‘Show me the money‘ say prospects and Jerry McGuire. 🙂
That’s what this page is all about and of course, before I dig in, It’s important to I say that my results are not average or ordinary, results vary and it’s wise to see any income disclaimer with any person or company you learn from and/or choose to do business with. Here’s mine.
I know it’s possible to build a business and an income without showing any income results whatsoever because I’ve done it. That being said I also realize there will be some who have been wisely counceled to trust but verify.
One of my favorite Napoleon Hill quotes is, “If money is all you have in your paycheck at the end of the week, you have been grossly underpaid.”
That being said – my intention for this page is to share some of my results to both prove and inspire – and hopefully do it in a way that’s tasteful, where I can also share more of my home business journey and valuable lessons I picked up along the way.
Sound good?
Ok let’s go. 
(see what I did there?) ha ha.. 😉
Ok..
First I want to remind you that I worked my entire first year in Network Marketing without making a single solitary cent.
This was despite the fact that I made and called countless lists, went door to door, passed out flyers to local businesses in the freezing Idaho winter and led a weekly hotel meeting for an entire year straight.
I remember sitting on the toilet (cover down) of my bathroom in my trailer house at 5:30 AM each weekday morning so I could memorize the sales presentation before going to work.
I heard a 7 figure earner say from stage one time, “If you lose, make sure you don’t lose the lesson too.”
And that first year was chocked full of them.
Here’s one of the big ones that helped us to begin crafting a life of freedom….
I was representing a debt elimination company and I remember being so shocked and blown away by learning how the financial institutions operated.
I learned that many of them operate by a principle called ‘distraction and manipulation‘ which means they distract your attention with something exciting like…
- A super low annual interest rate
- Low easy monthly payments.
- Etc.
And then while we’re distracted with the thing we’re excited about, like a 5 or 6% mortgage interest rate, the real manipulation happens behind the scenes when we end up paying astronomical amounts of interest to banks.
For example: on a $150,000 loan with a 5% interest rate, homeowners end up paying $114,696.86 in interest. 
The company I was representing had a slide in their presentation that ran a calculation of the interest actually paid compared to the loan amount.
In our example above, if you divide 114K in interest by the actual loan amount this is what you get on your calculator… 
Then the slide would ask,
“Doesn’t that look a lot more like a 76% interest rate than a 5% interest rate?”
That lesson sunk so deep for my wife and I that we vowed to eventually buy our own home and be debt free.
This is one of the reasons we chose to live in a trailer for the first few years of our marriage.
In fact, one of our favorite mottos is a quote by Dave Ramsey where he said…
“Live like no one else now, so you can live like no one else later.”
After a few years of following this philosophy and some effort, dedication and persistence to our home business, we were able to pay off the mortgage on our dream home in the country. 
This was one of the happiest days of my life. 
I was so happy I made a video that day and cried.
So even though I made no money that first year of network marketing – that one lesson I picked up, was worth at least $100,000 in saved interest and is probably still paying our family today due to the fact that we don’t have a house payment.
So if you’re still in the learning phase and not quite earning what you want yet (or perhaps making zero money) – please don’t underestimate the value of the lessons you’re learning because odds are high you’ll look back on them in a few years and realize how priceless they those lessons really are.
My first network marketing check.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of my first few checks but I want to tell you about them anyway because I feel like they contain some pretty important lessons.
After 5 years I finally started to have some success.
We were marketing a fuel additive that was designed to increase fuel mileage, reduce emissions and improve performance.
We built an active team of around 600 reps and customers right here in my home town of Blackfoot Idaho.
My monthly residual income in that company was right around $1,200 per month and this helped to give me enough courage to quit my job.
Right after I quit my job something happened…
We were building a binary compensation plan which means we had a left leg and a right leg.
In this plan (as with many Binaries) you get paid on whichever leg is smaller.
One day the leaders inside the company decided to take a huge chunk of my down-line from my pay leg and move it to my other leg.
This dropped my monthly check from $1,200 per month to around $600.
(Can you guess what the lesson here is?)
