The Bamboo Tree Network Marketer

A LinkedIn contact from online marketing emailed me about his new foray into social media strategy. After checking out his blog, reading his posts, watching video testimonials about what he has done for local clients, etc. I was impressed. The email from him said that he was looking forward to 2012 as he planted many good seeds.

I immediately responded to his email with an analogy that I always used when I was on the road doing training sessions for my network marketing company. The analogy was about a monk who was given the task of watering a bamboo tree every morning and evening.

This monk performed his task with gusto for the first week. But on weekends, he failed to see an outbreak. So he continued to do this the second week. Still not sprouting at the end of the second week. He began to lose heart, but continued his twice-a-day routine for a third and then a fourth week. To his dismay, there are no visible signs of life. Deciding to give her one more week before throwing in the towel, he continued. At the end of this fifth week, he does not sprout.

He went to the abbot, the head of the monastery, and told him about all his efforts with nothing to show for it. Obviously she wanted the abbot to suggest a different task for him. Instead, the abbot told him to continue doing exactly what he had been doing for the previous five weeks.

He left the abbot’s office, still discouraged, but decided that he would do what the abbot told him to do.

The next day, Monday, he went through his watering routine. The next day he noticed the slightest sprout peeking out of the ground. On the third day of its sixth week, this little sprout suddenly grew to be six inches tall. On the fourth day, she grew to a full foot. By Saturday, it was a fully grown 40 foot bamboo tree.

I related this analogy to his planting of good seeds in 2011, the results of which he intended to see in 2012.

(Great thinking in this age of quick and immediate rewards.)

How does this fit into your network marketing business? You could be doing your business for weeks, months, years and have little to show for it. But keep “watering” your business daily. You may not be seeing any sprouts, but as you go about your business, invisible roots are growing below the surface.

Somewhere, somehow expect these roots to support a big business, your big business, your towering “bamboo tree” for years to come.