How do you Eat an Elephant?

I wasn’t looking to get into another MLM. If you’ve read my previous blogs, you’ll know that I was kind of over the whole industry. I’d joined and quit several ranging from sports drinks to Amway to the ‘web only’ MLM types and so on.

Happy to live my life doing what I love, and that is create properties and illustrate, after all, there’s a famous quote "Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” ~Albert Schweitzer

So bottom line, I really was not looking for an MLM business to build. At all. Really.

But then I rekindled a friendship with an old buddy from high school who had gone on to become fantastically successful in business on his own. His name is Derek Wall. Not too long after high school, he founded Ezekiel clothing with some friends, eventually sold that off to a larger company, started, built, sold other huge companies, and eventually found himself as the president of buynow.com, a subsidiary of buy.com. Do an Alexa search if you don’t know how big that company is.

Suffice it to say, Derek is my most successful friend from high school, in the realm of business and finances. (Owing to Dr. Schweitzer’s quote above, I won’t qualify him as my most successful friend outright. J )

At any rate, Derek and I had been tossing ideas around, trying to find some way to put our talents together and build a new business. And one day out of the blue, I get a call from him about something I never thought I’d hear out of his mouth… ‘MLM’.

Derek had never been in an MLM before in his LIFE, he’s just always had an amazing work ethic and the sense it takes to see a business opportunity when it presents itself. And here he is, telling me about this ‘once-in-a-lifetime opportunity’. Yeah, like I’d never heard that before. But, since it’s Derek, I’m more that willing to listen to what he’s telling me.

Derek tells me about a room-mate he had like 15 years ago who spent all day on the phone because he met this guy from Herbalife who was starting another MLM called ‘NuSkin’. Derek thought he was wasting his time, and even told him to get a ‘real job’, you know, like Derek, who was paying the rent. Well, in about 9 months, his friend was making $400,000.00 a month, and Derek made a mental note about this crazy thing called MLM… If he were ever in the ‘perfect storm’, where there was an amazing product, where he knew the founder personally, and where he could get in at the very beginning… he would jump on the opportunity (of a lifetime) with both feet.

Derek then began to tell me about another friend of his he’s known for 17 years, named Trey White. Trey, it seems, makes Derek’s financial success look impoverished. Trey, you see, is a billionaire. Founder and Chairman of Homestore.com, he merged that venture with Realtor.com which had a $10BILLION market cap. He took that fortune and started other companies like White Ventures and White Energy, investing in other companies and building the 4^th largest ethanol refining company in the country. All this to say, Trey is no dope. And as I look to Derek for business prowess, he looks to Trey.

Trey found himself investing in a group of scientists who had created something they called ‘Archaea Active’. This formula was initially created for bioremediation, that is for the environmentally friendly acceleration of clean up of oil spills. The formula basically told cells to ‘get busy’ doing what they do. One of the scientists, Dr. Gene Kaiser, found himself diagnosed with bone cancer from his exposure to radiation in WW2, and was given 6 months to live. He decided that since the formula was designed to be environmentally friendly, and since it told cells to ‘get busy doing what they do’, that drinking this formula might help his cells to fight off the cancer that was killing him.

SEVEN YEARS LATER, the scientists had tailored the formula for human consumption, and Gene Kaiser was telling this story to Trey White. Through other evidence, Trey was convinced to invest the money required to get this stuff tested at MD Anderson and Futureceuticals, so that they could have documented proof of the formula’s efficacy. They did so. http://archaeaactive.com

To make an already very long story a little shorter, Trey was convinced to take this unique product to market through direct marketing. He called upon Derek, Derek called upon me.

The perfect storm, that ‘once-in-a-lifetime opportunity’ had arrived, and both of us jumped on it together.

That was then. This is now.

I ordered a ton of the stuff, now called ‘Evolv’ http://startevolvingnow.com . I was hoping that every single person I gave it to would have an incredible reaction, and that they would all want to sign up as a customer or in the business…

But hope and reality are almost never congruent.

