All the news that's fit to wrap around a dead fish
The week in review
Monday - "The root of all evil" More math! " In mathematical terms, the statement "Money is not the root of all evil" is Money != √(of all evil)"
Tuesday - "More meetings mean more money" Some SendOutCards events. "There are many other SOC events coming up, large and small, including my
weekly opportunity meetings and training sessions. Please join me for
one (or more) meetings. There will be donuts and coffee. Contact me for location info. Because more meetings mean more money."
Wednesday - "Build Your Wealth: Graduate from a Paycheck Mentality to a Net Worth Mentality" An article from The Art of Manliness. "One in three of us are potentially one paycheck away from homelessness,
with a new survey showing that many people would be unable to pay their
rent or mortgage for more than a month if they lost their job."
Today's blog post is from two years ago. Relationship marketing is also known as appreciation marketing or referral marketing. Here is some info on a couple of events coming up in the next few weeks: Relationship Marketing coming up next week in Fremont, CA and Creating a Referral Based Business coming up on May 18th in Fresno, CA. Last week I talked a little about what relationship marketing is and today I'm going to talk about why you should be doing it.
1. You'll get new customers
90% of your competitors are fighting over the same 10% of the marketplace
2. You'll retain your existing customers
Let your customers/clients know you care about their business
3. You'll stay top of mind
How many of you got a birthday card from your dentist, insurance agent or other service provider? Go ahead, raise your hand. Now keep your hand raised if you remember that person's name. Raise it even higher if you're likely to refer that person to a friend.
Sneak a slice of blueberry pie into your cubicle and celebrate Blueberry Pie Day. It's also Biological Clock Day No, not that one. Your circadian rhythm. You know, the one that tells you when to go to bed and when to wake up. No, not the alarm clock…although most of us are Jerked Outta Bed by an alarm clock for our J.O.B.
Today's blog post is based on an article from The Art of Manliness:
The authors of The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing (a book inspired by the sage investing principles of Jack Bogle) describe two mentalities when it comes to personal finance: the paycheck mentality and the net worth mentality.
A person with a paycheck mentality just focuses on increasing their
income in order to increase their wealth. A person with a net worth
mentality also seeks to boost their income, but builds their wealth
through saving and investing as well.
Most people live paycheck to paycheck, in fact a lot of people are one paycheck away from homelessness. According to Quora:
One in three of us are potentially one paycheck away from homelessness,
with a new survey showing that many people would be unable to pay their
rent or mortgage for more than a month if they lost their job.
Back to AoM:
The problem, according to the authors, is that it’s easy to conflate income and wealth:
“From the time we are old enough to understand, society
conditions us to confuse income with wealth. We believe that doctors,
CEOs, professional athletes, and movie actors are rich because they earn
high incomes. We judge the economic success of our friends, relatives,
and colleagues at work by how much money they earn. Six- and
seven-figure salaries are regarded as status symbols of wealth. Although
there is a definite relationship between income and wealth, they are
very separate and distinct economic measures. Income is how much money
you earn in a given period of time. If you earn a million in a year and
spend it all, you add nothing to your wealth. You’re just living
lavishly. Those who focus only on net income as a measure of economic
success are ignoring the most important measuring stick of financial
independence. It’s not how much you make, it’s how much you keep.”
Here are some highlights from the article:
The Benefits of a Net Worth Mentality
The paycheck mentality is fragile; the net worth mentality is antifragile.
Wealth grows even when you’re not working.
A two-pronged approach builds wealth faster.
How to Calculate and Track Your Net Worth
How to Start Increasing Your Net Worth Today
Practice frugality.
Start an emergency fund.
Pay down your debt.
Start investing in index funds.
Find ways to increase your immediate income.
Take a few minutes and check out the article, there's plenty of additional information there.
That's something that Steve Schulz, the President of Field Operations for SendOutCards, says quite often. I don't know if that saying originated with him, but I first heard it from him.
