Part Time Networker In A Web 2.0 World

Why Network Marketing Doesn't Get Respect

2011-10-02T20:39:00.000-04:00

When I first joined the network marketing industry almost 7 years ago, I always wondered why network marketing doesn't get the same level of respect as other business models.

Here you have an industry that has millions of participants all over the world. Tens of thousands of people have been able to earn a full time income. Thousands of people have been able to earn a 6 figure income. Hundreds of people have been able to earn a 7 figure income. And a select few have even been able to earn an 8 figure income.

However, some events over the last several weeks and months have really allowed me to see why network marketing doesn't get respect. I believe it is the same reason why religious people don't get respect and why politicians don't get respect.

Network Marketers Don't Practice What They Preach!

Here we have an industry that is SUPPOSE to be about personal development. It is SUPPOSE to be about building people up. However, everywhere you turn, all you see is people engaging in behavior that clearly lacks the personal development we profess to preach. Everywhere you turn, all you see is people tearing people down instead of building people up.

Recently, one of my colleagues in the network marketing industry reached a certain milestone in her business and I congratulated her for it. She is NOT a part of my company. She is in a different company, with a completely different product line from what I am marketing. Yet it wouldn't surprise me if I was the only distributor outside of her company who congratulated her.

Why? Because instead of being happy for her success, many distributors would see her success as a threat to their success. ESPECIALLY if they are in a company that markets the same type of product that she does.

In addition to that, a number of people this year recently made a decision to resign from the network marketing company that I am a part of and work with other network marketing companies. It was very interesting to see responses as these people made their decisions.

Some people in my company felt that because these people left, they needed to DEFEND the opportunity available in my company. Some of the people that left felt the need to publiclly trash the company that they just left and even specific individual distributors within the company. Others felt the need to publiclly trash the people that left.

Is this what the network marketing industry is all about?

In The Business School For People Who Like Helping People by Robert Kiyosaki, chapter 5 talks about one of the values of network marketing. He identifies this value as "Friends Who Will Pull You Up, Not Push You Down."

Yet, to ME it seems like that friendship in this industry is conditional. I am only your friend if you are in the same business as me. If I leave to do another business, I'm not your friend anymore. If you leave to do another business, I'm not your friend anymore.

This is not what I was sold when I joined this industry. However, unfortunately, this seems to be the reality in this industry.

I have friends that are in different companies from the one that I'm in currently. I have friends in the company that I'm currently in. I also have friends that WERE in the company that I'm in that have left, but I still consider them my friends. I even have friends that have left the industry all together. That's because I was always taught that friendship was based on the quality of the relationship that you have with that person, not whether or not they agree to build the same business that I build.

If we in the network marketing industry ever want the industry to get the respect it deserves, we must first become WORTHY of that respect. It starts with actually PRACTICING the so called PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT that we preach!

I'll conclude this note with some thoughts:

#1 - People are going to leave your company. It's a fact of life. This doesn't make them bad people. It doesn't make them hypocrites. It simply means that they no longer have the vision for the company that they had when they first got started FOR WHATEVER REASON and have decided to part ways and go with something that they have a vision for.

So unless those people are raiding your organization in violation of their distirbutor agreement, wish them well and keep on moving. Because the bottom line is NONE of those people are responsible for providing for you and your family. That is YOUR responsibility and YOUR responsibilty alone. Your kids don't want to hear that the reason why you are getting evicted out of your house is because JOE HEAVY-HITTER left your company and now you can't make money anymore.

#2 - Making a decision to leave a company can be a difficult decision. If that's a decision that you choose to make, go ahead and do what you have to do and move on. It's completely unnecessary to publicly trash the company that you left or individual distributors within that company. I read "How To Win Friends & Influence People" many times and I don't seem to recall that being in one of the chapters!

Now you might have left because you saw some very serious concerns about the viability of the business model. Heck, you might not have even left on your own accord, you might have even been terminated. Quite frankly, you might have even been terminated unjustly.

You might have friends in your former company that you are concerned about. However, I can assure you, trash talking your previous company is NOT going to make your friends see your point of view. If ANYTHING it's going to make them MORE likely to RESIST your point of view.

#3 - To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose in heaven. Not everybody is going to be involved in a particular network marketing company or even the industry for the rest of their lives.

For instance, I can tell you right now, I will NOT be actively involved in network marketing forever. I love the industry. I love the relationships that I have built because of it. I love the personal development that I have experienced because of it.

However, some of the goals that I have in life, being a distributor for a network marketing company isn't going to be enough to make these goals a reality. My wife and I plan on being on the Forbes 400. Everybody on that list is either the owner of a billion dollar business or a billion dollar investor, NOT a distributor for a network marketing company. So in order for that goal to become a reality for us, we will have to eventually make the transition to a vehicle that can make the Forbes 400 a reality.

I hope that when I do make the decision to leave that my relationship with you wasn't based on my allegiance to a company or an industry.

Finally, recongize that opportunity is unlimited! Opportunity is not ONLY found in ONE specific network marketing company. Opportunity isn't ONLY found in JUST the network marketing industry. When you have TRUE opportunity, it does not get diminished just because others don't value the opportunity. In fact, some of the greatest opportunities in world history were not recognized by the VAST MAJORITY of people.

Let us practice what we preach in network marketing. When we do this, I believe the industry will get far more respect than it gets now.

And if you agree with me, please share this with your colleagues in the industry. The more people that embrace this message, the more attractive our industry will be to the masses.

The Death Of Hype In Network Marketing Online?

2010-10-15T19:02:00.003-04:00

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It's no secret that there has been a lot of hype in network marketing online. Some of the claims that people in the industry out there are making is absolutely ridiculous. Because of this, I believe that prospects and distributors in the industry are at a point where they are beginning to start tuning out the hype and looking for leaders who can demonstrate value that is realistic and achievable.

I recently got invited to a webinar discussing this exact topic. If you are a network marketing distributor that uses funded proposals and affiliate marketing as a front end to your network marketing opportunity, I believe that this can be one of the most important videos that you will ever watch this year.

Even if you are a traditional network marketing distributor, this video can help you. You're not going to want to watch it from the standpoint of the particular online marketing tactics that are discuss. Rather, you will want to watch it to identify some of the common themes being presented that have application even if you are using a traditional network marketing approach. Themes such as creating value, demonstrating leadership and other principles that apply regardless of marketing approach.

I really want you to pay close attention to this information because I believe one of the reasons why network marketing has such a bad reputation is because of the hype, the exaggeration and the "fake it till you make it" philosophy that has permeated the industry. It's ridiculous and it gives us all as an industry a bad name.

Mike Klinger is a sharp guy and the real deal. He addresses this issue in the online context, but I believe that even if that is not your context, you can get a lot out of the video.

So check out The Climate of "Hype" is Changing (Make More With Less Marketing) and let me know what you like about it.

And if you haven't yet checked out my free report on the 7 strategies that I personally use to build an unlimited list of prospects for my network marketing opportunity, go ahead and check that out as well. It is free after all!

The Importance Of The First Pay Check

2010-10-13T21:57:00.002-04:00

Would you like to have a larger amount of your organization stick around and build the business? If so, the best way to do this is to focus on getting your new distributors their first pay check. This one simple action is in my opinion the biggest contributing factor towards retaining distributors on your team.

In the 5+ years that I've been involved with my particular company, 38% of the distributors that have joined my particular downline still have an active distributor status. This means that they have remained a customer with the company, active doesn't mean that they are still out consistently doing business.

However, when I look at all of the distributors that have signed up at least ONE customer since they joined the business, more than HALF of those distributors still have an active distributor status. The number is actually 54%. If you take a look at all of the distributors in my organization who have signed up at least 5 customers personally, almost 70% (69%) of those distributors still have an active distributor status.

What would your business look like if 7 out of every 10 distributors that joined your organization at a bare minimum, remained an active customer with you to a minimum of over $400 per year?That would be a very nice business for you indeed! That's why it is important that you have the devotion of a devote religious person towards getting the distributors in your organization their first pay check!

So what can you do to increase the amount of distributors in your organization that get their first check? Here are some pointers:

#1) Take personal responsibility for the distributors that join your team, not just the ones that you personally sponsor. If their sales are commission-able to you, it is your responsibility to reach out to them and make sure they are on the right track.

#2) As you teach them the business, use the TELL-SHOW-DO-REVIEW approach to train them. For example, let's say you are teaching a new distributor how to invite their prospects to take a look at one of your company's marketing tools. Here is the best way to teach them this process.

TELL - Explain to them how to invite their prospect to look at the marketing tool.

SHOW - Have them call one of their prospects and introduce that prospect to you. Then get on the line and invite that prospect to look at the marketing tool. The new associate should be taking notes on how you do it.

DO - Have them call another prospect and invite the prospect to look at the tool themselves. You watch them while they do this.

REVIEW - Give them feedback on what they did. Complement them for taking action. If they did anything wrong, provide correction. Then complement them again.

If you follow this process, the distributors in your organization will get their first check faster. They will be excited. Their belief level will grow and they will want to repeat the activity so they can get another check and another one. The more checks they get, the more checks you get! That's the power behind getting one of your new distributors their first pay check and why it should be your mission in life!

The Tortoise and the Hare In Network Marketing

2010-10-12T14:19:00.003-04:00

Have you ever heard of the children's story called The Tortoise and the Hare? If you haven't, I've included a link to the story. Please read the story first and then continue reading this blog because you will need to be familiar with the story first before you can understand the points that I'm going to make as to how this correlates to building a network marketing business.

There are a lot of "hares" in network marketing. In the almost 6 years that I've been involved in this industry, I see them all of the time. One of my mentors Jeff Olson tells a story in his training about the "insurance guy" that is very typical in network marketing.

You recruit a guy who is the #1 insurance salesperson in his company. You are very excited because this guy has a sales background and a proven track record of being successful in sales. This guy goes out and in his first week he sponsors 5 of his sales buddies. The very next week his buddies each go out and sponsors 5 of their friends. Now you are so excited! You say to yourself "I am so happy, I finally found one of my A players"

90 days later, none of them are in the business anymore and you are standing around wondering what happened.

Anybody can get off to a fast start in the network marketing industry. However, the real question is, are you able to build a sustainable business that is going to spit off cashflow to you and your family for the rest of your life? Only a select few are able to do that because only a select few have the discipline and the fortitude necessary to build and create that type of business.

I've seen people in my company race through the compensation plan. Some of them have even created checks of $2,000, even $5,000 their very first month in the company. However, because they had the mentality of the hare, they weren't able to build a sustainable business and as a result, they are no longer involved in the business.

In fact, I know of a number of people in my company who were able to earn a $100,000 income over a 12 month period who are either no longer with the company or if they are still with the company, they aren't earning anywhere near that amount right now. I've even seen people who were able to earn a $250,000 income over a 12 month period who are either no longer with the company or are not earning anywhere near that amount.

It doesn't matter if you build this business slow or fast. What really matters is your ability to build this business steady. The person that is able to engage in a steady consistent stream of activity over a sustained period of time is the person who will be able to build the lifetime residual income that we all dream about in this industry.

So which one are you? The tortoise or the hare?

What Does A Day In The Life Of A Part Time Distributor Look Like?

2010-09-15T15:54:00.002-04:00

One of the most common questions asked by distributors is what should your day look like when you are building your network marketing business on a part time basis? I decided to give you some insight into a typical day for myself and many of my fellow distributors who are building a business successfully part time.

Monday through Friday you likely have to work at your full time job. You will need to factor in time for commuting to and from work. If you have kids, you are likely involved in getting your kids ready for school. So generally speaking, you are probably not going to do a lot of business related tasks in the morning.

However, some tasks that you still might do in the morning include checking your commission statements from the day before (if you get paid daily), checking your genealogy reports to see how your organization grew from the day before, checking email, reading a personal development book and listening to a personal development audio. If you come across any good prospects during your commute, you might pique their interest and get their contact information or share with them a marketing tool.

During the day you are likely working on your job so there is no activity done during that time. The only exception might be lunch time where you might be taking a prospect to lunch to present to them your opportunity or using a portion of your lunch time to make follow up phone calls to your hottest prospects and distributors on your team.

After getting off work is when the bulk of your network marketing activity takes place as a part time distributor. If your business or team does weekly opportunity meetings and in person trainings, you are likely going to be at one or both of those events one or two nights a week. The best use for your time besides those events is doing presentations for distributors who are on your team. It is my experience that it is 20 to 100 times easier for you to recruit a distributor for one of your team members than it is for you to get your own recruit because your distributor can edify you.

If you don't have any meetings, trainings and your team members aren't putting you to work, your evenings should be spent on your own personal prospecting. My preference is to work the phones and use websites and/or presentation phone recordings to make the initial exposure. Prospects that are interested in more information, I then direct them to either an opportunity meeting or I might sit down with them in person and do an in person presentation. If they are long distance, dropping a marketing tool in the mail is also an option for me as well.

On the weekends you can go crazy and work your business like you are full time and I know a lot of distributors that do that. I personally prefer to try to keep my weekends open for my family and my spiritual development. That doesn't mean that I never work my business on weekends. If I have a team member who I working with, I will absolutely make myself available to them on a Saturday or even a Sunday after church.

I might also work weekends if my company is having a big regional event on a particular weekend. However, I prefer to limit my own personal prospecting to Monday through Friday so I can leave the weekend for my family. I don't want to be one of those husbands or fathers that spend so much time working my wife and kids never see me. The good thing is that even though I'm technically not working, there are opportunities that present themselves to get some productive activity done even while I'm supposedly not working. My family isn't going to kill me if I have a couple of prospects to follow up with that it is easier to reach on a weekend.

Notice nowhere in my schedule do I have things like labeling my marketing tools, pushing papers or working on my website and designing pay per click ads. While I do engage in those activities, none of that I count against my hard core network marketing time of 10 hours a week. I do that stuff above and beyond if I have time to do it. I have enough prospects that I could recruit forever if I never exposed a new prospect again.

This is what the time of a part time network marketing distributor should look like. Now evaluate your time and see if this is what you are spending your time doing. If not, I recommend that you make some revisions and that you do them quickly!

Should You Get A Job?

2010-09-14T08:00:00.003-04:00

A lot of distributors get started in the network marketing industry because they want to quit their jobs and create a lifestyle of time freedom and financial independence. However, when you are first getting started in the industry it can take some time before you start to experience the success that you are looking for.

Jeff Olson, one of the most successful network marketing distributors in the history of this industry got started many years ago in NSA. Within 2 years, he had gone from brand new to one of the top distributors in the company. However, he acknowledges that in the beginning, he didn't make any money because he reinvested his commission checks back into the business in the form of tools, meeting rooms, etc.

Olson is the exception in many cases and not the rule. In my dealings with many of the top distributors in many network marketing companies, whether it is in person, listening to their story or reading their books, the overwhelming majority of them report that it took them about 5 years of struggle before they were able to put the pieces together and really begin to build a financially successful business.

That means unless you prove to be the exception and not the rule, you cannot rely on the commissions from your network marketing business for several months in the best case scenario. More likely, it's going to be several years before you will be in a position to use your network marketing commissions to support yourself.

If you are in a position where you need your network marketing income to support yourself, I would answer "YES" you should get a job if you are building your network marketing business. Some of you might actually need two jobs depending on how much money you make in your chosen profession.

While many network marketers love to bash jobs, the fact is, jobs provide a number of benefits. If you have a full time job that covers your living expenses, the first and most important benefit is that the job gives you the income that you need to support yourself and your family. Try turning that negative spouse around when you have to pawn the television to make your minimum product order because you don't have a job and business is slow!

Another benefit that jobs provide is networking opportunities. My strongest organization to date came from two former co-workers. If I never worked at that job, I would have never met those co-workers. If I never met those co-workers, my organization would be a fraction of the size that it is today. Working with the same group of people 6 to 8 hours a day gives you a tremendous opportunity of relationship building. I'm still friends with many of my former co-workers today!

A job also serves as a great recruiting tool. The late great Jim Rohn use to talk about this a lot. He said when he first got started, he was working full time in farming and part time as a network marketing distributor. He use to tell his prospects "I am working full time on my job and I'm working part time on my fortune." Eventually, he got to the point where his part time network marketing business was making over $1000 a month.

Here were his comments...

$1000 a month on a full time basis, NOBODY wants to hear your story. $1000 a month on a part time basis, EVERYBODY wants to hear your story.

Finally, if your job provides you with income in excess of what you need to support yourself, the job can be an excellent resource to generate income to re-invest back into your business. Your business will grow much slower if you have to depend upon only your commissions to re-invest in your business. Having excess cash flow allows you to make investments faster and thus enjoy those return on investments faster.

So don't feel ashamed if you need to get a job. You might even need to get two jobs! Just know that you aren't the only one. I know distributors who worked as many as three jobs, continued to build their network marketing business along side of those three jobs and eventually was able to make more money in their network marketing business then they made from their three jobs combined! So it can be done. You just have to be willing to make the necessary sacrifices to make it happen and be willing to put in the time.

What if you are really bad and it takes you 20 years to build a passive six figure income in network marketing? Would it be worth it? You're already going to work on your job for 40 years and 98% of you reading this will not retire to a six figure income from your job pension or social security. So it would be worth it if it takes 20 years.

However, if you don't have a job and you are unable to make the investments necessary to build your network marketing business, you could end up a casualty in the industry.

What A Balanced Network Marketing Compensation Plan Looks Like

2010-09-13T08:00:00.000-04:00

This weekend my company just announced some modifications to the compensation plan that I am very excited about. I've noticed over the last couple of years that the compensation plan, although great, could have been a lot more motivating and rewarding to the sales force, if a few simple modifications were made.

This might come as a shock to you to hear me say this. The reason why is because when you read most network marketing distributors blogging about their company, they will tell you nothing but the positives about their company. You will never hear from them what they don't like about their company.

If you're ever evaluating a network marketing company, do you want to know a good question to ask? Ask what that person doesn't like about the company. Watch how they try to skate around that question or try to say something like "there's nothing they don't like about their company."

Here's what I didn't like about my company, up until this weekend.

To me, the compensation plan wasn't very balanced. The way the compensation plan was structured previously, a new person could move up three levels in the compensation plan with as little as 15 people. However, on average, you probably needed a few hundred people on your team to generate the volume necessary to get to the higher levels in the compensation plan.

This created two challenges:

#1) A new person could move up three levels within a few weeks. However, it might take them months, if not years to get to the next level. They get frustrated from a lack of progress and quit the business.

#2) A new person could move up three levels within a few weeks. They get stuck there because it takes a while to get the team and the volume necessary to move up further. Their best people also move up three levels within a few weeks. They only get to enjoy that override income for a few weeks and then the income gets cut off because their most productive people catch up to their level.

So what my company did is they made two modifications. First, they increased the requirements to move up. This makes moving up the compensation plan more balanced and by the time you get up to the higher levels with the new requirements, you will have the production necessary to move up because you needed it to get to those levels to begin with.

The second thing they did was they created more bonus opportunities at all levels of the compensation plan. The end result is that the people at the lower levels could make the same type of money, if not more than the people at some of the higher levels make now. The bonuses are based on the best activity in my opinion, the ability to help new people get started and make money.

The end result is that the people at the higher levels get to make money on the production of their team for a longer period of time because it's a lot more difficult to move up the compensation plan in a few weeks than it is now. Although it's more difficult to move up, the distributors are making more money at the lower levels so that they don't need to be at as high of a level to make the same type of money.

That's great for me because I now have a compensation plan that is very motivating to build into. However, unless you plan on joining my company, that doesn't really help you.

So how can you determine whether you are looking at a balanced network marketing compensation plan? Ask yourself the following questions:

#1 - If you are just getting started, how many customers will you need in order to make your money back? If it is a lot, or if it is a little but you have to sell them a lot, you are probably working too hard. This isn't a franchise. Making your money back should be very easy. You should be able to do it within your first month and it should be possible to do within your first couple of days if you want.

#2 - What does it take to move up to the higher levels? Is it too easy? If it's too easy, you are going to get to a point that everyone gets stuck at and you are going to see a lot of people drop out of the business at that level. If it's too hard, people will get frustrated and quit.

It is NOT a good thing to go to an opportunity meeting, see a few people at the bottom, A LOT of people at the middle and a few people at the top. It's also NOT a good thing to see everybody at the bottom and very few people at the top. There should be a balance, a few at the bottom and a few at the middle. There will always be less at the top because most people aren't willing to do what it takes to get to the top.

#3 - Does your company pay bonuses in addition to the commissions you make for product sales? If so, what are those bonuses based upon? The best bonus, in my opinion is one based on new people within an organization getting their first sales and/or recruits. It should reward the sponsor as well as the people higher in the compensation plan. Bonuses for reaching organizational sales volume are not a good idea because people will tend to hit that volume and then fall back.

Taking a look at these 3 areas of evaluation will help you to determine if your compensation plan is a balanced one. If it isn't that doesn't necessarily mean you should quit. Mine's wasn't, but all of the other areas that made up the opportunity were strong enough to deal with the limitations. There's no such thing as a perfect company so evaluate the other areas as well.

Network Marketing - Not For The Faint At Heart!

2010-09-10T12:24:00.003-04:00

Network marketing is a tough business! It is a simple business, but it is a tough business to really be successful at.

I've been a circular distributor, an administrative assistant, a technical support representative, a trainer, an operations manager, a freelance writer and most recently a social media and internet marketing manager.

I've owned or in some cases still own a computer consulting business, an ebay business, an information and affiliate marketing business, a freelance writing business and a social media and internet marketing company.

Network marketing is more difficult than any of those businesses combined!

You participate in a business model that is still under-appreciated and in some cases, even ridiculed and violently opposed. You have to engage in two activities that many people fear more than death. Those activities are selling and public speaking. Once you actually find people who are interested in joining, you get the fun task of trying to get people to do something whom you have no management control or authority over them.

It's easy to manage someone when you are the boss, they are the employee and if they don't do their job to your satisfaction you can fire them. If you really want to test your management skills, try getting independent people to do something.

It's like "herding cat" as the late great Jim Rohn use to say.

However, when you truly decide to commit to network marketing, the benefits far exceed the challenges involved. Yes you can make money and a lot of it in network marketing. There are also non-monetary benefits that exceed even the monetary benefits.

The relationships that you build can often be lifelong friendships that extend far beyond the business building aspect. The personal and leadership development that you get to engage in is momentum. Network marketing simply put, just makes you an all around better and attractive person.

So don't expect your journey in network marketing to be easy. It won't be.

Don't expect to drive the fancy car, to live in the dream house and go on the fancy vacations your first 90 days in the business or even your first year. You probably won't.

Do understand that success in network marketing is a marathon and not a sprint. There will be ups and downs. There will be peaks and valleys. It is not for the faint at heart!

However, if you are willing to engage in the process... If you are willing to stick with the journey... If you are willing to do what it takes to build a business, even if you decide a few years for now that the business is not for you, your life will be better for it and you will be able to build upon the principles that you learned in network marketing to progress in whatever other area of life you decide to pursue.

Simple Strategies For A Busy Professional In MLM

2010-09-09T18:03:00.002-04:00

As a busy professional I don't have a lot of time to build my MLM business. Therefore, any strategy that will save me time is something that I am very interested in learning more about. As I have built my business over the years, I have found that the following strategies have allowed me to save time and get better results.

#1 - Utilize a contact manager system to track prospects. If this system also has an autoresponder and broadcast email capability, this is even better. With a system like this I can send out one email to thousands of prospects. This way, even if I never connect with them via the phone at least they are still hearing from me in some way. An even bigger plus is if the system allows you to track whether a specific prospect opened up an email or visited your website. This saves me time because I can decide to call the prospects that visited the website first.

#2 - Have multiple distributors in your company's contact information in multiple time zones. This comes in very handy when you are looking for someone to do a 3 way phone call for you. What I do is send out a text message to everybody on my distributor contact list asking who is available for a 3 way call. This way if I get my prospect on the phone and they looked at the tool, I immediately know who is available.

#3 - Use tools and events. I simply don't have the time to sit down with every single prospect for my business and do a personal presentation. Therefore, I try to avoid those as much as possible. Instead, I prefer to direct my prospects to a tool, such as a website, a pre-recorded conference presentation, or a presentation on DVD. I then like to direct them to a live event in their area. This way I leave most of my running around to support new team members instead of chasing after prospects.

#4 - Plug new distributor into a training system. Every new associate I personally recruit, I send them to a training presentation online so that they can get the basics right away. I then schedule a more in depth training either in person or over the phone but only after they looked at the online training. If a new distributor can't even take the time to look at an online training, I know they aren't going to take the time to engage in the activities to build the business. For ongoing training, I plug them into live training events in their area and training calls.

These four strategies have saved me a ton of time and I really wouldn't be able to build the business effectively without them. If you aren't using these strategies, I hope you will begin to use them and get some benefit out of them. I know that they have been very helpful for me in my business.

The Most Important Statistic In Your Network Marketing Business

2010-09-08T08:00:00.000-04:00

What is the most important statistic in your network marketing business? Many leaders will say product sales as most compensation plans pay you based upon the dollar amount of product sales that take place in your organization.

Other leaders will argue that the number of new distributors joining your organization is the most important number. Their argument would be compelling because the best way to grow your commission is to grow the number of people out making sales.

Still others will argue that the number of exposures made is the most important number. Exposures are the amount of people that you share your business opportunity with. This is a compelling argument because nothing can happen unless an exposure is made.

I however believe that there is another statistic that is actually the most important statistic in your network marketing business. I've heard one of my friends say this very well. Considering that he went from brand new to earning over $100,000 a year in his network marketing business in a little over 2 years, I think he knows a little bit about network marketing success.

He says that success in this business is based on the number of people that you can take from not knowing about your opportunity to knowing about your opportunity.

I agree with him for several reasons...

#1 - We all want to make money and commission is important. However, there are too many factors outside of our control that determine the amount of commission you earn.

I've given killer presentations and watched people not buy anything. I've also given no presentation at all and have had people come to me and buy from me. Your team plays a big role in commissions and we all know you cannot control what they do.

The same is true for recruiting. We have very little influence on who gets recruited and who doesn't.

#2 - You can expose a lot of people to your business opportunity. However, just because they were exposed doesn't mean that they actually look at it. I know a lot of distributors in this industry who have exposures down pack yet not making money because they can't get anyone to look at their information.

#3 - The number of people that look at your opportunity closes the gap between exposures and recruits/commissions. You have significantly more control over the number of people you get to look at your opportunity by doing a better exposure, making enough follow up calls to get them to look at it and actually sitting down with them or inviting them out to an event so that you know for a fact they looked at it. Also the number of people that look at your opportunity have a much closer relationship to your recruits/commissions than the number of people you simply expose.

Are you tracking the number of people that have gone from not knowing about your business to knowing about your business? The only people that are included in this number are the number of people that you can verify have looked at some information about your business. This number is gold and if you track it, you will see a relation between this number and the number of people that sign up with you.

Evaluating Prospecting Strategies For Your MLM Business

2010-09-07T15:16:00.006-04:00

I've been having some conversations recently with one of the leaders in my organization in regards to evaluating prospecting strategies. If you are not where you want to be in your MLM business, I highly recommend that you read some of these insights. Without exaggeration I can say that this is the most important blog post that I have written this year.

Being successful in a MLM business requires mastering a number of key skills. One of the most important skills to master is recruiting. If you aren't a good, or at the very least a decent recruiter, you will never have the opportunity to develop many of the other key skills in this industry. The reason why is because you need a team to work with to develop those other skills.

One reason why I believe so many distributors struggle with recruiting is because it takes us outside of our comfort zone. We have no problems going to the meetings, listening to the conference calls and reading the books. Talking to people about our business? That's scary. That's uncomfortable. We might face rejection.

However, another reason why I believe many distributors struggle is because they never take the time to truly analyze the effectiveness of their prospecting strategies.

It doesn't help that many of our leaders like to prescribe "Talk To More People" as the solution for every recruiting problem. They are correct in many cases because if you're only prospecting one person a month like a lot of distributors in the industry, that's simply not going to cut it.

However what about the people that are talking to dozens, if not hundreds of people a month and are still getting nowhere? I don't care how many times you bang your head against a brick wall. Banging your head more times isn't going to get you through that wall. You need to try something else.

I see in this industry a lot of debate about what are the best prospecting strategies for building a MLM organization. Some leaders only recommend you talk to people that you know in your warm market. Others have the completely opposite philosophy. They don't want you wasting your time with your friends and family.

The fact remains, these leaders recommend their particular strategies because that is what allowed them to get to where they wanted to be. That doesn't necessarily mean that this particular strategy is going to get you to where you want to be.

For instance, what if you just moved to this country from Africa. Your entire warm market, everybody that you know lives in Africa. The only person in this country that you know is your sponsor, who you met at a local Starbucks.

You know no one else in this country and your particular MLM business opportunity is not available in Africa. I don't care how much your upline preaches warm market. Warm market is not going to work for you because you don't have a warm market.

That's a pretty extreme example, but it illustrates my point that all prospecting strategies do not work equally as effectively for all distributors. Some distributors will thrive with one set of prospecting strategies. Other distributors will thrive with a completely different set of prospecting strategies.

In order to learn which strategies you will thrive with, you need to have a system for trying and evaluating prospecting strategies until you find a few that work well for you. Here is how you do this.

In evaluating any prospecting system, there are 5 areas that you need to evaluate. They are:

#1) How much time does it take to implement?

