Alpha Influence is the most powerful, unique leadership training I’ve ever come across

Before I get into that, I bet you’ve noticed how quiet things have been on my blog for the last couple of months! Firstly, while I won’t bore you with the details, I got a little push button happy with the W3 total cache plugin settings one night and the result was it literally wiped my blog out. I’m talking literally just a banner hanging in mid air with no theme! It wasn’t a pretty situation as it deleted comments, reset social media buttons and all kinds of stuff and it dragged out for weeks. Anyway it’s all fixed now and to that end, I’d like to do a big shout out to my WordPress knight in shining armor, Wayne Hatter. Should you ever wake up to find your blog hanging in the middle of cyberspace in desperate need of help, do yourself a favor and click here to bookmark Wayne’s WordPress Live Help. Believe me you’ll be thankful one day :)

And the second reason I’ve been quiet is the whole reason for this post. The Alpha Influence leadership training has had such an impact on my life, I’ve been working behind the scenes creating a new blog dedicated entirely to the principals and insights I’ve learned. More on that at the end of this post.

When it comes to online marketing courses, I’m just as tired as you are of seeing the same stuff re hashed. Not only does it take a LOT to get my attention, there are only a handful of people who have made it past my complex detail oriented BS radar! While there are lots of pieces of software and widgets I’ve tested that I stand behind, it’s not the case when it comes to courses that actually produce a result. In fact the only course I’ve ever endorsed on my personal blog was when I first found out about the tribe mastermind community. The difference with the Alpha Influence program is it addresses the very core of leadership, your ability to control non productive automatic behaviors and start influencing and producing results. In a nutshell, it cuts straight to the core of your inner game.

If you’ve ever done any weekend leadership training courses, you know what it feels like to come away feeling like you can conquer the world. Believe me I’ve done my fair share and I’m now seeing the same high from friends of mine that temporarily feel unstoppable. There is an enormous amount of energy that’s generated from these types of trainings. And I’m not knocking them, in fact I highly encourage you to get to the next one of these events as they are amazing networking opportunities. But when it comes to shifting things at the core, none of them scratch the surface in comparison to how powerful Alpha Influence is. This is a totally unique online leadership training that teaches you how to influence people in any niche, by totally mastering your inner game.

The heart of Alpha Influence focuses on having complete mastery over your emotions through learning to control your M.A.R.M

Otherwise known to those on the inside of this community as the Minds Automatic Recall Machine. And when I say mastery, I’m talking stress, anxiety, fear, doubt, timidness, shyness, failure mindset, distraction, inertia and any other illusions you have going on. If you’ve ever thought stress or overwhelm was something you just had to live with, prior to Alpha Influence so did I!

Most people are walking around with a level of awareness equivalent to a zombie. They are puppets, not only of their own minds and of everything that’s going on around them. They have no clue that everything that is going on in their lives is because they’ve become the influenced, rather than the influencer. Prior to doing the Alpha Influence training, I honestly had no idea I to had become a puppet of my own mind…

Once I began to understand my own M.A.R.M. and the impact is was having, everything started changing. Now I’m not talking about sitting around doing affirmations all day long waiting for the Law of ‘Hopeful’ attraction to kick in. Alpha influence isn’t about hope or luck, it’s based on taking action. It ingrains Passionate Desire, focused Will Power & Significant Action into your psyche. It has nothing to do with sitting on your butt hoping the universe will deliver!

So what impact did Alpha Influence have on me…?

For a start, I went from varying levels of stress and overwhelm to waking up day after day thinking this is the happiest day of my life for no particular reason. I now enjoy and appreciate things and people, that previously drove me up the wall! Not to mention creating trust and rapport with whoever I choose.
When I face challenges, they feel like some sort game that’s been put in front of me for a reason and I look forward to the hurdles rather than dreading them. After the balanced blood module I lost weight (oops that one wasn’t something I needed but never mind!). I’m more focused, less distracted and action oriented than I’ve ever been. Some of you will have noticed entire weeks where I’m not on Facebook at all :) I’ve completed projects that I previously couldn’t even get off the ground. When I’m challenged with any highly charged situation, I can easily bring myself back into a calm state before my emotions kick in. I can see through and pick up on subtle cues in people that they probably aren’t even aware of themselves <== A skill every Alpha Influencer has mastered!

The video above and what I’ve written so far, is a drop in the ocean. I honestly don’t think any sales page will ever do the course justice.

The material in Alpha Influence is so powerful and so unique, I can’t imagine it not being totally game changing for anyone, no matter what niche.

You have to experience the training to know what I’m talking about. Even your partner, your kids and friends could benefit from it. And the influence droplets that you’ll create once you have this knowledge, will change more lives (including your own) than you can possibly imagine right now. I’ve had some close friends start the Alpha Influence training recently and they have all called me in the first week with a major breakthrough. Not weeks or months, but their first week!

