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MLM Companies with Momentum

November 23rd, 2009

I’ve recently suggested there might be better ways of measuring the appeal of a network  marketing company & their opportunity. Most new network marketing members I know make the decision to join a particular company based on emotion, typically fueled by questionable information. But when a distributor is looking for a new opportunity, shouldn’t they be most interested in a company’s momentum – their recent and ongoing growth?

Why Growth & Momentum?

If a distributor joins with a company whose market share is shrinking, they’ll find it increasingly difficult to win team members, make sales and otherwise succeed.

So, I decided to look at growth & momentum. Since no network marketing companies regularly publish audited revenue numbers, we can’t use those. Plus, revenue lags momentum in this industry so it would be a late indicator.

How to Measure MLM Growth & Momentum

I think the best indicators of most trends today are found in online data. Here’s why:

  1. Most people use the internet to research products & companies they are interested in.
  2. There are very reliable 3rd-party services that monitor website and search traffic over time.

Every online data source has some flaws, but intelligently combining reliable sources provided me with some interesting findings. I wanted to see which MLM companies are experiencing momentum built on long-term growth.

The Results

The results might surprise you. First the chart with companies in alphabetical order:

MLM Company Momentum ComparisonMLM Company Momentum Comparison

And here are the results sorted by rank:

MLM Nutritional Product Company Momentum Score
Xango 9.5
Vemma 9.0
Zrii 6.0
Agel 5.0
Shaklee 4.8
Max Intl. 3.8
Herbalife 2.0
USANA 1.3
Forever Living Products 0.3
Life Plus -1.0
Pharmanex -2.3
Tahitian Noni Intl. -2.3
MonaVie -3.0
Mannatech -4.8
Waiora -6.3

Methodology

First, to ensure I was comparing apples to apples, I had to focus my scope of companies to the largest segment in network marketing-namely those companies marketing primarily nutritional products. So I didn’t include those focused on technology or broad consumer product lines. I’ll try to find a good way to tackle those segments later. I chose 15 popular nutritional product MLMs.

I looked at website and search traffic growth over the past 3 months. You wouldn’t want to measure just 1 month since a lot can happen online to cause only a momentarily spike in a site’s traffic. But 3 months gives a good view of immediate trends = momentum.

Besides just immediate trends, it’s important to look at what companies are growing overall. A few companies I looked at were actually decreasing over the past year so their short-term growth looked more like an element of recovery than momentum building on long-term growth.

Reaching back to my past statistics training, I combined the 3 month and 1 year website traffic & search data for each of the 15 companies by standardizing their growth percentages and then giving a slightly higher weight to the 3 month score. I used data from the following services: Alexa, Compete Inc, and Google Trends.

Conclusion

I’ll admit, I was fairly surprised at the results. At the top you have some more established companies like Xango and Shaklee generating buzz and building momentum, next to, and sometimes above, newer companies like Vemma, Zrii and Agel. I wonder why.

Could it be new product launches, company marketing & support, the elusive “critical mass?” What do you think? Like any research, there is more to dig into here. Maybe I can expose the drivers if I look at search engine keywords, traffic patterns, product launch activity, etc.

Whatever the drivers happen to be, this seems to be the type of data I’d be relying on if I was considering joining an MLM company and building a successful network marketing business – partly because it’s the sort of market growth data that successful traditional businesses rely on when they launch into ne

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THE ADVANTAGES OF NETWORK MARKETING!

November 3rd, 2009
  1. From a 1 Billion Dollar a year Industry 30 years ago, Network Marketing has reached $200 Billion Dollars today. The growth curve is more than impressive.

Approximately 45 Million people are involved in Network Marketing Worldwide Today.

Over 1/3rd of all American Households have purchased goods and services provided through Network Marketing companies.

Network Marketing is creating more Millionaires than anything else out there.

Network Marketing is the most rapid way to market new products and services.

Network Marketing requires the least investment to bring new products into the market.

Network Marketing offers new possibilities for people seeking an activity and yet not willing to give up their freedom and their home lifestyle.

Network Marketing is the fastest way of generating extra income.

Network Marketing brings all the advantages of franchising without requiring heavy financial investment.

Network Marketing is being exported to many countries and growing very fast worldwide.

And with Financial Freedom you have the ability to GIVE and that is the best Freedom of all.

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Why You Need to Fail!

October 20th, 2009

Peter Bregman …..How We Work

Why You Need to Fail!

“Peter, I’d like you to stay for a minute after class.” Calvin teaches my favorite body conditioning class at the gym.

“What’d I do?” I asked him.

“It’s what you didn’t do.”

“What didn’t I do?”

“Fail.”

“You kept me after class for not failing?”