What does it mean? I think that answer comes in two parts. First, the more meetings that you can attend personally, the better it will be for your business, whether it's some kind of training event, a fun getaway with team members, attending a meeting that another team member is hosting or a local event of your own, it will help you grow. Secondly, the more guests that you have at these meetings, the better. When people experience first hand the excitement, camaraderie and fun, the more likely they are to want to join your business.
The remainder of this blog post is going to be very SendOutCards specific, but a lot of it can and will apply to other businesses...whether network marketing or another type of business.
About 100 SOC executives, distributors, customers and friends just came off a 4 day cruise to Mexico. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to go this year. But it involved a lot of the kinds of meetings above. There were several formal training sessions, including some "MLM Blueprint" training by SendOutCards founder and CEO, Kody Bateman. Kody hasn't offered this training for awhile, although the book is available in the SOC bookstore. My SendOutCards sponsor, Gregory Festo, did do some MLM Blueprint training before he moved to Florida a few years ago. Of course the cruise was also a fun getaway with team members and there were plenty of small, impromptu meetings. And since there were only 100 SOC people on a ship that carried 2700 passengers, there were probably a few curious people who managed to find out more about SOC.
On a phone call yesterday, some details about the 2018 SendOutCards International Convention were announced. Tickets are on sale now for $299, which includes the closing party which used to be sold separately. But discount tickets are available. My upline, Mark Herdering, has a pack of 50 tickets to sell for only $249 each...a $50 savings! If you'd like to purchase a discounted ticket, let me know and I'll get the info from Mark.
There are many other SOC events coming up, large and small, including my weekly opportunity meetings and training sessions. Please join me for one (or more) meetings. There will be donuts and coffee. Contact me for location info. Because more meetings mean more money.
Contrary to popular opinion, it's not money. In fact, according to the Bible:
For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil… (1 Timothy 6:10)
Not money, on it's own, but the love of money. And the love of money is not THE root. It's only a root. And not ALL evil, but all kinds of evil.
This post is not a philosophical or theological post. In fact, it's another mathematical post. In mathematical terms, the statement "Money is not the root of all evil" is Money != √(of all evil), which says Money does not equal (!=) the root (√) of all evil.
The root of a number x is another number, which when multiplied by itself a given number of times, equals x.
The square root is the most common: the square root of 4 is 2 because 2 x 2 = 4, the square root of 100 is 10, etc. There are roots of any positive integer greater than 1: 3rd roots, 4th roots, etc.
For example, the third root (also called the cube root) of 64 is 4, because if you multiply three fours together you get 64:
4 × 4 × 4 = 64
This would be written as
The above would be spoken as "the third root of 64 is 4" or "the cube root of 64 is 4".
The second root is usually called the "square root".
The third root of a number is usually called the "cube root",
After that, they are called the nth root, for example the 5th root, 7th root etc
And these are the symbols that are used in taking roots of numbers:
The symbols
Degree
The number of times the radicand is multiplied by itself. 2 means square root, 3 means cube root.
After that they are called the 4th root, 5th root and so on.
If this is missing, it is assumed to be 2 - the square root.
That means the logarithm of a number is the exponent to which another fixed number, the base, must be raised to produce that number.
Like exponents and roots, logarithms use exponents and a base. (Remember from last week that a fractional exponent is the root of a number). Roots, exponents and logarithms each solve for a different value of the base and exponent:
You can take a logarithm using any base but the most common bases are 10 (called the common logarithm or common log), base 2 (called the binary log) and base e (called the natural log). What is natural about using a letter as the base of a logarithm? Because the number e occurs often in nature, often used for finding the growth or decay of something. And yes, e is a number just like pi is a number...e is approximately equal to 2.718...like pi, e is irrational, it doesn't have an exact value.