This is not a learn the latest and greatest tips and tricks type of course, this is foundational, success defining stuff. This will take any and all marketing efforts you currently have going on to a level you never imagined. Not to mention the influence you’ll have over your prospects or anyone else you choose!

The course had such an impact on my business and life, I’m now half way through the mastery program and can’t wait to update you on the insights I’m gaining from taking it to the next level. The course is seriously so unique, my hope is that as the number of students grows, the message about this material spreads to millions of entrepreneurs, online or offline.

I’m seriously excited to be launching my new Alpha Influence blog to play a big part in making sure that happens :)

It’s just getting ready to launch but I’d truly love to see you over at Alpha Influence and would appreciate your feedback.

And if you’d like to find out more about the leadership course, click here to go directly to the Alpha Influence Program page.

Whether you’ve heard about the course, never heard about it or just want to share some insight, I would love to hear from you in the comments below.

Michaelé

Creating traffic for your Network Marketing team doesn’t have to be as difficult as it sounds

With Facebook ppc exploding, a sloth of new marketing courses are launching to teach you the latest and greatest ways to capitalise on the ever changing direction of traffic. Whether it’s low cost leads on Yahoo or Bing, there’s a new coaching program launching every other week. If you find yourself struggling to keep up, it might be time to take a step back and look at some simple actions you can take right now to send traffic to your downline.

Your blog is already the perfect medium for sharing traffic with others

A question I’ve had coming up a lot lately is “How do I promote my opportunity on my blog?” The short answer is you don’t (or at least not upfront). The focus on your personal blog should be concentrating on your personal brand by leading with value. However, the part that’s often overlooked here is the power of curiosity that comes from delivering value. When your mindset shifts from a sales mentality to a giving mentality, people are naturally attracted to finding out more about you. So as you build rapport with your blogging community, you create loyal followers who will be naturally inclined to click on the other pages you’ve created in your menu tabs. It’s these menu tabs are the perfect for introducing your team.

Here’s how to set up a page for your Network Marketing team

In this tutorial I’m going to walk you through the steps to create a page on your blog so that you can feature your team in a professional, non salesy way. If you are ready to set up your own page, you can use this tutorial as a reference and hit the pause button whenever you need to. If you already have a team page set up or are not yet ready to create yours, do me a favor and don’t watch the tutorial just for the sake of it! Your time is too valuable to waste on training you aren’t yet ready to implement. If you’d like to just learn about the plugin mentioned below, let the video buffer and then play it from the 12 minute mark.

Throw in a touch of personal branding on our new page and we’re done!

If you’ve been using the pretty Bar on your featured pages, you know what a gem of a tool it is for branding. Unfortunately last month WordPress brought in a new policy that doesn’t allow plugins that cloak links in their repositry. This means the free version no longer includes the pretty bar. Bummer! Anyway since I knew a lot of people (myself included) had grown to love the pretty Bar, I went in search of a solution.

The WordPress Bar looks just as pretty as pretty Link

In the screenshot below you can see what the plugin does to the links you use in the banners on your team page:

With your own logo embedded, it adds a nice professional touch!

If your niche is not Network Marketing, you can use the tutorial above to create a featured page for just about anything. It could be your online Tribe community, charities you support, your favourite authors, mentors and the list goes on. I’m sure you can come up with some creative ideas to put it to good use :)

As always if you’ve found this information useful, don’t forget to retweet it to your team. And I’d love to hear your thoughts or creative ideas in the comment section below.

Michaelé

It’s no secret that online video is one of the most powerful marketing mediums on the planet.

Creating your first however, can be a huge challenge.  After all, there’s shyness to overcome,   technical knowledge to learn and a reasonable amount of time commitment to make them look professional.   If you fall into that category,  all of your excuses are about to be swept from under your feet!   I’m about to show you a video branding tool that is super fast and easy to use, that will skyrocket your credibility.   It’s called Google Search Stories Video Creator and you’ll find it on YouTube.

In under 5 minutes this powerful little gem will allow you to create a video from Google’s search results all about you.   You can choose results from blogs, images, news and general search.   Choose your music, add a title and with the click of one button, your masterpiece is uploaded directly to YouTube! Imagine the boost to your credibility having a video that shows all of the Google search results on your brand.   But the power doesn’t end there…

Google Search Stories Video Creator is also a powerful way of telling a story.

As well as the obvious plus for your personal branding, you can also create stories around your affiliate products, your Network Marketing opportunity and just about anything else you can think of.   Rather than show you an example of a personal video, I decided to have some fun and create a video about the founders of my Tribe Community.

If you don’t want your Search Story to look like everyone elses, here’s how to stand out from the crowd and take your video to the next level.