“This,” he began to mimic my casual weight lifting style, using weights that were obviously too light, “is not going to get you anywhere. A muscle only grows if you work it till it fails. You need to use more challenging weights. You need to fail.”

Calvin’s onto something.

Every time I ask a room of executives to list the top five moments their career took a leap forward — not just a step, but a leap — failure is always on the list. For some it was the loss of a job. For others it was a project gone bad. And for others still it was the failure of a larger system, like an economic downturn, that required them to step up.

Yet most of us spend a tremendous effort trying to avoid even the possibility of failure.

According to Dr. Carol Dweck, professor at Stanford University, we have a mindset problem. Dweck has done a tremendous amount of research to understand what makes someone give up in the face of adversity versus strive to overcome it.

It turns out the answer is deceptively simple. It’s all in your head.

If you believe that your talents are inborn or fixed, then you will try to avoid failure at all costs because failure is proof of your limitation. People with a fixed mindset like to solve the same problems over and over again. It reinforces their sense of competence.

Children with fixed mindsets would rather redo an easy jigsaw puzzle than try a harder one. Students with fixed mindsets would rather not learn new languages. CEOs with fixed mindsets will surround themselves with people who agree with them. They feel smart when they get it right.

But if you believe your talent grows with persistence and effort, then you seek failure as an opportunity to improve. People with a growth mindset feel smart when they’re learning, not when they’re flawless.

Michael Jordan, arguably the world’s best basketball player, has a growth mindset. Most successful people do. In high school he was cut from the basketball team but that obviously didn’t discourage him: “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career, I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

If you have a growth mindset, then you use your failures to improve. If you have a fixed mindset, you may never fail, but neither do you learn or grow.

In business, we have to be discriminating about when we choose to challenge ourselves. In high risk, high leverage situations, it’s better to stay within your current capability. In lower risk situations, where the consequences of failure are less, better to push the envelope. The important point is to know that pushing the envelope, that failing, is how you learn and grow and succeed. It’s your opportunity.

Here’s the good news: you can change your success by changing your mindset. When Dweck trained children to view themselves as capable of growing their intelligence, they worked harder, more persistently, and with greater success on math problems they had previously abandoned as unsolvable.

A growth mindset is the secret to maximizing potential. Want to grow your staff? Give them tasks above their ability. They don’t think they could do it? Tell them you expect them to work at it for a while, struggle with it. That it will take more time than the tasks they’re used to doing. That you expect they’ll make some mistakes along the way. But you know they could do it.

Want to increase your own performance? Set high goals where you have a 50-70% chance of success. According to Psychologist and Harvard researcher the late David McClelland, that’s the sweet spot for high achievers. Then, when you fail half the time, figure out what you should do differently and try again. That’s practice. And according to recent studies, 10,000 hours of that kind of practice will make you an expert in anything. No matter where you start.

The next class I did with Calvin, I doubled the weight I was using. Yeah, that’s right. Unfortunately, that gave me tendonitis in my elbow, which I’m nursing with rest and ice. Sometimes you can even fail when you’re trying to fail.

Hey, I’m learning.

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The Survival Of The Fittest

October 2nd, 2009
Whether you’re already an entrepreneur, or just thinking about becoming one, you are invariably motivated by one of two things, or maybe even both—passion and necessity. Very often, entrepreneurs do what they do simply because they like it and want to do it. And because entrepreneurs, particularly very successful ones, rarely do anything half-way, they tend to pursue their lives and their businesses with a unique intensity. In short, they are passionate about how they live and work.

Sometimes though, entrepreneurs start a business because they have to. Maybe it was because they were laid off from their jobs, or even worse, fired. Perhaps their company went out of business and left them out of work, or didn’t pay them enough money. In today’s economy, it’s not uncommon to see whole industries collapse when their markets dry up, as we’re seeing with real estate, construction, mortgage lending and automobiles. Many of today’s highly successful companies were started by entrepreneurs and bred from pure necessity, plain and simple.

Entrepreneurship carries with it many rewards—and many risks. It is often said that when you are self-employed, you wake up unemployed every morning. But according to Experian, one of the three biggest credit reporting agencies, self-employed entrepreneurs make about 25% more than the general population. Of course when you really consider income differential, you also need to realize that most of the wealthiest men in America made their fortunes as entrepreneurs. Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Donald Trump and Sam Walton are all self-made billionaire entrepreneurs.

But what about the risks? According to Entrepreneur Magazine somewhere between 85 and 94% % of all new business fail within the first 5 years. According to Dr. Gregory B. Murphy, associate dean and director of the MBA program for the College of Business at the University of Southern Indiana, the number of small businesses that close up shop due to severe financial distress such as bankruptcy is more on the order of 30%–40%. Regardless, this is still a huge rate of attrition.

