Have you had a funny airport experience?

Don't hold back... leave a comment.

Why The Matrix insists on such glitches I will never know, but I have learned that I lose money unless I deal with them.  So at around 11 pm I sat down to get my biz back online.  After a little Dreamweaver trickery I was able to swap out the broken links with one that works and then I just had to FTP all the files up to the server.

Unfortunately I just moved to the mountains of Montana and am still waiting on my high-speed internet service to be hooked up (apparently such service requests are not met with the same eagerness as they were in the big city).  So that meant I was running off my cellular wireless card at much slower than desired speeds.

So basically what I'm saying is that I needed to upload about a hundred pages to a web server at speeds barely faster than dial up.

Another way to say this is... go get a book, you're going to be at your computer for a while.

So I did.

And boy am I glad it worked out that way.

Never mind that I had to be up at 4 am to catch a flight to Houston.  Never mind that as I write this sitting in the Denver airport on a layover I am near catatonic from lack of sleep.

The book that I grabbed made the night worthwhile.

It was a neat little book called The Dip by Seth Godin.

The premise of the book is that quitting is what separates winners (the few) from losers (the many).  And not in just the obvious way...

Knowing when to quit a dead end venture, according to Godin, is just as important as not quitting a worthwhile venture.  Very often it's knowing how and when to cut your losses that makes the difference.

"The Dip" refers to that inevitable time in every venture when the initial enthusiasm has worn off, the learning curve is steepest, the work is most thankless, and most people quit.

Godin hammers the point that The Dip is a fact of doing business (or anything new, really) and that to let it beat you (like most people do) is to throw away the time you spent getting to that point and consign yourself to the bin of the commonplace dilettante who tries lots of things but never sees any of them all the way through.

The world prizes expertise, not well roundedness, despite what our teachers told us.  As Godin astutely points out, no one cares if their heart surgeon is also a passable golfer and can order food in French.  We want the best in the world at anything we pay for and the best will always be the person who, along with talent, knew how to persist and push through the right Dips (in this case med school, residency, and the highly competitive career landscape of heart surgeons).

* Note that by "world" we mean "our world" which consists of whatever we know of and whatever is available to us at any given time.  Within that world we always want the best whenever we pay for a product or service.

Winners love The Dip because it is during The Dip that they assess whether what they are doing will move them forward (in which case they persist at all costs) or lead them into what Godin calls a Cul-De-Sac, in which case they quit immediately and without guilt.

This latter type of Dip is important to note.  It's actually not a Dip but some people are so stubborn they will insist that their dark, dead-end alley is merely a Dip on the way to greatness.  Many a venture that seemed promising quickly devolves into wishful thinking and we must be unfailingly honest with ourselves in these moments.  Ability to self-diagnose these pseudo-Dips is key to winning in business and life.

As I read the book I reflected on the many folks I have worked with to date in my own business... over 200 of them now.  I have coached people to every point on the spectrum from spectacular success to fizzle-out failure (I've seen people take the exact same system, training, and opportunity and use it to make over $100K in 4 months or nothing in a year).

In my business it is as true as any... where people end up has everything to do with how they handle The Dips (and very little to do with me as a coach).

In the era of the bailout that we are living in it is nice to be reminded that ultimately people determine their own success or failure.  In fact if we wanted to talk politics (which we probably shouldn't) we might say that the U.S. government has recently gotten in the ethically and economically dubious habit of trying to smooth over some very deep and very necessary collective dips.  But that's fodder for another post...

Since this is something of a book review I suppose I should say that I give The Dip, by Seth Godin, 4 out of 5 stars for pithiness, conciseness (I read the whole book while I waited for my ftp process to run), and clarity.

You can get it here at Amazon if you're interested.

In closing after reading The Dip I now find myself seeking out Dips in my business.  We grow when we are challenged.  Like water I should seek the lowest point in my business (where the most challenges are) and fight to erect a peak within the valley.

If I ever feel like I am coasting in my business (an omnipresent temptation when you work on the internet with no boss but your conscience) I need only look for a Dip, dive in, get as dirty as possible, and resurface better, stronger, and ready to fight again.

Jeff

A few days ago I was blissfully ignorant of the $3.83 trillion boondoggle that was about to be unleashed on the United States, masquerading as a budget.  Then I had to catch that darn news report out of the corner of my eye...

Uggh!

Funny, in my world making a budget means assessing how much money I have coming in each month and then figuring out how much to allocate first to things I need, then to things I want.  The latter half of that must of course be balanced against my desire to save and invest.

