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Please remember an important strategic fact:
A person who does not read has absolutely no advantage over a person who can’t.
Beginning February 1st, I’ll provide you with a strategic advantage of priceless value. I’ll continue to cull through the most interesting books of our time and provide you with a provocative concept unknown to the masses.
Each daily quote will serve as “brain food” which is literally mental stimulation.
Over 90% of all people lack the time and initiative to read one book a year. By reading about five books a week, I occupy a unique position in the civilized world…a place where less than one hundredth of one percent of all people reside.
I hope some of you will purchase a few of the books from which I quote, but let’s be honest … most won’t. That’s why I’ll provide as much important strategic information in each quote as possible.
I’ll do so in an economy of words so as not to cause you any significant time drain.
I’ll offer little, if any, commentary of my own. I’ll simply provide a quote, book title, author and author’s credentials.
Because in each case I’ll have read the book in its entirety, I’ll base the quote on some thesis concept of strategic advantage to you...a microcosm of the entire book.
I don’t read books because they support my opinions, nor should you expect to always agree with the concept presented. You won’t.
I’m not sharing the quotes to advance any agenda, nor confirm your biases about any subject. I’m offering you an online strategic advantage that will challenge you to think.
I assure you that this compilation of quotes will be found nowhere else on planet earth, either in virtual or actual reality.
Read my quote each day for one month and see if your life is enriched. Enough said.
Quote one will appear on this site on February 1st. Check it out.
None will be archived beyond 24 hours so I suggest that you habituate yourself to a daily visit.
It takes me many hours to devour each book, so five minutes of your time is a small sacrifice.
And by the way…if a million people read these quotes every day and you’re one of them, you have a strategic advantage of over 99.999% of all human beings alive in 2009 who will never read one book or one of my quotes.
As my uncle Jimmy used to say, “How do you like them apples?”
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| Posted by Mark Yarnell at | | | |
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To conclude the blogs on our Five-Step System (Step 1: Expose Step 2: Present Step 3: Validate Step 4: Enroll Step 5: Support), I’m going to address both final steps: enroll and support.
Obviously, when a prospect is ready to enroll, there’s nothing complicated about the sign-up.
However, my system differs 360 degrees from many other leaders.
I always suggest that the prospect sign up on his or her own. I never three-way them into the company because I want them to take the initiative to do so. It’s a commitment test.
This worries some leaders who believe that new prospects should be slammed in before they change their minds. However, I’d rather them change their minds before enrolling than waste my valuable time after they have already joined and been processed. Those who quit before signing up do us a great service.
With respect to the last step – support, I have a simple rule. I spend a minimum of one hour with all new business associates making certain that they learn these five fundamental steps.
Then I make myself available 24/7 to answer all questions for the first 30 days. After the first-month honeymoon, I gradually back off from those who're producing nothing.
Those who're recruiting and retailing can always count on my support.
Remember, new distributors will never be as excited as they are in their first month. If they can’t sell a few products and recruit a few people in their first month, they probably lack either the skills or motivation to succeed.
Sorry, but that’s just the way it is.
I support those who're working.
So that’s it – the whole Five-Step System: Expose, Present, Validate, Enroll and Support.
See ya' around campus.
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| Posted by Mark Yarnell at | | | |
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Once a prospect has been exposed to provocative information in Step One of The Five-Step System and has received a full presentation in Step Two, he or she generally has questions. They need to have several things validated and that’s Step Three - Validation.
Remember, you’re asking people to change careers and, at the very least, change mindsets. Some may not have been exposed to leveraged income so that whole concept of unlimited earnings seems too good to be true.
Remember too that most of them have spent dozens of years trading hours for dollars. They want to believe you, but it’s hard. This is where your favorite upline leader is critical.
This third step will often make the ultimate difference between success and failure. Great prospects need to visit with those on your upline team who are actually doing what you’re asserting.
What makes our industry so wonderful is this -- in every legitimate company, all distributors have the ability to track upline until they find a leader making the big checks.
More important, in every legitimate company these leaders are accessible to novice people who need them. That’s what MLM leaders are paid to do…support their new people with 3-way validation calls, tools and strategies.
I’ll never forget the excitement in my own life when I picked up my phone and called Richard Kall who was six levels above me and he answered the phone.
