Weekly Update

Tuesday 1st April

As many of you will have probably found out, today is traditionally a day for pranksters to come out in force, and try to fool as many people as possible. The biggest prank of all has been played on all of us by the Government. below is my reason for thinking this.

At 9am today, most people will embark upon another eight hours of doing something they don't enjoy, which makes someone else more money than it makes them, and they'll continue going back everyday for another 45 years, reaching retirement age having had precious little free time or control over their lives.

When offered the chance to retire in 3 to 7 years, and to get paid over and over again for a job you did just once, some people will snigger and make fun, as if it's our system that's broke, soulless, without control, with no free time, glass ceilings and unrewarding, when it's theirs.

This is the system our schools and governments teach.

Actually, this isn't an April Fool. This is the reality for most people and it's our job to help them realise that there is another way. The more people you help, the further away you push yourself from this broken system.

So, my April Fools Day has been a busy one. I just completed a mystery shop at a restaurant in Leighton Buzzard (no, I won't mention who it was here), along with my wife and daughter.

Then I had to chase up Sports Direct about our online order. It got delivered to us on Saturday, but had one item missing, one item was the wrong size, and two were faulty! They have a wonderful returns system - fill in the returns form and then pay the postage to send it back to them. I spent a long time searching the internet, trying to find out if I could take the items back to a Sports Direct shop for an exchange or a credit note (this still wouldn't have helped with the missing item). From what I could determine, it is very much up to the individual store and it seems that you have to put your foot down with the store manager to get them to accept items bought online.

Another option was to send Sport Direct an email detailing what was wrong with the answer. I sent my email out on Sunday, and only got an automated response that it will be looked into.

Finally today, I tried another alternative, phoning them up. I found on the MoneySavingExpert forum other people who had had this problem, and someone posted up Sports Direct's contact number which was 0845 129 9200. This time, I got to speak with someone, and it proved a very productive call

First, the missing item would be sent out again. Second the faulty goods and the wrong item could be returned to them, but instead of having to pay the postage, I was given a freepost address! So if anyone requires to send back goods bought online at Sports Direct, but do not wish to pay the postage, then all you need to do is post it to the following address

FREEPOST
RRGJ-ZZSB-GLBX
Sports Direct
PO Box 9034
Mansfield
NG18 9DD

After sorting out the above problem, I then went out and stood on my local High Street for 45 minutes. Not as good a result as Friday, but I still look at this as gaining another 4 entries into next years prize draw.

Location	Time Taken	People Asked	Forms Filled	Call Back	Appointments
Stony Stratford	14:50 - 15:09	28	1	Nil	Nil
	15:09 - 15:15	4	1	Nil	Nil
	15:15 - 15:25	10	1	Nil	Nil
	15:25 - 15:35	8	1	1	Nil
Totals	45 Minutes	50	4	1	Nil

After all this activity, I then had to prepare to go to work commencing the first of seven night shifts! To keep up my momentum, I took some special business opportunity newspapers with me, which I placed inside the free Metro newspapers first thing on Wednesday morning. I try not to put them all in one place, but place a few at the stations I travel through. Interestingly, where I work, I get a lot of contractors coming in overnight to work too. One of them became interested in the newspaper, and took it away with them. Hopefully, they will get in touch with me to ask a few more questions!

The rest of the week has been fairly low key, as I have been feeling exhausted with the amount of contractors to deal with at work, and getting broken sleep at home (getting cold calls in the morning!). However, I have been going through my contact list and making a few phone calls each day. One call has resulted in an appointment to see them next week! I am also in the process of educating myself with a bit of personal development. This week, I am reading a book by Gerry A. Ford about how coaching people is a very important part of building a successful Network Marketing business. Until I started reading this book, I hadn't realised there was a learnable technique to coaching! The funny thing is, is at my full time job, I am on a list of available Supervisor's that trainee Supervisor's can shadow, and learn from. So this book is now going to help me in BOTH areas of my working life!

Here we are, the end of the week (Saturday). As I had to take my wife to work for 15:00, this gave me a reason to do another High St WAM (I'm all ready out and about right?). Again I stopped of in my local village of Stony Stratford. This time I only spent 20 minutes there, as it was quite chilly, and I hadn't dressed properly (short sleeved T-Shirt) for the temperature! Even those 20 minutes proved productive (see below). Now I will just have to see if the appointment is successful on Friday!

Location	Time Taken	People Asked	Forms Filled	Call Back	Appointments
Stony Stratford	15:10 - 15:22	10	1	Nil	1
	15:22 - 15:30	14	1	1	Nil
Totals	20 Minutes	24	2	1	1

My personal best!!

