In today’s extremely troubling times I thought it would be appropriate to share a message of hope.  True hope is what will cause change and change is what will get us out of this recession.

In the network marketing industry we often talk about mentors.  I want to introduce to you one of my first success mentors Steven K. Scott.  You may have heard of Steve Scott.  If you haven’t surely you’ve heard of his products.

Total Gym with Chuck Norris and Christie Brinkley

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Steve is a millionaire, author and marketing genius.

As I have been doing video production and web marketing for him recently he has shared many valuable lessons with me.  One of those lessons is on hope and that is the message that I wanted to share with you today.

If you can’t see the video click here.

I will be sending you some more free training from Steve Scott along with my own internet marketing training if you will simply join my mailing list.

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To join for free put your name and email address in the box below and hit submit.  You will also receive a Special BONUS!  A free ecopy of Think and Grow Rich by Napolean Hill.

If you want me or anyone else to join your business there is one simple thing that you must do…

I often times hang out on a certain social media site and I get messages everyday that say something like this,

“Hi, nice to meet you. Hope we can be friends. I work from home and love it. I get to help others and save the world and get paid to do it. If you are interested in learning what I do let me know.”

I will never join that person’s business.

I also often get messages that are even way more spammy than that. I once got a two page pitch about a person’s business and this was my first interaction with this person.

I will never join that persons business.

Yesterday a dear friend said to me, “We have a business opportunity for you.”

I said, “If it includes a million dollars I’m in!”

This friend then proceeded to tell me how cool this business and health supplement was.

I will never join that friend’s business.

Not because I don’t like or trust that person but because I don’t feel that this person brings enough value to me as my sponsor.

Take a moment and digest this one principle and you will increase your understanding of what you need to do to become the person, leader and business owner you want to be.

Here is the principle. It is not enough of an incentive to join someone’s business just because they are your friend or family.

I’ll say that again. Being family or friend of someone is not enough to motivate a person to join your business.

I’ve signed up my mom into two of my past businesses and she did nothing. She lost money and quit both times. Why? Because I didn’t offer enough value to her to teach her what to do. I’m not saying that it is totally up to me, but if I knew then what I know now she would have had a much better shot. Also, I I had the value I have now then some of my other family members and friends would have seen more of a reason to join me in my business.

So what could my friend have done to convince me to join her business? What could I have done to help my mom be more successful? How could my friends on these social media sites have better enticed me to join their busines?

The answer is simple. Constantly add value to themselves or yourself.

How do you constantly add value to yourself?

• You become a student of marketing.
• You constantly learn, read, study and attend webinars, meetings and seminars.
• You network and partner with people who can add value to you. (The beauty of network marketing is that your value isn’t only what you bring to the table. It is also what your network brings to the table.)
• You learn to leverage your strengths.
• You learn to leverage your downline and upline’s strengths.
• Are you getting the idea?

The reason I didn’t join the spammers’ businesses or my friend’s business is because I didn’t feel that they gave me enough value. I didn’t feel they were bringing anything to the table.

Everyone wants me to join there business because I’ve spent 10 years learning marketing, internet marketing, video production, html, sales, public speaking and many, many other skills that make me a valuable asset to any home or traditional business.

The first question you need to ask yourself is what value do I bring?

The second question is what am I doing to add more value to myself?

Last night I began rereading Magnetic Sponsoring by Mike Dillard. It is a great book. I highly recommend that you go through his boot camp and read his book if you haven’t already and reread it if you have.

In Magnetic Sponsoring Mike Dillard talks about this very principle and he talks about how we need to workon becoming Alpha personalities.

The best way to become an Alpha personality is to constantly add value to yourself. Then you can have the right posture, as they call it in network marketing, when you strive to expose, involve and then upgrade your potential prospects and customers.

You will notice that I talk a lot about expose, involve and upgrade. One of the ways that I have added value to my downline, potential prospects and customers is that I have developed a systematic approach that allows me to expose, involve and upgrade prospects painlessly. I use this system to market to both my warm and cold markets.

I call this system Dotcomify because “to survive you must dotcomify” your home business. My goal is to train you to dotcomify your home business for free. To begin learning my Dotcomify System simply sign up for my newsletter by clicking here http://mlmnetworkingtools.com/dotcomifymyhomebusiness/

Other things that I recently recommitted myself to doing each and every day that will add tremendous value to me and those I serve and work with are:

1. Read 10 pages from a book every day.
2. Study Pay Per Click Daily
3. Continue to refine and test my sales funnels.

What are you doing to add value to yourself and others? Please share.

