’m very transparent in this story of, it didn’t start out great for me, and so I go through all that I went through, and then what its done for us over time. Hopefully, you get a lot of value out of this. I encourage you to share [00:01:30] it with your team, because it is going to help a lot of people in the network marketing business. I appreciate you plugging in and I appreciate you sharing the podcast. Let’s jump right in. Here you go with episode number five:

Hey everybody, it’s Steve Fisher and I am excited to be on with you today. I’m excited about this broadcast. A lot of you know I got a personal trainer last year and worked out for the whole year, and in December, right at Christmas, I tweaked my shoulder [00:02:00] a little bit and so I went and tried to workout one more time after that about a week and a half later, and no go. I ended up taking off the whole month of January from the gym and today was my first day back with my personal trainer and I got to tell you, it was ugly. I don’t recommend it. Don’t take a month off and then go back. Some of you have maybe heard [00:02:30] part of my story before, but most of you probably haven’t heard the whole story of how I got started in network marketing and kind of what happened there. Actually, the first time I ever got exposed to network marketing, my brother, Stan, who now lives out in Park City, Utah, you see us going out there pretty often, but my brother Stan called me up one day. He’s somebody I have tremendous respect for, he was an executive with Delta Airlines, and he [00:03:00] called me one day and he said, “Steve, I want to pick you up tonight at 7:00 and I want you to come to a meeting with me, it’s a business meeting, and if you like what you see, we can do business together.” I really felt special, because it was my brother and I had so much respect for him, I thought, “Wow, he’d never done that before,” so I thought, “Cool.” He picked me up and on the way down to this meeting he said, “Steve, now I don’t want you to pay attention to anybody [00:03:30] that’s in the meeting. I don’t want you to pay attention to the presenter, or how good, or how bad he is. All I want you to do is look at the numbers and tell me if it makes sense to you. If so, then let’s do business together.” That’s how he kind of prepped me for this meeting, which was in hindsight pretty good, because I remember it was like one of the worst meetings I had ever been to! It was awful.

It was a rough crowd, the presenter was terrible, but I looked at the numbers and they made sense to me, so much sense that I got so excited I told [00:04:00] my brother that night, I said, “I’m in. I’ll get in.” I signed up on the spot and I said, “I’ll sponsor 10 people this week,” because I really … I said, “I know 10 people right now, some of my best buddies.” I said, “I’ll sponsor 10 people this week to get started.” On the way home from that meeting, the first person I thought of, I called him on the way home and I said, “Hey, put a pot of coffee on and I got to come by, I got to show you something.” They gave me this little kit, when I signed [00:04:30] up they gave me this little pizza box… It had a little information in it. I didn’t know anything and I was really young too, and the friends that I went to, they were air traffic controllers at DFW here. The husband and wife both were air traffic controllers and I went to their house and I threw this pizza box on their kitchen table and I said, “Look through that box and tell me why this won’t work.” That was my presentation!

For the next couple of hours they were training me and basically saying, “Hey, did you know this?” [00:05:00] I was like, “No, I didn’t.” Then they’d say, “Well, how do you do this?” I would say, “I don’t know. Let’s just keep reading.” I didn’t know anything, but after two hours of that, they said, “Hey, we’re going to get in. How do we sign up?” I was like, “I don’t know. Let’s look through this box.” I mean, I didn’t even know how to sign them up! Anyway, I signed them up that night. By the time I left their house it was about 11:30 and I knew my brother had [00:05:30] to go to bed early, because he had to get up early the next morning and I called him on the way home and I was like, “Dude,” (it was 11:30pm), “I haven’t even been home yet and I already got my first associate. Like I was telling you, I’m going to kill this business. I’ll get 10 people this week.” I was so, what do you call that? Maybe arrogant, over confident, one of those two. I was young and cocky, that’s a good word.

