Dear readers,

I have a to brag a little.  I’m stoked to use a phrase from my teenage days in California.  (Stoked means really excited)

I just made the Send Out Cards top 25 money earners list!  This is my first time on the list since the very early days of the company. I’m so excited to be back in the top 25!

Sorry to brag but I’m just so excited I had to share!

- Ben Fitts

PS. On another note I just added a Google Call me widget to my site! You click the widget then put in your name and phone number and Google will try to connect you to me.

PPS. Some of you might be wondering… I just made the top 25 where was I before? Last time the list was updated: July 15, I was ranked #35. In about 2 months I’ve moved up 10 positions on the list.

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Dear readers,

Usually when I disappear for awhile it is because I’m busy working.

The past couple of weeks have been a blur for me because I have 3 new products coming out!

I think you may find all 3 products interesting but this one in particular is notable. I’ve set up webinars for my business associates and friends.  These weekly webinars are on the topic of 40 ways to grow your business using greeting cards, postcards, and gifts.

This is going to be a beneficial webinar for any business owner.  We’re going to cover in detail 40 different ways to grow your business using greeting cards, postcards, and gifts.  We will be talking about a greeting card system you can use for follow up but you can even apply some of these same ideas to email, text messaging, or other forums of communication.

• We’ll talk about building relationships with clients and customers.
• We’ll talk about getting more referrals.
• We’ll talk about training team members, business associates, and employees.
• We’ll talk about rewarding people for their hard work.
• We’ll talk about prospecting.
• 40 different methods to Grow Your Business!

Another aspect you may find beneficial is you may want to create your own system like this for your team.  When I have written in the past about having your own MLM marketing system this is what I meant.  I am talking about a generic system your team can use to promote your business AND build themselves up in the eyes of the prospect.

You can join my webinars to see how I’ve setup the system.  Here is a quick overview of how this system works:

1. Lead Capture Pages personalized for each member of my team
2. Prospect enters in their email to register for the webinar
3. Prospect is asked to confirm their email
4. Once confirmed they will receive autoresponder emails and reminders about each webinar
5. An email is also fired off the the team member to let them know they have a new prospect
6. Each email in the autoresponder is personalized to my team member NOT me
7. Email reminders will go out day of webinar to remind people
8. All emails and autoresponders drive traffic to the webinar schedule which also contains the contact information for my team members
9. The webinars are setup using InstantTeleseminar.

The key here is that it is super simple for my team members.  Every team member has one link to promote. That’s it. They promote their link to get people to register for the webinars and the rest of the system does the work for them.

We use the autoresponder to keep in touch with the prospect and continually remind them of the benefits of the webinars and the upcoming webinar schedule. The webinar is generic  and at the end of the webinar we tell people to get back in touch with the person who invited them to the webinar.

New people who join our team can instantly get a web site like this and use the same tool to promote their business.

The whole team gains momentum and focuses on one simple marketing system.

Want to join us to see what the webinar is about?  Register for our 40 ways to grow your business webinar. You may learn some tips for growing your business.

- Ben Fitts

PS. Some links in this post are affiliate links.

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Dear reader,

Building a successful network marketing business is NOT about You making money!!!

It is about helping others make money!!!

Does that make sense?

When you help others make money you will all make money. If you get to be really good at helping others make money then I assure you, you’ll be wealthy. You’ll never have a hard time finding people to join your business. EVERYONE will want too.

Here is what made me write about this.

This guy I met online was promoting  this new social network (SWOM).  This social network targets people like you and I. It targets other network marketers.

I have seen many of these come and go.  The problem is they are sold to networkers like you and I. Being networkers we all buy into the hype. Mostly because we’re entrepreneurs and looking for additional revenue streams.  Here is where the problem comes in: We are all already in business opportunities. We’re not looking for new opportunities. They pitch us on the idea that we can market our business to a bunch of other networkers but it never seems to work out that way.

A lot of people join thinking this is going to be the next Facebook.  They usually go strong for 6 months and then begin to die out slowly.  Once all the rush of networkers joins there is no one else to join except new people just getting started in network marketing.  They don’t attract the public because the public wants to go to Facebook where 500 million people are.  They don’t want to go to a social network for network marketers pitch them on deals every day. be

Anyway, I was letting this guy know that promoting a program like that isn’t worth it.  That these programs usually die out.  Here was his response.

