A Halloween Story

On a day, not unlike any other, I was browsing the business section of my neighborhood bookseller when I was approached by an elderly gentleman. Having been prospected before in this environment, it came as little surprise to me when he asked, "Are you open to other way to make money?".

"Sure, who isn't....as long as it's legal, ya know" , I answered.

His retort was pure textbook. "Great, you look like a sharp guy and, to be honest, I am looking for ambitious people .....", his voice trailing off as I became distracted by the large gem stone encrusted medallion he was wearing.

He noticed my obvious fascination with his jewelry when he said, "Oh you noticed my 'good luck' charm, huh. I bought this shortly after getting into my recent business venture." He quickly removed it from around his neck and was dangling it in front of my eyes. "Would you like to see what I'm doing that make this possible?", he asked in a low, measured tone.

Before I realized it, I answered, "Sss..sure."

At this point he must have given me details and directions to a business meeting being held that evening across town. I followed the directions he had written for me and found myself standing in front of an older hotel in a remote area of the city. I looked down at my notes and said aloud in a self-assuring voice, "This looks like the place....1313 Mockingbird Lane."

I found the conference room to the left of the hotel lobby and shuffled in with many other people that, I assumed, we here for the same purpose as me. As the room filled, a tall man closed the doors rather loudly which caused many in the room to jerk their heads suddenly toward the back of the room. I asked myself, "Why the hell did I let them put me in the front row? I'll never be able to slip out without being noticed."

The presentation began quickly and I noticed the man I met earlier in the day was the featured speaker. He looked somehow different in this light or perhaps it was that there was a conspicuous lack of light since the room had been effectively sealed.

He began talking and drawing some diagrams on a white board at the front of the room but, to be honest, I was confused by the numbers he excitedly shared with the audience. I did my best to take notes but my rendition of his explanation resembled something like a instruction manual from one of my children's toys.

When the presentation concluded, a procession of visitors were escorted to front of the room for personal introductions with the evenings' host. I took this opportunity to use the sudden rush of activity to conceal my escape. I tried to blend in others making their way to the exit from the center aisle of chairs. Just as I reached the outer hall, the host seemed to swoop in from nowhere and gave me a hardy slap on the back as if to congratulate me for some unrealized success.

"Hey Dave, how are you doing tonight?", he asked. "You didn't think I didn't see you in there did you?" He explained that he had told the ushers to watch for me and that, as his guest, I was given the honor of having priority seating.

"I guess that 'good luck charm' of yours is working for me", I said trying to not be too obvious in my sarcasm. I began to discretely survey my surroundings to locate the most direct exit door that I could reach on a dead-run. About the time I had developed my own "plan for freedom", my host had reached into the pocket of his tuxedo and produced a photograph.

"Let me show you what I just picked up last week from a luxury car dealer friend of mine", he said. "Just look at that baby, will ya." He informed me that the people posing in the picture were members of his family.

A rather tall man from the photo began to head in our direction. I seized the moment to make my break for the street and the relative safety of my car. As I approached the exit, I heard the man shouting after me, "Hey wait! I didn't even get to tell you about our conventions!"

Anthony Robbins' Top 10

Chris De La Rosa-

The Top 10 Secrets From Anthony Robbins.

For more than 25 years US-based motivational speaker and success coach Anthony Robbins has been passionately pursuing the answers to questions such as 'What shapes human behaviour? And how can we create lasting change within oursleves and others?'.

He has spoken in front of more than 3 million people around the world and sold around 35 million books and audio coaching products.

After attending his 4-day 'Unleash The Power Within' seminar recently in Kuala Lumpur I learnt many strategies to perform at your best.

I even took part in his famous barefoot walk over hot coals. This powerful physical metaphor shows how anyone can overcome their deepest and greatest fears with focus, passion and desire. Read the Top 10....

To Your Success

I recently "discovered" several blogs that are quickly becoming daily reads for me. Here's a clip from Your Success Is My Success blog written by Gregory Shunk.

You see the failure and frustration you may have experienced in the past trying to create additional income from home has not been your fault. The cards were stacked against you and you just did not know that they were. If you are anything like my me you have tried a bunch of different Network Marketing programs and perhaps some other things also. Most of which did not work and ended up costing you more than you made.

Well I am tired of it! Are you? Are you ready to learn the right way to do it? Through this web site you will learn the right way to build a Network Marketing business and create the financial freedom and time freedom you are looking for. Read the whole post.

Gregory has some great posts and a lot of information and insight to share.

Weekly Affirmation

I am learning how to inspire people. Not just motivate them!

Compensation Plans - Stair Step Break Away - Continued

As I mentioned in the previous post, the Stair Step(SS) comp plan is the oldest compensation plan in use today. Most popularly utilized in companies like Amway and it's sister company, Quixtar, the Stair Step offers dynamic growth potential in it's pure form.

My personal experience in Network Marketing includes about five years in a Stair Step structure so, with that, I felt this would be a good place to begin.

The Stair Step rewards it's participants through an increasing tier percentage as the group sales volume increases. First tier percentage may pay 3% bonus on group volume produced at about $200 for total monthly volume, for example. There can be 5-10 tiers in the initial growth course for the independent business owner (IBO) and may cap at 25% bonus paid on that group's monthly business volume (BV).
Here is a crude example of how a Stair Step may be structured.
(First number equals total group BV with hypothetical percentage to be paid for that group.)

