[Transcript starts at 0:40]
Hello, hello, hello, my podcast people. And thank you for joining me for yet another episode of my favorite online business podcast. If you're listening, tuning in, watching on the data drops, it is Monday, January 26th, welcome to the final, turn this mic up, welcome to the final week of January.
How, how, how, how. Let's move forward. Cause I am still like how, uh, so today's, uh, today's episode is honestly for folks who are, in my opinion, it's for folks who are newer to the online space, which maybe isn't new, but in my opinion needs to be said.
And I want this resource to exist in, you know, within my content. So here we are. All right.
But before we jump on into that, actually today's topic is going to be is online business, just an MLM. But before we jump into that few quick biz life updates and then into the main topic. So biz updates first, only got one for you this week, the data drops currently enrolling for press publish.
For those of you that don't know, press publish is my eight weeks, super small group coaching program that comes with a 100% guarantee that you will launch your pockets. Just follow what I say to do. You'll launch it.
I promise. Uh, you can check out the registration has all the deets, all the info, all the testimonials. We will link that in the show notes.
Thank you, Courtney. Thank you, Jojo. Uh, registration closes this Friday.
What is that date? That's going to be the 30th. And then we have our first call next Tuesday, February 3rd at 2 PM PST or PT. I don't even, I never know standard, whatever D I just say PT easier.
Um, the program press publish, it is an eight week live program. There's eight weeks, eight calls, one call every week. It's at us on Tuesdays at 2 PM Pacific.
And that is how I can guarantee that you'll launch your shit. Cause you're not doing it on your own. I know people need accountability.
It's a little scary to start off with. They don't know the tech. I'm right there with you holding your hand.
You will get it launched. I promise. So if you want to start talking on your podcast, instead of just talking about your podcast, I got you.
Yeah. Questions hit me up, but the link will be in the show notes. You can check that out.
And remember registration closes this Friday. So make moves. Okay.
All right. Life updates. Really only one there.
Community is everything. Uh, Steph came, Steph Hine of Hine Farms came to stay with us last week. Um, the day that I'm recording this, she's actually still here.
Uh, but by the time that this drops, she'll be, she'll be gone. Um, JPB also came into town. Um, I've had both of them.
I believe on the podcast. Um, right now as I'm saying that I'm like, I don't know if I've had JPB. I think I have had her on, but if I haven't, then I need to, I gotta start bringing the guests back at some point, but, uh, dinner with them and also Beth Dreyer and Erica Sapia, all folks in the mafia, all folks that I initially met online, um, actually I met JPB in person first, um, but community is the foundation for the antidote for everything that's going on right now in the United States, all of this bullshit that's going on, community is the foundation to solving it, right? It's caring about people.
It's having people who care about you. It is not always convenient, right? And it won't always be on your own time and your own terms, right? Being a villager or having a village means being a villager and being a villager isn't always convenient, but it's fucking worth it and it's what's going to save us, right? So if you have the opportunity to lean into community, say yes. All right.
Someone asked to do something, say yes. If you don't have the opportunity, say yes, then create it, invite people to do things, whatever it is. I actually, um, Jackie Fenton, she sent a thing in the beginning of the year of like, it's not, instead of doing New Year's resolutions or anything like that, it was like an action item that she wanted for this year, which is to have like a monthly dinner and invite different people.
And she had read about it in some publication and it's, it's awesome. I was like, I think the people in the publication did it every week. I might, might have been, which is wild.
That's a huge commitment. Um, but she's like, I want to do it every month and have someone invite people over. I fucking love that, right? If you don't have the opportunity to say yes, or even if you do still go and create that opportunity, go and invite people to do things, community is, it is the foundation for the antidote for all of this shit that we are in, right? It's the foundation for getting out of this.
So switching gears, hard pivot into the main topic for today's episode, which is, is online business just an MLM? So let's start off with some definitions. Um, and I'm also going to define what a pyramid scheme is, because I think that there are similar terms. And when I was going back and forth, like coming up with the title, I was like, I want to use this one or this one.
Um, but I think people kind of use them interchangeably, which I don't even care if you do. I just, it's still going to get the sentiment across that I want, which is why I went with MLM. If you want to go with pyramid scheme, same, same, uh, because what I'm trying to dig into in this episode is who actually wins in the online business world, right? Who is most likely to win in the online business world, right? But let's start with the definitions.
