Category Archives: Business

2008 is Half Over. Lets make some goals.

Business, concepts, Entrepreneurship, Inspiration, real estate, , , , ,

Most people review their plans every year for new years, they make resolutions, some minor and some major.    For most people these are gone by the end of January.  I try to update at least once per quarter, and usually break down goals for each month at the start.

In this blog I am really talking to people who run their own business, who can determine how profitable that business is, and want to make stellar profits.  It is said that 70% of the people in the US don’t have any specific goals.  27% have goals in mind, but only 3% have written goals.   In this 3% you will find over 95% of the entire wealth of our nation.  Most people who have jobs fall into that 70%.

For this month my goals are in two main areas.  First in my computer company, I want to market more to existing customers and drum up at least 10k in profit from doing this.  The plan is one of daily action and contacting people.  I have a huge database to work with, which is good, but the economy is limiting spending which is bad.  I also want to do more real estate investing.  I want to do at least one thing each day to build my network, knowledge and to actually do deals.  Today I looked at various agents to work with.

So far 2008 has not been a very good year for me financially, though many steps have been made in the right direction.  I have spent a good deal of time rebuilding from the bad things that happened in 2007 and the end of 2006.  I have stopped the bleeding, and now we have positive cash flow for the first time in a long time.  I also have expanded my knowledge and my network by huge amounts.  All of this was important but is meaningless with out action, now is the time for action, and to put everything to work.

So what are my goals for the second half of 2008.  Well my two main areas of focus are Real Estate investing and the continuation of the computer company.  The computer company is fairly easy money, because I have a huge database of customers, a ton of existing marketing and websites and everything is in place.  But computers are not very profitable right now.  For this reason I have been trying to move into real estate for years.  I understand the local Phoenix market very well because I was born here, I have been building my knowledge to the point that I am confident that I can most any sort of thing I want to do.  Now I am building my network of buyers, agents and money suppliers.  I want to do at least 10 real estate transactions before the end of the year.  I also want to Average 30k in sales per month for the computer company.  With an average real estate deal of 20k and a monthly computer profit of 10k that would net $260,000 by the end of the year.  Of course this needs to be broken down to monthly goals and then to daily action.  In order to reach these goals daily action must be done, I have a huge checklist for each business of things that need to be done, and my goal is to spend at least half of the working hours of each day working on these goals.

The point of this blog is not to talk about what I have done, but to inspire you to do the same.  Write down where you want to be at the end of the year.  Then figure out what you need to do each month to get there, then figure out the specific actions that must be done to get there, break it up into daily chucks and then ACT on it.  I have usually been good at the planning but a bit into it I would get discouraged, and settle back to a lower level of action, and then I would miss my goal.  One cure for this is accountability, you could do this in a few different ways, one is to make all of your goals, subgoals and actions public and let your friends have access, so that they can help you.  I have decided to simply talk to my business partner each day and we each will keep the other accountable.

So go out and make your action plan today.

More on our complex world…

Business, concepts, Entrepreneurship, Government, Money, The World, ,

Yesterday I wrote a blog about how our country is too complex.  Then I found that one of the blogs I read often wrote a blog on the same subject, only he did a better job about it than I did.   Read his blog here. As it turns out he is quoting from a book about the same subject, called The Collapse of Complex Societies.  I guess many people are coming to the same conclusion.  Too bad for them they see it as only the fault of the Republicans, when there is much more at fault than just that.   This must be much more important that I thought.

Our world is too complex and getting worse…please help.

Business, Computers, concepts, Entrepreneurship, Government, Investment, Money, The World, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Many people have jobs, where your job is to make something better.  In order to keep your job you need to show results.  Now a problem happens, many companies make their product just about as good as it can get.  In the real world of products they just move on to the next thing, but in software they keep adding features well beyond what is useful.

There are many examples of this. Winamp was perfect 8 years ago, it played music well, it had good skins and an equalizer.  Then they started adding stuff, and adding and adding.  They put in a video player, but it sucks.  They put in a browser, what is the point in that?  Adobe Acrobat is a program that never really worked well.  And every update just makes it slower.  There are third party ones that are much faster and better.  There are many other examples.