The reality is that many people felt no effect from the ‘water’. In fact, on the first day of my drinking it, I struggled to notice any real change. I thought I felt a little more clear-headed and alert… but admittedly that could just be psychosomatic.

I started giving sample 4-packs to everyone who asked, and some who didn’t… lol.

Again, I got people saying they noticed nothing. To tell the truth, it was becoming disheartening.

But then there were others. Others who had vastly different reactions to the product. My manager said it gave her that clarity and alertness that I had considered only in my own mind. My friend said he was climbing the walls (but he drank it after a cup of ‘joe’). His mother didn’t even know it wasn’t just plain ol’ bottled water, and it kept her up all night after making ‘sleepytime’ tea with it. Lol.

I met a man who was so debilitated from disease that he had to have his legs amputated to keep him alive… this man basically said Evolv gave him his life back. I met another guy who was an athlete who said it gave him incredible stamina during and after his soccer matches.

I started hearing testimonials that frankly I just couldn’t post because the FDA has ridiculous rules about saying anything ‘helps’ with certain inflammatory diseases that start with a ‘C’.

Most recently, I gave Evolv to a friend with Renal Kidney failure, she said "Well I sleep a lot! I'll get up do my dialysis in the morning and go back to bed and sleep til noon.....after getting up I still feel sluggish. Drinking the Evolv I just felt more "normal" back to having the energy and motivation to want to do something. So I'd say yes I noticed a difference ..."

I’ve heard such a variety of responses to Evolv, that it boggles the mind. Clearly it can’t be psychosomatic, since even my own unborn baby boy was reacting so much to my wife drinking it, that she had to quit, because she couldn’t sleep with all the summersaults he was doing in her belly…

One of the master distributors, Jim Lutes, likes to talk about one guy who was the biggest Amway distributor ever. I forget his name… but he had over 200K people in his downline, and when asked, he said that he had only ever personally sponsored 33 people. 11 died on the vine. 11 stayed in, but never did anything more than buy product. And 11… 11 thought just like he did. That they had the opportunity of a lifetime, and that if they could just find enough people who thought like they did, they could change their lives forever.

It’s inspiring to know that you can change your life by just finding the right handful of people who think like you do about a product as amazing as this is. I’ve already found one for sure. If it takes me another 10 years to find 10 more, it’ll be worth it, but for some reason, I don’t think it’ll take me that long.

The reason people fail at any MLM is because they quit before they find enough of these like-minded people to make their business successful. They think it’s impossible to ever get to the top of the hill, and quit, sometimes just before they reach the summit…

But I always like to remind people about making the impossible possible with an old African proverb: ‘How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.’

The Social Network wars have begun!

This is going to be a short blog post. I've been having a discussion with a friend about... you guessed it... yet ANOTHER new Social Networking site.

Understand something, people, whether you're in Zenzuu, Peoplestring, Blastoff, ProfitSharingNetwork, Hello,Hello... (MAN! The more I look, the more I find!) your social network is never going to be 'the next big thing'.

Look, this is simple. MySpace was king of Social Networks. The mother of the modern format. Facebook simplified, clarified, and 'professionalized' the format, and has kicked MySpaces' butt off the top of the mountain. Everyone and their mother is on Facebook, and harassing their friends and friends mothers to be on there too.

These other networks, while they might have something great to offer individually, like Peoplestring has retrievable email (why didn't someone think of that earlier?), and that and Blastoff let you save money shopping... can we not all just realize that NONE of these are ever going to actually take on Facebook? They're never going to be 'the next big thing'!

If you're in one of these social networks because you joined through an MLM, then realize that the only other people who are going to be joining that network are other people who are in it for that same purpose. Which is fine, if you are just trying to socialize with MLM'rs. Nothing wrong with that. But an MLM must offer something to people outside of the circle of it's own business. What that means is that an MLM must have CUSTOMERS.

