2: The Day My Upline LIED...

Oh, ho, what's going on, everyone? This is Steve Larsen, and you're listening to Secret MLM Hacks radio.

Here's the real mystery. How do real MLMers like us, who didn't cheat and only bug family members and friends, if we want to grow a profitable home business, how do we recruit A players into our downlines and create extra incomes, and still have plenty of time for the rest of our lives? That's the glaring question, and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Steve Larsen, and welcome to Secret MLM Hacks Radio.

All right, you guys, how you doing? Very excited for this. There's a great quote by Robert Kiyosaki in one of my favorite books for this industry. I'm sure you've read it before, or at least heard of it. It's called Business in the 21st Century. Great, great book, great audio. It's not very long, but it's very, very powerful. I can't remember if it's in that audio series of that book, or if it's in one of his other books. I've read a lot of books from him.

He said that any time we begin down an entrepreneurial journey, any time we start in entrepreneurship, and we take that first step forward, we feel good. It's a really great feeling. But as you move forward, and this is a concept he describes. This is not, obviously, verbatim what he says. As you move forward, and as you start moving down the entrepreneurial path, character flaws are going to explode in your face. You're going to get all these things that start coming up in front of you, going, "You know what? Ah, man, I really don't like talking to people." It's like, well, you might need to get around that before you can move on.

That's what he says. He says as we move down this path, and as we start walking down the path of entrepreneurship, what ends up happening is these character flaws explode in our face, and they actually stop us from progressing over all. They take us, and they say, "Nope. You're stopping at the pass right there. You're not going to move on."  Basically, you don't move on until you somehow address it, or get around it, or fix it. You can't move forward.

I started experiencing, when I first started MLM, I first started experiencing some pretty major character flaws. Now, I realized that I didn't have all the knowledge I needed to actually be successful with it. That was almost reassuring for me, to actually realize that, oh my gosh, I don't know enough. I don't know enough. At least I knew what the problem was. It was four years ago, when I first joined MLM. It was about four years ago now.  At that time, all these character flaws, like I said, started popping up, and I realized A, number one, I don't know enough. B, I'm way too afraid to speak, and C, what do I even say? How do you come up with a message? What is marketing, in general? I'm sure you've probably felt some of those experiences before, or felt some of those feelings in your life and in this business, as you move forward.

I started studying. I hit the books. It was right around the time that I decided to exit MLM. I hadn't exited it yet, but I was getting to that point. I was so fed up with home meetings, and hotel meetings, and going and trying to figure out what's the next way for me to get someone on the phone, and how can I corner the next person? I didn't know how else to do it. It was by sheer, brutal force that I was going and talking to all these people. Like I mentioned in the last podcast episode, people I know, sadly, are still a little bit mad at me for that. I just didn't know any better. That was a character flaw of mine. I had to overcome those things.

So, I hit the books. I hit the books and I started staying up. I was in the middle of college, at the time. We were in this little, tiny apartment, and this little tiny apartment, it was freezing. I couldn't get very warm, sometimes, at night. My wife would go to sleep, and she was pregnant, or she'd be with the newborn, or whatever it was, and I felt this inner desire: I had to provide better. I wanted to give her a better life. So what I would do is I would stay up till like 3:00 AM, every single day, but I had class at 7:45 AM. I would sleep, usually, about anywhere from three, four, five hours every day. I did that for months, and actually even years, because I knew ...

What was funny is that I was going to college for marketing. I was working for a marketing degree, but none of the stuff I was learning in college seemed to be any help at all. I actually wasn't learning how to market in my marketing degree. I was like, "What is going on?" I started taking the books from the best minds out there, and I started going. It was this ferocious pace. I was hungry to go figure it out, because I felt, A, the need to provide and feel like a man, but B, I really, really had to provide, obviously, because we had this kid coming, it was on the way.

So I started studying, started hitting the books. I was up super late. I remember this experience. I'd always sit at the kitchen table, our little kitchen table in our freezing apartment. It was always very dimly lit, at the time. You look back on the crap moments in your life, sometimes it can be almost bittersweet. You're like, "Oh, man. That was such a defining period of my life, when I was going through all that."

I remember I was sitting on the couch, and my wife had gone to bed. I was going to go to sleep, but there was an ebook. I don't even remember what the name of the ebook was. I remember the guy's face, but I don't know his name. I don't know the name of the ebook. I don't know. All I remember was this single concept. I remember that I got fired up, and I sat down, and I started reading. It was just on an iPad. I was reading through this ebook, and I was like, "Whoa. This is a different take on MLM than anyone's ever told me before. What is this? This is amazing." It sucked me in. I think I started reading at about 11:00, and I was just reading ferociously, till three hours later, at 2:00 AM, I remember I put it down, and I couldn't go to sleep. I was like, "Whoa. This is totally different. This is a completely different approach towards MLM, and actually recruiting people without feeling like you're bullying them. Finding people who are good."