I have made over $700 with Swom, if the site closed down tomorrow I would still be in profit. So I do not understand what your point is. Please if you are going to make inflammatory comments about other peoples biz-op’s, make sure you know what you are taking about first .

I bolded and underlined a couple of points in his message. He basically said “F-You I made my $700″.  He doesn’t care if the program dies.  He has made his money!

That is the problem with a lot of network marketers. I feel that is one of the reasons why MLM and network marketing get’s a bad reputation.  You have people out there that are greedy and only care about themselves. They don’t care about helping others.

When you promote programs like this you hurt your reputation.  I’m not going to call SWOM a scam.  I doubt it is a scam.  However I do know SWOM is doomed.  Everyone going there is going to sell people on their opportunity but everyone there  already has an opportunity.  That is a recipe for failure.  When the average person discovers they aren’t going to get any sign ups they will quit SWOM.

I am sure you could join SWOM and make money at it.  However making a quick $700 isn’t worth hurting or risking my reputation on a business that won’t be around long.  Come back to me this time next year and tell me SWOM is alive and doing great. Then I’ll take a look at it.  My reputation isn’t worth that risk.

That is why focusing on helping others is important. Your reputation is in tact.

If you only focus on helping yourself make money you will hurt others in the process. You will hurt your reputation in the process.  Sure a sucker is born every minute and you can continue to market programs and make money, but not very many people will stick with you.

I have people who stick with me. If I promote stuff I have people I know will buy anything I recommend. Why? Because they have benefited from working with me in the past. They’ve made money. I’ve taught them stuff. They know, like, and trust me.  That is worth a lot more than $700 to me!

Making money in networking marketing is about helping others.

Agree? Disagree? Want to spam me with your SWOM links? Want to tell me I’m wrong?  I’d love to hear from you!

- Ben Fitts

PS. This week one of those people that trusts me asked me about paying for a SWEEVA membership. (see the graphic for sweeva in the sidebar.) I told her no.  I told her no because I don’t think her product would market well on Sweeva.  I didn’t want her to buy something from me that wasn’t right for her.  I didn’t think loosing that trust from her was worth the money I’d make from selling her Sweeva when it wasn’t going to benefit her.

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Dear readers,

There is a cure to the MLM blues.

Just the other day I received an email from a team member that had been out of touch for awhile.  She had some personal stuff come up and so she took a little time off.  In her email she was telling me about how most of her team had quit but she had 3 team members left. She was wondering how to get them working again.

Do you guys see the problem in her statements?  She’s focused on her past. She’s focused on the 3 distributors she has left.  They aren’t even doing anything in the business.  She wants to try and save them. She wants to try and inspire them to work again.

You can’t force anyone to do anything… But there is a cure to the MLM blues.

You can actually inspire them.

How do you do it? You simply need to go out and start building again. You start sponsoring new people.  By sponsoring more people you’ll have a chance to meet someone who gets it. Hopefully someone who is ready to start building right away.  You’ll also have a chance to inspire your old distributors.

I’ve been amazed that when I get back into building mode my team feels it.  I’m not sure how they feel it but they do.  I start getting phone calls out of the blue from distributors I haven’t heard from in months (or years!)  They’re ready to work.  I didn’t do anything to them. All I did was get back to work myself.  Through the law of attraction somehow they feel it too.

Let’s put it this way.  Is sponsoring new distributors ever a bad decision?  No.  Sponsoring a new distributor is never a bad decision.  If you’re at a loss for what to do in your business… If you’re at a loss for how to take your business to the next level, try sponsoring some new distributors!

Simple isn’t it?

Ben Fitts

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Dear readers,

A mentor of mine suggested to me that when he hadn’t sponsored anyone in his business he made a chart on a wall signifying the 20 people he wanted to sponsor.  He had never sponsored anyone yet.  His mentor told him that on average every 20-30 distributors you will meet one leader.  This one leader can lead to a full time income for you.  He set a goal. The chart on the wall was a symbol of that goal for him.

