In the spirit of business
I’ve spent the last few years studying marketing: taking courses, attending conferences, reading a lot. How do you attract more customers and make them want to buy what you offer? With what message, language, headline, psychology do you deftly identify their pain or problem and urgently move them to action to buy your solution?
I’ve also migrated through a number of business models, from advising multi-million dollar, high-tech, scalable companies, to small businesses, consulting, independent entrepreneurs, direct sales or network marketing.
Independent business owners, consultants, contractors, and small business owners (including franchisees), including most for-profit businesses. Small businesses were responsible for 63% of net new jobs between 2009 and 2012. (“Small business” in the US is defined, depending on the industry, as fewer than 500 to 1,500 employees and fewer than $20 million in revenue.It’s worth noting, however, that more than 75% of small businesses generate less than $100,000 in annual receipts and have fewer than 20 employees—most have one.) Most business owners Small businesses recognize that they are not much different from employees, trading time for money (which means that the money they generate is directly limited by the hours worked). if they’re honest, they’ll tell you that after taxes, insurance, payroll, lease payments, and more, they barely keep their heads above water.
High-profile tech companies in need of millions in funding are media darlings with front-page coverage in the Wall Street Journal. You rarely read the ugly side though, the side that says for every one who makes it to the top there are 10,000 who don’t make it at all, or for every one who shines in the glorious spotlight momentarily, there are hundreds if not. thousands dying brutal and ugly deaths with laid off employees, ruined marriages, irrevocably broken friendships and demoralizing debt. However, because the successful are paraded around as lottery winners, that model is the Holy Grail of business schools and business accelerators presenting themselves to the masses as worth aspiring to, to hell with the odds and chances! reality!
Whether you identify more white-collar, blue-collar, or no-collar, we’ve been conditioned to align ourselves with high-tech and against network marketing: it’s illegal, it’s a pyramid scheme, it’s sleazy, and it’s not a real business. you might think. In 2012, network marketing was a $167 billion industry and it has continued to grow. To put that in perspective, in the same year, video games were a $67 billion industry and the NFL brought in $9.5 billion; In other words, network marketing is more than 17 times the size of professional football (think about that the next time you watch the Super Bowl, its halftime show, and Super Bowl commercials!)
I hoped that the process of learning about business models and marketing would lead me to getting clients and sales while I was hanging my shingle. Instead, it resulted in something infinitely more valuable; understand that network marketing is a business I can run without being alone, it is scalable without requiring millions or even tens of thousands of dollars, and success depends solely on defining and recognizing leadership skills, finding leaders, and becoming a leader myself. No amount of sales could exceed the value of my personal and personal development, and this development awaits each person who chooses network marketing and sticks with it through the learning curve. The excitement and satisfaction inherent in this business model stems from the level of integrity and moral character of the teams around me, the genuine friendships, the inspiration, the drive to excel, and of course, the highly lucrative nature of the industry. (As the saying goes, without income you have a hobby, not a business. Even nonprofits are driven by income.)
That is why this discussion is relevant to being spiritually healthy. My favorite editor, Margaret Evans, claims to be “genetically allergic to any jargon that smacks of ‘self-help,'” but my journey down the business model map has turned out to be a path to discovering who I am and how I can be better. Network marketing, to be successful, must travel the same path. As Margaret aptly observes about gratitude when she says that “it’s hard to intimidate someone into being grateful,” it’s just as hard to force someone to feel motivated. Either they are or they are not. (Perhaps that quality is currently dormant and will awaken at a future time, but it is the job of the individual to seek and then achieve awakening!)
To prepare myself to write about spirituality, I read “A Guide for the Perplexed” by EF Schumacher. It is a short, brilliant and difficult read. In fact reading it, for me, was like meditating. I’d come across an idea, then realize my mind had wondered important things like ‘Did I put the clothes in the dryer?’ In which case you would have to reread the sentence, or sometimes the whole page, to get the meaning. Published nearly 40 years ago, it clearly reflects today’s issues. For example, write:
“…this change in mindset stems initially not from a spiritual perception but from the materialistic fear raised by the environmental crisis, the fuel crisis, the threat of a food crisis and the signs of a coming health crisis. Faced with these – and many other threats, most people still try to believe in the ‘technological fix’.”
I can’t summarize his entire book in a few paragraphs, but let me give you an overview.
Minerals, plants, animals, and people exist on earth and have matter, life, consciousness, and self-awareness, respectively. Minerals are not alive while plants have an essence that minerals lack, something Schumacher labels ‘x’ or life; you can kill a plant but not a rock. Moving “up” to a higher level of being, we find consciousness. For example, you would associate curiosity with a cat but not with an oak tree or a diamond. “It’s easy to recognize consciousness in a dog, cat or horse, if only because they can become unconscious.” Next, we jump from animals to humans and the difference here, according to Schumacher, is self-awareness or ‘z’. “There is not just a conscious being, but a being capable of being conscious of its consciousness; not just a thinker, but a thinker capable of observing and studying its own thought.” After addressing these four levels of being, he articulates what he calls the “four fields of knowledge.” He claims that there is a level beyond self-awareness, a difference between living and ‘being lived’ and more… but you’ll need to read his book to learn about his discovery!
Schumacher supports my curiosity about personal development by giving it a credibility I didn’t know was lacking. Now I can say that the search for self-development is more truly the search for self-awareness. As Margaret wryly noted, commercial ‘self-help’ in today’s era “often seems to be the old Chinese variety repackaged.” But Schumacher’s self-help is the essence of spirituality. I can now understand and appreciate the search I have been on, strangely and unexpectedly sparked by my love of business and a drive to help others while helping myself, my family and my community. Schumacher eloquently states:
“Compared to inanimate matter, life is rare and precarious; in turn, compared to the ubiquity and tenacity of life, consciousness is even rarer and more vulnerable. Self-awareness is the rarest power of all, precious and vulnerable to the highest degree, the supreme and usually fleeting achievement of a person, present one moment and all too easily gone the next. The study of this z-factor has been throughout the ages…the chief concern of humanity.”
A guide for the perplexed states unequivocally that the solution lies not in technology but in the spirit-driven statement: “Know Thyself.” Today’s society relies heavily on the former, while successful network marketing encourages the latter. You choose!
If you are in the spirit of the moment and are drawn to developing the leader within you, contact the person who referred you to this article to co-create your own Evolved Economy business. Develop your self-awareness while pursuing personal development with a compensation plan attached.
If you got here independently and want to know more, all my contact information is in the “resources” section and I’d love to hear from you.