Welcome… and thank you.

Thank you for investing your time Time is that most valuable of all resources. I hope that in sharing my network marketing experience, you are able to eliminate weeks, months and possibly even years of frustration that so many people unnecessarily go through in pursuit of success.

As I sat thinking about the path I've taken, so many personal memories of tears, trials and triumph come to mind. I'm sure that you can relate at least to some degree. But you are not here to hear about the pain, frustration and at times downright heartache that are a part of my past failure.

You are here to learn exactly how I've securely ensured that these situations will stay past tense.

Of the hundreds of different paths that could have lead you to me right now, inevitably your guiding force has been a burning desire to achieve a level of success somewhere beyond your current state. If this is the case, then you are in the right place my friend.

By sharing the elements and concepts that lead to my success, I'm hope that you will gather the missing pieces keeping you from yours.

At some point, maybe our paths will cross and we can toast to the freedom and lifestyle that network marketing has afforded us!

Are you in one of these two situations?

Situation #1: You're new to network marketing. Maybe you just got started or possibly you are still in the evaluation stage.

Situation #2: You've been a little (or a lot) banged up by network marketing. You may have six months or six years experience in the industry but either way you feel like a veteran that's on leave from a war you're not winning.

If the answer is yes to either one of these situations, I believe the next few minutes of your time will be extremely well invested.

The only secret to success I know holds true is to learn from the mistakes of others and your own. One thing I can assure you is that I've made every mistake on the books so get ready!

My start in network marketing came in a most unusual way. It wasn't a family member, friend, co-worker or any other type of word of mouth referral.

I received a letter in the mail!

This direct marketing letter touting a new fangled air purifier machine destined to become as popular an appliance as the microwave. Something resonated with me and I called, listened to 3 minutes of people testifying to the product and business then left my contact info for somebody to call me back.

Then I waited. I waited for 2 days, no call. I called again.

This time somebody called back and after hearing this person stumble (quite obviously) through a script I think out of pure pity I bought an evaluation purifier. I went on to buy into the business for about $2,500.

As a junior in college this was more than beer money I was risking!

It wasn't the product so much that I was attracted to as it was the “system”. Touted as a remote control duplication machine, I'd never need to contact or recruit family or friends. All I had to do was duplicate the same advertising process that brought me in.

Boy this sounded great because as a college student I had very little influence and even less confidence.

I would go on to spend 4 years there and in the process become the youngest person to qualify for two bonus cars and reach the second highest rank in a 10+ year old company which at the time only had about 25 people at that level.

Honestly I didn't do anything special. I was a bulldog and I refused to give up. Having tapped my savings at one point I even resorted to taking a paper route to keep the cash flow going.

I was regularly spending $500+ PER MONTH on leads. It's all we were taught and all we knew.

“Leads are like toilette paper” was the rally cry. Wow I sure don't want to run out of that! At $4-6 dollars a piece for internet leads and $25-50 for direct mail leads that's some expensive toilette paper!

These 4 years were good to me; unfortunately I was the ONLY one they were good to. As the numbers (people) began to stack up my conscience began to weigh heavy.

The boiling point came when a personal distributor of mine committed suicide. Yes you read that right, and I know for a fact that the debt he was creating from leads had a lot to do with it.

I had more distributors achieve bankruptcy than a $1,000 per month income.

I'm bull-headed by nature so it took something as drastic as a distributor suicide to knock some sense into me. From that point on I vowed to never again promote a business or system that set people up for failure. I knew there had to be a way to do this right without hurting people.

Little did I realize that my quest at this point had just begun.

I had to pretty much throw out everything I was ever taught at this point. Not realizing that there were other ways of utilizing the internet to effectively build a network marketing business, I dumped everything and went “old school”.

My focus was on residual income so I wanted to find a good consumable product with a fair comp plan that did not reward front-end loading like my last venture. I decide to start with a nutritional juice company that had been experiencing momentum for several years and in less than 60 days I hit the "big rank" that everyone dreams of.

My timing was a bit off on the company. It had already gone through its momentum run, so I did not make as much money this go around, BUT I was also NOT responsible for a single “failure story”.

This was a step in the right direction anyway.

From start to finish, my network marketing career has included stints with nearly every type of compensation plan, every type of business building system and all the product types available.

