My Real Story
I
have made it big in the corporate world. I have made it big in the MLM
world. I have turned companies around and I have taken successful
companies to new levels. I've had my share of highs and lows and met
life's heroes and villains along the way. If you want the honest
version of how I got to be where I am today, keep reading.
From Humble Beginnings to Big Results
I
grew up in humble—even poor—circumstances. My father was an alcoholic.
When I was just four years old, my mother took my sisters and I and
left him to protect us from the abusive environment we had lived in.
Because Mom didn’t have the means to give me what I wanted, I had to
work for what I got. I worked on a farm in Idaho while I was in school.
A typical day began at 4:30 a.m. when I’d go move irrigation lines
before school started. I’d move them again during my lunch break, then
again after school.
Although there are many experiences I could
share to paint a picture for you of the lifestyle we lived, perhaps the
image of suicide tells the story best. When I was 16 years old, my
older sister attempted suicide for the second time. The image I carry
with me as I tied towels around her wrists and rushed her to the
hospital will forever be with me. Then, just a few years ago, my other
sister succeeded in taking her own life.
Through our struggles I
dreamed about creating a different life—a better, happy life—for my
family and myself. I dreamed of starting my own business and becoming
super-successful. In an effort to turn that dream into a reality, I
went to college. I was the first person in my family to do this. I
worked hard, got a good job, and began climbing the corporate ladder. I
had arrived. I was making six figures and had a 401k and stock in the
company at Ancestry.com. I had a great bonus package and a corner
office with a view of the mountains. I reached all the goals the
company gave me to accomplish; I hit the revenue numbers I was supposed
to. I had beaten the odds. I had gone from rags to riches. I was one of
those success stories you hear about that makes you feel good about
living the American dream.
House of Cards
Then
one day, it all went away. I knew something was up shortly before I got
the ax. There were constant layoffs at the company, and I had always
been involved in the discussions as to who was going to be laid off.
But this time I wasn’t.
MyFamily.com, the parent to
Ancestry.com, had acquired a company called ThirdAge, Inc. out of San
Francisco. ThirdAge had a Chief Marketing Officer with a hefty
parachute that would have cost the company too much if they let him go.
So it all came down to who would be the least expensive to let go. That
was me.
So after taking the company from $8 million to $20
million over a two year period and increasing the subscriber base from
110,000 to over 300,000 (making Ancestry.com number three in the world
for Internet subscription sales), I walked away and watched someone
else take over the team I had built. So much for stability. I realized
that the days of working hard for a company until you retire and
getting a gold watch and a pension were long gone. Sure, I knew other
people this same thing had happened to, but now it had happened to me!
In
hindsight I am, of course, grateful for that event in my life. It freed
me and allowed me to move on to bigger and better things. I’ve
discovered, as I’m sure you have, this is often the case. Something we
perceive as being the worst possible thing that could happen hits us
broadside, but in the end it proves to be a gift—a blessing in disguise.
When
I was laid off from Ancestry.com, I had a pretty big nut to crack each
month. I had been making over $15,000 a month with my salary and
bonuses, and with alimony to pay, two households to support, and the
maintenance of a lifestyle to which I had become accustomed, it wasn’t
any too much. But I knew I could go out and get another job quickly, so
I wasn’t too worried.
Unfortunately, 9/11 happened around this
same time and took its toll on the job market. I found myself out of
work for seven or eight months, which pushed me to the brink of
bankruptcy. I finally found a job that paid about half of what I had
been making, but I needed something, so I took it. Even though I was
making considerably less, I felt the right thing to do was to keep
paying child support and alimony at the same rate I had been, so I just
took it in the shorts and made it happen. The job was crummy. It was a
huge step backwards from where I had been. I was absolutely in survival
mode.
Rising from the Ashes
I
kept looking while I worked this job and, within a year, found a
company called Floppy Copy that was in need of being turned around.
They had built to over $30 million a year, then had lost market share
until they were eking out a measly $2 million a year. I visited with
Shane Argyle, the company’s owner, we discussed a plan, and I became
the company’s Director of Sales and Marketing. I led the re-branding of
the company to IntegraCore and pushed revenues from $2 million to $20
million a year in less than two years.
