As an entrepreneur you are in the business to make money. If you were independently wealthy, the odds are good that you would be lounging on a beach with a cold drink, a warm breeze in your face, and not a care in the world. Yet since your parents never did sign up for the trust fund option, you are on your own when it comes to making a living and as an entrepreneur you have found the method that most appeals to you: being your own boss.

You might have started out small, perhaps from your back bedroom or out of your garage, but eventually success began to smile on you and before long you found that just to keep up with consumer demand you would have to begin either working around the clock or get another pair of hand to help ease the burden and spread around the work that needs to be done in order to be profitable.

While initially your significant other, your kids, or maybe another family member of friend will lend a helping hand after hours or before school, eventually you realize that instead of the catch as catch can attitude this kind of assistance brings with it, you require the kind of assistance that is scheduled, deliberate, hard working, and most of all can be counted on, even if the weather is bad or Uncle Sam came to town.

In other words, it is time to place an ad in the help wanted pages of your local paper and look for a qualified individual to share your work load. In the realm of MLM this might simply mean finding another distributor who can become part of your down line and to whom you can funnel some of your extra business, while in the brick and mortar business sense this will refer to a person who will punch a clock and work a set schedule.

Yet becoming the boss is a double edged sword. Those who are break away from the corporate world to go it on their own do not always make good bosses. As a matter of fact, in some cases they make downright lousy managers and supervisors since they come from a business experience that had taught them to not play ball and become the team player but instead rely on their instinct as a maverick to become a mover and shaker.

In a very real sense this impedes such an entrepreneur's abilities to successful manage one of more employees in that it provides fertile ground for the practice of micro managing. After all, you know your business best and because of this reason there is no room for individual approach or process. Letting go of micro-managerial impulses, however, is a first rate requirement if you want to see your business flourish and your profitability grow by leaps and bound.

Remember that only by showing your employees trust in their integrity and ability to do the job for which they were hired that they truly will perform to the full extent of their abilities. Anything less will not only insult their intelligence but sadly also stifle any sense of ownership the individual employee will take of a business aspect. While trust must be earned, it also needs to be freely given unless and until there is a reason to doubt.

Do not presume your employee to be lazy because her or his approach does not match the frantic hustle and bustle that characterizes your work day. Instead accept that as long as the job gets done right and on time, her or his method does work!

For those involved in the multi level marketing (MLM) business, recruiting others to join in the business as distributors is a dream come true. After all, you know that you will profit from their hard work, and if you play your cards right, you will be able to live comfortably just off the residual income that will be yours if your recruits are properly trained and stick with the business.

Yet therein lays the rub of the business in general and your down line in particular:

Getting the candidates to work hard, inspiring them to find new methods of selling the product and then recruiting new distributors themselves. Even if you find a mover and shaker who will take your down line to places it has never been before, keep in mind that this individual will eventually hit a ceiling and if the attractiveness of the business opportunity runs out, so will the loyalty of your recruit!

Thus it is an almost foregone conclusion that the first few recruits you will introduce to your down line will most likely not stick around. Yet do not give up! There are several steps you need to take in order to find quality leads before introducing candidates to your multi level marketing down line.

1. Your leads cannot become serious candidates for your downline unless and until they have a solid understanding of multi level marketing. Weed out the ones in search of get rich quick schemes or who believe that they can make oodles of money while they sleep. Instead, focus on those who understand that there is no free lunch and that multi level marketing is hard work.

2. Be honest and up front about the time commitment it takes to get the business off the ground, run it, and make a profit. Also, be forthcoming about the amount of time it took you to make a profitable go of the business opportunity. Usually the literature offered to the new recruits will speak in glowing terms about the money they could make and how rich they can get, but if there expectations are unrealistic, soon the candidate will be discouraged.

3. Help the candidate understand the product and the market which exists for the product. Interestingly, many a network marketer will shop around for a bit until they find a product that not only suits their needs and beliefs, but also one that is easiest for them to market. Not everyone is cut out for selling makeup, just like not everyone is able to sell wellness products.

4. Be aware of scam artists that working your field. Candidates may have gotten burned in the past by those who are seeking to take advantage of recruits and thus may be very hesitant. If you know the angle the scammers are working you will be able to explain the difference between your genuine opportunity and the fraudulent opportunity offered by others.

Remember that introducing candidates to your multi level marketing down line will take time, patience, and also the willingness to be available for questions.

The network marketing business model has been around for at least a hundred years and scammers existed even then. However, most legitimate companies were able to reign in their rogue distributors and, with the help of government regulators, the amount of money lost to illegal scams was minimized. However, with the growth and expansion of the internet, network marketing opened a new market for many legitimate businesses as well as the scam artists.

Network marketing is a fairly simple model. A company has a good product that sells better if demonstrated by a trained distributor that also has sales techniques that enable them to close a sale in one visit. Everything from vacuum cleaners, housewares and health and beauty products were, and still all, sold through a network marketing model. The company produces the products and enlists the aid of outside sales representatives to take their product to market and put it into the hands of consumers.

Prior to the internet, these so-called licensed distributors worked in a territory protected against competition from other distributors and could earn a decent living selling whatever product line with which they were involved. Typically, the distributor had to purchase a sales kit in order to demonstrate the product and some companies may have even charged them for training on how to use the product or close the sale.

The money paid for the sales kits was usually enough to cover the wholesale cost of the kit, preventing the loss incurred by the company from the distributors who took the kit, made no sales and disappeared with the products. These distributors that worked well and earned their money were offered additional incentives to recruit others into the business. There was rarely any financial reward for signing up a new distributor, but for every sale they made, the person who recruited them received a commission.

Unfortunately, a few individuals came with an idea that they could recruit people simply for the sake of recruiting other people and no real product ever changed hands. Commonly referred to as a pyramid scheme, most are outlawed in countries around the world. The only way a person could recoup the money they paid to join was to recruit others into the scam and take a piece of their entry fee. Sometimes, they would have to recruit as many as five other just to break even.

With the growth of the internet, there are many people making unrealistic promises of how to make a ton of money without having to do a lot of work. These companies rely on a person's laziness and greed to get them into the business and promise them that every recruit they sign up will make sales on their products or services for which the sponsoring member earns a commission, in addition to the bonus for recruiting them.

Many of the people focus on recruitment to make their money and no product is ever sold. That is OK though, because that was the illegal intent from the beginning. These scams have turned most people away from network marketing giving even legitimate businesses a bad name.