I recently went through a divorce. During that time I went for 6 months without sponsoring any new distributors into my business.  All I did was focus on my existing team and helping them. I didn’t want to call back prospects or speak to people. I was in a rut.

How did I get out the rut?

I took my mentor’s advice but I took it up a notch.  My goal? Sponsor 50 new distributors. Here’s my dream board. This is on my wall across from my bed.  When I wake up in the morning this is the first thing I see. When I go to bed at night this is the last thing I see.

You can click the image to get a full size picture.

You’ll notice that the numbers 1-50 are on the board.  Counting down from 50 to 1.  The first 6 numbers 50-45 are in green and have the names of distributors I’ve already sponsored since I set this goal. I’m counting down to 1.  The halfway mark and the finish are marked off.

I’ve gone a couple steps further. I have some “I am” statements written above the board. These are positive present tense goals written as if they already exist.  To the side of the board are my rewards for accomplishing this.  On the left hand side (off picture) are a couple of watches.  My next promotion in my Send Out Cards business I will get, as a reward from the company, a gorgeous custom watch.  I have two photos of different styles of these watches on the left hand side of the board.  I know that by sponsoring 50 new distributors the odds are I will hit at least two new leaders and this will promote me.

On the right hand side of the board I have a couple of pictures of hot rod cards.  These are classic 1930′s era hot rods. I am going to reward myself when I sponsor all 50 with a new hot rod.

By doing this I’m making this a reality.  I’m envisioning it in my head every day and every night.  As I mark off another number on the board I’m building momentum.  When I only had 1 or 2 marked off the goal seemed further away but in the past 16 days I’ve marked off 3 more names on the board.  I’m building momentum and I can feel it.  Imagine what the momentum is going to be like when I’ve sponsored 20 or 30 or 40 of the people?  I’m going to be unstoppable!

I’m going to have to reset this goal to sponsoring 100 or 150 distributors

Do you have any goals for your business?

Do you have them in writing?

Have you shared them with others?

I’d love to hear your stories.
Ben Fitts

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Dear Readers,

Perhaps you’ve discovered 400 million people are on Facebook and want to grow your business there.

Here is an MLM Warning for you trying to build your business on Facebook…

We’re running into some issues with people targeting our friends on Facebook.  We’re finding people who are targeting people they don’t realize are already distributors with us and the ONLY place they could have found this person was Facebook.  If they’re targeting people who are already distributors they are probably targeting lots of other people too.

We’re also running into people who want to sell supplementary systems and are using Facebook friends as a sort of genealogy list. They can lookup my friends and see many of them are involved in the same business.  They’re using this information to try and sell them additional products which I do not endorse and which our company in fact does not approve of.  Our company is sending cease and desist orders to this vendor yet they are targeting unsuspecting friends/team members who are my Facebook friends.

What can you do to prevent this.

One option is to hide your friends. Only show your mutual friends.  To do this go to your Facebook page and then find your list of all your friends.  There is a little pencil icon there. Click on that and then click on “change visibility settings”. This will allow you to set your friends to only be visible by friends, or only visible by YOU. This will prevent people who aren’t your friends from harvesting your friends list.

The other thing I personally am doing is I’m removing most of my “friends”.  I’m going to try and get it down to where it’s just close friends and family. Then I’m setting up a “Fan Page“.  People who want to follow me on Facebook can “like” my fan page. This will allow them to get updates from me and following my activities on Facebook.

You can see I have added my Facebook fan page to my sidebar of my blog.  You can see who my friends are and become a fan yourself.

You might be saying, but Ben people can still harvest your friends from your fan page. That is true and I’m trying to see if there is another alternative.

A few advantages of the fan page is that I am lowering my total number of friends. This will allow me to keepup with my close friends and family better.  Another advantage is that if someone tries to friend one of my fans they do NOT see me as a mutual friend.  Facebook Fan’s are not mutual friends.  That will help some of my friends to not friend someone.

Previously if I saw a mutual friend whom I trusted I’d friend someone without even thinking about it.  By cutting back on my friends I’ll truly be able to trust those “mutual connections”.

Does that make sense? Do you have some tips how I can better manage a lot of Facebook connections?  Do you have suggestions? I’d love to hear form you.  Leave a comment and let me know!

- Ben Fitts
(that is also a link to my Facebook fan page!)

