Pay It Forward--The High Road To Success In A Network Marketing Home Business By George Shears

George Shears is a friend and business associate in Pay It Forward 4 Profits, a business building funded sponsoring system that we share in while helping others to build primary businesses. George has done an explicit job in illustrating the true meaning of the phrase Pay-It-Forward... George Marshall

If you're in network or internet marketing--or if you're considering starting a home business in one or both of these closely related industries--I strongly encourage you to do yourself a big favor and watch the movie, "Pay It Forward"--and/or read the book of the same name by Catherine Ryan Hyde. Even if you've already seen the movie, you might benefit from another review.

This charming story, starring Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt, and Haley Joel Osment, made its debut in the year 2000. It's main protagonist is an idealistic 12-year-old boy named Trevor. As a result of getting an extra-credit assignment in school to "think of an idea for world change, and put it into action," he rediscovers the ancient wisdom of unconditional altruism and enthusiastically puts it into action.

Here's how he describes it to his mother and teacher: "You see, I do something real good for three people. And then when they ask how they can pay it back, I say they have to Pay It Forward. To three more people. Each. So nine people get helped. Then those people have to do twenty-seven."

He then turns on his calculator, punches in some numbers and says, "Then it sort of spreads out, see. To eighty-one. Then two hundred forty-three. Then seven hundred twenty-nine. Then two thousand, one hundred eighty-seven. See how big it gets?"

Anyone who has sat through a traditional network marketing recruiting session is likely to recognize that this is like hearing a very familiar word, with the emphasis on a different syl-LAB-le, so to speak. In the prevailing network marketing counterpart of Trevor's "three paying it forward to three" idea, it's commonly called "three GETTING three." And what a huge difference that word, "getting," can make!

Whereas Trevor's approach is driven by pure altruism, its traditional network marketing counterpart, unfortunately, is commonly tinged by a fair amount of greed. After over four years in network marketing, I'm strongly convinced that this emphasis on getting, instead of giving, contributes significantly to failure--or, at the very least, significantly reduces one's level of success and satisfaction in network marketing.

I think that a strong case can be made, in fact, that the very heart of successful network marketing consists in helping others, or "paying it forward," to use Trevor's term. In this regard, when I'm personally interviewing a prospective business partner, one of the most important things I want to know is to what degree s/he likes helping others.

For network marketers who enjoy helping others, developing and maintaining a strong, consistent pay-it-forward mindset is highly rewarding in at least the following ways:

1. Helping your business team members be successful generates a high degree of consistent satisfaction for you, which can help enormously in sustaining you while you're on your way to reaching your financial goals.

2. With this emphasis, you simultaneously provide the support, guidance, and mentoring that is absolutely essential to THEIR success. Without this kind of consistent support, many or most of them are likely to become discouraged and give up.

3. Maintaining a consistent pay-it-forward mindset will help you to stay committed to the day-by-day PROCESS of building your business, instead of being preoccupied with how much (or how little) money you're earning. Anything that helps you in this regard is pure gold--especially in the early stages of business-building.

4. By consistently modeling the pay-it-forward philosophy in relating to your apprentices, you will teach them in the most powerful way possible to emulate you. Absolutely nothing else you teach them will pay bigger dividends than this as they pay it forward to the people they sponsor.

5. As you strongly internalize the pay-it-forward attitude with its intrinsic emphasis on giving over getting, others are likely to sense that you're someone who sincerely wants to help them, rather than just have them as pawns on your chessboard, so to speak. The more you project this attitude, then, the more you will help create a climate of trust. And this, obviously, will help you to build strong relationships with everyone you work with.

6. There's an old saying in network marketing that I think has considerable validity--namely that the people you're looking for are also looking for you. Given that "birds of a feather flock together," as you assume a pay-it-forward posture, you're likely to attract others with a similar attitude and a readiness to join you in building a pay-it-forward business. The more of them who join you in your business, the more successful and satisfied you're likely to be.

7. In the circus-like climate of hype and excessive emphasis on getting rich quick that currently pervades internet advertising, anyone who offers instead a sincere pay-it-forward approach is likely to stand out like an eagle in a flock of crows. Paying it forward, then, can be far more effective as a means of advertising to highly qualified prospects than promising them instant wealth through endless forced matrices, powerlines, "turnkey systems" and the like.

As Trevor learned, however, not everyone is a good candidate for paying it forward. So it's important to have an effective method for determining who are the best people to pay it forward to. A simple and effective way of doing this is first to offer very clearly your willingness to help EVERYONE who joins you in your business and provide a simple initial assignment for them to complete. Those who complete the assignment, whatever it is, or who ask for help of some kind in completing it, are the ones who are most likely to reciprocate as you offer further assistance.

You can use a similar approach in seeking qualified prospects for your business. Begin by simply offering them something of value in exchange for their contact information so that you can follow up by offering them further valuable information. Through this process, they will get a foretaste of the pay-it-forward orientation that you offer as a business leader. When you then offer them the ultimate gift of joining you in your business, the ones who respond positively are likely to be the people you're looking for.

In order to not fall into what some have called "idiot compassion," however, it's important to continue paying forward only to those who show through their actions that they are similarly committed to paying it forward to others.


When all members of your business team share this strong mutual commitment, your business will be primarily organized around the principle of paying it forward or helping others, rather than being primarily focused on just making money. Paradoxically, however, the greater the emphasis is on helping others, the more likely it is that you'll also have optimal financial success.

George Shears is a retired psychologist and psychotherapist who has spent most of his adult life helping others to become more successful in their lives. In retirement, this continues to be one of his primary missions. His main venue for doing so is network and internet marketing through a revolutionary new online business-building system called Pay It Forward 4 Profits. He is currently seeking new apprentices to train and mentor in using this remarkable, proven system.

He can be contacted at:
gshears@hcctel.net 651-204-0523
http://yodaspal.googlepages.com/sh
http://yodaspal.googlepages.com/dana