Take DUBLI for example. Dubli is a reverse-auction site that sells itself on the idea that the average Joe would just LOVE to 'bid down' items and get them for a fraction of their retail price. Now... why doesn't that work? About a year ago I ran a website that got about 30K uniques a day, and was advertising Dubli to a total of about 100K unique users a day for about three months. Out of all that time, and all those people, which was about 10 million views, TWO people bought tokens. And neither of them bought more than once.

That company exists on the business of selling it's business to others in it's business. Those outside customers DO NOT EXIST. It's a shell game, and it's making the people at the top a lot of money, and the suckers at the bottom a lot of grief.

Luckily, after a year, I could spend my $1000 worth of tokens I got for buying 'the business' buying down a $300 camera to $62, and buying it. Yes, I got a $300 camera for $1000 in tokens and $62 cash plus shipping. What a deal.

Anyway, back to the point, if these social networks do nothing but attract network marketers, then how will they generate the kind of necessary revenue to fill the dreams of all these young hopeful entrepreneurs? Short answer, it won't. Not for most of you, so please don't put all your hopes in the 'next big thing', unless it something that hasn't been tried half a dozen times already and failed. If you're just there to find other MLMers? Man, join a facebook group. There's thousands of MLMers you haven't met yet.

Granted, it's 2am and I can barely see the screen in front of my face... and yes, there are holes in my argument that you could probably drive a truck through... but what the heck, it's my blog, and I just felt like ranting a bit. And you read it all the way to the end? You must really love me. :)

It's the PRODUCT, stupid!

Not long ago my Mom's friend got me to sign up as a Monavie distributor. My wife already used the product, and she said she would build one of my legs because she had a huge network set up.

In one of our discussions, she said something I found very strange, but have since heard echoed numerous times in the MLM community... 'It's not about the product, it's about the business... the OPPORTUNITY'.

Now... I get that concept. I just think it's jacked. Yeah, people want a HBB and that means they need the business... but too often, it seems like someone or some group of people start up an MLM with the idea of 'I'm going to build an MLM, be at the top of the 'pyramid', and make billions... now all we need is a PRODUCT'. Enter: Fruit juice, health products, internet social networks and the like...

This drives me NUTS. If you don't have a product that would, by itself, be something unique and remarkable... then WHY on earth would you try to convince your friends and family, and the 'new' friends you make through your business, to SELL something for sometimes three times the price that they could easily get at Costco or on the internet???

That kind of salesmanship, in the real world, is called HIGHWAY ROBBERY. Coercing your FnF to do so to build a 'business' is no less smarmy, IMO. The fact that probably 95% of this industry is built on such disgusting profiteering is EXACTLY why MLM has such a horrible reputation in the 'real world'. It's why most of your FnF will roll their eyes at you when you bring it up.

I say it's time to STOP this self-destructive way of doing business. I say we BOYCOTT any MLM that isn't offering something UNIQUE. Something actually WORTH the money it's being sold for. Worth MORE than it's sold for, even!

Because damn it, MLM is a business... but it shouldn't be the business of selling business. It should be the business of selling a product that people want and need... and the opportunity for them to make some money selling it themselves.

My 2 cents.

The Juice Wars

Nearly a decade passed since my experience with Amway had soured me on MLM's.  But still, that logical business model still made perfect sense to me.  I had often been heard saying 'If I could just get someone to build an Amway business for me!'... but alas, that could never be.

Daniel was a friend of mine who had attended a few Amway meetings with me back then called me out of the blue, excited about a 'miracle juice' called Xango.  It was my first 'miracle juice'... 

He was telling me all these amazing testimonials about people being healed of this and that... I think one person had psoriasis or something... I forget.  But he was jazzed about the stuff, and going on and on about it.  He told me what was in it, and I started doing my own research into this 'Mangosteen' miracle juice.  Granted, it did seem like some powerful stuff.  Very high in anti-oxidants, vitamins and the like.  Around that time I also ended up having an amazingly painful back/shoulder spasm after about a week of overworking to make a deadline.  Like knives digging into my shoulder kind of pain.  Not good for someone who has to lean over a drafting table all day...

