Your first year in network marketing, in any business for that matter, is both exciting and exhausting. It can also be frightening if you aren't properly prepared to run your own business. Facing the challenges can be daunting if you aren't careful. However, if you are committed to building a successful home based business, the rewards can be life changing.
When I opened my first restaurant I was so new to the food and beverage industry that I was overwhelmed by everything; the customers, the cooking, hiring the staff, managing the staff, paying the bills, staying in compliance, ordering and inventory - the list was endless. I was thrilled beyond belief and terrified that everything would come crashing down like a house of cards. That changed as I became more experienced. And I became more profitable as time went on.
I experienced the same things when I started building my own network marketing business. Thankfully, I had had enough experience in the restaurant industry to know that I needed to get training and use the new skills I was learning right away in my business.
Your first year in business is a critical time in building a solid foundation for long term success. Keeping that in mind, it is imperative that you start out by understanding that this really is a business and that you have to treat it like a real business. Every business has challenges and you have to be prepared for the challenges that will occur. Part of building a successful business is understanding that you will need to learn new skills to effectively deal with the challenges that pop up so that they just become part of "the cost of doing business".
Here are some key points that will help you lay a solid foundation for your business.
One of the first things that you will need to do is create a business plan.
A very important component of your business plan is a detailed marketing plan designed to deliver your products and services to the right people. The right people are folks who have a problem that your product or service solves. Your marketing plan must provide a strategy to find the people who are looking for the solution that your product or service provides. Your plan must include how to get your information in front of these potential customers and business partners enough times so that these folks get to know who you are, get to like you and get to trust you. People like to do business with people they know, like and trust.
The other component of that business plan is your monthly business budget. You need to know exactly how much everything you do in your business costs you. Business expenses include your start up costs, your marketing expenses, your auto-ship (if you have one), your telephone services, your internet services, postage, mailing supplies, promotional supplies, business cards, websites, insurance expenses, advertising, leads, travel and training. It is vital to your survival as a business owner to know exactly how much of your product you need to sell in order to cover your monthly expenses. You need to know how many business partners you have to bring into the business so that you have enough sales volume moving through your organization to cover your monthly expenses.
Nothing will put you out of business quicker than being under capitalized and consistently spending more money than you are bringing in. You have got to know what your numbers are. In the beginning, you cannot realistically expect to cover all of your expenses through sales and team building. Which means that you need to have working capital on hand in order to be able to subsidize your business long enough so that it starts generating income for you. At a minimum, you should have at least three to six months of operating capital and your start up costs set aside.
Why you want your own business is just as important as how you are going to build your business. Why are you going into business for yourself? To earn extra cash? To be your own boss? To be able to stay home so that you can take care of your children? To help other people? To have enough money to retire comfortably? Those are all great reasons. However, knowing why you want your own business and knowing how to run your own business are very different matters. Excitement and desire don't make up for the lack of real skills and training. If your business is to be successful it is your responsibility to learn how to run that business so that it ultimately works harder for you than you do for it.
You will be overwhelmed at times. Are you a great manager? Do you possess basic business skills? If the answer is no, you need to get some training. Getting the training you need will take more effort on your part, but in the long run you will be even more successful with your business. If being organized is not one of your strong points, you will need to learn how to change that for yourself. Not being able to find your car keys is one thing, misplacing a customer's order information is something else entirely. Do you have the people skills necessary to be able to communicate effectively with customers and team members? Network marketing is a business based on building great relationships. Building a strong team is based on the ability to be a leader and a trainer. Most home based business owners benefit greatly from getting one-on-one leadership coaching sooner rather than later. Your network marketing company should provide you with the training that you need to grow as a business owner. However, that is not always the case. This is YOUR business. If you feel that you need more training than your company provides, it would be a smart move on your part to hire a home based business coach to help you identify the skills you need to improve on and work with you one-on-one to hone those skills.