Let's look at some examples:
Solving when given the base and exponent: 10^2 = x or 10 x 10 = 100, so 10^2 = 100
Solving for the base when given the exponent: x^2 = 100, you find the square root of both sides...the square root of x^2 = x and the square root of 100 is 10, so 10 = √100
Solving for the exponent when given the root: 10^x = 100...take the common log of both sides you get x = log 100. We can use a log table or a calculator and we'd find that x = 2, so 2 = log 100
Why is a root the same as a fractional exponent? If you remember from last week, a power raised to a power is just the 2 powers multiplied together: 10^2 = 100, now let's get the 10 on the left side alone, we can get rid of the 2 by raising it to the 1/2 power, since 2 x 1/2 = 1, and whatever we do to one side of the equation, we have to do to the other, so 10^2^(1/2) = 100^(1/2) or 10 = 100^(1/2) which means that √100 = 100^(1/2)
Looks like this blog post is a day late. Ever since I've started doing my Saturday morning meetings, my weekend schedule has been all messed up. I'll try to get better organized for next week.
All the news that's fit to wrap around a dead fish
The week in review
Monday - "90% will get this wrong" A math problem and a discussion of the order of operations. "I don't know if 90% of the people will actually get this wrong, but
that's the claim that was made on Facebook. From what I've seen, though,
is that most people do get it wrong."
Tuesday - "Hip 2b squared" A look at exponents. "What are exponents? Exponents are simply a shortcut for multiplication."
Wednesday - "Just a spoonful of creativity…" From my SendOutCards blog. A study recently published in the Journal of Positive Psychology
found that by doing one small creative task each day, participants
experienced more enthusiasm and energy in their lives. It didn’t matter
what they were doing or how well they did it, just as long as they took
the time to be a little creative daily."
Thursday - "A NAPKIN COMP PLAN EXAMPLE #TBT" How to share the SendOutCards comp plan. "This is the transcript from a call that my SendOutCards upline, and number one earner, Jordan Adler did a couple of weeks ago."
Here is a post from this time last year. I think I'm going to modify it slightly and start using it in my weekly presentations.
This is the transcript from a call that my SendOutCards upline, and number one earner, Jordan Adler did a couple of weeks ago.
Even
though Jordan is in SendOutCards, he has years of experience in the
industry and even though this was a SOC specific call, most of this
should be usable by anyone in network marketing...all you have to do is
change the numbers in the compensation plan.
I like the
simplicity of this presentation. SendOutCards has something they call
the MPP (Mobile Pocket Presentation), which is the suggested way to
present SOC. Even though I've used the MPP (which is a deck of cards
showing how to make money), I like this better.
April 4th, 2016
If you were going to take a trip across the country, you could choose
from any one of a variety of transportation methods. You could drive a
car. You could take a train or a bus. You could book a flight. It may take
awhile but you could even walk. The goal is to get to your destination,
but there
are many vehicles that could get you there.
The same holds true with showing your business. Sometimes you just
need to be flexible based on the circumstances that you find yourself
in. Sometimes you are showing the business to someone that is in your town.
Sometimes they live in another state. Sometimes you have 30 minutes with
them . . . sometimes only 5 (although I recommend getting a commitment
for 30 minutes). Sometimes you have access to the internet and sometimes
you don’t. As an entrepreneur, you’ll need to sometimes think on your
feet and come up with the best possible option for showing the business.
Let’s say your desired destination is to show the business to a new
potential customer or distributor. You have built up some rapport and
told them how and why you got involved in the business. You have demo’d
the app (you put a selfie on a card and sent it to them with a nice note
and some brownies and they watched you do it!). You have gone over the
options including the packages with them. Now it comes time to show the
money and they tell you they want to see how we get paid. The internet
is being flakey so you can’t show a video and you forgot your mobile
pocket presentation. Remember you have already demo’d the app and gone
over the subscription and the packages.
At this point you need to think fast! So you grab couple of cocktail
napkins from the table you are both sitting at and pull out your pen.
At
the top you write, PACKAGES. Then right below that you put
PERSONAL BUNDLE $195 – $70 comm
MARKETING BUNDLE $395 – $140 comm
BUSINESS BUNDLE $795 – $280 Comm
Then you write SUBSCRIPTIONS AND POINTS 20% and explain that they make
20% of all points purchased including subscription points.
Then you go to a second cocktail napkin.
Here is where we are going to give a very simple comp plan example.
