I met someone yesterday who has an excellent reason to look into a home-based business. She is the manager of a local department store photography studio.  The corporate office dictates the hours that her store is open without any input from her or feedback on what her customers need. She had to lay off all of her employees because the store isn’t open long enough to justify paying anyone and they aren’t making much money because the store is only open during the hours that her customers are at work. Talk about being a victim of Corporate America.

What she would like to do is go into business for herself doing photography but she’s worried that she wouldn’t be able to get enough clients. She probably also has a “no compete” clause in her contract which would make the jump to independence difficult. She also can’t go looking anywhere else for work because the people she let go are all still looking for work So she feels trapped.

A home-based business, like network marketing, could be a great opportunity for her if she has the motivation to make it work. She can do it part-time and still have time for her family and her current job, which is only part-time anyway. Once she gets going, it will help her bring in some extra money to make ends meet. Eventually she can start generating enough of an income to be able to quit the job and do the network marketing business full-time while she rides out the “no compete” period then start a part-time photography business if she still wants to. Then the network marketing income becomes the financial security for her to pursue her true passion.

Do you know anyone who is in a similar situation to this lady, or even that of her former employees? Have them read this and then at least take a look at network marketing.

Wayne Woodworth

Do you know how to build financial freedom? Do you know what financial freedom is?

Financial freedom is the ability to go about your life, doing what you want to do, without having to worry about money. Sounds cool and maybe too good to be true, right?

Well, it is true because I know a few people who have it. I have blogged a lot about Loral Langemeier and I believe she has financial freedom. Some other people I follow that you may have heard of, like Mike Dillard, Bob Proctor, and Joe Vitale, also have financial freedom. Closer to what I’m doing, Reid Nelson and Dave Johnson are high-ranking Nikken distributors who have achieved it.

I think that you and I should also be on that list, don’t you?

I quit my job 3 weeks ago today, totally voluntary, so that I could focus on building my own businesses. My primary business is with Nikken, a research company originally from Japan, that offers very unique technologies to help people feel better without having to rely so heavily on drugs and surgery. My goal is to build a team that cares enough about other people to want to offer alternatives for staying healthy,  building income, and establish their own financial independence.

I had some one-on-one time recently with Reid Nelson, one of the people I mentioned above, about what he sees as our real business. He doesn’t see Nikken and network marketing as selling. Instead he describes it as building distribution networks for some amazing products and our income is earned by moving product through those networks. I have to agree with him. I can’t remember the last time that I sold any product and I still get a check every month. I have a website that sells product for me and I get rebates from the product that I buy for my own use. The people on my team buy product for themselves and I make some income from that as well. It’s really a very useful way to look at it.

If this sounds interesting to you, please leave me a comment or contact me through my contact page. I can also be reached through my product site at www.getmywellness.com where you can also see those amazing Nikken wellness products I mentioned.

Wayne Woodworth
Building financial independence through distribution networks

You hear all the time right now about unemployment.  People are going through layoffs, downsizings and rightsizings as companies seek to find a way through the current economy, or give up entirely and close their doors.

On the other hand, if you travel in small business / entrepreneurial circles, you hear people talk about being unemployable.  I’m not talking about people who have no skills and no ambition.  These are bright people with a lot of skills.  So why are they unemployable?

Because they choose to be.  They are of the mindset that they cannot be employed by another person because they have chosen to set their own course, take responsibility for their own results, and not allow any external agency to set limits on what they can accomplish.

I first heard this term in August 2008 at one of Loral Langemeier’s Cash Machine Workshops.  If you have never heard of Loral before I suggest you take a look at what she teaches.  She has come to be known as The Millionaire Maker and her best selling books are published under that title.  One of the things she teaches is that everyone should build a Cash Machine, a way to quickly make money with skills you already have.  Once you do that and have money coming in based solely on your own efforts and ideas you will understand what it means to be unemployable.

So, what are you going to do?

Wayne Woodworth
I’m becoming unemployable too.

Have your heard that network marketing is a pyramid scheme?

I had a customer recently criticize network marketing as a scam.  Her first point was all the pay-per-click ads she had seen on Google claiming that network marketing is a scam.  If she had clicked them or even looked at the URL she would have seen that it was actually someone selling a program like Magnetic Sponsoring that teaches network marketers how to prospect online.

Her second argument gets into the old pyramid scheme idea.  She sees network marketing as a scam where a bunch of people sit around doing nothing and collect a check every month from the efforts of the people beneath them.  That does sound like a pyramid scheme.  It is also the view some people have of any corporate structure.  I want to address that now.  First of all, real pyramid schemes are illegal because members make money only by signing people up.  That’s it.  There’s no product or any other benefit to being a member.  The last people to sign up before the scheme collapses get screwed over.  That’s not network marketing.

