One thing that is needed in network marketing with ANY company are simple steps you can use to grow your business. New distributors need something simple like a one sheet step by step action guide.

This has honestly been something our team has been lacking in Send Out Cards. Recently however this has all changed with the new focus on the “Daily 8“. 8 Daily actions that you can do to grow your Send Out Cards business. This could take as little as 30 minutes a day or maybe a couple of hours. However if you can consistently complete your 8 daily actions you’ll see your business increase ten fold.

The Daily 8 is a new way of looking at the Send Out Cards business. There are 8 daily activities that can help you grow your business.

1. Sending a heart felt card every day
2. Sending 1 gift a week
3. Doing a gift account walk through
4. Helping someone get started as a customer/distributor
5. Adding Contacts to your contact manager
6. Training a new person
7. Following up with someone that has looked at SOC
8. Personal Development

This is a simplified way of looking at SOC. If you aren’t doing these actions then you aren’t really building a business. You might be “working”… you know doing “busy work”. But these are the things you need to focus on daily to build your business. There is even a scoresheet to help you keep track and you earn points. Your goal is to get 8 points every day 5 days a week. I put mine up on the bulletin board in my office and from the photo you can see how I’m tracking my contacts and my points. So far today I’ve earned 7 points. (I added sending a gift as a one point item to my list.) So now I’ve got to train a new person or do some additional follow up and I’ll be done with my 8 points for today.

We can even add accountability holding people accountable for whether or not they complete their 8 points every day.

What do you think? Simple right?

Does your business have a straightforward step by step system like this?

- Ben Fitts

Popularity: 48% [?]

I’m sitting here chatting with a super star in my business.  Literally one of the top producers and most recognized people in my company.  She’s a bit down today because she spent some time with a real jerk.  The guy wasted 10 hours of her time and THEN joined someone else.

Now I’m not going to get into the whole 10 hour thing … Instead I want to talk about people.

You know the BEST thing in network marketing is the awesome people you meet, the friends you make, the relationships you build.  That’s the best thing.  Some people in my downline sent me a birthday card that said they actually took time out of their thanksgiving meal to sing happy birthday to me!  You know how awesome that is?! My best friends didn’t even do that, to think that these two wonderful ladies and their spouses did that really touched me.

It can also be the worst thing… You can meet some real jerks.  SOME of these jerks might end up even being in your downline or might even end up being leaders you have to deal with.  It’s just the nature of the business.

You can choose to allow those few bad apples to bring you down or you can focus on those really awesome people like Sandy and Jan that sang me happy birthday.  You can choose to work with people you like.  That’s so cool!

Someone wanted me to take a job the other day.  It might even have been a dream job had I still been looking.  BUT I didn’t have to look for a job and I didn’t want to.  I didn’t want to be beholden to some jerk of a boss who puts you on some arbitrary deadline or for a few extra dollars in profit.  I hated that.  I hated having to jump through hoops to provide some report to some manager somewhere.  I can choose as a network marketer to work with the people I want to work with and build awesome relationships.

I think one thing we probably don’t teach enough though is… how to deal with people… how to deal with the bad apples… Does your company or does your upline train on that?  I’d be curious if you had any tips you want to share or books or anything you think I should check out.

Let me know how you deal with the bad apples!

Talk to you again soon.

Ben Fitts
The Custom Greeting Card Guy

Popularity: 42% [?]

Would you work hard for 5 years building a business in order to replace the income from your JOB with residual income?

Would that be worth while for you?

You see often when you see ads for building a business online  you see people making claims about how you can make extraordinary sums of money in your first week, first month, first year.

The truth is this is very rarely true!

MOST people take YEARS to build and grow a business. Most people don’t have business skills yet.  They have to learn them.  They have to work at it.

I know Kim Klaver has been talking about this for years and I just had it happen to me.  One of my team called me to say he had broken through to the top 200 in our company and yet he wasn’t making that much money.  He was very surprised because he didn’t feel he was making a full time income yet he was in the top 200.  He was wondering how many people are really making a full time living.