#2) How much money does it cost to implement?

#3) How many prospects are you able to get to actually look at your business?

#4) How many customers/distributors does your system generate for you?

#5) How much money do you make when you engage in your system?

To give you an example of how this works, let's evaluate two prospecting systems that you can engage in. The first system is prospecting at the mall. The second system is purchasing and calling business opportunity leads.

When evaluating any prospecting system, I recommend that you evaluate at least a minimum of 90 days of activity. The reason why is 90 days of consistent activity gives a better indicator of what could potentially happen in the future as oppose to shorter periods of evaluation.

In strategy #1, you decide that you are going to go to the mall on a Saturday morning. Your strategy is to go around the mall, meet people, engage in conversations and see if you can find some people who are potentially interested in your business opportunity. Your goal is to find 10 people every Saturday who agree to take a look at your business opportunity.

In strategy #2, you decide to purchase 100 business opportunity leads a month. Your goal is to call these leads and find people who agree to take a look at your business opportunity.

You engage in both activities over a 90 day period. At the end of the 90 days, here are your results

Strategy #1 - Prospecting At The Mall

#1) How much time does it take to implement?

36 hours of prospecting over a 90 day period.

#2) How much money does it cost to implement?

$240 in marketing tools

#3) How many prospects are you able to get to actually look at your business?

30 prospects actually look at your business.

#4) How many customers/distributors does your system generate for you?

7 customers and 3 distributors

#5) How much money do you make when you engage in your system?

$350 in commissions from personal product sales to the 7 customers.

Strategy #2 - Purchasing and Calling Business Opportunity Leads

#1) How much time does it take to implement?

15 hours of prospecting over a 90 day period

#2) How much money does it cost to implement?

$300 in costs for business opportunity leads

#3) How many prospects are you able to get to actually look at your business?

30 prospects actually look at your business.

#4) How many customers/distributors does your system generate for you?

3 customers and 3 distributors

#5) How much money do you make when you engage in your system?

$150 in commissions from personal product sales to the 3 customers.

After evaluating both strategies over a 90 day period, under this scenario, prospecting people at the mall is clearly the better strategy. It earned you $350 in commissions and when you subtract the costs for your marketing tools you are left with $110 in profit. The leads cost $300, but you only made $150 so you are losing $150 on the leads. Therefore, under this scenario you should stick with the mall prospecting and stop the leads.

Keep in mind this is a scenario for illustration purposes. If you actually employed these two strategies you might find that the leads work better for you. The point is take a hard look at what your prospecting strategies are producing for you and look for ways to either improve the strategy or replace it with a more effective strategy.

Let's throw one more caveat into the mix. Let's say from your mall prospecting, you also made an additional $100 in commissions from the sales that those new distributors made. However, from your business opportunity prospecting, you made an additional $1000 in commissions from the sales that those new distributors made?

Now you have a tougher decision. You lost money on the initial sales with the business opportunity leads, but made significantly more money when you factor in the commissions from the team you built.

In this case, you may want to try another 90 day cycle to see if those numbers continue to hold up. If so, it means that the business opportunity leads may be bringing in a higher quality of distributor and it's worth losing money on the front end to make money on the back end.

By constantly evaluating and refining what you are doing, this allows you to discover a rhythm for what works for you. Once you do this, you can prospect and recruit at will and that is when the business becomes fun!

So what about you? Are you evaluating your prospecting strategies based on hard actual data? Or are you just sticking with one strategy because that's all feel comfortable doing? If you are sticking with one strategy, how much money is that one strategy costing you? Those are the tough questions that you need to ask yourself.

If you need ideas on prospecting strategies, make sure you download my free prospecting guide that reveals the 7 strategies that I personally use to build my MLM organization.

Setting Priorities In Your Network Marketing Business

2010-09-03T13:10:00.002-04:00

As a network marketing business owner there are a number of priorities competing for your time, attention and finances. One of the reasons why I believe distributors fail in this industry is because they fail to set the right priorities.

As a distributor there are going to be a lot of things that are promoted to you. Your company will promote tools to purchase, company trainings to attend, company conventions to attend and other resources to help you build your business.

Your upline leadership team will promote conference calls to get on, opportunity meetings to invite your prospects out to, local trainings in your area to attend, team conventions to attend and other resources to help you build your business.

Then on the internet you will be bombarded with ads and promotions from personal development experts and network marketing industry vendors. They will promote the latest book or home study course that will teach you the skills you need to succeed in this industry. They will have their own conferences and seminars to promote to you.

Because there are so many resources and information available to the average distributor, I believe that most distributors suffer from information overload. They buy all of these courses, go to all of these events, purchase all of these products and services and then never make any money because they are unable to take all of those resources and turn it into an actionable game plan to execute.

Always remember that the bottom line is that you are an independent distributor for the company that you represent. While there are a lot of resources available to you and a lot of people willing to offer their opinion on what you have to do to be successful, the bottom line is that success in network marketing is pretty much up to you.

Therefore as a distributor you need to evaluate where you are in life and what you can engage in based on the resources that you have and where you are in the business.

If your company has a weekly opportunity meeting that you can invite guest out to, should you attend that weekly meeting every single week? If you asked me that question even a couple of months ago, I would have answered an emphatic yes. However, being home with my kids has giving me the time to reflect and my position and opinion on certain matters has now changed.

Now if you asked me that question, as a general rule, I would answer yes. However, it would be a qualified yes based upon your personal circumstances. It's probably not a good idea to attend that weekly opportunity meeting if you are suppose to be at work because then you are going to get fired from your job.

It's probably not a good idea to attend that meeting if you are strapped for cash and you need that money to cover your product order that qualifies you to earn commissions to begin with.

Should you attend your company's national convention? Generally speaking, yes you should. However, there are some situations where you really shouldn't be attending your national convention. For instance, it's probably not a good idea to attend a national convention halfway across the country if your wife is 9 months pregnant at the time!

The company, the leaders and the experts promoting these resources are going to promote them very hard. That's their job and that's what they should be doing if they are offering resources that are going to legitimately help you to build your business. However, the fact remains, your business life is not over just because you couldn't attend a specific event or purchase a particular business building tool.

That being said, there are sometimes where you are going to have to make a serious sacrifice as well. This is why I say you are an independent distributor and you need to make certain decisions based upon where you are at the time.

If you have no other way of improving your situation other than this business opportunity, you might have to do some uncomfortable things such as borrow money to attend an event that you know you need to build your business. I'm not discounting the sacrifices that are necessary to build a successful business.

My point is, set the right priorities and don't make stupid decisions.

Case in point, if you've been to your weekly opportunity meeting, attended your weekly local training, listened to a company conference call, listened to two training conference calls held by your team and then you realize that you haven't exposed a single prospect to the business because all of your available business time was spent attending these events, you will probably need to cut some of these events out of your calendar and dedicate some time for prospecting and recruiting.

Commissions are not paid for event attendance. Commissions are paid for product sales. The events can help you make more product sales, but if you are not engaging in activities that create opportunities for product sales, the events are useless.

So set the right priorities in your network marketing business based on where you are today. You do this by having an end goal in mind, evaluating the benefits and costs to each action you are considering and then you prioritize based on what action is the most important action towards moving you closer to your goals.

This is how you create success in a network marketing business and as you create success, that will create more opportunities to you that may not have been available when you first got started.

Live From Your Planner And What You Planned

2010-09-02T08:00:00.000-04:00

In yesterday's post I spoke about the importance of always planning the day before the day begins. Today, I'm going to speak about the 2nd part to being successful and accomplishing what you want to accomplish. That is to live from your planner and what you planned!

The first part, I'm pretty good at for the most part. I can sit down, map out my goals and what I want to accomplish. I've been dreaming big and planning big ever since I was a little kid playing with my matchbox cars and I use to pretend that all of these cars were real and that I owned all of them!

However, when it comes time to actually live from my planner and what I planned, this is the area that I struggle with.

Writing down your goals and plans is important. Doing this one step alone and nothing else will put you miles ahead of the masses. A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting down with my wife and I pulled out a goal document that we wrote up a couple of years ago. We haven't looked at it since. Yet several items that we had written down on that sheet, we have either already accomplish or we will accomplish this month in the month of September.

Bare in mind, we did nothing but write it down 2 years ago. We didn't go back to it. We didn't have a plan or strategy for how to get it. We simply wrote it down and several of the items we have already accomplished and some of the items we have accomplished before the deadline that we set to get it done by!

Now if we could accomplish this without ever looking at those goals for 2 years, imagine what we could do if we looked at those goals every single day and we actually had a strategy and a plan that we were working from? We could conquer the entire world!

That's why it is important to not just have a plan, but to actually take the time to develop a strategy for how you are going to make that plan become a reality. You then want to live from that strategy and plan your day to day activities around what are the things that you can do today that will move you the closest to reaching your goals.

Today, I am happy to report that last night, I already looked at my goals and I already identified the activities that I can do today that will move me closest towards reaching my goals. Now if only I can do this every single day, I believe great things can and will happen for me.

So that's the lesson today. Don't just write down plans and goals and never look at them again, although if you're not doing at least that, you are behind. Take the added step of constantly looking at your goals and plans and making course corrections along the way.

For more information on this important principle, I recommend that you read that article by David Byrd, Leadership Expert titled ACHIEVE the Next Level of Success With Effective Daily Choices!

Always Start The Day Before The Day Begins

2010-09-01T08:00:00.001-04:00

One of the lessons that I learned from the late, great, Jim Rohn is his philosophy on time management. He has a saying that goes like this...

"Always start the day before the day begins."

What he means by this is that one of the best habits that you can develop is to plan your day out ahead of time before the day actually begins. That means that the night before, you should map out your day and identify some of the key action items that you want to accomplish during that day.

Once you have mastered this habit, there are some other habits that he identifies that will help you as well. Such as...

"Always start the week before the week begins."

"Always start the month before the month begins."

"Always start the year before the year begins."

So in keeping with Jim Rohn's philosophy, yesterday I sat down and I planned out the month of September. I identified some of my key goals, not just for my network marketing business, but for all areas of my life. I filled out my goal tracker so that I can track my progress towards my goals. I've also identified some of the high payoff activities that I can engage in that will move me closer to my goals.

I also mapped out my plan for today and all of the imperative and important activities that need to get completed today. I prioritized each activity, identifying the most important to the least important. When I start my day today I will begin with the most important activity and I will continue on until I complete as many of the activities as possible. If I have anything left over, they will be transferred until the next day.

So what about you? Are you starting your day before the day begins? That's what it takes to be successful building a network marketing business on a part time basis. You already lack the time. The activities that you need to engage in to build your business are not going to just magically get completed. They get completed when you plan your day in advance and plan time to complete those activities.

That's the most important step and it is the step that most people struggle with. In fact, most people never even engage in this step. Then, 5 years from now they wonder why they haven't made any progress in life.

The second most important step is something that I struggle with, but I am really looking to make headway in this area this month. I will talk about it on tomorrow's blog post.

The 10 In Play Philosophy

2010-08-31T09:00:00.000-04:00

On yesterday's blog post I told you that I am back in business building mode. Today I am going to share with you a simple strategy that I use to get my activity going. This strategy is called the 10 in play philosophy and if you follow it consistently, it's only a matter of time before you are able to sponsor a new distributor into your network marketing organization.

So how does the 10 in play philosophy work? It's simple.

Having someone "in play" means that I have approached this person about my network marketing business but they haven't made a decision yet. My goal is to collect a decision from them. I don't care whether they do it or not. All I care about is that they make a decision one way or the other.

When I am building by personal sponsoring, meaning that I'm personally am the one going out and doing the recruiting, I always want to have at least 10 prospects in play at all times. If I don't have 10 in play, I need to find a way to connect with more people so that I can get at least 10 prospects in play.

Now in my case, I have way more than 10 in play. The problem is I haven't connected with any of them in a while because I took time off. So in my case, I identify the top 10 contacts that I have that are in play. I then follow up with those contacts and get them the information that they need to make a decision.

You might not have 10 people in play. If you don't, you need to get 10 people in play. If you are having trouble finding people, check out my free report on developing an Endless Stream of Prospects. You will never run out of people if you are doing the things that I talk about in my report.

So last night I went through my contacts list and identified my top 10 contacts. Now, I need to call those people, re-establish contact with them and see where they are in the evaluation process.

Most of these people I am probably going to have to give them some more information about the business. So what I'm planning to do is give them a link to my website presentation. I will set a time to follow up with them and then I will give them a follow up phone call to see what they liked most about the information.

Some of these 10 contacts might have already looked at my website. For those people I am going to get one of my associates on the phone to answer their questions and direct them to the next step. The next step might be for me to send them a package in the mail with more information or to invite them out to an event. Or the next step might be for them to sign up and I work with them to get them started.

What happens when someone makes a decision? That means they either got started or they told me that they are not interested. When someone makes a decision, they get removed from my 10 in play list. I now have 9 in play and I have to get a new person in play. In my case, I will simply go back to my list of contacts and find the next best contact who I have approached who hasn't made a decision yet. I then add them to my list and they become the 10th person in play.

If I didn't have anyone to add, I would go back to the strategies that I use in my Free MLM Prospecting Report to add new contacts to share my business with.

What happens if I call all 10 of my contacts in play and I still have more time left over? I can usually make 10 phone calls in 30 minutes and I generally have anywhere from 30 minutes to a hour a day to build my business. If I make my phone calls, I'll just find some more contacts in my list to call on, or I engage in some of the prospecting activities that I discuss in my free MLM report so that I can add to my database of contacts.

Finally, I don't call these people forever. If I call someone 4 times within a 2 week period and I don't get a response, I remove them from my in play list and I add somebody else. You need to call people multiple times because people are busy. I will be the first to admit, I don't return all my calls and if you call me only one time, you probably won't get a return phone call. Out of sight, out of mind is how the saying goes.

So make sure you adopt the 10 in play philosophy into your business. Now if you have more than a hour a day to build your business, you can increase your number in play. You can try to have 20 in play at all times. If you are full time, there's no reason why you shouldn't have at least 100 people in play at all times.

Try out the 10 in play philosophy and let me know how it is working for you.

It's Building Time!

2010-08-30T11:07:00.002-04:00

Many of you may not know this unless you follow me on Facebook, but I recently became a father for the 2nd time. My wife gave birth to a healthy and very handsome baby boy! So I've pretty much taken the last 6 weeks off from working to spend time with my family.

I've done a couple of training calls and took a few three way calls here and there, and I even signed up a customer who reached out to me. However, I haven't really been seriously building my network marketing business.

The good news is that I have a team of leaders and when you have a team of leaders, the organization continues to grow whether you are personally doing anything or not. We currently have 18 new recruits and 100 sales. One of those sales was mine. The other 99 sales and ALL of the recruits came from the organization.

While I am grateful for the team that I have, I also recognize that in order to get to the next level, I need to find more leaders like the ones I have and create new lines of sponsorships with those leaders. So now that I have taken this 6 weeks to spend with the family, it's time to get back to building a network marketing organization!

So what is my strategy? It's simple. I am going to identify people that are potential prospects for my business opportunity. I am going to systematically expose them to presentation tools that do a full presentation of the service that we offer and the business opportunity that is available. I am going to follow up with those prospects until they make a decision. Those that decide to get started, I will teach them how to do the same.

That's network marketing in a nutshell. If you are in network marketing that is what you want to be spending the majority of your time doing. If you are like me and you have a very busy schedule, you don't have time to engage in a bunch of busy work that doesn't make you any money.

You cannot spend your business time reading about every little website on network marketing, buying everybody's training course and wasting time setting up the perfect landing page and doing a bunch of stuff that doesn't make you money. The large majority of your time needs to be spent on money making activity. That's talking to prospects and if you aren't doing that, you aren't making money, plain and simple.

So it's building time for me and hopefully it is building time for you as well! The rest of 2010 should be very interesting to say the least!

P.S. If you are interested in the exact strategies that I use to find people to talk to, make sure you check out and download my free report located at http://www.web204mlm.com

Local Network Marketing Strategy

2010-06-17T10:33:00.002-04:00

Building a network marketing business in your local area is a very worthwhile endeavor. Being part time in the industry for over 5 years now if there is one thing I would change is I would have focused more on building a local team. That's not to say that I would have forsaken long distance sponsoring, because you need both. However, I would have focused most of my prospecting efforts on finding prospects in my own backyard.

There are a number of reasons why local network marketing is a powerful way to build your business. Remember, network marketing is a relationship business. It is significantly easier to build relationships with people who live within driving distance from you. Many of my closest friends in my specific business opportunity are distributors who live within my local market.

When you sponsor someone local to you, there are a number of tools that are available to you that are not available if you sponsor long distance. For example, you can sit down with them in person at a local coffee shop and personally walk them through their initial game plan. You can personally help them host an in home meeting. You can meet every week at the local opportunity meetings and local trainings. You can travel together to the big company regional events or your company's international event.

All of these elements of building the business help you build and develop a relationship with your new distributor. As a result of this, your new distributor is significantly less likely to quit. Will a lot of them still quit? Yes they will. The biggest disadvantage to network marketing is because the price of entry is so low, it's also very easy for someone to quit. However, a local person is less likely to quit than a long distance person, ESPECIALLY if at the very beginning you engaged with them and got them plugged into the local system.

So what are some strategies that you can utilize to do local network marketing recruiting? The first and most effective strategy is to start with people that you already know that live within your local area. It is ten times easier to get someone that you know to look at information about your network marketing business opportunity than it is to get someone you don't know to look at it. All we are trying to do is get them to look at the information. What they decide after that is totally up to them.

You can also expand your local market contact list by getting referrals. If you share the information with someone who is in your local market there is a good chance that they also know someone else that is in your local market. I've gotten a number of customers and distributors just by getting referrals both from people who become customers as well as people who don't.

If you've exhausted your contact and referral list or if you live in an area that you don't know a lot of people, you will need to find ways to meet new people. A good tool to use for meeting new people is to check out a website called meetup.com. This website has thousands of groups on all types of different areas of interest. Many of these groups will be in your local area, especially if you live in a highly populated area. Find some meetups that you can attend on topics that you are interested in and meet new people.

Also, be a little more friendly and outgoing as you go out and engage in living your life. Greet your neighbors. Talk to the person pumping gas on the other side of you. Talk to the waiter or waitress at the restaurants you go to. Talk to all of the people that you do business with throughout the day. I remember when I was moving, the same guy that was at the store when I picked up the truck was still at the store when I dropped off the truck. I commented on that and he proceeded to share with me about how long he has to work and how long he has to travel to get home. Needless to say, he was an easy exposure to my opportunity.

In the meantime, you will need to find people to talk to until you meet enough people in the area to build up a good pipeline of prospects. One of the fastest ways is if you have a couple of hundred bucks, purchase and call local business opportunity leads. Get some recommendations from people in the industry that you know and trust first because there are a lot of lead companies that are scams. If you are short on cash, social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter are also a great way to meet people.

Utilizing a local network marketing recruiting strategy is a great way to build an organization. I highly recommend it, even if you are mastering some of the internet marketing strategies to generate your own leads. I generate my own leads as well and I can tell you this, most of my leads are not local to me. You have to be more intentional about your local recruiting, but the extra effort is so worth it.

The Importance Of Planning Your MLM Business Ahead!

2010-06-16T09:00:00.000-04:00

I have a very busy schedule. As a full time marketing & business professional, a husband, a father of a 2 year old daughter with a son on the way, I have a very full plate. I will readily admit I am not as consistent in building my MLM business as I know I need to be. The key factor that I have identified in influencing my consistency is my ability to plan ahead.

When I plan my days and weeks ahead of time, I find that I complete tasks a lot faster. That frees up time for me to focus on building my MLM business. However, if I don't plan ahead, certain tasks just creep up on me. The end result is I have a mountain of tasks that have to be completed within a short space of time. Any task that doesn't have a definitive deadline (a.k.a. my MLM business) gets pushed to the back burner.

I'm sure you are probably the same way. That's why it's important to plan your MLM business and everything in your life ahead of time. Before you start a new day tomorrow, write down the top 5 tasks that you need to get done that day. Make sure at least one of those tasks have something to do with building your network marketing business. Then go out there and get them done.

At the end of the day check off the tasks that you successfully completed. Look at the tasks that you didn't complete. Compare them to the tasks that you did complete. There's only one question that you want to ask yourself. For the tasks that you did complete, will they move you closer to your goals faster than the tasks that you didn't complete? If the answer is no, you need to seriously reevaluate how your prioritize your time.

I know it's tough. However, the good thing is the MLM business model is a business model in which you can build a very successful business with a limited amount of time. My upline that I work most closely with earns over $100,000 a year in this industry and yet he does this while working only 10-15 hours a week in his business. I don't know of too many other things you can do for a living where you can make that type of money working 10-15 hours a week.

Make Money MLM - The 4 Ways To Earn Money In Network Marketing

2010-06-15T14:19:00.002-04:00

It is amazing how so many people get started in MLM and Network Marketing with the intention on making money. However, they don't engage in the necessary activities that will lead to the creation of income. Those people tend to do one of two things, both which compound the problem even further.

a) They quit and say MLM doesn't work or Network Marketing is a scam because I didn't make any money.

b) They quit their MLM business opportunity and jump to another network marketing opportunity assuming that the problem is they were with the wrong company or downline. Their hope is that now they are in this new company or with this new team that will solve their problems and now they will be able to make money.

However, the problem isn't the industry and the problem in most cases isn't the company. The problem is that this person hasn't taking the time to understand what are the things that allow you to make money in network marketing and then commit to doing those things.

Sometimes I get away from doing the things necessary as well and my income suffers as a result. However, fortunately I have come to a certain level of maturity in this industry in that I understand that the problem isn't my company, my upline or my compensation plan. The problem is me.

Also, another problem is that we do a poor job at explaining how we make money in this industry. As a result, we lose our prospects because we make things too complicated and we use a bunch of industry terminology that makes absolutely no sense to the prospect and causes them to think that what we do is an illegal scam.

Anyway, here's a quick video by Doug Firebaugh, a top industry trainer and a gentleman that spent 14 years working in the industry full time as a distributor building a million dollar organization. In this video he talks about the 4 ways you make money in network marketing.

Enjoy!

Why The Internet Will Never Replace Network Marketing Meetings

2010-06-14T09:00:00.000-04:00

There are all these ads on the internet that promise to teach you how to build a network marketing business over the internet. Many of them make claims such as you don't need to go to meetings anymore.

As a part time distributor this would be a very attractive offering...if only I didn't know any better.

The problem is many of the distributors aren't knowledgeable enough about the industry to understand the message behind the marketing.

You can certainly build a long term successful business without going to hotel meetings, holding in home meetings and attending weekly classroom trainings. Its just not going to be a network marketing business.

If you want to be an internet marketer then by all means do that. In fact you don't even need to be in a network marketing company to do that. Go sell gardening ebooks or ebooks about how to perfect your golf swing. Something that you are really passionate about.

However, if your intention is like my intention and that is to build a multiple six figure network marketing distributorship on a part time basis that functions with or without your involvement for the rest of your life, it is almost impossible to do that without having some type of in person meeting system in place.

There is something you get from an in person meeting system that you cannot get from the internet. It's called experience learning. Any student of learning and development can tell you this. I can take any lesson plan, teach one group online and the other group in person. The group taught in person will retain the information better almost every time.

Even internet marketers encourage you to come to their live events where they are almost always charging a lot more than what they charge for the information they sell online.

Network marketing is not selling ebooks. It is a relationship business. The stronger the relationship the more effective the production will be. There's no stronger way to build a relationship than by plugging into a system that encourages meeting people in person.

Take a look at any list of top earners in network marketing and you will find that 99% of them build their business using some type of in person meeting system.

So with that I will be headed to host my weekly business overview meeting later today. Are you plugging into some type of weekly meeting system? If not, I highly recommend that you start immediately.

You don't have to rent a hotel if you can't afford it and don't have enough people to support that. You can start by meeting in a coffee shop. Just don't forsake the importance of in person meetings under a false assumption that technology alone will build your business.

It won't.

How To Become A Top Recruiter In Your MLM Company

2010-06-11T08:08:00.002-04:00

Are you looking to become a top recruiter in your company? I'm going to help you out today and show you exactly how to do just that!

I'm not going to charge you $47 for a ebook to teach you how to be a top recruiter. I'm not going to charge you $147 for an audio home study course on how to be a top recruiter. I'm not going to invite you to a $997 seminar on how to be a top recruiter. I am going to show you how to do it by letting you hear from someone who has done it.

Best of all, I'm going to share with you how to do it, absolutely free!

My first year in network marketing I made an initial warm market list of people I know. That list was 130 people. Within 6 months, I prospected all 130 people on my list and recruited 10 of them, which is about a 7% sponsor rate. During my first 12 months, I prospected 350 people from the cold market and recruited 14 of them, which is about a 4% sponsor rate.

So my first year in the company, I sponsored 24 people, so on average about 2 a month. In a company of hundreds of thousands of distributors, that would easily put you in the top 1% of the company in terms of recruiting. All by prospecting 40 people a month, 10 people a week, 2 people a day (you can take two days off)

Now here's my question to you....

What if you could do what I did in my first year, you could do that in one month? In other words, sponsor 24 people within your opportunity within a single month?

You can. In fact, I'm going to introduce you to a guy who sponsored 26 people within a single month. In fact, he recruits this many people EVERY SINGLE MONTH!

So check out JR Jackson and his article entitled Learn How I Recruit 26 People Every Month

I don't make a dime off anything you buy there and I personally think there are more effective strategies than what JR is recommending specifically in his article (although the #1 strategy he recommends, I believe is an effective strategy), the fact of the matter is you don't need the best strategy to get the best results.

There's only three things you need and JR reveals them in this article.

So once again, check out the article and then post back on this blog and let me know if you figured out what the three things are that you need to be a top recruiter.

P.S. If you are looking for ways to find people to talk to, check out my free report on the 7 strategies that I personally use to have an unlimited number of people to talk to about my business opportunity.

The 5 Indicators of Performance In Network Marketing

2010-05-06T19:11:00.002-04:00

I am fortune to be a part of an incredible team in my network marketing business. Not only is the training top notch, but we have some incredible leaders that are constantly looking for ways to improve the business and identify the best ways to create success in the business.

One of these leaders over the past 2-3 years now has been receiving personal mentorship from one of the foremost leadership experts in the world. One of the processes that this gentleman had this leader do is to identify the 5 indicators of performance in his network marketing business.

So he took his core leadership team, held a weekly conference call and had his team members report on different numbers related to the building of their respective businesses. Over the course of this 1-2 year period, they have played around and tweek with different numbers to track. Eventually, they were able to identify the 5 key indicators of performance in a network marketing business.

How effective are these indicators? Well, let's just say that out of that core leadership team, he now has 8 people on that team that earn between $75,000 and $90,000 in their network marketing business. As for himself, he is closing in on the $200,000 a year mark.

So what are the 5 indicators of performance in network marketing? I'll give you a hint. They have nothing to do with how many blog posts you write, what your search engine rankings are and how many videos you submitted to YouTube.

All of those activities are good if you are looking to build an internet marketing business. They are also good for lead generation for your network marketing business because we all need prospects to talk to about our products & opportunity. However, none of these activities have the biggest impact in the growth of your network marketing commission check.

Here are the 5 indicators that have the biggest impact on growing your commission check:

# of new contacts - These are the amount of NEW people that you have made contact with and have shared some type of tool explaining your products, services & opportunity. It is recommended that you make at least 2 contacts a day to get enough momentum to start to consistently sponsor people. However, if you really want to take your business to the next level, the benchmark is 5 contacts a day (5 days a week)

# of guests to weekly opportunity meetings - These are the number of guests (non distributors) that have showed up to a weekly business opportunity meeting. You can include both the guest that showed up for you personally, as well as the guest of distributors in your organization. When you can get at least 10 guest a week from your team showing up at an opportunity meeting, your business is about to explode (evenly spread out based on your compensation plan of course)

# of in home meetings held by your team - This is self explanatory, how many in home meetings are being held by yourself or members in your organization on a weekly basis? In home meetings are usually held by new associates, so this gives you an idea of what type of new growth is occurring in your organization. You want to get to at least 5 of these meetings on a weekly basis.

# of 3 way calls - There are two numbers you want to track here. 1st is the number of 3 way calls that you have personally made to your expert for your own prospects. The 2nd is the number of 3 way calls that you have personally received from members of your organization. You want to get to 1 a day outgoing and 3 a day incoming for your organization to really start to rock.

# promoted to for calls & events - These are the number of associates on your team that you are calling on a weekly basis to promote key events in your business. This could be training calls that your upline organization or your company may hold. This could be events that your company holds throughout the country. You want to build a big enough team that you are able to promote to at least 25 people at a time within your organization.

So we started tracking these numbers within my organization and you know what's amazing? The people in my organization that are making the most money? They are the closest to hitting these benchmarks. The people that are making the least money are the furthest away from these benchmarks. So I have found in my experience that these 5 indicators of performance can truly indicate whether a person is going to make a good commission check or not.

So how are you doing on these 5 indicators of performance?

Of course, in order to move towards the benchmark, you need people to talk to. That's why I created a free report where I reveal the 7 strategies that I personally use to build an endless list of prospects to talk to about my network marketing opportunity. If you haven't already done so, download my report for free.

Do Most People Fail In MLM & Network Marketing?

