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.

It is absolutely critical to get regular training if you are involved in a business.

If you have ever studied personal growth then you have probably heard that if you aren’t growing, then you are dying. That is very true. If your business isn’t growing then you will soon find that you have been left behind by the other businesses in your market. Things are always changing, new technologies and methodologies are constantly being introduced. A regular training program is the best way to keep up with everything that is going on.

Training is even more important when you are building your business online where things are constantly changing.

I have decided to build my business online, and it is much more than just building a website and waiting for people to show up.  Right now social media and blogs are the big thing, and most people don’t understand them, especially social media.  Fortunately there are a few people who do have it figured out and they are willing to teach the people who will listen.

So far, the best training programs I have found for Internet Marketing are Mike Dillard’s Magnetic Sponsoring and Ann Seig and Mike Klingler’s Renegade Professional.  They both have a network marketing flavor but the material is appropriate for any small business looking to build its presence online.  If you are completely new to the online world, then I think Renegade Professional is best.  It provides very detailed, step-by-step instruction.

In building a business it is important to stay up to date, improve your existing skills, learn new skills, and learn from other people’s mistakes so that you don’t make them yourself.

Wayne Woodworth
FYI, spam is not the right way to use social media.

I have started listening to Bob Proctor’s Mission in Commission program, which is for people who make their income through sales.   He makes a few statements on the first disk that really stood out to me.

First is a quote that he found from a Spanish distiller: “The good life is expensive.  There is another way to live that doesn’t cost as much, but it isn’t any good.” I like that line.  Everybody has dreams of living a certain lifestyle and most people think they will never have it.  I think that’s too bad.  I believe that we are here to experience all of the greatness that life has to offer and it is a shame when we limit ourselves with wrong ideas.  Bob Proctor notes that salespeople are both the highest paid and the lowest paid of all professions and the difference between high and low is just your mindset.

The second statement that stood out is that “selling is something you do for a person, not to a person.” Being involved in network marketing circles online I am constantly amazed at how pushy some marketers are.  They will tell you all about how great their opportunity is almost before they ask your name.  Selling is about finding out about the other person.  Who are they, what kind of person are they, what are their concerns and needs.  Build a relationship first then only bring up your product and business opportunity if you see that you can fill a legitimate need of theirs.  Most people I meet on a daily basis know nothing about me being a network marketer or the product that I sell unless I learn they have a need for it.  Be a person and a friend first.

Bob then went on with the qualities that he thinks makes for a good salesperson.  “It takes a pleasing personality and sincere desire to help someone else improve their quality of life.” I think we’ve pretty much covered this one.  If you are friendly, not pushy, and have a genuine desire to help then you have the necessary qualities to be a great salesperson.  The rest of what you need are skills that can be learned.

If you like this material then you will love Bob Proctor’s other programs.  If you are interested in trying you hand at sales then I recommend network marketing because it is easy to get into and learn the skills as you go.  I know of a few different opportunities that you can check out.  Leave me a comment and we’ll talk.

Wayne Woodworth
Everyone is a salesperson. Most just don’t know it.

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.

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?

With the economy the way it is and unemployment rising, many people are looking for opportunities for employment.  As painful as it is for those people who are directly affected, some experts say that what is happening is actually a correction.  One of the principles America was founded on was entrepreneurialism and since the industrial revolution our society has moved away from small businesses to where most people now work for large companies.  Our food comes from industrial farms instead of small family farms.  The things we use are made in large factories and sold at big-box stores instead of made by craftsmen and sold in mom-and-pop stores.

Now things are changing.  Since jobs are disappearing from large companies, people are creating their own jobs by starting their own businesses.  A small business is better able to offer more personal service and take better care of their customers.  They are also more accountable to their customers because if customers don’t like the service then the business will quickly disappear.

One of the easiest ways to start your own business is with network marketing.  They provide a ready-made product or service and usually a business plan.  All you have to do is decide to join the growing ranks and start taking good care of your new customers.

Wayne Woodworth
network marketer
sharer of small-business opportunities

Last time we talked about how a “job” is a dead end.  JOB = Just Over Broke.  The problem is that your income is ultimately limited to the number of hours in the day.

What else is there?

