Why get a mentor?  Because if you don’t want to be prey to the industry, you’ll need to become king of your jungle, and if you read on you’ll see why you need a mentor to make the transition.  Let me explain; there is a significant likelihood that if you join a Network Marketing company you’re going to fail.   Of course your results may vary, but the average is 95% to 97%.  That goes for online or face-to-face marketing, it doesn’t matter.  This is a bare-boned and frank discussion of the reality of starting any business.  It’s DANGEROUS out there and if you are average you’ll be eaten alive.  Are you willing to be average, just fresh meat for an industry full of predators?  If the answer is an emphatic ‘No’, then you’ll need a mentor to become a “Leadership Lion”, a “Business Tiger”, and a “Marketing Bear”.

A mentor can help you get through two very steep learning curves.  One is marketing and sales, and the other is Business and Leadership.  A mentor knows the path, has been through this jungle before.  A mentor will help you become what you’ll need to be to succeed.

Become a Marketing Tiger.  Many people jump into a business opportunity thinking that they’ll invite a few friends to a meeting or put up a website and a sales funnel and the money will just come rollin in.  Not so…they’re already in the ‘Exit Lane’ from the industry and haven’t been involved 5 minutes.  Marketing and sales are at the heart of Network Marketing.  Don’t believe anyone who says “you don’t have to sell, you just share”, Horse Apples (Col. Potter, MASH).

Marketing is figuring out what to sell, whom to sell it to, how to find them, and what to tell them so they are attracted into communication with you so you can sell something to them.  And Sales is what you do with them once they show up at your door so they end up buying just exactly what they need and want, going away happy that they ran into you and telling their friends to go see you too.  This is a bit of a Swiss Cheese (full of holes) interpretation, but I think you get the point.  Marketing and sales are at the CORE of running a business.  Here are a couple of gold-letter definitions from the American Marketing Association for those of you who are sticklers for precision:

• Marketing.  Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.
• Sales.  Any of a number of activities designed to promote customer purchase of a product or service. Sales can be done in person or over the phone, through e-mail or other communication media. The process generally includes stages such as assessing customer needs, presenting product features and benefits to address those needs and negotiation on price, delivery and other elements.

Folks this takes time to learn marketing and sales, are you willing to spend time?  Don’t expect money to come rolling in up-front without these skills.  To get up this learning curve fast, you’re going to need help.  You’re going to need a solid and tested training process, and you’re going to need a mentor who can guide you through.

Become a Business Bear and a Leadership Lion.  The second learning curve is the Business Owner Mindset.  This is my favorite because it doesn’t sound very hard.  When I first started in this business I thought it would be a cinch, after all I figured that I had an MBA, 20 years in Corporate world, and I was leaving my role as VP of Marketing.  WRONG; I was not prepared to instantly succeed as a business owner and it took a lot of energy to get there.  I didn’t realize how ingrained the employer-employee mentality was in my personality.  Bottom line, even if you have the marketing and sales skills, financial management skills, if you don’t have the mindset of a Business Owner, you’re going to bounce all over the profits board, and you’ll end up a casualty of the industry.

The reason is simple enough.  Employees know that if they go to work, they’ll receive money in exchange.  Business Owners know that they don’t make money unless they make it happen.  Successful business owners don’t quit because they have stalwart self-determination.  Successful business owners are driven from within, from desire and a dream and from passion.  They love what they’re doing, or at lease something core to what they’re doing.

This is the mindset that’s going to get you past the tough times.  It’s the mindset that’s going to see zero sales and just keep pushing forward.  It’s the mindset that asks “how am I going to make this happen” when you get Google-Slapped (lose your AdWords account).   It’s the mindset that gets you up in the morning with a smile on your face when you’re losing money, knowing that you’re ultimately going to make money because of what you do each and every day to improve your business.  And it’s the mindset that forces you to change your entire personality and become an ‘Alpha’ leader so you can literally attract people into your business like a magnet.

Take it from me, you’re going to need a mentor who can help you make this transition into a business owner’s mindset.  It’s a steep learning curve, and I didn’t make it to the top until I had a mentor.

Get a Mentor.  Three percent to five percent make it in the industry, that’s all.  Eighty percent of those work with a mentor.  In fact over time they have a series of mentors as the ramp up their success year-after-year.  Are you going to be a statistic of this industry, or are you going to become a Business Lion, a Leadership Lion, a Marketing Tiger, and a Business Bear?  Get a mentor.  You’ll thank me for it.