4: The "Opportunities" You've Joined...

Alright, alright, alright. How are you guys doing? This is Steve Larson 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 want to grow a profitable home business, how do we recruit A-players into our down lines and create extra incomes, yet still have time for the rest of our lives? That's the blaring question, and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Steve Larson and welcome to Secret MLM Hacks Radio.

I love that intro. I put that together. I did a lot of music related things growing up. I always loved mixing music and putting it all together. When I was about eight years old, my mom, she was teaching piano lessons like crazy out of our house. It was really cool, I loved it because all these kids would come over, and they'd be learning. While my mom would be teaching these piano lessons, I'd get to go play with all these other kids. It was awesome. I remember that very vividly. It was just a lot of fun and really enjoyed that a lot.

What shocked me though, when I turned about eight years old, suddenly the tide shifted, and she wanted to teach me piano. I was like, "Okay, cool. Awesome." All these other kids are doing it. I'm excited about it. This will be great. I'll really, really enjoy that. This will be a lot of fun. I started practicing. You start out at a really small level. Just like with anything, you suck at the beginning. It's the same with anything in life. Soon as you start, you're going to suck at it. Why? Because you've never done it before, and as you keep moving forward and doing it, you start to suck less. "Eventually, you suck less so little that you actually become good." That's a quote from Garrett White. That's exactly what happened.

I was practicing, and I was really enjoying it and I was feeling the progress. I was feeling progression. I was feeling ... Which is, in my mind, one of the keys to happiness, is feeling progression in whatever you're doing. I was excited about it. I was learning different songs. I was learning that, oh my gosh, especially as the years went by, about four years went by. I was learning, I could woo some of the young girls around me also and get some attraction that way. Do you know what I mean? I was enjoying it.

But, when I turned about late 12, 13, I started hating it. I think a lot of it was because it wasn't cool to have my mom teaching me piano. I just so regret the fact that I did not continue doing that. For several years there, I was like, "Ah, piano. I'm not going to do that. I'm too cool for that." I was going through that teenage phase. Regrettably, I walked away from it, much to the dismay of my mom, of my mother. She kept teaching piano. I kept saying, "No, I don't want to do it. I don't want to do it."

What was funny is, about four years went by, I played for four years. Then, about four years went by, and I realized how cool it really is to stick with something and get really, really fantastic at it. My younger brother has stuck with it for a long time, and he's just insanely awesome at the piano. I have total jealous rage over it. He's awesome at it. I mean, extremely, extremely good. He's going to get recognized by states and stuff like that. He's quite good, for his age and stuff like that.

Anyway, what happened was I realized it was awesome. What I did was I picked it back up. I was 16, and I started self-teaching. I started getting interested into it for the sake of the thing, rather than anybody else really caring that much. I had just loved the actual act of playing the piano. I started learning it and I started working on it and started getting good again. What was funny is, I remember, I always loved it when I'd go to other people's houses, or I'd go ... There were churches, or I'd go in different classrooms, in high school, the music area. I would go there, and I would start playing the piano. What was so funny, to me, is that sometimes the pianos were just amazing. They were incredibly expensive instruments. Massive grand pianos and I could play on them. It was gorgeous music. You could definitely heard the difference in the keys. It was amazing. It was so cool. I promise the story is going somewhere very key, just bare with me for a second.

I was like, "This is fantastic. This is so cool, holy cow." Then I'd go on someone else's piano, and it would be slightly out of tune, but what was funny is, that sometimes being slightly out of tune, would be its own artistic flair. It actually would make it sound cool, in its own way, also. I'd be like, "Interesting. This is like a really, really cheap piano and it's out of tune a little bit, but this song actually sounds cool." This is slightly out of tune, or whatever it is. I realized something, that there were these people, these other kids that would walk up, and they'd play the piano, and they were crappy, really bad. But, they'd boast really good skill like, "I'm so good. I'm super good at it." But, they'd sit down and they weren't very good.

I was like, "That's interesting. You have this really expensive piano, but you don't actually play it very well, at all." Whereas, the piano we were playing on, it's not that it was bad, it's just that it wasn't really that nice either. It started getting out of tune, but this is something that really stuck with me. I realized that it didn't matter that the piano I was playing on was a little bit old, or out of tune just a little bit. That didn't affect my ability to play. That didn't affect my ability to go run out there and be self-driven and solve problems on my own. That didn't affect my ... Meaning, I didn't have to blame other people. I didn't have to blame external factors for my success. Whether or not I was actually going to be successful with it.

