The Mail Order Law Of Averages (written October, 1995)

Everyone always asks me what is the average response rate? What is the average time it takes to make money? What is the average amount of money that can be made? Yatti Yatti Yatti. What’s up with these questions? Do you aspire to be average? I certainly don’t. Here’s the answers: The sky is the limit for the amount of money you can make in this business. It depends on how much effort you put into investing into yourself and your business and responses always vary. Since that’s now out of the way – let me tell you what I think the mail order law of averages are.

This theory is based on people and reality. For every person who succeeds, one person will fail. For every “average” person, there is another “average” person trying to succeed, so you can fail. So your chances are 50/50. Do you want to increase your chances of success? I hope so.

#1) Work harder than the next guy. Stop telling yourself and everyone else what your limitations are and start building on your positives. Lately I have been extremely, extremely busy. I don’t have time to write these articles, but you know what? I have found time. I squeezed it in because it is necessary tool to build my business and exchange my ideas with great people like yourself who want to learn. Make time and work harder!!

#2) Understand you have to invest your hard earned money and your hard earned time into a mail order business. You don’t have time? You won’t succeed then. As I said above, make time. You don’t have money? You won’t succeed then. You have to be able to invest a couple hundred dollars a month in your business. Period!! If you can’t, then you can’t be in business. What is great about mail order is low to zero overhead and low to zero startup costs. Traditional businesses have high startup costs and high overhead.  Our business eliminates those costs – however it does not eliminate all costs. You still have to invest in advertising your business or it will never have a chance to get off the ground. Understand and accept this fact.

#3) Be consistent about your business. Too many people try something for a couple of months and then move on to something else and this becomes a vicious cycle of never being consistent. You want to be in business? Do something consistently every day and work on building it daily and don’t quit and try something different in a couple of months. You’ll fail every time. By reading this article, that is a start.  When you are finished with this article, pick up another article and read it. Call your upline and ask for advice. Call your downline and give them advice. If you find yourself doing nothing, then you are not being consistent. Try to get into a routine each day of working a couple hours, whether it be after work, after school or while the kids sleep. Get into a routine of consistently working your business every day. If your local hardware store owner advertised one time in the local paper, would he be in business for long?  Well don’t fall into that logic. If you are on a limited budget, look for inexpensive places to consistently place your ad. Then place them consistently.

#4) Be patient while you are being consistent. Results do not happen overnight and a few months in the mail order business is like a couple of days. You cannot succeed if you do not allow yourself time to succeed. Time to learn. Time to test. Time to allow results to occur. You are trying to “build” a business.  Building is a process, which requires time to accomplish. Before you get involved with any mail order endeavor, make sure you are willing to be patient enough to give yourself at least a year to succeed. Guess what? That might not even be enough. Too many people look for instant results, which is downright silly. It took a person 35 years to get to the point where they are now – and that point is not satisfactory – why don’t these same people give themselves more than a few months to turn it around then? Doesn’t make sense to me and that is why they always fail. Give yourself a chance to succeed with what you are doing by being patient and consistent.

#5) Take charge of yourself. Too many people sit there and get confused over the simplest things. Don’t allow that to happen. Tell yourself that nobody is going to help me other than myself. So I need to learn as much about this business from as many different sources as I can. In the meantime look for people that will help you by answering your questions and giving you advice. But inevitably by being consistent, by being patient, by working harder than the next guy, by spending your money and time working this business, by making yourself the most knowledgeable you can be, by relying on yourself and no one else, you will succeed. How long will it take? Who knows? Do you want to succeed or not? It is not how long it takes, but whether you do or not. Right? You have a 50/50 chance. Play the odds in your favor and you will win!!!

The author of this article is Larry Costello, President of All-American Print & Mail, 2200 Wilson Blvd #102-57, Arlington, VA 22201.