What's going on everyone? Last Christmas I went to a Phoenix Suns game down in Arizona. That's where my parents live, and I went with my brothers, and it was awesome. In the stands, we were there in the stands, and the game was cool. It was awesome. We're in this big arena downtown. There's lots of life, it was at night obviously, and the city's alive. It was super fun, right? Very vibrant. A lot of life. That's what it felt like, and you walked in and it was an indoor arena, a basketball court in the center obviously, and it was a lot fun, but I remember sitting down, and I was looking at all the different logos of all the businesses, all the people who had paid to put their name and their logo inside the stadium, right? Lots of money inside of it. Lots of money on those ads. Lots of money, and there are two kinds of these ads though. I remember sitting down and I was looking, and was noticing that there was a difference. There was really two kinds. There was one kind, and this difference is one of the major reasons why I know my upline didn't know how to teach me to be successful when I was doing MLM for the first time, this one difference.
I was looking around, and I was reading all the signs. I'm really fascinated with ads. I'm the kind of guy who would watch an infomercial for fun. I get it. I obsess over it, and I know it's one of the reasons why I've been able to be good at it. I encourage you to obsess over your craft also. But anyway, so I was sitting down and we were in the basketball game, and it was a lot of fun. Very close as I remember it. It was a great game, and like I said, there's two different kinds of businesses that had bought ad space. The first kind was they just had literally their logo and their name, and that was it. That was it. The second kind had a logo, a name, and a call to action. There was an offer on there, meaning it would be like, "Until Tuesday, get two extra tacos for just a dollar each," or something like that. I was like, "Huh, that's interesting." One kind of business type in this arena just wants their name out there, and they're literally throwing money away in my mind. The second part though, they had an actual offer on the ad with a call to action. They were trying to recoup money from the ad space they had purchased. Interesting. Hmm.
Let's think about the difference between those two real quick, because the difference between those two is why I can do paid prospecting, meaning I get paid even when someone doesn't join my downline. Last year I made about fifty grand that let us go, we went on a cruise, my wife and I, we went for our anniversary, I set up a bunch of cool stuff in my home office, we got a gym, lots of stuff that it did regardless of somebody joining the downline or buying a product or whatever it was. Those are the kinds of systems that I give my downline, these paid prospecting systems, and because of this one principle, I'm allowed to do that. Any time you place an ad, any time you go and you put your name out there, this is the reason why I don't have a business card. Any time I go put my business card out there and I say, "Hey, here's my business card," it's nothing. There's no call to action, there's no offer. There's literally no reason. I literally just gave it to them so they could put it in the trash for me. That's it.
I know I did that episode a little while ago about business cards, but this one principle, you've got to understand that there's a huge difference between promoting and advertising. An ad versus a promotion, and most people in MLM, like 99% of them are stuck promoting their MLM. One will get you a lot of money. One will get you almost no money, but you'll spend a lot. Does that make sense? If I am just running promotions, if I'm just promoting my MLM, it means I don't care who I'm targeting, I don't care who sees my ad, I don't care that I had to spend money to get it up there, I don't care to make back the money I spent to put the promotion up there. Does that make sense? When you're promoting, in my mind, it is the absolute least effective kind of marketing that's out there. Big corporations are known for this, right? Massive, massive with huge, deep, unlimited pockets, and they'll go buy an ad on the Super Bowl and spend millions and millions of dollars just to get their name to flash on the screen a single 15 second spot, right? Or even they'll just put their name inside the actual arena itself. That's it. Coca-Cola and their name's spinning around the inside of the stadium. That's it.
They can afford to do that. They've got a massive, massive, massive bottomless pit of cash they can just toss at stuff, right? They're in an awareness branding stage where they don't care about anything else except sustainability, people seeing the name over and over, that's it. They don't care about recouping the ad cost. I care about that. My ability to go and create some piece of marketing where I can recoup ad costs, now we're getting into sales funnels. Oh, baby! That's my actual job if you guys don't know. I build sales funnels for a living, and the reason that they work is because they are based 100% on recouping ad costs. How does that sound as a business owner? Sound freaking amazing. What I did, and what I do, is I place cool pieces of training, these cool tools, things I'll ship to you, stuff like that, for very cheap. Even I'll give them away for free even if someone just pays for the shipping. I do that kind of stuff all the time. After they buy that first thing, I'm like, you know what, if you like that, you also might like this. There's a little upsale that says, "Hey, I think you might like this." A good percentage takes that next one.
Well, now I'm already making money, right? My average cart value is now above what I paid to get that ad out there. That's a way better form of marketing, and most people, they get out there, and all they do is they just start promoting their stuff. They don't care where their ads are at. If you're spending money for an ad, would you not care who's actually seeing it? Think about this with your MLM. Think about this with who you're promoting to. Think about this with the people that you have been even walking to and talking to. Are they even in the market to hear about your MLM? I'm not saying you shouldn't talk to them about them, but I am never, ever, ever going to buy a pink Volkswagen. I'm not going to. I'm not in the market for it. I will never buy it. I do not have a preset disposition to buy that, right? A lot of times, guys, if you want to get better with your MLM, if you want to actually get people recruiting and get people, you've got to solve a problem for them.
"Hey, I'm going to teach you guys how to do X, Y, and Z, or I'm going to give this away to you for free," or whatever it is, and you're paying to place that ad in front of somebody, if you've some kind of loss leader out there, if you've got some kind of product out there, some kind of ad out there, figure out some way to recoup on that ad cost, and now you're getting customers for free. Does that make sense? If I can just get that first interaction to break even in my pocket, in my wallet, boom! You're getting customers for free. You literally have created and redirected a traffic stream towards your direction. How cool is that? That's why I can do what I do. That's why this works. That's why I'm so passionate about fixing this for so many people. What I did is a systematized it. I put the whole thing into a system, and that's what Secret MLM Hacks is. That's what the product is. It teaches you how to do that. That's step one of five. Now, there's four others, which are mind blowing and automate everything. It's true duplication. It's awesome, but that's why.
People ask, like, "Stephen!" The other day I got an email from someone, and this has happened many times. I've been approached by five MLM owners about my system. I'v...
