Posts Tagged Nikken

Nikken, Why I Got Started

There are literally a ton of network marketing companies out there, at least one that is perfect for anyone who wants to get involved in building their own business. So, why did I choose Nikken?

When I was introduced to Nikken I wasn’t looking for a network marketing business. I didn’t really know what network marketing was although I had of course heard Tupperware, Amway, Avon, and a few others. I had just finished massage school, which I started because I was in an IT job that I absolutely could not stand. Before I finished massage school I quit that job and started a new one that was a lot better, which is good because it takes a while to start up a business.

My wife and I were going to start a massage business because we wanted to do something that really helped people. I also wanted control of my own life. I wanted to set my own hours and work when I wanted to because I had two small kids that I wanted to help raise.

Anyway, I had just finished massage school and read in a book that people should sleep on a magnetic mattress pad. I asked a massage therapist, Greg, that my wife worked with ( he specialized in energy healing ) what he knew about magnets.  He responded by inviting us to a meeting at someone else’s house that weekend. Having no idea what we were in for, we went. It was a Wellness Home Preview, which is what Nikken people call their in-home opportunity meetings.

Nikken is all about magnets, sleep, water filtration, air filtration, nutritional supplements, and the like. It immediately made sense to have a product line that complemented the service we were going to offer our clients. Also, it turns out that massage is very time and labor intensive. To make a reasonable income I still wasn’t going to have the time freedom that I wanted. I saw that network marketing could offer what I wanted if I could figure out how to make it work for me.

After that meeting we borrowed a magnetic mattress pad and a magnetic necklace and used them for a week. Neither my wife nor I had any big sleep problems but we thought we should try it out and see what happened. I found the pad very firm but I fell asleep immediately and had the best night’s sleep I’d had in a long time. I liked it.

We returned the mattress pad and necklace, then joined the ranks of Nikken distributors. For the first two years we were effectively wholesale customers as we used the product but didn’t do much with the business. I guess that made us typical network marketers. Then we were ready to do the business.

We have decided to stick with Nikken for a number of reasons. Most important to me is to have the time to spend with my family and the freedom to move that time anywhere in the day when something comes up for us to do together. Any network marketing business will provide that freedom, especially when you learn to do it online.

If you remember, we wanted to start a massage business because we wanted to help people. There are many MLM companies in the wellness field, but most of them only offer some form of nutritional supplement or energy drink. We have learned through our on-going studying that wellness is a whole lot more than the amount of nutrition that enters the mouth. All of the systems in the body have to work properly. In addition to good nutrition it requires hydration, pH balance, relaxation, muscle movement, good sleep, and the ability to effectively handle invaders. Nikken talks about the Wellness Home because our environment is a big influence on our wellness. What it really comes down to is the environment that each individual cell lives in that determines our overall wellness. Unlike most of the other companies I’ve seen, Nikken understands that and has products that address most of those areas.

So, there you have it. I’m in network marketing because it allows me the time to be with my family. I’m with Nikken because they understand wellness and provide the technologies to address much more than just one aspect of it. It allows me to take good care of myself and my family, and I can help other people.

Wayne Woodworth
Wellness Network Marketing

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Can’t Become Wealthy in MLM

One of my current prospects sent me a link today to this story about two people who quit Nikken. They feel that it is a myth that people can become financially independent as a Nikken distributor, and it’s Nikken’s fault. I want to address some of their key points.

First, it is very possible to become financially independent with Nikken. I have met a few and know of many more. My local Royal Diamond upline, Jack and Sheri Clarke, then way up at the top of Nikken income earners: Dave Johnson and Reid Nelson. I missed an opportunity to meet Dennis Estes when he was in town last year. The cool thing about these people is that they are just regular people. You would never know that they are wealthy.

They came to 3 conclusions as to why Nikken’s marketing plan doomed them to failure:

  • Nikken does not concern itself with sales but is predominantly interested in the recruitment of people
  • The customers are primarily the Distributors themselves
  • The Nikken products are not officially approved and also expensive. This combination means that the products are very difficult so sell to ordinary consumers.