Earlier today, I posted about how I am actively trying to up my game where building my part-time business is concerned. As a result of my activity doing WAM's (Win A Mini), I have for the first time beaten my own record of customer gatheing, by signing up three customers in one month!! The third one was a direct result of standing on a High Street for an hour on Friday!

Like I said, I need to up my game to try and gather at least four customers every month, if I am to stay on track and quailify for one of the Luxury holidays on offer. The beauty of this business, is that although I may be trying for the stars, I inadvertantly reach the moon without realising it!

Now all I need is to see what happens later this week as I have another appointment lined up.

The buzz I got from today also galvanised me into volunteering to do some mystery shops (my other part-time hobby). I now have two to do this week and one next week. Oh, and I also have to go to work full time too. Just about to start seven days of night shifts (if that makes any sense to you).

My Part Time Business Allows Me To Rub Shoulders With Important People!

I haven't posted anything about my part-time business for some time, mainly because I don't want to bore you with all the times I have stood in a High Street offering a Free Prize Draw to anyone walking by. I certainly got a lot of forms filled in. I even got a few people to agree to an appointment! However, it is always a little bit depressing, when they phone you back to cancel, and downright annoying when you turn up at their door and they have either forgotten about the appointment, or worse still, refuse to open the door!

This business is definitely not an easy thing to keep going at, but if you persevere, and never give up, then you WILL succeed! As a result of my efforts over the years, I managed to move up one step of the companies stairway to success (note: I did not mention ladder, as the stairway is wide enough for anyone to go at their own pace and not be held back by someone above them in the corporate ladder). As a result, when the company held their annual conference last week, I was invited to meet the top Directors at a Champagne reception afterwards. The following pictures are proof!

This is me with the CEO of Telecom Plus - Andrew Lindsay MBE. He was a Gold medal winner at the Sydney Olympics in 2000

 This is me with Network Director Wayne Coupland.

And finally, this is me with our Executive Chairman - The Honorable Charles Wigoder.

I also had the chance to rub shoulders with some of the most successful people in this business. There is nothing like the buzz in a room of successful happy people! It makes you forget all your trials and tribulations in the past and focus on positive thoughts and ideas, thus giving you the motivation and enthusiasm to go out and get knocked down by narrow minded, glass half empty, miserable people - who only feel happy when they make others miserable too!

As I have a full time job too, I fit this business in as and when I can, offering to help people save money on their household bills, and if they are genuinely interested in working towards their financial freedom - there is the business opportunity side to consider too! Part of my skills training for this involves personal development, by reading books and listening to CD's. What I have discovered, is these books are designed to help and motivate both yourself and your team. This is something that is proving very useful, not just with Telecom Plus, but now, with all the changes about to happen with the management structure of London Underground (my full time job), it is helping me learn about management skills I will need if I wish to remain working for London Underground.

Anyway, Telecom Plus have given us some new incentives to help motivate us over the coming months. Some I will achieve, some may prove to be a bit harder for me. The hardest one for me will be to gather at least 4 customers every month for the next 18 months. Should I succeed (only gathered 2 so far this month), then I will be given a one week luxury holiday for me and my family. It could be a trip on a luxury Ocean Liner, or a trip to Las Vegas. All I know is the value of these holidays are in excess of £1,000 per day!

To give me a chance to actually qualify for some of these holiday promotions requires some extra effort on my behalf. This means I have to go out and talk to as many people as possible, either over the phone, or face to face. I am presently, going through my phone list contacting everyone again. I have the excuse to ask if they would like to enter in the new Free Prize Draw that has just started. It makes a good opening gambit to start a conversation again. Also, I am going to step up my activity with promoting the WAM (Win A Mini) events. I just did one in February over a weekend in a Wickes store (signed up one customer as a result), and have another one lined up in April at a B & Q store. In between these large official events, I am also still popping down to a local High Street to conduct an impromptu WAM for about an hour. This is by far the cheapest and easiest way to get people to stop and talk to you, although the quality of the leads are very much hit and miss, I can promise you it does work! This is the result of my most recent High Street foray -

Location	Time Taken	People Asked	Forms Filled	Call Back	Appointments
Stony Stratford	12:58 - 13:03	12	1	Nil	1
	13:08 - 13:15	13	1	Nil	1
	13:20 - 13:27	11	1	1	Nil
	13:32 - 14:03	32	1	Nil	Nil
Totals	65 Minutes	68	4	1	2

So this week I have two appointments, that I didn't have before as a result of my efforts. I will let you know how I got on with the appointments, as there is no guarantee that they will become a customer, as I mentioned earlier.

Company Incentive helps to Galvanise me into Action!