Regardless of the risk, according to a study of entrepreneurs conducted by Master Card International, 65% of small business owners would tell a friend to start a business now, rather than wait a year. And according to MSNBC, small businesses are responsible for over 75% of the net new jobs in the economy.

These businesses often start very small—called micro businesses—and then grow rapidly. The US Census Bureau reports that 49% of the nation’s businesses are run from home, and industry analyst the Dieringer Group places the number of Americans running businesses from home at 45.1 million. Today, more so than ever, it is easy to start such a home-based business. Global search engine giant Yahoo reports that well over 75% percent of adults surveyed online indicated that the Internet directly facilitated the launch of their new business.

Based on all of this, regardless of whether you are—or want to be—an entrepreneur based on passion or necessity, you also need to consider the risk versus the reward. The potential benefits are vast and unlimited. The major risk is that you have about a 50% chance of failure. But you can get around that by doing some very basic things.

Leaders are not born. They are created. Anyone can become a leader in any area if they want to. (Read OUTLIERS by Malcom Gladwell) You need to set realistic expectations and manage them aggressively and then stick the bleep in there! Success is almost entirely based on determination—having the discipline to hang in there even when you feel like quitting 1000 times. Most entrepreneurs fail because they simply give up too soon. Free enterprise is really about the survival of the fittest, where only the strongest survive. The formula is simple—figure out what you what and then don’t quit until you have achieved your goals. Period.

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Success Is Easy, But So Is Neglect by Jim Rohn

September 29th, 2009

People often ask me how I became successful in that six-year period of time while many of the people I knew did not. The answer is simple: The things I found to be easy to do, they found to be easy not to do. I found it easy to set the goals that could change my life. They found it easy not to. I found it easy to read the books that could affect my thinking and my ideas. They found that easy not to do. I found it easy to attend the classes and the seminars, and to get around other successful people. They said it probably really wouldn’t matter. If I had to sum it up, I would say what I found to be easy to do, they found to be easy not to do. Six years later, I’m a millionaire and they are all still blaming the economy, the government, and company policies, yet they neglected to do the basic, easy things.

In fact, the primary reason most people are not doing as well as they could, and should, can be summed up in a single word: neglect.

It is not the lack of money—banks are full of money. It is not the lack of opportunity—America, and much of the world, continues to offer the most unprecedented and abundant opportunities in the last six thousand years of recorded history. It is not the lack of books—libraries are full of books, and they are free! It is not the schools—the classrooms are full of good teachers. We have plenty of ministers, leaders, counselors and advisors.

Everything we would ever need to become rich and powerful and sophisticated is within our reach. The major reason that so few take advantage of all that we have is simply neglect.

Neglect is like an infection. Left unchecked, it will spread throughout our entire system of disciplines and eventually lead to a complete breakdown of a potentially joy-filled and prosperous human life.

Not doing the things we know we should do causes us to feel guilty, and guilt leads to an erosion of self-confidence. As our self-confidence diminishes, so does the level of our activity. And as our activity diminishes, our results inevitably decline. And as our results suffer, our attitude begins to weaken. And as our attitude begins the slow shift from positive to negative, our self-confidence diminishes even more… and on and on it goes.

So my suggestion is, when given the choice of “easy to” and “easy not to,” that you do not neglect to do the simple, basic, “easy” but potentially life-changing activities and disciplines.


Jim Rohn

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Michael Jordan

September 25th, 2009

MAYBE IT’S MY FAULT!

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FEEL THE FEAR AND DO IT ANYWAY.

September 25th, 2009

Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway. Simply feel the fear, acknowledge it and use self talk to explore the depths of it, then fill yourself with as much love as you can muster, and do what you need to do anyways. Trust yourself and affirm you are safe and all good and only good surrounds you.

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September 25th, 2009

There are no great people in this world, only great challenges which ordinary people rise to meet. William Frederick Halsey

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ARE YOU FULL OF…….EXCUSES!

September 25th, 2009

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Jim Rohn – Increasing Your Resiliency

September 25th, 2009

Resilience is the ability to return to the original form after being bent, stretched or compressed. That’s the dictionary’s definition of resilience. It’s the ability to readily recover from illness, or depression, or adversity.

In our lives, resilience specifically means being able to withstand setbacks, broken hearts and broken dreams, financial crisis, loss of loved ones, loss of enterprise, and loss of health. How would you ever handle it if you lost everything you had today? What would your next step be? How long would you be depressed and upset and angry? What would it take for you to pull yourself up and start all over again? How resilient are you? Could you handle it? Could you learn from all of your disappointments and start all over again? What would it take?

