Observable Patterns within Business

Ok, well in one of the previous articles I shared with you a little about my career and the things that I have experienced along the way. What I would like to share with you in this blog post is my observations of the patterns that I have noticed while running the various businesses that I have run in the past.

If you want to run any type of business, be it a Franchise, or Party Plan, Direct Sales, Home based Businesses or MLM/ Network Marketing, you would be wise to understand the fairly predictable patterns of men and women within all learning and management environments, be they business or educational. I forgot to mention in my previous article that I have also taught in the adult education colleges throughout Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong, which gave me another perspective on human behaviour that can add to what I will talk about here as well.

My observations here are not written to condemn or criticise the way people are, because I am not in a position to judge people’s reasons for going about things the way they did when they passed through my life at whatever point in time that they did. Everyone is at a different place in his or her life, and my part in their journey may have been just to touch their lives in some way that was never meant to be long-term. So when I make these observations, it is not being done to criticise anybody at all. It is simply the observation of a pattern: like that of observing how a school of fish will move through the water given certain circumstances. The general expected behaviour is the same, no matter which breed of fish it happens to be. You’ll see the parallel in what I am saying as I get further into this article, so bear with me for a while here please.

It would be safe to say that in almost all of my businesses – the Lingerie business, the Dancing School, the Cleaning businesses, the Pre-Loved Clothing shop, the classes at the Community Colleges, and the MLM/Network Marketing activity that I built – that out of all the people whom I crossed paths with during those times, there was usually only three people in every 30 to 50 who liked what I was able to show them so much so that they then went on and made real headway with what I had taught them or showed them.

There was only one of my sales reps in my Party Plan business who went on to run her own Lingerie business; there were only a small few of my dancing students who went on to become so proficient at their dancing that they were involved in competitions for many, many years after being my student; there was only one of my Community College students who attended my one-day workshop that I am aware of, who went on to open her own Pre-Loved Clothing shop and did extremely well with it.  Only three or four of my College students who attended the one-day workshop for the Cleaning Business training went on to run their own very successful Cleaning businesses without the backup of a mother-company.

Then, within my Cleaning business itself, after hiring and releasing many, many people over the years (probably more than 300), I concluded the business with only about 18 to 20 cleaning personnel whose work was consistently of a good-to-excellent standard, and who could always be relied upon to do the right thing by both the client and myself. Within the MLM/Network Marketing opportunity that I built, there was only one champion business-builder in my team of 375 people. The rest were either part-time business builders, or they coasted along, not doing much other than being a participant. Some even needed to have their hand held most of the time, as they weren’t able to make decisions for themselves within the context of that particular environment. This was not because they weren’t capable of making decisions, but within that particular company the business concepts were too complex for them and so they became confused.

There were usually only about 30% of people involved in either my businesses or training schools who applied themselves to what they were doing and moved forward with it in a progressive way at their own pace. These people usually provided me my bread-and-butter earnings in the early days of my businesses, so I am always very grateful for this level of commitment from my staff, contractors and students. It usually took a lot longer to find the team leaders, as they were always so much rarer to find.

There was approximately another 30% who commenced within my business, and then shortly after would decide that it wasn’t right for them, or they would have something happen in their lives outside of work or training that meant that they were unable to continue with what they had begun.

The other approximately 21% would take part but wouldn’t do very much – just the minimum to satisfy themselves and their needs. And that was fine by me. Each small contribution was important, except in the case where it was a drain on me which I always had to watch out for, as you too will find when you become a team leader.

Often the reason for the bulk of people not applying themselves was because they did not view whatever it was they were learning or working at as something they wanted to devote themselves too.  If something doesn’t inspire an individual to want to do more, then they can’t be expected to put full effort into it. It’s always a personal choice.  It depends on so many things too, such as does the situation grab their attention? do they have the skills to do it? is it something they absolutely love to do? If these questions can’t be answered positively, then those people were just passing through the situation – they weren’t meant to stay or focus on it.

So I guess what I am saying is this: if you want to build any kind of business, be it Party Plan, a shopfront, become a teacher, or run a MLM/Network Marketing business, you have to treat it like any training school or business where people will give it a go in order to decide if it’s right for them and often leave after realising that it isn’t. You can really only expect that only one person in every thirty or so that you introduce to the business will see it as something they want to commit to building or being part of, or learning from, or working within, and will enthusiastically work at making your opportunity their opportunity too. There will only be about 7% of people overall who will become your team builders. To expect the percentages to be more than that is to be unrealistic. However, having said that it’s these seven people out of every hundred that will become your mastermind group within your business, and it’s these people that you can learn from and encourage, and from whom 80% of your earnings will eventually be generated.

There will be others who want to be part of what you are offering, but will have limited time to dedicate to the development of the opportunity, so you need to be patient with people and work with them at whatever pace they are able to work at. So really, if you’re a team leader and business builder, then your lesson will always be one of patience and perseverance, where you don’t insist that people do things your way….. you let them apply themselves at the pace that’s best for them.

Let them come to their own realisations about things, and let them decide when it’s time to crank things up (which may be never, or could be alot sooner than you think).

I think it’s always important to remember that even when your business is up and running and doing really well, that you still need to introduce new people to your opportunity because there will always be a natural attrition in any company, so you’ll always need to replace those who have moved on.

Ok, ’til next time 🙂