I love getting paid...to shop!

Now we all can get paid to shop, paid to refer friends and paid when our friend's friend's shop. You see it everywhere these days, sign up for a checking account and get a $100, refer a friend to the groupon you just bought and yours is free. More and more companies are realizing the value of word-of-mouth promotions. Rewarding consumers for making a purchase and referring it to their friends just may be the smartest marketing tool ever created. It's not new of course, multi-level-marketing companies like Amway, Mary Kay and Seacret have based their entire company off the idea, but now even traditional companies want a piece of the pie. What do you think? Is it more effective for companies to advertise by rewarding the consumer to do it for them? Or should they stick to million dollar budget ads on tv and billboards?

Personally I like this new advertising scheme because we all can make money with it. Sites like moolala reward you everytime someone you refer or they refer buys something. Pretty cool. Check it out and see what cool things I've found at :
www.Cocopoo.moolala.com

What Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki have in common

They both recommend Network Marketing!

Check out what they said about how MLM helps people have success: 

"A true network-marketing business is the exact opposite of  traditional business model.  A network-marketing business is designed to bring you up to the top, not keep you at the bottom." 

Internet marketing has proven itself to be a viable and rewarding source of income, and the challenges could be just right for you. There have been some remarkable examples of success, and those successes have been earned through diligence, enthusiasm and the right product combined with timing." 

CONTEST!! Free entry for free stuff

Hey guys so I'm trying to reach a goal of 100+ likes on my Facebook fan page.

In order to enter to win $50 of free product all you have to do is like the fan page and share it with your friends on your page. The person who shares the most gets the most entries so essentially the most likes wins . 

Then just Message me your name so I know you are entering the contest. 

See the original post and enter here:

https://www.facebook.com/seacretcorrine/posts/1434791683407564

Avoiding pyramid schemes

I recently made a facebook post on this topic:  https://www.facebook.com/seacretcorrine/posts/1433210240232375:0

A lot of people are weary of opportunities today. There are so many stories about scams on Craigslist, spam on Facebook and get rich quick schemes that we often run at any sign of "too good to be true."

But what if within all this skepticism some of those things we thought were "too good to be true" actually were true?

Sadly many people won't take the time to educate themselves on how to spot a scam so they often run from legit opportunity and sometimes wind straight up in a scam they didn't know existed!

Today's post is about practical ways to spot a network pyramid scheme from a legitimate direct sales business. 

Pyramid schemes were deemed illegal by the Federal Trades Commission. They are essentially a scam where a con artist recruits unaware innocents and sometimes aware partners in crime to buy in to a business that doesn't actually offer a product. Sometimes the company appears to offer a service and so they hide under the radar. For example A recent company was shut down for posing as a legitimate network marketing company. They offered "exclusive" access to premium websites. They charged a monthly membership fee and a sign up fee for customers and sellers to access special websites.  After a person signs up they can make money by signing others up underneath, hence the pyramid structure. The problem is the service was not legitimate. It really only gave links to sites that were already free. The company made its money, not from making a legitimate product for the marketplace, but by preying on people who wanted to work from home and charging them sign up fees. They were recently shut down. 

Don't throw the baby out !

This kind of story can scare people who know very little about direct sales. But too often we throw the baby out with the bathwater. Just because a company with a pyramid structure or a network marketing facade was working illegally, doesn't mean all similar companies are.

Plenty of businesses run on a pyramid structure and have monthly membership or entry fees. For example the average corporate structure involves a CEO at the top, followed by several directors getting a slightly smaller income who oversee district managers, who manage local managers and then employees. It's the pyramid structure and its very stable. 

Also Gyms, Netflix and a plethora of other services thrive on monthly membership and entry fees. The problem isn't with the structure the company uses or the way they recruit, but rather what they are recruiting to or for.

So How to spot a good Direct Sales or Network Marketing company from a pyramid scheme?

The first test is does the company sell a legitimate product?

At Seacret direct for example, our product sold in the malls for about 6 years before we switched to direct sales. So all customers and agents alike know that they are standing behind a legitimate product. The product has never been hidden from the public eye or downplayed, it's where we started and how we thrive. Legitimate businesses don't make money by people buying into air, but rather buying in to a product or legitimate service .

Is the company paying compensation majorly for product sales or for agent sign ups ?

Where does the majority of the companies income come from?

 For example if a company charges a very high sign up fee just to sell their product or service, such as $150 or more, thats a good sign that the company isn't very good about earning money straight from the product/service. Many companies will include product in the sign up fee or offer extra kits of products when you join. This may make the starting cost higher and thats completely fine, because you are exchanging it for a legitimate item. But to charge a $400 sign up fee with no product involved just means the company wants to make money by signing up distributors and that's not a good sign. It doesn't necessarily make them a pyramid scheme, but maybe a less ethical company. Be careful. A legitimate direct sales company makes money off the volume of product sales, not the volume of sign ups. There may be a bonus for enlisting new sellers, but the intent is always in order to sell more product not sell selling. 

Does the company convince you to maintain or purchase a large inventory or do they allow you to build slowly?

Some pyramid schemes involve a useless or small valued product that they convince new recruits to buy in large amounts. Their aim is to make a fast and huge amount of cash on each rep knowing the person probably won't sell it all. This is called "inventory loading". Legitimate companies are required to buy by 90% of inventory that doesn't sell up to a years time from the purchase. However, most companies offer ways to sell through catalogs or online where products go straight to the customer and never have to be seen or delivered by the seller or agent. 