One way to look at network marketing is that it is a way for companies to outsource their sales force. Each company that the sales work is outsourced to has the right to sell the products and further outsource to other companies.  This lets the network marketing company to focus its efforts on product research and development.  The network marketers are effectively small sales companies that don’t have to worry about product development.  They are free to focus on sales and are paid based on how much product they sell.

The great benefit for you just starting out is that your advancement in the organization is completely unlimited. In any traditional sales organization there is a structure of VP of Sales, regional managers, district managers, and so on.  It has a pyramid-like structure.  In order to advance you have to wait for one of the people above you to leave the organization.  Network marketing doesn’t have a pyramid structure.  When you join my team there is nothing to stop you from advancing beyond me.  There are at least two places in my upline where the sponsored consultant outranks their sponsor.  That could never happen in a corporate structure and definitely not in a pyramid.

And as for them all sitting around and collecting money from my sales efforts?  That just isn’t true either.  They put a lot time and effort into training and support for their many downlines.

I hope that clears it up a little.

Wayne Woodworth
Internet Network Marketer
I challenge you to outrank me

April 15th has come and gone and tax season is over for another year.  Were you happy with how much money you gave the government or would you like to decrease it?  Now is the time to look at that and prepare for next year.

I don’t mind paying my taxes every year but I definitely don’t want to pay more than I have to.  The best way to reduce your taxes is to be in business for yourself.  If you have a regular job then you know that you pay taxes on the amount of money you make then you pay your expenses with what’s left.  Did you know that businesses do it differently?  They pay their expenses from the money they make then pay taxes on what’s left.

In case you didn’t get that, let’s say you are an employee who makes $3,000 each month.  The government taxes you at 25%, so they take $750 and leave you $2,250 for the month out of which you make a $500 car payment.  You have $1,750 left.  Now let’s say you are a  business that makes the same $3,000 each month.  As a business, your $500 car payment is a business expense leaving you $2,500 in income.  That amount is taxed at 15% (you dropped to a lower tax bracket) for $375 and leaves you $2,125 to get through the rest of the month.  You have an extra $375 each month just because you are a business.

Starting a business sounds good now, doesn’t it?  But what are you going to do?  It has to be a legitimate business.  How about network marketing?  It is easy to start, has very low cost, and you can do it from home (which saves you even more money because your home office is a business expense).  I can offer you two good choices of network marketing companies to look at. One in wellness and the other in greeting cards.

Wayne Woodworth
Network Marketer
Saving me a fortune.

One more thing, I am not a financial advisor.  I strongly encourage you to talk to one about your situation so that you know everything you need to know for your area and what you want to accomplish.

Before the economy became a problem, the news stories were about how health care is too expensive and people cannot afford insurance. Now that the economy is the top story, even more people are unable to afford health care. Do you know people who are in this position? Are you concerned that you could face this before the economy recovers? Would you be interested in a solution?

My favorite solution to rising costs is to make more money.  Easier said than done, right? It is easy.  Network marketing and affiliate marketing are what I like to do.  Would you like to get paid for recommending your favorite movie or restaurant to your friends? Unfortunately, restaurants and theaters don’t do that, although they do depend on word-of-mouth advertising for the majority of their sales. Some companies do work that way though, and they use either a network marketing or affiliate marketing plan.

Read more for another great idea to control your health care costs.

Bob Proctor has a great new affiliate program.

Wayne Woodworth
Internet Marketer

The company that I currently work for has an upside down pyramid for their corporate structure.  The customers are at the top because a company cannot exist without customers.  The next layer down has the regular employees who support the customers by taking orders, providing technical support, and handling accounting issues.  The next level are the team leads whose job is to support the regular employees.  They provide the employees with everything they need to get their jobs done.  Below them are a handful of team captains who support the team leads.  Then at the bottom is the company captain.  As you can probably guess by now, his job is to support the team captains.  The company is doing well even in this recession because they have very loyal customers and extremely low turnover in the workforce.  The company exists to provide good service to the customers and give the employees a great place to work.

Imagine what the world would be like if all companies were like this.  Every where you went you would see smiling faces offering excellent customer service.

This inverted pyramid is also how the successful groups in network marketing work.  They don’t describe this structure exactly but this is the way Nikken, the network marketing company I joined, encourages the teams to work.  For my upline to be successful they need to support their downline, me, and I need to support my downline.  For me to make a lot of money with Nikken I need to support a lot of partners who can make a lot of money.

So maybe instead of calling my sponsor an “upline” I should call him my “downline”.

Wayne Woodworth
You future network marketing downline?

How much money do you want to make this year?  Do you know how you are going to do it?

