Popping the MLM Hype Bubble

“Tom” wrote Mike Dillard on his “Ask Mike” series. Tom is frustrated and tired of the crap and hype that his upline has given him.
You can watch the video at the following url here

Tom is very frustrated and doesn’t know what to do next. I know that this is common in the industry. I’ve been there too. You are invited to a meeting, you see someone up on stage telling you their story. You fall in love with the dream and picture yourself up there too. You do everything that your upline tells you and yet no results.

During the episode Mike Dillard makes a profound statement: “[that network marketing is] an industry of marketing and promotion pursued by people who don’t know how to market and promote.” My question is how can we change that? The simplest answer is to teach people how to market properly. There are many different ways to market, with marketing on the internet being only one way. The biggest reason why attraction marketing is not taught is that it isn’t duplicable and mlm companies want to have a system that is duplicable. Yet, if most people in the industry are failing, why would you want to follow them?

Mike Dillard during his reply to “Tom” advises him to be responsible for his actions. Yes you need to take responsibility for your actions because it is your business. No one will build your business for you. It is unfortunate that some uplines tell their downline dumbed down marketing techniques and don’t tell you the whole story. For example, that they spent the first 7 years in the industry, struggling and broke while building their network. Then, with a big network, the opportunity comes to start with a new mlm company, they get in touch with their network and voila, the one who struggled so much for seven years is suddenly an overnight success.

One thing that is my pet peeve, is all the hype. Join our company, you’ll make x thousands of dollars overnight. They just want to get the “sign up.” For those who have a lottery mentality by joining the mlm industry, it’s not going to happen and then they quit and become frustrated and join company after company, hoping that one day, they will come across a company that will be a “magic pill.” and solve all of their financial problems. It doesn’t work that way. MLM is a business model that a company uses to market their products. They need individual sales reps to go out and teach others how to market and buy the products. The size of your network is your net worth is so true to those in network marketing. Because you build a network of people to market your products or services to. With Magnetic sponsoring, when you buy the ebook, there are some bonus material included with it. One of the bonuses that I really like is a list of interview questions to ask a potential lead who is interested in building the business. That’s why you need to qualify your leads and ask them questions to find out where they stand. such as why they want to start a home-based business, do they have previous experience in the industry, what are their expectations? If you find out a person’s motivations, then you can truly help them.

Purchase Magnetic Sponsoring

To Your Success

Joanne Brownlee

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Old vs New School of Network Marketing: Combining both methods

The old school techniques of network marketing, making your Top 100 list of family and friends, three foot rule, cold calling, presentations, telling your leads that your company is the be all end all solution to their problems. Handing out flyers, passing out materials. Three-way calling with your upline. Everyone is your prospect. These methods were taught because they were the only prospecting methods available. Mlm businesses have been build this way. The fact is for the average distributor, with you doing the prospecting and sorting, there is not enough time in the day to build a significant downline. People in mlm who have build massive downlines using the old way of network marketing, had some sort of system in place to sort prospects, which takes money to implement. They also network with other network marketers and keep in touch with these people. They do build relationships and spend years networking with their target market. They when the opportunity presents itself, they contact their list and seem to be an overnight success in company XYZ. What is not told to the major of distributors is that the “superstars” have spent years of work, networking and relationship building. These methods are still taught today because they have been successful and the company wants a ‘”duplicable” system to be taught to new distributors. The fact is that most of distributors are failing because of lack of marketing techniques and a marketing strategy. When was your last mlm training talking about developing your marketing plan?

The new school way of network marketing. Positioning yourself as an expert, selling through teaching, presenting information and value first, building relationships.
You can generate leads online. Some who sign up won’t want to learn how to build a business online. By asking qualifying questions, you can meet them where they stand and teach them how to do online, offline approaches, and a mix between the two. This is effective because you are still doing the things that will propel your business forward. The main activity is to connect with people everyday. Use the principles of attraction marketing when you approach people. Instead of pitching and pushing your business, find out what their needs are. In mlm presentations, this is called finding their “hot button.” What motivates a person? What is causing them so much pain that they will do something about it. Of course you will run across those who complain about this and that, but will not do anything about it because they don’t believe that they can do anything about it.

