Keeping track of your data is absolutely necessary in order to massively grow a home-based network marketing business. I know from experience that skipping over this daily task will keep you in the constant activity of treading water. You have no idea how much money you have spent, what works, what does not work, and most importantly, what you need to do to change what is not working.

Not only will tracking your data save you countless hours, tons of energy and money you do not need to spend, it will act as a roadmap to success for you to easily follow. Here are 4 reasons why.

1. Provides A Snapshot Of Your Business

When you become the owner of your own home-based business, you have to learn to wear many different hats. You can no longer rely on your boss to tell you what to do, so you have to be your own boss. This means you have to force yourself to keep track of every aspect of your business if you want it to succeed. This will provide you with an overall snapshot of what works and what doesn't work as you design your plan of action. When you see all of your efforts in front of you on paper, it's easy to track your progress and follow any kind of track you may be on...whether it's good or bad.

For example, I kept guages of an online business plan that I joined. I tracked how much money I was spending, how much money I was making, how many people I was recruiting, etc. What I found was a loss of $500 after 3 whole months following a plan designed by someone else, and they wanted me to "keep going" with it. I don't know about you, but I couldn't see myself being out $2,000 by the years' end, so I quit the system. It was that set of guages that pushed me to seek not just another program, but one that would actually guarantee a profit or my money back. Now my new set of guages show a continuous profit, and I would never have had found it without keeping track of every aspect of my business.

2. Pinpoints Your Strengths

Keeping track of what works for you is how you find the techniques that will make your business move in the right direction. Everyone has different strengths, so what works for one person might not work for another. That is why it is so important not to pull you hair out in frustration when someone says they made a huge profit from hosting a home party, while your house is always empty. (Not that anyone has ever become rich from holding home parties, but you get my drift.) Knowing what you do specifically is important because you ultimately want to work from home in your own special way. If you blindly follow other people and what works for them, you might as well go punch a time clock somewhere else and be an employee.

Keeping track of your strengths and what works for you is important because you can narrow them down to the point where eventually all you are doing is what works for you. It takes time and affort to get to this point, but when you begin with proper education on proven techniques (not taught by most network marketing companies), the process becomes even more powerful. Can you imagine waking up in the morning knowing that all you have to do is spend a few hours working a plan that you yourself designed that will allow you to profit a couple thousand dollars before it's even time for lunch? It's only possible when you keep track of your strengths.

3. Pinpoints Your Weaknesses

Knowing what you are doing wrong is just as important as knowing what you are doing right. Success is a pathway paved from the cobblestones of failure. You simply can not try new things without failing, so why not keep track of your failures and learn from them? Think of the great list of failures you could have to repeatedly look at to remind yourself of what doesn't work. Your focus will automatically turn to what works. When you spend the majority of your time on what works (based on knowing what doesn't work), you will have found success.

I personally spent many years placing flyers on car windows, hanging signs at every intersection I drove through and stapled flyers to any bulletin board I saw. I even placed business cards in telephone booths. What I learned was that these tactics didn't get my business going, so I no longer use them. The reason I learned they did not work was because I kept track of every cent I spent on it and how much money I made for my efforts. It wasn't too good, so I kept trying different things in order to find my success formula. Keeping track of what didn't work ultimately led me to seek and find education designed specifically to help me get my businesses off the ground.

4. Provides A Roadmap To Success

When you keep track of what works and what doesn't work, your time, energy and money, it will provide you with a roadmap to success. All of the numbers and statistics will begin to make sense once they start pointing you in the right direction. It is the only map you really need to find what you are looking for, but most people do not take the time to just look at their businesses long enough to find out what it takes to create the map for themselves.

This roadmap is like following the yellow brick road to OZ. It will lead you to a magical place filled with everything you have ever wanted. Sounds kind of corny, but it really is true. Success is not a destination, it's a journey. Along that journey you will encounter all the necessary ingredients for success. Problems, hope, friends, challenges, hills, valleys, decisions and everything else successful people endure. When you sift through what does not work and only follow what does work on that journey, your path will suddenly begin to lead you instead of you choosing which one to take.

There are a lot of details to which you need to pay attention in order to successfully grow a business and keep it moving forward. Simple daily activities seem so unimportant because they alone do not make an immediate impact, but over time it takes a toll. Understanding this is part of the mindset that it takes to bring in 20-30 people a week into your business. It was only when I decided to buckle down and really focus on keeping guages that I pulled myself out of the deep water in which I was sinking. From that point on is where I followed my activities, found what worked and what didn't, then simply applied only the aspects of my business that were working.

I help other people learn from my mistakes because I believe there is no need for a 95% drop-out rate in network marketing. All it takes is the proper educaton and a change in the way you do your thinking.