What's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Secret MLM Hacks Radio. So here's the real mystery. How do real MLMers like us, who didn't cheat and only bug family members and friends, who wanna grow a profitable home business ... How do we recruit 'A' players into our down lines and create extra incomes, yet still have plenty of time for the rest of our lives? That's the blaring question and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Steve Larsen and welcome to Secret MLM Hacks Radio.
Hey. What's going on guys? Hope the week has gone fantastic for you. I love reading. I actually really, really love reading. What's funny is I hardly ever get to, ever. But I love books. There's something about a book. And today I wanna talk about one of the most influential books, most influential for my career I should say, that I've ever read. I've read a lot of books. I just dropped another $3,000 on books. I built another book shelf in here. I love books. They're ... you think about some authority figure trying to convey an entire career's worth of experience, and condense it down into a couple hundred pages. Oh my gosh! Why would you not wanna read it. You know what I mean?
I'm not actually that fast of a reader. I get too analytical about it, and it takes me like two months to read one book, you know, because I read a paragraph, and I think about it, and I take notes, and I think about it again, and then I write more notes, and then I read the paragraph again. And then, I can go on to the next one. It takes me forever. I get way too analytical, but I really enjoy it though. And I hope that you're taking the time to study. Honestly, I believe that one of the main reasons why people stop being relevant is because they stop learning. They don't know where their own place in their own ecosystem, because they're not seeing the works of the other people inside their own industry.
So, if you're not reading, especially in MLM, my gosh! Go get a whole bunch of ... just look at MLM best sellers on Amazon. Start buying 'em, and read 'em, and drink deeply. So anyways, one of the books I really, really enjoy is a ... both for the title, and for the actual content, is a book called "Ready, Fire, Aim" and I guarantee there's a lot of guys who have listened to ... who are listening to now who have probably read this book. And I ... it's awesome. It's fascinating. It's fantastic. There are parts of it that are a little bit more nitty gritty, and there's other parts of it that are like, okay, that makes sense, you know, here and there.
There was a guy that I was working with at one time, and I actually think I shared some of the story in a previous episode, but I think it's worth to go back over a little bit. But he and I were actually in college, we were starting ... he was getting his wife a new diamond ring, and he's the man, honestly ... good friends, still good friends. This story taught both of us a lot. And basically, he wanted to get his wife a new diamond ring. And he found a place where you could custom build your diamond ring. And he'd send in all these pictures for the diamond ring, and he'd send it on over. And basically, what ended up happening is they would take the three or four pictures that you'd send in of rings that you like, and they'd send you back this blue wax replica, this blue ring, because it was made of max. And they wanted to make sure you liked it before they actually created the band, created the diamond ring band.
And then you would go and you'd choose your cut, and your color, and your clarity. And you would go ... and the shape of the diamond, and it was really quite the fascinating process. Well anyways, he went through this whole thing, and he got the ring back. And he decided that he would take it and actually get it appraised at a retail place. So he went and he got the ring appraised at Jensens. I think that's what it was, Jensens rings. And they appraised it at like $1,200, and he was like holy crap. He bought it straight from the supplier, so it was a lot cheaper. He cut out the middle man. And by doing that, he only paid like $300 for this ring that was retailing for $1200. We're like, "What!" That's insane. Oh my gosh. We were these college kids. And he's like, "Dude, we should sell these. Why don't we do this?"
And it was like, "Cool man. Let's do it." And so we started putting all these pieces together, started all these ... and we did everything we could, and started getting these things together. And it was interesting because it was a lot of work back and forth with these guys to get one ring made. So we sat down and he started coming up with these different plans, like what our future store would look like. And he started coming up with these different plans of our little slogan, what our logo looked like, what our colors were ... all this crap in business that actually doesn't turn dollars. And I got frustrated with him. We're buddies, hope he's cool with me sharing that. And I got frustrated with him.
And I was like, "None of this stuff matters man. This is not what turns a dollar. We're getting confused with the activities of business rather than business itself. Right? Actual sales." So he ... anyway, we went through and we got our first sale, and we're so excited. And I got back to his apartment after classes, and he's like, "Hey dude. It went super well." And I was like, "Yeah. Tell me about it."
And he goes, "Dude. So it was $300 right to the manufacturer themselves, and it was another $1,200 ring appraisal value." He's like, "Dude. I sold it for $325." And I was like, "What?!" I was ticked. I was like, "$325 ... we made $25?" And he's like, "Well yeah man. I was trying to give him a good deal." I was like, "Give us a good deal. You could still give ... you could charge $1,000 and still have a good deal in there."
And ... anyway, it ended up being this big thing and we didn't end up keep going ... you know, continue going with it, which we probably should have, probably would have made some actual real change with that if we kept going with it. But, there was this fascinating phenomenon that started happening. As we were in the middle of planning this thing, we were tying to figure out our business while we're trying to figure out how we actually made money. I don't really look at the comp plan that much. There's much smarter people than I am who actually look through that stuff, and tell me the best ways to play it, and stuff like that.
But you should know your comp plan. How do you actually get paid? What is it that you actually paid on? Do that thing. Get really good at just that thing. But there's this phenomenon that started as I was ... as we started planning this. And what started happening was I felt the need to start making everything I was doing a secret. I was like, "Crap. No one can hear about this thing because everybody's gonna steal it." And it's like this big thing. Everyone thinks that. They're all gonna steal my idea. They're all gonna steal my idea. And I had this professor, at the time, actually it might have been ... if it wasn't that exact semester in college, it was a different one.
But I had this professor who talked to me about this exact thing. And he goes, "You know what's funny Steven is that most the time you actually benefit like crazy by sharing your ideas." I was like, "What?! People are gonna steal 'em. Are you kidding me? And that's what I told him. I'm sure that's what you're thinking too. I was like, "People are gonna steal 'em. No. Mister Professor. Why the heck would I tell everyone my ideas. People are gonna take 'em. They're gonna steal 'em. They're gonna go off and sell 'em. They're gonna be the ones that profit from 'em. I'm gonna be the one who gets screwed, and lives in a ditch." You know what I mean?
And that's how most people treat, sometimes, their ideas ... in fact, a lot of times...