Check out the updated video below compared to the first video and I think you’ll agree, the extra 8 seconds in length, makes a difference. Oh and just a tiny thing I forgot to mention…. By the time I woke up the next day, this video was ranked number 4 for the search term ‘Social Media Tribes’.   How cool is that for SEO 101!

Ok so lets dig in to how to create one your own branded video!

This is getting slightly more technical but I promise it’s still easy, and will take you an extra 15 minutes.   You do want to stand out don’t you ;-)

• Take your newly created masterpiece and download it from YouTube to your computer.
• While logged into your YouTube account, click on my videos and find the Search Stories Video you just created.
• Now you should see Edit, Insight and a downward pointing drop down arrow.
• Click on this and select Download MP4

Now your masterpiece in the making is on your computer!

Next head over to OneTrueMedia and create a Premium account ($3.99 a month).

• Login and click on create.
• Go to add images and video clips and  click upload photos and video.
• The next screen will say select files so  choose the name of the file you just downloaded from Youtube.
• Repeat this step and upload a powerful graphic or logo that has to do with your message.
• Next ignore all the options to add music text etc and go straight to Edit & Sequence.   Now you will see your uploaded files.
• Make sure your graphic is before the video file and click directly on it.
• Leave all the properties as they are and click on effects.
• Choose an effect from the dropdown menu, save it and you’re almost done!

Final tip:  Download the video directly to your computer before uploading to Youtube as it removes the OneTrueMedia branding.

Now the reason we want to leave all the properties as they are and just choose and apply an effect, is to save time. This is one of those cool services that have a million and one options but we don’t want to be there fluffing around all day!   If you like the effect I chose, it’s called Metropolis.

If you’ve made your own Search Story, make sure you come back and post your link in the comments, I’d love to see it.  Did you think the extra time spent over at One True Media was worth the effort?   Post a comment below and let me know your thoughts on this incredibly simple, yet powerful tool.

Michaelé

Have you ever wondered why your Network Marketing team isn’t duplicating as fast as you’d like?

Depending on how closely you’ve looked at the culture you’re creating within your organization, these 3 key points could be the make or break in your teams success.

Are your new team members motivated by money or recognition?
Have you immunized them against rejection and taught them how to celebrate low points?
Are they immediately armed with the tools they need to get a new person started independently of you?

Ok so lets dive straight into the first crucial step in creating a downline explosion for your team.
If you thought money was the only motivator behind someone joining your team, think again!
When you were a child, if your teacher had have given you a choice of earning $20 to or the chance to be recognized as the top achiever in your chosen passion, which would you have taken? I suspect recognition would have outweighed the $20.

Fast forward to adulthood, not only do people rarely receive recognition, they already feel they have failed in many areas of their life. They can’t pay bills on time, they can’t make their kids first soccer match, they have to be at an important meeting the day of their daughters first ballet performance.

Now, added to their already stressfull life, you’ve offered a possibility for them to get out of silent desperation, a chance for them to feel successful and acknowledge their capabilities. So driven and excited to change their circumstances, they follow your coaching. They call 20 warm market people, or create their first ad or get started with social media. So far they’ve had zero sales, one guaranteed sign up who bailed and one totally abusive email. Are you on the phone celebrating with them? You should be and here’s why…

The Law Of The First (Small) Win

Mark Hoverson covers this in his training on Transformational Teaching vs Dictatorial Teaching.
Quote “People will return to the place where they feel appreciated, validated, inspired, challenged and helped in growth.”
The key here is to make it incredibly simple for people to feel achievement. You must acknowledge and applaud ANY and ALL progress!

The first time they pick up the phone to talk to someone.
The first time someone hangs the phone up on them.
Their first piece of content.
Their first guaranteed sign up that bails.

How do you applaud and have your team celebrating the so called negatives? Because you immunize them from day 1.
It’s critical to be absolutely honest about what they might encounter and what it really takes from the moment they start, if not beforehand.

Tell them right from the beginning:

“Hey, you are going to catch people on a bad day that might hang the phone up.”

“You might get so called ‘big hitters’ who join you and do nothing, but thats ok because the fact that you attracted such a high calibre person means you’ll do it again”.

That person who absolutely promised they were joining, suddenly doesn’t return your call. “Thats ok, people do that kind of stuff, it’s just human nature.”

The key here is to keep your team feeling like they are winning and progressing, even throughout the setbacks.

If you want people to duplicate, you need to tell them everything you’ve done to learn and grow. Don’t hold back on the  influential courses you’ve done, the amount of books you’ve read, the weekends you gave up, the late nights. There is no need to be in fear that this will overwhelm or be too much for someone new. People will move mountains to send their kids to the right school. But they can’t do this in your opportunity if you play down what it takes.

Another reason duplication stagnates, is because your new team members don’t know what to do with somebody new. They don’t have the confidence in getting their own new recruit started, so they subconsciously block attracting any new team members.

