I collected five business cards of varying value, from a president of a leadership training corporation to a down-and-out therapist who just moved here from Northern California and wants to sell her services to people who can't afford to pay. What could possibly go wrong? I sent LinkedIn invitations to them and got a few bites, so I'm feeling pretty proud of myself. I'm up to 50 connections. Whoo-hoo, look at me go. Some of these folks have 500 connections... Well, I'm sure they never write, they never call... have I even known 500 people in my entire life? I doubt it.
Today I met a guy for coffee in my neighborhood. I'll call him Bill. I looked him up on the Web beforehand so I knew what I was getting into. Bill has a business selling a product, but his real goal is to sign up distributors. In other words, multi-level marketing. MLM gives me hives, but I went with a researcher's mind. That is, skeptical. As I shuffled blearily down the hill to the coffee joint, I thought the exercise I was getting would probably be the high point of the entire morning.
Bill was in the coffee shop already when I got there, typing on a laptop at a tiny round table. I recognized him right away, a burly bearded guy who looked smaller than I remembered. I got my iced coffee and sat down. The place was crowded and noisy. I settled in, ready to let him sell me.
He launched in on a well-rehearsed series of stories about his experience in the marketing world. I wish I had a good audio memory. Now it has all blended together into one long fairy tale, the essence of which is: I'm a great and powerful marketer, I teach other people how to market, I have a successful business, and you are a somewhat pathetic beginner/novice/loser who could learn from me. That's pretty much what I gleaned from the first hour. The whole time the custom-imprinted logo of his company faced me on the lid of his laptop, white text on shiny red. Upside down to him, right side up to me, like a mini-billboard. When, oh when is he going to get to the pitch, I wondered?
Finally I got tired of waiting and gave him the opening he needed.
“What does the product look like?”
Bill's eyes lit up. He reached down into his laptop bag and pulled out some samples and a price list. I won't tell you what it was he was selling, because I wouldn't want you to feel compelled to look him up and laugh at his tiny head or something. The price list was confusing, as I expected. You subscribe for a monthly fee, you get points, that then allow you to get certain discounts on product. Huh? Why don't you just spell out the price? What's all this nonsense about points? Sounds like a timeshare or something! It made no sense to me, but I just listened and let him get on with the pitch. I knew he wouldn't spend a lot of time selling me on the product, not if he was any good. And sure enough, here it came.
“Down here is the option for people who want to be their own boss,” Bill said, circling a big $395 with a black pen. “Or you can buy in for only $50! But you don't get the website.”
“How many distributors do you have?” I asked.
“I never disclose that information,” he said quickly. “That would be like opening up my bank statement to you. Let's put it this way, I'm making my mortgage—and then some.”
I stared at him, thinking, what? Dude, I guess if your mortgage is $10,000 a month, I might be impressed, but you live in Vancouver. I didn't say that, but that's what I was thinking. Like most people who get suckered into an MLM, he's not making much money. He's probably buying his own product, in typical MLM, eat your own leg fashion, while the few greedy bastards at the top rake in the dough. There's a cliche for you!
To his credit, he did ask me a few questions about myself, but like so many... salespeople/guys/self-centered blowhards... the few answers I gave launched him back into storytelling mode, which after an hour and a half was getting a little tedious. Luckily he had another coffee commitment to get to. Whew.
The value in the experience for me was to realize that, while networking has its place, I need to be judicious about who gets my time. Meeting someone to listen to an MLM sales pitch doesn't give me a lot of value. Meeting me was the best use of his time, because he's signing up people. But me, I'm a researcher. I need to do the work, and that must be done alone. Alone, alone, alone.
So, I'm done with networking for the time being. I'll go back to the OD people, because they are interesting folks who aren't interested in selling me anything. They are refined academics. They smell good. I'm the predator in that crowd. I just need to learn their preferences, figure out what bait to use, let them get close. The other kind of networking is like going swimming in a tank full of stinky hungry sharks. I was prepared to lose a little skin. Today was the first bite, not all that painful. I survived to tell the tale.
I sent Bill a short email, thanking him for taking time to meet with me. I checked my email just now and there was one from him (not a reply to mine), an obvious boilerplate marketing email, big bold Arial fonts, with his logo looming at the top, and lots of colorful links to his website. My name wasn't anywhere to be seen. Yep, that's Bill, building relationships, one skeptic at a time. Rock on, dude.