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Dear readers,

A couple of times recently I’ve spoken to team members in my business that were trying to sponsor someone for less than the full package.  They are dealing with prospects that don’t want to commit $457. Instead the prospect wants to buy in at a much lower $59 package.

This is really disturbing to me and I try to discourage it.  In my opinion the prospect is PLANNING to FAIL.  The reason they are picking the $59 distributor package instead of the full $457 entrepreneur package is because they are afraid they won’t make their money back.  You see they’re already sabotaging themselves before they even start in their business!

In these cases I try to encourage the prospect to keep their money! Don’t waste the $59.  Keep it.  Become a customer. Try the product out and if you like it and other people ask you about it we can talk about you upgrading… or getting some sort of referral bonus or something.

I’d rather have my prospect keep his $59 and be happy than sabotage himself and cause himself to loose his money.

In our company buying in at $59 doesn’t give you the tools you need to grow your business. It also doesn’t give you the retail profits.  You miss out on 36% profit on retail customers!  Even if this person did build a business they’d be loosing a lot of money.

I’d rather have them keep their money. If I can show them that they could be successful… If I can show them that the $457 is an investment and we plan to make them A LOT more than $457 back… Then they’ll see the value in buying the full entrepreneur package.

The problem is if they are considering the $59 package instead of the $457 they’re doing it because they think they are going to fail. The risk of loosing $59 is much lower than loosing $457 so that’s why they choose that option. However these people aren’t committed and are already planning to fail!

If someone doesn’t have the $457 but they do what it takes to get the money… Whether or not they are borrowing the money from someone, spending money they should be putting towards another bill, pawning something, holding a yard sale, or whatever… That person is going to be committed to doing what it takes to make the money back.  The person who wants to take the easy route and invest only $59 isn’t as determined. In fact if they take the easy route out now, what are they going to do when it comes time to work? Are they always going to pick the easy route?

Is your prospect giving you these warning signs?

If so, tell your prospect to keep their money. It’s not worth it to your business to take someone’s money who is already planning to fail! I don’t know about you but I want people who are determined to succeed. I want the guy that invests his last dime into the business because he is the one that is going to be determined to make it work. He’s going to working harder and longer than anyone else.  I don’t want the guy that wants to take the easy way out.

Do your prospects have plans to fail?

- Ben Fitts

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I posted this quote to my Facebook page today.

“I’ve never been poor, only broke. Being poor is a frame of mind. Being broke is a temporary situation.”

- Mike Todd

I think it is a really great quote and applies to being an entrepreneur.

Donald Trump is one of the most well known entrepreneurs in the USA.  Partially this is due to his ability to brand himself but largely it is due to the immense fortune he has created.

Yet Donald Trump has suffered from financial woes. He was on the brink of personal bankruptcy in 1991.  He has had to suffer several of his businesses entering bankruptcy over the years including several of his hotels, resorts, and casinos.

However I think just about every reader of this blog would probably be willing to buy into Trump’s business if they were allowed too. We all know that a good man like Donald Trump won’t be held back.  He will bounce back just as he did in the late 90s to middle 2000′s.

Being an entrepreneur means you’re willing to take risks and you might even go broke once in awhile.  You know those losses are only temporary. You know you have the skills and knowledge it takes to succeed and you will bounce back from adversity.

The quote from Mike Todd is a good one because there is a difference between being broke and being poor.  Poverty is a state of mind.  You feel poor and hence you are poor.  You overlook risks and opportunity because of your fear.  You aren’t willing to make the sacrifice.  Maybe the sacrifice is to take a job that you hate to pay down the bills to get back to where you want to be.  The poor person will make excuses instead of taking that job.  The broke person knows that perhaps that job will allow them to get into a position to try again.  They know the reward of trying again in business is better than the pain of having to eat their pride and take a job.

Does that make sense to you?

Do you understand the difference between being poor and bring broke?

What do you think?

- Ben Fitts

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Dear MLMer,

I’ve been writing a series on MLM Marketing systems.  If you missed them you can go back and read: post one, post two, post three.

Today I’m going to being to talk about how to create your own marketing system to build up your team and make them look like experts in the eyes of the prospect. Your MLM Marketing System starts with content. You need to develop some unique content as a lead generation tool.

