How to Support Your Entrepreneurial Friends Without Spending a Dime

A couple days ago I shared this link and it seemed to really hit home with a lot of you. I had shares and comments and messages galore saying “YES! PREACH!” The overarching message is this: a celebrity or random company will put out products that we have no problem purchasing as we troll the aisles of Target, but when a friend or family member shares a product they’re passionate about and has something to benefit from it then we get annoyed and frustrated. But if these are people we care about, who we love and support in every other way, why is it so ridiculous to support them in a business endeavor?

One thing that I have learned with my foray into network marketing is that those of us who enter into this world have chosen to be OK with the public scorn and exclamations of annoyance in order to share something we feel passionate about. I have no expectation that friends and family will buy a thing from me just because we share a social circle or last name, and I think most network marketing entrepreneurs would say the same thing. But what we DO need is your support, somehow and some way, the same as we did before we started our businesses.

 

Did you know that you have the freedom to support your friends and family without spending a single cent? Read on for how to do just that!

 

1. TALK TO US! Ask us about business, try to understand exactly what it is that we do, ask us our motivation. At the very least this helps us to better formulate the ‘why’ behind what we do to share with others, but what it really shows is that you care. Be honest and tell us that you aren’t ready to buy anything, but that you want to show your support. In a world where we’re getting shut down more often than we’d like, just knowing we have someone on our side is huge!
2. OFFER TO HELP. Grab a glass of wine and settle in with us for an evening of creating sample kits. Offer to help with childcare if there’s a party we need to host. Offer to host a (non-financially committed) social gathering to help us share our story with others. Celebrate in the victories, give us a hug when it’s hard. Offering to help, even in the smallest of ways, is helpful beyond what you could imagine.
3. SHARE THE LOVE! Facebook and Instagram algorithms show preference to posts that have more engagement, so every time you like, comment on, or share a post you’re helping get that post more views and therefore helping to spread the message. Obviously it costs nothing to click “Like” versus scrolling on past. Leaving a comment is super cheap too – in fact, it costs nothing as well! Same with sharing 😉 And at the end of it all, who knows who you could end up helping? With that extra “Like” or comment or share you could be positioning that post to be in front of the exact person who needed to see it. Another way to share? Word of mouth! If you know someone who’s looking for a new career, who cares deeply about something, who needs a little side hustle – be the middle man and introduce them. Word of mouth is HUGE!

Like I say in the video above, what this can all be distilled down to is this: relationship. When you care about someone who starts to sell something via network marketing you can still be their friend for free. Be honest about whether or not you intend to purchase anything from them, and then still be their friend. Encourage them to pursue their dreams, to work hard, to improve the lives of others. And who knows – that encouragement may be just the thing needed to touch the life of someone else!