Now imagine that you sponsor reps who do a variety of different approaches, online marketing, offline marketing and a crossover between the two. Like posting on Facebook, Twitter or Youtube. Using a variety of different techniques, you will always be in building business mode because it takes time to establish an online presence and to get your content ranked high on Google.

If you yourself were at an event where you could network, such as a seminar or financial literacy workshop, you can apply the techniques of attraction marketing, collect business cards and stay in touch with people. Whatever your target market is, always keep that in mind when talking with others. Yes, the waitress at the restaurant might join under you, but maybe as a customer only. People will only be motivated to action if they think that it’s there idea and if the pain is too great and then they will change.

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Insider Secret to Generating Website Traffic

I know that this is the most biggest question on people’s minds. For those who post content, whether at a blog, Squidoo lens, Hubpages, or a document sharing site, you want to know how to get more eyeballs on your content. Search engine optimization (SEO) keyword research is very important. You need to know exactly what type of words and phrases people are typing into the search engine. Google frowns upon keyword stuffing, which is filling your content full of keywords. That’s another post in itself.

You have really good keywords that have a good number of hits not too small and not too big. About the content, how to create really great content. First before you create it, what is the purpose of the content. Begin with the end goal in mind.

Do you want your reader to opt-in to a mailing list? Or purchase an affiliate product that you are promoting? Or if you are doing coaching of some sort, do you want the reader to call you? Or do you want the reader to click through to another site such as your blog?
A side note that if you post content on Squidoo or Hubpages, they have strict rules about outgoing links and such, so read up on the rules and policies that they have or your account will be banned. You can make money too with Squidoo and Hubpages, check their sites for more details.

Choose one category from the above list as the end goal in mind. It will help keep you focused. If you try to do everything with a post, it won’t be as focused. With your content, you always want to lead with value and to write about something that you are passionate about. Posting content daily to generate traffic and leads can be tedious. If you’re writing about something that you love, it will make the time fly by and it won’t seem like work. You may have heard the phrase “fall in love with the process.” This is a process and it takes time, work and perseverance. Remember that you are working for you, not some boss that you answer to. Success is your boss.

To Your Success
Joanne Brownlee

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Differences between Selling and Networking in MLM

I posted earlier about why network marketers fail. I want to expand more upon the reason #1 people fail in network marketing which is lack of training. I’m going to explain the difference between selling and networking. Most people are taught how to sell and not to network and build rapport which builds trust. Successful business people network.

“The size of your network determines your net worth.” unknown

The aspects of a sales person are that they book an appointment, there may or may not be a flip chart involved in which they pitch the product or business. The sales person talks about the features and benefits of the product or service offered. They are trained to handle objections. Their goal is to leave with a signed contract and in most cases there is only one presentation done. Most mlm companies have marketing materials and videos geared towards this type of presentation, the flip charts, brochures, etc. Pushing your products this way turns people off. MLM companies have high quality products. Some people don’t see the value in the products or service and say that they can go to a big box store and get the same type of product for half the price.

Networking on the other hand has a much different approach than a sales person. A networker will build rapport, finding things in common. A networker will share a testimonial with passion and conviction and then be silent to let the effect of the testimonial sink into the audience. A networker asks qualifying questions to fina a need or “hot button.” When it comes to presentations, someone other than the networker will do the presentation and someone else from the team will validate the business model. Leveraging someone else’s story and credibility is critical when you first start out in the mlm business because you don’t have a success story, yet. Lastly, multiple connections and exposures are needed to sign up someone in your business. Here are some interesting statistics from the Direct Sales Association, which is the national association that governs the direct selling industry (if your mlm company is reputable, they will be part of the DSA)

2% of people will enroll on first exposure
3% of people will enroll on second exposure
5% of people will enroll on third exposure
10% of people will enroll on fourth exposure
80% of people will enroll on 5th to 12th exposure

As per the statistics above, multiple exposures are required for someone to enroll in your mlm company. So many people fail in network marketing because they are taught how to sell and not to network. When was the last time your upline told you to go and network with more people? Networking with people is essential to growing your network. Now you can network with people and still try to pitch your deal. Asking qualifying questions such as if they’d owned a business before or how are they building their business are essential because then you can address urgent problems that they have by providing solutions to their problems. If you were talking to someone and they were struggling in their business and you pointed to an ebook or a video that offered free training on how to generate more quality leads, you show yourself as a leader and someone who cares. Networking is building trust and rapport. Yes we are in a business to make money. However, networking comes first because people buy from someone that they like and trust.

