A more sustainable way to build.

To my parents' shock, I entered network marketing at 23. It went against every part of my personality. I'm introverted. Shy. Awkward around people. I studied art, never took a single business course in seven years of college. So why? I was working 60-hour weeks, college by day, eight-hour nights into the early morning, for four years. Then an opportunity let me picture the time freedom I could have. I loved the product. Still do. Still with the same company to this day. The rest is history.

Right away I started selling to my friends and family. All of them purchased right away. I was fortunate to have a lot of support initially, and I made some pretty quick instant sales. That really got me excited. The problem was those warm leads ran out. They could only purchase so much product at a time. A lot of them didn't want to repurchase. They wanted to support me with a one-time purchase. And I didn't know what else to do.

The idea of doing parties was intimidating, but I've always been willing to do the uncomfortable to get the result I want. So for the first year and a half, I really pushed it. I did everything my upline told me. Who to talk to, how often, where to find them, what to say. The three-foot rule. Can they fog a mirror? Making the list of 100 people. Setting up the party, prepping for it, pre-profiling all the guests, which was a challenge just to get guests anyway. I was getting rejected quite a bit. Told no more than yes. My attitude about the whole thing kind of sucked. I loved the product so much, I just didn't realize it was going to be so hard to sell something I loved. But I was determined.

After a year and a half, I finally reached the level of success I wanted. I promoted myself to the top 2% of my company. I built a large enough team to do it and earned my first free car incentive. I met enough people and built enough of a customer base to hit the sales targets I was striving for. Everything was great. But when I looked back at that whole year, I was exhausted. Mentally. Emotionally. I continued doing those things for years and maintained that status of top 2%. I led a team of over 50 people. I went on to earn two more company incentive cars. By then I had already quit my full-time job. I thought I had arrived. I thought it was the end-all, be-all.

After playing the hustle game for years to earn the next cars and build my team more, I became resentful. I didn't want to admit it at the time, but I did. I was starting to hate the process of maintaining it because of how exhausted and burnt out I was getting. I kept telling myself, how bad do you want to keep this? How bad do you want to stay at the top 2%? I wanted it bad enough. The problem was my team members didn't want to exert themselves at the level I did. All the team building was happening because of me. They'd bring in a team member or two, then fall off and stop. Then they'd get discouraged and disappear. That was the pattern. I was about to throw in the towel.

Then I found attraction marketing through a scroll on my feed. An ad from a gal who was attracting leads using social media. I had already been using social media a little for virtual parties, but I wasn't consistent enough for it to be a sustainable channel. I clicked on that post, and before I knew it I had signed up for the attraction marketing formula ebook. It taught me a new thinking pattern. A new strategy for how to approach my business on social media, how to resonate with people, and how to show up consistently.

Then a lot of life happened, all at once. COVID hit, and I had to take my business 100% online. But before I could get confident with it, a tragic, unexpected loss turned me upside down. I dropped almost everything I'd built overnight. A dark depression. Grief counseling. Then marital issues surfaced at the same time, and I started marriage counseling. Life was heavy. I had taken on more than I could handle. I had to prioritize my mental, emotional, and physical health, and my marriage, before I could give anything to anyone. I pumped the brakes on a business I'd been building for six or seven years, and watching my third car incentive being towed away was what solidified this pivotal opportunity for a new beginning. It was bitter sweet but necessary. I stepped away for three years. Lots of therapy. And that's ok.

But attraction marketing never left the back of my head. I knew social media was the future, and I wanted to be one of the first to learn it. I just needed to take one thing at a time and focus on myself and my family first. So I got help. Counseling. Therapy. Medication that really helped, that I'm still on today, and thank goodness for it.

About a year and a half ago, I decided to jump back in full force into attraction marketing. This time it is for real. I took the biggest leap possible, the one that scared the absolute bejesus out of me. I went all in on learning how to really use social media to build. And I'm telling you, I am more hopeful about what I'm learning and what I've already been able to achieve with it. I have super big plans and hopes and goals for where this is going to take me and help me pick back up the business I've been in for 14 years and grow it into something I really love again.

Now prospects direct message me, not the other way around. I have a larger warm market. And I have my time back, which is priceless. I teach network marketers to stop chasing and start attracting, with skills that are honest, repeatable, and sustainable. Side note, the marriage is still good. Marriage counseling helped. I'm in a much better place mentally and emotionally and in my healing, and I'm so glad I made the choices I did. We're at a good place.