2010-05-03T16:53:00.004-04:00

Do most people fail in MLM & Network Marketing or Direct Sales?

If you have been in this industry for a while you have probably come across this objection when sharing your business opportunity. I can almost guarantee that you have encountered it, whether it was verbalized or not.

The fact of the matter is most people not only fail in network marketing, most people fail at anything that they do in life.

Want proof? Go check out your local gym the first couple of weeks in the month of January. It is packed filled with people that are attempting to get into shape. Check out that same gym a few months later and it seems like a ghost house compared to what it looked like in January.

When I encounter a prospect that gives me this objection, my job is to educate my prospect and help him/her to not focus on the fact that most people fail. That fact is completely irrelevant to making a decision to get started in a business opportunity or not. Most people fail at everything, whether it's getting in shape, starting a traditional business, moving up the corporate ladder, investing and so on.

What the prospect TRULY needs to know to make a good decision as to whether to get started in a business or not is the answer to three simple questions:

#1 - What did the people that failed do?

#2 - What did the people that succeeded do?

#3 - Are they willing to NOT do what the people that failed did and DO what the people that succeeded did?

That's really all that matters!

To explain this concept further, check out this great video by Tim Sales on this topic! If you are viewing this post on Facebook, make sure you scroll down and click on Original Post to see the video as it will not display on Facebook itself.

Roosevelt Cooper

P.S. - One of the reasons why people fail is that they don't have enough prospects to talk to. Click here to download my free report where I reveal the 7 strategies that I personally use to build a virtually unlimited number of prospects to talk to about my network marketing business.

Video: Twitter & Blog Network Marketing Strategies

2010-04-29T17:59:00.002-04:00

Do you currently have a network marketing blog that you write for? Do you have a Twitter account? If so, you are missing out on a great opportunity to get additional exposures for your content if you are not linking your blog to your Twitter account.

Below is a video that shows you how to link your Twitter account to your blog. This way when you post new content to your blog, it updates your twitter account so that your twitter followers can see that you have published a new article to your blog.

If you are looking at this post on Facebook, you need to click on the link at the bottom of the post that says "original post" and that will take you directly to my blog where you can watch the video on how to do this.

By the way, it is also not a bad idea to create a video if you have something of value to share to the network marketing community. The reason why is because bloggers like myself are always looking for content to share with our readers. If you have a valuable video, we will take it, share it with our followers and post it on our blog. Then if people like your video, they might want to learn more about you and they could potentially become a new business partner in your network marketing opportunity.

While I personally don't advocate relying exclusively on people to come to you only (it can take months, if not years for you to brand yourself to the point where you attract a steady stream of prospects this way), it's certainly not a bad idea if you are into internet marketing & web 2.0 tools and are looking for a great way to supplement your primary recruiting strategies and tactics!

So anyway, check out this video and enjoy! And if you want to see more videos, check out the author of this video, Kurt Henninger on his blog.

Finally, if you are interested in the 7 strategies that I personally use to build a network marketing organization that is now in the thousands of associates in over 35 states and into Canada, make sure you download my free prospecting report.

Do 90% Of All Businesses Fail Before 5 Years?

2010-04-28T13:57:00.004-04:00

I'm sure you've heard quoted by a wide variety of sources of the high failure rate of small businesses. I've heard 90%, 95%, I've heard as high as 99%

However, the fact of the matter is, there is no credible study that shows that 90% of all businesses fail after 5 years.

I want to thank Tony Rush for highlighting this article and I decided to share it with you so you can see how inaccurate this widely quoted statistic is. The article is entitled Focus on Success Not Failure & it was featured in the Money section of USA Today.

Here is another study identifying start-up failure rates - the real numbers. These numbers are close to the numbers reported in the USA Today article.

One thing I want to point out that you might not catch is someone asked the author a question about what defines "failure" and points out correctly that businesses close for a wide variety of reasons. The author points out that an economist at the Small Business Administration surveyed owners of closed businesses. 70% of those owners referred to the start-up as a failure. So not all of these so called "failures" are truly failed businesses.

In fact, here is a study done by the Small Business Administration that indicates that a third of business closures are successful businesses upon closure.

So the facts are, 90% of all businesses do NOT fail before 5 years. Many of the businesses that do close, the failure could have been avoided if the business owner simply spoke with other owners of similar types of businesses before starting their own business.

Therefore, if you are considering starting a business, the #1 step that I personally recommend that you take is to speak to people who have owned that type of business for at least 5 years and get as much information from those people as possible before starting that business.

If you are interested in getting started in a business, but not sure of exactly what type of business to start, here is a great business that you can check out!

Relaunch Of My Network Marketing Blog!

2010-04-27T20:05:00.003-04:00

I am happy to announce that I am re-launching my network marketing blog!

I recently launched a social media & internet marketing consulting company and it has required a lot of my time. However, now that the company is up and running, I can now get back to writing regular and consistent blog entries here.

Also, I recently discovered a way that I can write blog posts directly from my phone and email them to this blog. I am very excited about this, because now when I have downtime and I'm out and about, I can put that time to use by coming up with some great content for you!

I have decided to take a slightly different spin on the blog content going forward. I'm still going to be providing you with great content for how to build your network marketing business, as well as company reviews, etc. However, I have decided to write everything going forward from the prospective of a part time distributor in the network marketing industry.

I personally have no interest in ever becoming a full time network marketing distributor. Not that I don't enjoy the industry. In fact, on the contrary, I love the network marketing industry and see myself involved in it for the rest of my life. However, I am an entrepreneur first and foremost and I love building and growing businesses from scratch.

I'm sure many of you feel the same way. You love the network marketing industry, but you're not necessarily looking to do this on a full time basis. You are basically looking to build a passive income stream so that you can focus on the things that you are passionate about.

So in short, I'm glad to be back and look forward to putting together some fantastic content for you on how to build and grow your network marketing business successfully on a part time basis in this web 2.0 world!

How To Recruit Pastors & Ministry Leaders Into Your MLM Business!

2010-03-15T16:54:00.002-04:00

Pastors & Ministry leaders often make great distributors as a part of your MLM business. However, there can be many challenges that you may have to overcome in order to have one of these influential individuals join your downline. The extra time and effort that it will take to recruit one can often be worth it. With the sphere of influence that these individuals often possess, as well as the personal development they often already have from their ministry, they can become great leaders in your organization.

For example, the reason why I am even involved in the MLM industry to begin with is because someone recruited the Associate Pastor of my church. This Pastor has gone on to earn over $100,000 over the last 12 months from his network marketing business and I would estimate that somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 to 25% of that income is a direct result of my organization.

So how do you recruit pastors and ministry leaders into your organization?

One of the best ways to do so is to start with your warm market. Your warm market are the people that you already know and have some type of personal relationship with. It could be family members, friends, co-workers, people you do business with, classmates, former classmates and so on.

If you don't personally know of any pastors or ministry leaders, check your network of contacts and see if they know anybody. Chances are they do. You can also join social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter as there are plenty of these leaders on these websites that you can network with.

If you take the time to make a list of people that you know, there is a good chance that you already know a pastor or ministry leader that you can expose to your MLM business opportunity. My associate pastor was exposed by someone he knew, a gentleman who was a carpenter and a friend of the family.

Credibility and longevity is very important when it comes to recruiting these leaders. A pastor or ministry leader often takes years to build upon and establish his/her reputation. They are not going to want to get involved in any opportunity that could damage that hard to earned reputation. Therefore be prepared to provide some third party credibility that highlights your company's product, service and/or compensation plan.

Third party tools are a must. The best way to expose a Pastor or ministry leader is to get an appointment and share the third party tool directly. It could be a DVD, a CD, a website presentation or a pre-recorded or live conference call. If your company or upline has created a tool that speaks directly to Pastors or ministry leaders, this is even better because the tool will "speak their language" so to speak. Most Pastors and ministry leaders, their primary concern is how will this help their congregation. Money is secondary.

Finally, make sure you have an expert who you can get either on the phone or in person who can answer their questions. Ideally, it would be another Pastor or ministry leader, but it doesn't have to be. The most important key is that you have somebody other than yourself who can validate that what you are sharing is correct.

If you follow these steps, you too can have Pastors and/or ministry leaders join your organization. Who knows, you might even have one that will go on to earn a six figure annual income!

A Network Marketing Business vs A Traditional Job

2010-03-08T09:00:00.000-05:00

Hello everyone,

I just came across a great article that talks about the difference between a network marketing business and a traditional job. Take a look at it and enjoy!

Roosevelt Cooper

http://www.web204mlm.com

Network Marketing vs. The Job Force
Which is Better for You and Your Family?

In today's economy when things are spiraling out of control in the
wrong direction, Moms and Dads are sitting at the kitchen table
scratching their heads and scrambling for solutions.

The problems people face are at crisis levels. Every day more
and more families are waking up to a pit in their stomach
surrounding their own job security and the rising cost of
living expenses. They are reminded throughout the
day of the bleeding circumstances as they stop by the
grocery store for a few dinner items and the gas station.

But, here's the thing. People are choosing to bank on that
very pit in their stomach for security. They place their
hopes and faith in the job market, in bosses, in the economy,
in the government because they are too afraid to do anything else.

There's no such thing as job security.

Anytime you work for someone else, you're at their mercy.
It doesn't matter:

How much your boss likes you.
How well you do performing your job.
How well or poor the economy gets.

You've positioned yourself to be one pink slip away
from possible financial devastation.

Things change. People change. Life happens.
Circumstances change. The economy changes.

Have you ever heard the saying,
"If it's meant to be, it's up to me?"

Well, today more than ever, men and women may wish to
evaluate their situations and their options for insuring
financial security for their families.

Hopefully they recognize in the deepest part of them that
if they seek true financial security, it's up to them
personally to create it and keep it.

And that's not with a job, but a business they own
where they hold all the cards.

I'll be the first to admit that not everyone is cut
out for entrepreneurship.

However,there's a great deal of people who have entertained
the idea throughout their lives and it's these people
I'm talking about.

I'm talking to those who carry a deep seed of knowing
they deserve more from life and believe they have what
it takes to make it happen, if they just had direction.

Some have acted on those dreams and perhaps have failed
with very identifiable reasons. Others have thought
about it but have never taken that first step.

More often then not, people seem so sure that their
security is in their jobs, when it's actually the
other way around. They see that paycheck every Friday
and bank their lives on it.

Security is in working for yourself, being your own boss.

As a society, we are taught from childhood how to be good
employees. Dreams of entrepreneurship are quashed because
of it. Since those dreams were not nurtured and honed in
on, these individuals lack the skills and belief system
it takes to be successful in that arena.

As a result, would-be entrepreneurs never achieve all
they were destined to. This is a tragedy.

Let's put entrepreneurship vs. a job in perspective here.

_________________________________________

WORKERS/CAREER ORIENTED/EMPLOYEES

This group of individuals

1) Invest thousands of dollars on a formal college education and
give up years of their life to classroom study to be able to enter
their career field where they become enslaved.

2) These workers will be told what to do for the next 40 years.

3) It's dictated:

a) When you get up in the morning (which dictates bedtime)
b) What to wear each day
c) When to eat lunch
d) When you can have time with your family and friends

. . . . just to name a few

3) It's dictated how much they can earn which determines:

a) When, where and for how long they vacation
b) The type of car they drive
c) The home they live in
d) The entertainment they enjoy
e) The food on their table
f) The gifts under the Christmas tree

. . . . just to name a few

4) IRS tax code was NOT written for them. They get paid,
pay taxes first, then deduct their living expenses.

Oh, and now they have school loans to pay for years.

_____________________________________________

HOME BASED BUSINESS OWNERS/ENTREPRENEURS/NETWORK MARKETERS

This group of individuals

1) Invest money into seminars, books, and coaching programs to
gain knowledge on how to run a business. (Trivial amounts
in comparison to a college education). Education will come
mainly from on the job training.

2) Invest in a business opportunity, generally a network
marketing company. Initial average investments range from
$300 to $3000.

3) The IRS Tax Code was written for them. They get paid,
deduct their expenses first and then pay tax on the balance.

4) They enjoy a lifestyle that looks like this:

a) They get up when they're done sleeping
b) They wear what they want
c) They come and go as they please
d) They eat when and where and what they want
e) They vacation when, where and for however long they want

They are NOT subject to:

a) Income caps
b) Time constraints

______________________________________________

If people would put their fears aside about being their
own boss, they would be able to sit back and assess the
situation and their options in a more rational way.

When one looks at the two comparisons, doesn't business
ownership make better sense all the way around?

So, the question these Moms and Dads have to answer as
they scratch their heads searching for answers to their
financial security, is whether they choose:

Plan A: Stay in the work force until retirement; or
Plan B: Take control of their life through a business of their own.

There is no Plan C.

Only a very select few will feel it's worth rolling up
their sleeves and learning new skillsets on how to create
security through a business of their own.

The majority will stay in the work force until they retire.
Then what?
What happens to them then?
Where do they live?
What do they eat?
What's their source of income?
Is it enough to sustain a quality of life?

If you're one of those individuals who carry the entrepreneurial
spirit deep inside, it's something to think seriously about
because it's here, in the home business industry, that one
will find the real security.

But, if you read my report,"You Just THINK

You Own Your Own Business", you will understand
that your business should be one of a Solutions Provider
and not just representing one company.

If you missed that, you can download it here:
http://www.MentoringWithHeart.com/rookie_mistakes.html

The training, the skillsets, the mindset are all very achievable
when the desire is there.

Yes, it takes time. But what are your options if you don't?
A year and two will go by so fast anyway. You deserve
to have the life you dreamed about for yourself and your
family.

Dedicated to your success,

Kevin Mack
http://www.Macksimize.com

How To Turn MLM Prospects Into Recruits

2010-02-10T18:48:00.002-05:00

I'm back!

For those of you who have been following this blog, you have probably noticed that I haven't posted in a while. That is because I have been working on an outline for a great series of blog posts for you! These posts are actually going to serve as a basis on an ebook that I am going to write.

There is a lot of information on different strategies on how to find prospects to talk to about your MLM business. However, what I've found is that there isn't as much information out there on how to take those prospects that you have found and turn them into recruits. That will be the basis of this series.

I'm going to cover recruiting strategies for all different types of prospects. Whether they are warm market (people that you know) lukewarm market (referrals from people that you know) or cold market (people that you don't know) I will share with you the mindset and the strategies that you will need to recruit these people.

I will also share with you some tips on how to avoid leaving money on the table. For example, a lot of distributors make the mistake of just writing a prospect off if they aren't interested in the business opportunity. Many prospects that aren't interested in the business would actually be interested in the product or service that you offer. I will show you how to turn your recruiting prospects into customers.

Here is a breakdown of some of the topics that I will be covering in this blog series...

a) The BEST way to approach people that you know about your business without ruining your friendship. A lot of people joke in this industry that they are in the NFL, which stands for No Friends Left.

I have NEVER lost a friend or a relationship with a family member as a result of my prospecting them for my MLM business. I will share with you how I prospect them so that I never ruin the relationship. I will also share with you some common mistakes I see other distributors make, which is why they lose the relationship.

b) The BEST tape to use in your business. The best tape to use is duct tape over your mouth! Too many distributors expose people by trying to explain the business. I never explain my business to anybody. I will show you how to share your business without explaining it and why this is actually the best way to build your business.

c) The FORTUNE is in the FOLLOW-UP. Most distributors don't follow up with their prospects at all. The few that do follow up too infrequently. I will share with you how to follow up effectively with your prospects so that you have the best chance at recruiting them.

And MUCH, MUCH MORE!

At the conclusion of this blog series, you will know exactly what you need to do to recruit prospects into your business opportunity or at least get them to purchase the service.

One thing I will NOT go over is where to find prospects. If you need help in finding prospects, I recommend you check out my free report, 7 Strategies To Generate An Endless List of Prospects!

I've been planning this blog series for a while now and the information that I have obtained from you comes from my own personal experience, what I've learned from some of the most successful distributors in the industry as well as some common mistakes that I have seen many distributors make. If you take the information that you will learn from this series and actually implement it into your business, I am confident that you will get the results that you are looking for.

How To Take Notes At A Network Marketing Training

2010-01-11T11:08:00.003-05:00

Have you ever been at a network marketing training and have been told about the importance of taking notes? I'm sure you have. However, it's not enough to just write some thoughts down on a piece of paper. You need a system to take notes so that you can turn those notes into something that you can act upon to build your business.

Today I will share with you a simple system to take effective notes. I have been using this system for a while now. What's interesting is that I didn't even learn this system from someone who is involved in network marketing. However, it works extremely well for distributors in this industry and I believe that you will get value out of it.

Whenever I take notes, I divide my thoughts into two areas. I take the paper that I'm writing my notes on and divide it up into two sections. The first area is "Lessons Learned." The second area is "Action Items."

Under the "Lessons Learned" section, this is where I record any new insights that I have gathered as a result of attending that training. This could be tips that the trainer has provided, concepts and techniques that I need to be aware of, philosophies and attitudes that I need to adopt and so on. I even take notes on the trainer. For instance, if the trainer stresses a certain point, I will make a note of that because that tells me that the point is important. If the trainer makes certain gestures that I believe are important, I will make notes of that as well.

In addition to the lessons learned from what the trainer tells me, I also record lessons learned based on insights that I have while attending the training and listening. Sometimes I might have certain thoughts that pop into my mind while attending the training that I will record in my notes.

The second area is the action items. This is where I record things that I have to do upon leaving the training. Sometimes we can get so caught up in the acquisition of new knowledge that we never take steps to implement that knowledge. As a result, we go from training to training getting excited and emotionally stimulated but never growing because we aren't taking action. By recording what I am going to do as a result of the information I learned at the training, I now have action steps that I can take to put the training into action.

By following this system for taking notes, I believe you will get more out of the trainings that you attend and the conference calls and webinars that you listen to. You will not only retain the information that you learn better, but you will be able to take action on the information, which is the most effective way to learn.

Why I'm Not Interested In Your MLM Business!

2010-01-09T10:34:00.006-05:00

I get approached all the time by people trying to recruit me for their MLM business. I understand totally why it happens. In our industry we are taught not to pre-judge people. We are taught to make a list of everybody that we know. We are taught that those who you think would be interested many times are not and those that you think would not be interested many times become your biggest producers in your opportunity.

However, I'm going to do both of us a favor and let you know right now that I am not interested in your opportunity. This is going to help you. By you knowing right off the back that I am not interested in your opportunity, this will free up your time and efforts to go after other people who are interested in your business.

I'm also going to explain to you why I am not interested in your particular opportunity. I believe when you truly understand why I am not interested and if you adopt a similar philosophy, it can literally be the foundation that allows you to create the type of success and lifestyle that you are looking for.

Reason #1 - I am already in the best MLM business!

The first reason why I am not interested in your business is because I am already in the best MLM business. Whenever you are taking a look at any opportunity, there are five areas that you want to evaluate.

You want to look at the company. Are you with a company that is rock solid? Or are you with a company that is going to be here today and gone tomorrow? The company that I am with has been in business for over 37 years. They do a half a billion dollars a year in revenue. They are publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. When companies like Citibank and General Motors were losing money and their stock price was tanking, we were making money and our stock price was increasing all in the middle of a recession.

You want to take a look at the need in the marketplace. My company addresses two major needs in the marketplace. We offer something that most people don't even consider because they can't afford it unless they make a lot of money and we make it available to the masses. It's just like what Henry Ford did with the automobile.

You want to take a look at our product. Our product changes lives. My company has literally received thousands of unsolicited letters from customers talking about what the product has done to help their families.

You want to take a look at the compensation plan. Our compensation plan is incredible! We've helped over a hundred people earn over a million dollars in their tenure with our company. We've helped hundreds of people earn over $100,000 in a 12 month period. We've help thousands of people earn over $3,000 in a month, most of them doing that part time and we've help tens of thousands of people create a spare time income of anywhere from $100 to $2,000 a month.

Finally, you want to take a look at the timing. Everything else could be great but if you are behind the trend, the opportunity has passed you by. We are in front of the trend. Less the 2% of the population we serve have what we offer. There are other populations in the world where more than 80% of the population have the type of product that we offer.

In some of those populations, it is actually ILLEGAL to drive an automobile without having what we offer. We even have brand new people who have joined our company with no experience in the industry who in their first year have generated over $100,000 of income. I'm talking about as recent as 2009. That doesn't happen if the opportunity has passed you by.

Why do I share this with you? Is it to try and convince you that my business is the best? No, but I certainly won't argue with you if you want to agree with me. The reason why I share this with you is because you have to feel the same way about your business. If you don't, you will NEVER and I repeat you will NEVER create the type of success and lifestyle that you want until you have built up your belief level to the point where you can feel about your company the way I feel about my company.

By the way I have literally looked at hundreds of network marketing businesses so I'm not just saying this based on looking at my business only. As a blogger for the industry I have to know what's going on in the industry so that I know what I'm talking about. There is a great chance that I have already looked at your business in particular and if I haven't, I can almost guarantee you that I have looked a business very similar to yours.

Besides, the specific business you are in, while it does play a role, it is not the biggest contributor to your success. There are people in businesses that quite frankly, I think they are stupid businesses that have done extremely well and have helped hundreds, if not thousands of people do extremely well also. More power to them, I am very happy for them! However, I've already found the best MLM business for me and there is nothing that you can say or do to convince me otherwise. I hope you find that for yourself as well if you haven't.

Reason #2 - I work with my family!

Now when I say I work with my family, I'm not necessarily talking about my biological family although I certainly have people in my biological family who are involved in my business. The reason why I say I work with my family is because many of my business partners are literally like family to me.

I was recruited into the opportunity by one of my best friends. I personally work with his father, who is literally like a father figure to me. The man married my wife and I and has mentored me LONG before we joined this business opportunity together. Some of my most successful distributors on my team, we were friends long before this opportunity and now we are even closer than we were prior to joining this opportunity.

My upline support team is the best in the industry. My friend's father has earned a full time income every year he has been with the business and he has done this on a part time basis. In fact, he has hit levels in the compensation plan part time that no one in our company has ever hit unless they were full time.

My mentor above him and his wife are literally like a big brother and sister to me! They are multi-millionaires, earn over $800,000 a year and I don't ever make a major financial decision without consulting them first.

My mentor above them earns over 1.7 million dollars a year. He literally took the time to invite me to his million dollar house in Maryland and show me step by step what he does and continues to do on a daily basis. He has encouraged me when I needed to be encouraged and he has giving me the kick in the butt that I have needed as well.

My downline organization are some of the sharpest, most clean cut good people that I have ever met in my entire life. Two of my best friends, I've known well before this opportunity and because of it we have become even closer. There are several people on my team who I didn't know prior to this company that I love dearly today and have created great success for themselves and their family.

Then we have my workout partners, distributors that are sideline to me who are literally adopted family to me. We have been in the battlefields together. We have celebrated together. We have cried on each other's shoulders. We have mentored each other. We have prayed for each other. I love each and every one of them and none of us will stop until we have all achieved the financial freedom and lifestyle that we are looking for.

Then we have the dozens if not hundreds of other distributors all across the country that I have built quality friendships with that are not even on my team. There are many places in the country that I could go to today and I wouldn't have to stay in a hotel room because I have so many friends in the business.

Reason #3 - How many vehicles can you drive at one time?

The answer is one. You can own several vehicles but you can only drive one at a time. This is the vehicle I have chosen to drive in the network marketing industry and I have no interest whatsoever in trying to drive two or more of them at a time.

I don't need multiple network marketing businesses. I have multiple businesses already and multiple streams of income. Besides for every ONE person that you can show me that has created a six figure income in 2 or more network marketing businesses at the same time, I can show you DOZENS if not HUNDREDS of people that did it building only ONE network marketing business at a time.

I think I will go down the path that the many have taken to success as oppose to the few.

These are the 3 reasons why I am not interested in your MLM business. By the way, if you are thinking "well maybe I'll follow up with you in case you change your mind, don't." I'm not going to change my mind.

Even if, somehow, someway I do change my mind because something happens to my opportunity that I'm involved with already, the chances are slim to none that I'm going to join you anyway. The reason why is, if something happened to my opportunity, 9 times out of 10, I'm going to follow whatever my current line of sponsorship decides to do. Remember, I already told you that we are family and families stick together.

However, even if my current line of sponsorship decided to retire and I was on my own, I already know right now what MLM companies I would strongly consider if I decided that my current opportunity isn't for me. Not only that, but I even know already which people I would go to in order to be sponsored by. Let me give you a hint. Each of these people make a multiple six or seven or eight figure annual income, with two exceptions. One person, I don't know what he makes, I just know I like what his company does and I like him as a person. The other, I also like him as a person and I not only know him, but I know his line of sponsorship and they are in that six or seven or eight figure income bracket. So if I don't know you, it's not you, nothing personal.

That doesn't mean that you have to make that type of income in order to be a good sponsor because you don't. In fact, I think many times it's better to be sponsored by someone who doesn't make that type of income. The difference is these are people who I have known casually or personally for years and in developing that relationship with them, I know that they can offer me the mentorship that I'm looking for to take it to the next level. In fact, most of them have already done so without me even being involved in their opportunity.

So please don't try to sponsor me into your business. I'm not interested. Please don't try to sell me your products. I'm not interested in your products. Instead, why don't you try actually getting to know me and build a real, genuine relationship with me that doesn't necessarily evolve around trying to recruit me into your business?

Because if you do that, like so many other distributors that I have developed great relationships with over the years, I think we will both be better for the experience. Plus, I might even decide to become a customer of yours or send you referrals because I love to support the businesses of my friends that have products and services that I want and need.

And who knows? If you actually become a real friend with me and something does happen to my business, maybe you might actually make that short list of people that I would consider working with in the future. If that happens and you are the one, trust me, I will come to you. My current sponsor didn't have to chase behind me because I am very serious about business and what I want.

In the meantime, focus on meeting new people, developing quality relationships and exposing people who have clearly indicated at least a preliminary interest in what you have to offer.

If you need people to share your opportunity with, there are a number of ways you can do so without having to go after me specifically. In fact, check out my free report where I share the 7 strategies that I personally use to find people I can share my products and opportunity with.

If you are interested in a business opportunity, I would love to share with you what I do and if it is for you I would love to work with you. I have a great track record. I have helped others and I know that I can do the same for you if you are coachable, willing to work and have a burning desire to achieve your goals.

The Real Reason Why Network Marketing Doesn't Work For You!

2009-12-23T16:20:00.003-05:00

Randy Gage, one of the top network marketing trainers as well as distributors (He is a million dollar income earner in the opportunity he is involved in) is reviewing this week some of the reasons why network marketing doesn't work for people. If you click on his name above, it will take you to his blog where you can read about it. Start with the blog post "Why Things Don't Work" and work your way up from there.

Today I want to talk to you about why I believe network marketing doesn't work for most people. Just to give you my prospective. I have been involved in this industry and with the same company for five years. I have created some success, but nowhere near the level of success that I know I am capable of. Fortunately, unlike a lot of people in this industry, I know exactly WHY I haven't created the type of success I should be enjoying right now.

I've also met a lot of people involved in this industry. Most of them, I believe they too aren't creating as much success as they are capable of. Some of them are creating outstanding success. I have friends in this industry that have gotten involved AFTER me that now already make a six figure income. I have friends in this industry that make a six figure monthly income. So I've seen a lot behind the scenes.

Based on my personal experience, as well as the experience of people that I know personally (the successful ones, the ones that have created some success but not as much as they probably should be, and the unsuccessful ones), I have found that there are really only three reasons why people are not excelling in this industry.

What's interesting about it is that I believe that an OVERWHELMING majority of the people not having success all fall into one category. A smaller contingent falls in a second category and an even smaller group falls in a third category. Today, I will share with you exactly what they are so that you too will know why you aren't having success.

So here are the three reasons why network marketing doesn't work for most people.

#1 - 90% of people in network marketing don't follow the system!

Now I know you are probably going to argue and tell me you follow the system, but the truth is you probably don't. I know you don't. I've been doing this for a while and there are just certain things that you just know when you have been doing something for a while. One of the things that I know is that you are probably not following the system.

Come on, be honest with yourself for a second. Are you REALLY exposing X number of people a day like your company leaders are teaching? Are you REALLY using a third party tool or are you running your mouth pitching people on your opportunity? I know a lot of you AREN'T using third party tools. You want to know how I know? Because YOU PITCH ME and you don't use a tool, you run you mouth (or in this case since most people pitch me online, you run your KEYBOARD!)

Are you REALLY reading those books every day and listening to those CDs every day? Are you really showing up to your events on a regular and consistent basis or are you only showing up when you think you might have a guest coming out? You are not doing it. Don't feel too bad though. I'll be the first to admit, I'm not doing it either!

While I've been in this industry 5 years, I know I'm not consistently doing ALL of the things that I'm suppose to be doing. There are some things that I'm great and consistent at and there are some things that I'm not. For instance, I'm great at plugging into the events. I'm at almost every event I'm suppose to be at and I've been that way for the past 5 years.

I'm OK when it comes to the personal development. I've been doing personal development well before network marketing so it is not a big chore for me to read books and listen to CDs. However sometimes I may skip a few days if I get caught up with work in my business or something like that.

I'm not that great when it comes to the exposing people to my business. Don't get me wrong, I have plenty of people that I can expose. The problem is I am not consistent at all when it comes to sitting down, making those contacts on a regular basis and MOST IMPORTANTLY following up with those contacts until I collect a decision. That's exactly why even though I've created some success, my success is nowhere where it probably should be if I was more consistent.

