I am quite hesitant initially to talk about this topic but decided to share with you what I have learnt over some of the public talks and books which I read up on this topic. I hope I can make it as interesting as I can.

I registered for one public talk from KC See which is talking about his Money Mastery Program. One of the highlights of the talk is the question to the audience about “How many days can you survive if you were to quit your job the next day?” I have not thought of this question in my whole life before and took some time to figure out how long I can survive, taking into the considerations of my liabilities and responsibilities.

I realized that it did not take long before all my resources will be drained out if I stop working the next day. This is the expected answer from the speaker. Obviously the ideal answer would be infinity which will imply that you are already achieving financial freedom. But most of the working class people are not in this category regardless of how high their salary are.

Financially free does not necessary imply that you are a millionaire although millionaires are perceived to be exceptionally rich and wealthy. But their millions could be splurge away if not properly managed. The true financial free people are those who can made money worked for you instead of you working for money. This is a popular statement used by Robert Kiyosaki in his book on “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”. Robert Kiyosaki and KC See shared the same preaching. In order to achieve this financial freedom, you have got to have multiple sources of income. It is definitely not sufficient to rely on your monthly salary to obtain financially free one day.

Coming back to the topic of how this idea of Internet MLM was generated, upon compiling the traits of the busy middle class’s behavior, I have decided to implement an Internet MLM system with a few objectives as stated below:

• To design an Internet MLM system for the busy middle class community
• To instill a greater awareness and educate on the benefits of network marketing system.
• To develop a system to eliminate and minimize the interaction between potential customers which in turn will avoid a possible cold-calling response ( a rejection free system)
• To incorporate an easy system of generating income with minimum efforts needed from this busy middle class community
• To improve on this Internet MLM system to allow easy duplication for direct down-line.

The inspiration behind these ideas came from the knowledge that Internet MLM wasn’t as commonly seen in the website. I also had a firm believe that this approach will be easier to be accepted by the busy middle class people. Until now, I can’t see any reasons why this busy middle class people would reject a system which will help to keep them educated on becoming a better business owner and generated passive incomes as a result. But still I am expecting a minority of these people to refuse to accept this system. I am more committed now on getting most of the people to understand how this system will help them in future. I appealed to all the people who know me personally to make an effort to try out this system which I have specifically design for the benefits of these friends and relatives.

The idea of using Internet to market MLM’s programs evolved as I happened to read some websites on Internet Marketing and attending some public money making course. The common preaching which was delivered by most of these websites is to have good products. In this way, using the steps taught in Internet Marketing is just a matter of time to make it successful. I began to think deeply on how I should use the MLM programs for this business since they are undisputed good products and need better publicity to gain more recognition. At the time of the planning, someone from a forum which I joined forwarded a website on “Internet MLM success” and I did not hesitate to buy the eBook in order to understand more about it. It cost US$97 but very worth it.

The author’s success stories also involved many setbacks behind it. In a lot of ways, we share the same consequences as we approach to make this MLM business a success. He feared to approach prospects as much I do which resulted in more “cold-calling” than a show of enthusiasm. He revealed those dirty truths about MLM marketing which I really agreed with my hands up.

People who have not done MLM marketing before will not appreciate this book as much as I do. He also taught about the techniques to make this Internet MLM a success which I will also share with people who are curious to know.

I need to confess that as I see my up-line cousin doing so well in their MLM business, making the kind of money I could possibly make in about 3-4 months with my salary, I can’t help feeling that I need to use this to motivate myself to get into the same business. There is nothing wrong with trying to sell a good product to people and getting some money rebate should someone else join as member and refer to another person to do the same. The more duplication there is the more active your MLM business becomes.

This is by no mean a pyramid kind of selling which I will be sharing some articles in another article. This is perfectly legal. And isn’t this killing 2 birds with one stone. You can take care of your health and wealth at the same time! Was there another kind of business which do it in the same way?

When we go to pharmacy to get supplements, the most we can have is discount. They don’t offer this package to get money rebate if another person you refer bought the products. And why did I take so long to realize this very obvious benefit? I believe I was just too lazy at that time to make these changes. I used to put across some excuses, citing heavy work load as one of them.

