What’s a husband and wife team of top-flight critical-care medical professionals who want out of the 50, 60, 80 hour a week hospital rat race to do? Get into network marketing and add another 40+ hours to their work week! How did you first learn about and get involved with network marketing Lori? We first learned about it through a really good product experience. My husband Wayne, had a good friend from medical school who he had kept in touch with over the years and she introduced it to us. I had hurt my back and we had tried everything through medicine, since I’m a nurse and he’s a doctor, and nothing helped. His friend thought she had something that would help me, so I tried it. It was fabulous! That’s how we started in network marketing. It was an, “Oh, by the way, you can share this with other people too.” NULL She gave us some tapes to watch and we thought, “Gosh, if they can do it we can do it.” We had never heard of it before but after the results I got and looking at the information we said yes. So you didn’t have any negative stigmas about it? None! We were in our thirty’s but really, we didn’t even know what network marketing was! I think I had heard of Amway, but I didn’t know what that was.
We didn’t know anything about it; we had never thought of residual income or side businesses or anything.
We were just in our own little box, working at the hospital 100’s of hours a month and not even thinking of doing anything else. Because of how the products changed my life and seeing other people’s examples of what they could do with this business, it inspired us. What got your attention about it as a business? That people had freedom! That people had time and control of their life! Because for us, I was working over 50 hours a week at the hospital, some weeks more, and Wayne, the only Critical Care Physician in the area, was there maybe 80 hours a week and a lot of nights he didn’t come home. We just felt like we had no control, we couldn’t take vacations, our hours were wacky. We even had a sleep chamber at our house, because we had to sleep sometimes during the day after being up all night.
So we saw people that had time, loved their lives and were helping people, but had freedom and were making money. That really turned us on.
Did you have children at the time? We got pregnant right in the first three months of starting the business so, yes. We had two children pretty quickly. In the first business that we built, it took us two years to get to the second to the top level, so we had reached the leadership level very fast. We did that with a brand new baby, working full-time at the hospital and doing the business part time with the hours we had at home. How did you do it—how did you succeed so quickly? We were so driven! Both Wayne and I were top in our class, we were always that way, I don’t want to say… we’re workaholics but if there is something we want we are driven and will figure out a way to do it. That’s how we thought about it. We thought if those people can do it we can do it and we gave ourselves five years to get to the top. We had decided if we couldn’t do it in five years, well, we’d given it a good go. And we made it in two and a half! That was just our drive.
Any time we had outside of the hospital, we would call people to have meetings and we would just do what it took.
We drove far away to trainings; we took weekends, baby in hand, to go to seminars and conventions. We went to Hawaii for a Leadership convention. It was all people we didn’t know, not our downline but crossline, but we flew out there when Savannah was five weeks old. So, you say you were driven, does passionate work? It really would. And because we knew nothing about network marketing or this new business that we were in, we really are the types that have to know everything about it. So we bought every book and we were reading all the time. We went to every training we could— about that trip to Hawaii that I mentioned. We lived in Ohio at the time and flew to Hawaii because they were having this giant leadership event. All of the big leaders that have made all the money and knew what they were talking about were going to be there. There were going to be training clinics where you could spend one-on-one time with them. We thought it was important to go so we just took five-week old Savannah and went. It was great and that’s really how we got going. We didn’t wait for it to come to us, we went to it. Were there any things in particular, Lori, that you and Wayne did that you would say were things that made you successful quickly? We actually took everything that people told us worked for them and we did it. We made the list of 100 people. We actually wrote them all out. We worked with our upline. We worked crossline. At the time, that business which was our start, there were a lot of different training materials. We bought them all! We went through them and took the things we really liked and we did those. We were on every call that was offered. What were the things that you really liked? Well, the thing that we really liked was the one-on-one, talking to people and sharing the products. Gathering testimonials from good results with the product and following up with people.
I think because we were really good at following up, that made us successful.
We didn’t just offer something and then back away from checking up with people. We wanted them to know that we really cared about them. I think that makes a big difference. I see people afraid to phone or send out mailings or some how check back with people once they’ve contacted them and we were really good at that. What role did your medical training—even in terms of credibility—play in your ability to build your business? In that first business I think it played in a lot. They were products that had to do with helping people with aches and pain and discomfort, and I think that the credibility of us being a doctor and nurse really helped. Plus the fact that I had great results with the product, personally. But yes, I think our background training helped because I was used to talking to people and teaching people about their diseases. So getting to know the person and taking the time to check up on them afterwards just came naturally. As far as being great at a business—my personality of being driven to know everything and be the best I can be is just my personality. So you achieved second to the top position in that company in two and a-half years, what did you do then? We continued to grow in the company and build our leaders under us. When you go that fast you don’t have a huge organization, so we continued to recruit and bring new people in. We got very busy traveling and doing trainings. For the next two years we did that and then we had the realization that this was a great learning experience… we were actually very successful, but we were having a difficult time getting everybody else as successful as us.
That was our dream. We didn’t want to bring our buddies into the business if they couldn’t be sitting on the beaches of Tahiti with us or getting to quit their jobs and work from home with us.
If they weren’t getting there then it wasn’t the right vehicle. Were you and your husband there? Where you could quit your jobs? Not if we wanted to maintain the lifestyle we were living. We had a giant home, a sailboat, two fancy cars, things like that. By that time we were making about $17,000 a month in the business, which was great money but it wasn’t enough to sustain where we were, so we were prett
y much still slaving. Were you still working your 80 and 50 hour weeks and doing the business with kids? Yes! The kids went to daycare from 6am to 5pm. I’d pick them up and bring them home. I’d feed them dinner, and then it was bath time and bedtime. I would put them to bed and get on the phone to do the business. We were probably on the phone every night until midnight or one o’clock. Wayne would often be up later than me, but in the early days I had to get up for infant feedings. And yes, we worked that hard for almost five years.
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He is the founder and former Editor-in-Chief of the highly regarded publication Upline®... was a Contributing Editor to SUCCESS magazine... the founder and former Editor-in-Chief of Network Marketing Lifestyles magazine... founding editor of Networking Times... the founder of GreatestNetworker .com... co-founder of TheNetworkMarketing Magazine.com and is the creative force behind TransformingMLM.com.
John is the author of the best-selling industry classic The Greatest Networker in the World, which has been read by more than two and a-half million people around the world and he has edited and contributed to far too many books to be mentioned here.
He has spoken around the globe, through out Canada and the United States, in Australia, China, Costa Rica, Crete, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore, Trinidad and the Ukraine.
John is married to Jekaterina (Katyusha), has a daughter Rachel 28, son Johnny 23, daughter Eleonora Milena (Ele) who's 7 and Anais Polina (his 'last child') was born in March, 2006.
- Carolyn Wightman– Who Leads the Leaders by John Milton Fogg - September 1, 2013
- Ørjan Saele– Seeds of Greatness by John Milton Fogg - August 1, 2013
- Sarah Robbins – The Big Picture by John Milton Fogg - July 1, 2013