Most people fail in networking marketing because they are trying to sell their product without building rapport and trust. Networking is a more involved process and more rewarding because you provide value and information to others first and then sales come later.

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Why People Fail in Network Marketing

You’re introduction into network marketing might look something like this.  You are invited into a meeting at a local hotel.  The room is packed with hundreds of people.  There is a speaker onstage they are telling stories about how the network marketing industry has changed their lives.  They are financial free, they are staying home with their kids and living the dream.  You see the opportunity too.  You think that that could be me, standing on stage and sharing your story.  You have very excited, you make your list of 100 people.  You tell everyone how great your company is and how incredible their product is.  Everyone you know says no and you are prospecting to everyone within 3 feet of you.  You are soon a member of the NFL club, no friends left.  Your family avoids your phone calls because they don’t want to listen to you pitch your deal anymore.  At the end of it, you are broke and frustrated.  What went wrong? You did everything you were told to do and it should have worked like magic.  Right?

Sound familiar?

People do succeed in network marketing.  However 99% of the time, your upline will tell you marketing methods that are outdated and will not teach you about how to properly market their business.  Has your upline ever asked you what your target market is? And the answer is not “anyone that will fog a mirror.”  Do you want to know the secret to how the heavy hitters have done it?  Here it is:

They network with people who are other network marketers at events.  They collect business cards and then keep in touch with those who are successful in building a business.  Then when the opportunity comes for joining a new company, they call those people up.  The heavy hitters have a big rolodex on their desk of names of people they can call.  The average time to do this is 3-5 years to build up their network of quality people.  Do you really think that the heavy hitters try to recruit their neighbor or uncle Bob who is an employee and is not interested in building a business?  Heavy hitters network with other business owners.  That’s why they appear to be such an overnight success when they join XYZ company.

The three main reasons why most people don’t succeed in network marketing is:

1) Lack of proper training
2) Lack of money
3) Lack of leads

Lack of Proper Training

In network marketing, you are a business owner.  The mindset is very different from that of being an employee.  Some qualities of a business owner is that YOU are responsible for your own success.  Self-motivated and self-starter, be willing to work hard to great the results that you want and to overcome challenges that are set in your path.  You work hard first, then get paid for it later.  It takes time for residual income to build up.  (Unless you happen to have a huge rolodex sitting on your desk full of business owners).  Yes it is important to have belief and confidence in yourself and a vision board and a “why that will make you cry.”  This are tools to help you to move forward.  They are such a fallback for telling the downline why you aren’t getting the results that you want.
Marketing – Businesses market to their customers and have their customers come to them.  Network marketing companies will not allow their distributors to put an ad out into the paper and say that they are working for such and such company.  When you market, you want to make yourself stand out from the crowd, what do you have to offer people that no one else can?  When doing marketing, you will need two marketing campaigns.  One is for your customers who will be consuming your product or service every month and the other one is for distributors.  People who want to be customers aren’t interested in building a business.  A customer might decide to become a distributor later.  When you market for other distributors market to business owners.  You will build your downline faster and be more stable for those who already have a business.  They know what it takes to succeed.  They won’t have a lottery mentality of rags to riches.

Lack of money

Funding a business takes a monthly budget.  A network marketing business is no different.  There’s your monthly auto ship to consider and your marketing budget.  If you market online, there are tools and training you buy to learn.  What if you could sell an information product to put funds into your pocket so that the business pays for itself?  This is part of the marketing funnel in the model of attraction marketing.  Selling a low-priced item to other network marketers about how to build a successful network marketing business covering the three reasons why people don’t succeed and how to overcome them.  It will pay for your marketing costs.  If you treat your business like a hobby, it will pay you like one.  If you treat it like a $1,000,000 business, it will pay you like one.