I thoroughly enjoyed working
with Shane. He’s one of the quality people I’ve met along the way. I
have great respect for him. He has since sold out his majority interest
in the company to pursue some service opportunities with his wife.
Shane and I were inspired by Jim Collins’ book, Good to Great, and
followed many of his principles in effecting the turnaround. I might
also mention that six years later, as I write this, the company’s
online presence is essentially what we created as part of that
turnaround. We made some extremely powerful and lasting changes in that
company that have stood the test of time.
While I was at
IntegraCore, a guy who had worked for me at Ancestry.com, Chris
Peterson, contacted me. Chris and I had developed a good rapport while
working together. He left Ancestry.com before I did when he had the
opportunity to become the personal PR man to Eric Schmidt of Novell.
Chris came to me and told me about this opportunity he had to follow
Eric around, shoot footage of what he did, and create PR materials for
Novell. The money was great and Chris was excited about the
possibilities this job held for him, so I told him to take it. And he
did.
The MyMangosteen Story
A
couple of years later, in the fall of 2002, Chris contacted me and told
me his cousin, Aaron Garrity, was starting an MLM company called XanGo
along with some other gentlemen. He knew I had some experience with MLM
both at the corporate level and as a distributor, although I had never
built a notable organization for myself at that point. I was, however,
his friend and someone who knew more about MLM than he did. He saw me
as valuable both from the standpoint of what I knew and what I could do
for him as a distributor. (Of course, he was trying to sign me up!) He
invited me to a meeting, and I went.
What I saw was better
branding, a better image, and a better story than anything I had ever
heard in the MLM world. I told him I was interested as long as we could
do some things differently from how they had been traditionally done
with respect to our recruiting. I’m not big on inviting people to
meetings at hotel conference rooms. Chris already had MyXango.com
reserved, so we were in a good position to leverage the Internet for
our recruiting efforts.
We teamed up with a couple of developers, Dan
Masterson and Nate Best, and, using our knowledge of Internet-based
marketing, set out to create a recruiting site for our XanGo
businesses. At first, we were all going to sign up in our own positions
and use the sites independently, but as the project progressed, we
decided to become a team. Chris designed the site, Dan and Nate handled
the programming, and I became the voice for all the trainings and also
conducted the conference calls. All of us but Chris were still working
other jobs and building our XanGo business as a grassroots effort.
Full-time Network Marketing Success
It
took 12 to 18 months to get the business to the point I could quit my
job and work my XanGo business full-time. I also became acting
president for another MLM startup called AquaGenus, who saw what we
were doing with our XanGo business and wanted me to create the same
recruiting tool for them. This gig was short lived, however, because
our XanGo business really began to take off and there was no question
in my mind what I’d rather be doing. I saw the potential at XanGo.
At
first, our system was only available to people in our downline, and we
provided it at no cost. Ultimately, we couldn’t keep it to ourselves
anymore. It became a hit that people were happy to pay for, so it
became another profit center for our team.
It was at this point
I tried to recruit Ken Forrest, a previous business associate and good friend, into XanGo. He wanted nothing to do with
it. In fact, we had sworn to each other after previous experiences with
MLM that we would never get into it again. We had joked (perhaps more
seriously than jokingly) that we should start an MLM with a monthly
auto-ship product that would be information on why one should not join
an MLM. We even considered the possibilities of offering a premium
membership level that would offer physical intervention services for
anyone who got too close to actually signing up in an MLM.
That may
make you smile—or even laugh depending on your past experiences with
MLM—but that’s how negatively we felt about MLM. We had both been
there. We had tried, somewhat succeeded, then failed (or the companies
for whom we were distributing had failed). Our experience was that of
untold thousands who had the same bad taste in their mouths for MLM. I
share this because I don’t want you to think we’ve been rah-rah MLMers
all along. We’ve been on the other side of that fence and despised MLM
companies and MLM distributors. We just hadn’t figured out how to make
it work properly. But that was different in my case at this point, and
I was trying to get Ken to see it. He just didn’t want to listen.