My skill level had nothing to do with the quality or brand of the piano. That had everything to do with my devotion to the instrument. What does that have to do with MLM? Everything. That has everything to do with MLM. I remember, I realized when I was first, remember I told you in the very first episode of this podcast that I joined and I got 13 people on my down line. It was a really cool experience. It was awesome and I really enjoyed it. Then they did nothing. I was like, "Ah, man," and I started getting discouraged. About three, four, five months in, six months in, seven months in, that I started getting even more discouraged and more time passed. Within the year afterwards, I had just flat out quit. I remember, distinctly thinking, it was the MLM's fault. I was like, "Oh, my gosh. This MLM sucks. It's nuts. This is terrible. Look at those other guys over there in that other one. Grass is always greener on the other side of the hill." Remember that?

I'm going, "Man, those guys over there, they totally got it made. Look at their comp plan. Look at the commissions that they get. Look at X, Y, and Z." Now, in all reality, did the brand of the piano matter? Yeah, like 10%, like not much at all. There was this extra 10% beautiful layer that got added on top of it, but the music still sounded good if it was on a cheap piano. It didn't matter what brand it was. That's the exact same thing with whatever MLM you're in. It's the same reason you'll never hear me say the name of the MLM that I'm in right now. I'm just not going to tell you on this podcast what I'm in. That's the exact reason why. Because if you love the MLM that you're in, good for you, that's your instrument, you're getting good at that one. That's awesome.

You're skill level has nothing to do with the MLM that you're in, like 10%. It has everything to do with your skill level. What is the skill level that you're working on? Marketing, marketing. It's this very, very big hole. There's one other aspect that I realized it's not just marketing for me. What I realized is that ... I'm back tracking a little bit. I realized that there are ways to auto-recruit people using sales funnels and that I needed to market to people rather than prospect to people. That's a recap of the last three episodes, thus far. What I realize is that I need to have ... What was the system in place? What was the system?

I realized all these other MLMers, these type guys, they weren't doing home meetings. They weren't doing hotel meetings. What do I actually need to go build? What I did is I sat down and I started using a software called, ClickFunnels. I'm not going to promote tons of stuff to you guys, just so you know. But, ClickFunnels is the freaking bees knees. It is so awesome. It used to take me weeks to build out what it takes me a day to do in ClickFunnels. It's amazing and it's so awesome. If you want a free trial to that, just let me know and I'll drop it over to you.

But, what I realize is, so I went and I created this system. I put the system together based off of what I saw the top people in MLM doing. I had a cool quiz. That was the first page somebody landed on. I had a cool quiz on the internet, on a little page there because they did. I went through and I made this cool quiz. All it was meant to do was get people into the state to go to the next page. I didn't even collect the data. Then on the next page I said, "Hey, if you want here's this cool little CD. It will teach you how to create a funnel. It will teach you how to create a funnel that you can use to help recruit people into your MLM. It's just seven bucks."

A lot of people are buying. They're still buying that. More people buy it today, which is awesome. It's just constantly working for me in the background. It's awesome. Then the next page of the funnel is, "Hey, you know what? Here's a complete funnel that's already done for you." Then on the next one, "Hey, you know what? Here's if you want to learn how to get some more traffic, here's that part there too." What's funny is I built this whole system out. It took me about eight months to do it. I put it all together. I went and I saw the other training materials other MLMers were doing. I saw the videos that they were doing. I transcribed them and I made them my own. I changed them and I tweaked them and I made it my own. I put my different spins on them. I recreated the videos. Those videos are what's at the Secrets, I'm sorry, SecretMLMHacksRadio.com. That's what's there. It's free videos, you can just have them.

There's nothing afterwards. I'm not trying to upsell you anything. I'm not trying to ... It's literally just for your education. I've never done that before. Anyway, I think you'll really enjoy it. But, there's a point to it. I'm not pitching you. There's a point to it. I started going ... Remember last episode I said, "Guys, there's a huge difference between sales and marketing. There's another huge difference between a product and an offer." This is marketing 101. This is stuff I didn't even learn in marketing degree, yet it's made all the difference and it's made the money for me that it has, which is awesome.

The difference between those four things is huge. What's the difference between sales and marketing? Well, I was doing door-to-door sales. Sales, according to Joe Polish, and marketing are very different like this. What he said was, "Sales is what happens in front of your face. When somebody walks up to you, what do you say face-to-face? It's what happens face-to-face." What do I say there? That's what sales is. It's closing the sale, right there, in face-to-face. Marketing is any action you take to get them to your face. It's whatever gets them to walk up to you. Marketing pulls, it's all the actions you take to pull there ... Posting crap on Facebook about what you drank and what you're doing at the gym is not marketing. That's not marketing. That's prospecting. That pushes people away. I swear, if my wife sees one more person invite her to a home party where they're going to get to try someone else's product for free. She's going to just start shooting. I'm so tired of those tactics, it's ridiculous.