Richard was earning over a million dollars a year and was an industry author who had written a book called “The First Million Is the Easiest.”
The fact that he was willing to do 3-way validation calls with me, even though I was a brand new Distributor, spoke volumes about my new profession.
I was on his sixth level. He was in New York and I was in Texas. He was earning millions and I had never earned one check…but Richard was supporting me. Wow!
I knew I had found the right business. As soon as I started making the big checks, I did the very same thing for my people. Validation is about “giving back” the upline 3-way support you were given.
Occasionally I get calls from Distributors who have read my books or have heard my speeches and they ask me what they should do if they have no upline willing to help them or no upline making big checks.
Truthfully, I don’t know because I’ve never been in that situation. I sometimes wonder if I would have even succeeded without a great sixth-level upline like Richard Kall who was always available for 3-way Validation calls. Maybe not.
But every legitimate company has leaders who are both accessible and successful. That’s how companies grow and prosper.
Most people who fail in MLM do so because they picked a stupid company not because they are themselves stupid.
Unfortunately many of those people then spend the rest of their lives bad-mouthing our industry. So permit me one simple observation. Before you throw up your hands and give up, track upline in your own company until you find an unselfish big money leader willing to support you by conducting validation calls.
You probably have several in your upline team. If not, find a company that offers upline support before you decide that Network Marketing isn’t for you.
Step Four is Enroll…and it’s on the way in the next blog.
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| Posted by Mark Yarnell at | | | |
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To put this second step into perspective, here’s a review of the Five-Step System:
Step One: Expose Prospects to Intriguing Information (See previous blog)
Step Two: Present Your Whole Business Story (This blog)
Step Three: Validation (Next blog)
Step Four: Enrol (Next blog after Validation)
Step Five: Support (Next blog after Enrol)
Step Two, the Presentation, is the process of profiling your company, your products and your pay plan as clearly as possible in less than one hour.
The best environments for presentations aren’t generally high arousal/low frequency, but rather low arousal/high frequency.
A high arousal/low frequency strategy for presentations was popular in the past. We herded prospects into a room where they became aroused by music, peer pressure, crowd mania and some outside speaker who came to town to heal everyone’s financial woes. It was arousing but, like many personal power seminars, the arousal went away in 72 hours.
Human contact through personal, face-to-face bonding is still the best way to build long-term downline organizations. But it is not the best way to recruit new prospects.
High arousal peer pressure is not the best way to impart information to people who are serious about researching a business.
When people are exposed to an hour of new information, they retain about 20%. The advantage of a low arousal/high frequency presentation, is that prospects can review information multiple times until they understand it.
Even better, if they do become a distributor, they will stay with their business longer if their decision is based on facts rather than temporary emotional arousal.
The best means of presenting your business is through a short, comprehensive website with all the relevant facts or a DVD that covers the important information about your company in under one hour.
In-home meetings are still great, but most folks lack the time to attend one. The pace of life today is too hectic to accommodate that former strategy.
The key is to spend time with prospects on the phone as soon as possible right after they’ve reviewed the presentation. That follow-up contact is called Validation and it’s Step Three in our Five-Step System. Stay tuned, you’ll learn about that in the next blog.
If no one in your company has created a presentation landing page or DVD, do it yourself. If you think you can’t create one, track Upline until you find a leader who can and will do so. If you can’t find anyone in your Upline willing to help you and you refuse to create one yourself, it’ll be difficult to follow our system. That’s just the way it is. I’m sorry.
Can you still succeed in MLM and earn the big money without a presentation website or DVD? You bet. Many great leaders have offices and conduct regular presentations at those locations. Some have offices in their homes where they invite prospects for the presentation. Others travel all over the world delivering speeches to excited prospects. Many make a fortune that way. If that’s how you want to conduct your business… great.
Twenty-four years in this industry have taught me one important fact: prospects always ask themselves one important question when considering whether or not to do the business, “Can I do what this person is doing?”
Some will refuse to participate in your business if they think they have to lease an office in order to succeed. Some will feel as though their home is not “good enough” for presentations or may resent the idea of having to keep their home in “presentation shape” at all times.