And so an MLM, like MLM stands for multi-level marketing. I'm going to read the definition here. A business model where people sell products directly and also earn commissions by recruiting others.
Income can come from retail sales and from a percentage of sales made by one's downline. Examples often involve supplements, skincare, or wellness products. A pyramid scheme right off the bat and a legal scheme.
Okay. So that's the biggest thing. It's illegal and a legal scheme where participants make money primarily by recruiting others, not by selling real products or services, new recruits, fees, fund payouts to earlier participants.
It collapses when part, when recruitment slows. Main difference. One is legal, the MLM, and one is not the pyramid scheme.
Either way. Most folks are losing money. It's like the majority of people in an MLM and in a pyramid scheme, they lose money.
And the folks at the top, right? The earliest entrance. They are the only ones who stand a chance at coming out ahead. All right.
So is online business an MLM? When money is primarily made by selling the idea of making more money, I think it can be. Absolutely. In other instances and other examples of online business, not so much.
All right. But I do think that in general, when it comes to online business, especially online business coaching, there needs to be way more transparency, so much more transparency, right? Again, I am making this episode largely to share the realities and, you know, the most probable outcomes for folks who are venturing into the current online business landscape. The reality there is that most people who play the online business game will not win if their definition of winning is traditional financial success.
Right? Most people will not. Is traditional financial success possible? Absolutely. It is possible.
Is it probable? Not as much. Like the probability is not zero, like it's not 0%, but it's also not 99%. Where exactly it falls, you know, like somewhere in there, I think it's closer to the lower end than it is to the higher end, right? But again, my goal here is just to present a realistic approach.
Like I don't have specific data points for you. I can just go by what I have seen over the past, you know, 10 years of doing this. Right? And this particular episode is very heavily inspired by a post that I saw on the socials where a creator was sharing how much they had recently earned and telling folks that it's possible.
And I was like, okay, again, my push is simply to state that it's possible, but maybe not probable, right? It doesn't mean don't start. So again, if you're new to this, new to online business, and you're watching this or listening to this, I'm not saying don't try. I'm not saying don't start.
Right? I'm not trying to be a negative Nancy. I'm trying to be more of a realistic Reba. Who doesn't love Reba, right? Where we move out of, you know, poor transparency territory, and then we start moving into MLM slash pyramid scheme territory is when online business coaches are teaching other coaches how to be coaches who teach other coaches to be coaches.
You see where I'm going here, right? There's no actual product or service here that's being delivered, right? Each level, especially at the top level is so removed from an actual end user that is actually receiving a service, a good, a product, an actual thing, right? The whole entire pyramid flow, multiple levels, it's rooted in teaching the next user how to make money by teaching someone else how to make money. So who's actually making money? Probably only the original teacher. To that end, with that in mind, and something that I've always highlighted is that B2B sales will always be easier than B2C, right? Business to business will always be easier than business to consumer.
I'm not saying that it's bad. This is what I do, right? I do business to business. It is the easiest way to make money is to help other people make money.
Again, this is what I do. Making money is not my main focus, right? It's not my main marketing approach at all. Y'all know this, but at the end of the day, I'm still helping people with their business in some way, shape, or form.
Even if I'm helping them with their confidence, whether they can go on message and market things, it's still ultimately helping with their business, right? I'm not doing my, my background, like physical therapy. I'm not helping people with like knee pain. It's different.
Y'all know, all you listening to this, if you're in the movement space, anything like that, you know how hard it is to sell something like physical therapy. Right? So to reiterate there, B2B business to business in general, they are in some way, shape, or form helping their customer make money. They don't have to be teaching online business either, or they don't have to be teaching business to that person.
They could just be selling, in my opinion, to another business or another business owner, because typically the reason that that person is buying that thing is to help them in some way, shape, or form to make more money. If they're not helping them to make more money, it's still an easier sell going to a business owner, just because like they understand the value of things they're more willing to invest. They may be, it may be easier for them to invest in this thing because they can write it off in some way, shape, or form.
Because if it is related to the business and then, you know, even like tangentially, tangentially, they can be like, well, it would help a business, even if not directly, right? Whereas B2C business to consumer or direct to consumer, right? There is no direct immediate or overt connection to making money. It's the physical therapist. It's the personal trainer.
It's a nutrition coach. It is harder to go direct to consumer. Absolutely.
