Leaving your job and going ‘Full Time’ in your Network Marketing business is the dream for many. Building our business to a point where we can leave the workforce and enjoy more time and freedom in our life – it’s a great goal.
But it can also be a point where people can get stuck. Once they go ‘full time’, their business stalls, even go backwards.
With that in mind – here are 5 major challenges I see people hit when they transition into full-time – and how you can avoid them.
- For a lot of people – once they go full-time and ‘work from home’, they can fall into the trap of never leaving their home. Getting to work from home is great. Never leaving the house isn’t. And once it takes effort / costs money to leave the house – it can become a burden, and so people don’t do it. Thankfully, in the age of Social Media – we still have so many tools at our disposal to interact with people. But we should never totally rely on sitting behind the computer each day. Going out and interacting with people each day is a fundamental skill of our business – one we should always be practicing. Once you’re full time – make sure you still have hobbies and social events that are away from your computer. Even look at volunteering, or getting a casual job that has you interacting with people all day. You’re getting paid to leave the house and talk to people – a great win:win.
- Another challenge is losing your hunger. When we’re desperate to leave the workplace – that energy drives us each day. Once we get there, it’s easy to lose the drive. A well fed dog is happy to lay around all day, a hungry dog stays out there. Goal setting is an important part of success – but once we reach a goal, we need to set a new one. If you’ve managed to set yourself free, set the goal of helping 5 people achieve the same. Plus – if there’s 5 people in your team who are free – your business is looking very solid.
- When we first went ‘full time’ in our Network Marketing business 7 years ago – I thought everyone would be so intrigued by my story. ‘I’ve managed to retire at 32 – do you want to know how I did it?’ Turns out it was the exact opposite. Everyone I spoke to about our business couldn’t relate to doing this as a side hustle. They would all respond ‘sounds great, but I can’t afford to leave my job and do what you do’ was a common objection I faced. I had become un-relatable. People couldn’t relate to our story anymore. People couldn’t see themselves doing what we’d done. So – I went back to work casually (as in Point 1). Very casually. 2 half days a week. But it got me out of the house, I was paid to talk to people – and I went back to having a job AND a side hustle, and people wanted to know how I could afford to only work a couple of days a week.
- Moving into some bigger picture challenges – is that when you’re working AND building your business, your business is an additional stream of income – you have the flexibility to use that extra money to reinvest back into your business. Event tickets, books, courses, mentorship, travel – all these expenses that are part of your business build. Once you go ‘full time’, your business is now wholly responsible for paying the bills. So – a lot of people will stop re-investing back into their business. And especially if any of the previous points happen, and the business takes a little dip – suddenly there’s financial stress on the business. Even a seasonal change in your business – suddenly you’re desperate to pay the bills, and desperation is never a great energy to be around. People can smell it on you. Once we become desperate, and we stop reinvesting into our business – that’s when things can go really, really bad. Before you make the leap – make sure your business is comfortably earning at least twice what your job was bringing in. We need to always budget for re-investment back into our business – or it will stop growing.
- Finally – following on from the above, is that when you have a job and a Network Marketing income, you have 2 streams of income. And 2 is always better than one. When you leave your job and go full-time, you only have 1 stream of income. It’s a great income stream, with a lot of perks, but 2 income streams is always better than 1. When you leave your job, you halve your financial security. Financial freedom is great, but we have to achieve financial security first. And that means having at least 2 streams of income – so you have a safety net in place if one ever goes south. As before – you can leave your workplace, but look for something casual, or more fun, or with better house – and view your job as the Angel Investor. Use your Network Marketing business to pay your bills, and your job to provide extra money for re-investment back into your business, or to invest in other areas – property, stocks etc. Overall, financial freedom isn’t really about how much money you make, but how many streams of income you have. Your job can be used to buy an investment, then your investment can buy other investments, then those investments can buy even more investments – and so forth. That’s the true path to freedom. Network Marketing helps accelerate it, but we should never rely on 1 source of income. It’s far too risky.
To your success
Andrew Logan
Andrew Logan is a Network Marketing Author, Coach and Mentor.
You can access more free training on his YouTube channel here and his Podcast here.
For your Free 7 Step Guide to Financial Freedom Through Network Marketing, click here.
Your roadmap to building a Network Marketing business – even if you’ve never done this before.