And that's all I'll say about fiscal discipline... enough has been said about the U.S. government's lack thereof by people much smarter than me.

But I think there's something more pernicious than lack of discipline at issue here.

Our government is engaged in outright theft.  Being perpetrated in the open, at the highest levels, on a grand scale.

They are stealing our money (by eroding it's value as they print more and more of it) and they are stealing our futures (by hopelessly encumbring our children).  And the media is applauding.

And I quote the New York Times "President Obama got his priorities mostly right in the new $3.8 trillion budget for the fiscal year 2011."  Direct quote.

When did bankrupting our country become a priority?  Don't people understand that if you deliver people what they want by climbing higher and higher up the walls of a house of cards then no one will have anything when it collapses (except people who got their money out of the paper economy).

Isn't it obvious that when this sham unravels the poor will be hit hardest?

And therein lies the rub... ultimately this isn't about the poor.  Pandering to the lower class is never about uplifting them, it's about deriving power and allegiance from them.  Sound economies, the kinds with the "rising tide that lifts all boats" are the ones that take care of the rich, the business owners, the ones with capital to invest.  This isn't rhetoric it's a historical fact evident in the ebbs and flows of all great civilizations.

As soon as economic policies become about robbing the rich to pay for the poor you're just robbing the rich.  The poor don't really get helped because it's productive business investment (by the rich), not bureaucratic squandering of tax revenue, that pays for the things the poor really need, like jobs, lower cost staples and goods, and ESSENTIAL social services.

So where does this come from?  How have we lost our way?  The Cycle of Civilizations theory does a pretty good job of putting it in perspective.  I encourage you to read it.

But I want to reference a different theory.  One more rooted in our mythology.

Where to do we find the idea that there is valor in robbing the rich to pay for the poor?

Well I've recently been trying to wade through Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand, possibly the greatest book ever written that wasn't written by guys with names like Paul and John, and it shed some light...

(And in case you were confused Paul and John is not a reference to The Beatles).

Bear with me, this is a long quote.  But amazing in every word:

...I'm after a man whom I want to destroy.  He died many centuries ago, but until the last trace of him is wiped out of men's minds, we will not have a decent world to live in... Robin Hood... He was the man who robbed the rich and gave to the poor...

Here I have to interject that the man speaking is a man who has been raiding government ships loaded with booty taken from the rich to be redistributed to the poor.

I have never robbed a private ship and never taken any private property.  Nor have I ever robbed a military vessel-because the purpose of a military fleet is to protect from violence the citizens who paid for it, which is the proper function of a government.  But I have seized every loot-carrier that came withing range of my guns, every government relief ship, subsidy ship, loan ship, gift ship, every vessel with a cargo of goods taken by force from some men for the unpaid, unearned benefit of others.  I seized the boats that sailed under the flag of the idea which I am fighting:  the idea that need is a sacred idol requiring human sacrifices - that the need of some men is the knife of a guillotine hanging over others - that all of us must live with our work, our hopes, our plans, our efforts at the mercy of the moment when that knife will descend upon us - and that the extent of our ability is the extent of our danger, so that success will bring our heads down on the block, while failure will give us the right to pull the cord.  This is the horror which Robin Hood immortalized as an idea of righteousness.  It is said that he fought against the looting rulers and retuned the loot to those who had been robbed, but that is not the meaning of the legend which has survived.  He is rememered, not as a champion of property, but as a champion of need, not as a defender of the robbed, but as a provider of the poor.  He is held to be the first man who assumed a halo of virtue by practicing charity with wealth which he did not own, by giving away goods which he had not produced, by making others pay for the luxury of his pity.  He is the man who became the symbol of the idea that need, not achievement, is the source of rights, that we don't have to produce, only to want, that the earned does not belong to us, bu the unearned does.  He became a justification for every mediocrity who, unable to make his own living, had demanded the power to dispose of the property of his betters, by proclaiming his willingness to devote his life to his inferiors at the price of robbing his superiors.  It is this foulest of creatures - the double-parasite who lives on the sores of the poor and the blood of the rich - whom men have come to regard as a moral ideal.  And this has brought us to a world where the more a man produces, the closer he comes to the loss of all his rights, until, if his ability is great enough, he becomes a rightless creature delivered as prey to any claimant - while in order to be placed above rights, above principles, above morality, placed where anything is permitted to him, even plunder and murder, all a man has to do is to be in need.  Do you wonder why the world is collapsing around us?  That is what I am fighting...  Until men learn that of all human symbols, Robin Hood is the most immoral and the most contemptible, there will be no justice on earth and no way for mankind to survive.