Now our company is only 4 years old.  We don’t even have ANYONE at the top position yet.  We do have 50 or so people making a full time income and 10-15 making serious money.

A skeptic could look at that and say, well sheesh there are 36,000 people in your company and only 50 are making a full time income?

I would say that in the first year we only had a couple thousand people… and many of them are no longer here any more.

So the majority of the people in our company have only been here 1-2 years.

Do you really expect to go into a brand new business and go from zero to full time income in less than a year?

So this man in my company (and a good friend and a great business leader) was not happy. BUT he’s been here only 2 years.  AND he’s progressing and moving up the chain and earning more and more money.  Right now he’s built that income on the lowest parts of our compensation plan.  So the next leader he finds is really going to explode his business.  That could happen next week or next year, but if he keeps working it will happen.

I know there are advertisements out there and people selling reverse funnel system and stuff like that which claim you can make tens of thousands over night.  Heck I know people who actually DID make that kind of money over night. BUT they were business builders. They had experience already.  They had a sphere of influence.  They had a mailing list, a website, and people who would listen to them and follow them.

AND much of that income isn’t residual.  It’s one time bonuses and such.

On the other hand if you told people… come in and work hard for 5 years… Would people buy into it?  Sure maybe less people would but those people would be here for the long haul.  They wouldn’t give up if they had a tough first month.  They’d stick with it.

I think one thing that is interesting is if you compare this to the music industry.  If someone is a singer they spend YEARS learning to sing.  A guitar player has to learn to play guitar, then they have to get in a band, then they have to play lots and lots of small shows. These musicians spend years in choir and musicals and crappy garage bands just learning their business and building a small following.  They go to lessons with professionals and practice over and over again.  Very few people in the music business come in and succeed right away.  Many put in years of practice maybe even ten or twenty years before they break it big…

Why do we expect network marketing to be so easy? (Because people using misleading advertising like the folks at reverse funnel use!)

If we were honest and we equated it to the music business… Come in and work hard learning your craft.  Build a small following.  Work hard and practice practice practice.  Study with professionals.  Perform over and over again. THEN you hit it big.  It could be 5 years or 10 years from now but if you put in the effort you can find the success.  It could be like a music business where you have an album and are paid royalties every year over and over for the rest of your life.  Network Marketing CAN be that way but it takes time to get to that point.

Does that excite you?

Do you want to have a home business that is similar to a rockstar or musician who gets paid residuals?  Are you willing to put in the hard work for YEARS to get there?

If that’s you, let me know.  I’m looking for people who want to put in the time and effort to grow a business.

- Ben Fitts

Popularity: 45% [?]

Hi team,

I want to encourage anyone in the northeast to come to the Connecticut
Treat Em Right this weekend!

Saturday January 26

Location:
Southbury, Connecticut
Address:
Crowne Plaza Southbury
1284 Strongtown Road
Southbury, CT 06488
Venue Phone Number:
(203) 598-7600
Scheduled Trainer:
Kody Bateman

You can meet a ton of the top people in Send Out Cards!

Kody Bateman - founder and CEO of SOC
David Smith - Kody’s best friend and #24 money earner
Dvorah Lansky #17 money earner
Deb Mullen (SUPER STAR) and #37 money earner
Ben Fitts (me) and #39 money earner
Plus I think Tommy and Curtis #13 money earners will be there…

and more I probably don’t know about?

Will Gail Foley (#110) be coming out all the way from Kansas again?

Will Bob Martinelli Sr. (#199) be there? Will Dave Dillon (#190) and
Bill Ryan (#185) be there?

Who else will be there?

If you’re coming I’d love to say hello to you… Let me know by replying back… and feel free to pass this along to your team.

If you can’t make it to this Treat Em Right seminar make sure you get to one in the near future. Here is the upcoming schedule:
https://www.sendoutcards.com/cgi-bin…94a523da06f3e:

See you Saturday!
- Ben Fitts

PS. If you’d like to attend as a guest and find out what Send Out Cards is all about let me know. I can get some guests tickets for you…. Use the contact link in the right hand navigation to send me an email or call me at: 877-236-3488

Popularity: 44% [?]