So companies that make programs have figured out that most people don’t need their updates, but if people don’t get their updates they can’t push future changes on them, that may include more advertising, or toolbars on your browser, and these companies love to do that.  So they have made their programs “phone home” each time they load, and if the company decided they want to send an update they will do so.  This makes these programs slower, and many of them gripe if you are not online when you load the software.  At least 20 programs I know of now try to push the Yahoo toolbar on their customers each time you update and unless you are very careful and unselect a box hidden somewhere you get it.  And it is hard to remove and almost totally useless.  There is really a battle going on for your attention, and these companies are trying more and more intrusive things to make you use their software, even though most of it is free.  The other day I noticed that if you update java, it tries to install download and install open office, a almost 180MB download.  Java is just a programming language, why should they push an entire office suite on users.  Most users are not smart enough to catch this stuff, then they call me when they see stuff they don’t understand, and these calls are increasing.  (As a note I love open office, I suggest it to many people and install it on all systems we sell.)

Now in the world of software this is a minor annoyance. You can run older versions, or usually disable all updates. But this is also done in many other areas, it is human nature that once something is very good you will keep changing it, even if the change is bad, simply to look like you are doing something.  One area where this is VERY costly and actually dangerous is in the area of Government.  The government keeps adding rules, and regulations in areas where none really is needed.  Many people running for office brag about the number of bills they introduced, and the number of laws they passed.  All of this makes life more complex.  Do we really need such a complex tax system that you have to call an expert for help and even the experts don’t know half the time.  Do we really need over 20,000 classifications for imported items.  Do we really need to have so many regulations on hiring employees, increasing complexity and costs so much that companies get fed up with it and simply hire people in other nations.  Should it really take over a year for a citizen to bring his wife to the US legally?  Do we really need the government to tell us what food is safe, to tell us that we need to give our babies over 20 shots, many of which cause more harm than good?  Should it be so complex to get a Federal grant that Matthew Lesko has become famous for his awesome 3000+ page book with over 15,000 DIFFERENT programs listed (BTW read his blog).  Do we really need a government with 1000’s of different divisions?

This has cost our country a huge price.  Our power has allowed us to survive for a while but now a crisis is coming. It is so hard to appease the government regulations that no nuclear power plant or oil refinery has been built here in over 30 years.  Most factories are built overseas simply because lack of regulations make them much more profitable.  Why would you want to build you widget here, and deal with the EPA the IRS and OSHA when you can built it overseas and import it for less.  This is why our balance of trade is so bad, this is why are money is flowing out of this country and we are all in debt, as a nation we are living well beyond our means.  This has been a problem for many years, but just recently it has gotten so bad that people have stopped lending to us, whole nations are writing down our debt, and this is causing problems for millions of Americans.  This is a problem, created by our own government decades ago, the symptoms were hidden for years, the official government report showed almost no inflation from 1997 until 2005 while the average person saw huge inflation.  Now it is all catching up, and millions of people are SHOCKED by it.  It will ruin the lives of millions, it will also improve the lives of millions.  I have written many times about this subject, see here or here.

Anyway this was suppose to be a simple post about how everything is getting more complex simply because people want to keep their job and have nothing better to do.  Please comment on what you think about all of this.

OK, I admit it, I was wrong. My OS Choice.

Business, Computers, concepts, Marketing, , , ,

As most of you know my main business is Emerald Computers, a computer company, where I sell computers and give advise.  Many people look to me as their computer expert.

Well for the first year of Vista being out I was negative on it, right when vista came out I was in my Ubuntu phase.  I was trying to use linux as much as I could to see if it really could replace everything that I did.  Because of this I did not personally use Vista, I used it on the computers I was fixing but not on my main computer.