“Work full-time on your job, while you work part-time on your fortune” Jim Rohn

Lack of Leads

Leads are the life blood of any business.  Calling new quality leads will help to move your business forward.  If you market online, you can post content on a blog or post content on numerous free sites that are on the internet.  When posting content online, the article needs to be informative and have value.  Never pitch your product or service.  In the offline world, do a presentation on your company’s product without mentioning the company name or product line.  Or you can do a video and post it online.  The goal here is to get your target market’s attention and have them ask you for more information.  Position yourself as a leader and someone who is knowledgeable about the product that you sell and you won’t look like a salesman.  A consultant is knowledgeable and believes in their product.  

The secret of the heavy hitters is that they have huge networks of people who are qualified business owners.  If a network marketer leverages the power of the internet, a large network of people can be build.  You can find customers who will buy information products about how to build a successful business and you can also find leads for your network marketing business. 

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Seo Optimization Tips to Increase Traffic

Seo optimization is constantly changing and fluid. One thing an internet marketer can always count on is Google changing the rules in SEO. It can take awhile for your page to rank high on the search engines. There are some things that you can do to improve your ranking from the start.

keywords – research keywords thoroughly using free keyword tools: google, wordtracker, keyworddiscovery.com, good keywords v3, semrush, Kgen(firefox add on), nichebot classic. These are just some of the keyword tools that you can use. An interesting note with Kgen. If you use the Mozilla Firefox browser, the Kgen add is a tool that you can use. It will analyze a webpage and pick out the keywords for you. Keyword research is important as you can find out the exact phrases that people are looking for. If you use a keyword that only has 20 searches per month, then it’s not the best keyword to use. On the other hand, if a keyword search comes up with a million searches in a month, that’s not good either because the competition is fierce for the keyword. Keyword in your content is important, but also what you choose to name your website.

backlinks – post content to other sites like forums and comment on other blogs to get more backlinks and traffic, the quality of the backlink matters, less the quantity. Post on high trafficked, reputable sites. There are many forums you can participate in depending upon your niche and target market.
Backlinks from high quality sites such as Wikipedia, will gain you higher ranking with google because the search engines think that your site is very important. A note on buying backlinks. The quality is usually poor, if you do still want to, check the date and URL of the page it will be associated with in Google, if URL is older than a month, then it’s not worth it

In your blog, have a sitemap. It’s easier to be crawled and the text of the content is what matters the most, not the pictures. There are plugins for blogs that you can do a sitemap for your site. Publish great content that your niche market wants and they will come back for more. Search engines love blogs that are updated constantly. At the minimum twice a week. The new content will be crawled and include keywords in the text and title.

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Magnetic Sponsoring Review

If you are thinking of buying Mike Dillard’s Magnetic Sponsoring, stop and read this first.

For a mere $39 this ebook packs a lot of information in it. Magnetic Sponsoring is about revolutionary ideas about how to market your network marketing business like a true business owner. You can skip the home parties, hotel meetings and harassing your family and friends. The radical new idea that Mike Dillard talks about is attraction marketing. Attraction marketing is having prospects come to you, rather than you chasing them. This is done by increasing your
value to others and to the world. Magnetic Sponsoring first came out in 2005 and the information is relevant and timeless today because he talks about the mindset that needs to be developed to
be a successful business owner, the marketing funnel to set up to capture leads, and how you can get paid to prospect and cover marketing costs even though someone doesn’t join your
company.

The mindset for becoming a successful entrepreneur and business owner is much different from being an employee. Entrepreneurs are paid to solve other people’s problems. Successful
entrepreneurs are leaders. Leaders have posture, strong belief in themselves, and have a mindset of living in abundance. Having a strong belief leads to certain actions and behaviours. A
leader will continuously develop the skills needed to be successful. Reading Magnetic Sponsoring is not a be-all-end-all product. It is just the beginning of your education. Leaders will learn new information and take action. Leaders on focused on their goals and don’t let what others think of them stop them. You are a product of your environment. Your beliefs, income and social status are a reflection of the five people you are around the most. Going from being an employee to a business owner and experiencing success, there will be resistance from some others around you. If you want to be at a different place in your income and occupation, start
networking with others who are in a position that you want to be in. That’s who leaders are, they are positive and others want to be around them. When it comes to business, leaders leave their
emotions behind. A prospect didn’t show up for a meeting? Just another day. They made $1000 in their business. A distributor talks big but doesn’t do anything. It’s just another day of doing
business. There are lots of ups and downs in business and that’s a part of doing business. With developing the mindset of a leader, that’s the first part of developing your marketing funnel to
capture leads for your business.