Hi everyone,

How can I assist you in growing your business this year?

I just put together a little online survey with a few questions to help me understand your business and how I might be able to assist you this year in growing your business and taking it to new levels. It’s only a few questions will take a couple of minutes for you to answer.

Click here to take our Online Survey on how I can assist YOU in growing your Business in 2008.

- Ben Fitts

Popularity: 41% [?]

Hi everyone,

I hope your 2008 is going great.

One of the things we’re doing on our team to start 2008 right is  we’re running masterminds. I put together a conference call with the top leaders on my team and called it a mastermind.  The idea was to discuss 2008 and see if we could develop a plan to increase “action” and “duplication” on our team.

Some really great ideas came from this mastermind.  One of the first things we talked about was working with those that want it, those that deserve our time.  So we discussed ways to get them involved.  This lead to the idea that we can use this leadership call as incentive.  We could let a few of our team members know we have this leadership call and see who is willing to step up and take action to make themselves stand out as a leader.  It’s an exclusive group of people including the current distributor of the year in our company and 8 of the top 50 distributors in the entire company.  If you want to join this group and learn from us then you have to stand out and make yourself known.  Do your demos, take action daily, show consistency.

This is an idea you can use in your own teams.  You can develop a mastermind with the leaders on your team and use it as an incentive and privilege for those people who  work the hardest.

You know what’s best about this idea?

It doesn’t cost you anything.  Contests can cost a lot of money.  I’ve held contests in the past that cost me several thousand dollars in prizes for my team.  However a conference call is free.  You can host up to 150 people for free. All it takes is your time to put it together.

Plus the call makes your people feel special AND they can learn from one another.  They can learn what works and what doesn’t and your team can develop a unified method for training and sponsoring.

What do you think? Would you like to be a part of a leadership mastermind?

- Ben Fitts

Popularity: 40% [?]

I’m sorry I haven’t written for a week or so.

My wife and I got back from our Christmas vacation and found one of our cats was having congestive heart failure.  We’ll we don’t have children.  Our cats our like our kids.  So it was a big blow and was so sudden that it was shocking.  Thankfully we have some great doctors and he was able to go to the hospital for a couple of days and is back home with us now.  He’s doing pretty well.  He’s still sick but at least we get to spend more time with him.

So with that came the new year.

It’s a great time to take a step back and evaluate our business.  No matter what business you are in… if it is mlm or internet marketing or whatever take a step back.  Sit down with a notebook for an hour and imagine your business.  If you tracked your records or results from the previous year look them over.  See how you did.

Then take some time out to just sit and ponder 2008.  Where do you want to be at the end of 2008?  What type of people do you want to attract into your business?  How much do you want your business to grow?  How many people do you want on your team to attend the convention with you?  What do you want your team party to look like?  How many of your team do you want to see on the stage?

That’s your goal.

The HOW comes later.  Right now you need to set goals.  You should focus on they what and the why.  What your team will look like and why you will want it to look that way.   Write down notes in your notebook.  Create some goals and write them down.

Then and only then do we begin to evaluate the HOW… You have to know where you are going before you figure out how to get there.  When you look at a map you can’t determine the route you are going to take unless you know where you are going.  So you can’t figure out how to get to Dallas until you determine you are going to go to Dallas.

Start with a mastermind session. Get your team leaders together on a conference call and brainstorm.  You may have people with various levels of experience and expertise and some might have some new and unique ideas.  Find out what has been working best for yourself and your leaders and see if you can put a plan in place to teach that to the rest of your team.

Now is the perfect time to start over…. if you don’t have a team yet then it’s easy.  What has worked for you so far?  What has worked for your upline?  Focus on what works.  Don’t try to re-invent the wheel.  Just find out what works and make it work.  I know it’s not glamorous but in network marketing we just have to find what works and do it over and over and over again.

What has worked for you so far?

- Ben Fitts

Popularity: 45% [?]