After 6 months of trying Ubuntu I decided that, for me, a power user there were too many things that just did not work yet.  There were MANY things that were much better, than the Microsoft world, but lack of support for my games, QuickBooks, Photoshop and yahoo chat with webcam were the things I could no longer live without.  I went back to XP, and I was happy.  Well in late April XP crashed on me for the 3rd time.  I needed to reload so I decided to take a gamble and install vista.  I figured my computer is VERY fast so even if vista is crappy slow it will still not be that bad.  I have used vista on about 50 or so customers computers, and mostly disliked it due to the fact that most things were moved around.

Well vista loaded, it did it faster than XP, and almost all of my hardware was detected.  It was great.  Next I loaded my software, and I load a lot of things, I have checklist of about 30 things that I load on every new computer.  Almost everything I had worked right away, the ones that did not were fixed by upgrading to the newest version.  Even when you are an Administrator you don’t have real administrator rights, this is just like Ubuntu.  In Ubuntu you just put sudo in front of anything you want to run as an admin.  In Vista you do sort of the same, you just right click on it and click on “Run as Administrator”.  It was a very easy.  As a computer geek there were about 20-30 things I changed to make it easier to use, such as network settings, sharing settings, and all the programs I run.

So now I have been using it for a month, I wanted to wait a month before I wrote this blog so that I had a more expert opinion.  I run Vista SP1 Ultimate.  I have found it to be better than XP in almost every area, and in the areas it is not better it is exactly the same as XP.  I was surprised how many small programs are basically exactly the same as XP was.  I thought they would rework everything, but there are major things the left the same, even though the XP version was bad (Such as how fonts are loaded,

Now many people have said that Vista is slower.  I have seen many customers that have 4-5 year old computers and they load vista and YES it is slower.  My computer is 3 years old but it was a top of the line computer when it was built and it is still faster than 90% of the computers our company makes, it is a 4.9 on Vistas performance scale of 1-5.  So on my computer it runs great, it is MUCH faster than XP, and almost as fast as Ubuntu.

So if you have at least 1GB of ram and a Dual Core CPU Vista is great for you.  If you have a single core CPU or 512MB of RAM stick with XP.  Basically if your computer is over 2 years old and you want vista just get a new computer.  I can help you with that if you leave a comment, I can tell you want you need for your usage model.

So my OS of choice is now Vista.  It runs all the stuff I need and is fast.  There are many good ideas and features in Ubuntu that Vista could easily put in.  I don’t agree with some of the philosophy behind Vista, about making closed source drivers, and pushing towards trusted computing, for this reason I hope Ubuntu will soon be able to run, with ease, all of the things I need, and then I hope it starts to gain popularity.  Until then I will use Vista, or the next thing that MS creates.

The 7m7y contest.

Business, concepts, Entrepreneurship, Inspiration, Marketing, Money, , , ,

One thing that I have been looking at is a mentorship program, offered by a guy who is a millionaire many times over. His name is Adrian J Cartwood. He has the mindset that I want to have.  He is looking for 7 people to teach how to be a millionaire. He is writing a book and is using this as more material. I applied, here is my profile on the page, with typos and all. From there you can find out much more about the program, and you can also apply.  It looks really exciting, I hope I am selected.

A story from the heart, what drives me.

Business, concepts, Entrepreneurship, Inspiration, Investment, Money, real estate, The World, , , , , , , , ,

I often think about my dreams. To me almost all of my dreams have to do with my legacy, what I leave behind for future generations. For me there are a few things that really give me a great since of satisfaction. First, I really think that it is important to help out people who need help, and want the help. The think that I feel really made my life what it is the fact that I had access to education and tools to take advantage of that access. I started high school in 1989, and I was the only person I knew who had a computer at that time. I also spent a huge amount of time learning. By the end of high school I knew more about computers than any teacher there, same thing went when I was in college, almost all of this was self taught. (In high school I entered into a state competition, and got first place in the entire state for computer expertise) I only placed number 24 when I went to the national competition.

