When do you call it quits?

During motivational speaker seminars, football game locker rooms, and in a bunch of motivational books, there is a lot of cheerleadering and saying "Never give up!". Well the reality is in business, there are times you have to abandon things, and quit.

In my case, I pulled the plug on Better Life Technologies Friday and I am out of business. After seeing my costs go through the roof, and not having sufficient income, I pulled the plug. My DBA had the same name as another company here around 10 years before I registered it. The prospects I got to make sales were spotty. And, all and all, I just didn't get into the money. So, I pulled the plug. Sad to see things end this way, but now I go back into the job market and see if I can work, and collect unemployment.

Anyhow, due to my total wipeout, I am going to stop doing entries here until I can manage to demonstrate a track record worth speaking on. To occupy my time, I am going to design some board games.

Well, there ARE times to say enough and end something. Don't let anyone else tell you. Ideally you should end failures early and let good things ride, but knowing which is an art.

So, signing off until whenever... Good luck everyone.

I am going to be taking at least a week off from here.

I need to refocus on things and rework some material I have. I will be looking to take a least a week off. It could run longer. To be notified when I will be back, please sign up on the left for subscription, so you will know when I am active again.

Thanks...

There are three kinds of stupid (Global Online goes belly up)

Welcome to the world of "passive income" and get rich quick. I had made mention of this importer I had invested in. I also managed to get others to put money into it. Well, the end result of Global is here: http://www.grassmueckgroup.com/global_online.php

Yep, thing went belly up. It was bad that I was out $600, but worse that I promoted it, costing people more money. I do have shame over it.

Anyhow, I might as well bring up a topic I had in mind in relation to this. This was stupid on my part. The area I played in here was one of high risk, because made you violate a basic principle of investing, that being to do your due dilligence and get the financials for any investment you do. You need to seriously crunch the numbers before you do anything. Unfortunately, when you play in the area of HYIPs and grey area investments, you have no chance of seeing the books. So, you are doing a crapshoot. In most cases, you will end up losing.

Ok, now back to three kinds of stupid. These kinds of stupid are see in the cartoon, Aqua Teen Hunger Force. They have three main characters in it. One character is child-like in nature, and ignorant of the world, and easily duped. Another one has major character flaws, a lack of integrity, and outright greed. The third is intellectually smart, but fails in the area of practical intelligence and understanding the world. All three of these are types of stupid that if someone displays any, they are likely to run into serious problems in making bad decisions.

Unfortunately, my involvement with Global likely involved all three, and blind trust in places I shouldn't have.

Next Sucker Syndrome

Whenever you don't provide any value in what you sell, except the promise of making a lot of money, you fall into the "Next Sucker Syndrome" (aka, the "Last Guy in Gets Screwed"). In other words, you sign up for a network marketing opportunity where you hope to recruit the "next sucker" so that he can then recruit the next and so on. This mentality drives speculators in bubble markets and people who engage in gifting programs. Often time, program jumpers are people who fall prey to "The Next Sucker Syndrome" but suck at lining up the next sucker.

All and all, if you get into this, I just hope you aren't the last sucker in.

Greasing the slide, weeding the garden.

Greasing the slide is a term that refers to making your sales pitch so appealing that your prospect can only say yes. To make this work, you have to do what I call "weeding the garden". This involves addressing issues that your prospect may have problems with, to allow their desire to buy to come through. In other words, get rid of the objectionable weeds (pun intended), so that they will then act on what they really want.

In other words, get out of your way by getting their reasons to hesitate out of the way. By the way, this involves a LOT of listening.

U.S. Mortgage Foreclosure Filings Rise 90% in May

This is for those who happen to believe that they are safe looking for work in the job market and working a job. Most people reading this blog likely are aware of it. Anyhow, here is the link:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=av3bqU7edFDs&refer=home

June 12 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. foreclosure filings surged 90 percent in May from a year earlier as more homeowners fell behind on their monthly mortgage payments, RealtyTrac Inc. said.

There were 176,137 notices of default, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions last month, led by California, Florida and Ohio, the Irvine, California-based seller of foreclosure data said in a report today. The median price for a U.S. home slid 1.8 percent the first three months of 2007 as the housing slump entered its second year, according to the National Association of Realtors. The filings rose 19 percent from April.

Turn your weaknesses into a strength.

I think of Scatman John, the musical legend when I write this. Scatman had really bad stuttering during his real life. He decided to do something about it and took up the musical form scat, using his stuttering as the basis of his music.

A key in business to turn any weakness into a strength is to see how that weakness can generate into a solution for other people's needs, and thus be able to sell it.

An example would be a bad habit you are able to succeed inspite of. If you are lazy, and make money, you show people you are lazy but still make money.

Go here to learn more about Scatman John:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scatman_john

How much can you afford to spend on an opportunity?

A basic rule of thumb to use in determining how large of a program one can afford to buy is to take about half of what one can afford to spend, and use it to acquire the opportunity. The rest needs to go to cover overhead. For example, if you have about $2000 saved up, you would end having around $1000 to acquire an opportunity. If you have $1000, then you would have about $500 to spend. For a more accurate assessment, figure out what your entire operating expense will be, from a phone line to getting a computer, to covering a merchant account, and add a MINIMUM of 25% for marketing (this includes advertising, printing up business or sizzle cards, and so on).

What you do NOT want to do is buy an expensive program, and have no money to operate.

The Three Foot Rule.

I just became aware of something called "The Three Foot Rule". While, like all advice given, it has a bit of truth, apparently this is pitched to network marketers as to how to build their business. It is the cold call method of social interaction. Pretty much anyone within three feet of you is supposed to be a person you pitch your business opportunity to.