I
start by asking, “HOW MANY FB FRIENDS DO YOU HAVE?” Then I have them
google on their phone, “Average # of FB Friends” and have them tell me
what the average # of FB friends a person has. The # is approximately
330.
WRITE THE NUMBER 300 AT THE TOP OF THE NAPKIN.
I tell them that we have a very simple 2 step texting strategy where we can private inbox people with 2 simple texts that work.
I show them the texts.
TEXT
#1: ________, I want to set up a time to show you something really cool
that I think has big potential. (If they ask, “What is it?” send TEXT
#2)
TEXT #2: It’s a new technology I need to show you
on your computer or on your phone. When can I catch you uninterrupted
for 30 minutes so I can show you?
(This is not spam. You are personally inviting people to take a look one by one)
And I ask them this important question . . .
If
we sent these texts to 300 people and showed them what I have shown
you, how many of the 300 do you think would do this? They will usually
say ’10’. I then say . . . “Let’s use 5".
So then NUMBER YOUR NAPKIN DOWN THE SIDE FROM 1-7 REPRESENTING THE 7 LEVELS. WRITE ‘5’ NEXT TO LEVEL ONE.
And
then say, “Now each person has an average of 300 fb friends so let’s
assume each of the five also have 300 and that 5 of the 300 that receive
our texts get started.” Write 25 on level 2.
Then write 125 on level 3. Let’s carry this down through 7 levels. Write
625 on level 4 and 3,125 on level 5. Then write 15,625 on level 6 and
78,125 on level 7.
At this point I say, “If we add all of these distributors up, we come
up with about 100,000 distributors. Just to be real conservative, let’s just assume that 90% of this doesn’t work out.
DRAW A LINE UNDERNEATH THE 100,000 TOTAL AND WRITE 10,000 DIST
Then I write under the 10,000 x3 to represent 3 customers per distributor. So it looks like this:
10,000 (10% OF 100,000)
X3 CUSTOMERS
30,000 CUSTOMERS
So the total distributor (10,000) and customer (30,000) count is 40,000 users (write this)
I now tell them that most people do the $39/mo subscription so they can lock in the
lowest retail price but to be ultra conservative let’s say the average customer spends
$10 a month on cards and gifts.
Underneath the 40,000 users , write $10/mo
The total volume produced by the 40,000 users spending $10 a month is $400,000/mo.
Our residuals range from 2% (lowest amount we pay) to 25% (Highest amount we pay). Let’s use 2%. Tell them this.
Ask them, “How much is 2% of $400,000?”
When they say $8000/mo
Tell them . . . this is a residual check that comes in month after month, year after year.
We
are assuming that 5 of each persons 300 FB friends get involved and
that only 10% of that actually happens. We are also using the lowest
percentage that SendOutCards pays out (2%). You can run your own numbers
but this is just an example.
This is a quick and easy way to show someone how the upfront commissions and residuals work.
If
you want to sketch something out, this is just an example. If you don’t
have a mobile pocket presentation handy or if your internet is giving
you troubles. you can try this.
I wanted to remind you
that I built my SendOutCards business to 40,000 distributors without
ever talking about the compensation. I built it solely on the power of
our product and the excitement of our distributors wanting to share it
with others. The compensation was the by-product of doing this. The comp
plan was available to learn about on the DVD, but I didn’t teach it or
talk about it in my presentations. Ever. And we still grew!
We have so many great tools today to show the program and the money. And they work.
I
was having a conversation with Kody (Bateman, CEO of SOC) last week and
he suggested that he believes our packages are strong enough now that
we may not even need to show the money AND PEOPLE WILL STILL SIGN UP FOR
A PACKAGE AND FOR THE DISTRIBUTOR OPTION. I tend to agree with him. But
they might get even more excited if we show them how they can make some
money.
Follow the steps of the APA (Ask-Present-Ask)
to make sure all of your bases are covered. When you get to “Show the
Money” you can use this as an option to explain how we get paid.
Don’t
ever let an obstacle get in the way of what you are trying to do. Be an
entrepreneur. Know your outcome and do the best you can. For example,
let’s say you get half way through your presentation and the person gets
a phone call with something that has to be taken care of right away.