This is where a welcome system and blueprint is critical for new distributors

Without this, not only will you create a needy downline that need you for everything, you won’t have a template for newbies to duplicate. This blueprint is where you cover your team training resources, corporate resources and training, tech support, your availability and basically set the culture for your team. A simple one page site works best, but if you don’t have the resources to create one, setting up a blog with a static page will work just as well.

Let’s cover some ideas for this webpage to get your team duplicating and working almost independent from you.

• Welcome video and overview on what’s included on the page and why they need to follow it.
• Point out the importance of signing in to your autoresponder system so they can stay plugged in to team updates. (Keep this part as close as possible to the top of the page and emphasize the importance of opting in immediately)
• Give a brief overview on what they are about to embark on and what it’s going to take to realize their goals. Be honest and down to earth here. This is not the time to be hypey about your opportunity. They are already ‘sold’ on your business so now is the time to get into the meat and potatoes.

Next, go through the exact steps they need to take in order to be fully plugged in to all of the available resources. Write a blurb under each step explaining the importance of completing certain tasks immediately. Weave parts of your own story into the tasks to make them relatable. E.g. “When I first started, I had no idea what an autoresponder was and used to spend xyz amount of hours each week just updating people individually. Now I can be in Fiji with my family, knowing Aweber is sending out my welcome emails.”

Make it crystal clear that their sponsor is not the ‘go to’ person for technical questions but include where they can go for help with each step. E.g. Godaddy has excellent 24/7 tech support that can walk you through a domain redirect, Aweber has video tutorials and live chat etc. Become comfortable with telling people to ‘google it’. If you allow your team to call you every time they are stuck, your will create a needy downline that will drive you nuts! This welcome page is a chance for you to instill a culture of independance from day 1.

1. For our weekly training webinars, register here.
2. Upcoming live events are listed here. Check the next event now.
3. Business overview webinars times are listed here.
4. Enter your details here for corporate updates.
5. I use and highly recommend Aweber for your autoresponder, click here to set up your account.

On the next part of the page, you want to cover some of the courses/resources that helped you get started. If you are an affiliate for any of the products you recommend, it’s a no brainer to use your own links. Again maximize this by weaving your own story in. What this course taught me, why I couldn’t do without this resource etc.

The final part of the page is where you really get into the nitty gritty with the focus being on leverage, independance and duplication.

• Clearly state your hours of availability.
• Clearly state corporates hours and contact details.
• Be crystal clear about questions that should be directed to corporate e.g. my product hasn’t arrived, I can’t login to my back office, will my left arm drop off if I take X product with such and such medication etc etc.

Network Marketing offers an incredible opportunity to create financial freedom, however without setting the foundations from day one, you can easily find yourself back in a full time job, surrounded by needy volunteers.

How you welcome people into your business, sets the bar for how they will (or won’t) bring other new people into their business.

How you applause a new person, also sets the bar for how your newbies will applaud and acknowledge other new team members.

I would love to hear what systems you’re using in your business to ensure newbies feel competent in duplicating.
Please do pop your thoughts/suggestions in below so others in the community can benefit.

Michaelé

Youtube announces a cool new feature!

Have you ever given out your email address to opt-in to a ‘secret training tips or special offer’, only to find that the video you were sent is already on YouTube for all to see?

I know I have and it’s annoying as it leaves you with a feeling of being misled.  There is nothing secret or exclusive about a video that’s already on Youtube!  Not only is this damaging for your brand, it’s kinda weird for your viewers to be watching a video that is welcoming people to a sales page and/or saying “On the next page you will see xyz” when the person is not on your sales page but watching it on Youtube.

Up until now, the problem wasn’t that it was impossible to share private videos with your list or as part of your free report, it’s just that it wasn’t easy.  You could fluff around working out how to use Viddlers ‘sercret URL’ function, or pay to host your videos else where but there was nothing super simple about either of these options.  YouTube had a ‘private’ option that could be shared with up to 25 people, but not only was the cap a problem, the viewers needed to also have a YT account!

Today, all of that changed!

In an effort to help students keep their videos private and yet still have the ability to share with their parents and classmates, YouTube has just introduced ‘Unlisted Videos’.

Adding value to your MLM list just became easier with this new feature from YouTube

So from a marketing perspective, this now means you have a powerful new tool to use in your email campaigns.  With the tick of a box, your videos will no longer show up on your channel, in the search results or on public pages (unless of course, someone decides to share your link).

The other feature that I’m super excited about is ‘Unlisted’ Embed codes for your Blogs and MLM Marketing Funnels.  The YouTube blog and FAQ’s don’t seem to have covered this but I was able to make it work when I tested it.  I’ve  made one of the videos on this blog ‘Unlisted’ and it still plays!  So until YouTube covers Unlisted Embed codes in their FAQ’s I would say the easiest way to do it is to upload a public video, grab the embed code and then change it to Unlisted once you have finished.