Some will meet prospects for coffee and that works for awhile, but a steady diet of it doesn’t last.
Some prospects will decline if they believe that they have to deliver hotel speeches in order to succeed. (Public speaking is still the most frightening activity in the world to most people.)
But anyone can hand out a DVD or recommend a website and that’s what makes our presentation model so effective.
Prospects need to see that they can do what we’re doing. Even more important, they need to know that the presentation is both cost and time effective so that they can reach huge numbers of other prospects in a short time.
So that’s Step 2: Presentation. As I said earlier, next is Validation and you’ll have that tribal system in your hands very shortly. We just got another foot of snow and it’s too cold to go fishing or paragliding so I’m writing another blog today whether you like it or not.
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| Posted by Mark Yarnell at | | | |
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Okay, let’s start this Tribe. Based on the high traffic and positive comments about our last blog, I assume that many folks are interested in joining a community of ethical entrepreneurs. I also think it’s safe to assume that people are fed up with strategies that take them only part way to wealth.
So I think I’ll name our Tribe ATWTAHK which is an ancient Native American term which means All The Way To A Hundred K. ☺
Prior to talking about the first step in our Five-Step System for building your business, I need to make a preliminary point. In order to save you a great deal of frustration, I want you to realize that as many as sixty percent of all North Americans are not cognitively hardwired to do MLM. That’s just an estimate based on my 24 years of experience, but I’ll bet I’m fairly close.
In other words, approach ten people and six cannot succeed no matter how great your leadership. You can join Tribe ATWTAK and execute every strategy to perfection, but unless you are prepared to accept the fact that most people are not legitimate prospects, you’ll eventually quit or seek geographical cures (jump from deal to deal).
Some people get disgusted and quit our business and others jump around from deal to deal and one is just as self-defeating as the other. Eventually we must all come to terms with the fact that the majority of humans will not face the personal humiliation which comes with failure, and therefore will never rise to their full potential.
Success is just too much to expect from many people. That’s why you and I are free to earn all we want. If it were easy everybody in the whole world would simply join Amway and we’d all live happily ever after. Based on their recent TV ads, I think Amway would like us to consider that.
The Five-Step System for building your business includes the following steps which I will cover over the next few blogs:
Step One: Expose
Step Two: Present the Whole Story
Step Three: Validate the Information
Step Four: Enrol (Enroll is spelled with two ls in the US - enroll)
Step Five: Support
In this blog we’ll focus on how to execute Step One most effectively. The best way to get people through the five steps to MLM involvement, is to begin by exposing them to facts without bringing out their biases. Many people fail because they combine the first two steps, Expose and Present. They inadvertently give people too much information at the very beginning of their contact.
Prospects need to be exposed to rational facts which reinforce their current predicament and cause them to want to hear about your solution. If you tell them anything in the very first exposure step that will allow them to google you or your company…Poof! They’re gone. That’s because they have an inherent stereotypical belief about our industry that’s usually inaccurate.
If you give them anything except a generic exposure tool including but not limited to business cards, tapes, CDs, company websites, or e-mails which define your company or anything else that triggers a red flag…you blow perfectly good prospects right out the water.
We created a free, generic exposure tool two years ago on www.15yearsleft.com. Feel free to use any or all of it for your own purposes. Leaders from many companies use that information. Some leaders have taken the information and created their own tools based on it. That’s great.
Just make sure that when you approach people the very first time, no matter how you do it, you don’t give away the farm. If and when they call you back, you’ll have plenty of opportunity to give them a full-blown presentation.
It’s all very simple. You are looking for people who want to make big money and when you find them, you expose them to generic facts which reinforce their need to act. When they call you back, you then present the business. How to do that will be the subject of the next blog.
My goal is to get you through all five steps by January 1st so that you can hit the ground running in 2009.
On January 2nd I will make a very important announcement. To my knowledge no one has ever done what I’m about to do – free of course, to our Tribe.
Now, stay tuned for Step Two: Present Your Whole Story
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| Posted by Mark Yarnell at | | | |
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I want to be part of a Tribe of fascinating, stimulating Networkers. So I think I’ll just start one with this blog.
How would you like to be part of something that matters? Networking matters. It matters especially today because all the former exit strategies available to aging boomers and eager young people have gone away.