My 4 Biggest Mistakes in Network Marketing:

1. The basic building block of your business MUST be driven by word of mouth marketing.

I've wasted more money on systems and leads than I care to remember. Yes I've found great people through leads but the risk/reward ratio is so far out of whack with leads you are destined to hurt your team if this is your primary building block. Because of the need for word of mouth, the first qualifier I look for in a company is a product that lends itself to natural word of mouth promotion. I joined my first MLM because of “the system”, and it took me 4 long years to realize that mistake. Every ounce of my income was dependent on “the system” and the instant I stopped so did my income.

2. Build as many relationships with people outside your team and in other companies as possible.

Only on hindsight did I realize that my best personal recruits in every company have come from network marketers themselves. The reality is that most people in network marketing do not stay with the same company forever. This includes you, your downline, your upline, your prospects and every current network marketer on the planet. Timing is everything, are you going to be the one they turn to when the time is right?

3. DO NOT make a rush decision to join a network marketing opportunity.

I've found that the best prospects take time to attract. They do their homework and really evaluate the product, the company, the systems and most importantly they evaluate their potential sponsor. All opportunities are not created equal. Be sure that you are not going to be fighting an uphill battle to build your business. Once you do make the decision to pull the trigger, don't look back – period.

4. If you are in a company or using a system that is not working and you would not start it over again knowing what you now know, then quit doing it - IMMEDIATELY.

Re-evaluate and take a new course or quit it all together. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. This being said, do you meet the definition of insanity? There are plenty of great companies and methods out there that work, there is no reason to drive yourself into your own grave and not at least enjoy the view along the way.

While there are hundreds of other learning experiences that have shaped my network marketing career, these are the standouts that I hope you can gain some insight from.

One of the age-old rules that I am the biggest backer of is to never be actively working multiple network marketing programs at the same time. It is hard enough to handle everything required to build one business, very few people can handle multiples at a time.

Every time I've violated that rule it's come back to haunt me.

On the other hand, I have seen good people that had to try their hand at several opportunities before finding the right one. Traditional wisdom would say that it's the person, not the company, that accounts for success. I also believed this until I witnessed firsthand several folks, who were previous network marketing failures, change companies and become very successful.

Not everyone can be “molded” into one opportunity. What makes us different makes us great.

I am not one of those company puppets that believes my one single opportunity is the greatest opportunity in the history of free enterprise. What I do believe is that for the average person, network marketing is the greatest opportunity in the history of free enterprise. Right now my efforts and my focus are all in one company. Unfortunately my one company is very geographically restrictive so if you are shopping for a company and mine does not seem like a good fit, I'd love to point you in the direction of a good upline elseware.

As for my company, here it is...

Ambit Energy is the first of the last as I like to put it. Ambit is a company capitalizing on the deregulation of energy (electricity & natural gas) currently taking place in America and throughout the world.

Facts that attracted me to Ambit Energy:

You WILL pay a utility bill EVERY month for the rest of your natural life, period. Utilities are about as residual a product/service as it gets.

Ambit guarantee's savings and rewards loyalty customers for paying on time with free cruises and other travel incentives. This loyal solidifies your residual income by ensuring customers stick with you.

Our dependency on energy is not likely to change and this is an service industry in which technology cannot drive to extinction, thus ensuring an opportunity that will always be there

Compensation plan is solid with rock solid residual and extremely lucrative up front bonuses as well.

The only downfall to Ambit Energy is that Texas, New York, Illinois and Ohio are currently the only three states where the service is available. Unlike the deregulation of telecom which happened nationwide all at once, energy is a different animal and the process takes place on a state by state basis. Beyond our current three states we are looking at expanding into another six states by the end of 2009.

I've decided to sink 100% of my efforts into this business despite its geographical restriction primarily because of the scope of the long term potential that the deregulation of energy represents. If you are interested in the opportunities that the deregulation of energy may hold, feel free to drop me a call, email or check out my website at www.EnergyGoldRush.com.

Whether or not we ever have the fortune meeting or working together, I hope that my experiences and hard lessons learned have been of value to you. If there is anything specific that you would like my input on, feel free to give me shout @ 210-232-6032 or shoot over an email to yoda@mlmjedimaster.com. Also be sure to check out my in the trenches network marketing blog.

Wishing you success in all your endeavors,

Shawn Cornett

210-232-6032
yoda@mlmjedimaster.com
Skype: mach2_on_fire

P.S. For some great network marketing training, go get a free copy of my MLM Training Manual.