Again this is really for leaders.  If you aren’t a leader yet and don’t have income coming in from your network marketing business this probably isn’t for you.  If you don’t have a team already then this probably isn’t for you.

Back to creating content… Your content could be focused on the opportunity. It could talk about achieving dreams, setting goals, owning a home business, tax benefits of a home business, etc.  It could talk about marketing and be targeted to other networkers (much like Magnetic Sponsoring is).  It could talk about your product and the unique benefits of your product.

Your content SHOULD have testimonials.  If  you have a team it should be pretty easy to go to them and get testimonials from happy customers. It should be possible to get testimonials from people who are earning an income from the business opportunity.  Since we want to keep everthing generic make sure you don’t put in too much information.  We don’t want to say “Ben Fitts, Oxford Mississippi” for the testimonial.  If we did then it would make it easy for someone to look me up and seek me out directly.  Instead you say “Ben F., Mississippi”.  That gives plenty of information to go beside the testimonial without giving out too much information. You want the testimonials to appear unique but not too much info.

You could and should consider paying a copywriter to write some content for you.  Copywriters can be expensive but you could get a short 1000 word special report drawn up without costing too much. That would make for a 4 or 5 page pdf document.  If you added a page of profile information on your team members and a cover page with some fancy graphics you could have a 7 page special report. This is what you’re going to market. You’re going to market your 7 page special report on “weight loss while eating cookies” or “tax benefits of owning a home business” or whatever.  The report I’m working on right now is “21 ways to grow your business using greeting cards” and I’m working on reports for specific industries: Real estate, financial services, insurance, construction, even church ministry.

You can pay someone to write content for you.  I know a couple of highly paid professional copywriters if you’d like to hire an expert. I’d be happy to recommend them. Just contact me. I use them even when I write my own content to clean up my grammar and make my content sing. You also can be sure the content these professionals are writing for you is actually unique and not reused.

Otherwise you can try hiring a freelancer to write content for you.  Sometimes you can find freelancers on sites like Craigslist but the quality of the work is spotty at best.  I know some people who have had luck on Craigslist and others who bought worthless content you wouldn’t be able to use. You are probably better off going to a freelance web site like elance and writing a formal proposal.  Then freelancers will come bid on your proposal, provide writing samples, references, etc.  That way you can pick the best freelancer for your job.

They should deliver this to you in Microsoft Word format. You can later turn the Word document into a PDF or into an HTML web page(s).

You don’t have to give away everything in your special report. This is just a PDF they can download and get’s their appetite whet for your product/opportunity. It is just a teaser to get them to request more information.  It is just a teaser so when your team member calls to follow up with them they’ll remember the information.  It also helps make your team member look more like an expert because the content will have their name on it and their biography information so it appears as if it was written by them.

For more on how to make it appear to come from your team members come back tomorrow

- Ben Fitts

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Dear MLMer,

For the past week I’ve been writing about MLM Marketing Systems. (read the first post,  read the second post)  One of the key points I talked about was a marketing system that promotes your TEAM members not you, not the “expert”.  The purpose of the marketing system should be to build up your team member so they appear to be more of an expert.  This way your team members can attract prospects to them.  The flaw of most of these systems is they build up the expertise of the “expert” and not the individual.  The system should build up the individual so the prospect wants to join them, not skip over them and go to the expert!

So how do you do that?

First let me say that this is a topic for leaders. If you are brand new to network marketing skip this It is advanced stuff and I don’t expect someone new to network marketing to know how to do it!

• Step 1 develop some unique content for your business opportunity or product.
• Step 2 design the content so that your team members can put their personal information on the content and make it look like their own.
• Step 3 design an email autoresponder that includes your team member’s personal information as if the email came from them.
• Step 4 go through the entire system and make sure your name never appears anywhere.

I’ll go into more detail about each step this week.

The main thing is step 4 and it is the flaw of the big MLM Marketing Systems. When you get their ebook the big expert’s name is on the ebook. The big expert’s name is in the copyright, the graphics, the footer, on the autoresponder message’s etc.  That’s the big thing we want to avoid.

Tomorrow I’ll talk about developing some content to use for your own MLM Marketing System.

- Ben Fitts

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