Probably some of you might be able to feel that I have some kind of regrets now for taking such a long time to realize something so obvious. Yes, I do have regrets but still feel it is not too late to realize it now. I am still happy with the decision to take supplements daily until now. What I can hope from some of my friends will be able to do the same things as me. The purpose of sharing this experience is hopefully none of you should repeat the same mistakes I took previously.

Probably you will still be thinking that my main concern with roping people in is still to make money, and I do not deny that. But definitely that is not my main message trying to convey to you. My ultimate message is to work to be healthy and wealthy at the same time. This has already been proven to be working. And remember, MLM business can only be successful if there is determination and confidence. I am writing this article now because I feel I am equipped with this confidence and determination to make it work.

I began to think of health more seriously as some of my relatives and close ones suddenly suffered from cancer. They don’t smoke or drink extensively. I can tell you I was really very surprise when I realized they are suffering from cancer. But there are just too many live examples when people who don’t smoke or drink still suffer from cancer or some other heart related diseases.

There are also many cases of people who smoke and drink but still remain healthy with no diseases attacking them. Honestly I have no answers to all these so-called myths. There are just too many kinds of diseases and illnesses around to be aware of. What I can do is to make sure I will remain healthy and do not wish to take the chance of risking my life if there are ways to prevent it.

At that point of time, I honestly did not think much about making use of the MLM activities to help to create wealth.

Maybe this might appear as a serious topic to some of you. But have you ever wonder which should be in your priority? I am not surprise if there are more people who will prefer health to wealth than wealth to health. I recalled that I attended one MLM marketing talk few years ago, but not by Elken. The speaker was very convincing. He spoke about how he used to suffer from near kidney failures and how well the supplements help him to recover after that. And he recovered to become a wealthy person through this MLM organization.

At that time, I wasn’t very keen to get into this kind of MLM activities even though I am quite convince that those products work well.

Maybe I was reluctant to break away from my comfortable life at that time.

Maybe I never thought that I would suffer the same disease as him one day.

Maybe I though he was just unlucky to be down with this kind of disease.

Maybe I just thought that I was healthy at that time and will be healthy all the time if I can take care of myself well.

There are no less than 5 excuses which I can think of at that time to dismiss MLM products and activities. So I ended up as another passenger in those talks which still failed to move me to take action.

When my cousin first brought me to attend a NDT conference organized by the Elken, I had mixed feeling after coming out of the meeting. I was quite satisfied with the product introductions but had some questions on their ways of delivering MLM system to the audiences. I am not questioning that it will not work. In fact it worked so well for them but I am quite certain that it will not work with the pool of people I know. I even told my cousin that I have a feeling that the vast majority of audiences are quite lowly educated and would be using the techniques and teaching by these leaders to promote and market their products.

With no disrespect to this Elken community, I felt these techniques and teaching will never work well for the more educated people. At that point of time, I didn’t bother to pursue further on what I think will work better for the more educated people. But knowing my circle of friends well, I knew I would probably be banging my head onto the wall if I were to use the methods taught by them to make sales.

But nevertheless I still tried but in a more cautious manner because I didn’t want to give them the impression that I was acting like a sales person. Again, with no disrespect to sales people, I have to admit that I wasn’t proud to get involved in direct sales. As expected, I didn’t manage to do that well with my friends. In fact my mum did better than me to get my aunties and uncles to try out these supplements.

My up-line cousin helped to talk to some of my relatives and managed to clinch some sales under my account. I was quite amazed with his eloquence speech on selling and wish if I could have half of his skills, I could easily have closed these sales by myself. But anyway, these are some of the things which you can wish and hope but can’t rely heavily on. And after a while without seeing any progress made on this business, I began to show less enthusiasm and focus more on other things.

But I am still getting some monthly extra income from some sales or discount which I bought the supplements for my family daily intake.

I got to know about Elken (my first network marketing company) through my 2 much younger cousins from Malaysia. I started from eating their supplements as my mum purchased in a family size package.

