Network Marketing and Popcorn
Posted in Watkins Business by Eldon on March 30th, 2007 On our weekly Watkins Summit Group training and brainstorming call last night, one of our Executive leaders (Randy Robinson) shared an analogy with us.
Building a profitable Watkins business, or any network marketing business, requires consistent and focused effort. Unfortunately, many new associates don’t understand this principle and how important it is to their success.
Think of your business as a bag of microwave popcorn. Yes, this is “corny”, but don’t leave me now! 
You put your bag of popcorn in the microwave for twenty seconds. Now, in twenty seconds, a lot of energy is put into that popcorn. Twenty seconds in that same microwave will melt a piece of chocolate and many other things. However, after twenty seconds your popcorn hasn’t even started popping. You open the bag, inspect the popcorn to make sure it is in there, and put it back in for another twenty seconds. Still, nothing happens.
By now, do you begin wondering why your corn isn’t popping?? You think, “ok, I’ll give it a little longer”. You put it back in the microwave for twenty more seconds, and walk into another room for a bit. You return, and your corn still hasn’t popped.
Frustrated, you open the bag and inspect the popcorn again. It is still there, it still looks right. So you put it back in for yet another twenty seconds. Meantime, you decide to watch a few minutes of television. You look at your popcorn, and now find that two kernels have popped. Thrilled, you put the bag back in for twenty MORE seconds. You go check your email. When you come back, you find just the same two kernels popped, nothing else. You are now getting increasingly frustrated, and wondering if your corn will EVER POP!!
Twenty more seconds it goes….while you walk outside and grab something from your car. When you return, expecting great things, you find nothing much has changed. You are now convinced that your corn will never pop. You now have two kernels that popped and a whole bunch of them that didn’t. Do you give up, and assume that you’re just not able to pop corn?
NO! You put the popcorn back in the microwave, and this time set it for two minutes all at once. You return in a bit, and find that - YES - you have a nice delicious bag of freshly popped corn waiting for you. What was the difference? The difference was applying consistent energy (effort) to popping that corn. Instead of applying a little energy here and there, you applied consistent effort and made the corn pop like it was supposed to.
Your network marketing or MLM business is like this. If you do a dab here and a dab there, you will not have much success. You will start feeling that the business doesn’t work for you after all. If you apply steady and consistent effort (in line with guidance from successful upline members), you’ll see growth and results far beyond what you can achieve with just a token effort here and there.
The key point - start your business and work it consistently. Treat it like a business, not like a hobby. The results you achieve will speak for themselves!
About the Author:
Eldon Beard is a Watkins Manager with Associates All Across the USA and Canada