To everyone’s surprise computers turned out to be a huge industry, taking control of much of how the entire world works. I was given a huge advantage. Now we all know that computers are VERY important to success, so I have gone on a plan to give very poor children, access to computers, and access to quality education. These are kids that would not be able to get a good education or maybe even go to school. These are kids that will live a very poor life if we do not step in to help. This year we are looking to support 7 kids. The cost for one year is about $800 per kid. I am trying hard to raise this money now because it needs to be committed by the first of June. If you want to help out you can donate using PayPal. (Just send to my email [dragon(at)capitalactive.com] as a donation) Anything you send will go directly to help these kids.  This photo is of the 4 kids we helped in 2007, before they met us they were living in a small shack, with a tarp as a roof, they never had been more than 10 miles from home, and never even seen a mall.  (I have before pictures also but they would break your heart.)  They were very smart but the schools they went to were very poor, and this kids were years behind the city kids, even though they were near the top of their class in their rural schools.  In one year they were able to catch up and pass the city kids, we gave them quality food, clothes, and housing.  This year I want to do even more.   My goal is to support 7 kids.  We will use these 4 and add 3 boys.  Without your help I don’t know if I can do it.

The next thing is a much larger thing. I really want to develop Real Estate. I have always been interested in architecture and large buildings. When you see a large building you know that someone designed it and also someone thought of it and paid for it to be built. To me this is the ultimate legacy. I want to build great unique buildings that will stand out. I decided to go a different path, and I went into computers and business. But now I want to go into. I firmly believe in the mixed use real estate concept. Basically building communities, of housing, work, and shopping all in the same mega complex. This is the way life used to be but, here in the southwest, the car made all of these things disperse. Most people travel many miles to work, and at least a mile to shop. There is no community left in many places and this lack of community is one of the major things destroying our country. Imagine if you lived on the 7th floor of the building, shopped on the first and second floor and worked in your office on the 15th floor. All the while you had many friends, and felt like you truly belonged. I don’t just want to do real estate; I want to do real estate with a purpose. I have a young son, only 9 months now, and I want to leave him a legacy he can be proud of, and one he can carry on.

I also want to provide quality housing to people in need. Imagine going to a city in Asia, where the people are poor, and getting the community to work together to build a massive complex, I would supply the materials and organization, the community would do most of the work, and we would own the building and charge a very low rent. People would have the ability to move up from the squalor to live in healthy and much higher quality housing. What is I can do that, and impact a thousand lives in a very profound way. This is the legacy that I want to leave.

Now I am only 32 now, I have decades to do this. I am looking for like minded people who will know more than me to advise on these projects. I don’t think I will have the resources for a few years to do such a thing, but once I do it will roll on and on.

This is my WHY, this is the reason I want to be hugely successful, this is the reason why I need to make the things I do work. It is much more than me I do this for.

If you know of ways to get this done faster or cheaper I would love to hear from you. Please email me or comment below. Thanks.

Awesome laptop deals, make your business more productive.

Business, Computers, , , , , , , ,

A computer is one of the most important tool that any small business has.  Many business are stuck with old computers, they simply don’t realize how much better new computers are.  For many people a laptop is the computer that best fits what they do.  I have found a few good deals on laptops and we are selling them.  If you need a laptop download this PDF file to read all about them and order.

Even if you don’t get one from me, if your computer is more than 3 years old please upgrade, you will be surprised how much better they are, how low priced they are and how much more efficient you will be.

How do you value the worth of a company or person?

Business, concepts, Entrepreneurship, Investment, Money, , , , , ,

So I am going to take a break from the series that I am writing because I have a topic that I really want to talk about.  I would love to get some input from my readers, so please leave a comment.

There is a website called Networth IQ, this website is about keeping track of your income, assets and debts.  Then over time you will be able to track how your networth is doing.  When you track something you focus on it more and then it starts to improve.

Now after using the site, I did expect a bit more.  My most valuable asset is my businesses and there is not even a place to enter your business so I put it in other assets.

To point of today’s blog is to ponder the question of how to value a small company.  When you are a public company the value is usually what someone is willing to buy it for.  Of course most companies will really sell for the market cap, this is because many people who hold the stock think it is worth more than the current price of the stock, so if you wanted to buy the entire company you would have to buy these shares at a higher price.  So even this measure of market cap is not a real value.

