This is ‘Recession Proofing Your Income with Network Marketing’, an interview with Ken Maxwell.

When choosing network marketing company to work with, what would be the criteria? Like, does the company have a least ten years track record?

Ken: Yes, absolutely. You would only buy anything from someone you trusted, right? If you went out and bought a car today, you want to know that that company has been in business for a long time and that if anything goes wrong with that car you can get spare parts for it, you can get service for it easily, quickly, efficiently and so on. And there are the kinds of businesses that people trust and there are the kinds that people do business with. And it’s the same with a network marketing company. You need to make sure that you're involved in a company that has a significant track record, it can prove everything that it states.

The second thing that I look for is a company who has no debt, because if you're working with a company that has no or very close to zero debt, the chances are that company is a lot more solid and you will gain a bigger benefit from that company anyway. It’s a very clever company. You would also look at the size of the organization and as importantly, how they support you to grow your business so that their success is also affected accordingly. How they support you? Do they give you all the coaching, a lot the sales materials that you need? Do they give you extra value in your business to make you successful? It’s about u. because you are basically the franchisee to that organization. So the more successful you are, of course the better the company would be.

There’s also something else that you can do. There’s an independent magazine called Network Marketing Today. It’s a very, very effective magazine and it’s totally autonomous. It’s not involved in any company whatsoever. It’s called the industry watchdog, Network Marketing Today. Now, they do a survey every single year. They look at all the network marketing and the multi-level marketing companies on the planet, and there are thousands of them. They’ll look at the company’s strengths, they’ll look at the executive, they’ll look at how they support the networkers, how the commissions are paid, the products, the sustainability and so on. Stack of parameters. They’ll look at those companies and they’ll give it one to ten every year. Now, what you would do is, choose the best of course. So you would find out who is number one. And that’s the one we go and have a look at very carefully. If you're company that’s being offered to you is not on that list, I would do some investigation. The world of the internet is an amazing thing, you can find out so much information. Go in there and have a look.

What about if the parent company is a public-listed or a private-owned company? When it’s a public listed company, then they’re also at the mercy of the shareholders as well, not just the distributors. Does that also have an impact?

Ken: It does, actually. Yes, it does. There are advantages to both systems. A private company works very, very well if the management has the network at its heart. So that’s where the focus is, that would work extremely well. If it was the other way around I’d be a little bit cautious. The advantage of having a publicly-listed company is it means that you can actually go in and look at their books, because as a publicly-listed company they have to meet certain criteria. If the company is listed on the stock exchange, does it meet the Business Week or the Forbes magazine’s list? Which is the best one according to those particular indices, and they are very significant indices. You can look at the share price of the company, you can see how it’s tracking. If it’s going up and down, up and down, or if it’s continuously rising, how long it’s been on the stock market, and so on. So you can get a lot of information about the solidity of that company.

Part 1: Why did you pick network marketing?

Part 2: What are the misconceptions of network marketing?

Part 3: What is the difference between multi-level marketing, network marketing and direct selling?

Part 5: Do you have to quit your job to do network marketing?