You can also just charge more when you're going business to business, right? So we know the number one thing that impacts how much money you make is how much the actual thing that you're selling costs. It's easier to make more money if the thing costs more money. This is just simple math here, right? So there's a dog next door.
It's barking. And I just wish it wouldn't do that. Just, so let's circle back to, and I'm so sorry.
If you hear it, I'm sorry, I'm not stopping this. We're going to, we're going to keep, keep rolling here, but let's circle back to this realistic Reba. I am not saying do not try to make it in the online business space.
I'm not saying do not start, right? Clearly I love being online and this is a place where I really thrive. It's the place where I've built my whole business. And I, and I just have a place that I really understand and that I can navigate really well.
And it's also, I did a post last week about using your platform to speak out right now against everything that's going on. And I can't not make that post because I have literally built my whole entire business around teaching people how to exist on this platform, right? How to exist fully as their whole selves. So I can't be like, but it's okay that you're not speaking up for anything that's terrible because you're a little bit scared that it might impact your bottom line.
I can't, I have to say something about this. So I'm going to come back to that as well because it ties into what I want to see us build, right? But with this, from this realistic REBA approach, I want people to try to make it in the online space if that's what they, if that's what they want to be or as they think they want to be, give it a try. I want to help people if it's where they know they want to be.
I just want for folks to know that traditional financial success is more possible than it is probable, right? The likelihood of it happening is not, it's on the lower end, but the good thing is that there are a lot of levers that you as the individual can actually pull and manipulate and actually be in control of, right? And your individual efforts can absolutely improve the probability that you will succeed. Coming back to realistic REBA, the thing, however, that is most contributory when determining the likelihood of traditional success or traditional financial success, I should say, is demand. You can work hard.
You can be really fucking smart. You can be really good at what you do. You could have an it factor, but if there's no demand, AKA no one wants this thing, this service, this product, this software, this thing is, you likely won't make any money.
Great example, the Segway. Do y'all remember that? Remember those things? What happened? They didn't make any money. No one wanted it.
They didn't look at demand first. So I'm going to zoom out to round the episode out. While the inspo for this episode was that post that I spoke earlier, the post of the creator that was like, this is how much I recently made.
The real impetus for this episode is everything that is going on in the United States right now. At the heart of all of the fucking horrendousness that is going on, the heart of it is corporate capitalism, extractive capitalism, global capitalism. We just happen to have a real fun variety in the United States that is sustained by racism, but it is capitalism at its heart, at the core that's causing all this.
People want fucking money. They want endless amounts of money, endless amounts of profit. At what cost? Any cost.
And how does capitalism work? The only way it works is by having a class of people that do all the labor and are really removed from the service and you can exploit them. Again, in the United States, racism really fuels this and perpetuates this. Right.
So to that end, when I think about fighting back and beating all of this bullshit, I'm just as, if not more, more so thinking about what do we build? What comes next? What needs to come next? I have a tattoo on my side and it reads, Buckminster Fuller quote, you don't change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. I am not here to just make online business as a whole obsolete, but I would like to make the way that it is currently done obsolete.
I want a new model with transparency and honesty and integrity. Right. Supply and demand is not exclusive to extractive capitalism, right? It is a basic central tenant of commerce.
You don't have to raise your prices because there is more demand. That is something that we see that comes along with capitalism, right? But having demand be, you know, part of what affects the supply and yes, that is basics of commerce. So if you are new, that's, I'm saying that because again, the biggest driver in terms of determining one's probability of having financial success, whatever it looks like, is demand.
So if you're new to online business, I want you to understand the reality, especially the current reality and the probabilities, not just the possibilities. And then I want you to build something based in integrity. If from another side of this, right, you're an online biz OG, I want to say thank you because I know if you're listening to this, you're listening to this show, then I know you are actively working on building something that is worth saving.
You are working on building something that breaks and replaces this current bullshit model that we have, right? So yes, in many ways, online business can be an MLM, but it doesn't have to be, right? We can, we can do better. I'm going to wrap it up there because the dog is still barking. Don't forget, enrolling this week for press publish.
We start next week. The link is in the show notes. Thank you, Courtney.
Thank you, Joe. If you got any questions, hit me up on Instagram, the Maitreau, or give me a text 3 1 0 7 3 7 2 3 4 5 as always endlessly, endlessly, endlessly appreciative for every single one of you. Until next time friends, Maestro out.
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