$200 / 3%
$500 / 6%
$1200 / 9%
$2000 / 12%
$4000 / 15%
$6000 / 18%
$10000 / 21%
$15000 / 25%

Keep in mind that while your group may reach the 25% qualification, these are group volume numbers. That means all qualified IBOs on your team and the respective percentages are paid through "downline bonuses". The proper structure of your group will greatly affect your personal earnings. By that I mean, the number of "legs" or personally "sponsored" that are producing business volume in your organization determines your potential profitability.

Consider this rule for building in this pay plan - Build width for profitability and build depth for stability. Width means the number of personally sponsored IBOs in your group and depth means the number of IBOs in those respective legs. This is a post subject onto itself.

Continuing through this compensation plan, once the participant has reached the top level, say the 25% bracket, this is where the "break away" occurs. At this point, downline group business volume is no longer directly calculated through the upline organization. As long as the upline maintains qualification, an override is paid on the BV produced from this spin-off group, usual about 3% or 4% on total business volume generated. This is where residual income kicks in and becomes the dynamic force of this pay plan. The more of these 25% groups that are produced within a person's organization, the greater the income potential.

There may be additional incentive bonuses paid based on the total number of 25% groups developed but this is specific to individual companies.

There are many subtleties and building strategies in the Stair Step Break Away compensation model. We'll look at some of these in an upcoming post.

Compensation Plans - Stair Step Breakaway Intro

There are five common compensation plans most widely utilized in Network Marketing today. In coming posts, I will offer some preliminary information about each. Tonight, I will share some basic information about the venerable "stair step breakaway" pay plan.

To get this started, here's some of what is contained at Wikipedia about stair step comp plans -

Stairstep Breakaway refers to Multi-level marketing compensation plans featuring two types of distributors: managers and non-managers. Stairstep Breakaway is the oldest and most common type of compensation plan.

No matter what use term the company uses to call their sales managers: 'executive', 'platinum' or 'Regional Vice President', upon achieving a certain performance criteria, a distributor becomes a manager and "breaks away" from his or her original manager. The original manager loses his or her managerial overrides and, instead, receives a percentage override from the sales of the entire breakaway organization.

This type of compensation model relies heavily upon titles and title attainment to assist in differentiating of the participants in the hierarchy. This is not necessarily a bad thing per se but, in my experience, pursuit of a "title" does not always produce a profitable business.

Stair Step is the oldest comp plan and most often utilized by new start-ups for it's stability. This model has been used continuously with little variation by Amway and their spin-off company, Quixtar.

Here's what Wikipedia notes as disadvantages in this pay plan -

The chief disadvantage of stairstep breakaway plans is the tendency for inventory loading. Unless the company aggressively monitors them, distributors will tend to coach their subordinate distributors to amass inventory to gain rank. Read the complete article...

Well, now we're underway.

Next time, I will elaborate on the Stair Step model in greater detail as I have the most extensive background in this type of pay plan. In the future, I will also post about the other common plans like the Binary, Unilevel, Australian 2-Up, and Matrix plans (in no particular order).

Do your homework

Shelley Penny at Net Nuggets writes about the need to stay connected to your company, the industry, your products, and your training and support program. Common sense advice that seems to be overlooked or neglected by many in our profession. Here's a sample -

That thought brings me to the point of my writing. It has occurred to me why it is so important to read about your company, the management, the big stars, the products and the vision. In fact it is absolutely crucial to your success that you sell yourself on your business every day.

You see, this industry is full of pitfalls, and dream stealing traps. There's a tiger in the bushes, and a wolf on the street corner. Distractions, and fears, that can throw you off track when your enthusiasm wans.

There are many reasons why you started your business...right? Whether you have been with your company for a month or a decade, you should be able to count those reasons off one by one.

Part of keeping yourself focussed on your goal and your reason has to include a daily supplement of company related "energy". You need to immerse yourself in the "culture" of the industry until it becomes a part of who you are.

Here's what I do to stay on the bubble. Read more...

Three areas of focus in Network Marketing

Here is an article by Doug Firebaugh that outlines three areas that networkers should focus their efforts. Here's a tidbit -

There are three focuses you can have on working this great Network Marketing business, and each one will bring you success, but only one will truly create momentum. Momentum is everything in network marketing, especially in the beginning.

And in this MLM Success Nugget, I want to share with you the way to ignite a fire of success in your business and drive it to the heights of any success you seek! That level of MLM Success will be determined by you, and you alone. These focuses are how people work this business, and where they end up in it.

Make sure that in Network Marketing, you end up where you want, and not where you have been led to believe is success. Only you can determine that.

Read more ...

Natural Selling - Calling Leads Training Program

This from Michael Oliver's Natural Selling blog -

If you're a Network Marketing or MLM distributor and want to get the best results from your lead programs, don't spend another cent until you've seen my new, 4 CD audio program, "Calling Leads".

"Calling Leads" is a special extended edition and contains 4 CDs and well over 3 hours of in-depth information to help you get full value from every dollar you spend on leads.

Learn more about this new program...