Fire Up Your Networking

I’ve always been sort of a pyromaniac. Is there anyone who doesn’t actually love a good fire?

As  a child, when my family went camping, I always looked forward to the irresistible  nightly  bonfire that my dad built.

I’ve also always been kind of a goody-goody too.  Which means that when I was a kid and I wanted to play with fire, I did it in the safest way that my child mind could think up.

So, my sister and I took a book of matches and our little beach bucket with us to the neighborhood park.    For safety’s sake, we filled our pail in the lavatory sink.

When we arrived, we were happy to see that no one was playing basketball on the asphalt court.

Even though I’m tall and was always asked if I played basketball, at the time, I wasn’t coordinated enough  to walk and chew gum at the same time.  So I had no business being near any hoops…except maybe hula hoops.

Off we proceeded to center court, with our water filled bucket, matches ready.

Since it didn’t take very much to amuse us, we were having a great time lighting one match after another (over the bucket) when we were caught.  Not by a grown up, but by the older brother of one of our friends.  He threatened to tell on us…unless we became his servants.  So what else could we do?  We agreed.

For some reason, our main duty as I recall was to stand with our arms out to our sides, keeping them up as long as we could.  I guess he thought that was funny.

Well, that brings me to this past weekend.  Since it was cold out and my husband was gone, it was up to me to get the fireplace going.

The first day, everything went perfectly.  My fire was roaring in no time.  On the second day…not so great.  I did finally get it going, but only with a lot of tending.

What was the difference?

This started me thinking about fires.

I wondered about Smokey Bear (he dropped his middle name, you know) and his cause of saving the forest from fires.

“Only YOU can prevent forest fires!”

Did that mean that only I could start a forest fire?

How exactly does one dropped match burn down a whole forest when I had a hard time get my fireplace to light with quite a few.

I had carefully placed the kindling in a tee-pee shape with crumpled newspaper underneath.  I then lit the paper in several spots, several times.  A bit of fanning and nice little fire erupted…and then died down to basically nothing.  More kindling, more paper, more fanning…ablaze again.

Of course, I hadn’t even put any real wood on there, yet.  It was too soon to pile on the big stuff.

After rearranging the log placement many times and adding to it, it seemed that I had a real fire going.  It couldn’t be neglected or it would surely go out.

It finally got to the point where it only needed tending from time to time and stoking occasionally to keep me warm.

You are probably wondering what any of this has to do with network marketing.

One thing that comes to mind is that when someone is really making things happen, we say they are on fire or that they’re all fired up.

Fires and networking businesses (or any business for that matter) actually have many similarities.

They all start out small.  They are all unique.  Some grow into a big blaze, maybe even to epic proportions…out of control.  Others fizzle and die for lack of trying or lack of understanding what it takes to build it in the proper order.

Even though some fires are started accidentally, they all begin with a combination of circumstances (intentional or not).

The electrical fire is started when there is faulty wiring that is plugged into an outlet that has power running through it.  No fire ever begins with a carelessly tossed unlit cigarette.

There is always some sort of initial cause.  Cause and effect go hand in hand even if we can’t always figure it out.

I suppose it might be possible to accidentally sponsor someone.  I guess that someone might see something about your business and ask you if they can join, but I’ve never heard of it happening.  It definitely never happened to me.  Come to think of it, I also don’t know anyone who accidentally burnt down a forest.

When you look at anything that is past it’s infancy stage, it becomes more difficult to decipher how it got to where it is.

In the case of actually doing anything well on purpose, there is usually some sort of small, imperceptible trick to it.  Something that was done at or toward the beginning that made it either possible or at least easier to do.

Learning from someone who has done the thing that you would like to do is the fastest way to speed up the learning curve.

It takes some different skills to start something up from scratch than to keep it going or grow it.  It really helps to have some tools to work with.  The fireplace broom and dustpan were excellent for removing the old ashes to start fresh and have room to grow my fire without smothering it.  The poker and the tongs were indispensable for moving hot logs around to create a hotter fire.

It takes more than one log to build a bonfire but you can get a nice one started with a bit of kindling and just a few logs.  The same is true of your business.  You must start with the fundamentals and then it only takes a few good builders to get it red hot.