You will get discouraged at times. This happens to EVERY business owner. So you need to be prepared when it happens to you. The facts are: some people in your downline will not do what they say they want to do, customers will decide not to continue to buy your products, your sponsor or upline will not be as supportive as you need them to be, and your spouse, family or friends just might not understand or support your decision to build a network marketing business. Discouragement can take the wind out of your sails very quickly. Make sure that you have someone that you can turn to so that you get the help you need to work through whatever the difficulty is. Surrounding yourself with positive, upbeat, successful people can really make a difference in how well you are able to handle the discouragement and disappointment that comes to every business owner at some time or other. The only people who succeed are the ones who have a long term business plan that they are committed to seeing through. Every successful business owner that I know has known failure of one sort or another. They just made the decision that becoming successful was more important to them than anything else.
You must be ready to deal with the growth of your business. As a business owner, you are the CEO of a potential million dollar business. How you handle the growth of your business will determine the success of your business. Sometimes businesses fail because owners don't know how to respond to the growth of the business. Something very similar happened to me when I opened that first restaurant. We became very successful very quickly. Three months after we first opened the doors Easter weekend happened. That Sunday afternoon, we had lines of people waiting for tables to sit down and have dinner. I just didn't have enough staff to take care of all of the customers. I didn't have enough cooks to cook the food fast enough. I didn't order enough food to feed everyone that came for dinner because we had overbooked the restaurant. We disappointed alot of people that first holiday weekend. Thankfully, I was able to fix the mess by hiring more people and buying a full page ad in the local newspaper in which I made a public apology for our serious shortcomings on Easter Sunday. I also gave away free dinners to everyone that we had not been able to serve properly. The lesson I learned from that was to always expect success and be ready for it by having the people and things in place needed to support it. This is no different with a network marketing business.
Network marketing is the only business that I know of that allows average every day people like me and you to get into business for ourselves with very low start up costs and very low overhead expenses. The earning potential of the business is determined by each individual. Some folks are very happy earning an additional $400 - $500 a month. Other folks are able to replace their monthly incomes and stay at home with their families. Some people have become truly wealthy through their network marketing businesses. But, as with any business, network marketing is not for everyone. Only you can decide if it is right for you. Take the time to do your homework to see if this type of business really is a good fit for you and the goals you have for your life. For a network marketing business to be successful it requires a long term commitment, consistent motivated effort and most of all a constant journey of personal growth and development.
When I opened my first restaurant I was so new to the food and beverage industry that I was overwhelmed by everything; the customers, the cooking, hiring the staff, managing the staff, paying the bills, staying in compliance, ordering and inventory - the list was endless. I was thrilled beyond belief and terrified that everything would come crashing down like a house of cards. That changed as I became more experienced. And I became more profitable as time went on.
I experienced the same things when I started building my own network marketing business. Thankfully, I had had enough experience in the restaurant industry to know that I needed to get training and use the new skills I was learning right away in my business.
Your first year in business is a critical time in building a solid foundation for long term success. Keeping that in mind, it is imperative that you start out by understanding that this really is a business and that you have to treat it like a real business. Every business has challenges and you have to be prepared for the challenges that will occur. Part of building a successful business is understanding that you will need to learn new skills to effectively deal with the challenges that pop up so that they just become part of "the cost of doing business".
Here are some key points that will help you lay a solid foundation for your business.
One of the first things that you will need to do is create a business plan.
A very important component of your business plan is a detailed marketing plan designed to deliver your products and services to the right people. The right people are folks who have a problem that your product or service solves. Your marketing plan must provide a strategy to find the people who are looking for the solution that your product or service provides. Your plan must include how to get your information in front of these potential customers and business partners enough times so that these folks get to know who you are, get to like you and get to trust you. People like to do business with people they know, like and trust.
The other component of that business plan is your monthly business budget. You need to know exactly how much everything you do in your business costs you. Business expenses include your start up costs, your marketing expenses, your auto-ship (if you have one), your telephone services, your internet services, postage, mailing supplies, promotional supplies, business cards, websites, insurance expenses, advertising, leads, travel and training. It is vital to your survival as a business owner to know exactly how much of your product you need to sell in order to cover your monthly expenses. You need to know how many business partners you have to bring into the business so that you have enough sales volume moving through your organization to cover your monthly expenses.
Nothing will put you out of business quicker than being under capitalized and consistently spending more money than you are bringing in. You have got to know what your numbers are. In the beginning, you cannot realistically expect to cover all of your expenses through sales and team building. Which means that you need to have working capital on hand in order to be able to subsidize your business long enough so that it starts generating income for you. At a minimum, you should have at least three to six months of operating capital and your start up costs set aside.