Finally,
I contacted Ken and told him he had to look at my website. At the time,
Ken was in Hong Kong speaking on how to make money on the Internet. I
showed him that’s exactly what I was doing. We had combined MLM and the
Internet and we were making great money on the Internet with all the
advantages of MLM tied into the business. That sealed it. Ken joined
online after going through the tour at my website. He sent emails to a
number of people he knew, telling them to go to his website (which had
been created for him automatically by the system as soon as he signed
up) and check out this business opportunity. As I recall, Ken had 20 or
25 people signed up and going before he returned from that trip. Ken
worked his XanGo organization for a while, and then decided he wanted
to take this amazing online recruiting system to other MLM companies.
That’s when he started Solution X.
Starting Over
Although
I was busy building the XanGo business Chris, Dan, Nate, and I had
started together, Ken began working on me to come over and join him at Solution X. I consulted with him and did what I could to help him get
the company going, but I was content as a XanGo distributor. Then
things started to change.
Chris, who held the spot above Dan and I (we
had bought Nate out of the business) became a 200K distributor and
stepped into the limelight. He was on stage at XanGo events, in demand
as a leader in the company, and, at one point, featured in XanGo’s
distributor magazine, Go. Of course, I was happy for his success
because we had collectively built our businesses and had been splitting
our commission checks according to the agreement we had for our team.
But sometimes money does interesting things to people. Our relationship
deteriorated.
When Chris made the cover of Go magazine, he didn’t even
mention Dan or me in the article. Even though I had noticed this when I
read it, the realization of what was happening struck me hard when my
then-13-year-old daughter read the article and asked me, “Dad, isn’t
Chris your partner?” I replied he was. “Then why didn’t he even mention
your name in this article?” came her query. It was obvious to everyone
that we were no longer a team.
With that said, Chris, who came
to me asking for direction and help when he knew nothing about the
world of MLM, has undeniably come into his own. He tells the XanGo and
MLM stories well. He has a good stage presence. He’s a strong
motivator. At one point in his life, he was the drummer in a band,
which won a competition and had the possibilities of a real future.
Chris wanted to be a rock star. That all ended when the singer decided
she wanted to quit and have a baby. The gig was over. Although his
group has disbanded once again, this time by his choice, Chris has
become a real rock star in XanGo.
I tried to get bought out of
my position in the team Chris and I had launched, but that didn’t work
out. I really did like XanGo and knew if I could get bought out and
start over with a different group I could be successful and content. It
just didn’t go that way. That’s when
I joined Ken at Solution X. Corporate management and distributors alike
at dozens of MLM companies have caught the vision of what we’ve
collectively developed in joining the forces of MLM with the power of
the Internet to create a tool that allows more people than ever to be
successful in their MLM businesses. While to this day I’m known
throughout the MLM industry as one of the founders of MyXango.com /
MyMangosteen.com, a website and system which has been widely hailed and
copied, it has been a rush building Solution X and bringing my formula
for success to such a vast audience.
Moving Forward … Focus and Finish
This
story of my experiences with Chris as a XanGo distributor brings up an
important point. The most successful people I’ve seen are those who
surround themselves with people who are better than they are at
whatever they are doing, give those people the tools and resources they
need, then praise them and shout from the rooftops telling everyone how
great these people are. This philosophy works in every situation. As
long as you’re sincere, you will never diminish your own standing by
praising others and giving credit to those on your team who make things
happen. In fact, quite the opposite is true. You will add credibility
to yourself and your entire team by doing this. And nowhere is this
more true than in MLM.
Your financial success in MLM is absolutely, one
hundred percent, totally, and completely tied to the success of your
downline. You should recruit the best people you possibly can to be on
your front line, then coach, praise, and help them in any way you can
to help them be everything they can be. That’s how MLM works! I would
love nothing more than to have the 10 best-ever MLM distributors front
line to me. I’d be set. And do you think I’d take every opportunity
possible to bring attention to their success and efforts and pump them
up into larger-than-life icons? You better believe it! Surround
yourself with the best people you can find. Give them what they need to
succeed. Readily give credit to them for everything they do. Make them
as successful as possible. This is how truly successful people do it.
At the end of the day, it’s all about people.
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