There are three broad categories of ways to make money.  The first is to trade time for money, or have a job.  This also applies to some people who start their own business. For example, when someone starts a restaurant they feel that they need to cut costs by doing all the work themselves, which makes for some excruciatingly long days. They have to begin work very early to prepare food, work all day serving customers, then after the restaurant closes at night they still have to total all of the receipts, order supplies, and any of the other office-type paper tasks of running a business. As a massage therapist, I know that this is where a lot of therapists fail to make ends meet. They want more money so they keep adding more sessions during the day until they end up injuring themselves from overwork. At the end of the day, for both the restaurant owner and the massage therapist, there is very little money left over after expenses. That’s way too much work for so little money, not at all my idea of the American Dream.

The second way is to trade money for money, or to invest. I think most people do this to some degree, usually through a 401k plan through their job or with an IRA. I also think that most people have no idea what they are doing when they put money into their account. You need to do a lot of research to successfully invest money in stocks, or you need to have someone you trust doing the research for you. I don’t know about you, but I don’t take the time to be an educated investor. I look on my pay stubs to see that money went into my 401k then hope that my quarterly statement will show an increase in value. While some people do make a lot of money doing this, Warren Buffet for one, most people don’t do as well. Some people lose everything they have (think Enron). The problem with trading money for money is that you have to have money to start with and you have to have enough money to be able to weather the market fluctuations. And it is very risky. Most of us are probably too young to remember the Great Depression but we probably do remember the .com bust, Enron, and the very recent collapse of Bear Stearns which involved a lot of speculative investing in sub-prime mortgages.

That brings us to the third method, which is to leverage other people’s time for money. This is usually called MSI, or Multiple Streams of Income. You may have also heard the terms “residual income” or “mail box money”. This is how most, if not all, of the wealthy people created their wealth. Basically, since you only have so much time available, you use other people’s time to make money. An example that you are probably very familiar with is the person, or group of people, who own the company that you work for, assuming that you currently have a “regular” job. They have hundreds or even thousands of people, including you, doing things that make them money. The restaurant owner who was doing everything himself can turn his business into an MSI by hiring some employees to run the restaurant, which will free him up to focus on activities to build his business, such as marketing, and eventually opening up more locations and/or franchising out to other people. Our massage therapist friend, or my wife and I, can rent out some space to do massage and contract with another massage therapist to do the work. The owner only works on select clients herself and uses the rest of her time to work on marketing and attracting more clients. Then she hires more therapists to handle the growing client base and eventually opens more locations.

That’s how MSIs work in a traditional business world, but it still takes a lot of up-front work to get the business started. There are easier ways to get started that don’t require all of that initial effort. I will cover a handful of them here very briefly and cover them in more depth in separate posts in the near future.

Affiliate marketing is the easiest that I know of. With affiliate marketing you sell someone else’s product for a small commission. You can create an Associate account with Amazon.com then add book links to your website or in your email signature. When someone clicks on your link they are taken to Amazon.com where they can buy that book and you get a share of the proceeds.

In network marketing you can create full-time income with part-time effort. Take an established business (some of which have been around for 30 years or more) with established products (usually higher quality than you can get anywhere else) and start selling them. Sounds like affiliate marketing, right? Well, with network marketing you generally get better commissions and keep the profit from the difference between retail and wholesale prices (effectively buying at wholesale and selling at retail but without the headache of actually handling the product). Network marketing companies generally offer incentives too. For example, the company I’m with will make my car payments once I reach a certain level, and at a higher level will make my house payments too. That is all in addition to the money that I earn.

The real money-making opportunity in network marketing comes from getting other people to join your team. That’s what makes it an MSI. In the company I’m with, I get paid on up to six levels deep. That means I get paid on the activities of the people I sponsor, the people they sponsor, and the people they sponsor, up to 6 levels. Put another way, if I sponsor 6 people and they each sponsor 6 people, and everyone on down each sponsors 6 people, I will get paid on the activities of 55,986 people. Now that’s what I call mail box money.

Next, you can write a book or e-book and sell it online. With the internet and Adobe’s PDF format, you can self-publish and self-market your own books. You are no longer dependent on big publishing houses and major bookstores. As an author and publisher, the internet gives you complete control of how your information is presented to your reader. And you keep all of the money. You won’t get that from a traditional publisher. So, if you have something to say, say it online.

Last, you can start an on-line business. Everything I’ve mentioned so far can be done as an online business, but there are other things you can do too. Just use your imagination. I’ll give you an example to get you started. How about an eBay store. I know of people who go out and buy things, usually from outlet stores, garage sales, or auctions where they can get them cheaply, and list them for sale on eBay. People will buy just about anything on eBay.

If you want to learn more about network marketing right now, see my page on Squidoo or check out my opportunity. For some recommended book, see my resource page.