Initially I didn’t have the habit of popping a few tablets of this health supplements every morning and as time goes by, I conveniently forgot to take them and gradually I ended up not taking them. After realizing that I haven’t been taking them as I see the bottle of supplements still quite full and heavy, I started to take them again, also with my mum reminding me to take if she herself remembers. I didn’t realized that there are suppose to be some effects acting on me.

I took a few type supplements at one time including a kind of reverse oasis (R.O) water which I install in my house 2 years ago. It immediately changed my perception of drinking water. Upon discovering that this water filter machine works like our Singapore NeWater, I begin to drink water like drinking orange juice. It tastes better than our tap or boiled water at home.

Anyway, I did not meant to promote this filter in this column, just to share with you about the experience of drinking water. I still remember at that time, I haven’t exercise for quite some time and dragged myself to jog at Bedok Reservoir one day.

The whole track is 4.2km long and usually I will stop running after 2.4km because I will be dead tired by then. But I was surprise that I could finish the whole track without stopping to walk to the ending point. I felt quite energetic even after that. Now I can consistently jog non-stop for at least 2.4km. I don’t like to jog longer than 4.2km if possible so I have not tested out my limits.

Anyway these supplements are not steroid if someone should be curious about what they are. They are just nutrients supplements which can help to balance your daily intake of food. I can only relate this story to you because fortunately I do not own any major diseases to boast about how good these products are on those diseases.

But I did come across some real cases where these products really help to cure or prevent certain diseases from attacking them. After this discovery, I began to show more confidence in these health supplements and will make it an effort to take them daily.

1. Too comfortable to upgrade themselves further.

2. Generally this category of people is less risky. They are not willing to move forward to try out something new.

3. This category falls under the type of “Everyone wants to go to Heaven but no one wants to die”. An excerpt from Robert Kiyosaki in “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” to describe those people who just want the better of both worlds but not willing to be at the losing end.

4. Too proud to involve in direct sales, thinks that direct sales requires making a nuisance of themselves to sell products to others. A door-to-door sales person’s job is perceived as low-class in the eyes of these middle class people.

5. Confidence will be easily damaged if being turn down or so-called “cold calling” treatment by prospects once or twice. Too fragile to accept rejection.

6. Too afraid of making mistakes and wasting time to do something not proven by the rest of the people. Ironically, these people have the time and ideas but refused to take action.

7. Middle Class communities are people who ask questions to make them more confused and afraid instead of asking questions towards making something more constructive and successful.

8. Did not consider health as a potential hazard in the near future. As long as they are healthy now, they do not think they will fall very ill even in future.

9. Waiting for people to provide them with an easy way out to make money and an affordable means to remain healthy.

10. Willing to spend any amount of money to keep them look pretty but not willing to fork out a single cent to keep themselves healthy.

Back to the topic on analyzing the middle class’s behavior, I do not read books on psychology or have attended any psychiatrists’ talks to come out with this analysis. What I simply did is to observe how people react upon being asked on the topic of health products and MLM and making extra income.

I received mixed responses ranging from skepticism to various levels of enthusiasm. Some showed good enthusiasm at first and gradually faded away and even tried to avoid the topic. Others show no interest level and claim they are quite comfortable with their current life-style and show no sign of wanting a change. Some are skeptical enough to claim if MLM products are good, why didn’t everyone used them. Some also claim that they are not interested to be rich.

Sad to say, I used to behave in exactly the same manner and that is the reason why I didn’t want to persist to convince people to accept my intentions. I used to be more skeptical than some others and dismissed MLM products as nonsense. I have previously taken some health supplements from another MLM company but did not continue after some time. It didn’t mean they are not good products, they just lack a person to follow up on whether I would like to try out other products or telling me how good those products are. That was their mistakes, not mine.

Those are good products which really help to improve a person’s health but it did not have their deserved recognitions for the public. And it didn’t mean they are bad products. They were just lacking a group or team to extensively promote for them in a manner which MLM should work. Maybe I wouldn’t have participate in their products at that time too as I was quite comfortable with my life to make drastic changes to my daily routine. I have to admit that. The next post shows some of the analysis made on busy middle class’s behavior.