Why you want your own business is just as important as how you are going to build your business. Why are you going into business for yourself? To earn extra cash? To be your own boss? To be able to stay home so that you can take care of your children? To help other people? To have enough money to retire comfortably? Those are all great reasons. However, knowing why you want your own business and knowing how to run your own business are very different matters. Excitement and desire don't make up for the lack of real skills and training. If your business is to be successful it is your responsibility to learn how to run that business so that it ultimately works harder for you than you do for it.
You will be overwhelmed at times. Are you a great manager? Do you possess basic business skills? If the answer is no, you need to get some training. Getting the training you need will take more effort on your part, but in the long run you will be even more successful with your business. If being organized is not one of your strong points, you will need to learn how to change that for yourself. Not being able to find your car keys is one thing, misplacing a customer's order information is something else entirely. Do you have the people skills necessary to be able to communicate effectively with customers and team members? Network marketing is a business based on building great relationships. Building a strong team is based on the ability to be a leader and a trainer. Most home based business owners benefit greatly from getting one-on-one leadership coaching sooner rather than later. Your network marketing company should provide you with the training that you need to grow as a business owner. However, that is not always the case. This is YOUR business. If you feel that you need more training than your company provides, it would be a smart move on your part to hire a home based business coach to help you identify the skills you need to improve on and work with you one-on-one to hone those skills.
You will get discouraged at times. This happens to EVERY business owner. So you need to be prepared when it happens to you. The facts are: some people in your downline will not do what they say they want to do, customers will decide not to continue to buy your products, your sponsor or upline will not be as supportive as you need them to be, and your spouse, family or friends just might not understand or support your decision to build a network marketing business. Discouragement can take the wind out of your sails very quickly. Make sure that you have someone that you can turn to so that you get the help you need to work through whatever the difficulty is. Surrounding yourself with positive, upbeat, successful people can really make a difference in how well you are able to handle the discouragement and disappointment that comes to every business owner at some time or other. The only people who succeed are the ones who have a long term business plan that they are committed to seeing through. Every successful business owner that I know has known failure of one sort or another. They just made the decision that becoming successful was more important to them than anything else.
You must be ready to deal with the growth of your business. As a business owner, you are the CEO of a potential million dollar business. How you handle the growth of your business will determine the success of your business. Sometimes businesses fail because owners don't know how to respond to the growth of the business. Something very similar happened to me when I opened that first restaurant. We became very successful very quickly. Three months after we first opened the doors Easter weekend happened. That Sunday afternoon, we had lines of people waiting for tables to sit down and have dinner. I just didn't have enough staff to take care of all of the customers. I didn't have enough cooks to cook the food fast enough. I didn't order enough food to feed everyone that came for dinner because we had overbooked the restaurant. We disappointed alot of people that first holiday weekend. Thankfully, I was able to fix the mess by hiring more people and buying a full page ad in the local newspaper in which I made a public apology for our serious shortcomings on Easter Sunday. I also gave away free dinners to everyone that we had not been able to serve properly. The lesson I learned from that was to always expect success and be ready for it by having the people and things in place needed to support it. This is no different with a network marketing business.
Network marketing is the only business that I know of that allows average every day people like me and you to get into business for ourselves with very low start up costs and very low overhead expenses. The earning potential of the business is determined by each individual. Some folks are very happy earning an additional $400 - $500 a month. Other folks are able to replace their monthly incomes and stay at home with their families. Some people have become truly wealthy through their network marketing businesses. But, as with any business, network marketing is not for everyone. Only you can decide if it is right for you. Take the time to do your homework to see if this type of business really is a good fit for you and the goals you have for your life. For a network marketing business to be successful it requires a long term commitment, consistent motivated effort and most of all a constant journey of personal growth and development.
Rose Mis is the creator and "Executive Chef" of the Attraction Marketing Training Kitchen for Network Marketing and Social Media Apprentices. She teaches people how to build profitable home based businesses as efficiently as possible. Her focus is "no cost and low cost" lead generation, personal branding, personal development and marketing both online and offline. There is always something great cooking at the Attraction Market Training Kitchen. Take the time to stop by, see what the special of the day is and say "Hi". http://www.RoseMis.com
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