Network Marketing | Where To Start?

Well you have probably read that The Money Gym has signed up with Success University and I’m going to be the main driver of this arm of our activities.  There are two goals – one is to see if Network Marketing works, and the second is to get our Money Gym materials to a wider audience and Success University has over 100,000 success hungry students in the UK alone.

I’m also going to keep a “warts and all” record of my network marketing journey so that any of you that are interested, can follow my progress and see if it “works”.

I’m very interested to see if it works!

Another income stream is always welcome but I’m not about to do anything I don’t feel comfortable about….so this attracted me because I can see that it could be built entirely online – I’m not about to start going to ra-ra kind of meetings all the time!

So why did we sign up?  It’s not like we haven’t got enough to do!

1.  We believe in network marketing intellectually, as a good vehicle for someone who has a job but hates it, to get started in the world of business.

2.  We can see it’s a good business model, being paid a little bit for the efforts of those you work with and help, not a million miles away from the affiliate marketing business model online.

3.  We like things where people can get started in building a business for a very low initial investment.

4.  We believe in personal development and positive thinking and network marketing tends to attract go-getting people

5.  I like the product – they have great overall content at and are adding more all the time.

6.  I like the person who gently and persistently encouraged me to join, never pushy, and want to help him “get out from the dark side” as we say in The Money Gym.

7.  I can see the potential for The Money Gym in getting our material in front of the Success University faculty.

So where do I start?

ACTION STEPS:

I signed up at Success University upgraded our account from the $2 offer and then recruited five others from my friends and family onto the $2 offer themselves – so far, so easy.

I then put a Success University badge on our blog and wrote a blog posting about it.  I’ve also set up a network marketing support group, for our Money Gym Gold & Silver members who might be into network marketing of any kind.  I know we have some Agel people and Telecom Plus people at least.

One person tried to click on the blog badge, but i’d changed the referral name subsequently, so even though I emailed her back to tell her, she doesn’t seem to have signed up. Also, we have now changed the blog theme and had to prune back on sidebar items.  The Success University badge seems to be one of those casualties.

Hmmmm, I can see this is not going to be as easy as I thought LOL

The first month passed (my friends and family’s $2 trial period) and I made it up the first level which is Counsellor.  I got an email confirming that and congratulating me.

I also got some phone calls from my “upline” as it’s called which was a bit disconcerting as I bloomin’ hate getting random phone calls.  At least it was on the office line, which is on answerphone most of the time.

I am getting lots of emails from various people and Success University itself, which have been going into a seperate folder ready for me to peruse at my leisure.  Today is “at my leisure”, so I’ll look at them now along which having a mooch around the site to see if I can puzzle out what to do next!

I could call the person who recruited me, but he’s a creative furness, and just comes up with more and more ideas, so I’ll leave that for now.

What I’m looking for is a practical step-by-step guide to building my Success University business online, not a step by step guide to building a great life!  I know how to do that LOL.

I’ll come back to you later and let you know if I found one!

** This post is sponsored by Success University.  If you want to join Nicola in her journey to Network Marketing success, click the link above to try out a 2 week trial membership and get access to our private email support group **

What Is YOUR Company Worth Right Now?

With thanks to Thomas Power of Ecademy for twittering this – the quick 11-step process revealed a very surprising outcome for us at The Money Gym!

“YouNoodle, the online platform for the global entrepreneurial community, today introduced Startup Predictor™, the first technology that analyzes data on early-stage startups and generates a scientific prediction of the companies’ future outcomes, as well as the first standardized score for pre-funded startups.

The first version of Startup Predictor has been made publicly-available and is a free Web-based service that allows entrepreneurs, investors and other startup supporters to enter information about early-stage companies through an online test. Users receive an estimate of the startup company’s valuation in three years, as well as a “YouNoodle Score” — a number similar to a credit rating, based on a 1,000-point scale, that gauges the feasibility and promise of the company’s future.

After taking the free online test, users will also be matched with other YouNoodle members determined by the YouNoodle search engine to be of value to that particular startup company — potential employees, advisors, journalists, service providers, business partners and more.

“This is the first time technology has been used to help manage risk and predict growth for early-stage companies,” says Bob Goodson, CEO and co-founder of YouNoodle. “For more established companies, quantitative, systematic decision-making for investors is standard – using technology-driven credit rating services such as Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s. But until now, no similar system has existed for companies in their earliest stages.”

Startup Predictor uses a sophisticated and patent-pending algorithm that evaluates a number of variables, including backgrounds of the founders and advisors, business concept and team dynamics. Users must input details about key team members or advisors, relationships between team members, current or future products, patentable technology, and any capital invested by the founding team.

To determine the information needed to generate an accurate and reliable score, YouNoodle’s development team studied thousands of current and past startups, using both publicly available and proprietary data, to determine patterns of predictive factors for early-stage companies’ success.

“We learned that a company’s DNA — the fundamental things that can strongly influence its future success — is generally formed in the very first days that the company is in business,” says Kirill Makharinsky, co-founder of YouNoodle, who led the development of the mathematical algorithm behind Startup Predictor. “Our technology analyzes data based on those early days — going back to the pure concept and the bones of the business built by the founders. Our research has proven that the patterns in the data we measure from those days can be surprisingly prophetic about how a company will perform in the future.”

Calibrated specifically for companies that were founded recently and have not yet received capital investments in its first version, Startup Predictor is the first in a series of decision-making tools YouNoodle plans to introduce for the startup industry, including predictive tools for later-stage companies…..”

READ MORE & FIND OUT HOW MUCH YOUR COMPANY MIGHT BE WORTH >>>

Business Startup – The NonEvil Way

I was sent a link to this intriguing essay on business startups by a member of my mastermind group Dr Karl Blanks, written by Paul Graham of Venture Capital firm Y Combinator.

(This essay is derived from a talk at the 2008 Startup School.)

About a month after we started Y Combinator we came up with the phrase that became our motto: Make something people want. We’ve learned a lot since then, but if I were choosing now that’s still the one I’d pick.

Another thing we tell founders is not to worry too much about the business model, at least at first. Not because making money is unimportant, but because it’s so much easier than building something great.

A couple weeks ago I realized that if you put those two ideas together, you get something surprising. Make something people want. Don’t worry too much about making money. What you’ve got is a description of ….

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