I went to a chiropractor, I popped pain pills... not much helped.  NO, this is not the part where I tell you Xango made me all better... This is the part where I went to an Alphabiotics center where a guy named Steve basically poked, pushed and pounded my spine for about two hours... Acupuncture, acupressure and chiropractic techniques like I'd never dealt with before.  So how does this fit into the 'juice wars'?  Well, he sold me a bottle of Xango to help with the inflammation.  I woke up the next day swollen.  The day after that, I felt great.  Did that have anything to do with the Xango?  Don't know.  But it did pique my interest a bit.  That is, until I went to the Japanese market.

There I stood in a Japanese store face to face with a bottle of Mangosteen juice.  And not nearly as pricey a bottle of Mangosteen juice as I paid for at the Alphabiotics center either.  Next to that bottle, was a bottle of Goji.  A bottle of Noni.  A bottle of Acai.  A bottle of Mangosteen, Goji, Noni and Acai mixed together... A plethora of 'miracle juices', all for less than any MLM you could shake a stick at would ever sell them for...  So the concept of my plunking down more than I had to for this stuff from an MLM... well, let's just say it wasn't first on my list of things I wanted to do.

A couple years later, Daniel and his wife Erika moved closer to us, up in Orange County.  Laguna Beach to be specific.  And she met another gal who was into yet another 'miracle juice' called Monavie.  She wasn't particularly moved to get into another juice, especially so soon after the whole Xango thing flopped for them...  but then her friend told her about some actor from General Hospital who was having a Monavie meeting at his house.  Well, far be it for her to miss out on a chance to hang out with a real live actor, so she went.  And she got sold on joining Monavie.  She dug the product too.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not harping on ANY of these great juices... They are all really good products with lots of health benefits... And to prove it, she gave a bottle to my wife.

As I mentioned  in my other blog, my wife had had excema on her hands and arms for years, cracking, bleeding, itching, scaling... it was not pleasant.  After two days of drinking Monavie, it was GONE.  Nothing the doctors, or nutritionists could give her, be they pills, lotions, powders, cremes... nothing worked, but two days into drinking that 'miracle juice', and it was GONE.  God bless it.  Well, not willing to buy into another MLM, we decided to start buying the Monavie from Erika.  Eventually we even signed up to order it directly from the company.

But then I found myself at Costco, staring at another bottle of Acai berry juice called 'Fruita-vie'.  It was 9 bucks.  I had a case of Monavie at home that cost me $120, and I could buy this stuff for less than 40 a case?  I cancelled my autoship.  We're still not out of Monavie, but when we do run out, we'll be trying the Fruita-vie instead.

The juice wars for us weren't nearly as painful as it might have been, had we actively tried to build a Monavie business.  What with all the competition in the MLM Fruit Juice wars... Xango, Monavie, Noni, Goji, Zrii, Mandura, Zija, Limu Plus, Xelr8, Efujion... it seems like there's a new one every month... well, I can't see where you'd ever get someone to leave one juice company to shill for another, so you cut off HUGE numbers of possible prospects right there... And the fact that this juice or that juice... frankly, ANY juice can be produced for far less and sold in Costco or Walmart... to any struggling warrior in the Juice Wars... it can be just too much of a temptation to stop losing money every month and buy your 'miracle juice' from the big box store.

Or the Japanese Market, for that matter.

MLM: A cautionary tale...

THE SPORTS DRINK

I was probably 18 years old the first time I was introduced to an MLM, or 'Multi-Level-Marketing' company. The concept was completely new to me. My friends invited me over to their house, gave me a sample of an orange flavored drink they mixed up in the kitchen, and sat me down to watch a video.

For the time, remember this is some 20 years ago, the computer graphics were fairly state of the art. It was an impressive package, I recall. A golden eagle soaring through the sky, the model of a man working for gold ingots, and every time he went to put his ingot into savings, his savings had doubled... A crude illustration of the power of residual income that made me excited and energized... Or was that the drink? Either way, I thought, 'man, this, I have to get into!'.