Ok so who is now itching to scoot off and remove some of those funky sales page video intros and other stuff that doesn’t make sense to a new viewer from your YouTube channel? :-)

If you found this post helpful, please share it will your community and leave your comments below.

What are the best WordPress plugins to build community and traffic?

I’ve been noticing lately that so many really well designed blogs, that have awesome content, still lack an important crucial aspect….

Social proof and a sense of community!

It kinda got me thinking of the analogy of being invited to a party at the best looking house in your street. At first glance, it seems inviting because it’s well designed (just like many blogs).

Yet when you arrive and take a look around, you discover this house you admire actually has no guests. Right then and there you probably felt like going home (clicking off the page) but in the spirit of being a great guest, you decide to stick around for a few moments.

You then hear that this party did in fact have many guests, even though at the time you didn’t see any proof of their attendance…

In the blogging world, one of the fastest ways to increase loyalty is to build community. In order to build community, firstly you need social proof of the communities existence and secondly you need proof that you actively engage with your community. With all of the funky tools available today, it’s super simple to display your social proof through Retweet buttons, interactive commenting and community widgets that people can ‘join’, ‘like’, ‘friend’ etc.

I have to admit that when I started blogging, I totally missed the point on how important it was to ‘engage’ and build community. In fact I was so far off the mark with understanding how important this was, that I didn’t even reply to the few people who left comments!! It wasn’t until I became involved with the Empowered Tribe community that I realized the powerful relationship opportunities I was missing out on. Not to mention all the traffic I was literally ‘scaring’ away lol.

So lets get straight to the blogging tools that literally turned my blog around!

1. Google Friend Connect: If you don’t have this installed, you want to get it ASAP. It doesn’t matter how good looking your house is, if there are no ‘visible’ guests, people will be unlikely to come back. Installing this widget will not only add a sense of ‘community’ to your Blog, it will display ‘social proof’ that others value your site too.

2. Comment luv: This plugin is an awesome way to reward your readers for leaving a comment on your blog. Basically what it does is it auto-generates a featured link of the title of your commenters last blog post. I like to think of it as the ultimate reciprocity plugin!

3. WordPress Thread Comment: This little gem has completely revolutionized what was once one big nonsensical mess lol. If you’re like me, you don’t always reply to comments the day they are left. What happens then is when you do reply to a person, your comment just ends up on top of the last comment which might be from a completely different person. So basically the entire comment thread has no flow and doesn’t make sense. Well not once you install WP thread Comment plugin! Oh and if you’re wondering if you install it now will it ‘nest’ all of your current comments, the answer is yes. Quite ingenious really :) Update: Now included in the latest WordPress upgrade.

4. Linkwithin Widget: This one caught my eye one day when I came across a Blog post on Google while researching a particular topic. As I finished reading the article that had caught my attention, this funky little widget boldly suggested “You might also like this…” and displayed 5 visual thumbnails of other posts. Well the widget was right, I did also like some of the other blog posts! So instead of leaving the person’s blog after a few minutes, I left about half an hour later! What an incredible way to increase ‘stickiness’. You can grab your widget by clicking here.

Tip 1: For it to work effectively, it scans for pictures to produce the thumbnails so make sure you add pictures to every post before you install the widget.

Tip 2: When entering your details to grab the code, it will ask if you would like to display up to 5 thumbnails. Even if you don’t yet have 5 blog posts, choose the option for 5 anyway so that you don’t have to go back later and generate a new code as your blog posts grow.

5. Homepage Excerpts: You might have noticed that on a lot of blogs, each and every post is displayed on the home page in its entirety. There is nothing wrong with this but it does make it difficult for people to ‘scan’ your content to find another post that might be interesting to them. Once you install this plugin, you have the option to choose how many of your posts display in full on your home page. The rest will then convert into nice little tempting paragraphs which allow your reader to quickly scan and jump to the post that most interests them. Personally I like to have only my most recent blog post displayed in full and let ‘Linkwith’ & Homepage Excerpts work their magic :)

There are loads of amazing plugins and widgets out there that can add all kinds of incredible features and functionality to your blog. These are just 5 that I use to increase page views, encourage and reward comments and engagement and build community.

If you’ve found a plugin or funky widget thats made a big difference to your blog, leave me a comment as I love hearing about these cool little add ons :)

Michaele

P.S. It goes without saying that Tweetmeme and Simple Facebook Share buttons are ‘must haves’ for content syndication!

Have you ever noticed a company replicated capture page that says “You can have your very own website, just like this one”?

If you have, then that statement alone should be an alarm bell and I’ll talk more about why in a moment.

On the surface, most of these replicated sites look pretty darn sexy, use the latest in technology (or do they?) and seem to cover every possible detail about your amazing company and products. If you’re brand new to the industry, the thought of having your own sizzling hot marketing website can seem very appealing.