I went to bed that night and I tell you that story, [00:06:00] because six months later I sponsored my second associate. That was a tough time, because I really believed that I was going to sponsor 10 people that week and it was so disappointing to get all the no’s and some of the people that I thought for sure were going to join my team told me, “No.” I remember … Now, let me just explain the first guy that I sponsored, he was killing it. He had like 89 people [00:06:30] on his team and to promote to the first leadership position in the company, you only needed 12, but you had to have three personally sponsored and I only had one. Even though I had 89 people on my team, I couldn’t promote, but when people would ask me, “Hey, how’s that deal going for you?” I would always respond, “It’s awesome. I got 89 people working for me.” That’s all I could say. I couldn’t promote, it was terrible. I remember [00:07:00] we had one of the top money earners in the company coming to our town this week… Can anybody relate to this? Anybody relating to this story here? It was not a rosy picture for me in the beginning. I remember we had this top money earner coming to our town and I said to myself that week, “This is going to be my week. I’m going to make this happen.” I said, “I’m going to invite [00:07:30] 30 people to this meeting with this top money earner.” I did and I went out and I got to tell you, I was not easy on these people when they would tell me, “Oh yeah, I’ll be at the meeting.” I was literally like grabbing people by the shirt and saying, “Listen, don’t tell me that you’re going to be at this meeting and then you not show up,” right? Because I was really, by this point, I was kind of fed up. I was on edge. You ever been there? I was on edge, and I was [00:08:00] getting frustrated, and I was getting tired of people telling me they would do things and not do it. I was like grabbing these people by the shirt going, “Hey, if you tell me you’re going to be there, you better be there.”

15 people told me the were going to be at this meeting and so I was all jacked up. I had my best duds on, I was definitely trying to GQ at this meeting, suit and tie. I get there early and [00:08:30] I remember when the top money earner came in, it was just me and him at first, because I got there so early. I was so excited, I was telling him, “Hey man, tonight is my night.” I said, “I have 15 guests coming to this meeting.” I’ll never forget the look on his face when I told him that. He just kind of looked down at me and he put his arm around me and he said, [00:09:00] “Steve, that’s awesome.” He said, “But, don’t get upset if they don’t all show up.” I said, “Oh no, I took care of that.” I said, “You don’t understand, I grabbed these people by the shirt and I told them, ‘If you tell me you’re going to come, you better be there.’ I had 15 … Even after that, I had 15 people tell me they’re going to be at this meeting.” He just looked down at me and I could tell he felt sorry for me.

At about a quarter till 7:00 none of my guests are there, but I thought, “Well, it’s early,” right? Then, [00:09:30] five minutes till none of my guests showed up, so I’m starting to get a little worried here at five minutes till start time. 7:00 none of my guests showed up. The story is, that night none of those 15 people showed up to that meeting. I got to tell you, that is the night that I quit network marketing forever. I really did. I went home to my wife, I was done. I [00:10:00] went home to my wife and I said, “You know what? I obviously can’t do this business. I’ve tried, I’ve been trying for six months. I can’t sponsor anybody, I can’t get anything done.” I literally quit the business that night. I said, I told my wife, I said, “I’m done. I’m not doing it anymore.” I quit and I went back to my job at American Airlines the next day working at American. Back then, we had to ride a shuttle to the terminal and I remember [00:10:30] the next day I get on the shuttle and one of the guys that told me he was going to be at the meeting was sitting across from me on this tram and I probably had a bad look on my face, I was just like staring him down.

He looked at me and he said, “Steve, Steve, I really wanted to be there.” He said, “But my wife, she was sick last night and we couldn’t make it, but we really want to see the business.” He said, “Can you come over tomorrow night and show [00:11:00] us the business?” I had to think about that, because remember, I had quit the night before and here’s a guy asking me for an appointment. I thought about it, I was like, “Okay, I’ll come over. I’ll show you… I’ll do it,”  Boom, I’m back in the business all of a sudden. I go to their house the next night, show them the business, and they get in the business, so I have my second associate. True story, the very same day, another [00:11:30] one of the guys that was supposed to be at the meeting came up to me and he goes, “Hey man, we were supposed to be at the meeting… Sorry, couldn’t make it, but we want to see it.” They set up an appointment for me to show them the business the next day and they got in the business as well and that was my third associate, I promoted to that next level.

Really, that was kind of the icebreaker for me, because that business just started exploding with that group and it [00:12:00] was just … I don’t know how to explain it, it was kind of the breaking of the ice and all of a sudden that team took off and we started growing and went on to do extremely well with that company, which eventually went out of business. I had taken a leave of absence from American Airlines to do that business full-time and so here this company goes out of business. What happened with me was my wife Diane was pregnant with our [00:12:30] third child at the time, and she had had two cesareans before, and we knew that she was going to have to have another cesarean, so I called my manager at American Airlines. I was like, “Hey, if I come back from this leave of absence,” because I was on Cobra at that point, the insurance, and so I called him and I was like, “Hey, if I come back from this leave of absence, is she going to be covered for this cesarean?” He said, “Absolutely.” I was like, “Well, [00:13:00] I’m back!”