It is true that Nikken, and all other network marketing companies, are more concerned with recruiting people than with sales. They aren’t in the business of selling their product. That’s what the distributors are in business for. McDonald’s doesn’t sell hamburgers either. They recruit businesspeople who open franchises to sell hamburgers.

It is probably also true that the distributors make up the largest percentage of customers, which is unfortunate. But that isn’t Nikken’s fault. It is the distributor’s job to find customers and sell the product. That’s what a distributor is. Another interesting point here. The same prospect told me that she was talking to other Nikken distributors today about internet marketing. They told her it wasn’t possible to sell Nikken’s products online because they have to be demonstrated first. I haven’t done a product demonstration in years and I am finding more and more customers online all the time.

As for the third conclusion, I think I just partially answered that one. I am selling these products online to regular people every day. $60 for a pair of magnetic insoles that last 10 years looks very inexpensive compared to the $60 shoes that people buy and wear out within 3 years. A $1500 magnetic mattress pad to resolve sleep problems doesn’t sound like much compared to what people are spending on hi-def flat-screen TVs. I’m not sure what they mean by “officially approved” other than by something like the FDA. Vioxx was approved by the FDA. Do I really need to say anything more?

The rest of their gripes apply to all MLM companies, not just Nikken. The problem really comes down to the sponsoring distributors. They are targeting regular people who don’t know what it means to run a business, and then don’t teach them once they are in. If they did, it might be harder to recruit new people but they would get better results from the ones who did join. As a distributor with a network marketing company you are a self-employed business owner. You are also your number one salesperson and your job is two sell two categories of product. One is the actual product or service that the company offers, and the other is the business opportunity. Old-school uplines recruit new people through hype and then teach the new people how to recruit others through hype. Once the hype wears off, chances are that the new distributor will disappear. That’s why most people fail in network marketing and there is such a high turnover.

So, if you are interested in “joining the club”, getting excited, and hyping up rookies, then please find another sponsor. On the other hand, if you are interested in owning your own business, building a team of responsible business owners who want to run a real business selling remarkable products, then I would like to talk to you.

Wayne Woodworth
Self-employed independent Nikken wellness consultant

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Nikken’s 35th Anniversary

This year marks Nikken’s 35th Anniversary and they are going to celebrate it in style. The convention in October this year is going to be an international convention inviting distributors from all 40+ countries that Nikken is current operating in. This gives us a unique opportunity to meet distributors from other countries as well as from the US and Canada.

Another new thing with the convention this year is that they are not selling any tickets. The only way to get tickets is to win them. This makes now a great time for anyone who has been thinking about starting a Nikken distributorship to go ahead and do it.

First, about the convention. It will be at the Aventura Spa Palace in Riviera Maya, Mexico from October 14 – 17. For those who qualify, Nikken is paying for 4 days and 3 nights for 2 people. They are covering all meals and beverages, transfers to and from the airport, and all taxes and gratuities at the resort. Each room also receives a $300 credit for golf and/or spa treatments.

How to get there. For new consultants who join during the qualification period, which is from now until July 31, they need to reach Silver rank and earn 30,000 PGV. If they earn an additional 10,000 PGV ( 40,000 total) they will also receive $300 toward their airfare. What’s more, it is possible to do it all this month (April). For the month of April Nikken is awarding double PV toward qualifying for the contest. That means that if a new consultant reaches Silver in April, earning 20,000 PGV, then they have a full 40,000 for the contest.

Click here for more information about how to become a Silver distributor with Nikken and to get started winning your trip to Mexico on Nikken’s dime.

Wayne Woodworth
Looking forward to meeting my new teammates in Mexico.

