Let’s look at the business I was in at the time. I was a stock and commodity broker. The person who ran the office I was in, Rick, was friends with the regional manager. Rick received override commissions on the production of the entire office I was in consisting of over 50 brokers. There was also a regional manager who received override commissions on the production of all offices in the region. Then the national sales director received HUGE bonuses based on the production of the entire firm. While the CEO cashed huge even fatter checks and the owner did nothing and was worth several hundred million dollars.

Now, let me ask you, what chance would I ever have from removing myself from the creation of my income in that scenario? Could I be the regional manager? Probably not as those were all buddies of the national sales director or CEO. Would I ever work my way into becoming the CEO or national sales manager? Highly unlikely as they were friends of the guy who started the company and were really appointed positions.

On the other hand had I participated in MLM as my friend Tom had I could have been sitting on a million dollar per month residual income that continued to thrive and grow even if I settled into semi-retirement.

Subsequently I decided to try my hand at a network marketing opportunity. I quickly found that not only was it challenging but one absolutely had to do careful examination of the company behind the opportunity before banking on success. Regardless of how much time and effort I was willing to put in, that first foray into MLM was not going to work because I really did not do my homework and the company eventually went out of business.

As I knew this was a business that could lead to great success, as evidenced by my friend Tom, I decided to learn all I could about the business. I went to Tom and he suggested some reading and also spent many hours with me over lunches and dinners educating me on network marketing. I learned all about various compensation plans, I studied all the books and material I could find that were written by successful MLM professionals. What I found was that there were several criteria that all the professionals agreed were necessary for success. I have written about them in the related article link you will find below.