The drink was indeed energizing, I don't even recall the name now, but there was something about it that really pumped me up whenever I drank it. I thought this would be a great thing to get into the hands of athletes and grow a business! Then I did something foolish, for someone who actually wants to believe in his product... I asked someone who actually knows a few things about health products.

My best friend at the time was a beautiful girl named Aimee. Her father was a physical trainer of some sort, I don't recall exactly. He took a look at the ingredients in the package and pointed out the high levels of fructose and caffeine in the product. Yeah, it gives you energy. The same way an orange and a cup of coffee will. But they wanted me to sell this stuff for a premium, and get my friends and family to do the same? Thus ended my first foray into the world of MLM.

THE GRAND-DADDY

A few years later, I had moved down to San Diego, had just gotten married, and a friend of mine said he wanted to come over and show me something... something POWERFUL that could make me RICH! Who am I to say 'no' to such an offer?

Ben comes over with a pad of paper, and a white cardboard box, sits down at my kitchen table and starts to draw 'the circles'. The circles, you see, show how you tell five people about this great business, and they tell five people, and they tell five people, and pretty soon, you're making residual income from five gazillion people, and low and behold, you are RICH, my son!

I looked at the paper, these circles, they make sense, don't they? I mean, I'm a logical fellow, and I look down at the math, and well, heck... this is perfectly logical! How can it fail? So I get excited. I tell my family. I tell my wife's family. I tell my friends. I tell the people at my new job. I tell friends at church. I tell strangers on the street! Why do I tell all these people? Why am I trying to 'sell' this opportunity to everyone with a pulse? Because that's what the SUCCESSFUL people in this business do. And as we all know, if you want to be a success, you follow the successful! That's just common sense.

The problem, however, is that as logical as this system is on paper, the one thing that Ben didn't illustrate on his yellow legal pad was that all those little circles? They were people. I mean, sure, they symbolized people, but they weren't really an illustration of what people are like. For example, people don't want to bug all their friends and family with business. People don't want to spend every waking hour trying to figure out who they can sell soap to. People don't want to get out of their comfort zones. Ben didn't show all those little facts on the paper. Just those beautiful, logical circles. Well, truth is, a circle is logical. People are not. Not generally, anyway.

If you haven't figured it out by now, this company was called AMWAY. The great-grand-daddy of MLM's. The decades old behemoth that has, indeed, created many, many rich people. Rich people whose lives are completely consumed by their business. Their every waking thought is about how they can build their business. How they can help their business. How they can find more people to join their business... And why do they need to do that? Because of the thousands of people 'downline' who have already hustled every friend, family member, church goer, and co-worker they know, and not one single person was interested in giving up their own comfort zone to join them in their Amway adventure.

So what do these grand poo-bah's of the Amway business tell them to do? FORGET THESE PEOPLE and find NEW friends, family members, church goers, and co-workers... After all, you don't want these negative people holding you back from your ultimate goal... which, supposedly, is to be JUST LIKE THEM. Living a life in a gilded cage, where your only real friends are those people who are either making you money, or you're making money for. In a very real and scary sense, it is a cult-like atmosphere propagated by the 'successful' in that business.

Now, I grant that it has been a long time since I was in Amway. And I grant that on paper... man, those circles always made sense, and still do. If there were some way to utilize the power of that logical system in a way that didn't turn me into an obsessed and friendless MLM zombie... THAT would be a golden ticket.

Did I actively pursue trying to find such a business? No. Of course not.

Ben, too, eventually quite Amway, not quite as dismal a failure at coaxing his friends and family into it as I was. But not quite good enough at it to actually see any of his dreams come true. Dreams like... breaking even, I suppose. And the seed was planted in my head and in a couple friends heads that somehow... this kind of thing can actually work. But not like that. Not like that.

Next: The Juice Wars cometh!