The problem is, people are attracted to joining your opportunity because you are offering them a solution to their pain. If a person has worked a 9-5 job for decades, they are likely to have resolved that a solution to their pain doesn’t exist. They may be completely operating from survival mode and so their ability to dream big has been left somewhere back in childhood. Our job, is to reconnect that person back with their dreams and goals and help them to see new possibilities.

A replicated website shows them a fantastic product, management team, comp plan etc etc, but it doesn’t show them how it’s all going to work for them. At this stage, the opportunity being presented might be interesting but in your prospects eyes it’s all just a pipe dream. It’s only through connecting and creating a relationship with you, that they can start to see how it’s possible for it to work for them.

Unfortunately, many MLM replicated sites allow you do little more than display your name, number and perhaps a photo. They do very little to connect you with your prospects.

But they are designed by multi million dollar companies, wouldn’t they know best?

Well firstly, due to our friends at the FTC, most MLM companies are shaking in their boots over compliance issues. The marketing arm of many great companies has been suffocated by the legal department, resulting in very limited, if any, customization of these cookie cutter websites. Not great if you want to stand out from the other tens, if not hundreds of thousands of distributors marketing your opportunity!

Secondly, people join people and not opportunities. Yet most replicated websites are not geared for creating personal connections (yet!). They don’t have powerful relationship building avenues to ‘Follow You On Twitter’ , ‘Connect with you on Facebook’ or ‘Contact You On Skype’. They send out ‘old style’ marketing emails otherwise known as ‘push’ or ‘shout’ marketing, with no opportunity for you to further your relationship with your prospect.

Thirdly, they often have very poorly written sales copy, way to many links (that can send people into information overload right from the get go) and no clear call to action.

Let me give you an example of a reputable ‘A’ company’s replicated website that I recently tested.

Step one: I entered my details on the distributors capture page (which gave me no opportunity to connect or learn more about them). I also didn’t enter my phone number.

Step two: I received a pre written company email in my inbox which read:

Michaelé,

What if you could start your own business where:

• You already have proven products
• You didn’t have to deal with the headache of manufacturing and inventory
• You already had the perfect website
• The shipping was done for you for free
• You never had to do payroll or manage employees
• At the end of the week, you get a check!

You Can!!!

But guess what, this is one of only a tiny handful of company written automated emails I ever received from this poor distributors website!

Yet according to the US Executive Sales Association, only 2% of sales are made from the first exposure, yet 80% of sales come from between the 5th to the 12th exposure!! So this distributor was using a self replicating website, that had no ability for them to create relationships (when we are in a relationship marketing business!), and was completely reliant on the companies ability to create a connection between the prospect and their potential business partner. As I didn’t leave my phone number, they were left with very little chance of exposing me to their opportunity 5-12 times.

The company emails ended with a link to ‘learn more’ or ‘contact us’.

Here is the kicker… I clicked on ‘contact us’ and guess where it took me? Not to the distributor so I could ask questions and build a relationship, it took me to the corporate contact page!!

Then I clicked on ‘learn more’ and it took me back to the replicated site. Drum roll as I share how many shiny new toys I was presented with to get distracted/confused by… In short, just on the home page alone, I was given a total of 14 places to click!!

So while we wait for many MLM companies to come into the 21st century and produce replicated sites that focus on relationship marketing, what’s the solution?

If you were just aiming to keep your prospect laser focused on your companies most powerful tools, you could head over to Free Web Templates and create your own. Grab a template that allows you to embed 1 or 2 of your companies hottest videos, customize it and away you go. While this option cuts down on distraction and overwhelm by not offering so many shiny tools to click on, it’s still not geared to build the relationship.

By far the most logical solution in Network Marketing is to build ‘YOU INC’

Building your YOU INC brand is not a new concept in Network Marketing, however it is still not widely being taught. Setting this up allows you to profit being you, rather than profit from marketing a company that you don’t own.

I see so many people In Network Marketing getting hung up on how many levels deep their Comp Plan pays or the Orac score of their nutritional product, yet the real power is in none of the above. Your primary focus should be on how to become more valuable to your target market.

If your company has hundreds of thousands of distributors, there is every chance that your prospect has already been approached about your opportunity. What’s going to make the difference in who they decide to join is YOU.

If you can show that you have valuable skills, that the majority of distributors don’t, you’re guaranteed to have more people joining your opportunity.

So lets talk about the basics of getting ‘YOU INC’ up and running.

If your building your warm market and incorporating social media strategies, you need a central hub where people can find out more about you, what you have to offer and connect with you on a more personal level. While owning your own website is great, unless you have the skill or money to continually update it, its not going to be a feasible option if you are new or on a budget. Your best option is to start a self hosted WordPress blog using yourname.com as the domain.

