First it’s a few people on your team. Then it turns into dozens of team members. Then hundreds – and if you (intentionally or accidentally) do the right things, thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of people will fill your team and your bank account. Some unsophisticated onlookers might think this is just dumb luck or random chance at work in your business, much like picking the winning lottery ticket. Others, just as naïve, may think it is due to some inborn talent at work that only the chosen few are blessed to possess.

Actually, in most cases when a network marketer rises to the higher levels of accomplishment, it is neither dumb luck nor God-given talent at work. Rather, it has more to do with your ability to work hard, learn fast, and flow with the undercurrent of hidden forces at work behind the scenes as anything else. I would never say that randomness and God have nothing to do with huge success in network marketing, because I believe that both absolutely play a huge role (just my opinion). However, I will adamantly argue that luck and inborn talent have very little, if anything at all, to do with MLM success. I will talk more about this in future articles. Until then, however, I want to unveil for you a trait that I have noticed among all the hundreds of top network marketers I have worked with or interviewed over the last 30 years from a variety of companies with very different marketing systems employed.

This little-observed powerhouse component may be one of the most potent of all, while at the same time being among the least of all noticed, discussed, studied, or taught. It is the conscious decision to simply hold on tight and yield to the flow of the current as it grows from less-than-comfortable to, seemingly, out-of-control. It is MLM workflow efficiency at its best. It is the state of being at peace in the eye of the storm.

So, when I say, “flow with the undercurrent of hidden forces,” what I really mean is that one must possess the courage (or maybe just enough tenacious ignorance) to hold on tight while one’s life suddenly morphs from looking like a slow Sunday drive in the family car into a fleet of spaceships racing through a meteor-filled galaxy in another universe. One day you sit in the break room at a job that you detest, pondering the dullness of your existence, and wondering where you went wrong in life. The next day you join a network marketing company, wondering if it will work for you and then, suddenly, whole thing just explodes on you. Life shifts dramatically and it changes the way you view the world around you and how you relate with it. The blog title, Peaceful in the Eye of the Storm is an idiom that plays upon the metaphor of the eye of the hurricane vortex. At the center (i.e., the eye) of a hurricane or typhoon is a place of calm that has relatively light winds, a warmer temperature, lower humidity, and often perfectly clear skies. Top MLM pros, experienced in the ways of fast downline growth stay emotionally and organizationally centered, calm, light, warm, and clear amidst the chaos and change taking place around them.

For most of us, dependent relationships sprout into our lives slowly like the growth of a seed turning into a tall tree. For example, a couple of lovers get married and eventually have a baby. Baby #1 takes some getting used to, but it is, after all, just one baby and they adjust to the new challenges. Then, after Baby #1 grows out of the diaper stage and mommy and daddy have had ample time to rest and prepare, Baby #2 eventually comes along. Maybe some venture onto Baby #3, but typically no more often than one at a time and certainly no more frequently than one birthing every nine months. Decades later, mommy and daddy graduate to grandparent status, and later to that of great-grandparents. They witness firsthand a small sampling of the effects and joy of exponential growth in their family as it grows from the original family of five to 35.

Another example is the person working his or her way up the corporate ladder. They typically don’t have subordinate (dependent) vocational relationships immediately. Before a corporate leader has thousands of staff members to lead she usually starts with none, works her way into lower management, then middle management, then on to the big leagues where dozens, hundreds, or thousands of employees report to her. This often happens over a course of many years, and most often decades.

This is not typically the case with a network marketing downline that produces a six-figure (or greater) income. They rarely grow up slowly into big teams. Rather, they move more like a series of sprints. With powerful enough sprints the growth can produce momentum, and the subsequent financial rewards may last for years. When the money stalls, however, the only remedy is another sprint. If network marketers do not understand this they will look for gimmicks, systems, promotional incentives, or they will hammer their downline leaders in an attempt to produce more results. These all produce short-lived results. Short-lived results produce an overall lack of confidence in the downline toward passive income which is the heart of why people do MLM. This lack of confidence, thus, produces deep frustration and distrust in the downline which turns into downward spiraling revenue. Essentially, the only proven way to start, or revive, a big downline is with a personal and team sprint that lasts long enough to create, or recreate, momentum. Any other attempt to remedy the situation will be made in vain.

MLM sprints can be defined as excessive activity that, by their nature, can only be maintained for short periods of time (weeks and months, not years) by the leaders who run them. After a runner sprints, she must rest because she gave everything she had to give during her burst down the track. Likewise, an MLM sprinter must stop to rest, reestablish a healthy social and family pace that was put on hold during the sprint, and prepare for the next sprint whenever he or she wants to take the downline to the next level.

During an MLM sprint, the excessive pace of productive activities creates a recruiting frenzy throughout your team. The resulting positivity turns viral and grows out of your control. Unlike the grandparents (from the earlier example) who witnessed the effects of geometric (exponential) growth take their little family of five to 35 over a few generations or the upward-mobile corporate leader who, over decades, took on the leadership responsibilities of hundreds or thousands of people, the successful network marketer may witness his/her team grow from five to five thousand (or more) in a matter a year or two. Then, if they are wise, it sores into the hundreds of thousands in a few years more! This pace of creating “vocational dependents” can feel overwhelming at times. Imagine all those people looking to you for leadership, when just a few years prior you couldn’t pay people to look to you for leadership.

What would seem most intuitive is to manage and organize the uncontrolled nature (chaos) out of the growth. However, a well-hidden MLM secret to igniting and maintaining this growth is to not attempt to control it too soon. Although contrary to conventional thinking, it is the random, or uncontrolled, nature of it that lends the growth its power. Experienced networkers who have learned to build massive teams over and over again do not sweat the small stuff and, to them, it is all small stuff. They let the demands of thousands of people tugging at them roll off of them at the end of every day like rain on an umbrella. They don’t take the pressure, complaints, praise, challenges, tears, demands, micro failures, and unplanned triumphs too personally. They realize that this is just the natural course of a fast-growth, organic, human-driven network of free enterprisers at work. They also realize that to attempt to manage it like a corporate staff or one’s family only crushes the life out of this relatively vulnerable giant living organism they call their downline. They stay calm and unfazed when everyone around them seems like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

So, what is the moral of this blog with regard to its title, Peaceful in the Eye of the Storm: Workflow Efficiency in the Chaos of Hyper Growth? Your downline members are neither your family nor your corporate staff and they should not be managed like them. If you do, either your downline will not grow as quickly as it could or you will stop its growth when just as it begins to gather momentum. You must learn to let MLM nature take its course. Your objective is to be a catalyst for growth. Be an MLM sprinter. Set a clear financial goal and take immediate and massive action until you reach it. Then, chill. Enjoy the fruits of your labor. Take that dream vacation with your family. Take your new Harley, RV, or yacht for a cruise. During this period you won’t completely stop working because your earlier flurry of activity will require some follow up and ongoing training with your team. But if you’ve reached your financial goal don’t skip this break – this time of rest will fuel your next surge of business building activity. Then, when you want to see another rapid boost in your team growth and income, sprint again. Remaining peaceful in the eye of the storm is not only good for your health and sanity; it is also the most efficiency-rich business practice for inspiring and nurturing fast growth in your downline. Peace.

Copyright © 2012 David Colister