Wow - such clarity of thought, born amidst the back drop of the Bolshevik Revolution and honed against our own New Deal and Great Society Revolutions.  I couldn't have said it better myself.

When people are right, they're always right (that's one of the ways I know God exists by the way - truth never changes).  I think it's time Ayn Rand made a come back.

During that time approximately 2,000 people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

After 3 minutes:  a middle aged man noticed the musician playing.  He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried on.

4 minutes: The violinist received his first dollar.  A woman threw the money in the hat without stopping and continued to walk.

6 minutes: A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and walked away.

10 minutes: A 3-year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The child stopped to look back at the violinist again, but the mother pulled hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head back all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. Every parent, without exception, forced their children to move on quickly.

45 minutes:  The musician played continuously.  Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while.  About 20 gave money, but continued to walk at their normal pace.  The man collected a total of $32.

1 hour: He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed. No one applauded.

Findings; No one knew this, but:

     · The violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world,
     · He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written,
     · With a violin worth $3.5 million dollars.
     · Two days before Joshua Bell sold out a theatre in  Boston where the seats averaged $100 each.

This is a true story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the Metro Station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste, and people's priorities.

The questions raised: "In a common place environment, at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty?  Do we stop to appreciate it?  Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?"

One possible conclusion reached from this experiment could be this:  If we do not take a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world, playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever made... How many other things are we missing?

Feel free to disagree with me, just try to be rational in your posts.  Labeling me a "Conservative Fascist" (as one Facebooker did already) will not only get your comment deleted but also betray you as completely ignorant about conservatism AND fascism (and their ideological incompatibility).

Let me paint the background... this is an applicant to the business (who only applied because I sent out a free app coupon) who had already told my assistant, Melissa, hastily on the phone that she would not get involved in anything where you had to "pay anything upfront".

I had already advised Melissa not to spend any more time with this lady when the lady (let's call her Jane) found me on Facebook me and the following dialogue ensued.

Jane:  I would love to get started with your program if I do not have to pay anything to get started and if you deduct the original fee from future commission! Can that be deal?

Me:  The answer is no but rather than give you a long explanation I'm just going to turn this into a blog post. Be watching my blog jefflearner.com over the next few days if you care to know my full reasons.

For now I'll give you a summary:

Charity is charity and business is business and while the business community generates most of the charity in this country we should never perform charity and call it business or we will no longer be in the business that supports the charity.

You could also equate this to calling Subway and asking them if they'll give you a store to sell sandwiches out of so you can pay them back if you're able to actually sell any sandwiches.

Come to think of it... that's what financing is. I guess I would do it if you would pay me back with interest and submit to a credit check and post collateral and sign a contract. Basically you are asking for a loan.

Jeff

Jane:  I was expecting a better answer from you! This is very disappointing It was a test! You have lost you Xmas spirit and you should be much more given. Never forget where you came from and how you got there.

I will also turn this into a blog. If you can open your hands to help others you should do it. Life is a circle, you should give in order to receive. I'm so glad that I have never forgotten this basis principle of life everyday and always try to help others when I'm able to.

If you have made so much money you shouldn't have had a problem to help someone! But I guess this is all blalalalalal that I get bombarded with everyday!

Me:  Again - I (like most successful business people) do help people and often. But charity should never be labeled as business or vice versa. To succeed at charity one must first succeed at business... you cannot help the poor by being one of them. Believe me I know where I came from but I also know the principles of good business that got me out of my financial predicament. Once a person has achieved success is not the time to abandon the principles of good business.

Now I suggest you try calling Subway (back) and telling them that this time you want a free store because they should be generous since they already have so many stores. Or try calling Chase Bank and tell them that because they already have so many loans they should give you one interest free. Or try calling the federal government and saying that because you promised every new hire at your company 30 years of pension when they retired early at 55 you are facing bankruptcy (wait that one would work!)

So often successful businesses are attacked as being uncharitable because they are "by the book" when it comes to business. It never occurs to people looking for special treatment that this approach is what supports the charity. Did you know that over 50% of all charitable giving in the world comes from the 1% of people and corporations who are most successful in business? Did you read the Christmas Miracle post on my blog (http://jefflearner.com/home/2009/12/24/a-real-christmas-miracle.html)? It's a case in point.

Perhaps a better way to illustrate this is to mention that it was when the government started forcing the mortgage industry to treat their lending practices (their business) like charitable giving (by lending equally in all neighborhoods and eliminating so-called "redlining") we ended up in the mess we're all in when (surprise!) people that shouldn't have qualified for mortgages in the first place couldn't pay their mortgages.

