You’ve seen him on stage, listened to his audios, read his books and articles… ever wonder how he’d do if he was back in the trenches actually doing the business? You’re about to find out. Randy’s back, building again, aiming for a six-figure a month income, and, he’s “going crazy with it!” So how many times have you retired, Randy? Well truthfully, once of my own volition and once without my own desire. When I was 40 I had my mid-life crises right on schedule and said I was going to drink out of a coconut, race cars and play softball and that was it. That lasted nine months and I was crazy and felt like I had to get back doing something. Then the second time was when I retired from network marketing but it wasn’t because I wanted to— truth be told, the company I was working went out of business so I just said, ‘well, this is the second time I’ve been with a startup, second time it went out of business, I don’t want to go through this anymore!’. I was kind of burnt out and gun shy so I did my consulting thing and my seminar and other projects but I retired as a distributor at that point. NULL So what possessed you to come back and do it again? Well, in the last five years I bet I have made more MLM millionaires and multi-millionaires than anybody on the planet. Now I don’t say that as hype or ‘rah rah’, I mean you can send Mike Wallace and the 60 Minutes camera crew out here and let’s go through my files. I can show you company after company after company of the top, #one in the world, two, three in the world, top 10 payouts in the world of eight or 10 companies where the top leaders will say, “well yeah, we use Randy’s system, you join our group, you buy his book, you get his Duplication Nation, we use his system.” And so…
I’ve been helping all these people make a lot of money, and I mean a lot of money and I wasn’t getting any residual. If you know me that’s like a crime against nature!
So really, the last two years of that time I was going crazy looking for a program to build personally, and just spent the time shopping around to find the one that I could build. What criteria does the one you selected meet for you, especially that the others didn’t? Okay, 1. Top of the list— they’ve got to have good people at the top. Because if there are good people, if there’s a problem anywhere, whether it’s the comp plan or whatever, if there are good people at the top they have that in mind. Now… I did find a number of companies with good people at the top. The next criterion is the product. It has to be a product that I would use myself, personally. Some of the companies failed on that. Some of the products made me sick or I was allergic to them, that kind of thing. Or I felt the product didn’t have legs in the marketplace. In particular, there’s a real problem in the industry with this incestuous ‘me too’ product issues. I mean if somebody gets a sizzle product, there soon are at least 15 knockoffs of it in the marketplace. That’s just silly because the knockoff never meets or exceeds the market share of the original. It’s like those Russian eggs that I know you’re familiar with John; each one has the smaller one inside, and the smaller one… that’s how the knockoff products work.
So I didn’t want a knockoff product I wanted a unique product and it had to be one with a ‘sexy’ product story that people understand.
They don’t need 10 lab reports and 10 research studies and 10 DVDs from doctors or lawyers or whatever explaining the product. There has to be a concept that people get. And again, I found some companies with good products and some that were just ‘me too’ or I didn’t think the product had traction. Then of course, I look for a compensation plan, one that’s balanced. I don’t want a ‘heavy hitter’ plan even thought I am a “heavy hitter”, because I know if that’s the case I’m going to make a lot of money initially but if I have tens of thousands of people who aren’t making money I’m never going to be able to retire or ease up. I would always have to be churning and churning like being in a grinder and of course I don’t want that.
So I look for a balanced plan where not only can I make a lot of money but I know that my people can make money, because that’s where the real ‘drink out of the coconut’ money is, in what I call a legacy position.
I look for what is called a legacy position. Every major company that has made it long term and has made it big, they have distributors who have legacy positions. By that I mean if a bus ran them over next week, that distributorship would continue to throw off residual income forever, every month, because there is so much volume there, there are so many leaders under them that are already trained, they are into a daily, monthly, weekly method of operation that it’s going to continue to churn the money. To earn one of those positions you have to get in one of the fairly early stages of a company. You have to have a system that duplicates. You’ve got to have a comp plan that rewards people so that if you can get three, five, seven key leaders who are making more money with you than they’ve ever made in their life, it wouldn’t matter if you said you were going to quit tomorrow. They’ll say, “You go ahead and quit. I’m not going anywhere. This is the most money I’ve ever made in my life!” and when you get that kind of response, that’s the true legacy position, that’s the ‘drink out of the coconut’ money. So, those are the kind of factors I seek. And of course a big one is, if you’re going to do a company early on, which is obviously what I was looking for because I want a legacy position, you have to make sure that they really have the money in the bank— that they really are well-funded and can withstand the bumps in the road. And everyone is going to have bumps in the road so you have to have enough money to see yourselves through that. Cool! How’s it going? It’s Great! I guess August was my third partial month, my second full month, at the business and it’s going amazing! I’ve got a great group going. A good selection of leaders who are breaking ranks like crazy. I believe we are the fastest growing distributorship in North America and we’re doing really well with it. Were there any surprises, Randy? Were there things that you didn’t expect? Truthfully, I’m actually a little surprised, and it sounds stupid to say it, but I’m a little surprised at how fast I’m building. Because I guess what has happened is in the last five years I’ve learned about network marketing even more. Because I’ve been doing all this consulting, I’ve become a better copy writer; I’ve become a better speaker. I’ve become a better meeting organizer. I’ve become, and this is the big one, a better person. And so in this situation I’m actually building 10 times faster than I’ve ever built any organization. I’ve got people making incomes 10 times faster than they’ve ever made working with me before. That surprised me. I knew that I could be good at this; I knew I had a track record and experience and I have to be honest, the company I chose is part of that. I think I do have a product that has a sexy story that I can work with; I do have a delicious compensation plan to work with so of course, I can’t take all the credit. And of course Eric Worre is my sponsor; he’s the most experienced, successful sponsor I’ve ever had in the business so I have to give some credit to him as well; so all of these factors have come together to give me surprising growth. Also, I guess a mild surprise is just how credible the industry has become in those five years. The pyramid objection just doesn’t even come up anymore. It’s just not an issue for people. There is so much credibility today for the industry because we’ve been in Forbes Magazine and Fortune, Success, and I even saw a two page spread in USA Today a couple of weeks ago about the
DSA. There is just so much credibility in the industry today compared to back in the day when we had to be so aware of that in our presentation and now it’s just not an issue.
Today everybody knows of it, they seem to respect it, they are intrigued by it so I’m attracting some really credible profess-ionals, educated, successful people. The legitimacy issue has just seemed to disappear.
What are the keys, Randy, you attribute this success to— are there three or four major factors that are having this time be so good and build so well for you? Well, number one is I’m in right at launch, even a few weeks before launch, with incredible funding, so you can say what you want and say there’s just as good an opportunity five years into a company as the beginning but the truth is people are very seduced by getting in at the ground floor.
Downloads
Randy Gage is a network marketing icon, having helped launch the business in many developing countries, and training the top income earners in dozens of companies.
He is the author of 14 books translated into more than 25 languages, including Direct Selling Success, Making the First Circle Work, and DEFCON 1 Direct Selling.
Jaime Lokier is one of the most renowned Spanish-speaking leadership experts. He is the author of the best sellers Leadership Networks and Leaders Die, Movements Don’t.
- The Character of Leadership by Randy Gage & Jaime Lokier - January 30, 2023
- How to Develop “Rainmaker” Productivityby Randy Gage & Jaime Lokier - December 30, 2022
- How You Become a Positive, Powerful Leader by Randy Gage - January 31, 2022