For me, I own a few companies.  The two with the most real assets are my tile business and my computer business.  The tile business has about 60k worth of inventory at our landed cost, but we have a contract to sell this tile for 150k to a buyer, we also have exclusive import deals and exclusive sales deals that makes our company worth more.  So how do you value this company?  Do you do it on the cost or the sales price.  What about the deals, do they count?

Next is the computer company.   The actual assets of the company are fairly small, this is because the cost of computer hardware always falls so we keep very little in stock, we do have at least 20k tied up in tools, furniture and the computers that we use in the business.  But then we have some very valuable assets.  First we have connections and relationships to great suppliers, built up over a decade.  Next we have over 3000 historic customers, we have over 1000 people on our mailing list and over 400 resellers on our reseller mailing list.  Many of these people will usually call us up when they are ready to get a computer.  We have systems and processes in place that took years to figure out, so that things get done right and the on time.  We have pricing models set up, and vast experience.  Almost all of this is heavily documented.  We have many domain names and websites, together these get about 200-300 unique hits per day.  So how do you value all of these things.  With these things we can design a system and send out a mass email and in a day we will have orders coming in.

Now lets take this same idea to individual people.  People are much like a small business like my computer company.  We have connections, we have systems for getting things done, we have our experiences and mindsets.  You also have your education and knowledge which translates directly into ability to make money.  There are some people who have assets and these assets took a decade or more to get.  While there are others have the tools and knowledge to gain those same huge assets in a very short amount of time, even though they may not currently possess those assets.  So, networth is important but it is not the most important thing.

I think of it like poker.  Good poker players treat the chips in from of them like ammo.  Some times you take risks and it does not work out and you have less ammo.  But good players know how to play, they know how to win because they can read other players, they know things that others don’t.  In the end they usually win, but of course there is always luck and sometimes they fail.  But even when they are down they know how to pop right back up.  The have the connections to get money and the knowledge of what to do with it to earn more. During the game the value of what you have in front of you is not nearly as important as your ability to turn that money into something larger.  But at the end of the game it is the money sitting in front of you that decides if you won or lost.

Networth is much like this, if you want to be the really big winner at the end, sometimes you have to go “All-In” and risk it all for a great return.  Most people play it safe, they never lose big but they also never win big.  And in life the bets are never 50-50, if you know what you are doing most of the time the chances are way in your favor.

Tell me what you think please.

How to pick a MLM company, and what to stay away from.

Business, concepts, Entrepreneurship, Inspiration, Marketing, MLM, Money, , , , , , , , , , ,

There is a huge range of different MLM companies out there in the world. Some are small, some are huge. Some sell a product some have services. They all have a good sales pitch, and they all promise success. But how do you go through all of these and find the ones that you can be successful at? How are companies different from each other? What should you look for in a good MLM Company? How do you do all of this while not being taken?

Well there is a very wide variety of MLM companies out there. At this time there are about 5000 MLMs with a sales force of over 5000 people. There are 100 or so really successful ones out there. For this blog I will keep it all concept, in the next blog I will name names and rate companies that I know of.

To me one of the FIRST things that I look for is the ROI, this means how many sales do I need to make to get my money back and start making profit. I also look at the cost of maintaining the membership, the value of the product, the support of the team.

One of my main tests of any MLM that I look at is the source of the money. Most good MLMs out make all of their money off of selling a product or service. They have to have a good product because this is where the money is made. But at the same time there are MLMs that focus on recruiting, and almost all of the money being made is from a huge ($300+) fee that new recruits must pay. Almost all of this money is paid to the upline. In many of these companies almost all of the money is being made from the recruiting fees. If you think about this, it is not sustainable. And I feel that this is unethical, you are promising people a dream, and taking their money, and the only way they can get to their dream is to take more money from their friends and family. And most of that money goes upline. In these companies history, and the math, shows us that about 1% of the people win big, 5% of the people win, 5% more break even and the rest LOSE MONEY.