At the beginning of this month the Franchise business I am involved with (Utility Warehouse) made an offer that is too good to miss! All I have to do is gather a minimum of two customers each month until the end of May and I will be given 500 Telecom Plus shares. If I manage to gather a total of 15 customers by the end of May, I will be given 1000 shares! At present, the Telecom Plus shares are trading at around £18. So I have the chance of gaining £18,000 for just a little effort!

My usual methods of just talking to people and the occasional High Street Win a Mini, only produces about one customer every other month! To achieve a higher gathering average, I needed to try something different.

One of the tools available to me is to post a neighbourhood letter to the houses in my village. The idea is to post the letters, and then knock on their doors a few days later, to see if they have read the letter. At the moment, there is a lot of discussion regarding whether this is doorstep selling, as this is no longer allowed, especially where energy is concerned, I am a bit dubious of working this way. The way some people have got round this is to knock on peoples door and ask them if they would like to enter a Free Prize Draw. If they say yes, then you give them the form and say you will be back to collect the form in a day or two. Attached to the form is the neighbourhood letter, which they can read if they want to. This technique, I am told, proves to be quite successful.

Yesterday, I stapled Win-a-Mini forms to 20 neighbourhood letters, and set out to deliver them. I had to knock on 50 houses (it feels uncomfortable when you first start, but it gets easier with practice), before I managed to give out the 20 forms. This morning, I visited the 20 houses again, and out of the 20, 6 of them returned the forms - without filling them in! 2 had already lost them! 4 couldn't find them, or hadn't looked at them and could I come back later in the week? The rest either were not at home, or wouldn't answer the door!

What I have learned from this experience, is that I need to do more of these, as there is a definite skill to approaching people this way. It is like climbing a ladder. Take a step with your left leg - learn the techniques. Take a step with your right leg - put the techniques you've learned into action.

It looks increasingly likely I won't manage to gather the required 2 customers this month, but there will be other opportunities in the future, and by then, I will have built up enough skill and experience to achieve the goals I set myself.

Some You Win, Some You Lose.

A couple of weeks ago, the MLM company I am involved with, unleashed a holiday offer to those of us who went to the Company Conference. All we have to do is gather 20 average customers (that means they have 3 or more services) before the end of January 2014, and the company will then take you on a weekend trip to Paris! They will also include £250 spending money. We would be visiting the Eiffel Tower, Moulin Rouge, Champs-Elysées, Notre Dame, to name but a few!

The Company then made it more difficult to attain, in that you have to meet certain criteria along the way. Basically, I have to gather a minimum of 2 customers in September, a minimum of 4 in October, and 4 in November, 2 in December, and 4 in January. The 2 customers in September have to be gathered after the 15th September. Any customers gathered before this date do not count!

I had a couple of appointments lined up to go to this month, but unfortunately, both customers cancelled their appointments, one didn't reschedule, and the other rescheduled for mid October. So as I needed to find some new customers, I got off my lazy backside and took a stroll down to my local town to attempt to drum up some more appointments by doing a High Street W.A.M. (Win A Mini prize draw). This time I stood in the High Street for an hour, and the table below shows what I got for my efforts -

Location	Time Taken	People Asked	Forms Filled	Call Back	Appointments
Stony Stratford	13:10 - 13:25	25	1	Nil	Nil
	13:40 - 13:50	25	1	Nil	Nil
	13:54 - 14:05	28	1	Nil	Nil
	14:08 - 14:10	4	1	Nil	Nil
Totals	60 Minutes	82	4	Nil	Nil

So for the one hour of effort, all I have managed to achieve is gain 4 more chances to win £1,000 for myself next year!

Yesterday, I received a call from one the the Mystery Shopping Companies I am affiliated to. They were desperate for me to make a telephone call assessment. I thought all I had to do was make the phone call and fill in a report, but no, they want a lot more from me!

The phone call had to be recorded. Then I have to wait 24 hours for the recording to be sent back to me, so that I can write my report based on the recording! All done and dusted? Not on your Nelly! I then have to wait a further three days to see if I get any literature through the post, or receive a call back!

At least this is one project that will be successful... eventually!!!

A Little Bit Of Part-Time Work Can Pay Dividends.... Eventually!

In 2005, July 29th, to be exact, I joined a MLM (Multi Level Marketing) Franchise Company called Utility Warehouse. I had never been self employed, I had never sold anything professionally, and I had a full time job that paid well. All I had to do was recommend the services to friends and family, and anyone else who I talked to, and if they used the services, I would get paid a commission each month.

