Hi, my name is Luis Figueroa and I am guilty of “Shiny Object Syndrome”. 
Yes, I definitely have the shiny object syndrome. And let me take you through the journey of what caused it and what I have done.
You see, like the many people I know, I wanted to make money. Also, to work from home and as little as possible. I got inspired by the “4 Hour Workweek” by Timothy Ferriss and thought this will be a great fit. Plus, this will make my dream come true. I thought this was the vehicle of first getting my lovely wife home and free from work. Secondly, buy a new home with at least 3 acres so we can have a couple of alpacas.
I am an insurance producer and loving my job. I love helping people in getting the right protection that they need. I became torn between continuously working or building my own business.
I started by doing both. I started with network marketing or what other people call multi-level marketing. This was hard work as we had to focus on both selling and recruiting people to join. I had a hard time between working my 50 hours a week combining with at least 25 hours of network marketing.
I was getting tired of this as I felt I got another job. When I started I did not know any better. Then, I found another MLM program thinking that they have a better idea. Nope, it turned out to be the same grind. I eventually joined the third thinking that the third time is the charm and it was the same. It was a lot of work with little to show for.
What I learned from network marketing is that those that made it big had to have a very big group. Plus, each time I was not truly close to those that made it big such as a “Diamond Level” to learn the true secret sauce. What happens is that God bless my uplines as they did not know what they were doing. It was the blind leading the blind syndrome.
As a whole, the group had to go to time-consuming conferences to pump us up. In the beginning, it was useful, but I kept thinking that I can’t keep being here, build the business and work full time.
One thing I did learn was that to be successful you have to sell yourself. For the most part, the product or service that you are selling is good. When you promote your product via your website or social media, the people will do their own research. They go to the company’s site. Unfortunately, they will buy from there. When you brand yourself, people will follow you and buy from whatever you are influencing.
Then I moved on and went on to affiliate marketing. Now affiliate marketing is like I thought, this will be a perfect thing because I am an introvert at heart. Unless I get to know you and I am an extrovert. I know this is a weird personality and some people may have it as well.
I jumped from program to program and they all did not teach the secret sauce to build the business. Shhh, but don’t tell anyone, but the secret is to build a list.
Each program had its own version of making money quickly and with very little work. Yet, it didn’t teach us the fuel of how to do it. I soon learn that I had to do the art of traffic building.
I got tired of jumping around with frustration and I quit that. My next venture was e-commerce and arbitrage. I soon realize I am doing so much work. Almost the same amount of work as network marketing. I actually got less money as each sale had such little profit. Plus, there was no recruiting and I did not get any leverage or recurring income. This is what I learned from the e-commerce format. You have to build your list. And it was costly. Many times I wind up with a loss. So, I did not stay in this format for long. In other words, I had done so much work and very little to show for.
Okay. And then I went into consulting. And I did this for an insurance agency and applied what I learned in traffic building, and it worked. So I learned how to do traffic building. I learned how to do social media, I learned how to network. And this, this all helped. I was very happy. But then the owner sold the business. He wanted to build value for his agency in which he can sell the business at a higher price for his retirement.
My next journey was selling insurance as an independent. At the same time, memories of affiliate marketing came back to me. I learned much more than I did when I started. I needed steady money to pay the bills and to make my wife happy, but I could not give up on my dream. I did not want to settle. I made a deal to myself and will do both. Here is the deal. I have till June of 2022 to consistently pay myself $5,000 per month for 3 months using affiliate marketing. I will quit the insurance business and stay with what I want to do. Why did I go back to affiliate marketing? I realized affiliate marketing had flexible hours, lower costs, lower overhead, no brick and mortar.
I will achieve this goal and affiliate marketing is here to stay. No more jumping around. I don’t need to jump around from program to program as I already learned so much. Even though I have spent years in my journey, I am glad that I know affiliate marketing is the platform for me.
In addition, I got myself a mentor, Igor Kheifits. I learned so much about traffic building. In fact, he is the king of traffic.
Recently, he recommended joining John Thornhill’s ambassador program. Since Igor is successful and direct I listened to him and I joined.
I signed up this week (July 21, 2021) and will give you the good and the bad. Since Igor is direct, I will do the same. No fluff.
I will let you know, and keep you in touch. And in the meantime,
Always remember everything in life. It’s all marketing. Take care.
If you want to join me and check it out please click here.
This is a guest post from Luis Figueroa, if you would like to be considered for a guest post please contact me.