If this sounds like an overwhelming, daunting concept because you think you lack the technical skills, don’t panic!  The internet has revolutionized the way we learn and there are now free courses that will take you click by click through the process. With software that captures the tutors computer screen, you can be stepped through exactly what to do on your computer screen!

If you need any help with finding free blogging resources, just give me a shout :)

I would love to hear your experience with replicated MLM websites. If you’ve found any that you think are a cut above the rest, pop a generic link in the comments below and join the conversation!

Here’s to YOU INC success,

Michaelé

One of the things I’ve always loved about Network Marketing, is that it leaves no stone unturned when it comes to personal growth.

In this post I’m sharing a real life story that started last year and continues to be one of the most inspiring learning curves I’ve encountered so far….

We all keep regular contact with our Network Marketing leaders, usually daily, if not several times per day. If you are used to this kind of contact and it suddenly drops off, naturally you become concerned. Well that’s what happened to me last year when one of my top leaders, seemingly dropped off the face of the planet.

Little did I know at the time, that he had been arrested, extradited and put in prison.

Obviously my first reaction was shock. The only experience I’d had with prison, was from one the few TV shows I ever watched, ‘Prison Break’. So having only ever been exposed to prison life through TV, I started to panic about his safety.

This is one of my top leaders who I’ve been friends with for years and I’ve suddenly gone from daily Skype calls to no way of contacting him or finding his whereabouts. Little did I know at the time, that prisoners can be shifted almost on a daily level, (from jail to jail) to the point that their own legal team don’t even know where they are! Grr where is that (1800-Locate-an-Inmate) number when you need it!

My next thoughts were sh**, a friend has been thrown into an interstate jail and I need to fly up there to see if he is ok and show that someone cares.

So not knowing anything, I jumped on a plane to visit. I want to add here, that as a female who has never entered a prison in her life (and this is one of Australia’s most notorious prisons), my fear levels were starting to escalate. You go though so many security hoops to the the point that you think geez, if I had to get out of here in a hurry, I’m toast.  But then I started thinking if I’m scared, how must my friend on the ‘inside’ be feeling?

I have to say it felt like eternity sitting inside there waiting for the staff to ‘prepare’ my friend for his visitor. They dress them in this really weird outfit that comes up to their neck so that you can’t slip any illegal contraband into their clothes. Damn! Although I’m pretty sure they just stripped me of everything but my clothes 3 security gates ago!

If you’ve ever experienced this yourself, you’d know that it’s pretty awkward working out what to talk about with a guard standing within earshot. So once the small talk ended, we started talking about (you guessed it) his Network Marketing business. I’d never really thought about this before but suddenly I saw a new meaning for the word ‘passive income’. No matter where you are (beach, prison or otherwise), your income really does continue. Although in this case, it was obviously going to require some ‘out of the box’ kind of thinking to keep it going.

So as the months went by after my visit, I started learning through his letters, about the hopelessness that some of the ‘soon to be released’ inmates felt regarding their future on the outside. I guess ‘Just Released From Prison’ is not a desirable selling point to have on resumes these days.

As my friend has lived and breathed MLM for the last couple of decades, he naturally started to introduce some of the inmates to the concept. Although some of these guys had previously been highly successful entrepreneurs, made significant amounts of money and were highly intelligent, they were still at a loss as to what they would do when they were released.

Enter Network Marketing & Inspiring Hope From Prison…

The letters from my friend continued to talk about other inmates who were soon to be released and yet hungry for information on starting their own business, so I decided to post 3 books to him. You’re First Year in Network Marketing, The New Professionals & How To Win Friends & Influence People.

Considering the circumstances, I figured the latter would be put to good use regardless :-)

From here the story continues as I begin to hear inspiring feedback about some of these men, who are now educating themselves on the possibility of a new life and an extraordinary future. I’ve since had the pleasure of actually speaking to some of them since their release, and I can tell you they demonstrated more drive and willingness to make a difference than many people who have never been in such circumstances.

It’s made me realize more than ever what an incredible platform Network Marketing is for anyone, no matter what background, to get started as an entrepreneur.

What about you, do you have any inspiring stories to share about how this industry is having a major impact on peoples lives?

People do extraordinary things in the most extenuating circumstances and I’d love to hear about your stories. And if you enjoyed this post or think it would inspire someone in your circle of influence, don’t forget to share it on Facebook :)

Michaelé

Welcome to the latest and most ineffective way to build your Network Marketing business!

Have you ever walked up to a complete stranger, asked for their Twitter and Facebook profiles, waited politely for 5 minutes and then started shouting at them? If you ever feel tempted, please give me a call first so I can save you from being detained by the men in white coats :)

Well I don’t know where these men in white coats are hanging out these days but I reckon they could make a killing scooping up abnormally behaved people on the Social Networking sites!