By increasing your value and knowledge and presenting information first, you attract prospects to you instead of chasing down people. People don’t care about how great your mlm company is or
how great their product is. Then want to know how you can help them build their business. By selling a low-priced information product on the front end, you can pay or reduce the cost of your
marketing. A higher-priced information product in the middle of your funnel will put more cash in your pocket to fund your education and mlm auto ship. The last part is your mlm opportunity.
This creates the long-term residual income needed to sustain your business. By providing information products first, you build a relationship with your customers and it builds trust. People
buy from someone that they like and trust. By providing products that have nothing to do with your mlm opportunity, they fund your business by reaching a wider market. By marketing to other
network marketers and providing information on how to be a leader and generate free leads for their business, you are providing a solution to their problems. Lack of money and leads for their
business. Why target other network marketers? Because they are already in the industry and you don’t need to convince them of the benefits of network marketing or convince them that it’s
not a “pyramid scheme.”

Setting up the marketing funnel. There are five parts to the marketing funnel in total. The first part is a traffic and prospect generator. It could be blog entries, advertisements on the internet,
article marketing, or Facebook fan page. These are just some examples. By providing value and information you are positioning yourself as a leader and not just a salesman pitching your sale.
This will work 24/7 for you because you don’t have enough time in the day to shift and sort. Time is your most precious asset and can’t be renewed. By capturing their name and email address
(sometimes phone number), the prospect enters the second part of the marketing funnel. Through an email autoresponder, you provide more value and content for their benefit. If you have your lead’s phone number, calling them and connecting that way is excellent. The more
information we have at our fingertips, the more we crave human content and connection. Picking up the phone and calling someone instantly forges a stronger bond than email and Facebook
ever can. Successful leaders spend time on the phone with their prospects. While on the phone, the principles of attraction marketing still apply. Connect with your lead and find out their
problems and offer a solution. The third part of the marketing funnel is the cash register. It provides cash on autopilot to fund your marketing, not necessarily making a profit. This is where
you introduce the first and second information product to provide cash to keep your business going. The last part is your mlm opportunity. It is at the end because by this time, you will have
developed a relationship with your prospect and they like and trust you. This is where your leadership qualities will come strongly into play. The marketing funnel becomes highly efficient and effective when it’s automated. All you need to do is put content out there and have traffic find it through keyword rich content.

Mike Dillard’s Magnetic Sponsoring is an ebook with timeless information in it about how to position yourself as a leader, how to fund your business without sponsoring anyone into your mlm
opportunity and how to set up a marketing funnel to capture leads. Magnetic Sponsoring contains great information, however you are the key to your entire marketing system. Without taking action, you will always be where ever you are. There are testimonials in the beginning in the ebook and they are all from people who have taken action and have seen tremendous success in their business.

To buy a copy of the book, click here

To your Success,

Joanne Brownlee

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Why Having a Business Plan for Your MLM is Critical

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where….,” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
-Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

The above quote illustrates that if you don’t know where you are going, then any road will take you there.  Having a business plan is crucial to being successful in network marketing or any business in fact.  If you plan on developing a million dollar business, creating a plan and following it will get you there and focus your energy.  If you are struggling in network marketing and don’t know where to start, then read on.  Business plans are more than just plans for projecting finances and getting financing.  A network marketing business plan is a blueprint on where to focus your time, money and energy.