Most people are having trouble connecting the dots, partly because of all the distractions of emerging technology and partly because traditional professionals are always threatened by any challenge to existing paradigms. Addictive gadgets and those poor souls who have been appointed to guard the past can be very distracting.
Sorry folks, but it’s time to stop betting on Wall Street, real estate, pseudo- leaders and long-shot investments. It’s time to start betting on yourself. I’m willing to bet on you, so let’s begin.
Over the next year, I’m going to connect some dots for you. It’s self-evident that many Networkers are being grossly misinformed about the unlimited income potential our industry offers and the methodology necessary to prosper. The bar has been lowered, the expectations have been diminished, and the industry has been flooded with low-income strategies.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with small goals unless they are forced on you by those who promote strategies for mediocrity, and imply that greater financial objectives are unrealistic.
So let’s get one thing straight…when I say that you can earn $100,000 a month, it’s because I’ve earned much more than that and can teach you how. When others say that you can’t, it’s because they haven’t, not because I didn’t or you won’t.
I’m fed up with self-appointed critics who point to the tiny number of big money earners in relationship to the masses who earn little or nothing in MLM. That’s not a rational analysis.
What are we supposed to do, end the PGA tour because only a handful of talented, hard working golfers earn big checks?
Or how about this. Out of an estimated 1.5 million hopeful children worldwide who engage in years and years of hard work, sweat and tears, only one kid every four years is good enough to win one or more gold medals in each Olympic event. Should we cancel children’s athletics and deny our kids their dreams and hopes?
It’s true that only a tiny fraction of Networkers get to the big money so doesn’t it make sense to learn how we did it rather than encouraging others to strive for averagism?
It all begins with one basic mindset. Consider the position of one of our leading scientists. I agree with the assessment of Dr. Leonard Mlodinow, the noted physicist from Caltech and coauthor of Stephen Hawkins’s latest book, “A Briefer History of Time.”
Dr. Mlodinow puts it very succinctly when he writes: “successful people in every field are almost universally members of a certain club – those people who don’t give up. John Grisham’s novel A Time to Kill was rejected by 26 publishers, and Dr. Seuss’s first children’s book was rejected by 27. John Kennedy Toole committed suicide when he lost hope of ever getting his book published. His mom never gave up and 11 years after his book was published, it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Successful people don’t give up.”
Pick the right company with products about which you’re passionate, an owner whose values are evident, a track record of profitability and a successful Upline who is accessible.
I can’t help you pick the perfect company so please don’t ask me to do so. Either you’re in one or you aren’t and only you know the truth.
You pick the company and I’ll give you the tools. If you follow our strategies and remain focused for over a year with little success…perhaps you need to pick a different company. That’s as far as I’ll go.
If you don’t have an ethical Upline anywhere above you who is both successful and accessible and willing to support you, don’t give up, pick another company.
If your owner is crooked or your products are worthless, don’t give up, pick another company.
Company selection is up to you and nobody should be expected to do your due diligence or make that choice for you. But make certain you are content because people will not follow you anywhere if they can tell that you aren’t happy.
You may think that you can disguise your true feelings, but you can’t. We’re in a relationship business and nobody wants to bond with those who lack passion for what they’re doing.
So my first two Tribal pointers are simple: big money requires passionate focus and long-term loyalty. To form a Tribe of fascinating, stimulating Networkers we must all agree to be fully content with our companies so that our total focus can be on success.
The legendary Mario Andretti, at the very peak of his racing career, could have never won the Indy 500 driving a wheelchair…if you catch my drift.
Next blog I’ll cover Step One of my Five-Step System for building your business: The Exposure.
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| Posted by Mark Yarnell at | | | |
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A question I’m frequently asked is: “How should distributors start conversations with prospects?”
The simple answer is - always start with a question that allows a prospect to describe his or her work. My favorite question is, “Just out of curiosity, what do you do for a living?”
Then I listen carefully to what they have to say. A quality person will always reciprocate by asking what I do … and that’s when the fun begins.
Sometimes I’m an “Emergency Retirement Planner.” Other times, I’m a “Unit Actuary.”
Either response will cause a prospect to become curious. Most will ask me what the heck a Unit Actuary is.