So I know that if I'm not consistent, and I've probably build a larger organization than the vast majority of people in this industry, I know for a fact that 90% of you are not consistent either at following the system and that's exactly why you aren't having success right now. You have to sell out to the system and do it on a regular and consistent basis, not just part of it and not just the parts you like. If you make a cake with only 9 out of the 10 ingredients it needs, it will still be a nasty cake!

#2 - 9% of people in network marketing follow the system but have the wrong expectations!

A smaller group of you are following the system but you still aren't having success. Do you want to know why? It is because your expectations of success are totally off!

For some of you, it's really not your fault. The reason why is because you have been taught wrong. Your sponsor or whatever group you were working with told you some things that are simply not accurate by any stretch of the imagination. Because you were taught wrong, this has created false expectations for you.

One example, if someone told you that you can build a serious network marketing business without any money, you have incorrect expectations. This business requires a financial investment. It's not a huge investment in the grand scheme of things but there is a financial investment required to do this business the right way. You need money for marketing tools, you need money for product (if you are in a product based company), you need money to attend events and you need money for personal development resources.

Another example of poor expectations, one of my distributors told me that some lady was trying to recruit him and she told him "You've been involved for more than a year and you aren't earning six figures yet?" That's a classic example of incorrect expectations.

Don't get me wrong, can you earn six figures in your first year? Of course you can! I know a guy right now with no network marketing experience in my company who earned six figures his first 10 months in the company. So it can most certainly be done. However, if your expectations is that you have to earn six figures your first year or else it doesn't work, your expectations are totally off.

Randy Gage said it best on his blog. It takes three years to build a stable income and it takes five years to create financial freedom. Keep in mind that's 3-5 years of actually following the system, which goes back to the first reason I talked about above.

#3 - 1% of people in network marketing follow the system but have a poor skill set.

There's a small group of you who have the right expectations and you are following the system, yet you still aren't having success. For that small group of you, the problem is a skill set issue. You are lacking the skills that are necessary to build this business effectively.

For example, the #1 skill set that I see lacking in this industry is prospecting. Here is how the process works. Most people who stick around and make a serious attempt to build this business go through the following scenario. They get started, they make their initial contact list of everybody that they know. They go through their list, systematically exposing their contacts to the opportunity. Then eventually, they get to a point where they run out of people to talk to.

What makes matters even WORSE is that most companies and teams do a poor job at teaching their teams what to do when they run out of contacts to expose in their warm market. One of the reasons why is a concern among the top leaders of distracting their organization. They know that the foundation of a successful network marketing business is exposing friends and family.

They also know that the overwhelming majority of their organization will never even need to learn how to make contacts outside of their circle of influence because they won't be doing this business that long anyway. If this is you and you have a skill set issue and your company or organization isn't providing you with anything more than "pique the waitress" or "buy some leads" it's up to you to get the training and information you need to develop and improve your skill set on your own.

The good thing is that with the advent of the internet there are a lot of resources out there that we previously didn't have access to. The bad thing is with the advent of the internet, a lot of those resources are crap and if you aren't careful you could spend a lot of money on a bunch of crap that doesn't work.

So the bottom line is if network marketing isn't working for you, it is probably because of one of these 3 reasons.

P.S. - If finding people to talk to is a challenge for you, check out my free report on mlm and network marketing prospecting where I reveal the 7 strategies that have worked for me. The good news is that this report is free so you can try this stuff yourself and see if it works for you.

Are You A Thermometer Or The Thermostat Of Your MLM Organization?

2009-12-22T22:17:00.002-05:00

Are you a thermometer or are you the thermostat of your MLM organization? What is the difference and why is it important that you become one and not the other if you want to create the success you deserve?

In my experiences with building a MLM business I have always found myself in one of two positions. I have discovered that I am either a thermometer or I am the thermostat in my organization.

What is a thermometer? It is a device that takes the temperature. The thermometer has no control over itself. It is completely controlled and dictated by the weather. If it is hot outside, the measure increases. If it is cold outside, the measure decreases.

I can tell when I am acting like a thermometer when I am building my MLM organization. All I have to do is listen to my language or self talk for some key words and phrases. I start saying and thinking thoughts like...

"Why is my team not doing nothing?" (Fortunately, I have parts of my organization that is always doing something because it is filled with overlapping levels of leadership. However, in order to get to the big money, I'm going to need a number of these types of organizations not just a few)

"No point in doing my exposures today. Nobody is going to sign up anyway."

"If only I had more money, I would be sponsoring people like crazy."

If you notice in all of these negative statements and thoughts, they are all based on blaming the results that I am not happy with on other people or things instead of taking responsiblity for my results. That is thermometer thinking and it will severely limit your success.

A thermostat on the other hand is different. The thermostat controls the environment. When it is cold in your house, you turn the thermostat up and the temperature in the house increases. When it is too hot in your house, you turn the thermostat down and the heat shuts off (or if you are blessed with central air like I am, the air conditioning turns on)

When I am acting like a thermostat in my business, that is when my business is rocking. The reason why is because instead of blaming my environment, outside factors or other people, I begin to take responsibility for my business.

I can tell when I am operating from a thermostat mindset as well because these are the types of thoughts that I have...

"I got to make these phone calls to these prospects. One of these people could very well be the next leader in my organization!"

"Well since my prospect didn't look at the website that I gave him, I'm going to ask him if he's got 10 minutes right now and if so, I'm going to three way him into a recorded conference call. This way I know for a fact that he has now looked at the information and I can collect a decision."

"Let me make some phone calls to some of my distributors that I haven't heard from in a while. I don't care if they make some sales. I just want to catch up with them, see how they are doing and continue to build that relationship with them."

So now ask yourself the following:

"Am I a thermometer or am I the thermostat of my MLM organization?"

If you are the thermometer, the good news is that you can become the thermostat. It simply requires a slight shift in your current way of thinking.

The Litmus Test Of A Great Network Marketing Company

2009-12-21T12:16:00.002-05:00

This morning, I was listening to the corporate leadership call held by the executives in the network marketing company that I am involved in. At the beginning of the call they were announcing the names of some of the people who have hit certain income milestones in the company.

One name I heard was Kimberly Ferris. I recognized her name because I have been trained by her many times throughout my career. The company just announced that over the last 12 months she has been paid over $250,000 in commissions!

Now there are a lot of people making that kind of money in network marketing. It is still a huge accomplishment. However, what's significant about her making that type of money is the fact that I know she is not a big recruiter. She focuses most of her efforts on introducing our product to companies so that they can offer this as an employee benefit and the large majority of her income has come from doing just that.

Why is that important? I was talking to Jim Tanner, a fellow network marketing professional on Twitter. He's also in the same company I'm in. He had replied to the following Tweet that I posted on Twitter...

"I love being a part of a nm company where we got people earning six figures without recruiting. It shows we have a real product."

By the way if you aren't following me on Twitter and you would like to, here is my twitter page.

Anyway, Jim had replied to my tweet "well said...that is the litmus test" and I agree wholeheartedly.

If you really want to know if you are in a great network marketing company or if you are evaluating certain opportunities and trying to decide which one will work the best for you, ask the leaders or those recruiting you to share some stories of people who are making money simply by selling or retailing the product.

Now, they may not know those stories off the top of their head and that is fine. Give them a chance to talk to their upline and gather some of those stories for you. However, if they cannot share with you stories of people who are making money just by retailing the product, that is a BAD sign, in my opinion.

It is no secret why Avon is the most successful network marketing company today (if you judge success by which company generates the most revenue.) The reason is because Avon offers a REAL product that people have interest in, even if they have no interest in getting involved in the business opportunity.

I personally have no interest in the Avon product. However, it doesn't matter. There are plenty of women (and now they have men products as well) they do have an interest in their products. As a result, their representatives can make actual retail sales to actual retail customers and earn commissions from the sale of those products.

Now I don't think it is necessary that you have to have people earning a quarter of a million dollars like Kimberly Ferris. However, I do believe you have to have people earning at least some money by retailing. The magic number, in my opinion is $500 to $1000. Does the company have people who have earned $500 to $1000 simply by retailing the product?

My first month in the industry I made $997 in commissions. 80% of that came from my own personal sales, people that I had signed up for the product. And 80% of those personal sales commissions came from people that I signed up for my product that didn't join the business as a distributor. So this isn't theory for me. This is something that I have experienced for myself.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of companies out there that to make $500 in retail sales your first month is like almost impossible. I personally would steer far away from those companies if I were you. You shouldn't need to have to recruit people just to make $500 to $1000.

Now do I think you should just make retail sales and don't recruit? Absolutely not! I am a firm believer of recruiting, building teams and building leverage. However, I do believe that it needs to be possible to make money in your opportunity without recruiting anybody. Otherwise, you are dealing with at best a tough business to build and at worst an illegal pyramid scheme.

Edification In The Network Marketing Industry

2009-12-10T16:25:00.002-05:00

One of the skills you are going to need to master if you want to build long term success in the network marketing industry is learning the skill of edification. Edification is a powerful skill and if you master it, you can create an outstanding amount of success in this industry.

First off, why is edification important? The reason why it is so important is because we work in an industry where 3rd party is better than 1st party. When you are prospecting a candidate to join your organization, that candidate needs to hear from more than just you. There are two reasons why this is so important...

1. The prospect may not believe you completely. This is especially true when you are dealing with people that you personally know. For example, you try to expose your uncle to your business and your uncle responds "Boy, what are you going to tell me about making money? I use to change your diapers!"

By edifying someone or something else to your uncle, this puts the business beyond yourself and on to a 3rd party person or resource. As a result, your uncle is now able to evaluate the business independent of you.

2. The prospect may be intimidated by you. This is especially true when you are dealing with people that you hold a lot of authority or influence over, such as people that work for you or people that you mentor. Without edification, they will be hesitant to get started because they will evaluate the opportunity based on your past level of success and compare themselves unfavorably to you.

Learning how to use edification allows you to overcome these two very common challenges in the prospecting process.

Let me tell you about two people that I personally work with so you can get an idea of how edification works.

The first gentleman is my upline and mentor. In less than 5 years he went from a state of financial desperateness to creating close to a six figure income, all by working the business 10 to 15 hours a week. He has reached one of the highest pin levels in my company's compensation plan and to my knowledge he is the only person to reach the pin level that he is at in the HISTORY of the company while building the business on a part time basis.

The second gentleman is one of my leaders in my downline. Thanks to this opportunity he went from running a full time retail store t day and working a full time job at night to being able to quit his job and work strictly from home after only 8 months. He is a master at using social media to build a network marketing business, having recruited dozens and dozens of distributors personally with it.

Now when do you need to use edification? You need to use it whenever you are moving a prospect through the exposure process. So for instance, if you are trying to get one of your prospects to watch a DVD overview of your company, you need to edify the DVD. You can say something like "This DVD features two of the top income earners in this opportunity and is responsible for creating over 100 millionaires, hundreds of six figure earners and thousands of people able to earn a full time income on a part time basis!"

That's how edification works! It is simply speaking highly about other people or other things. As I once heard Darnell Self, multi-millionaire and 2004 Entrepreneur Of The Year by the National Black Chamber of Commerce say "a candle loses nothing by lighting another candle."

Here is a video training by Diane Hochman on how edification works. Why should you care about what Diane has to say? You should care because she has been involved in this industry for over 10 years. She used the vehicle of network marketing to go from being $40,000 in debt, losing over 120 pounds and building a massively successful business. The bottom line is she knows what she is talking about and she has a track record. That is why you should listen to her.

Notice, I just showed you how to edify when I described why you should watch this video. So go watch it right now, it's less than 5 minutes!

Sowing & Reaping In Network Marketing by Jim Rohn

2009-12-09T09:35:00.003-05:00

This is one of my favorite trainings on network marketing. So many people struggle with this area right here. Maybe it is because so few of us farm these days. Whatever the reason there seems to be a huge lack of understanding as to how this principle works in the world today.

In network marketing success isn't going to just happen for you overnight. You have to be willing to invest the necessary time, energy and money into creating the success and the lifestyle that you want to create. Part of this is the willingness to continue to invest time in large amounts of people until you find the small minority that are going to be willing to do the things necessary to be successful.

I'm sure you have all seen the presentations where they say all you have to do is get 3 who get 3 who get 3 and so on. However, what those presentations neglect to tell you is how many people you are going to have to go through to find those 3 people who are going to be consistent. You might have to recruit 10, 50, 100, even 300 people just to find 3 people who are going to get 3.

However, the bottom line is you are going to work hard anyway. If you don't build your network marketing business you are going to have to earn a living doing something to survive. The difference is whatever you do for a living, you are going to have to either do it for the rest of your life or hopefully save up enough money so that one day you can retire. In network marketing if you are willing to do the sowing, what you reap is an income that can support you for life!

So take a look at the law of sowing & reaping by Jim Rohn below. If you are looking at this blog post on another site other than my blog, you can view the video by visiting http://web204mlm.blogspot.com and looking for the post dated December 9, 2009.

A Week In The Life Of A Part Time Network Marketing Professional

2009-12-08T11:43:00.002-05:00

If you are new to network marketing or even if you have been involved in the industry for a while, one area of concern that you might have is how you should spend your time. Many distributors have no idea how to spend their "business time" and as a result, they waste a lot of time and lack productivity.

The following is a good blueprint to help you so that you can maximize your time, efforts and results. This information is based on answers that I have received when asking some of the top income earners in the industry about time management for a part time network marketing professional.

My first recommendation is if you are really serious about building a big business, be prepared to dedicate at least 10 hours a week to building your network marketing business. 15 hours a week is even better. 20 hours a week will pretty much guarantee you a full time income part time as long as you are utilizing those hours appropriately.

Can you make some money if you are only putting in 5 hours a week? Sure you can. If your goal is to earn a few hundred dollars a month profit, 5 hours a week is more than enough time to build your business to start making that type of money. However, if you really want to start making the big money, I'm talking about bonus checks of $2,000, $4,000, $8,000, $16,000 a month or more and to earn those types of checks on a part time basis, it will probably not happen if you aren't prepared to dedicate 10 to 20 hours a week building the business.

Once you decide to dedicate 10-20 hours a week, what should you be doing during those time periods? My personal mentor who has earned over $800,000 over the last 12 months teaches us that this business is about two things. Those are tools and events. Your 10-20 hours a week should be spent distributing tools out into the marketplace and inviting people to and attending events that are going to help you build your business.

There are two types of events that are going to be a part of your business building calendar. The first type of event is recruiting/retail events. These are events where the primary purpose of the event is to make product sales and/or recruit new distributors as a part of your organization. Examples of recruiting/retail events that will be a part of your calendar include...

a) In Home Presentations - Presentations that occur in your home or the home of a teammate.

b) Sit Down Presentations - Presentations that occur at a Starbucks or some other public place.

c) Breakfast/Luncheon Presentations - Presentations that occur at a restaurant over a meal.

d) Live Conference Call/Webinar Presentations - Presentations that occur on a conference call or over the internet.

e) Business Opportunity Meetings - A professional presentation that occurs once a week at a local hotel in your area where the local distributors invite their best prospects to see the opportunity.

I recommend that at an absolute minimum, you should be attending a business opportunity meeting once a week at the same location each and every week. You should then be using the other types of events to build into the business opportunity meeting.

The second type of event is a training event. The primary purpose of this event is to provide you and your team with the philosophies, attitude, knowledge and skills necessary to be more effective at generating retail sales and/or recruiting more distributors. Examples of training events include...

a) Getting Started Interview - A in person or over the phone event where you help a new distributor to get started in their business.

b) Live Conference Call/Webinar Training - Trainings that occur on a conference call or over the internet.

c) Weekly Training Event - An in person training event that occurs every week where the distributors in the local area invite their new and existing distributors to get trained by the top leaders in the local marketplace.

d) Company product trainings - Trainings held by the parent network marketing company to provide more comprehensive training on the product.

e) Regional/National/International Events - A large scale event where some of the top income earners in the company fly in to provide training on a variety of different topics related to building the business.

Prepare to dedicate anywhere between 50% to 75% of your schedule attending events and promoting for events to your prospects and/or distributors to get them to attend.

The remaining time when you are not attending an event is going to be spent distributing tools to promote your products/services and business opportunity. A tool is a resource that you provide to a prospect that allows him/her to receive an overview of the products/services that your network marketing company offers, as well as the business opportunity that is available.

The following are some examples of tools that you can use to build your business:

a) DVD/CD

b) Website

c) Pre-recorded conference call

d) Flip book presentation

e) Magazine/Brochure

Prepare to dedicate anywhere between 25% to 50% of your schedule distributing tools, following up with prospects to see if those tools were reviewed and doing 3 way calls for either your own personal prospects or fielding calls from your team to answer questions once the tool has been reviewed.

These are the activities that you should be engaged in as a part time network marketing distributor. It is important that you have both tools and events as a part of your business model. If you use tools, but no events, you won't be able to build a strong culture and you will have a very high rate of people joining and quiting. If you host events, but don't use tools, your business will grow at a slow rate because the only time your team will be able to build is when there is an event.

If you are interested in ways you can find people to give out tools to or to invite to events, make sure you check out my free report which outlines the 7 strategies that I personally used to build an endless stream of prospects to talk to about my business opportunity.

Jim Rohn Died Passed Away - A Mentor Of Mentors

2009-12-07T10:08:00.003-05:00

This has been a rough couple of months for the personal development industry. First, we lost one of the founders of the personal development movement, Mr Paul J Meyer. Then, on Saturday December 5th, we lost one of the most influential leaders in the industry, the great Jim Rohn.

Jim Rohn died this Saturday from a heart attack. He has been experiencing health challenges for a while now and unfortunately, they have finally caught up to him. He is easily my favorite personal development speaker. There isn't even a close second!

The man just had such a way with words and his ability to express powerful thoughts and ideas with such simple words and expressions was absolutely uncanny. I felt like I could literally sit at the feet of Mr. Jim Rohn with a notepad for hours and hours and just gleam nuggets upon nuggets of wisdom.

There is a saying that those that can do and those that cannot teach and that is most certainly true in the personal development industry. There are a lot of people teaching and writing about these concepts, yet they haven't been able to demonstrate them in their lives.

This is even more so in network marketing. Many personal development speakers and personalities have attempted to build a network marketing organization in several companies. Very few of them have succeeded. Quite frankly, as I close in on 1000 distributors, I have build an organization bigger than most personal development speakers that have attempted to engage in our industry.

Jim Rohn was not one of these people. This man got his start in network marketing, mentored by another extraordinary individual, Mr. Earl Shoaff he was able to become a multi-millionaire, using the same concepts and strategies that he has taught us today. He didn't just write about this stuff and speak about this stuff. He actually APPLIED the lessons that he taught us in his own life and business and created success with them.

What also makes Jim Rohn so unique is the masses and masses of millionaires who have taken the concepts and principles learned from Jim and applied them to create massive success in their own lives. Some of his proteges include the following:

Tony Robbins - arguably the #1 personal development speaker in the world today

Jeff Olson - arguably one of the greatest network marketers in the industry and author of The Slight Edge,

Stuart Johnson - The owner of Video Plus. There is a good chance that Video Plus is the company you buy your marketing tools from for your network marketing opportunity.

Darren Hardy - Publisher of Success Magazine. If you are in network marketing and you aren't subscribed to this magazine, I don't know what planet you are on!

I could go on and on!

I was fortunate enough to meet Jim Rohn personally at an event in Las Vegas almost 5 years ago. He did a powerful training that I still have the notes for to this day. Some of the concepts that I learned at that event were as follows:

1. Work harder on yourself than you do on your job. Your income is not determined by your becoming, it's determined by your philosophy.

2. Figure out a way to render uncommon service.

3. The key to greatness is to find a way to serve others.

I also learned an amazing recruiting script that he taught us at that event as well. He said when he was recruiting people this is what he would say to them...

"Would you mind if I ask you one of the most important questions you will ever be asked in our life?"

When they say yes, he would say...

"Have you found an opportunity that will take care of you and your family for the rest of your life?"

When they say no, he would say...

"Are you spending some time every week looking for that opportunity?"

Whatever they answer, he then proceeds as follows:

"Would you mind if I render you a gift?"

When they say they don't mind he says...

"The gift is the gift of advice. The advice is you must spend some time each week looking for that opportunity. Now, I will give you a promise. The day you start looking for an opportunity like this is the day your self esteem will soar and your life will never be the same again. Here is my business card. The day that you decide to start looking, call me as I would like to share with you an opportunity that has changed my life and the life of my family."

Isn't that incredible?

Jim Rohn...you will be missed!

Here is the Jim Rohn Tribute Video - I was actually surprised to see one of my personal mentors, Mark Smith featured in this video. Go Mark Go!

Here is the Jim Rohn Tribute website - You can learn more about Jim's life here as well as purchase some of the resources that he has created.

Generating Free MLM Leads On Facebook Video

2009-12-03T14:46:00.004-05:00

Above is a free video on generating free MLM leads on Facebook. If you are reading this on a website other than my blog and you cannot see the video, make sure you come to Web 2.0 For MLM, which is my blog and look for the blog entry for December 3rd, 2009 so you can see the video.

A lot of people want to know how to generate free mlm leads on Facebook. I found a video on YouTube that explains exactly how to do this. It's actually pretty funny because this guy is pretty much doing almost exactly the same thing that I do on Facebook.

The only thing I disagree with on here is he says that he doesn't list his primary business on his Facebook page. I'm a firm believer that you shouldn't be pitching other network marketing distributors directly on your business opportunity. However, I believe you are also doing yourself a serious disservice if you aren't at least including a link to your primary business opportunity.

Why? Because if you are doing this right, adding value and you offer a non-competing product to what these other distributors are promoting, many of them will actually come to you and inquire about becoming a customer. I know because I have several network marketing distributors who have signed up as customers with me from my Facebook profile.

What's interesting is that I have never had to contact any of them and pitch my products to them. Each and every one of them initiated the conversation and asked me for more information about my product.

This works for recruiting as well. My team and I have recruited dozens of distributors on social networking websites like Facebook. For many of these people, we didn't even have to be the one to initiate the conversation, they came to us and inquired more about our primary business and what we do.

I think the most important point that he makes here is the consistent friend adds on a daily basis. Adding 20-30 friends a day is going to allow your friends to grow consistently and then eventually virally. As you continue to add more and more friends, other people will start to add you and soon you will literally have thousands of friends on Facebook.

Finally, I also want to add that you don't have to specifically target MLM distributors to make this work. In fact, if you are new to this, I actually recommend that you DO NOT target MLM distributors. Instead, find a group or fan page that has hundreds or thousands of people who have something in common with you.

For instance, if you are an avid golfer, you can find fan pages and groups that are related to golfing and add other golfers as friends. You can engage in a great conversation on golf and with a link to your primary business opportunity, you should be able to get a lot of new customers and new distributors utilizing this strategy.

Also, if you are looking for other strategies on how to generate free MLM leads, make sure you check out my free MLM lead generation report.

The Prosperity Mindset In Your Network Marketing Business

2009-12-01T16:10:00.002-05:00

One of the main reasons why I believe that many distributors struggle in network marketing has nothing to do with their skill set. It has nothing to do with their company. It has nothing to do with their compensation plan. I believe many distributors struggle because they lack the prosperity mindset.

Distributors in our industry are FAMOUS for self sabotage. I guarantee you practically every single one of you do this. I do it myself. Your mindset simply won't allow you to truly believe that you can have what you say you want in your life.

So instead of identifying what the REAL reason is for your lack of success, you blame all of these external factors. You blame your upline for not being available to take your 3 way calls. You blame your downline because they are lazy. You blame your parent company because the price of the products are too high. You blame your prospects because they are too stupid to recognize a good opportunity. You blame everybody and everything else for your lack of success when the real reason is because you lack a prosperity mindset.

One of my mentors who is a Pastor says it best. He says we are designed and created by God for success, but we are programmed and conditioned by society for failure. We are programmed by the media, by family members, by friends, by the education system, by our jobs, by our religions in some cases, by all of these other outside influences to shy away from success.

So when it comes time to do your exposures, to go to your weekly opportunity meeting, to go to your international convention, you find any excuse to not do those things. Why? Because if you become successful, then your friends and family won't like you anymore. You will be classified as greedy or bad because you are rich. Everyone will try to take your money away. All of the negative connotations associated with wealth that are programmed deep into your subconscious begin to take over and stop you from doing the things that are necessary for success.

By the way, for those of you who believe the bible is a spiritual book, yet you somehow believe that being wealthy is bad, let me help you out. Some of the biggest heroes in the bible were wealthy.

Abraham was wealthy. Issac was wealthy. Jacob was wealthy. Joseph was wealthy. Esther was wealthy. David was wealthy once he became King. Job was extremely wealthy, lost it all and then got it back double the amount. Solomon was wealthy. I can go on and on and list all of the wealthy heroes in the bible. So throw away that erroneous mindset that you have to be poor to be spiritual.

One of the best trainers in the network marketing industry in the area of the prosperity mindset is Randy Gage. So I found this video for you that I think you will enjoy to help you with your prosperity mindset in your network marketing business.

If you are reading this article from a website other than my blog and you cannot see the video, visit my blog at http://web204mlm.blogspot.com and look for the blog entry with the date of December 1st, 2009. There, you will be able to watch the video.

Interview By Mike Dillard Of Robert Kiyosaki

2009-11-30T16:15:00.003-05:00

Mike Dillard, one of the leading direct sales distributors in the area of attraction and internet based marketing strategies for the direct sales, MLM and network marketing industry did an interview last year with the co-author of the best selling "Rich Dad" book series, Robert Kiyosaki.

I have been a supporter of the Rich Dad franchise since the early part of this decade. I met Mr. Kiyosaki personally on two occasions. The first, my wife and I were invited to a book launch party at the home of co-author Sharon Lechter. The second, I volunteered to help staff the booth of the Rich Dad company at a Learning Annex event where he was speaking at several years ago.

What you may not realize is that even though Kiyosaki made the bulk of his fortune in traditional business and real estate, he is a huge fan of the network marketing industry. In fact, he was even a guest speaker at one of the twice a year conventions that the network marketing company I am involved with hosts.

In this video, which is basically a recording of a conference call that I was actually on, Robert Kiyosaki talks about the importance of understanding what is going on in our current economic environment. On the call, he talks about why we as network marketers are in such a great position and why he recommends network marketing.

If you are reading this from a website other than my blog and you cannot see the video, you can visit my blog directly at http://web204mlm.com and it will be the first entry on the page if you are visiting this today, which is November 30th, 2009. If you are visiting this sometime after, just look for the November 30th, 2009 entry and you will find it.

How To Build Your Direct Sales Business On Thanksgiving

2009-11-25T12:00:00.002-05:00

The Thanksgiving holiday is a wonderful time to build your direct sales business. Often you have the opportunity to interact with family members and/or friends who you haven't seen, in some cases for a year or more. There is a right way and there is a wrong way to build your direct sales business during the Thanksgiving holiday. Here's my take on how to build your business without alienating your family.

Some distributors use the opportunity of having people over their house as an opportunity to turn thanksgiving dinner into an in home presentation. BAD IDEA! Your friends and family didn't come over to your house to hear a sales pitch. They came over to eat, catch up and have good times. It is stunts like this that give the direct sales industry a bad name.

Thanksgiving is also not the time to turn your home into an infomercial for your direct sales business. This is not the time to be leaving marketing materials and product samples all over the house! That is weird and if you want to attract your family and friends to your business, the best way to do that is to be normal, not weird.

So what is the best way to build your direct sales business during the thanksgiving holiday?

On Thanksgiving day, what you want to do is be normal. Pretend that you aren't involved in your business opportunity. What are the things that you would talk about? What are the things that you would do? Those are the things that you should be talking about and doing during the holiday, not trying to sell your family and friends on your opportunity. I personally wouldn't mention my opportunity at all during the Thanksgiving festivities.

There is one exception to this rule where I believe it is OK to talk about your opportunity. If you are in a situation where all of your family members and friends have already been exposed to your business, it is then OK to talk about it. However, when I say talk about it, I'm not referring to pitching them on it. You just want to talk about it like you would if someone asked you about your job or profession.

One of your friends or family members might ask you "So how's that business of yours going?" Darnell Self, one of the top income earners in my direct sales business opportunity has a response that I love. Anytime one of his friends or family members ask him how his business is going he responds "It's incredible!"

What if your business isn't doing that well and you aren't making any money? Darnell Self says that by responding "it's incredible" you are still providing an honest response even if your business is not doing well. For example, isn't in incredible that no one showed up to your in home presentation? Isn't it incredible how people tell you they will come to your local opportunity meeting and then they flake out? So your business really is "incredible" regardless of whether you are doing well or not.

The best time to share your business with your family members and friends is when you are about to leave and on a one on one basis. Don't announce to everyone that you want to share your business with them. Go to everyone that you want to expose one on one and expose them to your business that way. You should always use a third party tool, like a DVD or a magazine. Alternatively you can get their phone number and call them later and expose them that way.

The day after thanksgiving (Black Friday) is an excellent opportunity to expose people to your business. There are going to be a LOT of people that are going to be out shopping. You can use that opportunity as an excellent opportunity to get a lot of exposures out in the marketplace.