What he was talking about was this concept called paid prospecting. Paid prospecting meaning you get paid even while you're prospecting people. Now, for me, at first, I was like, "Man, that sounds like almost too good to be true. That's intense. Holy crap." I remember sitting on the couch, the lights were off, it was totally dark. I didn't want to turn them on. I just sat there and I just thought, "Huh. That dude figured it out."  He was showing all the people he had been recruiting, and he was showing his big fat checks on stage, and showing all this stuff. I was like, "How interesting. I'd like that. That'd be kind of cool."

But what's this paid prospecting thing? How did he actually do that. It changed my mindset. It changed the way I look at the industry. It changed everything about the way that I ... Gosh, you'd think I'd remember the guy's name. I believe in giving credit where credit is due. I am so sorry. I can't remember his name. I still don't remember his name. I don't even know if I can go find the ebook again, but it was the concept of paid prospecting. I was like, "Wow. Interesting. That's fascinating."

I started getting hungry again for the next thing. I was like, "Hey, so now I know this thing about paid prospecting. How do I actually do that?" I thought to myself, "Why don't I go look and see what the top MLM leaders out there are actually doing." Guys, this was the craziest thing. It was the biggest realization I've ever had. Just, oh, it was just nuts. I sat down and I started going person by person. I think I literally just Googled "top MLM leaders." For weeks, I went on this really deep dive. I got a whiteboard out, and I would basically draw out all the different things that they were doing. I was like, "Hey, let's go look at this person. Let's go look at this person."

I was looking at all the top MLM leaders, and you know what I noticed?  Not one of them was doing home meetings. Not one of them was doing hotel meetings, or phone meetings. Not one of them. I was like, "What is this crap?"  I actually got mad about it. I was like, "This is total garbage. Why is my upline telling me to do this, when none of the actual top guys do that stuff?  What's the deal?"

I felt gypped. I actually felt a little bit pissed off about it. I got kind of mad. That was a character flaw of mine. I had to overcome knee jerk reaction, pissed-offedness. I was like, "This is total garbage." I started looking through all the different things they were doing, and why is that guy being successful? He doesn't do home meetings. My upline tells me that's the only way to do them. What about that guy over there? I started drawing out all the similarities I was seeing between all the top people. This pattern started to emerge from the paper, and from the white board, and from the notes around me, and all the books. I was like, "What? No way. This is so cool. This is totally different. I've got to figure out how to actually make this work."

I went and I started putting it all together. This was the pattern. You guys ready for this? I'm going to give you massive nuggets. This is only episode number freaking two. You better keep coming back, because I'm giving you guys gold right in the front. I'm really excited for you. I feel so passionate about this because I feel like so much of the marketing tactics out there in MLM is so stuck in the 90s. It's so much for an older generation, which is fine, but most of the time you drive away all the younger generation when you use those tactics. I'm a millennial. I'm not very good, sometimes, face to face with people. I love stage presentation. I do it often. Did an awesome one, I just spoke at two different events. It was a lot of fun. But sometimes I don't totally want to go speak to people. My wife always makes fun of me. She's like, "How come you can speak on stage in front of hundreds, and go for three straight days teaching stuff to people who've paid 10, 15, even 25 grand? How come you can do that, but you can't have people come over and have a normal dinner with them?" I was like, "I don't know what it is. It just gives me anxiety. It freaks me out."

What I'm trying to share with you guys, right now, is that if you feel those feelings also, with me, I found out how it works. This is what people were doing. I would go and I'd start looking at all the people who were number one. Almost every single one of them had their own website or web presence, whether it was on ... It wasn't just a Facebook page. They literally had their own website, or what I call a sales funnel. It wasn't just a website. What they would do is these guys would go out and they would offer education for free. They would say, "Hey, here's some really cool education." Then, what would happen is there would be, after they'd take the free education, the next page that it would bring you to, rather than a, "Hey, thanks so much," the next page, instead, was actually a page that would be like, "Hey, if you liked that free stuff, what goes really well with this is this CD that will help you learn how to speak better. It's 7 bucks. It's really cheap. If you want it, it's a great companion with that."