Anyhow, to learn all about the horrors of this, check this video out:


So, in a nutshell, if you want to understand the true meaning of the three foot rule, it is this, if you practice it, people will think you are a weirdo with a third foot, that should be locked up in a cage in some freak show. Now, it is good to enage a lot of people to practice socialization skills. But, to turn everything and spin everything into a chance to pitch your opportunity is warped.

True leadership doesn't sell money.

I thought this video I saw on My Space, on true leadership and building a downline, is very on target. True leadership is about inspiring, not selling money.

The Inspiration Economy for Marketers

Add to My Profile | More Videos

I plan on writing soon on what to lead with besides money (the comp plan).

Selling your dreams for a bowl of soup.

The title today's entry aludes to several Biblical verses, where Esau sells his birthright for a single bowl of soup or stew. It is a sad state of affairs where a person sacrifices long term goals for short term need.

Well, how many people manage to do this with your life? How many people sacrifice their dreams as a result? Look at yourself and ask if you had done that with your dreams, sell them out for a bowl of soup. If you have, ask yourself when you will do something about it?

You are the guardian of your list.

Do not treat your list as something casual. If you don't care about your list and feed them things that are irrelevant or harmful, your list is going to shrink. You need to assume, if you want a good list, that people will eventually take your recommendations on faith and act on them. If you are careless in how you build it, and don't do the due dilligence for your people, then you will end up having people blacklisting you, and even possibly bad mouthing you to everyone they know.

What story does your happiness depend on?

I want to focus this entry on the concept of happiness. In the case of myself, I happened to be chatting with some woman over the Internet who was fuming that no one remembered her birthday. She plays in an online world called "Second Life", and she was all upset no one sent her back whether or not they would attend her birthday on there. Well, I hadn't sent anything else, and she was fuming at me, saying I hated her, and so on. It wasn't even her birthday, mind you, just pre-birthday.

Contrast this with myself, and Myspace. Dave Ramsey dumped me! He was in my top 24 and he drops me for whatever reason. Maybe I ended up borrowing money sometime, but I have no idea. Do I let this bother me? Well, just some, but I move on.

The lesson here? Well, how about you not bother to make up stories to make yourself miserable, or reach conclusions that may not be true. How about a simple leaving things as a mystery and that is that?

The world's best compensation plan (In My Humble Opinion)

I believe if you took a 1Up and put it in a residual mode, and put at least 50% of total costs in that, and then forked off up to the remaining 50% into a 3 by X (10 seems to work) matrix (same amount on each level). This would be the world's best compensation system. The 1Up allows people to go past the Matrix, creating paylines, and the Matrix provides a way to combat the breakaway mode. In addition, the Up works to motivate people not to get lazy (as they tend to do in Matrixes, waiting on spill over). By working it this way, with the split, you would only need to get two or three people in to break even, which helps. The Matrix also makes a person more comfortable bringing people into a program. While the Up part goes to the sponsor, the person who is brought in goes in the downline of the Matrix who brought them in. Everyone wins here. The Up is used to get people in profit, while the matrix is used to provide spillover and connection of people. I call this an Up Matrix (or Up and Up Matrix).

There is NO network marketing program on the planet that uses this compensation plan now. There is ONLY one on the planet that uses the 1Up residual (1Up and Up System) and that is Your New Fortune in EDC. You can learn more about that here: http://www.1UpandUp.com

Of course, you need to have a bunch of products and/or services that are worth the money, so people will stay in the program and believe they are getting their money's worth out of it. It is the quality of products that keep people in an MLM and are competitively priced. This is one reason why I carry Invisus (http://Invisus.BLTeks.com) my only MLM at this point. It costs $15/month, and while somewhat more expensive than usual Internet security, it carries a lot more, plus American tech support. And, $15/month is affordable by people, particularly if it makes computers happy.

Some basic facts about Aussie Up Compensation plans

If you are going to consider an Aussie Up compensation plan, there are some basic things you need to know.
1. The comp plan is one of the most lucrative out there.
2. The comp plan requires you to have havie more skills of any other comp plans, or owning systems than compensates for you having these skills. You have to be good at getting people qualified relatively quickly, so they can get you new sales. The people you will be constantly dealing with are new people who likely don't know how to sell. In a 2Up, the amout of people you are dealing with will get larger and larger.
3. The comp plan is a breakaway model. This means that once your people are qualified, you don't get any more payments from them (Unless you use an Up and Up, http://get.1UpAndUp.com, which is residual). This means thaty the comp plan breeds increasing numbers of competitors in the marketplace you don't make any compensation off of once they are qualified. It is like to be said under this, "there are not fat cats on top getting rich off your efforts while they do nothing".
5. What usually happens in Up compensation plans is the sponsor is a heavy marketer and relies on someone else to close, or they are excellent closers. They will tend to go into robomarketer mode and not be available. The system, once they do large number of sales, forces them to get more impersonal forcing them to implement more and more system solutions to keep things going. Due to the demands, Aussie ups end up getting marketed as if there was no leverage behind them.
6. Aussie Ups are geared towards one time sales from people, but leveraged. You don't get long-term residual income from them.
7. If you don't like your upline, you won't make it work, as you are passing sales to him to get qualified. If you dislike your sponsor, you will sabotage things to prevent him or her from getting anything. On that note, you work an Aussie up, you need to have your people like you.

In my case, I am involved with EDC Gold, which runs an Aussie 2-Up. What I am able to do, in EDC Gold, is guarantee a person will be fully qualified in EDC Gold within 60 days after they sign up under me. This guarantee, which I am able to act on, enables me to address a LOT of the issues people would have if they sign up typically in an Aussie 2-Up. If this interests you, please sign up here: http://60DaysEDC.BLTeks.com