As the slogan of one of my current home businesses goes, “Decide. Commit. Succeed.”

May you learn to have the success you desire,

Curt Clapier

PS. If you are interested in possibly partnering with me on a venture click here http://curtclapier.com/partner-with-curt/

My wife and I got into home businesses over two years ago.

Last summer we spent the summer in Brazil building our business and we had a blast but we lost lots of money.

Since then we have analyzed what we learned and what lies we were told.

We’ve taken the lies we were told and turned them into motivation to create a system that markets and builds our business successfully in spite of the lies we were told. So we’ve decided it would be effective to share these lies with our friends on CurtClapier.com and then after making everyone aware of these lies then I will teach you step by step how to set up your own system and teach you the marketing skills necessary for you to succeed in spite of the lies that you have been told.

So here’s the first LIE about home businesses and network marketing that I was told.

1. The system is simple. All you have to do is use or consume the product yourself, then share your experience with the product with all of your friends and then invite them to get involved.

Well, I shared multiple opportunities with many many people that I know and we continued to only loose money. In fact our upline told us that you just need to put 2 people into the business.

Only 2 people?! That sounded easy enough. So we did that. And it wasn’t easy.

Then my upline told me to make a list with them and then go personally with my people, since I was their leader in Brazil, and present the opportunity to all of the people on their lists.

So guess what we did. We did exactly that. My husband presented the opportunity to a couple of dozen people who were on our first two people’s lists and they ALL said NO. It was devastating to my new distributor who had made a sacrifice to purchase their product and join the business. They both ended up quitting because all of their friends said NO and they could not afford to continue.

But all of the training we would receive continued to tell this same LIE. “Just stick to the system.” they would say. “The only people that don’t make money in this industry are those that try to reinvent the wheel and don’t listen,” they would say.

Lies, all lies! The only people that this conventional network marketing strategy worked for were the people who came into an organization with such a huge circle of influence that they could instantly sponsor hundreds of people into the business.

Well, I didn’t know any of those people. Did that mean I was destined to fail?

Have any of you been told similar lies? If so please share your stories here.

Over the next few days I will share all of the 3 big lies I was told and then I will teach you what we did to succeed in spite of these lies. If you follow along and continue to bump this thread so everyone can learn we will teach you step by step how to set up this system in your business. In fact we will set parts of it up in our newest home business along with you.

To gain Access to all of these trainings and all of these videos be sure to join my FREE newsletter. Click here to join.

Thanks,

Curt

Today on a home business forum I read the following post.

“People are scared because not everyone has an entrepreneurial spirit.  Some people enjoy working their jobs, getting their paycheck and want nothing more.  Others long for something else but the fear of the unknown has them shackled to jobs they aren’t satisfied with.

Still others want more but don’t want to do what it takes to get more.  They ask for work at home opportunities that cost nothing yet everyone knows you have to work two weeks for your first paycheck.  What do you use to get to work?  How about meals to keep you alive until that first check arrives?  They spent money to make money when they agreed to take their first job.  They just don’t see it that way.

I just keep looking for the people who are open to taking a chance, to step out on faith and make things happen.  These are the people I’m looking for.  Take care and God bless.”

I do agree with some of the points this forum user made.  I agree that it takes money to make money.  I agree that fear all to often paralyzes us and keeps us from doing what is necessary to succeed financially in life.

However, there are many things that I disagree with in this post and those are the points I wish to write about in this article.  I do not wish to disrespect the user that wrote this post for I believe that this person, as far as I know, is a successful and honorable home business owner.  I write this to help those who are looking into home businesses to not make the same mistakes that I made.  I also hope that this article will help any of those people who are struggling in home businesses and are only loosing money or barely braking even.  My hope is that this article will cause those people to step back for one moment and rethink how they are doing business and quit spending money until they have a clear marketing plan in place to succeed.

The point was made by the user who posted this comment on fear that if people are willing to pay for gas to go to work and to buy food then they should not be afraid to invest in a home business for it costs money to make money.  I don’t think it is fair to compare the costs of maintaining a job to the costs of joining a home business.  Here’s why.

