I’ve spent the last few years studying marketing: taking courses, attending conferences, reading a lot. How do you attract more customers and compel them to want to buy what you offer? With what message, language, headline, psychology cleverly identifies their pain or problem and moves them urgently into action to buy your solution?
I have also migrated through a number of business models, from advising scalable high-tech companies that require millions of dollars, to small businesses, consultancies, 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” is defined in the US, depending on the industry, as fewer than 500-1,500 employees and fewer than $20 million in revenue. However, it’s worth noting that more than 75% of small businesses generate less than $100,000 in annual receipts and have fewer than 20 employees—most have one.) Small businesses recognize that they are not much different from employees, trading time for money (meaning that the money they make is directly limited by hours worked). if they’re honest, they’ll tell you that after taxes, insurance, payroll, lease payments, and more, they’re barely keeping their heads above water.
High-profile tech companies needing millions in funding are media darlings with front-page coverage in the Wall Street Journal. Yet you rarely read the ugly side, the side that says that 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 employees laid off, marriages ruined, friendships irrevocably broken, and debt crippling. However, because the successful are paraded as lottery winners, that model is the Holy Grail of business schools and business accelerators presenting themselves to the masses as worthy of aspiration, to hell with the odds and the odds! reality!
Whether you identify more as 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 dollar 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 bigger than professional football (think of that the next time you watch the Super Bowl, its halftime show, and Super Bowl commercials!)
I was hoping that the process of learning about business models and marketing would lead me to customers and sales while I was hanging my roof tile. 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 every 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 very lucrative nature of the industry. (As the saying goes, without income you have a hobby, not a business. Even nonprofits are income-driven.)
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 go the same way. As Margaret aptly observes about gratitude when she says that “it’s hard to intimidate someone into feeling grateful,” it’s just as hard to force someone to feel motivated. Either they are or they aren’t. (Perhaps that quality is currently dormant and will awaken at a future time, but it is the individual’s job to seek and then achieve awakening!)
To prepare to write about spirituality, I read “A Guide for the Perplexed” by EF Schumacher. It’s a short, brilliant and difficult read. In fact reading it, for me, was like meditating. I’d come up with 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 entire page, to grasp the meaning. Published almost 40 years ago, it clearly reflects today’s problems. For example, write:
“…this change in mentality stems initially not from a spiritual perception but from materialistic fear aroused by the environmental crisis, the fuel crisis, the threat of a food crisis and the indications of a coming health crisis. In the face of these – and many other threats, most people still try to believe in the ‘technological solution'”.
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 an oak tree or a diamond. “It’s easy to recognize consciousness in a dog, a cat or a horse, if only because they can be rendered 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 aware of his awareness; not just a thinker, but a thinker capable of observing and studying his own thought.” After addressing these four levels of being, he articulates what he calls the “four fields of knowledge.” He claims 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 know his discovery!
Schumacher supports my curiosity about personal development by giving it a credibility I didn’t know was missing. 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 age “often appears to be the old Chinese variety repackaged.” But Schumacher’s self-help is the essence of spirituality. I can now understand and appreciate the quest I have been on, strangely and unexpectedly started by my love of business and a motivation 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 more rare and vulnerable. Self-awareness is the rarest of all powers, precious and vulnerable to the highest degree, a person’s supreme and usually fleeting achievement, present one moment and all too easily gone the next. The study of this z-factor has been down through the ages… the main concern of mankind.”
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 network marketing success encourages the latter. You choose!
If you’re in the mood and are drawn to developing your inner leader, contact the person who referred you to this article to co-create your own Evolved Economy business. Build your self-awareness as you pursue personal development with an accompanying compensation plan.
If you came here independently and want to know more, all of my contact information is in the “resources” section and I’d love to hear from you.