I was like, "Well, shoot. Yeah. Totally. I'd love to get something like that," you know what I mean? I was like, "Yeah. Awesome." After that, it was like 49 bucks for the thing that taught you how to do the next thing. Then $120 to do the next thing. Then $1,000 to come join them to do something else. You know what I mean? That's what I call a sales funnel. As I was watching these guys, and I was watching what they would do, they wouldn't work with anybody who didn't pay them money. It's not because they were greedy, it's because they needed to sift out the people who were serious and the people who weren't serious. If somebody's willing to spend $7 versus someone who's not willing to spend $7, right there, the mentality, the person, the person's who's willing to invest in their education, the mindset of the individual willing to spend just 7 bucks, totally different person that pulls into your world. That's what paid prospecting was.

Paid prospecting became this thing. I was like, "Oh, my gosh. These guys are getting paid prospecting." What's crazy is they get paid regardless if someone actually joins. They go out, and there's not a lot of money, but what it does is it sifts out all the people who are time wasters, people who weren't ever really going to do it, people who were joining their MLM just to be nice versus actually trying to be successful. Does that make sense? It sifts out and creates somewhat of a filter and a barrier. It protects the top MLMers' time. It protects their money. It protects their own downline from getting people in there that are leeches. Kind of like the people that I had. It's not to offend you by saying, "I feel like, hey, I'm kind of one of those people." That's okay. It's easy to fix that. Just take action. You won't be a leech anymore.

That's what they were doing. I realized that they were taking all of these pieces, and they're putting them together. If someone bought the $7 thing, even if they didn't buy anything else, that was the person they were prospecting to. They were making the person raise their hand on their own, and vote with their wallet, and say, "This is what I want to be." They were having and putting together what I call sales funnels, and what they're commonly known in the Internet marketing industry now.  So, sales funnels. I was like, "I bet I could build that."

That's what I started doing. Very, very fun, when I started doing it. Crazy, ridiculous results starting coming with it. There's a lot of challenges that come with that. There's the tech side. There's a lot of ... I grew up around computers like crazy. My dad was an executive at IBM. We did a lot of stuff with computers, so I had a little bit of an upper hand with that. There was a lot of tech stuff. It can be challenging to put that kind of stuff together, but I went through, and I put it all together. I was like, "Interesting."

I want to tell you a little more about that, but it'll probably for the next episode, on how I actually put it together, and what I put together, and why. Specifically, the pieces and aspects of it. Anyway, that's probably for another time. Just know that the big, massive realization that I had was that A, holy crap, you guys. Top MLMers don't go bug the crap out of people in malls. They don't. You shouldn't either. It's not how this game works anymore. Maybe that worked for a while, like a day or two. I don't know. Could not have been long. I'm not saying that there haven't been A players recruiters, that method, but the squeeze is not worth the juice, you know what I mean? How hard you have to work for that, in my opinion. I want my time back. I want to spend time ... Now I have two little girls. I have a three year old and a two year old. I would love to be able to spend more time with them. She's almost four. She's awesome.

Anyway. The other realization I had is that man, all these tactics, they really are all the things that my upline, the guys that are crushing it, the guys that are actually making 10 grand a month, that are doing really well, or even more, a lot of them, they were still teaching me to go be their lead gen, and go make big lists of family members and friends and just bring people to them. That's a great deal for them, but that's not how you grow your own thing.

Anyway, yeah. The belief that I had, that this crushed for me, was that I needed to bug family members and friends. I finally found a way around it. I'm very, very excited to share more of that with you.

Anyways, if you liked this at all, now please. There's a really cool thing called the MLM Masters Pack that I'm giving away for free. I'm being totally vulnerable, totally open and honest, and showing you guys, pulling back the screens and showing you all the things that I'm doing to actually create automated systems. It's a training you can show your whole downline. I don't ever pitch, or even talk about my MLM. You will never hear the name of the MLM that I'm in, on this podcast. You're just not going to hear it. It's because I want you to feel ... If you want to stay in your own MLM, or network marketing company, or home business, or whatever you want to call it, you can. That's fine. I'm okay with that. My whole goal is to be able to just help you understand what actually works and what helps you recruit A players into your downline, so you can be successful with it.

That's pretty much it. If you're interested in that, go to secretmlmhacksradio.com. Guys, I'll talk to you later. This was an awesome. I'll talk to you guys later, and I'll see you the next episode. Bye.

Hey, hey, hey. Thanks for listening. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback for me. Do you have a question you want answered live on the show? Go to secretmlmhacksradio.com to submit your question, and download your free MLM Masters Pack.