• When we join a home business we are required to purchase a certain amount of product each month or annually to remain “active”  This can cost us a lot and in most home businesses people are unable to earn more than they spend on their own product.

• There is NO guarantee that if you purchase the required product that in two weeks you will receive a paycheck. However with a JOB you are guaranteed that if you put gas in your car and drive to work you will recieve a paycheck at the end.  As for groceries and food you have to buy those anyways, those are not part of the cost of having a job.

I don’t think we should let fear paralyze us to the point that we do nothing for we have to do something, but I would suggest that we exercise caution and use intelligence in deciding how to better our financial situation.

If you are considering a home based business or are currently loosing money in a home based business I would suggest you consider the following things:

1. If you have a job DO NOT quit your job until you have the income you need.  That is unwise.
2. Understand clearly what the cost of doing business is.  Not only the cost of the product, but also the cost of marketing and time that you will have to invest.
3. Know what it takes to be in the positive.  For example how many people will you need to put on auto-ship to pay for your minimum product purchase each month?  How many will you need to earn $1000 per month?  How many for $5000 per month?  Uplines and sponsors often don’t want you to think about this because it is rational and they want you to make an emotional purchase.  If you come in to your business rationally and not emotionally then you will stick with it longer and you will have more success.
4. Create a personal marketing plan and know what you are going to do to grow your business to the point that it is earning you the amount of money that you need to be making.  We claim to be entrepreneurs, but NO entrepreneur would get funding from an investor without a clear business plan and that business plan must include an extensive marketing plan.  So if investors won’t put money in to our business with out a plan why should we invest our own money without a plan.
5. Do NOT settle for the promise that “we will train you.” “If you do everything that we tell you then you will make money”  “The only people that don’t make money are those that don’t listen to us and follow our system.”  These are lies.  Learn how you are going to succeed before you invest the money and time into that opportunity.  As you do so you will learn skills that will make you successful in any business and you may find that their is a better business opportunity out ther for you.
6. Resuming the other 5 points. Be quick to learn, ask lots of questions and slow to purchase products unless you want those products regardless of whether or not you make money selling those products.

I hope that this helps somebody and I invite you to comment and contribute to this topic.

I’m not telling you not to join a home business.  Much to the contrary.  I’m simply telling you to learn, network and create a marketing plan and a system and then join the business that is right for you rather than join a business, begin spending money on product every month and loose money.  If you are interested in learning how I build businesses and want step by step instruction on how you can do the same please join my newsletter and you will have access to my LIVE trainings and my recorded past trainings.

You can join my newsletter by clicking here. http://mlmnetworkingtools.com/dotcomifymyhomebusiness/

“If you are a marketing professional who wants to reach your buyers directly, you will likely encounter resistance from corporate communications people. They’ll say the old rules are still in play. They’ll say you have to focus on “the four P’s”. They’ll say you need to talk only about your products. They’ll say that the media is the only way to tell your story and that you can use press releases only to reach journalists, not your buyers directly. They’ll say that bloggers are geeks in pajamas who don’t matter. They are wrong.”

- David Meerman Scott -

“Never let your ads write checks that your website can’t cash.”

- Avinash Kaushik -

“A strong foundation increases the value of everything you do.”

- Aaron Wall -

The only way to survive in todays economy is to learn how to Dotcomify Your Small Business.  My weekly webinars are FREE and they teach you how to thrive in a recession. Click here to Dotcomify your business.

“The entrepreneur builds an enterprise; the technician builds a job.”

- Michael Gerber -

“I’m not sure I knew what an entrepreneur was when I was ten, but I knew that starting little businesses and trying to sell greeting cards or newspapers door-to-door or just vending machine kind of thing is.. there’s just something very intriguing to me about that.”

- Steve Case -

Many of these lessons can be learned by watching these free videos.  Click to claim your Magnetic Sponsoring.

“Over the years, the U.S. economy has shown a remarkable ability to absorb shocks of all kinds, to recover, and to continue to grow. Flexible and efficient markets for labor and capital, an entrepreneurial tradition, and a general willingness to tolerate and even embrace technological and economic change all contribute to this resiliency.”

- Ben Bernanke -

The only way to survive in todays economy is to learn how to Dotcomify Your Small Business.  My weekly webinars are FREE and they teach you how to thrive in a recession. Click here to Dotcomify your business.