At the time it was a crushing blow, but looking back I realize it was just one of the first big tests I had to pass to see If I was really going to make it in this profession.
Napoleon Hill says something like, “It seems there is a hidden guide who’s duty it is to test the hearts and souls of men and women to see if they really want that which they say they want.”
No one wins without passing the persistence test and this was my first quiz.
Napoleon Hill also said “In every apparent setback lies the seed of an equal or greater advantage.”
Little did I know there were 2 huge lessons in this failure that I was destined to be taught again through a few more experiences down the road, because I didn’t learn them the first time.
(more on that in a bit)
After building so hard locally using traditional belly to belly methods, only to have the majority of income yanked away from my family, just when we needed it most, I was ready for a different strategy and that’s what led me to the internet.
My First Internet Marketing Check
Once again – I don’t have a picture of this check either but I’m guessing, when I tell you the amount, you’ll believe it.
It was $65 bucks.
I remember this check and wanted to tell you about it because this check was like magic for me.
I made a copy of it and taped it to my brown-paneled trailerhouse office wall right above my desk so I could see it every day.
To me, this was proof that If I could make $65 REAL dollars from home using the internet – then I could earn more.
It was a seed of belief that kept growing into a pretty good sized prosperity tree. 🙂
I tell you about this in the hopes that you’ll remember not to discount the small wins because it’s the small wins that lead to big one’s.
People are always so quick to show you the big checks but you know what?
This $65 check was one of the most meaningful and empowering one’s that I got because it helped me to believe that it was the beginning of something bigger.
My First $3,000 Per Month From Home
In those early days my hearts desire was always set on $3,000 per month.
In fact, I remember having this goal for YEARS prior to it manifesting in my life.
(4 years to be exact)
The reason I wanted $3,000 per month so badly was because this was the amount I needed to be job free.
So here’s how it happened.
As you hopefully learned in my story, I had knelt down and offered a prayer to God.
Part of the answer I received was to study Think And Grow Rich and apply what I was learning.
So each night I was walking outside my trailer house visualizing 2 income amounts.
One of the things I learned in marketing was how important it is to select a target market that you can market to.
I was taught that one of the best markets of people to market a home business to – is people who already have a home based business.
The logic here is that if someone joins a network marketing business opportunity – the odds of them joining another one are very, very high.
I’m perfect proof of this having joined over 14 different business opportunities in my early years.
In any case, the goal is to have your primary company that you can share with the one’s who are open – and then have some sort of system or educational platform you can share with the one’s who already have a business that they love.
This is why I was building 2 income streams.
1 was my network marketing company and the other was a system I was representing.
So there I was visualizing a $1,500 check in my mind from my liquid vitamin network marketing company and another $1,500 check coming from the system I was promoting.
Each night I faithfully did this for about 90 days or so and low and behold as if by a stoke of magic, almost on the exact day that I had been saying in my mind, a get a check in the mail for $1,500 exactly from the system I’d been promoting.
I couldn’t believe it.
But then, I go in my trailer house, log into the back office of my network marketing company and guess what…
I see that my network marketing company had just sent me a check for $1,498 ….
It would have been exactly $1,500 but the company had a $2 check processing fee.
WOW!
Finally!
My coveted goal of $3,000 per month had been realized.
(Video Proof of Enrollments)
I had reached the end of my rainbow.
(or so I thought)
Then one day I’m driving to Salt Lake City to catch a plane to attend an internet marketing event and I have the phone to my ear as I’m listening to my network marketing company conference call.
I’m on cloud 9 feeling like all is right with the world.
Part of the reason I’d achieved a $1,500 monthly residual in this company was because I had rank advanced to a position called Executive Vice President.
Our normal residual pay for each bottle of liquid vitamin was $1.00 to $3.00 per bottle.
The company had a feature of the comp plan that said “If you advanced to EVP, we will triple your residual pay for the rest of your life.”
The company was doing away with this feature but told us if we hit the rank by a certain deadline, they would grandfather us in to triple pay for life.
Of course my team and I jumped all over this and did anything and everything we could to rank advance.