When I tell someone that they can make it, and they can have success I want to mean it. I am NOT going to put my name on it if the chips are stacked against my friends. The first MLM I was in was, and still is, the largest MLM in the world. They had great motivational meetings, but almost everyone there was loosing money. On top of that they were spending a ton of time, and hurting many relationships by trying to force people to consume their products. You became good friends with the other people in the company, and you would have pressure to use the products, even though they were vastly overpriced, you also would be pressured to buy “tools”, overpriced educational materials. With all of this going on they had weekly meetings, monthly all day meetings and a few times a year they had 3-4 day conventions. All of these meetings had various costs, and you were told to come early and stay late. Even people who recruited 10-20 people into this company did not make money, if you counted the amount they were overpaying on their products. Almost everyone there was loosing money, but they were sold a dream, and they would hear from people who made the dream. Some would try for years never reaching success. Other would get 50 or so friends and family to join in, who were all loosing money so that they could make a decent income.

Other companies that I have seen have a product where you make very little on, some as little as $1 a month for each customer, but these same companies have fees over $500 to join, and these fees are almost totally paid to the upline. I was presented a company last week where, as far as I could figure, over 80% of the money made in the program was ONLY from these recruiting fees. You can always tell these companies because they have a large fee to join and once you are in they tell you to focus on getting other people to join so that you can pay back your fee. Of course this all is great for the person on top, but for me, I can’t ethically build a company like that where for me to have success I have to hurt other people. Yes they have a chance to make it, but that chance is slim, and for them to have success they also must hurt others financially. Personally I like to stay away from ANY company that pays for recruits. I want it to be easy for people to sign up.

There is a semi new evolution of this concept. This is where, instead of a large recruitment fee there is a smaller monthly fee. Some companies even go so far as to charge a monthly fee for you to have a website so that you can sign up other people. And they have yet another fee to be allowed to sell their products. They call it a technology fee. I am in the computer industry also and I know to make a dedicated server with a self replicating software on it costs about $50 a month to maintain, and such a server could host tens of thousands of associates. So if they are charging $40 a month PER USER that is a huge profit. $30 or so of this money was paid to the field and the rest was kept with the company. I talked to a lady there, who was making great money, she had recruited over 1100 people. I ask her if more than 100 people have broken even and her answer was “ I think it about 100” That means that over 1000 people paid $350 to sign up, and $40 a month for months on end and did not make any money. The even worse part was that they sold a product that was very bad. I was in a meeting with the leaders of this company, as they presented it to me and some other people looking at the company. At the end we asked them if they have ever even used the product they are selling, and to our surprise and horror not even ONE of these leaders had ever used the service that they sell. It was crazy. Their response to the objection that many of us had to the monthly fee was that “If you personally find 6 other people to pay the fee each month yours will be waived”. To me this was a horrible answer. I told all of my friends in this company to quit, and they did. (I tend to have that result, the last three people who were new in a company that was bad and presented the idea to me I showed them logically how it was bad, and the next day they were quitting and getting their money back.) A pyramid scheme is a company has NO product at all and all the money is made from the new people paying the people who have been in longer. This company has almost no product of value.

Believe it or not there are many even worse companies. One company charges 1000 to join, and you have to then pass up the first few people that you get, with the full 1000 going to your upline, then you start to find more people to sign up and you get the full 1000 from them and also from the first two people that they sign up. So what is the product, you will laugh at this. The product is a $20 a month website that allows you to sell the $1000 memberships. If you stop paying the $20 a month you then lose your chance to make money off of other people. The guy who thought up this whole plan has over 100,000 people now paying him $20 per month. All this running on servers that I bet cost him a few hundred per month at the most. What a smart, devious idea.

Now that you know what is bad, I don’t want to give the impression that all companies are bad, far from it, many companies have great products, and a great plan for paying people back. Later this week I will release the blog about that. That being said not every company is right for every person. Some companies focus more on selling products, and other focus on team building. Some sell services; some have just one product, while others sell 1000’s of products. Some are online while others are almost totally offline. Find a product, and a management style that fits you. Don’t just take any opportunity simply because it is presented to you. Find one you will love to represent.

