Friends - Fun - Trust - Leadership

Normally one would say: Investing into a business without earning one cent is wasted time and better forget about it as quickly as possible. This “wasted time” covered one and a half years.

Looking back I would not say it was wasted time. I have learned a lot in spite of the bad experience, because I made good experiences as well during that time.

As I already mentioned at the end of my last chapter I was attending a beginners seminar with Sirius company and I could not keep my mouth shut. So there were a few things which did not seem to me really serious and I asked a lot of questions which after a while became that unconfortable to the discussionleaders and were causing other participants to start asking questions as well that the whole seminar ended in a big disaster and all of us left before the seminar officially was finished.

That day I met Andrea Wedel the first time who was living close to my own little village and is earning her life today on internet with webservices of all kind. She not only became my friend but also my teacher in creating webpages and many basic techniques to find my way on Internet. She is an artist in creating blogs and webpages and has the eye of an artist in harmonisizing your webpresense. Sometimes I drove her to the brink of insanity with all my questions.

But thanks to her and my personal development I can offer today the necessary service if somebody needs his own branding, minisites, sqweezepages etc.

But that was not yet the case during these 1,5 years I wanted to tell about.

At that day when we left the seminar we also met Mr. DS who already was an advanced member of Sirius and at that seminar decided to leave this company and found his own MLM business based on the idea of companies like Alpha and Sirius.

The basic concept was really good, but neither Alpha nor Sirius seemed to be able to realize it. DS was a great merchant, he was able to sell you an old shoe torn by the dog as a wedding shoe. He was able to distroy the biggest doubts with his immense persuasive power, but he also was able to sell his own grandmother. He told us that day about his ideas to bring the basic concept to a very lucrative MLM business. And it sounded terribly good.

Even today I’m still convinced that the basic concept is one of the best within all MLM businesses I ever heared, it just depends how you try to realize it. So Andrea and I decided to participate in his plans and help him starting this business online.

Well to make it short, DS was a totally offliner, never has done business online before. But Andrea had the online experience and I was learning very quickly with her help. So we prepared the online presentation. Andrea made the design of the slides and I prepared the text. 1,5 years we made the presentation twice a week. DS was building his offline organization and Andrea and I were quite successful in building online our downline.

But then all three of us made a wrong decission. We accepted the payment of the lincense fee in several parts to be paid as soon as the people earned their first money. This way we wanted to give all those a chance who did not have the money for the total license fee of 250 Euro at once. But this wrong decission could have been easily corrected. The worst thing, which was the beginning of the end of this business was the mentality of DS. He thought he could run a business like that as a one-man-company without a team at his side which took care of and decide about the business online. And then it turned out that we had to get along with a cholerican who just did not accept any serious doubts or questions, who was not able to follow the advice of more experienced people. He just knew everything and was the best of its kind even when he did not have any idea - at least at that time.

The whole business failed by the wrong leadership. He was not able to lead people and just closed the account of everybody who dared to say a frank word or put a justified question which did not fit into his concept. It was a terrible time, especially when he got the feeling that Andrea and I together became too strong. He started to play one against the other and finally closed our accounts too, so that we could not go on working and lost the complete downline.

But all this was a slow development and Andrea and I very long were still convinced that we were able to keep the whole business alive and convince him to work together with partners and make the decisions together. But before our accounts were closed too we came to a point where we did not dare to bring new people into the business. We could no longer recommend it and make new members pay the license fee. And then one day DS closed the conferenceroom and decided that he only would keep those partners who will work offline. He was convinced that the onlinebusiness was destroying his company and he threw out everybody who was not willing to work just offline. The last 6 months were a terrible time. I refused to give up. I had given all my heartblood and enthuiasm in this business. I loved it, I loved the partners I met, it was a great team. But one day I was no longer able to hide the truth and find excuses and I could not motivate my partners any more to recruit new partners.

After Andreas and my account was closed but we still had valid contracts we decided to wait and watch what will happen in the future.
Well after a few months DS started from scratch together with my best teampartner, my direct line. It seemed as if this time he would do better. He finally did what we always asked him to do: He got a gremium of 6 more partners who in future should then be elected by the partners and who should decide about the business together with DS. After a short time of success it seems as if they are now again at the same point as 1 year ago, when Andrea and I had to quit. And again for the same reason which only lies in his person, his mentality, his leadership.

What were the positive experiences? I found out, that I was able to to trainings, to make presentations, to gain the trust opf my partners and keep a team together inspite of all difficulties because they trusted me. The more it hurt at the end, that I could no longer justify their trust in me. But during these 1,5 years really good friendships were born and partially the former partners now work together the one way or the other.

And I won two big friendships which still last even though our businesses are developping in different directions.
So far my very personal story about my time with integral without going deaper into the details.

What happened with Andrea and me, after we failed with Integral?

Well Andrea always saw her future in the webservice business and was going on working on this goal during her time with integral. She never lost her focus. And she did well with this, because this business is her strength and her life. And she never completely lost the contact to her former Integralpartners and today has several won as customers and networkfriends.

And I? My online life completely changed in December 2006, when I heared thru an advertisement the first time of the Yorgoo Network and became a member. Since I focuse the international market my former contacts are only of loose nature.

But my first year with Yorgoo will be the content of my next chapter. Hope to meet you there again.

To your health and success

Renate