It's one of the reasons why I'm making this podcast and why I'm putting out this content. Because I found a different way to do it and it works way more effective and you don't ruin relationships as you do it. Number one, we market, we don't prospect. The marketing pulls people and helps pull people to us. Sales is what happens face-to-face and that's the part I'd really like to automate. I can automate both those parts sales and the marketing, but especially the sales. I don't really like to talk face-to-face. I don't really like doing sales. I love stage presenting, but I hate, I hate doing face-to-face, one-on-one sales. It drives me nuts.

When I realized, like I said, the difference between sales and marketing, huge. Alright. I'm trying not to go into too much techno-babble. Stay with me real quick. Here's the other aspect. When I launched my automated system, it failed. You're like, "What? Stephan what qualifies you to be doing this? What qualifies you to be teaching these people and teaching us? What is it you're doing?" Well, the reason why is because it failed and I walked away from it. I was like, "Dang it. I went an I recreated this whole system from all of these top MLMers and it did nothing."

Why did that do nothing? That is the weirdest thing. That's what all the other top guys are doing, how come I'm failing at it? What I ended up doing was walking away out of pure frustration. It took me eight months to build this thing and I walked away, completely defeated, thinking that I had failed. I walked away and I completely forgot about it. Well, literally, months and months and months later, probably a solid six months later, it was a while. I can't remember, it might have been six months. Regardless, it was a long time.

This guys comes out to me and he's like, "Dude, I stumbled across your thing." I don't know really how he found it. "I stumbled across it. Holy crap, dude. Why aren't more people using this and seeing this?" I was taken back. I was like, "How did you find this? Are you kidding me? It's in this dark corner of the internet. It's on these webpages. I put it up. I know it's not a normal thing to do in the MLM world. I just forgot about it to be honest." He goes, "No, are you kidding? This is the coolest thing ever. This has changed my life. This is amazing stuff. This kind of stuff is not out there, but the kind of stuff that's needed." I was like, "Yeah, I know. That's why I did it." He goes, "Dude, I bought your thing. I'm using it. It's awesome."

I won't say his numbers on here because I don't want any kind of income claims, but he was spending $5 a day on Facebook ads and he'd pull out a couple hundred dollars a week in paid prospecting. Regardless if someone joined his own MLM down line. I was like, "That's super cool." He had the marketing piece. He had the sales piece. Those parts were all automated. But, for me personally, why did that fail at the beginning? It actually, really didn't do that well for a little while. The reason why is ... Maybe I should have done a separate podcast about this because I don't want this to go too long, just bare with me for a second. Stick with me. This one concept changed everything for me.

The difference between a product and an offer. What I was doing was I was selling a product. I was selling the one thing. I was selling the MLM recruiting system. There was just that one thing. I was like, "Cool. That's interesting. I thought it was good enough." You have your MLM product and it didn't sell very well. It didn't, for some reason, it just didn't sell well. Not many people bought it. I was like, "This is amazing how come nobody's actually getting it?" The one guy bought it and was like, "This is awesome. You know what? I wish you included X, Y, and Z with it." I was like, "Huh, that's really good feedback."

I went and I created it and I added it to the other product, so when they bought the product they got this other thing with it too. Guess what? My sales went up. The craziest thing. Other people started hearing about it and started buying it. I started getting more and more feedback from people. They're like, "You know, this is really cool and so is that other thing, but I wish I had this third thing." I was like, "Huh, that's a really good idea. I should go make that." I went and I put that aspect together and I put those pieces together and I included it. So, when you got the main product, you got two other things with it now." Crazy again, my sales went up. Then again, again, again, and again, over and over and over. You can see where this is going.

Pretty soon it was like this waterfall of paid prospecting cash that started coming in. We went on a cruise. We went ... It was nuts. We're pulling two grand a day sometimes, or in a week. It would be $2,000 in a day, $1,000 a day, $1,000 a day. It was like, "Holy crap, these people don't even join my MLM yet." What was crazy is I wasn't pitching the MLM. I wasn't going around and trying to beg people to get in. I wasn't walking around malls. It was totally automated. These people were giving cash. They were paid prospects, but, at the same time, man, I got, right now, I still have 15 people begging to join my down line. I just haven't pulled them in yet. I haven't gone in and finished the sign up process with them, currently as I'm making this episode. It's hilarious.

I was like, "Whoa, that totally happened. That worked." I was like, "Why did that work? Why did that work?" I'm very introspective as an individual. I was like, "Why did that work? How come that worked?" I understand the difference between sales and marketing. That's the part I automated. That's the system I created, but why is it that I went and how come it's working now? What I realized is that people want to buy offers. They don't want to buy products. They don't want to buy just a product or just a service. Have you ever gone to ...