My wife and I spent some more time with Live Out Loud for training on their affiliate program (which pays very well if you are looking for a cash machine).  One of the things we came away with is Loral’s process for revenue modeling.  It is a very simple process because you want to quickly figure out what you need to do to meet your goals then get busy doing those things.

First, write down how much money you want to make in the next however many days.  Then figure out how much of your product or service you need to sell to reach that number.  Next figure out what you are going to do to make those sales.  And the last step is go do it.

For example, let’s say I want to take home $2000 in the next 30 days.  My profit for selling Nikken product is 20% if I sell it at the full retail price so my sales goal is $10,000.  Now I have to figure out what products I think I can sell this much to reach $10,000.  It turns out that all I have to do is set up 3 families with the basics of a wellness home (if you curious, that is a magnetic sleep system, air and water filtration, magnetic insoles, and a few other small items).

Pretty easy, right?  The benefits of spending a few minutes doing this planning are huge, especially considering the amount of time it takes because now you know exactly what you need to do to reach your income goals.  You know where you need to devote your time so that you are not as easily distracted  by other things.

If you don’t have a way to make money outside of a fixed paycheck, see my cash machine post then leave me a comment.  I would be happy to discuss ideas with you as well as share a few of the things that I am doing.

If you want to learn more about how to write you plan, check out the Building, Leading, Protecting Your Business audio program or attend on of her live Cash Machine Workshops.

So there you have it.  Go plan then get busy.

Wayne Woodworth
Network Marketer
Affiliate Marketer
Planning to be wealthy

The successful people in business that I have talked to don’t watch the news or read newspapers.  That doesn’t mean that they are completely uninformed about what is going on in the world, but more that they don’t want to be overly influenced by what the media says.

The media wants you to believe that the economy is in recession and things are getting worse.  That may be the truth for some, like some banks and the American auto industry where things are really bad because of bad business decisions they made.  For others though, things are going very well.  My business has never been better and my wife has just launched a new business of her own.

If you pay attention to the media you probably think that there is a terrorist waiting around the corner to get you as soon as you step on the street.  In my town it is still perfectly safe for my four year old daughter’s teacher to walk her class two blocks from one building to another.  In most cases I bet your town is closer to how mine is than downtown Baghdad.

So, one thing you can do to turn your business around if it is struggling is to ignore all of the over-sensationalized media stories about how bad things are and spend more of your time focusing on the things you can do to strengthen and grow your business.  Or do what my wife did and start a new one.

Wayne Woodworth
Successful Internet Network Marketer
Recession? What recession?

It is much cheaper to keep an existing customer than to acquire a new one.  With that in mind, you need to create a process to keep your customers interested in your products and repeatedly draw them back.  One method is to create a sales funnel.

You create a sales funnel by introducing yourself and your products to your prospective customers through something inexpensive, or even free.  Introductory offerings such as ebooks or other inexpensive items work very well.  Your goal is to give your customer a taste of what you have with only a small commitment from them so that you can build their trust.  Through successful delivery of a quality product it is easier to get your customer to come back for more expensive items because you have already established a relationship.  Once a customer has tried your entry-level product you work on upselling your interested customers to your next tier product and so on up to your high-end products.

The personal growth industry does this very well.  I will pick on James Ray because he does this very well and has excellent products and programs.  Currently he spends most of the year traveling around doing FREE 2-hour seminars.  Once you are there you get quality content for 2 full hours.  Near the end he will introduce his books and learning systems and offer them at special event pricing, taking you from the free level to the $20 level for books and the $100 level for learning systems.  Then he will tell you about his 2-day programs at the $1000 level and so on up to 5-day programs.  For the first two hours he has been building your trust in his quality, for free, so that you will be more likely to buy into his products and events.  They really are quality.  Check James Ray out if you are interested in personal growth.

The same thing will work in your business.  I’m in network marketing with a wellness company that sells magnets.  Not many people know what magnets can do, so I will create a sales funnel for the magnetic products.  To get prospects started in my funnel I sell, or sometimes give away, a small button magnet to help people with their aches and pains.  Most people are curious enough that at $2 a piece people are willing to try them out.  Once they feel the benefits it is easy to upsell them to a pair of magnetic insoles, then massage tools, and finally a complete magnetic sleep system.

As a network marketer, I can do the same thing to get people interested in the business side as well.  I can start with a free report about the potential tax benefits of having your own business or a book about starting your own business by someone like Loral Langemeier.  Once they see that they really should have their own business I introduce them to the different levels at which they can start their business with me.

As you can see, a sales funnel is easy to set up and makes it easy for your prospective customers to get to know your product and through that process they get to know you so that you can build that all-important relationship and have customers who return to you again and again.

Wayne Woodworth
Home-Based Business Owner
Internet Network Marketer