Some companies like YTB (Shop YTB) and Pre-Paid Legal (Blastoff Network) now have stratigic alliances with other companies where they can offer free shopping portals that you can sign people up for, allow them to get cash back on their shopping and expose them to your opportunity all at the same time. Some of these sites, you even make money when the people you sign up shop, up to a certain number of levels in the organization. What better time to talk about getting cash back on shopping than on Black Friday?

If you can get a bunch of postcards made up that talk about your free shopping portal and go to a public place where you can give those postcards out to people, you can generate a lot of free leads for your business. I recommend that you send them to some type of lead capture page first and then send them to your free shopping portal so they can sign up. This way you get their email address and phone number and you can follow up with them.

Even if your particular company doesn't have a free shopping portal (Note - You can use Blastoff for free even if you are not in Pre-Paid Legal, just make sure you send them to a lead capture page first before giving them your Blastoff website so you can contact them and expose YOUR opportunity), you can still get out a lot of exposures during Black Friday.

I personally wouldn't recommend the postcard approach if you are promoting your opportunity directly. The best approach is to just go out there, get into normal conversations with people and right before you are about to leave the situation, say "By the Way..." and then use whatever approach you normally use when you want to expose someone to your business that you don't know.

Black Friday is also a good time to be working the phones. There are a lot of people who aren't into the whole shopping thing and many of those people are going to be home because they don't have work on Friday. A lot of your contacts who you may have previously had trouble getting in touch with, you will be able to reach them on Friday.

This is the approach that I personally recommend when building your direct sales business during the thanksgiving holiday.

MLM Business Operates By Small Town Rules?

2009-11-24T12:00:00.001-05:00

This video has huge implications in the business world at large and in particular, in the MLM industry. When you take a look at many of the MLM companies these days, there really isn't a whole lot that separates them. The health and wellness companies all have similar products that promise similar benefits. ALL of the companies make the same promise, that they can serve as a vehicle to help you reach your financial goals.

Whether you like it or not, the fact is you are also in competition with other distributors INSIDE of your own network marketing company. Prior to the internet if you exposed a prospect to your business opportunity, pretty much their only option to get involved was to join you because chances are, they probably didn't know anybody else doing the business besides you.

Those days are over! You can expose someone to your business opportunity and if they like your product or opportunity but don't like you, they can very easily find someone else on the internet who is involved in your opportunity and sign up with THEM instead of you. I can't tell you how many people I have signed up on the internet who was exposed to my business by someone else, but for whatever reason they didn't want to work with the person that initially exposed them so they came to me.

Over the next 10 years you are going to see MLM business operate by small town rules. Especially with the evolution of social media. Everyone is going to know everybody else. Trust me, it's already happening. I went to a little meetup at ESPN with some other network marketing distributors and ran into one of my customers that I met on Facebook. We were sitting at the same table and didn't even recognize each other until we starting talking to each other and eventually put two and two together.

What's going to give you a competitive advantage is your ability to provide MORE than what your competitors are offering, both the ones that are in other MLM companies, as well as the ones that are in your MLM opportunity.

Why should I sign up with you? How do I know that you have what it takes to help me reach my goals? The internet offers some powerful tools to help you gain that competitive advantage. I personally think that you are insane if you are involved in MLM and you don't have your own blog. Don't you think my prospective customers or distributors are going to feel a lot more comfortable signing up with me when they see the hundreds of articles and posts that I have authored on this blog about building a successful MLM business?

"But I'm not an expert on anything" you say? First off, that's probably not true. You don't have to be an expert in the area of MLM to be a successful recruiter. Leverage the areas that you are already an expert. I have a business partner who is the founder and CEO of the Deaf Welcome foundation. She's already hit the leadership bonus position in the compensation plan, helped someone on her team do the same thing and has an organization of over 600 distributors in 20 states in her first 12 months. How did she do it? She tapped into the community of her expertise, which is the deaf.

What communities can you tap into? By tapping into those communities, that gives you the ability to operate your MLM business by small town rules. Doing so gives you a huge competitive advantage when building your MLM business.

If you need help with this, make sure you check out my free report, where I reveal the 7 strategies that I personally use to identify as many prospects as I want and need to build my MLM business.

Develop A Reward System For Your Network Marketing Business

2009-11-23T12:00:00.003-05:00

On Friday evening, I took my wife to an upscale steak house in Manhattan as part of a new rewards system that we put into place. I think it was 90 days ago when we set this system up and already it is working.

The way it works is simple. We set certain savings milestones, which means that we have to have a certain amount of money saved up in our bank account. Once we reach one of those milestones, it triggers a reward.

The food was absolutely incredible! My wife really enjoyed herself as did I. More importantly, we have already mapped out our next savings milestone and the reward that will be attached to that milestone. Our next reward is orchestra seating at a Broadway show and dinner for 2 at Tavern on the Green in Central Park.

While our system is specific for our personal finances, I believe that everyone should have a reward system for building their network marketing business. You should tie rewards based on hitting pin levels or production levels for the first time and have a reward that is appropriate for the accomplishment.

For instance, you probably don't want to buy a new car for hitting a pin or production level that's only going to net you $200 a month. However, you most certainly can reward yourself with a new cell phone for that type of accomplishment.

Some people also have punishments for not hitting their goal. I personally don't believe in that. I don't believe you should be punishing yourself for not hitting a goal. I think not getting the reward is an appropriate consequence without then tying a punishment to not accomplishing your goal. Plus if you fail to reach your goal too many times, when you add a punishment to it, that can be devastating to your self confidence in building a network marketing business.

Direct Sales Business Retention Strategies

2009-11-20T12:00:00.000-05:00

Direct Sales Business Retention Strategies
Part 3 - Tips To Increase Your Customer & Distributor Retention

In part 2 yesterday, I illustrated using a simple scenario how small increases in retention can result in large increases in your income. Today I am going to share with you 3 tips that you can implement into your direct sales business starting today that can increase your income.

Tip #1 - Get your customers to use your product or service

The number one reason why a customer stops ordering or cancels their subscription to your product or service is because they aren't using it. Therefore, the #1 tip that you can apply to your business right now to increase retention is to get your customers to use your product.

How do you do this? One way is to ask them either during the sales process or directly after you sign them up to list some reasons why they can use your product right away.

If you have a health based product, one reason may be to lose weight or increase energy. If your product has elements that contribute to weight loss and/or energy increase by reminding your customer of these benefits, often that simple reminder is all they need to get them to use the product.

Another way you can do this is to schedule some time after the sale where you can show them HOW to use your product. Some products, you almost HAVE to do this, like if you're selling some type of video phone or if your selling some type of specialized service like an online greeting card delivery system.

However, even if you are just selling a vitamin or a health drink, you can still schedule time to show them how to use the product. Most health products have a recommended minimum serving. You can show them what that is so that they know how much of it they need to take daily to get the benefits that your product offers.

Tip #2 - Follow up periodically with your customers and distributors

You should make follow up calls periodically to your customers. I can't begin to tell you the amount of customers that I have saved almost accidently simply because I decided to call and check up on one of my customers.

The same applies to your distributors. If your distributor is serious, you will be working with him or her on a daily basis so you won't have to necessarily make follow up calls. However, the fact of the matter is most distributors aren't serious. Therefore, with most of them, you WILL have to make period follow up calls to check up on them.

Why do you want to make follow up calls to distributors? Timing is everything. Just because someone decides to get started in your opportunity doesn't mean that they are ready to actually begin to work your opportunity at a serious level. It also doesn't mean that they will always NOT take your opportunity seriously. Timing is everything and if you catch a non-active distributor at the right time, that non-active distributor could become one of your biggest producers.

Tip #3 - Continue to resell your customers and distributors on the product

The sale doesn't just stop once the customer signs the application. You need to constantly continue to resell your customers and your distributors on the product. How do you do this? There are many techniques that you can use to continue to resell the product.

I highly recommend that you have an email list of all of your customers and distributors. With an email list, you can send out weekly or monthly updates where you can continously resell your customers and distributors on the product. Share product stories and testimonials of other people who were able to benefit from the product. Share tips and strategies on how they can better use the product. Send suggestions on different ways they can use the product.

Aweber is the #1 email system in the industry. They are who I use and they are who I recommend to manage your email list.

Retention is an important aspect of building a direct sales business. Unfortunately you don't hear too much about it either from your upline or even from industry trainers. I hope that you find these tips beneficial. More importantly, I hope that you take these tips and apply them to your business so that you can increase your retention rates, as well as your income!

MLM Business Retention Strategies

2009-11-19T12:00:00.000-05:00

MLM Business Retention Strategies
Part 2 - The Difference In Retention And Income

In part 1 yesterday, I explained why it is important that you resist the temptation to slam people into your business just to achieve some type of short term benefit. However, before I go into the tips, it is important for you to understand why you want your retention to increase.

Building a MLM business requires an investment of time and a financial investment as well. That investment is going to be relatively the same whether you have a poor level of retention or a good level of retention.

Let's take two distributors that are in the same network marketing company. Suppose each distributor makes $50 commission on an initial order and $10 commission per month for every month they retain the customer.

Distributor 1 (we'll call him John) signs up 5 customers a month for 12 consecutive months. At the end of the 12 months, 50% of his customers are still with the company. Distributor 2 (we'll call her Jane) also signs up 5 customers a month for 12 consecutive months. At the end of the 12 months, 60% of her customers are still with the company. Let's see how much money they would make.

John's Income Earnings
Upfront commissions - $3000
Monthly Residual After Month 12 - $300

Jane's Income Earners
Upfront commissions - $3000
Monthly Residual After Month 12 - $360

Under this scenario, even though Jane only has a 10% higher personal retention than John, her monthly residual is actually 20% higher than John's monthly residual. Jane makes $60 more a month than John.

Now let's say both John and Jane had 5 personally sponsored representatives that got the exact same results that they got and they earned on average $2 monthly residual per customer from their team. Those 5 reps each had 5 and those 25 reps each had 5. Here is how John and Jane's organization would look:

John and Jane

1st level - 5 representatives
2nd level - 25 representatives
3rd level - 125 representatives

They would have a grand total of 155 representatives who each signed up 60 customers in a year. However, each of John's reps would only have 30 customers at the end of the year, whereas each of Jane's representatives would have 36 customers at the end of the year. What would be the difference in monthly residual income?

John's Income Earnings
# of representatives = 155
# of customers = 9300
Remaining customers after 12 months = 4650
Monthly residual income = $9300

Jane's Income Earnings
# of representatives = 155
# of customers = 9300
Remaining customers after 12 months = 5580
Monthly residual income = $11160

Jane still has a 20% increase in income compared to John. However, that 20% increase means a difference of $1860 in MONTHLY INCOME!

See why it is important that you focus on retention? Once it duplicates through your organization the difference in income can be staggering. Average tgat $1860 over 12 months and that is a difference of $22320. That difference in income is actually what some people make working a FULL YEAR ON THEIR JOB!

Now that you see the difference that retention makes, tomorrow I can talk about how to actually retain more customers and distributors into your business.

Network Marketing Business Retention Strategies

2009-11-18T12:00:00.001-05:00

Network Marketing Business Retention Strategies
Part 1 - Why It Is Important That You Don't "SLAM" People Into The Business

The network marketing company that I currently work with has a quote that they love to say all the time that I completely agree with. It goes like this...

"The business that stays is the business that pays."

Unfortunately due to the nature of the industry that we are in, there is sometimes a temptation to generate whatever business you can, even if you know that the business is not going to retain. If you are only $100 away from qualifying for your company sponsored incentive trip, yet the final day to qualify is tomorrow, that is a huge temptation to slam someone into the business anyway you can.

Winning that trip by slamming people into the business is congruent with the phrase "you win the battle and lose the war.

So before I go into some network marketing business retention strategies, I want to share with you why it is a bad idea to submit just any kind of business to qualify for incentive trips, car bonuses, promotions in the compensation plan and so on.

#1 - It's bad for the company. Anything that is bad for the company is bad for you as a distributor. When you slam business into the company, the company loses money. When the company loses money, they are unable to make investments that will help you to build your business better.

That means you get lower quality business building tools, less incentive trips, less bonuses, less money in the compensation plan and so on. You might think your one little bad customer might not matter, but think about the thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions of distributors in your company that also have that same mindset.

#2 - It's bad for the customer. If the customer is just signing up to "do you a favor" they are not getting a proper prospective of the value that your product or service offers. This person who might have been a good customer for you now becomes a bad customer because they really don't see the value in what you have to offer.

In addition to that, you are robbing the customer of the benefits and experiences that he or she could have as a result of seeing real value from your products. Whether it is a reduction of weight, an increase of energy or just peace of mind, customers that are slammed into the business never have the opportunity to experience the benefits that our products offer.

#3- It is bad for you. How is it bad for you? Everything that you do duplicates within your organization whether you realize it or not. The good duplicates and the bad duplicates as well. What is amazing is that many times the bad will duplicate EVEN if your team has no idea that you are engaging in this activity.

A good friend of mine who is successful in the industry (he has earned a full time income and has qualified for the leadership bonus in his company's compensation plan for years) shared a story of how this happened to him. Back in the days when he was struggling to qualify for the leadership bonus in the company, he use to "slam" people into the business by making them feel sorry for them.

What he would do is tell people that they need to sign up otherwise he won't be able to qualify for his leadership bonus that month. If they refused, he would try and "guilt trip" them into getting them to sign up. One day he came out of a meeting and he heard one of his distributors in his downline DOING THE EXACT SAME THING HE WAS DOING even though he never taught his team to do this.

Will it take longer for you to have success building the business the right way? That may very well be the case. However, you are much better off building the business the right way than you are slamming people into the business. Trust me, it will catch up to you and you won't like the end results.

I have seen talented people QUIT THIS INDUSTRY because of the negative repercussions that came with them slamming people into the business finally caught up with them and they couldn't handle it. Save yourself the heartache and build the business the right way.

Coming up tomorrow in part 2, I will share with you some scenarios that shows you the difference that retention can have in your business.

Arbonne International Settles Discrimination Suit

2009-11-17T15:16:00.002-05:00

Arbonne International just announced that they have agreeed to pay $30,000 to settle a discrimination lawsuit. The lawsuit charged that Lisa Wilson, a deaf woman was not hired by the company because of her disability.

The lawsuit was filed on Lisa's behalf by the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. As part of the settlement, in addition to paying the $30,000, the company also agrees to not discriminate in its hiring in the future. They must also provide notification and training to its employees in regards to not discriminating.

This is not the first time we have heard about trouble with Arbonne. Last month, Ty Tribble posted on his blog Arbonne Bankruptcy Rumors and he even has a letter from the CEO of the company addressing the rumors.

So what do I think about Arbonne? Here's my take on what I think about the Arbonne business opportunity and compenstion plan. As for whether I think the company is going under, my personal opinion is no, I don't think the company is going out of business.

However, here is a word of advice for Arbonne representatives. While I'm particularly talking to representatives of Arbonne, this advice applies for representatives in ANY network marketing business, in my opinion.

While I don't think that Arbonne is going out of business, the fact of the matter is I could be wrong. What is your plan should Arbonne go out of business???

Here are some tips that I believe will help you...

#1. If you have a full time job and you do Arbonne part time, keep your full time job for as long as possible. You shouldn't even think about quitting until the income from your Arbonne business is consistently matching the income that you make from your full time job. I personally prefer the "Jim Rohn" scenario. Jim Rohn use to say as part of his recruiting script, "I found a way to earn twice as much money part time as I make full time on my job, would you like to hear my story?"

#2. As you start to make money in Arbonne look for ways that you can invest your earnings outside of your Arbonne business. This allows you to diversify your income and assets and dramatically reduces the risk of the impact that an Arbonne bankruptcy could have on your personal finances.

#3. Build strong relationships with the people within your downline, your upline and your sideline especially the ones that you didn't know prior to the Arbonne business opportunity. This way, if Arbonne does go under you have a tremendous amount of contacts at your disposal that you can tap into when you decide what is the next business opportunity you are going to build.

Other than following my 3 tips, don't worry about it. Focus on building your business and do not allow yourself to be distracted by the distractions.

Make sure you download and read a free copy of my Endless Streams of Prospects so that you can have as many people to talk to about your Arbonne business opportunity as you need to be successful.

Go For No In Your MLM Business

2009-11-16T11:25:00.002-05:00

I believe one of the biggest areas that hold back distributors from having success in their MLM business is having the wrong philosophy about when people tell them "No." There is a great book entitled Go For No - Yes is the destination No is how you get there by Richard Fenton & Andrea Waltz that I highly recommend that you read.

The story is a fictional story about an average salesperson who discovers the power of no in his sales business.

One of my favorite and most impactful chapters is the chapter on "setting no goals." Do you notice that the majority of distributors in the majority of network marketing companies submit the majority of their business at the end of the month?

Why is that? It is because they are trying to hit their qualifications and they need to get that business in by the end of the month in order to hit those qualifications.

Now wouldn't you agree that those same distributors probably had to talk to a certain number of prospects that last week of the month to meet their qualifications? They might have had to talk to 20 people that week to get the minimum that they need for qualifications.

See the problem is most distributors have YES goals. In other words, their goals are driven by their qualification requirements, which are based on people saying YES. Instead of setting goals based on qualifications what if you set goals based on the amount of people that tell you NO?

So let's say it took you 20 people to talk to and 4 people signed up to make your qualifications. What if you made a minor shift and set a goal for the amount of people that you want to tell you no?

Well previously you would stop your prospecting efforts once you meet your qualification requirements. If your goals were based on NOs instead of qualifications, you will continue to work even after you meet your qualifications because you are looking for number of NOs, not meeting your qualifications.

Here's a example of the difference between a distributor that I believe one of the biggest areas that hold back distributors from having success in their MLM business is having the wrong philosophy about when people tell them "No." There is a great book entitled Go For No - Yes is the destination No is how you get there by Richard Fenton & Andrea Waltz that I highly recommend that you read.

The story is a fictional story about an average salesperson who discovers the power of no in his sales business.

One of my favorite and most impactful chapters is the chapter on "setting no goals." Do you notice that the majority of distributors in the majority of network marketing companies submit the majority of their business at the end of the month?

Why is that? It is because they are trying to hit their qualifications and they need to get that business in by the end of the month in order to hit those qualifications.

Now wouldn't you agree that those same distributors probably had to talk to a certain number of prospects that last week of the month to meet their qualifications? They might have had to talk to 20 people that week to get the minimum that they need for qualifications.

See the problem is most distributors have YES goals. In other words, their goals are driven by their qualification requirements, which are based on people saying YES. Instead of setting goals based on qualifications what if you set goals based on the amount of people that tell you NO?

So let's say it took you 20 people to talk to and 4 people signed up to make your qualifications. What if you made a minor shift and set a goal for the amount of people that you want to tell you no?

Well previously you would stop your prospecting efforts once you meet your qualification requirements. If your goals were based on NOs instead of qualifications, you will continue to work even after you meet your qualifications because you are looking for number of NOs, not meeting your qualifications.I believe one of the biggest areas that hold back distributors from having success in their MLM business is having the wrong philosophy about when people tell them "No." There is a great book entitled Go For No - Yes is the destination No is how you get there by Richard Fenton & Andrea Waltz that I highly recommend that you read.

The story is a fictional story about an average salesperson who discovers the power of no in his sales business.

One of my favorite and most impactful chapters is the chapter on "setting no goals." Do you notice that the majority of distributors in the majority of network marketing companies submit the majority of their business at the end of the month?

Why is that? It is because they are trying to hit their qualifications and they need to get that business in by the end of the month in order to hit those qualifications.

Now wouldn't you agree that those same distributors probably had to talk to a certain number of prospects that last week of the month to meet their qualifications? They might have had to talk to 20 people that week to get the minimum that they need for qualifications.

See the problem is most distributors have YES goals. In other words, their goals are driven by their qualification requirements, which are based on people saying YES. Instead of setting goals based on qualifications what if you set goals based on the amount of people that tell you NO?

So let's say it took you 20 people to talk to and 4 people signed up to make your qualifications. What if you made a minor shift and set a goal for the amount of people that you want to tell you no?

Well previously you would stop your prospecting efforts once you meet your qualification requirements. If your goals were based on NOs instead of qualifications, you will continue to work even after you meet your qualifications because you are looking for number of NOs, not meeting your qualifications.

So make this important shift in your philosophy. Instead of always looking to qualify start looking to see how many people you can get to tell you no. You are going to have a lot more people that tell you no in your MLM business than the ones that will help you meet your qualifications. So since there are going to be more NOs than people that tell you YES, doesn't it make sense to set goals based around the amount of people that tell you NO?

This is definitely a principle that I'm going to be applying to my MLM business. If you decide to apply it as well, let me know how it works out for you.

Also, if you need a strategy for finding people to tell you NO to begin with, make sure you check out my free prospecting report where I reveal the 7 strategies that I personally use to build an endless amount of prospects to talk to about my MLM business.

Is Internet Network Marketing Dead?

2009-11-06T13:22:00.002-05:00

Last week I got an email from Mike Dillard of the Magnetic Sponsoring Fame and I had to laugh when I saw it. The subject of the email was "Is our future (gasp!) Offline?"

The reason why I laughed was because of who was sending me the email. Here is what Mike Dillard has to say on his website advertising his book...

Look, here's the cold, hard truth you won't hear at the Thursday night MLM meetings or in your company's literature:

In the Internet age...

The "Old School" Prospecting Methods Will Kill
Your Chances Of Making Any Real Money In MLM.

In fact, using those "dinosaur" MLM tactics is like trying to fill a leaking bucket.

Then when I read my email, here is what he has to say regarding baby boomers interested in joining the MLM profession...

They don't know how to market online - at all. And they don't really want to... Ever.

And I can't say that I blame them.

They've done quite well for themselves using the people skills they've acquired over the last 40 years. The thought of spending the next 12+ months mastering PPC, HTML, and copywriting doesn't sound like the same kind of fun that it does for us in the "Nintendo Generation", nor will it allow them to reach their financial goals immediately.

Frankly, they're better off using "old-school" prospecting techniques, and so are most of their friends in the "baby-boomer" generation. That's what they know.

This is what I have been saying for the longest on this blog. Internet marketing strategies are great. However, they will NEVER replace traditional network marketing strategies and tactics. The bottom line is that the VAST majority of top income earners did it using traditional network marketing strategies.

It is also a fact that most of the leaders these days are advocating a DUAL approach where you combine BOTH traditional strategies as well as internet based strategies.

Here is a great article that puts things in the proper prospective Internet Network Marketing Recruiting – Is This The End Of The Road?

If you are interested in a great free report that combines both traditional network marketing strategies with internet based strategies to help you build your contact list, make sure you download the Endless Streams Of Prospects report today!

How To Expose People You Meet To Your MLM Opportunity

2009-10-29T19:27:00.002-04:00

I'm actually at my house trying to finish up some last minute work before I get ready to watch game two of the world series. While at home, I was presented with a great opportunity to expose someone to my MLM opportunity.

Today, I am going to quickly share with you my experience and show you how you can apply this to your own business. With all the focus on building a network marketing business on the internet, calling leads and so on, a lot of us are missing out on some great prospects that we can share our opportunity with.

Anyway, my doorbell rings. I look out the window and there's a gentleman at the door that I didn't recognize. I open the door and he asks if Mr. Cooper is home. I told him I am Mr. Cooper. He explains to me that he wanted to drop by to talk to me about a particular candidate that is running for office in my neighborhood.

So we're talking about the candidate for a couple of minutes. He asked me whether I was prepared to vote for him. I told him that I'm leaning towards his candidate but that I'm not decided yet. He also asked me that if I do vote for him would I select a particular party. I told him I would. I understand that game. The smaller parties outside of the big two here in the United States need as many votes as possible because it influences their funding.

Anyway, he thanks me for my time and begins to walk away. Before he left, I called him back and said...

"By the way, I'm just curious since you're already here, I'd thought I'd ask you...do you keep your income options open?"

He said "yes."

I said "Great, hold on a second, I got something for you..."

I ran upstairs and got one of my DVDs that I use to promote my MLM opportunity. I came back down and handed it to him. I then said..."

"This may or may not be for you, but I'm doing well with this opportunity and I am just looking to promote this to as many people in the community as possible."

I handed him the DVD and then said "What's the best phone number I can reach you at?"

He gave me his phone number and thanked me for giving him the DVD. I then closed the door and went on about my business.

Now mind you, I didn't do this exposure as smoothly as I would have liked to do. In fact, I almost completely forgot to expose him at all. Normally, what I like to do is ask them "If I gave you this DVD would you look at it?" I also like to find out when they can look at it, confirm that they would have looked at it if I call them at a time after that and then get their phone number. Eric Worre does a great training on this technique that you can check out if you are interested.

Despite the fact that this wasn't one of my best exposures, the bottom line is a bad exposure is always better than no exposure at all. When I call this guy back, he might be completely excited, I recruit him and he becomes one of the next success stories in my MLM business. Or maybe he doesn't do much, but he leads me to someone who becomes the next success story.

Now notice, I didn't go out to the mall looking for people to expose. I met this guy during my regular routine and activity and was able to expose him to my business in the moment. Those are the types of exposures that I believe are the best, because they are authentic and you come across like you're doing them a favor as oppose to them doing you a favor.

So think about all the ways you can get these types of exposures during the course of your daily routine and activity. Such as...

a) You are having breakfast, lunch or dinner at a restaurant where you are being served by a waiter.
b) A telemarketer calls you to sell you something.
c) Someone stops to ask you for directions.
d) You are in the supermarket and you ask someone if they know where they keep the eggs.
e) You are at the gas station and you stop to talk to the guy on the other side of the pump.
f) And more...

Some of you could have so many prospects just from this one technique that you won't ever have to do anything else. For others, this could just be a strategy you can add on top of anything else you are doing because it only takes an extra 60 seconds to do this.

So don't forget to take advantage of "In The Moment" MLM prospecting. You never know who you might be missing out on if you are not doing this.

Also, this little strategy is only one of SEVEN strategies that I personally use to build an endless amount of prospects that I can expose to my MLM opportunity. In fact, I have so many prospects, I honestly do not have the time to call them all. Some of my prospecting efforts are even residual, which means I did something one time and I get prospects over and over and over again from that activity that I did ONCE!

If you would like to be able to do that as well, I highly recommend that you download my free report on the 7 Strategies To Build An Endless Stream of Prospects today!

Paul J Meyer Died Today - A True Icon & A Life Well Lived!

2009-10-26T16:41:00.004-04:00

PAUL J MEYER
May 21, 1928 - October 26, 2009

I was sad to hear that Paul J Meyer passed away early this morning. He was a gentleman that I really wanted to have the opportunity to meet because of the tremendous life that he lived and the impact that he has had on millions of people all around the world. He was 81 years old when he passed.

Born to immigrant parents from Germany, Paul is a classic example of the American success story. He started off his career in service to his country by serving in the military. After serving his country he moved on to insurance sales. My understanding is that he applied to well over 50 companies, being rejected by each and every one before finally being accepted by a company and given one of the worst territories. By the time he was only 27 years old, Paul was already a millionaire insurance agent and insurance broker.

However, it is his contributions to the personal development industry that Paul is most well known for. Many refer to him as the father of the personal development industry because he was one of the first people to produce audio versions of personal development. It was through a passion for personal development that Paul started his two personal development companies which are:

Success Motivation International, Inc

Leadership Management, Inc

A couple of years ago he also launched a publishing company known as Leading Edge Publishing Company, which publishes many of the books he has authored, including one of my favorites which is 24 Keys That Bring Complete Success (Fortune Family & Faith)

Paul was also a deeply religious man, unashamedly speaking about his personal relationship with his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. However, what impresses me most about him is for all of his professional accomplishments they have not had a negative impact on his family life. Unfortunately when you read about most leaders who have earned the type of income this man has earned, they are usually divorced several times. Not Paul. He was married to his wife Jane for over 37 years and EVERY WEEK he sent flowers to his wife! Even more impressive is the fact that he has five children and 15 grandchildren. A lot of kids usually want to move far away from their parents. However, all five of Paul's children live within 2 hours or less driving distance away from him.

Paul J Meyer was also my upline in Pre-Paid Legal Services. Along with his daughter Leslie and his son in law, Kevin, they co-founded LK Marketing Group. This group is the #3 income earners in all of Pre-Paid Legal, earning well over 1.5 million dollars a year. A multi-millionaire many times over (last year Paul earned well over 100 million dollars for the year), Paul donates his half of Pre-Paid Legal commissions to religious ministries and charities all over the world.

Every year, Paul invites every distributor in the organization that has reached the Gold Executive Director position or above to his ranch in Waco, Texas for a leadership retreat. It was an event that I was looking forward to qualifying for in the future and having the opportunity to meet Paul in person.

I am so grateful that he has taken the opportunity to document so many of his philosophies and attitudes in books and tapes. Now that he is no longer here, I won't have the opportunity to meet him in person. However, I can still benefit from his years of knowledge and incredible success philosophy through his books and tapes.

Paul J Meyer - A great man, mentor, role model and a classic example of a life well lived. He will be missed!

I've included some links to some additional resources if you would like to learn more about this amazing man!

Read Paul J. Meyer’s Obituary

Paul J Meyer - What It Takes To Be A Winner - June/July Success Magazine 2009

MLM Training - Fear Of Failure? Fear Of Success? Part 1

2009-10-23T23:03:00.006-04:00

Why Overcoming Fear Of Failure and/or Fear Of Success Is The Most Important MLM Training Topic That You Have Likely Never Been Trained On!