One of my best friends and team members sold his car and borrowed money from his mom so he could afford to buy enough product to advance the new level.
We both achieved the new rank and were thrilled that we were now going to have TRIPLE the residual for the rest of our lives.
I mean we had to sacrifice and work hard but it was worth it right?
Imagine my surprise when the company owner comes out on the line and says…
“Hey guys, you know that triple pay thing we promised you?
We decided not to do that any more.
Hope to see you at the next event.”
And in 1 20 minute conference call – my newfound residual income was slashed by 2/3rds without so much as an apology from the CEO.
He acted like it was no big thing.
Wow.
This network marketing thing was turning out to be harder than I’d expected.
But I remembered what Napoleon Hill had said..
“In every apparent setback lies the seed of an equal or greater advantage.”
I decided that I would believe that and look for the next seed.
And I guess what?
I found it and it led to….
My First Big Network Marketing Check
I had been using this lead scraper software where I was gathering leads from websites online and sending them recruiting emails.
A guy named Dr. Fran Clark who had actually built up a million dollar per year residual income in a company called Univera got one of my emails and called me up on the phone and started to build a relationship with me. 
He started trying to recruit me into this new company called One24 that he seemed to be pretty excited about.
By this time – I was starting to learn that jumping to new network marketing companies over and over and over was not the way I wanted to spend the rest of my life and so I told him ‘no thanks‘ the first few times he called me about it.
But man, he was persistent.
On about the 5th or 6th pitch – I finally pulled out my credit card and said “Fine, put me in.”
It was only like $69.00 or so and I figured “If that’s what it takes to get this guy to stop asking me to join – it’s probably worth it.” 🙂
The first month, my residual check in that company was only about $10.
Then it went to $15, then $56, then $120, then $320, $1,700, then $1,900…
Then something happened that I can only describe as a miracle.
In fact, I always called this The Miracle Money story – because to me – it truly was a miracle for my family.
One day, in about our 7th month or so in business, my wife Corene was shopping at the grocery store and I was home working in our new Trailer house.
By this time we’d moved off my Grandpa Ford’s farm and purchased our own piece of land that had another single wide mobile home on it.
I knew it was payday and so I logged into the back office to see what my commission payout was going to be.
I kid you not, I about fell out of my chair and onto the floor when I saw that my residual check had jumped from $1,700 to over $7,000. 
In fact, I thought it had to be a mistake so I called Doc Fran on the phone and told him what I was looking at.
He was out driving with his wife Nancy in their Mercedes convertible and told me he would get home as fast as he could so he could help me check everything.
I hung up the phone and called him back a couple minutes later to say “are you home yet?”
Finally, he got home – looked over all the numbers and said “Paul, this is accurate.
You really did earn over $7,000 this month.”
I was so happy I told Doc, If this is true I’m going to fly to Florida and hug and kiss you!
A few days later the check showed up and I made this video. (I recorded this in my parents house because I was still living in a trailer at the time.)
This was my first really big breakthrough in network marketing and it’ll always hold a special place in my heart.
The company had a recruiting contest one time where they gave away free trips to the Bahamas and I won first place in the contest. 
My wife Corene and I had so much fun on this cruise and formed friendships with people we love and stay connected to today.
I went on to personally sponsor over 400 people personally in this company, I became the #1 recruiter and my income grew to over $10,000 per month.
I was asked to join their leadership council and I even got to train on stage for the first time at the company convention…
(I was so nervous the night before I couldn’t sleep but it turned out ok) 🙂
I thought I had finally made it.
Our volume was growing a consistently each and every month to where eventually just our team was doing over 100K per month in sales.
That’s 1.2 million per year in volume.
There didn’t seem to be an end in sight.
Then – all of a sudden, something happened that brought it all crashing down.
The company owner decided that the company wasn’t growing quite fast enough and decided to launch a sister company selling – (Get this) a fuel additive.
Lots of ideas might sound good in theory but this one – selling nutritional products along side fuel additives – hmmmm… I wasn’t quite sure about it.
None the less we tried to go along but the affect it had was devestating.
People were so confused.
2 companies – 2 product lines – 2 comp plans…?