But they tell you they are very interested. What will you do?
If
they are truly interested they will follow through when you reconnect
with them. I probably would send them a video or audio from www.thecoolbuzz.com
and ask them to listen to it. Or I’ll
invite them to the conference call on Monday night and three way them
in. Keep in mind they have a card and a gift that will arrive in the
next few days. The follow up is in place!
Now you have a very simple way to show the money with just a pen and a couple of cocktail napkins. Nothing can stop you!
Here is the recording for the actual call (It takes a few minutes for the recording to start).
I
still don't think it's a coincidence that the letter V is di-di-di-dah
in Morse code...just listen to Beethoven's Fifth (V in Roman numerals)
Symphony.
A study recently published in the Journal of Positive Psychology
found that by doing one small creative task each day, participants
experienced more enthusiasm and energy in their lives. It didn’t matter
what they were doing or how well they did it, just as long as they took
the time to be a little creative daily.
“Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.” – Bill Moyers
Each of us has the ability to be creative and make something new.
Using that energy to create lifts us out of our everyday lives and helps
us to express who we are and what we feel. That’s why it’s so important
to practice and why we should all seek a little creativity in our
lives. Need a few ideas?
Doodle every day for at least ten minutes.
Free write each morning – whatever comes to your mind.
Get
out some play dough, paint or crayons and have fun with the kids. Kids
are great at being creative and showing us adults how fun it can be.
Just follow their lead and you’ll be busy in no time!
Take up a new art hobby like painting, photography or sculpting.
Arrange your furniture in new and fun ways.
Celebrate fun or unique holidays throughout the year in different ways.
Bake or cook something you have never tried before and don’t worry about how it turns out.
Sing a song or play an instrument each day.
Take silly pictures and write funny captions for them with your family.
Do a sketch or skit with your family.
Make your own greeting cards for any occasion you want.
There are so many other ideas you can add to your list. You can pick
one to try for awhile or do a different one each day. All that matters
is that each day you put a little time aside to cast off your worries
and responsibilities and enjoy the freedom to create!
Yesterday we talked about the order of operations, and today we're going to talk about exponents, roots and maybe even logarithms (gasp!). And more importantly, we'll talk about the laws of exponents and show you why any number raised to the zeroth power is always one. Or is it?
What are exponents? Exponents are simply a shortcut for multiplication. From Wikipedia:
Exponentiation is a mathematicaloperation, written as bn, involving two numbers, the baseb and the exponentn. When n is a positive integer, exponentiation corresponds to repeated multiplication of the base: that is, bn is the product of multiplying n bases:
In that case, bn is called the n-th power of b, or b raised to the power n.
The exponent is usually shown as a superscript to the right of the base. Some common exponents have their own names: the exponent 2 (or 2nd power) is called the square of b (b2) or b squared; the exponent 3 (or 3rd power) is called the cube of b (b3) or b cubed. The exponent −1 of b, or 1 / b, is called the reciprocal of b.
When n is a positive integer and b is not zero, b−n is naturally defined as 1/bn, preserving the property bn × bm = bn + m.
Since I'm not able to create superscripts I will use the caret (^) to represent exponentiation, such as b^n.
So 2^2 (or two squared...who remembers playing 2 square and 4 square as a kid? How about 9 square?) which is the same as 2 x 2 or 4, 5^3 (five cubed) is 5 x 5 x 5 or 125, 3^9 is 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 (which is a lot!) but according to the calculator in my trusty iPhone 5c the answer is 19,683.
For those of you who hate algebra, you just had a taste of it in the excerpt from Wikipedia: bn
simply means any number can be used as the base such as 2 or 3 or 5 in my examples and any other number can be used as the exponent like 2 or 3 or 9. The letter b makes sense as the base, while n is often used to stand for a number. The superscript e may have made more sense to stand for exponent but the letter e actually stands for a very specific number (2.7182818...). The number e is actually very important and we'll talk about it a little later.