The sad irony is that this recession hurts the poor much more than the rich (as mismanaged economics always does) even though it was created partly by efforts to ennoble them (enable them) with the "American Dream" of home ownership.

Which is exactly my point... never do charity and call it business or both will suffer, charity moreso (charitable giving is down over 50% this year, much more than corporate profits).

Please respond again so we can keep this going. At this rate I won't have to write a blog post I'll just copy and paste our conversation.

(I was a little disappointed to never receive a reply but I felt there was enough here to go with...)

In summary:  Here's raising a glass to a profitable (and charitable) 2010, the year when authentic capitalism reemerges and shows that the profit motive (not government intervention or overly-regulated pseudo-capitalism) is the only thing that has ever consistently raised standards of living for the population as a whole.

Oh yeah, and in case you're still wondering if you should buy (gift) people into your business... No!!!!!!!

Happy New Year

Jeff

Which is why, more than ever, I think the following story must be told.

Today I am so proud to be a part of the internet marketing community, particularly a part of one company, CarbonCopyPro.  Thanks to the amazing generosity of this community, a 19 year old girl will be able to continue her college studies and a heartbroken mother's prayers were answered.

Here's the story...

Jessica Phillibert is a 19 year old college student at a leading U.S. college.  Originally from Jamaica, Jessica had been attending university for 3 semesters on a full merit-based scholarship.

But due to the economy the school was having to revoke the scholarship, despite Jessica's having made the Dean's List in the past semester and generally being an excellent student.

The family was at a loss for how to come up with the $18,384 needed to pay tuition for the upcoming semester and with the deadline rapidly approaching it seemed that Jessica's academic dreams were fast coming to an end (as a non-U.S. Citizen student loans were not an option).

On a whim, Jessica's mother Melanie sent an email to Jay Kubassek, the CEO and founder of CarbonCopyPro (the internet marketing education company that taught me how to market online).

The first Christmas miracle in the story is that Jay even read the email!  He is a well know internet entrepreneur who gets literally thousands of donation requests and surely can't read most of them.

But as chance would have it 2 days before Christmas Jay did get the email and was touched by the sincerity and boldness of the request.

So he did what successful entrepreneurs so often do... he took action and launched an impromptu fundraising campaign.

Within hours he had emails out to all of the top producers in the company, asking them to chip in and help support Jessica's cause.

Next Jay stepped out on the CarbonCopyPro community's morning "Wake Up" Call and asked the community to visit his blog and read Melanie’s story in more detail and make a donation if they were so inclined.

Jay and his wife, Jamie, kicked it off with a $3000 donation of their own.

Sure enough... the community responded.  And gifts from $10 to $1000 began pouring in from top earners and "newbies" alike.

Within 24 hours all the money was raised and Jessica's tuition was wired to her university.  78 people had contributed an average of $235 a piece.

And that is why today, of all days, we should be proud to live in a world where individual entrepreneurs are going against the grain and thriving.  While many large companies teeter on the brink of collapse and governments are printing money they don't have in order to support bloated, ineffectual spending bills (and devaluing all existing money in the process) there is a group of people in this world who are in ascendancy.

Internet entrepreneurs... who are creating real prosperity and real profitability and are able to engage in real (meaning non-taxpayer subsidized) charity because their lean business models thrive in times like these.

It's how capitalism is meant to work.  And it does work.  And I'm proud to be a part of it.

Our VP of Leadership Development, John Jackson, has a saying he always ends his calls with:  "Do something good for someone today in the knowing there is no way they can ever repay you."

And today as a community we did it.  What a great feeling it is to grant a wish!

Merry Christmas.

* Note - I have to disclaim that I heard about all this after the fact and was not one of the individual donors, lest anyone accuse me of trying to "piggy-back" on others' good deeds.  Still I take pride in our company's spirit of giving and the effort as a whole.  Way to go guys and gals!

The MOST successful mlm business is the one where ONLY 99.42% of distributors lose money.  WHAT!?!?!?  Is this a joke...?

Nope, turns out it's the actual state of affairs for that industry.

Now to be fair, entrepreneurship as a whole has a 90%+ failure rate so it's got a lot to do with the difficulty in starting ANY business... not just MLM.

But still, a 5-10% success rate is radically different from a .01-.05% success rate.  The first is called "survival of the fittest", the latter is called "survival of the statistical anomaly".

There are lots of arenas in life where success rates of less than 10% are a result of a healthy weeding out process... whether it's admission to elite universities, achieving certain military ranks, promotion to certain levels in companies, etc.