You know what I find most interesting about MLM training? The large majority of the training resources available deal with how to build a MLM business. Everyone has their different philosophies and techniques on how to actually go about building a downline.

However, for the overwhelming majority of those of you reading this who have not achieved the success you want, the problem isn't you lack the how tos.

The how tos are so readily available, it's amazing. Do a search for mlm training at Google or your favorite search engine and you will find a host of websites and other resources teaching you how to build a downline.

Yet I bet if you look at all of those resources most, if not all of them deal with what I believe to be the NUMBER ONE reason why most MLM distributors fail to achieve the success they want in this industry.

It is because of an inability to overcome fear of failure, fear of success or in many cases both!

Overcoming The Fear Of Failure In Your MLM Business

Let's start with the fear of failure because this is the one that I believe I personally struggle with the most. A fear of failure is when you are afraid to do something because you believe that you will not get the result you are looking for.

So in the case of building a MLM business, a distributor is afraid to build the business because they are afraid that their efforts will not produce a successful downline organization. I believe one of the biggest contributors to the fear of failure is our education system.

We all know that in life one of the best ways to learn many principles is by trial and error. You cannot read a book on swimming or riding a bike. You only learn how to swim or ride a bike by trial and error.

However our school system actually punishes our kids for failing and making mistakes. They are taught that they must get good grades in school, else they won't be able to go to college. If they don't go to college they won't get a good job. If they don't get a good job they won't live a good life.

Fear of failure is simply the result of negative programming and misconceptions about success and failure.

How can you tell if you suffer from a fear of failure? Are you a sore loser or were you a sore loser as a kid? Are you a perfectionist and you feel that you cannot do anything until you have it down packed absolutely perfect? Do you constantly look back at your life to previous mistakes that you made and say to yourself "if only I would have done this, or if only I would have done that?" If so, you likely suffer from a fear of failure.

One of the best ways to overcome a fear of failure is by engaging in MASSIVE ACTION! Some people would have never learned how to swim unless someone didn't push them into the water where they had no choice but to sink or swim. This is the type of action that you need to take in order to get over a fear of failure in your MLM business.

Are you afraid of talking to prospects because you think no one will want to join you in your business? Then talk to a lot of prospects all at one time. If you absolutely cannot get over the fear to get yourself to start talking to prospects for your own business, go get a part time sales position immediately!

Many of the best distributors in the industry today were absolutely terrified to talk to prospects. However, after getting a part time job where they had to talk to lots of people, they were able to overcome their fear of failure through massive action.

If you need prospects to talk to, download my free MLM prospecting report where I reveal the 7 strategies that I personally use to generate endless amount of prospects for me and my business.

In part 2 I will talk about fear of success and how to overcome that fear.

The 5 Rules Of Closing In Your Network Marketing Business

2009-10-21T17:10:00.003-04:00

One of the biggest struggles that many network marketing business distributors deal with is trying to close out their prospects. It's amazing how many people are so terrified of asking for the sale or recruit.

One of my mentors in my upline talks about this all the time. He will do a three way call for one of the distributors on the team. The prospect is ready to go so he turns the call back over to the distributor. Out of curiosity he stays on the line to hear what happens next. Here is an example of how a typical conversation will go.

DISTRIBUTOR - Wow wasn't that great?

PROSPECT - Yeah, that was great!

DISTRIBUTOR - So...um...do you have any more questions?

Of course the person has more questions! They just made the decision to get started in a business that they absolutely know nothing about! In fact, they might not even know what questions they should be asking!

Now I want to clearly point out that closing is not about CONVINCING someone to join your business. I once heard it said that if you have to convince them to join, you are going to have to convince them to actually go out and work.

We need to stop making this business so complicated. The bottom line is as a network marketing distributor, our job is to give the prospect enough information about our products, services and business opportunity so that they can make an intelligent decision as far as whether this business opportunity is right for them or not. Our job is to then collect that decision.

If the opportunity is right for your prospect, they will decide to join with you. If the opportunity is not right for your prospect, they will decide not to join you. It as that simple.

Anyway, here is a great video training by MLM Trainer Doug Firebaugh on the 5 rules of closing in your network marketing business. This is a great video. Now I also recommend that you proceed closing out your prospect by doing a 3 way call with another experienced distributor in your network marketing organization.

And of course if you actually need some prospects to talk to, consider downloading my free mlm prospecting report that reveals the 7 strategies that I personally use to build my network marketing organization. Considering the fact that my organization continues to grow every single month whether I personally sponsor anyone or not, I think what I'm doing works pretty well.

Anyway, here is the Doug Firebaugh Video. If you are reading this on another website and you cannot see the video, visit my network marketing blog located at http://web204mlm.blogspot.com and look for the post entitled "The 5 Rules of Closing In Your Network Marketing Business'

You Already Know The Answers To Your MLM Success

2009-10-19T15:01:00.003-04:00

Recently I got an email from a distributor in a MLM company. This person wanted me to give them some advice that would help them take their business to the next level. I asked this person what do they think they need to do to take their business to the next level. They replied that they need to be more consistent in following the game plan provided by their company. Being familiar with their company and their game plan, I knew that this person's answer was an accurate one and told this person such.

Many of us in the industry find ourselves in the same boat. It doesn't matter whether you are relatively new to the industry, have been around, built a team but haven't been able to break through to that full time income, or whether you are stuck at six figures (not a bad place to be stuck at!) For the large majority of us, we already know the answers as far as what we have to do to be successful in our MLM business. The problem is we don't do what we know.

This business is not a very complicated business. It's not like we are search engine optimizers where we have to figure out the keyword ratio density and figure out how many inbound links we need to get into a website with what keywords to get listed in the search engines for the word or phrase we want. Unless of course, you are into the whole internet marketing/network marketing business model, but that's another story!

Here is network marketing in a nutshell...

1. You find people to network with.

2. You find people to market to.

3. You plug the interested people into a system that teaches them how to find people to network with and find people to market to.

I can almost guarantee you that each and every one of you either know how to do what you need to do to build your business or if you don't know, you at least know who you can go ask anything that you need help with. So the issue isn't not knowing how to do the business. The issue is you just aren't doing what you know.

So stop wasting your time trying to figure this business out. You don't need to listen to your company training CDs again for the 164th time before you go out and start building the business. There are only 4 things you need to do...

1. Set a goal.
2. Put together a plan to achieve that goal.
3. Execute on the plan.
4. Review your plan and execution and make tweaks until you achieve the goal. Then you start all over again back at step #1.

For most of us, regardless of whether we are stuck at broke, stuck at break even, stuck at small monthly profits, stuck at a nice 4 figure monthly part time income, stuck at a nice 4 figure monthly full time income or stuck at six figures, the reason why we are stuck is because we are either not goal setting, not working from a plan, not executing the plan we already put together or we are not reviewing it and making the necessary tweaks. It has very little to do with not knowing what we need to do.

I made money my first month in network marketing. I didn't know anything about attending local business overview events. I didn't know anything about getting on team training calls. I didn't know anything about attraction marketing, squeeze pages, funded proposals or any of that fancy internet stuff everybody is trying to teach us these days. All I knew is show this DVD to people and if they like it, have them fill out the application and check to see if the money got wired into my bank account the next business day!

We don't like to hear that it's a simple business. We want the business to be complicated. One of my mentors always says people don't like simplicity because there is nothing to hide behind if it's simple and it is so true. So stop complicating the business, get out there and go build an empire so you can leave a legacy for your children and your children's children!

If you really don't know the answers and you are stuck, go download my free report. It's free! It doesn't cost you a dime. I tell you exactly what I did so that I now have a database of thousands of prospects that I can tap into at any time with more being added on a daily basis. Do you think you would have more success if you had thousands of people you could contact? If so, go download my free report right now.

"But I'm afraid you are going to sell me something" you say? Of course I'm going to try to sell you something. This isn't charity, this is a for profit business. If you're afraid that you are going to be hypnotized by my masterful sales process then give your credit card to your spouse or a friend you trust for all I care before you download the free report. Just stop making excuses and take the action that you need to take to build a successful business.

Otherwise, if you are going to continue to procrastinate, you are going to be just like the people that Jeff Olson talked about in this TPN training. You are going to say "man I wish I had" instead of "gee I'm glad I did."

The TRUTH About Home Business Leads

2009-10-12T15:42:00.002-04:00

Are Home Business Leads A Good Way To Build A MLM Business?

There are a wide variety of opinions regarding the validity of home business leads when building your MLM downline. Some leaders swear by them as a fantastic way of building a business from home. Others feel that they are a waste of time and money. The question is who is correct?

The fact is, both of them are correct. I know a number of leaders who have generated and/or purchased leads of people interested in home businesses successfully. I know of other leaders who have dabbled with them, but simply didn't have the success they were looking for, so they moved on to other strategies for building a business.

First, you must understand that there are two different ways to generate these types of leads for your business. The first way is to purchase them from a leads vendor. The second way is to generate the leads on your own.

I do both and have done both throughout my entire almost five year career in the MLM industry. Here is what I have discovered as far as my experience with these two methods of lead generation.

The Truth About Purchasing Home Business Leads

Purchasing home business leads is the easiest way to get leads. All you have to do is come up with some money and you can have a steady stream of leads for your business. The problem that I found is that the quality of leads in my experience fall anywhere from ok and decent to flat out horrible and a waste of time.

The reason why is because of the way that lead generation companies use to get these leads for you. These companies participate in what is known as a CPA network or Cost Per Action network. These networks compensate website owners to place advertising on their web page. For each website visitor that completes a certain action (in this case, fills out a home business survey), the lead company pays the website a commission.

The problem with this approach is that it is very easy to manipulate the system. A website owner can play games with the system so that they can earn higher commissions. Some of them are just flat out unethical and will fill out fake names to generate commissions.

Others will offer incentives to get people to fill out the survey. For instance, they might say that anyone who fills out the survey will be entered into a drawing to receive a free laptop. With the incentive, the people filling out the survey may not actually be interested in an opportunity, they just want the free incentive.

Now there are some lead vendors that offer some pretty decent quality of leads. These are companies that rely mostly on their own advertising to generate their leads and use CPA networks to only supplement their marketing efforts.

A good example is Cutting Edge Media, who has a number of websites and magazines that they own that they can use as tools to generate leads for their clients. CEM produces a number of Home Business magazines and periodicals that they get out to hundreds of thousands of people a month. You'll pay $1 on the low end up to $5 on the high end. You are also going to need at least $100 to order a minimum number of leads.

Another company you can use is MLM Lead Specialist. Their leads aren't as good as Cutting Edge in my opinion. However, they are a lot cheaper and they do some specials all the time. I've gotten as many as 60 phone interviewed leads for $40. One of my business partners is one of the top 5 recruiters in her state in my company and this is the lead source that she uses.

The Truth About Generating Your Own Home Business Leads

Generating your own leads is definitely the way to go if you want to work a higher quality lead. It's even better if you are able to generate your own leads consisting of specifically people that are interested in the exact business opportunity that you are a part of.

This can be very expensive and/or time consuming. I remember, I was spending like $8 to $13 a lead off pay per click search engines. However for me it was worth it because I was converting them at a profit and I was able to talk to less people then I would have to if I was buying business opportunity leads and get retail customers and new business partners.

The challenge with generating your own leads is that it requires a new set of skills. These are skills that go above and beyond the set of skills you already need to actually acquire new retail customers and distributors for your business opportunity.

To generate your own leads, you will need to learn how to set up lead capture pages. You will need to learn what things like "conversion ratios" and "click through rates" are. Most importantly, you will need to learn how to generate traffic to your website so that you can get leads to begin with.

What I do like though about generating my own leads is that I don't have to worry about them being "surveyed" to death. This is when the person who is the lead fills out a bunch of surveys and gets a bunch of phone calls from a bunch of unprofessional MLM distributors that have no clue how to work leads effectively and vomit all over the prospects with their opportunity. Generally, a lead that I generated is usually filling out my lead capture form only at that point in time.

Another benefit that I like about generating my own leads is that you can replace financial equity with sweat equity. This means that even if you don't have any money, you can make up in work effort and know how what you lack in cash.

I also like the fact that many of the techniques that I use to capture leads have what I like to refer to as a residual effect. What this means is that I do that activity one time and it generates leads for me forever.

For instance, I wrote an article back in April. Since then I have had over 1000 people read that ONE article and I have had hundreds of people visit my website, some of which resulted in free leads for my business opportunity. These visitors continue to come into my website on a daily basis just from that article that I wrote one time!

Try going to your leads vendor and telling them you want to pay one time and get leads every single month for the life of your network marketing business. It simply doesn't exist.

Finally, most lead vendors that you purchase leads from will replace leads that you buy in cases where you have someone that puts in the wrong phone number or fake information. When you generate your own leads you are on your own in this area and you would be amazed at how many people actually put in fake information, especially phone numbers.

So in conclusion home business leads do work. However, you need to be aware of the advantages and disadvantages. That said, they certainly aren't the ONLY way to find prospects for your business opportunity. I know many leaders who have build wildly successful businesses without ever having to purchase a lead and without ever having to generate their own leads online.

In fact leads is only one aspect to my business. I have actually identified 7 strategies that I've personally used over the years to generate thousands of contacts for me to talk to about my business opportunity. If you are interested in learning more visit my website and download my free MLM prospecting report today!

FTC Testimonial & Blogging Changes For MLM Distributors

2009-10-07T15:45:00.003-04:00

On Monday, the United States Federal Trade Commission (known as the FTC) released a press release providing guidance for advertisers who make endorsements and testimonials. I already knew this was coming, which is why for my longtime readers on this blog, you saw that I added the disclosure that I do get paid on many of the links on my blog.

Today I want to share with you my opinion on how this effects you as a MLM distributor. Keep in mind this is my opinion. I am not an attorney or a legal expert of any type. In fact, I recommend that you consult with an attorney if you are concerned that you could be in violation of these guidelines. That is why I am a member and independent associate of Pre-Paid Legal Services, so when issues like this happen, I can get the legal consultation that I want and I can get paid to share these services with others.

Here is a link to the guidelines:

FTC Publishes Final Guides Governing Endorsements, Testimonials

Here is my commentary on how I believe this affects MLM distributors. I am purposely writing this prior to my conversation with my attorney because I do not want this to be construed as legal advice.

The first area of these guidelines deal with endorsements. If you make a positive statement about a product or service, it is likely that this is considered an endorsement if you are compensated in any way, shape or form by the company that produces that product or service.

Here is a statement found in the guide regarding determining whether someone is making an endorsement...

"The Commission does not believe that all uses of new consumer-generated media to discuss product attributes or consumer experiences should be deemed “endorsements” within the meaning of the Guides. Rather, in analyzing statements made via these new media, the fundamental question is whether, viewed objectively, the relationship between the advertiser and the speaker is such that the speaker’s statement can be considered “sponsored” by the advertiser and therefore an “advertising message.” In other words, in disseminating positive statements about a product or service, is the speaker: (1) acting solely independently, in which case there is no endorsement, or (2) acting on behalf of the advertiser or its agent, such that the speaker’s statement is an “endorsement” that is part of an overall marketing campaign?"

For example, let's say you are a distributor for MonaVie and I am not. You write on your blog "MonaVie Pulse is the best tasting health drink that I have ever had!" I also write the same thing on my blog.

In my case, I am acting solely independently because I have no affiliation whatsoever with MonaVie. I am not making an endorsement. I am just sharing my opinion on the product.

In your case, you are an independent distributor with the company. That means you are acting on behalf of MonaVie, as well as your own independent distributorship. What you are doing is making an endorsement that is a part of your marketing campaign to get people to sign up for MonaVie.

So the bottom line is do you get some type of benefit from the company, whether it is you are paid money or you receive free products

In fact, look what it says here...

'For example, a blogger could receive merchandise from a marketer with a request to review it, but with no compensation paid other than the value of the product itself. In this situation, whether or not any positive statement the blogger posts would be deemed an “endorsement” within the meaning of the Guides would depend on, among other things, the value of that product, and on whether the blogger routinely receives such requests. If that blogger frequently receives products from manufacturers because he or she is known to have wide readership within a particular demographic group that is the manufacturers’ target market, the blogger’s statements are likely to be deemed to be “endorsements,” as are postings by participants in network marketing programs." (emphasis mine)

So how does this affect you as a MLM distributor? If you make a positive statement online about your company's products and services and you are a distributor with that company, you must disclose that fact to your audience. Failure to do so could put you in violation of the FTC guidelines.

The other part of this deals with testimonials. Any testimonial that illustrates a performance or result that is attributed to the product or service falls under these guidelines. For example, let's say you use the Herbalife Shapeworks product and you lost 25 pounds on that program. You cannot just post in an ad or on your blog that you lost 25 pounds on the Herbalife program and leave it at that.

In order to use a performance based testimonial, you must do one of the following:

a) Provide information on what the "typical" customer using the product would experience. For example, you can do a trial where you have a certain number of people try the Herbalife Shapeworks program for a specific period of time. At the end of the time, you can ask the customers how much weight they loss and then establish the average as what the typical customer can expect to experience.

b) Limit the circumstances depicted in the advertisement. For example, if you disclose in the ad that in addition to Herbalife, you were exercising for 90 minutes a day and that you made specific changes to your diet, you can then use that testimonial.

Otherwise, it is best that you avoid specific performance based testimonials and stick to testimonials that do not make a specific performance claim. So for instance you can say that Herbalife Shapeworks is the "best diet program you have ever been on."

Based on my understanding of these guidelines, my assumption is that the testimonial rule also applies to the live opportunity meetings and live company overview calls that we as MLM distributors have. So for instance, if at an opportunity meeting, you have a distributor come up and say "In my first 30 days I was able to make an extra $1000." that would be considered a performance based testimonial and would have to be backed up with supporting information in order to not be in violation with FTC guidelines.

As you see, these rulings have a major impact on the way we do business as MLM distributors. I highly recommend that you take a look at the guidelines produced by the FTC on the website I linked to above. On that website, there is a guide in PDF format that you can click on to read and receive more clarification on these guidelines.

I know of a person who got into trouble with the FTC. It wasn't pretty, but he learned a lot from it. He's not a MLM distributor, but his story does offer insights that we as distributors can learn from. To read the story check out Frank Kern FTC: What's it's like to get sued by the FTC. I will warn you Frank is a "colorful" character to put it lightly so if you are easily offended, you may not want to visit his blog and read his story.

How Robert Kiyosaki Can Help You Build Your MLM Business

2009-09-28T16:03:00.001-04:00

What if there was a way that you could leverage the awesome marketing power of Robert Kiyosaki and the Rich Dad brand to build your MLM business? Would that be something you would be interested in doing?

While this strategy isn't one of the 7 strategies that I personally use to build an endless stream of prospects for my MLM business, I know of a number of successful distributors who use this strategy. They don't just restrict themselves to Robert Kiyosaki either.

So how does this strategy work?

Robert Kiyosaki has a company called "Rich Dad Education." It is a partnership with a company known as Whitney Information Network. WIN offers training and education on a wide variety of topics including real estate investment, stock market investment and other business and investing strategies.

Under the brand of Rich Dad Education, they offer free workshops all across the world for free. Their main workshop is called Learn To Be Rich and it is a 2 hour class that teaches you how to put the lessons of Rich Dad Poor Dad into action.

You can learn more about Rich Dad Education and their free workshop by visiting their Rich Dad Education website.

So what does this have to do with you and your business?

Think about it. You are involved in the network marketing industry. Your best prospect is someone who is interested in improving their financial lives. Now you could talk to random people on the street and at the mall and hope that you come across the right person. In fact, I can pretty much assure you that if you talk to enough people, you would come across the right people.

However, what if there was a way to get in one room where the chances of encountering the right people dramatically increases? That is what you have here at a Rich Dad Education event.

So here is the strategy. What you want to do is go to the event. Bring your notebook and your pen and prepare to take good notes. Part of the fundamentals of building a successful network marketing business is committing to personal development and an event like this is a great way to continue your personal development.

What you want to do is meet as many people as possible at this event. At the very least, you should be able to meet 4 people. The person in front of you, behind you, on the left hand side of you and on the right hand side of you.

Your goal is NOT to TRY AND PITCH THEM on your business right then and there. I'm not sure what the seminar's policy is but many of these events have a no recruiting policy and that is a great way to get kicked out.

Instead, all you want to do is find out more about the people you meet. What do they do for a living? How long have they been doing it? What prompted them to attend the seminar? Questions like that.

If you like the answers that you receive, ask the people you meet if they have a business card. If they do, get it from them. If not, get their name and contact information so you can follow up with them later on.

The free seminar will probably have a pitch to attend a several day seminar in which you will have to pay to attend. You can choose for yourself if you want to attend that seminar or not. If the money isn't going to take food on the table, I recommend that you do take the course. The worst thing that will happen is you will learn something. The best thing that happens is you learn something and you meet more people who could potentially join your business.

I will tell you this...you will likely have an even better class of prospects at the paid seminar because these are people who have clearly indicated that they are willing to invest in their own personal development. In fact, one of my good friends in the industry, who earns in excess of $100,000 a year in commissions from his MLM business recruited his #1 leader at a paid seminar.

Keep in mind, this strategy can be used not just for Robert Kiyosaki. You can use this strategy for ANY company that uses a seminar business model to teach people strategies and techniques to improve their financial situation. Companies such as Trump University, Peak Potentials and so on.

Once you have their contact information, now you can follow up with your contacts. Introduce yourself. Remind them that you met at the seminar. Complement them. Then ask them a question that will let you know if they "keep their financial options open?" If they do, you can expose them to your opportunity.

Utilizing this strategy is a great way to find quality prospects for your MLM business. So why not let Robert Kiyosaki use his advertising dollars to promote the seminar and then you leverage the power of that advertising to build your own MLM business?

Multi Level Marketing Companies

2009-09-23T15:03:00.002-04:00

If you look on the internet, there is a lot of confusion about multi level marketing companies. Some people don't understand what they are. Some people don't understand whether they are a scam or not. Many people don't understand how they work. Also many people don't understand what it takes to build one successfully.

There are many different marketing strategies that a business can use to grow its revenue base. This business model consists of the company recruiting a team of independent sales distributors. The distributors either earn a commission for the sale of the product or they earn retail profits when they purchase the products wholesale and sell them retail.

What makes this business model different from other sales commission structures is that the independent sales distributors can also recruit distributors as a part of their organization. Whenever those distributors buy products wholesale or earn a commission for the sale of the product, the distributor that recruited them has the opportunity to earn an override commission.

Depending on the structure of the compensation plan, distributors that are a part of Multi Level Marketing companies can earn on multiple levels of sales.

As for the legality of these companies, in the United States that are completely legal. In fact, there was a court case that settled this issue by the Federal Trade Commission back in the late 70s. After several years it was ruled that multi level marketing is a legitimate business opportunity.

Known as The Amway Safeguard Rules because Amway was the company that was challenged, these rules define the difference between legitimate multi level marketing companies and illegal pyramid schemes. You can learn more about this by reading about The Landmark Amway Case as well as reading the Amway vs FTC decision.

Some people use the pyramid structure of these companies to argue that it is not a legitimate business opportunity. They argue that if you get 3 who get 3 and so on, eventually you are going to run out of people to recruit into the opportunity and saturate the market. This is simplistic thinking at best.

Do you have a refrigerator in your house? You probably do. Does everybody you know have a refrigerator in their house? They probably do as well. So why is it that stores still sell refrigerators if you have one and practically everyone you know has one? Shouldn't refrigerators be saturated by now?

What these saturation theory's fail to factor in is several elements.

1. I might move to a new house that doesn't have a refrigerator. Now I need to buy one.
2. My refrigerator may break. That means I now need to buy another one.
3. I may not see the value of a refrigerator at first. However, in the future I change my mind and see the value in it and now I buy one.
4. When I have kids and they move out and live on their own, they may also face scenario 1 and/or 2 and buy another refrigerator.

This is true for cable television, cellular phones and multi level marketing companies and the business opportunities that they offer.

Finally, what does it take to be successful in building a distributorship with multi level marketing companies? Many people point to things such as the "average distributor check" which is usually a low number to justify why the business model is not legit.

According to a survey done by the Direct Sales Association 66% of distributors work less than 9 hours a week. 43% work less than 5 hours a week. So of course the average is going to be low. Instead of worrying about what the average people are doing, you should want to know what the top people are doing. If you do what the top people are doing, you can have what the top people are experiencing.

In studying some of the top distributors, I have found that although many of them have different systems in place, they all have several things in common...

1. They consistently expose new people to their products, services and opportunity and help their team of distributors do the same.

2. They have a system in place that allows their team to get trained on how to do the business.

3. They commit to a process of personal development by reading self development books, listening to/watching self development audios & videos and attending live self development events.

I have analyzed hundreds of multi level marketing companies and if you are interested you can learn more about the company that I have decided is the best business opportunity for me. If you are currently involved in a company, feel free to download my free report, which reveals the 7 strategies that I use to find prospects to talk to about my business.

The Truth About Downline Building

2009-09-22T15:30:00.002-04:00

If you want to be successful in network marketing you have to master the fundamentals of downline building. It is the key to achieving passive and residual income.

You can earn great money retailing your network marketing company's product. In my network marketing company, we have distributors who earn a full time, in some cases even a six figure income, just from the commissions that they earn retailing the product. However, that type of income is what is known as earned income. This means that you have to personally do something in order to be able to earn that income.

When I host a network marketing business opportunity meeting, I like to refer to this type of income as "roll out" income. What this means is that you have to roll out of your bed and do some work in order to make this income. While it is nice to earn this income, I didn't get started in this industry because of this type of income. I got started because I wanted to make money even if I wasn't the one personally making the sales.

To get to that point in your business you have to become good at downline building. What this means is that you have mastered the art and science of recruiting new distributors into your organization. However, more important than that, you have mastered the art and science of teaching those new distributors how to recruit and teaching them how to teach their new distributors how to recruit.

So how do you become successful at this? There are several keys to becoming good at this. They are the following:

1) The REAL Recruiting & Downline Building Begins After The Distributor Signs The Distributor Agreement

What is interesting is that most distributors in this industry have the exact opposite mentality. Once they get their prospect to sign the distributor agreement and make that first product order, they pretty much believe their job is over. They are off looking for the next recruit while their new distributor is sitting there without the slightest clue as to how to build the business.

Some distributors might actually sit down with their new recruit, develop a game plan with them and plug them into some type of company training. However, even that is not the REAL recruiting.

The best in this industry understand that you are not done recruiting someone once they sign a distributor agreement. All that means is that they have given you permission to recruit them some more.

There is a young man by the name of Todd Cahill. Most of you probably have no clue who he is. In fact, many people in the company that Todd is in have no clue who he is. However, I can tell you this, I believe that Todd Cahill will be one of the greatest network marketing distributors in the history of this industry. Do you want to know why I believe this? It is because Todd Cahill has MASTERED this concept of "real recruiting" and downline building.

Todd Cahill's organization last month recruited over 1000 BRAND NEW DISTRIBUTORS. Yes, you read correctly, that is not a mistype. His organization recruited over 1000 brand new distributors in a single month and he's only been involved in this industry for 5 years. He's not even 30 years old yet. I personally don't know of anyone his age with a team putting up those type of recruiting numbers

How did Todd's team recruit over 1000 distributors? It happened because Todd spends a HUGE portion of his working hours calling through his massive organization of tens of thousands of distributors.

Is Todd a big recruiter? Not exactly. He's probably recruited maybe 100 people personally since he's been involved. Yet he doesn't have to be a big recruiter because he knows how to recruit the distributors who are already a part of his team.

You see, just because someone joins your team, that doesn't mean that they are recruited yet. You now have to get them to do some activity. You might recruit them, but it may take you 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, 6 months, a year or more just to get that person to come out to an event or to start exposing other people to your products and business opportunity.

Simply ignoring these people is a big mistake. Some of the most successful people in this industry didn't get started immediately after joining the business.

2) Helping Your Team To Leverage Their Strengths In Downline Building

This is a big one and I see so many people completely fail at this aspect of downline building. Everyone is not going to build the business the exact same way that you build the business. Trying to force people to do activities that you might be strong and comfortable at is are surefire way to create failure in your organization.

I see distributors who are good at meeting people on their way to work, coming home from work, filling up gas at the gas station, going to the mall or supermarket, etc and exposing those people to the business. However, just because you are good at building the business that way, that doesn't mean that everybody on your team is going to be good at building the business that way.

Case in point, I have NEVER personally recruited someone that I met during the course of my daily activity. It is not anywhere close to being one of my strong points. I am a shy person naturally and talking to some stranger at the mall and trying to pique their interest about my network marketing business is not a skill set that I have effectively mastered as of yet.

So the way I look at it, I can either try to get better at something that I'm not good at. Or I can take something that I'm good at and see if I can apply it to downline building.

I am good at talking to people I don't know over the phone. I have a call center background so it is a skill that I have developed after years of experience. I am also good at marketing over the internet. My full time business is a marketing and consulting business and the large majority of my clients are small business owners that I help market their businesses in some way, shape or form over the internet.

So I decided that instead of trying to become good at something that I'm not good at, I would focus on taking what I'm already good at and looking for ways to apply it to my network marketing business.