I simply point out that I help people compute the total effort required to retire in one, two or three years based on the number of units they need to fund their favorite retirement lifestyle.
I explain that a fisherman might only need two units in order to have a nice boat and fish several days a week, while a pilot who likes to travel may need six or seven units in order to fund a nice plane and afford fuel.
I end by explaining that my job is to compute unit needs and then help a person find a funding vehicle which will yield that number of units in three years or less.
Virtually all prospects will appear completely befuddled and most will ask what a unit is. In response, I simply tell them it’s a bit complicated, but one unit equals $10,000 a month for life with no principle drawing interest.
I tell them to check out www.15yearsleft.com and then I give them my home number and ask them to call me if they’re still curious.
Those of you who own the first four Holy Grail books and accompanying CDs know exactly what to do next.
Obviously, this is one of many strategies and applies to situations where you’re face-to-face.
Many distributors laugh when I teach them this approach, but I’m very serious. Some say they can’t possibly start a conversation that way and that’s perfectly okay with me. I’ve got a big pile of money and maybe when people stop making excuses they’ll get theirs.
In the meantime…how’s your approach working for you? Been to Tahiti lately?
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| Posted by Mark Yarnell at | | | |
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When I was a kid growing up in Missouri I sold Christmas Cards one year just to make enough quarters to buy an ant farm. The kid next door had one and I loved to sit and watch through the glass sides as a small army of industrious ants tunneled through the sand.
I never really thought about the ant perspective until I read a humorous dialogue in a marvelous book called Ant Farm by Simon Rich.
It’s not only a fascinating book crammed with short, humorous stories, but a very interesting collection of bizarre tales that metaphorically reflect the human condition. Buy the book and I promise you a day of absolute wet-your-pants laughter.
In the Ant Farm dialogue below, the author has imagined a conversation between the leader ant and his workers as they try to find a way out of their desperate situation.
What struck me were the similarities between the plight of the ants and the equally frustrating efforts of many Network Marketers who just keep doing the same things year after year and expecting different results. Here’s how Simon Rich imagines it.
“Ant Leader – All right team, listen up. As you know, we’ve built seven tunnels and we still haven’t found a way through the glass. I can tell you’re discouraged and I don’t blame you. Tunnel 7 was our most ambitious project to date and you all risked your lives to make it happen. But rest assured, we’ll be out of this hellish wasteland soon enough. I have a plan.
Ant Worker – What is it? What’s the plan?
Ant Leader – An eighth tunnel. Through the sand.
Ant Worker – I don’t know, sir…we’ve been digging tunnels ever since we got here. We always end up hitting glass. We lost ten on the first tunnel: Brian, Jack, Chris –
Ant Leader – I know their names.
Ant Worker – Why don’t’ we just give up? I mean seriously, what’s the point?
Ant Leader – The point? The point is we have no food or water. The point is we’re trapped in this crazy desert, and if we don’t find an exit soon we’re going to suffocate.
Ant Worker – What kind of God would put us here, just to torture us? Sand to the left…sand to the right…
Ant Leader – It’s a test, William. He’s testing us.
Ant Worker – You’re right. We can do this. We just have to work ten times harder than we’ve ever worked before! (Starts digging)
Ant Worker – You want to know something? I’ve got a good feeling about this one. A really good feeling.”
Many times I’ve wanted to point out the futility of some MLM companies, but that’s not my role as an industry author and mentor. Unfortunately, many people fail in our industry because they join companies with pay plans that are cash games, products that nobody needs, owners who are inexperienced and leaders with no loyalty.
Many great people fail because they are sucked into Ant Farm Networking.
If you wind up digging and digging over and over and continue to remain financially desperate…maybe it’s time to try some new digging strategies or sell the farm and join a new one that at least meets the basic criteria for a viable Network Marketing company.
…More on those basic criteria in a future blog.
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| Posted by Mark Yarnell at | | | |
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This is a very simple strategy – so simple anyone can do it. Do not deviate from this system.
Step One
Obtain a list of Realtors’ names and telephone numbers.
Step Two
Call one Realtor at a time from a landline.
Step Three
Identify yourself and ask them if they’d be willing to sell something besides real estate if they could triple their income in the first year.