Time, Plan out how much time you can devote to your business daily.  Little action steps over time will cause a snow ball effect.  Time management is critical especially if you have a family and/or a full-time job as well.  When people get started with online marketing, it is so easy to get distracted doing blogging, Facebooking, creating videos, etc and not spending enough time on activities like to talking to your leads that you generate.  Pick one area you want to focus on and learn for example, getting traffic on Facebook or videos on Youtube.  Focus on that area until you get 10+ leads a day, then add another source.  Post one piece of content daily, whether it’s a blog post, article or video.  Once you have leads, then focus on connecting with them and then introduce them to your primary opportunity.

Money.  Set aside a certain amount of money for your marketing, whether it’s for pay per click or buying tools and ebooks to further your knowledge.  You need some type of budget.  Most if not all offline businesses expect to operate at a loss for one year.  For your online business, have money set aside for at least 6 months in case nobody joins your opportunity.  A note on buying tools.  You can easily spend thousands of dollars buying tools.  Buy tools that are specific and that will help you move your business forward.  Whether it’s learning how to drive traffic to your website or increasing your skills on the phone (if you can get your lead’s phone number it is a very good idea to call them and connect with them).

Knowledge.  Online marketing is a skill that can be learned just like anything else.  Remember that the network marketers who build massive downlines started where you are now.  They spent thousands of dollars on their education and thousands of dollars on coaching.  Why? To increase their knowledge and perfect skills.  Contribute to your knowledge everyday.  Look up the leaders in your industry.  Go to their blogs, read what they are writing about.  If you are part of an online marketing platform for network marketers, such as My Lead System Pro, find out who the top producers are. Find out what they are doing.  Success Leaves Clues, if you want to be success, find out how they did it and copy them.

Belief.  Work on your belief level.  Whether it’s reading positive thinking books or inspirational material, meditating or going for a walk outside.  Doing this business and sticking to it, till you meet your objectives and goals, is 95% belief.  It’s important to surround yourself in a positive environment, and network with like-minded people, especially if your family, friends, co-workers are not supportive of your new endeavor.  It takes courage to go against the grain of what others are doing.  So congratulations.

A business plan can be flexible and changed as you go along.  It’s important to review it at least once a month to see how your business is progressing and where you need to focus more attention.  When you develop a plan, you will be miles ahead of the other network marketers who don’t have one.

To your success.

Joanne Brownlee

Facebook Fanpage:  http://www.facebook.com/joannembrownlee

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How to get Traffic to Your Content

Ok you discover attraction marketing and post content to the internet.  Whether it’s from a blog, squidoo lens, or an article directory and you get very little response from the search engines.  There is one simple way to get your article picked up by the search engines.  Search engine optimization is putting keywords into the article itself and by tagging the article when you post it.  By using a free tool that Google provides you can instantly see how many people are searching for your key words and decide if it’s a good key word to use or not.

The keyword tool is located at this website:  http://adwords.google.com.  Put the keyword you want to research in the box.  Underneath it says “Only show ideas closely related to my search terms” click on the box to the left of the phrae.  Now, go over to the far left, under where it says “Match Types” click on Exact.  Those two boxes are clicked because it will be a more refined search, it shows results for the exact keywords that are typed in.  Underneath it will show a list of global searches and local area searches.  For local area searches, the default is set to the United States.

If the keyword search turns up with say 100 people searching for that word, then there won’t be much traffic for it, and you won’t get as many hits.  However, if the research turns up 200,000 then there is much competition for the keyword and it will be very challenging to get your page ranked with the search engines.

One more feature with the keyword tool.  Under the Match Type area, click on the box beside the term “Broad.” Click on the “Search” button and scroll down.  Google will give you addition keywords that are related to the keyword you typed in.  This is an excellent way to find other keywords that people are looking for to include in posts and tagging your content.  The keyword tool takes the guessing game out of how many people are looking for your content.  Keywords gives your content a laser focus to the search engines and to your niche.

To your success,

Joanne Brownlee

Facebook Fanpage:  http://www.facebook.com/joannembrownlee

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My blog

Greetings all,

Thank you for visiting my blog.  The purpose is to provide valuable information that I find about attraction marketing to people struggling to build their mlm businesses online.  There is a TON of information out there and thousands of opinions.  I know that you are frustrated, overwhelmed and confused.  I’ve found some exciting information that I would love to share for free.  Why? Because I believe in providing value to people, which is the first thing I learned about attraction marketing.

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