As a result, I l have an organization of hundreds of distributors in over 33 states in the United States. I have done this all on a part time basis and quite frankly I have not been anywhere as consistent as I should have been or could have been. It's scary to think what type of results I would have produced had I been consistent over the last several years.

How did I do this? Because I made a conscious decision to find another way to build the business that leverages MY strengths instead of trying to build the business in a way that leverages my weaknesses.

Since my strengths are the phone and the internet, the large majority of my personal recruits have come from people that have responded to some type of advertisment and people who I have met over the internet. I have also recruited a lot of people that I know personally, which I assume is because the people that know me actually like me and trust me, which helps.

3) Plugging Your Team Into A System That Makes Downline Building Easier

If you want to build a team that grows rapidly, you have to plug your team into a system. Many of us have different philosophies about how we build a network marketing business. Therefore, if you want your team to be able to duplicate recruiting without your involvement, it is a requirement that you plug each of your distributors into a system that teaches, systematizes and simplifies the process for them.

What makes up a good system? It should be something that anybody can do and it should be something that can be plugged into by anybody anywhere.

Some examples of different components of a system include the following:

a) A local opportunity meeting
b) A local business training
c) An opportunity conference call
d) A training conference call
e) A team website and/or blog
f) Tools that do a full presentation for your distributor
g) 3 Way Calls between a prospect a distributor and an experienced distributor

When you have an effective system, your team can grow without your involvement. This is what you want to happen and when this does happen, that's when you know that you have mastered the art and science of downline building.

Blastoff Network - Viral Marketing Meets Network Marketing

2009-09-21T12:00:00.001-04:00

Is the future of network marketing viral marketing? A Dallas Texas based company known as Blastoff Network is about to find out.

Network marketing is a powerful business model. According to a recent survey done by http://www.businessforhome.org they have documented 1500 people that have earned in excess of $25,000 in a single month. So there is no question that network marketing is a great way for the average family to create wealth.

However, there are some challenges as well. For instance, it does require an initial investment to get started. What if the prospect truly doesn't have the start up fee? Should they be excluded from an opportunity to change their financial circumstances simply because they have fell upon hard times?

What about prospects who simply don't have the time? Trying to get referrals to work through these people can be rather difficult. They might not be willing to share their contacts with you.

What Blastoff Network has developed is a platform that may very well address many of the biggest challenges network marketing distributors face. Their strategy may literally revolutionize how network marketing is done.

So how does viral marketing work? While network marketing is a form of viral marketing, in this case, I am particularly referring to some of the strategies that internet based companies use to promote themselves automatically similar to how a virus works.

A virus in an ideal environment simply replicates itself repeatedly. One virus becomes 2. 2 becomes 4. 4 becomes 8, 8 becomes 16, 16 becomes 32. Soon you have a massive infection and there is almost nothing you can do about it.

The same holds true for a viral marketing campaign. The campaign is able to easily replicate itself because people quickly and easily share the message with others. In no time, it goes from a few people knowing about it to millions of people knowing about it.

One of the best examples of viral marketing is the email website hotmail.com. The way it got started was very simple. You signed up for a free email account. At the bottom of every email you send out, hotmail promoted its services. Some of your email recipients also signed up for a free email account. The cycle continues.

First off, you do need to understand that no matter what you do there is no guarantee that any viral marketing campaign is going to be successful. A lot has to go in your favor. However, if you are the originator of a campaign that goes viral, you can set yourself up to make an absolute fortune.

There are two key elements that can make a viral campaign successful. The first is you have to offer something of value for free. YouTube is a perfect example. The website allows users to upload videos for free. Try hosting videos on your own web server and you will see how valuable this service is. If your video gets lots of traffic, the bandwidth fees alone could be in the hundreds of dollars a month.

The second element is you need to have a very easy way for people to share it with others. Facebook is a good example. As soon as you create a Facebook account, they ask you if you would like to import your email address book to search for friends on the network. Those friends in your address book that are not on the network get an invitation to join Facebook. When they join, they too have the ability to import their email address book quickly and easily. The cycle continues.

Unfortunately there has never been a legitimate viral marketing campaign with a financial incentive. Gift letters are a perfect example of viral marketing and can expand rapidly. However, they are considered illegal ponzi schemes and if you get caught promoting or starting one you can go to jail.

You may have remembered the chain letter in which Bill Gates was supposedly giving people money to forward an email to their friends. Millions of people got that email.

What if a network marketing business was able to give its distributors access to some of the same tools some of these successful viral marketing campaigns used? The results could be staggering!

Several companies have already done this with some success. For instance, Efusion is a network marketing company that is promoting a viral Facebook application that others are sharing on Facebook. ChatToText had a lot of success promoting on Facebook until they were shut down for violating Facebook's Terms of Services.

However, there are still several challenges that need to be addressed before we see a network marketing company use viral marketing to drive it into critical mass. I'm talking about the levels like an Avon or an Amway, where the company is close to or doing double digit billions of dollars in annual revenue.

How do you deal with prospects who don't have the money to get started? What about prospects who claim they don't have time to build a network marketing business? What about distributors who are already involved in another network marketing business? Most distributors know that the key to wealth in network marketing is to build one network marketing business.

What if you were able to offer an opportunity that was free to get started? I'm not talking about an opportunity that's free but then you have to buy product. I'm not talking about an opportunity that's free but if you want to earn overrides you have to buy product. I'm talking about an opportunity that was truly free to get started with no strings attached?

What if there was a financial incentive attached to that free opportunity? A financial incentive where you can help people simplify what they are already doing and save money at the same time? What if there was no financial requirement to be able to enjoy that financial incentive? Meaning you didn't have to qualify by making a minimum product order? If someone in your network buys, you get paid whether you buy or not?

What if you were able to offer a tool similar to Facebook or Twitter that makes it easy for someone to share the opportunity with their contacts by importing their email address book. That would eliminate the "I don't have the time" excuse, wouldn't it?

What if you offered something of value for free. Something that is so valuable even other network marketers would want it even if they weren't involved in your business opportunity? They would sign up for it.

I believe the product offered by Blastoff Network provides all of these elements and more!

Now here is the clicker. Remember the example that I gave with hotmail where at the bottom of each and every email sent on its servers, there was a link promoting people to get a hotmail email address?

What if the network marketing company that you are a part of struck a deal with hotmail at the beginning when they were first getting started? In addition to a link to hotmail, they also included a link to that network marketing company's website. What if every distributor in your company with a hotmail account, when they sent out an email, the link went to their distributor website where the person who clicks on it would sign up with them?

What if that distributors friends, family and contacts who signed up for a hotmail account, when they sent out an email, if they were not in your network marketing company, the link in their emails was your distributor website? As well as the people that signed up from their contacts. And their contacts? And their contacts? And so on and so forth forever and ever?

You would literally have people joining your team every month who you didn't even know all because you gave away free email accounts and helped your friends and family do the same!

This is exactly what Blastoff Network is doing. I know people paying $500 to get started in network marketing companies that offer what Blastoff Network is going to offer for free. So there will be a lot of people who sign up to join the network.

However, those who are distributors with Blastoff's partner company are really going to be able to benefit. When all of their contacts and their contacts and so forth sign up and join the network for free, they will receive free advertising for their products and business opportunity in a manner very similar to what I described with the above hotmail scenario.

To learn more about this revolutionary new platform that Blastoff Network has developed, check out these free Blastoff Network videos.

If this explodes I predict that you will see other network marketing companies flock to this business model. They will all begin to strike alliances with viral internet companies so that their distributors can capitalize on this new business model. This could literally explode the concept of network marketing.

How To Deal With MLM Distributors Trying To Recruit You

2009-09-08T18:24:00.002-04:00

If you have been involved in MLM you are likely to encounter a distributor from another MLM company trying to recruit you into their opportunity. There are several different types of people that you may encounter, each using a number of different types of strategies to recruit you.

Below I am going to list some of the most common different strategies that I have encountered as well as the rebuttal that I give to people who try to recruit me with these strategies.

Strategy #1 - "The Prelaunch Approach" This is a very common one. The distributor tells you that they just got involved in a company that is currently in prelaunch. This company is suppose to be the next big thing. They will tell you that you need to get in right now on the "ground floor" while the company is in prelaunch because once the company launches everyone who is in beforehand will make a lot of money.

My Rebuttal - I'm not interested in getting involved with a ground floor company. Most new companies fail within the first 5 years. What I'm interested in is to be involved in a rock solid proven company that is participating in a ground floor industry like I'm currently involved in right now.

Strategy #2 - "The Heavy Hitter Joining Us Approach" This is also a very common one. The distributor tells you that "So and So" who is a heavy hitter in the MLM industry is leaving his existing company and joining this company. They might even go as far as to say that some of the leaders in your company are taking a look at their company. The premise is that since this heavy hitter is joining, the company must be good.

The Rebuttal - "So and So" has no impact on my income potential. First off, he or she probably got a special deal that you and I don't know about. Secondly, I already have great leadership and mentorship in so that I don't have to chase behind some heavy hitter who I don't personally have a relationship with.

Strategy #3 - "The fake prospect approach" With this approach the distributor pretends that he or she is a prospect for your business. Right when it is time to sign up, they hit you with the pitch about their opportunity.

The Rebuttal - The reason why I contacted you is because you indicated you were interested in my opportunity. Is that still the case or were you really interested in just pitching me with your opportunity?

Strategy #4 - "The comp plan review or the opportunity review" With this approach the distributor agrees to take a look at your opportunity (or comp plan) if you would be willing to take a look at their opportunity (or comp plan). The distributor will then show you why their opportunity or comp plan is better than yours so that you will sign up with them.

The Rebuttal - I'll ask them a simple question. If I sign up a customer that purchase $100 worth of products how much money will I make? In most opportunities it's going to be anywhere from $1 to maybe $50 max. Or, you won't make anything because the opportunity's minimum product price is like $1000. I will then reply, in my business opportunity on a membership that's $35.95 a month I earn a $207 commission. So why would I switch to your opportunity where I have to make a higher priced sale to make less money?

Now that rebuttal may or may not work for you depending on what your opportunity is. If it doesn't work for you, simply respond "well there's more to a business opportunity than the compensation plan and the facts of the company. A huge contributor to your success is the level of upline support and the relationships that are established. I already have proven relationships with leaders in my company. There is no guarantee that I'm going to get the same level of support if I switch over to you company so we would be just wasting our time reviewing each other's program.

Strategy #5 - "The Increase Your Success Approach" With this approach they will tell you that your upline is lying to you, or holding back from you and so on. They promise to reveal the secrets that will allow you to make $10,000 a month in your current opportunity. Or they might promise to show you how to start recruiting 10-20 people a week. However, the catch is they want to sell you on some high priced training program and eventually recruit them into your opportunity.

The Rebuttal - My first question would be "are you making $10,000 a month" or "are you recruiting 10-20 people a week?" If the answer is no (and 9 times out of 10 it will be), then my response will be "So how can you teach me to do something that you currently aren't doing?

If they do say yes, I will ask them what opportunity they are with. 9 times out of 10 it won't be mine, so I will say "Ok great, give me the names of the distributors in my current opportunity who are producing those types of results with your program. After I verify that this is the case I would be more than happy to consider your program." You won't ever have to consider it because they will not be able to produce that for you.

Strategy #6 - "The You Can Do This Also Approach" With this approach the distributor will try to sell you on the fact that you can do their opportunity at the same time alongside of the opportunity that you are currently doing.

The Rebuttal - I have looked at many of the success stories in my existing opportunity and what I noticed is that not a single person has ever created long term success building more than one opportunity at a time. Every last success story that I have seen in my opportunity, the person or couple was building my opportunity exclusively. Why would I deviate from what the successful people are doing?

Or regardless of what strategy you get you can use this simple rebuttal. You can say, "do me a favor, check this out" and then send them right to this website. They will read this article and get the point.

So for those of you who were sent to this website as well as those of you who want to know how to recruit MLM distributors, here is how you do it.

Develop a real relationship with them. Don't treat them like a recruit. Treat them like a friend. Don't try all of the training tactics that you have been taught on recruiting. We are getting the same training so we know what you are doing already and it doesn't work on us.

At some point in the future if the time is right, you won't have to recruit that MLM distributor. That distributor will come to you.

In the meantime, you need some strategies that will give you some real prospects to talk to. I recommend that you take a look at my Endless Stream of Prospects free report.

Four Levels of MLM Recruiting On Facebook

2009-09-02T12:00:00.002-04:00

There are four levels of MLM recruiting on Facebook. The good news is you don't ever have to progress beyond level one in order to be able to use this as a powerful strategy for building your MLM business.

However, those distributors that can master all four levels often find the recruiting process much easier and less frustrating.

Let's examine the four levels of recruiting on Facebook!

Level #1 - Hunting: The first level of recruiting on Facebook is hunting. As a hunter, you basically use Facebook as a tool to meet new people. You do this by finding friends with similar interests, building relationships with them one on one and when the time is right, piquing their interest about your business opportunity.

We have recruited a number of distributors into my organization using level 1 recruiting so it is a very effective strategy. In fact, the large majority of the distributors that joined my organization as a result of a social networking website like Facebook came from the hunting approach.

Level #2 - Fishing: The second level of recruiting on Facebook is fishing. As a fisher, you basically use Facebook as a tool to attract people to you. You do this by placing bait throughout the Facebook network. Your goal is to make the bait enticing enough that a prospect who may be interested in your business opportunity to actually request information from you.

An example of fishing is updating your status with a message to attract potential prospects. One time I updated my status to say "My company is looking for people interested in earning extra income working 4-6 hours a week." I had a number of people send me a message requesting more information.

Level #3 - Attraction Marketing: The third level of recruiting on Facebook is attraction marketing. This is a more advanced form of fishing. Like fishing you put out bait to attract people to your business. However, with attraction marketing, you use more advanced bait that demonstrates your expertise and how you can help someone.

For example, let's say you are an attorney or a legal professional. You can write notes on your Facebook profile or create videos that offer information that would be of value to others in your profession. Then place a call to action for additional information, but make sure that information ties to your MLM business in some way. Some people will take the call to action and now you have a hot prospect for your business.

Level #4 - Celebrity Marketing: This is the fourth and highest level of recruiting on Facebook. Very few people ever reach this level. However, if you are fortunate enough to be one of those few people, it can be a very powerful tool for helping you to build your MLM business.

Celebrities have a lot of influence. This is why companies pay them millions of dollars to endorse their products. Well you can become a celebrity on Facebook by building a massive following of others who are interested in what you have to offer. By doing so people will come to respect you so much that they will follow anything you endorse just like they do for celebrities in real life.

So these are the four levels of recruiting on Facebook. My question to you is what level of recruiter are you right now and what level of recruiter do you want to be?

A Time Management Strategy For Network Marketing Distributors

2009-09-01T18:25:00.002-04:00

I just came across a great time management strategy for network marketing distributors. 95% of you are like me. You are building a network marketing business on a part time basis.

You probably have a job that you work 40 to 60 hours a week. Or, you are like me and you have a business that you put in those kind of hours for, if not more. Most of you are probably married and many of you probably have children.

You also have hobbies and interests that you enjoy. You also need to sleep.

So how do you find the time to build your network marketing business?

Do you abandon your family and tell them "I'll spend time with you when this business starts making money?" That's a great way to have your kids hate you and to have your husband or wife ready to divorce you. I posted a little quote I came up with about divorce on twitter. I said "Divorce is like getting an amputation with no health insurance and no anesthesia." Not a good idea if it can be avoided.

What about cutting your sleep down from the 7 1/2 to 8 hours that you are suppose to get down to 6, 5, or even 4 hours? You may not realize this but when you don't get the proper amount of sleep, you are actually LESS productive not MORE! The reason why is because you can't focus and concentrate like you need to and you get less done as a result. So I want you to get your sleep.

What about abandoning your hobbies and interest? That's also not a good idea either. Your hobbies and interest are what makes you interesting. They are also a great way for you to find commonality with other people, which help your recruiting efforts.

Now they shouldn't take up ALL of your time. I mean, come on if you're at the bowling alley, on the golf course or playing video games EVERY NIGHT for HOURS at a time, you're probably not going to build a successful network marketing business. However, I believe taking some time to engage in your hobbies and interests is very healthy and actually helps you to be more productive when it's time to work.

So what should you do if you are very busy and are pressed for time to build your business?

Eric Worre spoke about this on his blog yesterday and I think that he answers this question better than anyone else that I've ever heard answer this question. I highly recommend that you take a look at the below video and see what he says.

If you want to participate in the discussion, check out his blog post entitled Time Management Secrets of the Top Achievers

The TRUTH About Network Marketing Success

2009-08-28T15:04:00.002-04:00

Today I want to talk to you about the truth about network marketing success. If you are a regular reader to this blog, this is not one of these posts that you want to skip over. In this post I have captured some significant insights that if you take them and apply them, they can really help you get over the hump and take your business to the next level.

I'm going to highlight some of the biggest misconceptions and show you how to overcome them so that you can create success in your business that you only dreamed was possible.

While I wish I could take credit for these concepts, I cannot. While I have been significantly more successful than the average network marketing distributor, I am on the journey just like you are. What I have been fortunate enough to experience is being able to associate with people who have achieved incredible levels of success in this industry.

So let's highlight the three biggest misconceptions...

1. All I have to do is...

Whenever you start uttering these words you are setting yourself up for a letdown. In business it is almost NEVER as easy as it seems. Everything seems so simple when you are looking at the compensation plan for the first time.

"All you got to do is recruit 3 people, help them recruit 3, help those get their 3, etc..."

Or the other deception is when you get started and you are recruiting in your warm market. You start to sign a lot of people up because you have a reputation and you are able to capitalize on relationships that you have cultivated over the years. However, once your warm market runs out and you have to move to the cold market, it's a whole new ballgame!

So don't set yourself up for a disappointment because of unrealistic expectations!

2. I'm going to wait until I start making money and then I will...

This is a very common one. I see this all the time across the industry. The problem that people who have this philosophy don't seem to understand is that whatever comes after the "then I will" is probably what they need to be doing before they start making money. For example...

"When I start making money, then I will have a better attitude."

"When I start making money, then I will go to my company convention."

"When I start making money, then I will start buying those books and tapes."

"When I start making money, then I will buy tools for my business."

It just doesn't work that way. You won't make money if you don't have a good attitude first. You won't make money if you don't go to the company convention. You won't make money if you don't start buying those books and tapes. You won't make money if you don't buy tools for your business.

3. Needing to know everything about everything...

This one killed me! Have you ever taking one of those personality profiles? The most common one that I've seen in network marketing is the colors. There are four colors that describe four personality traits. They are as follows...

Red - Results motivated
Blue - Fun motivated
Green - Facts motivated
Yellow - Relationships motivated

I am a combination of red and green, which can be a very powerful yet very dangerous combination in a network marketing business. The red in me wants results right away as quickly as possible. The green in me wants to know everything about everything.

It took a long time, but I have very recently come to accept the fact that it is impossible to know everything about everything. I know understand that sometimes you are going to have to just take the best action that you can think of at this point in time and you will figure it out as you go along.

Practically every distributor that I know personally that has achieved network marketing success understand this. One of my mentors likes to joke when I ask certain questions that we aren't trying to calculate the trajectory of a rocket ship flying to the moon!

The bottom line is the series of events that are going to trigger the biggest portions of your success are events that you simply cannot predict and plan out. That's why it is important that you just stay engaged in the activity, be consistent, be persistent, and constantly engage in personal development. If you do those things, everything else will work itself out.

To conclude, let me share with you some stories of how some very successful leaders were recruited into the industry.

One distributor exposed someone at his job. They weren't interested. The distributor asked for referrals and they referred him to someone else. This 2nd person wasn't interested but referred him to someone else. The 3rd person wasn't interested but referred him to someone else.

The 4th person wasn't interested but referred him to someone else. The 5th person was interested in the product but wasn't interested in the opportunity. She referred him to her son. The 6th person, her son was interested and now makes over a half a million dollars a year!

A couple met another couple at the mall and gave them a CD. They listened to it, liked what they heard. They invited that couple out to a meeting. The couple came to the meeting, got excited and signed up. It took them 90 days just to sign up 1 person.

They struggled for 18 months but eventually hit the leadership position in the company. They made a good full time income for several years, eventually got it up to a six figure income. However one day something just clicked and over a 5 year period they went from making $100,000 a year to possibly making $100,000 this month!

By the way, that original couple that recruited them? They were terminated by the company for unethical business practices.

A distributor in California called a business opportunity lead in North Carolina. The guy in North Carolina signs up but doesn't do a whole lot. What he does do though is share it with his brother. His brother signs up, goes to work and in 72 days hits the leadership position in the compensation plan.

His brother doesn't last though, but he did sign up a guy, who signed up another guy who was a carpenter. That carpenter signed up one of his clients, who was an assistant Pastor at a church.

That assistant Pastor has earned a full time income for the last 4 and a half years, has an organization of thousands of distributors in over 35 states and is closing in on a six figure income. By the way, none of those other people are in the business anymore.

That's the truth about network marketing. If you apply it and are willing to stick around long enough to make it happen, success is just a matter of time for you. However, if you continue to fight it, you will continue to struggle and eventually you will quit.

Don't be another casualty in this industry. Embrace the truth about this industry!

USANA compensation plan

2009-08-27T15:41:00.003-04:00

Today we are going to examine the compensation plan of USANA Health Sciences.

If you would like more information how how network marketing compensation plans work in general, take a look at this post entitled how to evaluate a network marketing compensation plan.

USANA is a health and wellness company. They offer a variety of health & nutritional products as well as personal care products. They also offer a business opportunity that allows you to build a distributorship in the United States as well as several other countries.

The company was founded in 1992 and is over 16 years old. That is very important because you want to align yourself with a company that is well established. Many people believe you need to be involved in a start up company to make big money in this industry. You don't want to be in a start up company because most of those companies fail.

So how does the USANA compensation plan work?

The first way you get paid is in the form of retail sales. As a distributor with USANA you are able to purchase their products at their wholesale distributor prices and then sell those products at retail prices to your customers. While this isn't an exact number, you can expect a difference of about 20% between the wholesale price that you pay and the retail price that you sell the product to your customers.

The start up fee to become a distributor is $49.95 which is very inexpensive. However, you have to remember that you will also need to purchase products, so your product purchase needs to be factored into the picture.

The second way you get paid is in the form of commissions generated based on the purchases made by customers and distributors in your downline. Customers that go on autoship (ordering a minimum amount of product a month) as well as distributors who join the business become a part of your organization.

The amount of income you earn is dependent upon the amount of sales volume your organization is able to generate. Each product is assigned a point value known as SV. On average 1 SV = $1.20 in product purchases.

There are two options as far as your initial product order to get started in the business. You can get started by opening up one business center with a product order that equals 150 SV (about $180 in product). Or you can get started by opening up three business centers with a product order that equals 450 SV (about $540 in product).

You will also need to have a minimum order of at least 100 SV a month (about $120 in product) if you have one business center or if you have three business centers but you only want to get paid on the first one. If you have three business centers and you want to get paid on all three, you will need to have a minimum order of at least 200 SV a month (about $240 in product)

USANA operates a binary compensation plan. This means that you get two lines of sponsorships in which your distributors can be placed under. As both lines of sponsorships accumulate a certain amount of SV, this triggers commissions to be paid to you.

When both the left side of one of your business centers as well as the right side of one of your business centers generates at least 250 GSV (this means the total amount of SV orders made by all of the distributors within that business center), you earn 40 commission points. This is the equivalent to $40 in commissions in the USA but may be another amount depending on what country the orders come from.

When you accumulate 500 GSV you earn 100 commission points. 1,000 GSV equals 200 commission points. 2000 = 400. 3000 = 600. 4000 = 800. It maxes out at 5000 = 1000. Commissions are paid out on a weekly basis.

So if you max out your business center, meaning your team is doing over $5000 a week on both sides of your business center ($10,000 minimum), you can earn up to 1000 commission points a week or 4000 commission points a month. In the US, that's $4000 a month in commissions from the orders placed by people on your team.

It is significantly more profitable to get started with 3 business centers than one. The reason why is it's kind of like getting to count the same volume twice and getting paid twice. With 3 business centers, you have one business center occupied by you. Both the left side and the right side is also occupied by you. You can then build both sides of the 2nd (left) and the 3rd (right).

Therefore, you get paid when ANY of the three business centers reach at least 250 in commissions. In my opinion, it doesn't make any sense coming in at anything less than 3 business centers. Otherwise, you are leaving a lot of money on the table.

If one of your business centers has more points than the other (i.e. left side has 500 and right side has 250), the additional points are carried over to the next week. Points continued to get carried over until the other side catches up so that they can be utilized.

Preferred customers can also be added to your business centers. You don't earn retail commissions on sales to preferred customers but you do earn points to count towards your business center income.

However one disadvantage to USANA's binary is you have to place preferred customers on the left or right side. I've seen other binary plans where your preferred customers are automatically added to the side that has the least amount of points. That feature helps you earn commissions faster in other binary plans and USANA lacks this feature.

Once you max out one of your business centers, you can re-enter your own downline with another business center and begin building this new business center. You can do this twice per business center so technically there really is no limit on your income, because even if you max out the business center, you can always start another one.

Keep in mind that because everyone only gets a limited amount of business centers, those that recruit more than 2-4 people will place those additional recruits under the business center of one of the distributors in their organization. This allows you to potentially earn income from the efforts of your upline. You can do the same with your downline.

Now that you understand how the USANA compensation plan works, let's see how it matches up with our compensation evaluation points.

1. How easy is it to make $500 to $1000 a month?

To earn $500 a month just from retail sales, you will need to move about $2500 a month in product. The amount of people that you are going to have to sign up a month really depends on how much product your average customer purchases from you.

Let's say your average customer purchases $100 worth a product from you at retail prices. That works out to $20 in profits. To get to $500, you will need to sign up 25 customers a month. The average distributor is not going to be signing up that many customers a month.

This means that in order to get $500 a month consistently you are going to have to rely on group volume. Group volume comes from signing up preferred customers and recruiting distributors. You will need to do 500 GSV on both sides for three weeks, plus 1000 GSV on both sides for one week to generate $500 a month if you have one business center.

With three business centers you can reach $500 a month with only 250 GSV on both sides for four weeks for your 2nd and 3rd business center. This will automatically give you 250 GSV for your first business center and produce an income of $480 a month. You can always retail some of your personal product to get the additional $20 to equal $500 a month.

If each customer/distributor on average orders 100 SV a month, you will need approximately 50 active customers/distributors evenly distributed to generate an income of $500 a month. Impossible? Absolutely not. However, that's not something you're necessarily going to get to right away.

Therefore, I will have to say that it is difficult for the average distributor to earn $500 to $1000 a month. There are a lot of other opportunities where you can generate that type of income on a much smaller amount of customers, even if those customers aren't even involved in the business opportunity.

This is why I don't like binary compensation plans. In my opinion, they seem to reward the heavy hitter who can either recruit a ton of people quickly or someone who has the ability to bring over an entire downline from one organization to another. Those types of people can make big money in a binary plan very quickly. The average distributor though is going to struggle and see some very small checks in the beginning.

2. How much does the product cost and how much does it cost to get started as a distributor?

The product costs are about average compared to what I have seen with other health and wellness network marketing companies. The prices are a little on the high side when you compare them to similar products that are marketed through a retail business model.

However, network marketing companies tend to be able to charge higher prices for their products because distributors have the mindset that they are going to support their own business and buy from themselves.

As for whether the products are better than competing products, I have no idea. I'm certainly not a health and wellness expert. Bottom line, if you try the products and you benefit from them, great, continue to use them!

3. Is there competition for the product/service?

There is a tremendous amount of competition for USANA's products. They have to compete with other network marketing companies that offer health and wellness type products. They also have to compete with retail companies that offer similar products.

So what's the bottom line on USANA's compensation plan?

I'm not really a big fan of the compensation plan. I think other health and wellness companies offer a compensation plan that is more lucrative than USANA.

However, there is more to an opportunity than a compensation plan. The fact is USANA is a very successful proven opportunity. There are distributors that are making a significant income. The company has a lot of credibility and third party validation. They are not a start up, but a solid and stable company. You can do a LOT worst than joining USANA trust me!

So if you really enjoy the products don't let the faults in the compensation plan stop you. If you're willing to put your time in, you can create a great income with USANA. I think they are a fantastic company overall.

However, if you are not that excited about the products and you are looking for a more lucrative compensation plan, I recommend that you pass on USANA and keep on looking.

For example, in the company that I'm with, I make $414 if I signed up 2 customers for a service that only costs $35.95 a month. I don't have to place them anywhere in my organization and generate any volume. The customers fill out the application. It gets processed and I get the money wired into my bank account the next business day as we get paid daily, 5 days a week not weekly like USANA.

If I was in USANA and I signed up 2 preferred customers for a product order of $120 a month, that would equal 100 SV. Let's say I put one on the left and one on the right of my business center. It would take me 2-3 YEARS to earn that same $414 on those two customers in the USANA compensation plan.

If you are interested in more information about the company I am with, you can check out a link for the company that I believe has the best MLM compensation plan.

If you are already in USANA or you are going to join and you are interested in learning how to sign up more customers or recruit more distributors into your organization, I highly recommend you check out my web site and download my free report.

MLM Team Building by Tap Rooting

2009-08-26T14:26:00.002-04:00

There is a very powerful MLM team building concept called "tap rooting" that if you master it you will build a large, successful and duplicating organization.

