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A New Math for Network Marketing

Game B [1] Network Marketing Series

Fairy Pools

I pull the twig
Gently at first
Surprised by its resistance
Whispering “let me be”

Must be frozen
Trapped in the winter’s grip
Not yet warmed
By the April thaw
Something less solid
Holding back the dam

A stronger tug
Ripples reflect
The delicate
Hold about to release

Letting go
The flow carries
The twig to
A new web in
The pool below.

Was it the walk with a childhood friend,
The late-February sunlight, or
The early-March air
Reminding me of
That 9 year old New Hampshire boy
Pulling the twig like
The sword from the stone.

The morning after publishing Game B Network Marketing, I had a moment of contraction. As soon as the cringe feeling passed, the word “re-enchantment” arose and I had a sense about what I wanted to write about next.

Why did I start with a poem?

In the midst of writing “about” re-enchantment, I had an impulse to write a poem — as an experiment in expressing my felt-sense of “enchantment” — something new for me and a bit cringe-worthy — and also a reminder to myself not to try to do too much in one piece, to be too attached to my ideas or to take myself to seriously.

Time Freedom System

In Game A network marketing, time freedom is the primary outcome of the financial freedom that a large residual income can offer. Residual income becomes “passive” once you have generated a large enough (productive) network and you can buy free time. So many people lose at Game A network marketing because the time price is too high.

My Game B network marketing system (the “time hack” I hinted at in my last piece) arose out of playing the Game A version. I say “system” because the machine-like elegance of my simple duplicable model. It feels like it strips network marketing down to first principles and reveals its “generator function.”

I know my math is right and a network using this system should scale exponentially with minimal effort. If the nodes of the network were machines, each machine in my entire network would max out the compensation plan.

But a network with human nodes works on a different math than machines. Working with that math, would allow a complex human “system” to scale. High performing agile teams give us insight into this math. So do rapidly scaling network marketing teams.

The “time hack” is a simple interface between the machine-like algorithms that offer exponential scale with almost no effort and the human math that “enchants” the human network. Working with choice, power, trust and natural enthusiasm, a small team of people can generate a huge human network (a better description might be a team of teams).

Here are a couple of thoughts:

Elegance — The elegance of math/logic can easily snooker us thinking simplistically when faced with complexity. Humans are complex and they aren’t machines. Watch this short video of Sabine Hossenfelder if your mind struggles a bit with a “different math.”

Re-enchantment — This word has so much potency, so I am reluctant to write much more about it. I will just say how enchanted I am when people are allowed to be abundantly themselves. For me, enchantment captures the spark that ignites team flow in a human network.

Almost without exception, the network marketing leaders I know are “enchanting people” — they have mastered an art of generating natural enthusiasm in other people, and over time, create the conditions for other people to become masters themselves.

This can get lost in sales hype and some approaches feel more time-consuming than they need to be, but these enchanting people have real mastery and it is awe-inspiring. Too many people miss this about network marketing.

Next piece in this series: Human Math- How to Scale a Human-to-Human Network

[Previous piece in this series]

[1] What is Game B? See the Game B Wiki.

Please Note: Although this piece did not call for a footnote, I do want to attribute some of my choice of words and phrases to Bonnitta Roy. Her work continues to inform me. See my earlier Medium pieces on Bonnitta’s Open Participatory Organizations work here.