There are certain rules, or laws, that apply to exponents. They'll make sense as we look at them. This table is from Math is Fun.
In the first example, anything to the 1st power is that number. It makes sense if you remember that the exponent tells how many of the base number to write down, putting a multiplication sign in between each one, Since there is only one, there is no multiplication sign.
In the second example, any number raised to the zeroth power (yes, that's a word) is equal to one. We'll show you why in a few minutes.
The 3rd rule is just a special case for the last law before Fractional Exponents, we'll discuss them both then.
Check out this table from Math is Fun:
The first three laws above (x1 = x, x0 = 1 and x-1 = 1/x) are just part of the natural sequence of exponents. Have a look at this:
Example: Powers of 5
.. etc..
52
1 × 5 × 5
25
51
1 × 5
5
50
1
1
5-1
1 ÷ 5
0.2
5-2
1 ÷ 5 ÷ 5
0.04
.. etc..
Look at that table for a while ... notice that positive, zero or
negative exponents are really part of the same pattern, i.e. 5 times
larger (or 5 times smaller) depending on whether the exponent gets
larger (or smaller).
When you multiply 2 numbers with the same base, you simply add the exponents: x^2 * x^3 = x^2+3 or x^5. Let's write it out and see...x * x (*) x * x * x = x^5. For example: 2^2 * 2^3 = 4 * 8 = 32, which is what 2^5 equals.
When you divide 2 numbers with the same base, you simply subtract the
exponents: x^6 / x^2 = x^6-2 or x^4. For example: 2^6 / 2^2 = 64 / 4 = 16, which is what
2^4 equals.
Now we can show how a number raised to the zeroth power equals 1. We all know that any number divided by itself equals 1...such as 4 / 4 = 1. Let's write this as exponents and use the rule to subtract exponents when dividing. 4 / 4 can also be written as 2^2 / 2^2 which is still equal to 1. Now if we subtract the exponents we get 0, so 2^0 = 1, This applies to any number, except maybe zero...zero is kind of strange. According to the rule above, any number raised to the zero power is 1...and some people agree that this is the definition of zero to the zero power. And most software also gives the answer as 1...including my phone.
But we also know that 0 raised to any power is 0, and some people agree with that as the definition of zero to the zero power. Which also makes sense. But if we use the fractional method above, we get 0^0 / 0^0, which is undefined since you can't divide by zero. So, what is the answer? Nobody agrees, although some say it depends on context.
The next rule says that if you raise a power to a power, you multiply the powers together. (x^2)^3 = x^2*3, which equals x^6. Let's use a base of 2...(2^2)^3 = 4^3 which is 64, which is the same as 2^6.
Next is 2 numbers multiplied together and then raised to a power (in algebra, when 2 or more letters are written right next to each other, that means they are multiplied together). (xy)^3 is the same as x^3 * y^3. Let's pretend that x = 2 and y = 3, so (2 * 3)^3 is 6^3 (remember PEMDAS from yesterday) or 216. How about 2^3 * 3^3? We have 8 * 27 or 216!
The next one is the same thing, but with division, so I won't go through it.
The next to last one says that a negative exponent means the reciprocal of the number. x^(-3) is 1/x^3. For example, 2^(-3) = 1 / 2^3 or 1/8. Let's use our division law...we have 1/8, or as exponents we have 2^0 / 2^3 (remember we can only divide if they are the same base and 2^0 is 1). Subtracting 3 from 0, we get -3, so 2^(-3) = 1 / 2^3.
And the very last one shows what we do with fractional exponents. These are a combination of powers and roots. I thought we would talk about roots today, but this article is getting too long. Maybe I'll talk about them next week (I have something else planned for tomorrow)...but this example shows that x^(2/3) is equal to the 3rd root of x and the whole thing is then squared. Let's use a base of 8 this time, so the numbers work out better...8^(2/3) is equal to the 3rd root of 8, which is 2, square that which is 4. Next week, I'll show why fractional exponents means to take the root of a number (and I'll tell what roots are).
Posts
The above would be spoken as "the third root of 64 is 4" or "the cube root of 64 is 4".
