How he made MLM cool

Rethink the cool. (Shoe ad)

“One day Sally meets a quiet nervous boy named Johnny. He says that he needs new shoes. Sally shows him her pair of Xspot sneakers, on which she’s painted a bunch of neon pink skulls. Johnny thinks she looks pretty wicked in them. He likes that her shoes look like they’re really hers, like she’s been wearing them for a thousand years. Like the shoes weren’t cool until she mad them cool.

That sounds nice, he decides.”

Moral: girl makes shoes cool. They were not cool because they were a big brand name with some celebrity getting a billion dollars to say they are cool.

Gent makes MLM cool (business ad)

In a recent recruiting class, I showed folks how to create “Wanted Posters” for their potential recruits. Using different appeals, they started with who they were. Goal: attract like souls.

Anyway, one gent reported that he just created a short “wanted poster” in a local classifieds source, asking for a yoga lover who wanted to add to her income so she could do more yoga…like, ahem, the writer.

On the short Word Press page this gent created he told how he was a yogi, how he loved practicing and going to the teachings. But with his full time job, he didn’t have the time to do the love of his life – yoga and meditation practice.

He showed pictures of himself taking teachings from Tibetan Buddhist masters. Very touching and effective.

He also had a link to his family “store.” That, he said, was his way of building up some income so he could practice and meditate more.

I showed this page to several folks. And their reaction, each one, was: Wow I’d want to look into whatever he is doing – because HE is doing it.

His story had nothing to do with getting big money or buying the mansion or other signs of worldly success. It told how he was doing this (business) thing to give him more time to do the thing he loved most – meditation and yoga.

MLM made cool – by a person who learned to tell his why story. And it was not about the money first. (The recruiting class last month was an advanced version of Art of Recruiting.)

NOTE. On his first day running the short wanted poster ad, he wrote me that he’d already gotten a dozen responses to his ad. All yoga teachers with a business of their own. They were attracted because of who HE was. Because of what his values were. WAY MORE than the money.

“Make Money” as a lead pitch is losing more and more appeal for genuine people with a different order of values. Plus it’s much harder to earn money if that’s the only reason you’re doing something.

The pursuit of ever more money has ruined the quality of so many things. Take food. Shelf life, cheap, and crave-ability is now way more important to big food brands than nutritious food. Look around to see the fatafat results. Are those the values you want to support with your dollars?

So consider advertising for business partners by leading with your values first. Then your question will be:

How will YOU make MLM cool with your wanted poster and your why story?