The Utility Warehouse set targets that, should I meet them, I would receive substantial bonuses. The first of these was the joining fee. When I joined, the registration fee was £200, and if I gathered 6 customers within the first three months, I would receive the £200 back as a bonus (today you only have to gather 3 customers to get your registration fee back, and the registration fee is now only £100).

Because I didn't have a large circle of social contacts, I found it difficult to talk to enough people to build my business. I had no support from the people who introduced me to the business. I was left completely on my own to find my own way forward. Also gathering 6 customers would then release the monthly residual income!

 It actually took me 15 months to finally gather my first 6 customers! The company provided free training, and recommended I should attend a training course at least once a month. Guess what I did? I attended two courses in September 2005, and one in October 2006. Admittedly, because of the very slow start to building my business, I freely admit that I totally lacked any motivation to be successful quickly. I wasn't prepared to go on training courses, wasn't prepared to read any books that would help with my self development. I had no role models I could follow, or look up to. Yes there were the high flyer's within the Utility Warehouse that were constantly being talked about in the newsletters that were sent to me on a regular basis. I didn't know there was a better way to build this business. In July 2007, I finally managed to introduce someone into the business, and hopefully begin to build my business into something substantial! Only, I did exactly what my sponsor had done to me. I totally left my new distributor to fend for himself. In one year, he managed to gather just 3 customers. Then he quit!! I have only myself to blame for not giving him the support and help he probably needed to be successful in this business.

I refused to give up. The company charges a monthly fee to maintain my position within the company, and there were frequent months when the fee deducted was greater than the monthly commission that came in!! Admittedly, I never had to pay more than a couple of pounds each month, and it galvanised me into doing more activity to gather a new customer. So I never had to pay the company out of my own pocket for more than three months in a row! The next target I had to reach was gathering 12 customers (today it is now 20 customers), and this I finally managed to achieve in May 2008.

It was also in 2008 that I finally met up with someone who's team I was in. He had a vested interest in making me successful, and so he took me under his wing, and taught me how this business really works! I started attending special events, went on loads more training courses (5 of them in November and December 2008 alone!). I was also told that as I was self employed, I had to register my business with Inland Revenue, and submit tax returns myself, or employ an accountant! Admittedly, my income from this business wasn't anything to write home about. In fact, I had been probably operating at a loss, if I included all the travelling, and advertising I had done so far. What I didn't realise was that I could offset the business costs against the tax I paid from my full time employment! Now, every year, I have received a tax rebate from Inland Revenue!! Eventually, my business will begin to bring in more money, and I will, at some point in the future, have to start paying MORE tax, but happily, that time hasn't arrived, yet!

Since 2008, I have applied myself to this business in fits and starts. I would get fired up and become enthusiastic and focused on building the business, then become despondent, and lethargic. The trouble was, that the failures, or should I say lack of success, kept happening, no matter how hard I tried! Consequently, I would  take my foot off the throttle, and the business would grind to a halt, until I would have another bright idea, or go to one of the company seminars or training courses and get my motivation levels back up again. The one thing I am really proud of though, is I DIDN'T QUIT!

As a consequence of not quitting, I have now introduced three other people into this business, and they have begun to build a business for themselves. I  offer them help and support, and keep in regular contact with them, which is why they are still in the business and haven't quit. Because of their efforts, and my own efforts since 2005, this week, I was able to move up another step on the stairway of success within this business, and become a Team Leader! My monthly income still has it's ups and downs, depending on whether I do any work or not, but I can definitely see, that this business WILL eventually provide me with an income that will increase every month until the day I die, and then provide an income for my family for the rest of their lives too! How big that income will be will depend on how much effort I put into building this business.

I'm not an Entrepreneur, I'm not a salesman. Deep down, I hate to think that I am useless, and incapable of being successful. This is the vehicle I have chosen to prove to people that I can be successful at something!!

Working Smart can pay dividends!

Today, my wife had an appointment to see her doctor, so we decided to do some multi-tasking. My wife, my daughter, and myself arranged to walk to Stony Stratford. My wife to go to the doctor's for her appointment. My daughter to take our dog for a walk, and myself to keep them company and do a 30 minute High St WAM. We all achieved our various aims, our dog was completely worn out with the exercise (our daughter too!). My wife completed her appointment which conveniently took 30 minutes to complete. During the wait, I successfully managed to do the following -

Location	Time Taken	People Asked	Forms Filled	Call Back	Appointments
Stony Stratford	09:58 - 10:05	6	1	Nil	1
	10:09 - 10:16	11	1	Nil	1
	10:20 - 10:28	7	1	1	Nil
Totals	30 Minutes	24	3	1	2

Not bad for 30 minutes work, that would have been spent idly sitting in a doctor's surgery!