I went back to American Airlines after doing network marketing full-time and started climbing the corporate ladder again. It only took about a year and a half of that before I realized why I didn’t like doing that. I got fed up again with the corporate world, and there was another company launching that a friend of mine called and introduced me to, and I came back and got [00:13:30] involved in network marketing again, and started building a new team. I love the industry, I love the business, and it has ups and downs just like any other business. I think that’s kind of the moral of the story today, is don’t judge yourself by your start, because there’s very few people that get in this industry and just get off to this lightning fast start and start making all this money and you [00:14:00] hear … You do hear the stories, and one of the problems that people have in network marketing is starting to compare themselves with all these crazy stories that they hear, and starting to compare themselves with other people that have had a great start and have success.

You know what? That’s not the norm and that’s what I wanted you to hear today from me. I think a lot of times you see people that have been successful in network marketing and you don’t know the whole story. I titled this, my network [00:14:30] marketing story of failure, because I feel like that’s kind of how my business went for a long time before I ever had real success. I think a lot of people deal with that in the beginning and I think it’s just like any other business, it’s tough. There is no easy business, it’s tough to have a successful business. What a lot of people do in this industry is when they experience those slow starts, when they experience the failures, [00:15:00] and they experience the no’s, and the negativity, and people not showing up, and people not doing what they say they’re going to do, a lot of times people look inwardly and they start taking that personally. You’ll hear their self-talks saying, “Well, I can’t do this.” Just like I told my wife. I mean, did you hear my story? I went home from that telling my wife, “You know what? I just can’t do this business.” I blamed everything on myself. I felt like I was the failure. I felt [00:15:30] like I just couldn’t do it and you watch other people do it. I said, “I see other people succeeding, but I just can’t do it.” I want to encourage you today not to put it on you. Understand you can be successful here, but it’s going to take some work, it’s going to take commitment, longterm commitment, it’s going to take persistence, consistence. Really, if you watched the Superbowl and I had no skin in the game, right? I will say I was pulling for Atlanta. Sorry for those [00:16:00] of you who are Patriots fans, but I was pulling for the underdog, right? If you watched that game, man, there was a lot of lessons in that game, and you see Tom Brady, and just their determination, their never give up, their focused on winning. That’s so important for you too in your business.

You’ve got to have that same attitude. You look at how they [00:16:30] got started in that Superbowl. I mean, really for three quarters they really sucked, right? They did not look like the normal New England team and so you start thinking, “Man, Atlanta’s going to kill these guys,” right? Just look at that for your business as well, because things may not look so great for you in the beginning, but you can end with a ring, right? You can have the ring. You got to have that winning attitude. [00:17:00] You got to believe in yourself that you can win and just keep going forward, keep taking those steps, keep doing the things daily that you got to do in your business to succeed. Don’t get caught up in busy work, don’t get caught up just trying to look busy, get caught up in money making activities. Evaluate your business and be okay with the no’s, be okay when you experience those things that I experienced. [00:17:30] I mean, think about that. When I had … I invited 30 people to that meeting, 15 tell me they’re coming, and nobody shows up.

Some of those things are going to happen, but I went on … I’ve gone on and I don’t say this to brag, but understand, I’ve gone on to make over $5 million in the industry. What if I would’ve really quit? Wouldn’t that have been disastrous? It would’ve been disastrous. I did, I really did quit. Look, these people [00:18:00] pulled me back into the business that wanted an appointment, right? Thank God, thank God they pulled me back in. Don’t quit, guys. Don’t quit. I really believe it’s an incredible industry, it’s an incredible way to create passive, residual income. Here’s what you have to do. You have to find something that you’re passionate about. You have to find a company that you can believe in. You have to find a leader that you can believe in. Then you got to put your head down and go to work, [00:18:30] put your head down and go to work. Don’t get frustrated by the process. All right. That’s what a lot of people do, is they get frustrated by the process and they end up quitting. You have to be able to see longterm and see the end and understand this is worth your time. It’s worth your effort. I hope that helped you today. Hey, I really appreciate everybody joining. Gosh, we had hundreds on here today and that’s awesome. I appreciate you being on. I hope you got some value and most importantly, I hope I inspired you [00:19:00] to get busy, go to work, build your team, and don’t pay attention to all the negative stuff. Focus on the positive stuff. All right. Thanks a lot, guys. Appreciate you, love you, and I’ll be back soon!