The first big obstacle for many to overcome is one of mindset – the need to treat your second income as a business instead of treating it as a hobby. That said, there are aspects of hobbies that make them attractive, and that can be carried forward in to making running a second income more attractive.

When you treat your second income as a hobby instead of a business it means you pick it up and drop it, just like a hobby. It is almost impossible to develop a big enough base of loyal customers on which to have any reasonable sustained income.

I did ‘this’ myself in the very beginning: I said to myself “Martin, this is a second income, you’re going to spend much less time on it than your main job, you’re doing it from home in your spare time. Enjoy it, and don’t think of it as work (that’s your day job!), but more like a hobby…” And I’ve seen stacks of others take the same view as well.

WRONG!! A hobby is a hobby. This means you can pick it up and drop it whenever you like, and the consequences are measured somewhere around the ‘zero’ mark.

You CAN NOT do this with a second income that has any meaning and significance for you. Successful businesses are run like business but this doesn’t mean there is no room for fun and enjoyment. Very successful owner-managed business are usually full of fun and enjoyment – the two seem to go together!

Cheers

Martin

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Every day more people stop to consider a second or extra income. They do so usually because they are needing extra income now, or because they’re looking to realise a future dream. Many of these people look at network or multi level marketing (or ‘MLM’) as the route to achieving these aims.

Making the right decision here is usually pretty important for those involved. What is amazing is just how many people are able to make an informed decision about something so important. I’m sorry, what I should have said is, it’s amazing how few people are able to make an informed decision.

There are plenty of myths and lies floating around about this kind of second income activity. Some have bad aspects to them, such as “only failures try multi level marketing”. Some have more positive aspects to them, such as “anybody can do this”. And with the advent of the Internet, it is even easier to find conflicting information and advice.

I had to find out about these things the hard way, as did my wife, when we started in MLM many years ago. Now, as the economies seem to be headed for stormy waters, more people are asking about MLM, and there are more opportunities than ever for them to be ’scammed’. This is a prospect that didn’t sit comfortably with me, and wouldn’t let me be, so I pulled together my own experiences, the experiences of others I’ve worked with, plus plenty of research that I’ve done over the years, especially in the last 2 years, and created the “MLM / Network Marketing Manifesto & Workbook”. My research draws on the work, writings and teachings of a wide variety of people, including Colin Powell, Anthony Robbins, Rich Schefren (who has worked with many big names in Internet Marketing, including Mike Filsaime, Jim Edwards, Hans Johnson, Frank Kern, Dan Kennedy), Robert Middleton, Bernadette Doyle, Jay Arthur and yes, even Albert Einstein!

Anybody considering creating a second income or extra income stream, and looking to do so with any combination of network marketing, multi level marketing (or MLM), and internet marketing, would benefit from downloading the Manifesto & Workbook fromhere and spending some hours working through it before coming to any decision.

The purpose of the “MLM / Network Marketing Manifesto & Workbook” is to help people like you come to an informed decision about

1. Whether to create a second or extra income stream at all, and if so
2. How to go about doing so with MLM / Network Marketing for maximum success

I’ve split it in to 2 main parts. The first part sets the scene, providing some definitions and giving an overview of the state of multi level marketing or network marketing as a business approach. The second part is structured around detailed descriptions of the 12 big obstacles to success that I’ve seen so many people experience. By the industry’s own data it seems 95-97% of mlm operators as I call them fail to achieve their desired outcomes. That’s just appalling.

These 12 big obstacles are listed below, followed by a brief description. You’ll find more on how to spot and avoid each obstacle in a separate article/lens.

1. Treating it as a hobby more than a serious business
2. No ‘outcome’ thinking & inappropriate expectations
3. The Great Myths of MLM – believing them!
4. Lack of strategy, being too opportunistic
5. Poor business design
6. Following the MLM company’s “Plan”
7. Poor decisions about what to outsource, and how
8. Not using leverage & scalability
9. Not playing to YOUR strengths
10. Not managing tasks, workload & processes
11. Not using the right metrics to manage business
12. Not engaging in Continuous Improvement

In future postings I’ll expand a bit more on each of these – they’re covered in full in my manifesto, which you can get when you sign up.

Cheers

Martin

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