And then, my volume began to reverse.
Instead of climbing higher and higher, it stopped growing and began going lower and lower – along with my income.
I felt like I was on the Titanic and no matter what I did – I couldn’t stop the ship from sinking.
I remember getting on a conference call one night with my team and breaking down in tears.
We had promoted this like it was the be all end all ticket to our freedom.
I was so sorry for myself and the people who had trusted me.
Sure enough – that income dwindled down to zero.
But hey, you dont’ lose if you don’t lose the lesson right?
ha ha..
So after a pretty dark period of confusion and depression – I decided to look for those lessons and hope that maybe there would be another seed equal or greater to the setback.
I guess this is a good time to share what seems to have been one of the biggest lesons I was supposed to have been learning over my time up to this point in home business.
Big Lesson 1 : The Law of The Measuring Cup
Remember that first company and how I’d built a team of 600 people for a $1,200 monthly check?
Well in this last company – my income had shot up to over $7,000 with a team that was only around 100 or so, at the time.
My team in this company eventually grew to over 1,400 active customers but at the time my check bounced to over $7K there were only 100 or so…
It was here that I learned a big lesson relating to income generation.
See this company had a profit sharing part of their plan which made it possible to share in the profits of the entire company instead of just relying on what was coming directly from your downline.
The bottom line on this was it made it possible to earn upwards of $50 to $60 residual income, per customer in your organization – instead of the typical 1 to $3.
This made it so I could have a MUCH smaller team and still enjoy a nice sized income.
So many people in network marketing don’t understand this point (i was one for a long time) and because they miss this – they get stuck in income vehicles that are nearly impossible to build a full time income in.
I like to call this principle The Law of The Measuring Cup.
Let’s say you want to bake a cake (an income cake) and the recipe calls for 2 cups of sugar.
You’ve got the sugar container to the left of you and the mixing bowl to the right.
You need to move that 2 cups of sugar from the container to the bowl.
The choice is this: Do you use a teaspoon to scoop the sugar in or a big glass (2 cups or more) size measuring cup?
If you want the job done fast, you use the bigger cup right?
Tea-spooning little bits of sugar over and over to get to your 2 cup goal would take a lot longer.
It’s the same principle when it comes to building an income from home.
In my first company we built a team of over 600 active customers & distributors and that produced an income of $1,200 a month.
You could say I was earning teaspoons of income ($2 per customer).
I didn’t even know this was a problem because it was the norm in the network marketing profession.
But then, in this last compay where I had my biggest success, becuase of their profit sharing feature I earned not $2 per customer but upwards of $60.
And that’s how, with a much smaller team I was able to earn a much bigger income from home.
The law of the measuring cup.
If you don’t take this into consideration when building your income from home, you could be causing yourself to work 50 to 70 times longer and/or require 50 to 70 times the amount of production to reach the income you want to reach.
This is a BIG DEAL!
Ignoring this principle is a definitely a mistake I never want to make again.
And that’s why – I made sure my next project applied this principle within the comp plan.
You keep hearing me quote Napoleon Hill’s famous quote…
“In every apparent setback lies the seed of an equal or greater opportunity.”
Can you see how in each apparent setback I’ve had in my home business career up to this point, there was always something greater on the other side?
So when my last company crashed, would it surprise you to know that my biggest home business success was just around the corner?
That’s exactly what happened.
My Next Biggest Success
The next company I joined was a hybrid network marketing / affiliate marketing company.
The compensation paid out through a downline but the products were information based and so you could earn healthy commissions for your production.
Law of the measuring cup right?
I sponsored over 500 personals in this company…
(Video Proof of Enrollments
I went on to earn over a half a million dollars with this company, have my biggest month and experience my biggest days earnings up to that point.
This is all still pretty amazing to me when I think about how I started my home business in a trailerhouse.
It helps me to remember that we may not be able to choose where we start, but we can certainly choose where we finish.
This was the company that I had over 14 six figure earners in my downline.
(Here’s a pic of a few of us at an event)
I was so grateful be be able to speak on stage many times at this company and at many different locations all throughout the USA.
