Most network marketers will either join an existing company that will train them how to market or they will find a mentor that will teach them what they need to know. Many who came into this industry years ago only knew one way to network market and that was to harass your friends and family, talk to people you meet in line at the store, purchase generic leads or cold call like a telemarketer. It worked well in the past, but not now.

Many successful network marketers today still believe in the "old way" to market and have grown their businesses slowly over time with these same strategies. But with so many opportunities on the web today, your family and friends are not going to join every single company you get involved with. They will probably start running from you as soon as they know you are headed their way.

So what does it take to become a successful network marketer? How can you have long term and real success in this industry that you will profit from for the rest of your life?

The first mistake most network marketing companies make is leading their team into believing they are a "distributor". They teach you to believe that they have the greatest products in the world. A distributor is just a very nice word for "sale representative". Is this how you see yourself? Personally, I consider myself to be a "business owner".

In network marketing, your business is YOU. It is not the company, it is not the product, it is not the compensation plan... Your business is YOU.

So if your business is YOU, what do you think you should really be promoting? Should you be promoting your company, your product, your compensation plan, or your marketing system? If your business is YOU, you should be promoting YOU.

This is what the majority of the industry has not quite figured out yet. This is another reason that so many people continue to struggle to recruit new distributors while other people are signing up more new business partners every single week.

In order to become a successful network marketer, you should be promoting YOU. If you are your business then you should be promoting yourself.

People do not join companies, they do not join products, they do not join compensation plans and they do not join marketing systems. They join people. They will either join you or they will join someone else. So if you are spending the majority of your time promoting something other than yourself, you are promoting the wrong thing. Once you start branding and promoting yourself, you will find that it is much easier to attract prospects to you and sign them up into any business you want no matter what that business is.