Why Chasing 100 Recruits Leaves You With Nothing

Chasing 100 recruits leaves you with nothing because nobody on that list gets tended. You spread yourself so thin that every new person gets a welcome message and then silence. They quit about as fast as they joined, and next month you start over from zero.

I'd guess you've lived some version of this. So this season I'm doing the opposite. My goal is 5. Here's why I believe 5 people you actually help will outgrow 100 people you only signed up.

You've probably been told it's a numbers game. Talk to everyone. Post every day. Make your list of 100 names and work it until something happens.

Here's what usually happens instead:

• Your friends and family stop answering the phone.
• You post every day and hear crickets.
• A few people join, you can't keep up with all of them, and they drift away.
• The commission check after months of work is too small to justify the effort.
• Your own upline was busy chasing their 100 too, so nobody helped you either.

That last one is the part people don't talk about. When everyone above you is chasing volume, the person who just joined gets a link and a pep talk, and then they're on their own. That's not a team. That's a revolving door.

Farming teaches you quickly that you can plant more than you can water. It feels productive on planting day. Later in the season, the ones you couldn't reach are the ones you lose.

A team works the same way. Every person you bring in needs someone to answer their questions, help them get their first leads, and check in when they get discouraged. If you've signed up 40 people and you're already chasing number 41, who's doing that for the first 40?

Nobody. So they wilt, and a team built on volume wilts right along with them.

There's a job in orchard work called thinning. Early in the season, a tree sets more fruit than it can carry, so you pull a good share of it off by hand. That way the fruit that's left can grow full size. It feels wasteful the first time. It isn't. A tree trying to ripen everything ends up with a crop of small, poor fruit.

Chasing 100 recruits is a tree that never got thinned: lots of little starts and nothing that ripens. Picking 5 people and giving them your full attention is thinning. Fewer, but they actually grow.

Five is a number I can keep my word to, and that matters to me. My brother and I ran our ag-spraying business on the rule that our word was our bond. Later, in 22 years of teaching at-risk teenagers, I learned those kids had been let down too many times to trust anyone. The only way in was to do what I said, every time, and not blow smoke.

I can't make that promise to 100 people. I can make it to 5.

Here's what makes 5 enough: each of those 5 learns to do the same with their own 5. One tree becomes 5. Five become 25. That's how an orchard grows, row by row, without anyone chasing a crowd.

1. They're already looking for leads. I'm not trying to talk anyone into wanting something. I'm stepping onto fresh ground, with people who have already raised their hand.
2. They're willing to be helped. I'd rather work with someone patient and coachable than someone in a big hurry.
3. I can actually show up for them. If I can't answer their questions this week, I'm not ready for them yet.

My best advice is also the thing I'm still working on myself: ask better questions. Listen to what someone is struggling with before you tell them anything about your business.

I'll be straight with you. The 5-Tree Orchard isn't fast. If you need big money next month, this isn't that, and I won't pretend it is. An orchard takes seasons. There will be slow weeks, and I'll share mine here right along with the good ones.

But if you're tired of starting over every month and you'd rather build something steady with a few good people, it's worth a look.

If you missed it, start with why I'm building my business like an orchard. And if you'd like to see the fresh ground I'm planting in, here's the lead system I'm using, Traffic Ignition.

Subscribe in the sidebar and I'll let you know when the next post goes up.

Just keep moving forward.
Bill