I made a new Facebook friend today and I thought (as we probably have some similar interests) that you might have met him, or one of his friends too…

“Dear Michaele (okay let us pronounce it Mikayla!) happy!!
First of all thanks for your message.
Other than my regular assignment, I am presently focussing on one internet online business right from my Laptop. And that is XYZ Company. I hope u might have heard about it. If not, then hurry, dont waste even a single minute. Just go and check this link of my website
http://www.facebook.com/xyz
Yeah truly speaking it is an amazing business opportunity available as on date. Never seen and never heard such an opportunity. Oh my GOD! when I first time heard about it, I did not take a second to jump on it and grab. Now it is mine, my own business and forever mine.
Hey by the way why dont u just check, take a tour, watch the video presentation and if you have any question, come back to me.
lo!!!!!!!!!!! I forgot to wish u a very happy new year 2010.
May this new year bring you and your family a lot of wealth and good health.
Sincerely Yours”

I know, I know, it must be because my profile says “desperately seeking new opportunity; complete strangers, anti relationship marketers, all welcome to submit ” lol. Maybe not!

Aside from these types of messages being mildly annoying/amusing *sigh*, if you’re in Network Marketing you feel a deeper sense of wanting to educate.

I used to try politely educating via 140 character DM’s on Twitter but there’s nothing like the power of a video!

Have you ever been hanging out on one of your favorite Social Media sites only to be rudely interrupted by someone shouting at you?

If so, I would love to hear your thoughts on how we can bring people up to speed on the power of building relationships online in the comments below.

Michaelé

Firstly, Happy New year!

Well the 1st of Jan and 2010 has arrived. Yay!

I don’t know about you but I’m in two minds as to whether 2009 really flew by or not. Partly because I spent most of it learning new skills and it almost feels like it was a long way back that I delved into Social Media. And it wasn’t a long way back at all, it was less than 12 months ago!!

In retrospect, this would have been a great post to get done by Dec 31st but after reading my friend Kary Rogney’s post, I’m starting today with no regrets.

So what did I learn in 2009 that can be of value to you? Well a ton actually!

So let me start with my biggest learning curve…

I launched this blog somewhere around June of 09 after a lot of trepidation and hiding it from my Twitter profile. Why? Well because like most of us, I wanted it to look good before anyone saw it! I was doing tutorial after tutorial on how to set it up, how to lay it out and even learning the fundamentals of SEO can you believe it! I hadn’t even launched it and had absolutely no content and I was trying to learn SEO before it went live lol.

Reflecting back, I read some really great info along the way that I hope will help you through your hurdles. If you’re starting out online with blogging and Social Media and don’t have a technical background, information overload is pretty much a given. I haven’t met a successful person yet who didn’t go through it. Yeah great I hear you saying… How does the obvious help me?

Well here are a couple of things that I hope might help :)

Firstly, one of the biggest mistakes we make (well at least I did) is learning information ahead of time. E.g I was learning SEO before I even launched my blog! This is a huge waste of your time. Why? Because when it comes to technical stuff, the chances of you remembering it when it comes time to use it are very low. Chances are you will have to go back and read or watch that tutorial all over again when you are ready to use that particular piece of information. What a complete and utter waste of time huh! So my advice is, don’t go learning how to upload a video to your blog if you haven’t yet made a video. Make the video first and then learn how to upload it!

Only spend your precious time learning things when you are ready to take action and implement. I can’t emphasize this enough as from personal experience, you can easily fall into a trap. 2009 was a year where I spent thousands upon thousands of dollars learning some of the most cutting edge Social Media strategies and yet guess what? If you were to ask me to share what I learnt right now, I would be lucky to be able to convey 30% of it!

But here is what’s really cool. What I can share with confidence are the things I learnt and actually implemented! Now I have a lot of confidence in the value I have to offer as I can speak not only from experience but from walking the talk. End rant number 1 :)

My second biggest learning curve was about how much value we have to offer the world. One of the things that happened to me was the more I chose to mix in a circle of people that were ahead of where I was at, the more I thought everyone knew what I knew.  Therefore I didn’t think I had anything of value to share as I assumed everyone already knew every strategy that I did. Are you kidding me!! There is always someone who is just starting out and needs your information…

I had an uh ha moment 3 days ago that has changed the way I’ll be operating in 2010.

I was speaking to a person in a high level management position about a particular system that could be taught more easily world wide by using Webinars. He replied with “a what?” and I said a Webinar. He then said can you spell that word for me! As you can imagine, I almost fell off my seat. I was thinking geez Webinars, isn’t everyone learning from Webinars these days!!

So talk about inspiration. Here was a highly switched on intelligent guy who didn’t know what a Webinar was. Do you think if you made a tutorial today on what a Webinar is or how to conduct one that it wouldn’t be of value to thousands of people…

So where have you been stuck last year that has a whole new light this year?

This is such an awesome journey and I would love to hear your accounts on how you started out. The good, the bad and the ugly lol.

Happy New Decade!

Michaelé