This is a goofy example, but have you ever gone to Sports Clips? Sports Clips is a haircutting place. You go in there and it's not just a haircut. You go in there, it's a haircut for dudes, but you go in, mostly for guys. You go in and you sit down. They give you a haircut, but after that they wash your hair, but then they put hot steam towels on your face and they massage your scalp and your face. They put you in this vibrating massage chair. They put you ... They'll do ... It's really interesting. It's a manly spa. Do you know what I mean? I love it. It is the coolest part.

What they did is they took a boring product, haircuts, and they made an offer out of it. The problem with most people in MLM is they don't have an offer. You, out of the box, are exactly the same as thousands of other people. You have the same product. You have the same websites. You have the same marketing material. You are, literally, carbon copy as everybody else, out of the box with MLM products. Why would somebody join you? Do you know what I mean? That's the whole ... That's what I realized. Oh, my gosh, the reason people are buying it is because I made my MLM, I made my recruiting system into an offer. I made myself different. I carved out my own niche. Nobody else is doing it. I was like, "Whoa, that's nuts."

It started blowing up and started going nuts. That's why it's been successful and why I've had so many people join. Again, I don't want to dive into numbers. It's not the purpose of this. I'm not trying to make myself look awesome. I'm just trying to help you see where the holes in MLM are. That they do exist. That MLM out of the box is already broken. If you want to be successful, that you have to set yourself apart. You can't sell just a product or service. You need to turn it into an offer, add stuff in of your own. Say, "Hey, when you join the MLM, I'm going to give you X, Y, and Z."

I'll dive into that a little bit later of how I do that and why I do that. How I found it to be successful in places where I know it's not successful. But, you need to be different than everybody else. How are you going to do that? Why would I join you versus all the other people out there? That's what I realized. It's not the piano. It's the operator. It's the artist. It's the pianist. What's your skill level inside of MLM? What's your skill inside of business? Most people, when they first join in, especially MLMs, a lot of people in MLMs, again, stereotypically, typically have not done that much in business. The problem is that they go ... A lot of people will go out and they're thinking they got visions of piles of cash, which is great, but most of the time when a person is focused on cash, they don't make any.

But, when a person is focused on marketing, they make money. If you want significance you can't seek it. If you want cash you can't seek it. You have got to seek how to market. Every time I do that with a $1 million company, we just launched something a little bit ago, that's unrelated to MLM. Within two months it made $1 million. It's awesome, but you want to know why? It's because we marketed the crap out of it. It took us four or five times to relaunch and relaunch and relaunch, to actually be successful with it. We've done that many times and most of the time when we launch something it's not successful. When you first get MLM out of the box, it's not successful. You're not set up already for success. You are the exact same as everybody else.

The way you get around that is by creating an offer and getting obsessed with how to market it. How you get people in front of your face and I want to automate systems to do that and that's exactly what I have done. If this is interesting to you at all, I'm sorry this has gone 20 minutes, but if this is interesting to you at all. I am so passionate about this because most of the industry, in my opinion, right out of the box, is broken. It doesn't work and people are not set up for success. It's not their own fault. It's not even the up line's fault. It's that most of them don't know.

They all got big, where they are, a lot of them, by building automated funnels, automated recruiting. They do things that shift from focusing on converting one person at a time to lots of people at once. That's how you go from six to seven figures. That's how you built it. Anyway, you guys can tell I'm really passionate about this topic and I totally am and it's the reason why I decided to podcast about it. Because after about the 12,000th question about it, I was like, "Okay, I got to make a place where everybody can see why I'm doing what I'm doing and how it's working and why it's been such a success." Such a starving need for the industry and how it works.

If not approaching family members and friends and still being successful is interesting to you, then go to SecretMLMHacksRadio.com and go get the five videos that teach you more about what I'm talking about right now. A lot of the content that I'm talking about right now is way more in-depth on those videos. They're for free. You don't even hear the podcast, I'm sorry, you don't even hear the MLM that I'm in. I will never tell you on this podcast what MLM I'm in. It's so that it's purely educational to help people get back on their feet with their MLMs.

MLM is a great thing. I really enjoy it. It has a lot of personal development that comes from it, but there's still this massive business side of needing to turn a dollar. If you're the kind of person thinking that it's the instrument and you've been gone opportunity, to opportunity, to opportunity. No, it's got to be that one, it must be that one, it must be that one. That's not true. It's the skill level. It's the operator. It's operator, it's user error. The way to get around it, like I was saying, you've got to learn to obsess over the marketing. You've got to learn how to create offers. You will set yourself apart from everybody else in the industry.

Anyways, guys you can tell I get passionate about this one, but it's a big, big deal. This is worth figuring out. It's worth you having the life that you should have to go figure this out. You owe it to you. You owe it to your message. Now, anyways, go get those videos at SecretMLMHacksRadio.com and guys please check out the next episode and I will see you there.

Hey, thanks for listening. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback for me. If 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.