Here’s a funny little video clip of me on stage one time with the CEO…
I even got a taste of what it felt like to be considered a bit of a celebrity.
People would find me at random locations and ask to interview me.
Like one time my wife and I were in an airport and this lady came up and asked for an interview.
(It’s the strangest feeling going from living in a trailerhouse to people treating you like you’re a famous movie star).
Anyway, I’m SOOOO grateful for my experiences with this company – I certainly be wouldn’t be where I am today without them and all the people who helped to make my success there possible.
That being said – this too, was not to last.
There came a time where decisions were being made by leadership that were out of alignment with who I had become and was becoming on the inside.
My partner and i were both on the leadership council and we tried to make suggestions and influence the company to move in a direction we thought, would be more in alignment with the ways we wanted to do business.
But all of our pleas fell on deaf ears.
This is when we had to make a hard choice.
Despite the fact that we were ‘big leaders‘ and earning great income with the company – we had to choose between our principles and our income.
We flew to an event, met with the company owner – shared hugs and tears and told him we were leaving.
As hard as that was, and even though many in the company criticized us for being ‘disloyal‘ by choosing to leave, I knew deep down inside, it was the right choice.
(Sidenote: this company also, eventually went out of business)
And that leads me to…
Big Lesson #2 : Principle Centered Leadership
A principle is like a compass that tells you which direction to go, regardless of where on planet earth you happen to be.
If you live your life and run your business according to principles, then most (if not all) of the decisions you’ll be faced with will have been made far in advance of any specific situation that might arise.
I like to believe there are fundamental truths, laws or (principles) that we can learn, latch onto & live our lives by.
When followed – these principles can lead us to ‘the good life‘.
If we ignore or choose to live out of harmony with these principles, negative can consequences follow.
As I reflect back on all of my experiences in home business – I’m profoundly grateful.
I’m also a bit sad that none of the projects lasted.
When I got started in home business, I joined for the idea of building a residual income to provide for myself and my family for many years to come.
I never joined with the idea of building one thing after another.
What happened?
Why did (and do) so many of the companies and incomes come and go?
I’m not a prophet and I certainly don’t claim to know everything but, it seems to me, that many, if not all of my past collapses in companies & incomes were due to leadership decisions that were perhaps made out of harmony with universal principles.
Where I’m At Today
I guess you could say I’m at a point in my career where I really want to do things that matter and make a difference.
There is much in the home business profession that turns me off and i have a sincere desire to be the change I wish to see in the world and help others who want to do the same.
After I left my last company I had to ask myself – do I really want to join yet another company and hope it will turn out to be a different story?
They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again while expecting a different result.
This is why I decided to partner up with one of my best friends and team members to create a new company that could be a solution for all of the problems we’d both faced in our careers up to this point.
But what we’re doing is about more than a company.
It’s about a movement to make the home business space and the world a better place. 🙂
A movement of people who have a desire to create lives of financial freedom and who are committed to doing it in principle centered ways while supporting others of like mind along the path.
Our vision is Freedom, through principle centered leadership.
We created a product line, sales system and compensation structure from scratch to help us monetize and it’s working well so far.
Here are some of the results we’ve created…
- (the biggest sales day online I’ve ever experienced)
- Significant enrollments, residuals and contribution to a great cause…
So that’s more of my story, results and a few more of my biggest lessons.
- Live like now so you can live like no one else later. (it doesn’t matter how much money you make in your business, if you blow it all by living extravagently, it’s impossible to build a life of real freedom.
- Make sure whataver you choose to promote has a compensation system that follows The Law of The Measuring Cup and…
- Seek to live and build your business in alignment with universal principles and strive to work with people who are doing the same.
I sincerely hope seeing some of these results have inspired you and that you can use some of these lessons in your life and business to step into freedom faster. 🙂
Thanks for reading!
To freedom and beyond,
Paul Hutchings
PS – Always go for your dreams!
PPS – If you’re looking for some tips on using the internet to recruit more reps or sell more product online, you might consider going through my Advanced Internet Recruiting Bootcamp. (It’s free)