When you personally sponsor a brand new distributor into your organization, it is your responsibility to make sure that you direct them to the training that they need to build their MLM business. Now you might be personally doing the training if you have been successful already or you might be directing them to a leader in your upline who is doing the training.

Let's say you are doing mlm team building training for your new distributors. What should you do with new recruit?

The first step is if your company or team has a new distributor training you should have your new recruit go through that training. There are three reasons why you want to do this...

1) It duplicates - Not every distributor can train a new distributor but every distributor can tell their new distributors "go to our team website and click on the new distributor training."

2) It exposes them to the concepts you are going to share with them - It is a lot easier to get a new distributor to do what you want them to do if when you sit down with them it is not the first time they are hearing these concepts.

3) It tests their commitment - If your new distributor won't even go to a website for training, they are not worth your time and effort.

After they have completed the new recruit mlm team building training, the next step is to schedule a game plan interview with him/her. If the new distributor is local to you, conduct the game plan live and in person. If the new distributor is long distance, conduct the game plan on the telephone.

At the game plan interview you want to find out why they are doing the business. You want to help them start making a list of prospects to talk to about your products and business opportunity.

Once you make that list, help that new distributor identify the best way to expose their prospects, whether its a in home presentation, a hotel meeting, mailing out a package with a tool, etc. Then you want to help your new distributor to begin to contact their list.

What many distributors do, (which is a big mistake, I've been guilty of this as well) is they allow their new distributor to contact their list. Your new distributor doesn't know what he or she is doing and they are likely to make mistakes that will reduce their chances of success.

As the person working with that new distributor, you should be doing most of the work and your new distributor should be doing some of the work. You shouldn't be doing all of the work for them and they shouldn't be doing all of the work themselves either.

So for instance, you might have the new recruit call their list. They might let the prospect know that they just got started in a business project that they are excited about and they want to let the prospect know what they are doing. They can then introduce the prospect to you and you can take it from there.

Also don't rely on the new recruit to follow up with their prospects on their own either. Again, the new recruit doesn't know what to do so you should make the follow up calls with your new distributor.

The goal is for you to help your new distributor sponsor their own recruit. Once that happens, you want to take their new recruit and do the exact same thing as you did with your original recruit.

This process should be repeated until you find a leader who can take over the tap rooting process for you. Once that happens, that frees up your time because now you have an organization that has duplicated your actions. That is how you do mlm team building training by tap rooting.

Recruiting Strategies From A MLM BILLIONAIRE!

2009-08-24T12:00:00.000-04:00

There aren't many people who can say that they have developed a billion dollar net worth as a direct result of building their MLM business.

One of the people who can say that they did is Art Williams.

Have you ever heard of the company Primerica? They do a couple of billion dollars a year in revenue and are one of the most successful MLM companies in the entire industry. Well, the precursor to that company was called A.L Williams and was founded by Art Williams.

Art got started in the insurance industry and was amazed at how much money he was able to make part time selling insurance while working full time as a football coach. I believe either in a one or a two year period he was able to save up $40,000 from his insurance commissions.

He then started the company A.L. Williams. That company eventually became Primerica, which was brought out by Citigroup. The money that Williams made off that sale made him a billionaire!

Anyway, here is an article that he wrote about Successful Recruiting.

In The Mind Of A Million Dollar Network Marketing Professional

2009-08-21T12:19:00.002-04:00

If you had the opportunity to ask questions from a network marketing professional that earns over one million dollars a year in this industry, what would you ask him or her?

Well myself as well as several other people in the industry had such an opportunity back in May. I didn't even know that it was recorded. However, I have discovered the recording and I have posted it right here on this website for you to review.

In this video there were a lot of great questions that were asked. Some of the topics that were covered include:

1. If you have a hour or two a day to grow a network marketing business, what should you do?

2. How to recruit other distributors who are already in network marketing?

3. What is holding you back from achieving success in this industry?

And much much more!

So take a look at this video. It's great!

MLM Companies That Do $100 Million Or More In Revenues

2009-08-20T16:32:00.002-04:00

I just checked out a very interesting article posted to Direct Selling News. This article highlights MLM Companies that do at least $100 million dollars in revenue.

The top 2 companies are of course the mighty Avon with its 5.8 million representatives and of course, Alticor Inc, which is the parent company for Amway Global.

65 companies made the list. However, what I found interesting were two things. #1) Some of the companies that made the list that I never even heard of and #2) Some of the companies that didn't make the list.

For example, the #3 company on the list is Vorwerk & Co KG, with annual revenues of 3.4 billion dollars. I have never even heard of this company, yet they are the 3rd highest revenue grossing company in the network marketing industry!

I was shocked to see that Ambit made the list. These guys are only in 3 states and yet they are doing more in revenue than a LOT of MLM companies that are in multiple countries! $197 million in revenues in less than 3 years is VERY impressive!

Now of course, revenue alone doesn't mean anything. A more important indicator of the company strength is profits. In other words, after the company pays all of its bills, including the commission checks of the distributors, pays it taxes and so on, how much money does the company have left?

Some of the companies on this list are actually LOSING millions of dollars a year when you look at their profit numbers. However, many of the companies on this list are generating millions of dollars in profits even after all their bills are paid, which is a good thing.

Some distributors will have you believe that the company profits is not important, which is silly. If your company isn't making any money, how in the world do you expect them to be able to continue to pay you? It's just like a person who lives on credit cards. Eventually, everything is going to collapse.

I was shocked that Ameriplan didn't make the list. I also thought that if Ambit made the list, surely some of the other start-ups like Send Out Cards and Worldventures would have made the list as well. Apparently, they did not. Now it doesn't mean that those companies don't make $100 million. The authors of the articles clearly admit that the list is not complete. I just thought for sure that those companies were $100 million dollar companies.

Anyway, here is the list of the $100 Million Club - MLM Companies that do $100 Million or more in revenue. Check it out and see if your company made the list!

Advanced Facebook Network Marketing Recruiting Strategies

2009-08-18T19:32:00.002-04:00

Yesterday we talked about using Facebook Group & Fan Pages to meet new prospects for your network marketing business. Today I am going to share with you a more advanced version of this strategy.

If you are willing to invest more time this advanced strategy can pay big dividends in the form of a higher quality recruit.

The more advanced version of this strategy is to create your own groups and fan pages.

Network marketing is like an adult version to the game "follow the leader." The more you are able to establish yourself as a leader, the more people there are that are going to be attracted to joining you in your network marketing business.

Establishing your own group or fan page on Facebook allows you to establish yourself as the leader and build a following. You get all of the same benefits as you do when you join groups and meet people in those groups. However, being the leader creates the perceived notion that you are an expert in the subject matter of the group.

So for instance, the gentleman that created the Robert Kiyosaki group that I referred to yesterday. If he was involved in a network marketing business and he utilized my strategy, he has the added leverage that he can use as the creator of the group.

When he makes the friend request and offers the introduction he can say "I'm the admin for the Robert Kiyosaki group that you are a part of." People are even more likely to accept a friend request from the admin of a group than just a member.

It is important that you understand the appropriate use of a group and the appropriate use of a fan page. Otherwise you might find your group or fan page removed and worst case scenario, your entire account can be de-activated.

A group can be created on whatever topic that you want. A fan page is suppose to be an official representative of the person or business entity that is represented. You cannot create a fan page on a general topic.

So for instance, you can create a group about Robert Kiyosaki. However, you cannot create a fan page about Robert Kiyosaki unless you are an official representative of Mr. Kiyosaki himself.

So the strategy you want to use is to create a group about topics that will attract ideal prospects for your network marketing business. Or you can create a group about a topic that you have a lot of interest in so that you can build rapport with others with similar interests.

If you are going to create a fan page, you should create an fan page that represents your independent distributorship for the network marketing company that you are a part of. You don't want to create a fan page that represents the actual company itself as it will get deleted and you might even get into trouble with the network marketing company you are with.

The other benefit to creating your own group or fan page is you have the ability to contact every member of your group or fan page. With a group, you can actually send them a Facebook message that goes directly to their Facebook inbox.

Many people check Facebook on their phones, so you get direct access to their telephones as the group administrator.

On a fan page, when you post a message, it gets posted to all of the fans news feed in Facebook. You also have the option to send an update to the fans, which prompts as a prompt when the fan signs in to Facebook.

If this strategy seems too advanced for you, don't worry about it. As I said yesterday you can just simply focus on the Facebook Groups & Fan Page strategy that I wrote about and that will give you more than enough prospects to talk to about your network marketing business opportunity.

MLM Recruiting Using Facebook Groups & Facebook Fan Pages

2009-08-17T16:47:00.003-04:00

Now that Facebook is the #1 social networking website on the internet, there is a growing amount of interest in mlm recruiting tips using Facebook. With over 250 million users and more growing, you could literally use this one website to address all of your prospecting needs if you know what you are doing.

However, if you don't know what you are doing, the best case scenario is that you will likely anger a number of people and draw them away from your opportunity. The worst case scenario is you can literally have your account removed from Facebook.

So what is the right way to use Facebook to attract a mlm recruit to your business? The right way is to attract prospective prospects to your business by utilizing Facebook groups and Facebook fan pages.

A Facebook group is a community of facebook users who have an interest in a particular topic. By joining the group you have the opportunity to communicate with like minded individuals who are interested in the topic that the group is about.

There are two approaches you can take towards Facebook groups. Either approach is effective and you can even use both approaches if you want.

The first approach is to identify and join groups that will have people that you believe will be a good fit for a MLM business. I have found that generally speaking the best prospect for our industry is someone who has indicated that they have an interest in improving their life or someone who is already a business owner or self employed.

Therefore, I would look for groups that are about topics that these type of people would be drawn to and/or have some type of interest in.

For example, I am a huge fan of Robert Kiyosaki, author of the best selling book "Rich Dad Poor Dad." So I did a search on Facebook to see if there are any groups dedicated to Robert Kiyosaki. Sure enough there is a group with over 3,000 members, so I joined the group.

Now as a member, I can see other members of the group. These other members are all potential prospects for my MLM business. I can click "show all" to see all of the members of the group. I can then click on their profile and see if they are someone that I would like to prospect for my business (if they show their profile to non friends.)

Let's say I find someone who I think would make a great prospect for my business. What I would do is click on the "add as friend" button. I can add them to one of my friend list categories (I have a category specifically for people that I want to prospect for my business). I can also send them a personal message.

I recommend you send them a personal message. Most people don't send personal messages so it sets you apart. I would say something to the effect of "Hi, I saw that you are a member of the Robert Kiyosaki group. I'm a big fan of his books and am looking to network with others who like his books." This way, they know how I found them and they will be more likely to accept my friend request.

Once they accept my friend request, I would post to their wall thanking them for accepting my friend request. I would then send them a personal message. If they happen to be online, I might even send them an instant message to see if I can strike a conversation with them live.

What would I talk about? Well Robert Kiyosaki's books of course! As I message back and forth with them I would start with Kiyosaki info, but my goal is to get to know them better. I want to know what they do for a living, if they are married, if they have children, what their goals are and what their interests are.

As I get to know them, there is a good chance that I will uncover a need that my network marketing business can address. Once I have built up rapport with them (this can be the same day if I'm doing instant messaging or days, or even weeks later if we are going back and forth via regular messages), I will then see if they have any interest in checking out my business.

So I might say something "I am currently involved in a business project that currently utilizes and teaches many of the principles that Robert Kiyosaki advocates. It's a great way to actually take the lessons that you are learning from the books and apply some practical application to them. It may not even be for you, but would you be interested in investigating it further to see if this would be a match for you?"

Pretty much the point is you want to use something that they are interested in and tie it to your business. While Robert Kiyosaki is a natural fit for a member of the group, that doesn't necessarily have to be the tie in. For instance, if in talking with them I know they are passionate about their kids but I know their job doesn't allow them to spend a lot of time with them, I might say "I am currently involved in a business project that is helping a lot of parents to be able to spend more time with their kids."

If they say YES, I will get their name (which I have already) and their phone number from them and then give them a call. What's great is in many cases, their number is right on their Facebook profile, so I would just confirm their number.

I would then give them a call, ask some questions first based on the concepts that are taught in the home study course Black Belt Recruiting and if I like what I hear, I will then give them my website or a pre-recorded conference call number and schedule some time to follow up.

The 2nd approach is to join groups that you have an interest in that doesn't necessarily have to have prospects that are ideal for network marketing. For instance, if you are a fan of the strategy board game RISK, there are groups on Facebook where you can connect with other fans of the game.

I would pretty much follow the same approach as I would with the other type of group.

You can use this exact same strategy for Fan Pages as well. The main difference between a group and a fan page is that a group is about specific topics and can be created by anybody. A fan page is specifically for businesses and individuals.

If you utilized this one strategy alone, you could literally have an unlimited number of people that you could prospect for your network marketing business! It works! I have recruits on my team right now that have come as a direct result of this and similar strategies from social networking web sites.

Some people in my business opportunity are amazed that I very rarely prospect people when I'm out and about like many network marketing distributors, yet I have way more prospects to expose and follow up with than they will ever have.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. However, if that's the only thing you know how to do, what happens if something happens and you can't leave your home? For instance, what if you have a major snowstorm and travel is difficult, if not impossible. If all of your prospecting is based on you going out and meeting people, you have no way of building your business during the snowstorm.

You see, I work full time from home, so the large majority of my time is spent in my house. Therefore, I needed a way to meet people from home and this strategy is a fantastic way to do just that. PLUS, it costs absolutely NOTHING to do this other than the cost that you pay for your internet access!

Tomorrow I will share with you a more advanced strategy of using Facebook Groups & Facebook Fan Pages to recruit people. However, you could literally do nothing else except this and by being consistent and persistent you will have more than enough people that you can prospect for your MLM business!

Top 10 Network Marketing Blogs

2009-08-14T13:31:00.002-04:00

Today we are going to examine the top 10 network marketing blogs as of August of 2009. Each blog is ranked based on its Alexa rating, which is an independent rating that estimates how much traffic the blog is receiving compared to other websites on the internet.

The lower your Alexa rating, the higher the amount of traffic that you are receiving.

Now some blogs are a part of the blog owner's website. Those blogs I have not considered as a part of this review. The reason why is because there's no way of knowing whether the traffic is coming from people checking out the website or whether the traffic is coming from people who are checking out the blog. I'm looking for blogs on their own domain for this review.

I'm also only including blogs that are specifically devoted to discussing network marketing. There are some blogs that mention network marketing but don't exclusively discuss it and those blogs I am not including in this review.

So with that in mind, here is each network marketing blog along with the website, the Alexa rating and some commentary about it. If there is a blog that you felt should have been listed, please post it to the comments area and the next time I do another review, I will make sure that I keep that blog under consideration in my review if it meets the criteria above.

Also, I list the Alexa rating, and in parenthesis I also list what was the Alexa rating for this blog if it made my list the last time I did this review. If the blog wasn't on my list, I listed n/a.

So here they are in order from 10 to 1...

10. MLM 10 Week Challenge - 499,059 (n/a) Authored by Gavin Mountford, the purpose of this blog is to teach you how to go from a follower to a leader in the MLM industry. With a focus on attraction marketing and building the business using the internet, Gavin offers a content rich blog on a wide variety of different topics.

9. New School Network Marketing - 400,199 (n/a) Authored by Kurt Henninger, this blog features cutting edge video training on how to use the internet to generate leads for your network marketing business.

8. New School Marketing by Kim Klaver - 320,112 (205,131) Authored by Kim Klaver a very successful former network marketing distributor, she shares her insights about the industry in general as well as how to build your business with a product first focus. Very witty commentary and always a good read.

7. Home Business Blogs - 266,778 (n/a) Authored by Ben Fitts, a successful distributor in the SendOutCards business opportunity, he offers some great content on a number of topics about building a network marketing business. He specializes in helping distributors to find their niche in network marketing.

6. MLM Blog Expert - 251,164 (413,983) Author by Jaz Lai from Singapore, he provides some great content on internet network marketing. In particular, if you want to learn how to build a list of prospects and distributors that you can make money from and recruit to, he's your guy!

5. MLM Blog - 129,694 (229,514) Authored by Ty Tribble this is one of the oldest blogs on the internet dedicated to network marketing. What I like about Ty is that he's not afraid to talk about controversal topics (just like I'm not afraid to give a company a bad review in my compensation plan review series) and he offers spirited commentary on many of those topics. An excellent blog.

4. Network Marketing Pro - 94,948 (n/a) Authored by million dollar earner Eric Worre, this blog is a video series that teaches network marketing distributors how to become professionals in the industry. With great commentary as well as a series of interviews with other million dollar earners and professional development speakers, this is a must add to your blog rolls!

3. Renegade Professional Blog - 49370 (n/a) Co-authored by Ann Sieg and Mike Klingler they, (along with blog #2) are the leaders of the new school attraction network marketing business model. This blog teaches you internet marketing concepts and how to apply them to building your network marketing business.

2. Magnetic Sponsoring - 45549 (n/a) Authored by Mike Dillard, who many refer to as the "father of the internet network marketing movement." this blog focuses on the product line of Mike's magnetic sponsoring principles where he teaches you how to attract prospects to you and your network marketing business.

1. MLM Business Opportunities Blog - 24913 (35,701) Authored by Dale Carson, this blog continues to dominate the Alexa ratings and claim the number one spot. This blog serves as a good snapshot as to what is going on in the network marketing industry.

MLM Leads - Do They Work In A MLM Business

2009-08-11T12:00:00.000-04:00

This video discusses the topic of mlm leads and whether they are appropriate for building a mlm business.

There are a lot of people who have questions on this topic. Some people only use MLM leads and teach everyone on their team to use them. Some people refuse to use them and bar everyone on their team from using them. Most people are somewhere in the middle of this equation.

On this video I talk about this subject. I analyze whether a distributor should be using this type of prospecting method to build their particular business opportunity. If you have always wondered what the role of this type of program should be, I highly recommend that you check out this video.

In addition, there are a lot of people who are using the attraction network marketing or the internet network marketing business model. One of the challenges to this business model is for most people it takes a while of creating and developing content before the flow of leads starts to come in.

I talk about this in this video as well and provide a solution for you while you wait for the leads from your internet network marketing efforts to come in.

So take a look at the video and let me know your thoughts. Also, if you are interested in more ways to have people to talk to about your MLM business, make sure you download my free network marketing report as well.

Funded Proposal

2009-08-10T12:00:00.000-04:00

This week I was in the discussion forums for the Better Networker community where a young lady started a thread about a funded proposal. In case you don't know what that is, this is where you offer some type of information product prior to offering your network marketing business opportunity to your prospect.

There was a spirited debate that occurred after this post where people made all types of comments regarding the subject.

Anyway the conversation shifted a bit towards whether distributors that focus on branding themselves instead of their network marketing companies are actually against network marketing. There was a gentleman that weighed into the conversation named Richard Bravo.

Now Richard refers to himself as a "matrix extraction specialist" which I love! My #1 producing and recruiting distributor on my team loves to refer to his business building activities as "freeing people from the matrix." Interestingly enough his name is also Richard and his last name begins with a B as well! Also one of my business partners did a really powerful training based on the Matrix that was truly amazing.

In any case, Richard had some truly powerful insights about the attraction marketing and mlm funded proposal process. So today, what I want to do is share some of Richard's insights with you. If I have anything to add, I will add my comments in blockquotes below and they will appear in blue text.

To learn more about Richard, check out his better networker profile as well as his blog. He's a sharp guy with a ton of entreprenur and online marketing experience. He is with a reputable network marketing company so he's not just one of these guys that's teaching online marketing to network marketers but isn't building a distributorship on his own. If you find that he resonates with your philosophy, you would do well to check him out.

Here are some of the areas that he addresses...

Is attraction marketing and funded proposal marketing anti MLM?
Can you position yourself as a leader even if you have little to no experience?
What should you do if you really don't have any experience or special skills to position yourself as an expert?

Richard Bravo Shares His Thoughts On Funded Proposals

If you ever find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause, and reflect.
~Mark Twain

I agree that at first glance, the whole "self branding" teaching may appear "anti mlm" or at least anti build your mlm. I contribute part of that to the way it has been taught by so many people. A lot of "mentors" out there grab the idea and pass it on; because that's how they were taught. And with the advent of all of these "systems" that have grown a huge following online, honestly it's gotten worse.

I say worse, because so many of these actually do thrive on promoting "their" business and tools and service first, aggressively, and your mlm has almost become a side thought.

I agree. That's why you will see the way I generate my leads is I put MY stuff out there first (i.e. my website, my blog, my facebook account, my twitter account, etc) and THEN I present one of these systems secondary.

As I said - At First Glance.

I think the key for anyone implementing self branding into their business model, which I still strongly believe they should, is to look for a balance that suits you. Here's what I mean...

The way the whole attraction marketing thing and self branding has been passed down is to position yourself as a leader, an expert, a mentor - even a gooroo of sorts. Well that's great if you have a lot goin' on. And what I mean by that is, if you ARE the kind of person who has gathered a good deal of knowledge about this or that, as it applies to marketing, business, branding, etc. This strategy works really well because you actually DO have a lot to offer. Or at least you know enough to be able to "fake it till you make it" and you're comfortable enough with your skill set and ability to be able to pull it off.

This is one of my biggest challenges with the way attraction marketing is taught by a lot of people out there. They teach you to be an expert but most of the people out there are not experts. Of course, if you are not an expert, they tell you that you don't have to be because you can just promote their system. However, guess who their system is promoting? It's promoting THEM, not YOU!

The reason why I have an organization in over 33 states in the USA is because I taught my team concepts that they can duplicate and trying to be some marketing expert when you don't even know how to create your own autoresponder isn't going to fly in my opinion, nor will it duplicate.

This works really well for some people because like I said they either have or know how to quickly acquire the things needed in a marketing strategy such as this, to drip feed their leads and their team. They can bust out a 30-60 day email auto-responder series. They can write an ebook. They have access and know how to expose their audience to multiple tools, services and opportunities, over time, without coming off as a sleazy salesman. They know how to use the systems properly to strengthen their brand as "a professional business owner that can help you grow or build your own business - what ever that may be." And one way or another you will be a customer to some degree.

And that truly is the power of this marketing strategy. You're going to put the same amount of energy into generating a lead attracted to YOU as you will for one that is attracted to your MLM. The key difference is, if they don't like what you present initially with You Inc., and you've done this correctly, you have multiple options for them on standby and readily available for them to look at. With the "Join my MLM" option, if they decide it's not for them, well, that's it. The conversation is over. Next! See what I mean?

Now, on the other hand, for someone who truly is "green," this is a scary proposition. What if someone calls you out? They put that, how did Dean put it before.... "Gurudom," to the test. What if someone puts your new found gooroo status to the test? What do you do? Do you know what to say? Or were you just following the script in the manual and it didn't quite cover this part of the conversation.

It's like that scene from Speed.... Pop quiz hotshot.... What do you do? What Do You Do!!!!

Well in most cases I've seen people panic, freak out and hurl the phone across the room in sheer panic attack! (it's kinda funny actually, but not really... I know.)

But that really is what happens. The only thing that's different online is you can't see the phone. It usually manifests here by way of someone who's pissed off and disgruntled that they got conned or scammed by mlm and all this $#!^ doesn't work!

It works. And it's sad to see people fail. Even more so when they give up and quit. And it all could have been avoided if they just learned how to do it a little better and had some balance.

So the trick is learning "balance." Find a comfortable level or Gurudom that works for you. Something, anything that helps you stand out from the crowd a little- if not a lot.

If that means you are the...

"I'm the most ON FIRE new member of Company X! I haven't made a dime yet, but I'm guzzling online marketing information by the gallon everyday! And if you want to judge the opportunity on that basis go ahead - your loss. But if you want to come along for the ride - then hop on - This Is Gonna Be Fun!"

kinda person.... then roll with that!

People love enthusiasm and excitement. You don't have to "know" a damn thing - but if you're excited about going somewhere and equally excited about the journey, people WILL follow you. I've seen plenty of whakos get people in a frenzy over the stupidest things and they follow in droves. If they can do it, then you can most certainly do it with the hope of bettering their lives in some way!

Guys, this right here is GOLD! If you can get this ONE concept, this will put you LIGHT YEARS ahead of most distributors in the network marketing industry. You don't have to be some marketing guru expert to be successful in this industry. Being excited and demonstrating enthusiasm will help you address 80% of what is required to be successful in this industry.

BUT YOU STILL NEED to show them you at least have access to tools and resources that will teach them how to do it too. And that's where the systems and so forth come into play. And that's why the consensus is to LEAD with you. Tools, resources, systems, all of that is a dime a dozen and they come and go everyday. So do mlm companies. But you are here, right now and YOU are the one meeting these people. Not the CEO of your mlm. Not your upline diamond. YOU! You are the teacher and you are the source they are coming to for answers to their problems. You are the one they were "attracted to."

So to whatever degree you USE the attraction marketing techniques or what ever name you want to give it, the point is to strike a balance that you can work comfortably. And by all means, of course promote your mlm.

Just remember the idea that was shared about having multiple options for your leads, customers, prospects, team members - all of them. Of course you don't need 100's of affiliate programs. 3-4 things is plenty to start with. The point is you have multiple channels to derive revenue and they have choices.

Branding is just the shiny gift wrapping you put on that package. The more appealing you can make it, the more people will want to open it to see what's inside.

Well said Richard! Well I hope you enjoyed that as much as I have enjoyed that. By the way, if you haven't already done so, make sure you sign up for my free report, where I reveal the 7 strategies that I personally use to build a huge pipeline of prospects to talk to about my business opportunity. I've been involved in this industry for 4 and a 1/2 years now and I could literally shut down all of my websites and just from the people I already have, I have enough prospects to keep me in business forever. Do you? If not, you need to SIGN UP FOR MY FREE REPORT LIKE YESTERDAY!

Network Marketing Scam - I Got Scammed!

2009-08-07T12:00:00.000-04:00

Well fortunately for me I'm not the one that fell a victim to a network marketing scam. I didn't get scammed at all. Tony Rush is actually the one who fell a victim to this scam. I was actually very shocked when I found out. After all, Tony is a very intelligent guy.

Tony is a very successful distributor in the network marketing industry. He earns a multiple six figure income. He has done so for several years now. He is a top leader in his company and he is living an incredible lifestyle.

However, none of these things prepared him for the shock and the setup that he received when he fell a victim to this scam in a major way!

Therefore, I decided to share with you Tony's story because I don't want you to make the same mistake. Maybe you have visited my blog because you are researching information about getting started in a home business opportunity.

There are a lot of scams out there as well as a lot of legitimate opportunities as well. For instance, the opportunity that I am involved in has an A+ rating with the better business bureau and our founder was invited to be the keynote speaker at the national conference for attorney's generals. Most scam artists run from attorney generals, not go and speak at their conference!

If you are looking for a legitimate opportunity and want to avoid a network marketing scam, make sure you read about Tony's experience so that this doesn't happen to you.

Maybe you are already involved in a network marketing company right now and you aren't making the money you thought you would be making. It could be because you just haven't developed the knowledge and skills necessary to earn the income that you want.

It also could be because you joined a scam.

Anyway, I've rambled here long enough. Just go check out I Got Scammed by Tony Rush and make sure this doesn't happen to you!

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The Death Of Hype In Network Marketing Online?

The Importance Of The First Pay Check

The Tortoise and the Hare In Network Marketing

What Does A Day In The Life Of A Part Time Distributor Look Like?

Should You Get A Job?

What A Balanced Network Marketing Compensation Plan Looks Like

Network Marketing - Not For The Faint At Heart!

Simple Strategies For A Busy Professional In MLM

The Most Important Statistic In Your Network Marketing Business

Evaluating Prospecting Strategies For Your MLM Business

Setting Priorities In Your Network Marketing Business

Live From Your Planner And What You Planned

Always Start The Day Before The Day Begins

The 10 In Play Philosophy

It's Building Time!

Local Network Marketing Strategy

The Importance Of Planning Your MLM Business Ahead!

Make Money MLM - The 4 Ways To Earn Money In Network Marketing

Why The Internet Will Never Replace Network Marketing Meetings

How To Become A Top Recruiter In Your MLM Company

The 5 Indicators of Performance In Network Marketing

Do Most People Fail In MLM & Network Marketing?

Video: Twitter & Blog Network Marketing Strategies

Do 90% Of All Businesses Fail Before 5 Years?

Relaunch Of My Network Marketing Blog!

How To Recruit Pastors & Ministry Leaders Into Your MLM Business!

A Network Marketing Business vs A Traditional Job

How To Turn MLM Prospects Into Recruits

How To Take Notes At A Network Marketing Training

Why I'm Not Interested In Your MLM Business!

The Real Reason Why Network Marketing Doesn't Work For You!

Are You A Thermometer Or The Thermostat Of Your MLM Organization?

The Litmus Test Of A Great Network Marketing Company

Edification In The Network Marketing Industry

Sowing & Reaping In Network Marketing by Jim Rohn

A Week In The Life Of A Part Time Network Marketing Professional

Jim Rohn Died Passed Away - A Mentor Of Mentors

Generating Free MLM Leads On Facebook Video

The Prosperity Mindset In Your Network Marketing Business

Interview By Mike Dillard Of Robert Kiyosaki

How To Build Your Direct Sales Business On Thanksgiving

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Direct Sales Business Retention Strategies

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