Another key to finding a product is the size of the industry. If you are in an industry that almost everyone needs you will do better than in an industry that has very few people. You also need to look at the profits in that industry. Some industries have huge profit margins while others are very small. The phone industry is huge but the profits paid out to the mlm companies that sell phone service is VERY SMALL simply because competition has forced prices down. Most MLMs sell very low priced items, and these are items that people don’t need that many of. If your company sells something that only makes $10 a month there simply is not much money to work with, you will have to build a huge group to make life changing money.

About 60% of all MLM companies are Health and wellness related. One major reason for this is because health products can be marked up a lot. A $50 product may only cost $5 to make, this gives a lot of room for profit for the company and for the distributors. Another reason that the health products sell in MLM well is because most of them need to have a fairly large explanation for people to use them, and the normal retail channel just does not provide this. Most of these companies have a few core products, or maybe only one that they sell. In general these products do provide some help in our vastly malnourished society, and are fairly profitable to sell. For me personally I have no passion for this, and even if someone uses the product as they should the profit will still probably be under $30 per month for each person you sign up. I know many people who have made it big selling such a product, they have found many people who also found many people and they are making nice 6 figure incomes as a result.

Another major area are companies that sell many products, some they make themselves while others simply get a discount from products made by other companies. Everyone can find something that the company sales that you will like. The problem with most of these companies is that for them to be able to pay the kind of money that people want they have to mark up these products much more than you could find the same products for elsewhere.

One of my great product type is the financial services type. Most everyone needs investment help, a mortgage, insurance, or education. These are items that traditional methods charge huge amounts, these are also items that a large percent of many budgets goes to. One MLM that I was in originated mortgages. The fees charged to the customers was typical of the industry, and yet were still 3000 and more per sale. As you can see, even with a small team it was easy to make money doing this. On your first sale you made more money than all of your first year expenses. In my mind this was a great MLM, the only problem is now there is a credit crunch and it is very hard to get mortgages approved. Most people in this company have quit, and it would not surprise me if the company is gone before the end of 2008.

RULES. People want to join a MLM for the freedom they have to run their own business, but many MLMs have so many rules that they place on their distributors it almost feels like a commission job. Before you join a company look to see what rules you will have to live by. One MLM I know of states in their policy that they “OWN” anyone who signs of for their company and if you mention another business idea to them and they leave the first company you will be punished for theft. Other MLMs, say that you can’t sell their products anyway other than person to person or at their website. This limitation will make it much harder to be successful. Many companies won’t let you discount the products. Most won’t let you be in multiple MLMs at the same time and use your contacts from one to build the other. Most will not let you have your own marketing, your own website for the company and even your own business cards. Before you join a MLM decide what rules you are willing to live by and make sure that the one you are joining allows you to operate in the way you want to.

One last thing to look at is the stability of the company.  Is this a company that had been around for a long time or something that just started.  Most new companies may not survive and they usually don’t have all of the bugs worked out, but you can get in on the ground floor and be at the top.  A company that pays out a ton of money may look good, but if the company can’t make profits you may find one day that they are gone and so is all your hard work.  I also find it VERY hard to deal with a company that is always changing the compensation plan.  I understand as they get bigger you need changes, but I have seen companies that made 8 changes in a year.

Also you need to have a company with an easy to understand compensation plan.  I have been to meetings where the compensation plan is so complex that none of the leaders fully understand it, they simply keep asking you to “Trust the Company” and that the money will all come out right.  If you can’t explain the whole compensation plan in 30 seconds it is just too complex.  This will make it harder to build, and harder to see the direct results of your actions.

So the bottom line, find a company where you can make money, has a product/service you like and a team and system you would like to work with. Do this, then build it big and you will have great success.

I hope this helps. This is the third blog in this series. Please click here for the first one.

