Let's face the music about network marketing ladies and gents. If your having dreams of firing your boss and sipping on mojitos at some exotic location elsewhere and you've just joined your MLM company a week or two ago, then you are in for a rude awakening my friend. MLM is a serious business meant for serious entrepreneurs and if you're going to approach it as a hobby or a get-rich-quick scheme, then you probably have as much of a chance to win the lottery than to succeed in this industry. While it's true that some achieve success in this industry faster than others, it wasn't based on pure luck.

I know that some of their testimonials make it seem this way, but that's not the case.

"I put up my company replicated website only 3 days ago and when I checked my email this morning, I had made $134,484 dollars and signed 27 recruitson autopilot!!! After that I went to my job, punched my (now ex) boss in the face, told him to "Kiss My A** " and went on and married Halle Berry...on autopilot!"

Right....lol

Now I'm not saying that there isn't anyone that has made a significant amount of money in only a few days, but some may leave out the fact that they struggled the last ten years before they found some type of success. You have to look past the hype. For those of you that are still attending your weekly hotel HYPE meetings, let me bring you back down to earth for a second. You cannot build a business based solely on "hyping" everyone into your downline. Eventually the feel good sermon is going to wear off and if you don't have nothing of value to offer your downline, they will either quit or look elsewhere for their solution to achieving some type of success.

There are 3 important phases of growth in MLM that you must understand in order to get to where you want to be. First you must gain the knowledge, the power, and only then will the wealth come to you. This is where many network marketers fail because their lottery mindset stemming from their lack of patience causes them to skip the first two steps and go straight for the wealth. If you want to build your business, then you must have a plan laid out in front of you that will take you from Point A to Point B. It may require 5, 10, or even 20 steps between point A and B. However, you cannot put the plan in motion if you don't have the slightest clue to what you are doing.

How can you market yourself and your business if you haven't taken the time to actually LEARN how to actually market? Please understand that "Hi, my name is (blank), would you be interested in taking a look at my once in a lifetime business opportunity?" is NOT marketing! I like to call it BS (Business Suicide). You must take the time to educate yourself on how to market effectively. Now I understand that the Internet has an unlimited amount of sources on the subject of network marketing, so much in fact that the information overload can literally fry your brain. That doesn't mean you go off and purchase each and every e-book out there all at once. Money may be tight at the moment and you don't want to waste it on a bunch of irrelevant crap that is circulating the net these days.

I would recommend starting off by focusing on those that are considered to be leaders in this industry or even those that are putting it all together and really starting to catch a head of steam. These guys have all types of relevant content scattered all over the web, most notably on their blogs. Many of their blogs provide FREE valuable tips and methods that you can store in that MLM archive in your brain.

Don't get me wrong because there are some books and programs that I have purchased that have truly helped me along the way, most of them recommended by some of these industry giants. I made up in my mind that in order to succeed that I needed to bulk up my knowledge base on how to be successful in this industry. I'm glad to have shared a little of my insight with you guys today. I'll get into the next two steps sometime later this week. Lay your foundation by educating yourself and you'll have no where to go but up!