Those are the 3 biggest areas that will help you to recognize a pyramid scheme. Unfortunately because of the dishonesty of some, a lot of good, honest companies that provide quality products and services have been scrutinized and even mislabeled by the public. Hopefully by educating yourself on the differences you can be able to avoid scams and safely benefit from the quality products or lifestyle network marketing and direct sales has to offer. 

For more information check out the Direct Selling Association article at :

http://www.dsa.org/ethics/legitimatecompanies.pdf

Another super resource is this wiki how article on specifics of spotting a scam

http://m.wikihow.com/Distinguish-Between-a-Pyramid-Scheme-and-Multi-Level-Marketing

Make every Sunday Dream Day

I'm starting a new tradition. Every Sunday is Dream Day. From now on I'm going to dedicate at least 2 hours of my Sunday to writing down my dreams, reviewing my vision statement and brainstorming how I can achieve my dreams. I also will reflect on what I did the previous week to achieve those dreams.

Why Most People Fail:

Most people don't start with vision or if they have vision they lose sight of it. We can do anything. I think of Disneyland's motto  from Walt Disney, " If you can dream it , you can do it." That doesn't mean anything you ever dreamt is possible, it means you can accomplish anything you want when you have a clear vision of that dream. You actually have to do the act of dreaming. Dreaming isn't a fleeting image or a rash thought. It's concentrating on your goals and envisioning what you want already coming true for you.

So every Sunday I am going to actively dream .

Today after church when I'm done praising God, I am going to go to Starbucks get on their free wifi and consolidate every dream I've ever jotted down in my iPhone into one master dream list. Next I'll turn my list into two master vision statements. One for the next year and one for 5 years from now. Often we overestimate what we can accomplish in one year, but ironically underestimate what we can do in 5. 

Then I'm going to send it to our mentor Jesse Macpherson who asked us to send him vision statements. 

And then the most important part. 

Print that list and vision statements at staples, buy a frame from Dollar Tree and frame those vision statements so I can hang them on my wall.

Dream Binder: 

For my business it's very effective to have before-and-after pictures. I'm going to make a professional binder with all the pictures and include my dreams and vision statement. Every Sunday I can be reminded of my dream while being reminded of the vehicle that will take me there. And when I talk to others who want to start a business I can show them my dreams to inspire them as well.

I highly recommend you do the same thing. Pick a day, once a week, when you just review your dreams and where you're going. Most people fail to achieve their dream because they lose sight of it during the every day activities. 

Select one. It doesn't have to be Sunday but it needs to be consistent. I'll keep you posted on what it does for me and if you notice a difference in your life from a dream day routine, I'd love to hear your story.  E-mail me or post on this blog. 

Herseacret@gmail.com 

Be willing to go through the breakdowns

To get to the breakthroughs. 

I haven't posted much of anything for a couple of days. I've been struggling with achieving my goals and believing in my dreams. Trying to go from spending only a couple hours a week working on my dreams to full time with a 90 Day Run has been so taxing. I don't think I can maintain the kind of stamina necessary to go that 'all out massive action' as I wanted. I'm not saying I'm not going to do it, but coming from being a regular person with a regular job to being in complete control of my own schedule and how much I make is harder than it seems. I am going to try for a more gradual transition. Instead of aiming to spend every free minute working on my business I am going to aim for a consistent 3 hours every day minimum with 6 hours being my ideal that I'm working up to. Some people need to aim higher so they reach a more moderate goal, like shoot for the moon so even if you miss, you land upon the stars. That's awesome for them, but being a perfectionist, as I can be, means if I shoot for the moon, I'll be miserable and overly critical of myself even if I land upon stars. If I shoot for 3 hours a day. It's still a challenge coming from 0 hours a day and  it will get me consistently building. Also I expect that if I am consistent in doing 3 hours of calls I will eventually be doing a lot more than 3 hours because I will have meetings lined up throughout the day. 

In order to come up with this more realistic plan, I had to go through a stage of excitement for my crazy huge plan of working non-stop every second. And that stage ended quickly with my crash and burn meltdown yesterday. 

What was supposed to get me closer to my goals than ever led me feeling further than ever. No one would blame me for quitting. "It was an impossible path" they would say "you were destined to burnout sometime." But I'm not going to quit. I'm not quitting my business and I'm not quitting my run.

My mentor said in a run you are sprinting and you will get exhausted and want to stop. The first couple weeks are the hardest. 

I'm just adjusting my run. The full out 10k all day run isn't for me right now. But before this run my average hours a week spent on my business were 3-5. I would sometimes call people, go to the weekly meetings and listen to personal development.

Now I'm listening to my teams development call every day at 10 am, I'm blogging about my business, posting my customers crazy results on my Facebook fan page, getting in touch with old friends  (well that's not really work, but it can help spread awareness of my business if we talk about it) ,making calls every day,  having multiple meetings with prospective builders and customers almost everyday and still attending the trainings once a week.

So while I won't be doing the non-stop 9am to 9pm, I will be consistently working more than ever before and recording my results . I will not give up. 

The one thing I learned about running in High School was that if I started out running fast I never made it to the second lap. But if I started at a medium speed I could keep it up for the long haul.

It's my life

It's now or never