The one great reason why millions of people around the world embrace Network Marketing as a business is because of the flexibility to pursue the business on a part-time basis without foregoing one’s job; and its potential to open up a second stream of income for the household and therefore supplement existing income. But let’s put our minds into something we already know. If Network Marketing industry didn’t exist, the fact is that we still have a choice to pursue any of the other regular business opportunities available in the conventional industries.

A critical question arises then! When other conventional part-time business opportunities are available that can fetch good money, what then makes Network Marketing so special that one can’t ignore from having a good look at it? Well, before we understand what is special about the income from Network Marketing, we need to first understand what is Active Income? So let’s discuss it.

Active Income helps just to ‘get on’ with life

In a job, people work for a month and get a salary. The self employed and business people work for, say a month, and earn profits. Professionals on the other hand, like Doctors and Attorneys work on a case and charge fees.

Be it the salaried, the self-employed or the independent professionals, everyone trades his/her Time for Money. They work once (1 month / 1 case), to get paid once (salary / profit / fees). If they stop working, their income stops flowing. They therefore live from one pay to the next.

The bottom-line! No one gets paid more than once, for a job done only once. That’s why the income earned by in the aforesaid conventional means is called Active Income. As long as people are active at work, they get paid.

Active Income helps an individual, by-and-large, just to Survive. In other words, Active Income could at best help to just about meet the monthly, quarterly or annual commitments of an average individual or household. That’s why a typical family classified in the middle-income group, in spite of having one or even two income earners, still can’t manage to have decent savings or net-worth after 5, 10 or even 20 years of work life. Another reason for poor financial status over the years is the wide disparity between the lifestyle of the family and the quantity of disposable income.

This is a universal phenomenon whose outcome is expenditure always exceeding net income. No matter what raise one gets at work across years, inflation, additional commitments in the household over the years like an additional member in the family, children’s education, medial expenses, dependents in the larger family, etc. almost invariably ensures that the disposable incomes always remain minimal.

That’s why more than 90% of people globally go about spending almost their entire lifetime paying their monthly bills, home-loan and maintaining their small-car. In most cases, people end up working much beyond their retirement age. In all fairness, there are much more things to life beyond just paying off one’s car and home loan. There is something called leaving a Legacy by acting on one’s “true calling”! Is anyone listening?!

Understanding Active Income

Let us discuss in the form of an example, how employees work for Active Income (no matter how fat the pay is) as they build and maintain Systems in their organizations and later, in most cases, leave their efforts and the System behind only to join another company and start all over again.

Take the example of, say, a Business Development Manager (BDM) employed with a leading Insurance Company. His job or role would primarily be to recruit, train, generate sales, motivate and retain the insurance advisors. The role he has to play is virtually nothing but putting in place a System that would, in the final analysis, reap rewards / benefits to the insurance company in the form of sales and revenues from a dedicated group of performers for which he gets paid.

For about 3 years in the company he works sincere and hard to not only thoroughly train 20 insurance advisors but also coaches them on-the-job and makes them independent professionals with leadership attributes. In the event he switches his job to another competitor (in most cases for a small 2 digit percentage hike in salary), the benefit of all the efforts he put to train and coach those 20 advisors across 3 dozen months, would of course go to the company! After all, invariably all the advisors stay with the company. Even otherwise, in how many cases can we see all the 20 advisors quitting simply because the BDM who recruited, trained and coached them quit?

You may say that the company has anyway compensated the BDM in the form of a salary. Well then, the word I would love to focus on is, as you said, the company just compensates and does not pay the real potential-worth of the efforts put by the BDM.

Wonder what do I mean by ‘real potential-worth’? Read on! Coming back to the example, just imagine (you really have to pause and put your mind in it) the revenue generated by the 20 advisors, say 5 or 10 years after the BDM quit?! Even if a fraction of it was paid as royalty commission to the BDM for his efforts to build that Team of 20 advisors during the initial 3 years, he would easily rake in a six digit figure every quarter, if not every single month! Would his salary for 3 full years come anywhere close to it? For that matter even 5 years’?!

The BDM’s efforts don’t end there. In the new company that he joins, he will be back to square-1 and would have to start all over again, putting in a similar effort in creating and grooming a new set of professionals - leaving behind all the efforts that he put in the previous company. And in all probability, a similar thing will happen again! He will quit even the second company and therefore gets caught in the vicious cycle. Sounds familiar? Should be!

In the final analysis, have you ever heard someone owning a part of the company in which they worked as an employee, simply because they worked for over a decade or two? That’s why it would be a wise thing to have a revenue-generating System that one can call, is his/her own!

Does it mean no one should be an employee?

Absolutely not! No way can one ignore the law of averages! Going by it, there is always going to be scenario where 90-95% of the people will be salaried, working for a select 5-10 % of the ‘wealth creators’ if I can call it! One has to live by the fact that going by the same law of averages, not everyone can be an entrepreneur right out of college and have to therefore start their career as an employee. Having said that, it doesn’t mean that being an employee is a one-way ticket for life and there is no other option available for those aspiring for financial freedom after putting in say 15-20 years’ work experience.

People decide to start, create and own business out of choice and seldom out of chance. But unlike conventional businesses where by and large people wouldn’t dare to take risks, the present world we live in throws in front of us an opportunity that is unconventional by the true sense of the word yet in tune with the emerging global business trends! Network Marketing is the most powerful opportunity among them that virtually anyone can start with virtually no start-up capital, no capital, no overheads and no employees!