I could write 10 more pages on this but I feel that I have hit the most important points already.

What you need to get set up for a successful MLM business

Business, Computers, concepts, Entrepreneurship, Inspiration, Marketing, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This is the second article in my series on the MLM concept. Here is the first one with links to the rest.

I am going to define success as a business that is large enough to replace your entire normal income and also make a large positive change on your lifestyle. To be successful you first need to have a success mindset. You need to know how to make sales, how to make presentations and you need a team

For this blog I am going to assume that you have all of this in place and it is time to get started. Here is what else you need to get started quickly. These are the tools that I use.

Computer: You MLM is probably online, and you need to keep track of your customers and use your computer for marketing. (If you need a good deal on a computer go to Emerald Computers)
An office: You need a place where you go to work. This can be in your house or outside. It should be easy to bring potential customers there to talk with. I like to have a desktop as my main computer because you can use it longer with less fatigue. A laptop is also very useful.

Ok those are obvious, as should be having a good vehicle and an email account.

Now let me get a bit deeper, on what you need. I will assume that you are building an online business because most MLMs now are mostly online.

First you need your own domain name. You company has a web page and a domain name, but they control that. You need your own, something that is good for what you do, easy to spell, easy to remember. You then will get an email address on your domain. Never run a business using the email address from your ISP or one of those free sites like yahoo, msn or gmail, it really looks bad to many people. I use GoDaddy for my domains, it is cheap, had good support and works well.

Next you will want software to track your contacts. We use a program called ACT. With this program you enter in all the information about the people you are contacting. It them allows you to keep notes about them, update the info when you are on the phone, and most importantly it reminds you of the times you need to follow-up with these people. I also use a Palm Pilot to take all of this info and make it mobile, so that I can access and update it on the road.

Next you will want an auto-responder to manage your emails. What this does is track all of your contacts that wanted to be added to your various mailing lists. You also can preset automatic mailings, and send mass broadcasts to your prospects. There is much more you can do with it. I use a company called GetResponse and for the $150 a year I pay I get unlimited usage and it is well worth it.

Next you need your own website, you can make a simple site that you control. You should have a site for your prospects to visit. Another for your customers to visit and yet another for your team to visit. You need to learn about making a squeeze page, a way to extract data from your customer to feed to your auto-responder. I use a company called PrecisionWeb for my hosting. They offer much more than others for a great price. Check out the main Capital Active site for a great example of a basic page.

Next you should join networking websites like linkedin, Myspace, YouTube and make sites here for your business. You also can find many people who may be interested in your products.

Next it helps to have a blog, it is great way to establish yourself as an expert, as well as get a following of people finding out about you. It also really helps get you on top of the search engine results. I use wordpress because they are free, easy to use, fast and give you a ton links.

I found a lady who seems to have done everything PERFECT. I don’t know her, I just found her site from her blog today. She has her own great domain wealthcreatorsinc.com, and a nice blog. But you may not notice the two most important things she did, she made her page a squeeze page, where you must give her your information to go on. And second she DID NOT mention the name of her MLM this keeps you courious and willing to go on, and it lets her advertise without worrying about the rules of her company.

Next you need to create business cards with YOUR business name on it. I would suggest NOT to use business cards with the name of your MLM on it, they limit your advertising, and they are less flexible when you are marketing. Now carry many of these cards with you wherever you go. I hand out over 80 cards per week on average. More important than getting your card out is getting the cards of other people. I usually flip them over and write on the back details of what we talked about so I can remember.

I also often print up fliers with an upcoming event on it, as well as info about my website. Using this you can get a few more people a month to join your team.

You now need professional clothes. Depending on where you live you will have a different dress code. For Arizona pants and a nice button up shirt is good for most meetings. For the east coast you should wear a suit most of the time. No matter what, you need to have a suit for special events.

When I leave my house, I always have my Palm Pilot, my wallet with at least 20 business cards, my keys, my cell phone, an ink pen, a comb for my hair and usually I have my green laser pointer because it comes in handy all the time.

Well I hope this helps you be more successful.