Step Four
If they say “no” or argue, thank them politely and hang up immediately.
Step Five
If they say “yes” send them to www.15yearsleft.com or some other short enticing message that works and ask them to call you back if they’re interested in checking it out further.
Step Six
If they call you back interested, present your business opportunity in any manner you wish – face-to-face, or walk through a web presentation, or whatever works best in your company. Most companies provide a presentation booklet or web site presentation.
Step Seven
Repeat those six steps 30 times a day.
Do not worry about any details. You’ll become better with practice and within a couple of months you’ll easily sponsor one out of thirty Realtors who go through the entire process. It’s all a numbers game, just like any other form of sales, with one major exception…do it for a year or two and you’ll be sipping your favorite beverage on some exotic beach and jetting to Paris for Fois Gras and Crème Brulee.
How can I be so sure? Been there…done that.
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| Posted by Mark Yarnell at | | | |
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If you really want to know why MLM has become so filled with money games and goofy scams, I have the books for you.
The first one was written by the editor of “Machinist”, the daily technology newsblog at www.Salon.com, F. Manjoo. The book is called True Enough and Mr. Manjoo is a dynamic, young technology expert who explains in simple English what guys like me have been trying to say to the world for years.
When I say or write these facts, some people dismiss my comments. When a technology genius like the contributing editor at Salon.com says or writes this stuff…you need to pay attention because his wisdom will help you avoid the money-game scams and prepare you to earn those huge checks you’ve always desired.
The problem is lack of trust and the biggest challenge is now the process of picking an ethical company. Now that pseudo-MLM leaders are changing organizations like jumping beans and bad mouthing their former companies, who can you trust?
Now that some company owners are taking away checks, lowering payouts, adding bogus products with questionable science behind them, creating silly front-end load sign-ups, inventing training that doesn’t work, allowing people to lie about their checks or change downlines and all the while hiding behind the mask of Christian values, how can people ever hope to join a long-term, ethical company?
Well, first, we must understand why trust is so important in human ventures and then we must be willing to never compromise our principles. A good start is Monjoo’s book, True Enough.
Here’s one quote from his book that will make sense to you:
“Society works better when people trust one another. The US was once among the most trusting countries in the world. In 1960, nearly 60% of Americans said they trust most people. By the early 70’s, it had dropped to below 50% and by 1990 it was just below 40%.
In 2006, only 32% of Americans surveyed said that they trusted most people. Modern communications technology has shifted our understanding of the truth and completely altered our grasp of ethical reality.”
Folks, trust this book recommendation and stay tuned to these blogs because in the coming weeks, I’ll arm you with some additional materials that will help you sort the scams from the real companies. In order to succeed in MLM, you need to know who you can trust, how you can find them, what questions to ask and how to avoid unethical companies and pseudo leaders.
After 23 years in this industry, both as a builder in 2 companies and author of numerous books and articles, I’m still persuaded that MLM is the last bastion of capitalism in a world of dramatic change.
But due diligence is more important than ever to those who truly need to create a good life for their families. Some future blogs will be dedicated to helping ethical Networkers and their prospects navigate though the expanding vortex of entrepreneurial leaders ---many of whom are just plain untrustworthy.
My life as an industry leader has become a series of phone calls from people who feel confused and betrayed. They wonder why so many of us earned such huge checks when there were only a dozen companies. They wonder if our industry has grown too saturated now that there are thousands of companies. Some have squandered thousands of dollars in sign-ups and systems and strategies that never worked and they wonder why they’ve failed in our industry after succeeding in others.
Simply put, people wonder what’s going on. I’m going to tell you. I will argue that Network Marketing has always been based on trust and word of mouth distribution. Trust is the essence of MLM. As that trust has eroded, our industry has suffered. The question is this…can we recover and once again grow and prosper as an industry?
You bet we can and if I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t waste my time writing these blogs. When I recommend a book, I suggest you read it. When I present a concept, please think about it. When I warn you about a delusional strategy…avoid it.
Or, keep right on doing what you’ve been doing and keep right on earning what you’ve been earning. How has that been working for you so far?
Anyhoo, I’m going trout fishing and the next blog will appear in a couple of days.
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| Posted by Mark Yarnell at | | | |
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