There's nothing wrong with this, it's called capitalism.  But when success rates are so abhorrently low we have to ask if maybe there is something beyond just differences in talent and drive that are driving the numbers.

And I'd like to suggest it is this...

The "MLM promise" is built around a false assumption.

MLM is built around the idea that everyone can and should be an entrepreneur. 

Just like our recent worldwide financial crisis stemmed largely from the fashionable late 90's idea that everyone can and should be a homeowner, regardless of demonstrated ability to support a mortgage.

Picture an MLM Statue of Liberty beckoning "Bring me your poor and huddled masses and we'll make entrepreneurs out of everyone!"

Then the MLM companies systematically eliminate the things that normally qualify people for business ownership:  capital to invest, previous experience, financial stability, standing in the community, etc.

Traditionally banks don't loan money to start a business to people who don't have all of the above.

MLM on the other hand is designed to attract people who lack some if not all of the above criteria.

Why do banks apply standards to business ownership that MLM companies do not?

It's obvious - the bank is letting you risk their money while the MLM company is asking you to risk your own.

Imagine if Monavie or Amway was loaning the start-up money to every one of their distributors, you can bet they'd be a little stricter about who they accept.  The number of distributors would drop... but success rates would go up.  Despite what we want to believe qualifying criteria are not a bad thing.

*As a side note it's tempting to note that the mortgage crisis basically ensued when mortgage banks stopped underwriting like banks and started attracting MLM-type herds to their home loan products.  Only they were stupid enough to underwrite that way with their own money at risk.  No wonder mortgage default rates and MLM failure rates are looking more and more similar.  

But MLM companies take it a step further...  Not only do they make "business ownership" available to people who are not qualified, they limit your financial success to that which you can achieve through "duplication", rather than from your own direct sales efforts (because you can never make that much money yourself selling low-ticket products).

So even if you are a great entrepreneur, with all of the fortitude, stamina, and street-smarts it really takes to succeed, you'll be limited in how much you can profit from your own efforts (because of the low commissions paid on the items you sell directly) and instead you are forced to wait for your downline to duplicate you, so you can get the magical "leverage" everyone dreams of.

To take the mortgage analogy a step further... imagine being a subprime mortgage broker but instead of getting paid upfront origination fees for the loans, you only get paid if your subprime borrowers make timely mortgage payments for 5 years.  You'd never get paid on the majority of the loans you worked hard to originate - just like in MLM you'll never make much money off the majority of people you recruit.

My one personal experience in MLM clearly illustrated this point:  I personally sponsored 25 people (and made $100 each time).  Those 25 people sponsored a combined 5 people.  Those 5 people sponsored a combined 0 people.  Thus what began with a bang ended with a whimper.

It's the typical MLM story.

As someone who IS an entrepreneur through and through and embraces the challenges and frustrations that go with the territory there is nothing more frustrating than being restricted in my own money making ability (because I can never make more than $100 per sale) while waiting on people who "thought it was going to be easy" to get out and do the work.

And I actually MADE a little money in my MLM experiment, so according to the statistic I am part of the less than half a percent that "succeed".  But I still consider the experience a wretched failure (from a business standpoint) so I suggest that the actual success rate is even lower than the statistic.

So what's the answer to this systemic flaw?

Simple.

Sell higher ticket products.  Pay bigger commissions.  Make it more expensive to get started.  Underwrite like a bank (make people apply to your business and even better, charge an application fee!)

Pay out large commissions (like $10,000 each!) for single sales and/or single recruits.  Attract and demand a higher caliber of individual for your business.  Start treating your home business like a business and not a bake sale (and find a company to partner with that takes the same attitude).

And finally... put some real skin in the game.  Let's not pretend that that something we bought into for the cost of  a George Foreman Grill is going to be our top priority a year from now.

Traditionally the main obstacle to business ownership was the same as the traditional obstacle to home ownership... a down payment.  Historically banks have required it for either a business loan or a home loan.

Once politicians decided that everyone should own a home, banks started side-stepping that with zero-down home loans... and we saw how that worked out.

For companies that believe everyone should be a business owner (MLMs) they sidestep that obstacle by making cost-of-entry very low... and again we see how that works out (reference the very first sentence of this article).

So as much as people want to decry upfront investments, they do a lot to promote long term stability and success.

So let's stop shying away from the idea of an upfront investment in home business.

When's the last time you heard of a doctor who spent $300,000 on medical school and dropped out in the first 90 days?  Exactly.