Number one, it would take a lot of self-discipline. It would take a lot of positive self-talk to muster up the energy to begin again. It would take a lot of concentration to block out the noise and the clutter of all the negative voices trying to get through, as well as the negative voices of others around you. That’s a lot! It would take a lot of discipline to balance the fear and anxiety with the knowledge that, if you did it once, you can do it all over again.

It would also take a lot of self-reliance. Whether your losses had anything to do with you or not, your future success has everything to do with you. It would take a lot of self-reliance to avoid blame. What’s happened has happened. You would need to get on with your life and begin again.

It would take a lot of faith. It would take a lot of faith and trust in God to move ahead.

If you lost everything tomorrow and you were gathering all the courage to try again, it would take a lot of self-appreciation. You need to know in your heart and mind that you have the skills, the talent and the strength to do it one more time.

Resilience is the ability to bounce back from adversity, no matter how large or how small. You lose a client, one of your biggest ones. This client accounts for more than 25 percent of your gross revenue. Losing this client is going to hurt, financially and emotionally. Losing this client is going to negatively affect things for a while. The first thing you do is figure out why you lost this business. What role did you play? In what way are you responsible? You can’t just rant and rave, yelling and screaming at everyone in the office. Even if it was the wrongdoing of someone else, you can’t act like this, because it’s not professional. You’ll lose respect. And respect is hard to regain once you’ve lost it, whether it’s the respect of those you work with, your trusted colleagues or your valuable support people. You have to approach the situation rationally and figure out how to bounce back from your loss.

You have to evaluate the situation and then start a plan to recapture the lost business. Consider how you can increase your market share with other businesses. Maybe you can network with associates to bring in a similar client or even a better one! You can’t sit back and dwell on what’s happened. You’ve got to get back into the marketplace and recapture what’s been taken from you. Get back at it and replace what’s gone.

Perhaps your loss is a personal loss. Maybe you’ve recently been faced with the death of a loved one, a divorce or the loss of a very special friendship. If your loss is a deeply personal one, you must approach the situation a little differently. You must be patient with yourself and give yourself time to grieve, time to mourn, time to regroup.

The stages we go through in loss, be it the death of a loved one, the death of a relationship or the death of an enterprise, are beautifully defined in Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ book On Death and Dying. Whether the death is a literal one or a figurative one, the stages are the same: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. And only by going through these stages and reaching acceptance can we rebound and begin again.

It’s said that children are more resilient than adults. Why? Maybe it’s because they don’t evaluate their current situation based on past experiences. They approach it in a fresh way, a new way. In their own minds, they deal with loss much better than adults.

Children who grow up in the unfortunate circumstances of poverty or abuse or neglect and later become successful are known as “dandelion children.” If they can succeed and prosper with terrible conditions, they can grow anywhere. It’s important to be more like a dandelion child. To be able to grow and prosper and succeed despite our current conditions. To be able to grow and prosper and succeed despite our losses. To be resilient.

Cultivating a resilient character turns what others would call failure into success. A resilient person won’t give up. A resilient person will, in spite of all obstacles and setbacks, keep doing it until.

In their book The Resilient Self, Steven and Sybil Wolin studied resilience and found seven key characteristics that compose it.

No. 1: Resilience requires insight. You need to develop the ability to ask tough questions of yourself and be honest with your answers. If you had something to do with your loss, be honest and responsible for it.

No. 2: Resilience is independent. As a resilient person, you can count on yourself to bounce back into life.

No. 3: Although resilience is independent, it’s also tied to others. The more people you are responsible to, the greater your motivation to begin again. The stronger the reason, the stronger the action.

No. 4: Resilience calls for initiative. You need to develop the ability to take charge of the situation, to take charge of the problem. You need to stand up and do whatever is necessary to get back on course.

No. 5: Resilience has an element of creativity. With resilience, you are able to look at a situation and creatively determine the best way out. You are enterprising in your approach toward starting over.

No. 6: A resilient person has humor. You may cry until you start laughing, but a sense of humor is so important when turning your life around. You’ve got to take your goal seriously, and you’ve got to take yourself seriously. But you’ve also got to be able to laugh at yourself and your situation at times. If somebody says, “You’ll look back on this and laugh someday.” Well, maybe today is the day to start.

No. 7: A resilient person has a strong sense of morality. Whatever you do to get back on your feet, whatever you do to bounce back into life, make sure it’s moral. Make sure that your upcoming success is at the service of others, not at the expense of others. Success, if it is yours to keep, must be at the service of others.

The more obstacles you face and overcome, the more times you falter and get back on track, and the more difficulties you struggle with and conquer, the more resiliency you will naturally develop. There is nothing that can hold you back if you are resilient.

To Your Success,
 Jim Rohn

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