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Nutritional Supplement Regulation

The US Senate has been presented with a bill, Senate Bill 3002, that proposes to have the FDA regulate dietary supplements. I can’t believe that it will be as bad as what this writer says, but it will affect all nutritional supplement companies to some degree if it is passed. Personally, I hope it disappears into the sunset and is never heard from again because I like my supplements.

Fortunately, it won’t affect my network marketing business though. The company I am with, Nikken, does sell nutritional supplements, but they aren’t the primary focus. Actually, I personally sell very little of the supplements. Instead, I focus on what makes my company unique, magnets. There are so many companies out there selling some form of dietary supplement that the market is becoming saturated. There aren’t many other companies in the “magnets for wellness” market though, so I am in good shape with Nikken regardless of what happens.

Wayne Woodworth
Magnets: Attraction marketing at a whole new level

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Niche Marketing

All of the internet marketing experts I have read lately are talking about niche marketing, that to be successful you have to focus on a niche. The same thing really goes for face-to-face marketing too, so this all applies whether you are internet-based or not.

Niche market is defined on Wikipedia as “the subset of the market on which a specific product is focusing” and is usually used to refer to something other than the mainstream market. Niche marketing just means that you have a specific target market and offer products that meet their needs. The benefits to working in a niche market is that you have one set of needs that you need to learn about, so you can quickly become an expert at understanding those needs and satisfying them. Once you’ve done that, you are a recognized name in that area.

Since this blog is mostly about network marketing and I’m with Nikken, I’m going use Nikken as an example of how network marketers can use niche marketing. Since you are probably not with Nikken, just follow along and see how you can apply it to your business.

Nikken is a wellness company that offers a wide variety of products that cover a wide variety of needs. This gives a new distributor a lot of options to choose from when picking a niche.  I’m a massage therapist, so I’m interested in pain relief and relaxation. It just so happens that Nikken has massage tools in their magnetic line, so I decide to build my first niche there and focus on telling people who want an alternative from drugs about magnets for relief from discomfort. Now I know where to focus my marketing.

New distributors also gain in that they only have a handful of products to learn about, instead of the whole catalog. Once they are established in that niche then they can pick another niche to build. For me, that’s water filtration then sleep. I don’t put a lot of attention on learning the rest of the products.

Like I said before, this doesn’t just apply to Nikken. There are a lot of companies out there that offer a wide variety of products. Shaklee is one that I am somewhat familiar with. For teams that still do the hotel meetings, this approach gives them experts who can present different aspects of different products with real authority.

So, is this something that you can use with your business?

Wayne Woodworth
Niche Network Marketer

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Response to Network Marketing Scams

You’ve seen the business opportunity offers that say “no recruiting necessary” or “we do all the work for you”. Doesn’t that sound like a “too good to be true” kind of deal? It does to me. Any time someone tells me that I can make money without doing anything I start thinking “scam”.

I was thinking about this today and I believe I know what they might be doing, at least some of them. My guess is that they are in an MLM business that has a binary compensation plan. In a binary plan you only have two legs and you get paid based on the weaker of them. If you recruit more than two people then you place them in your downline somewhere under someone else. This discourages people from stacking everyone in one leg and ignoring the other.

What these “no recruiting necessary” businesses probably do is, as they recruit people, they will build a strong leg for you, balancing out both of their legs, so that they get paid. Another problem for you is that these contacts aren’t yours and they have no loyalty to you if something happens with the business down the road. Since you aren’t doing anything to build your weak leg, or a stronger leg, you aren’t likely to make very much money, if any at all. You could start recruiting people and build out your legs, so I don’t think it is a complete scam, but the offer is definitely misleading. The ones who do the work will always be the ones who make the money.

I will make you a similar offer, with a slight difference, if you will take a look at the company I am with. Join my team, tell other people about it, then get them in touch with me. If they join, they go in your team. There are several differences with my offer. First, the company I am with, Nikken, does not have a binary compensation plan. You have a team and you make money based on your performance and theirs. You do the first step in recruiting new people by getting them interested enough to talk to me, so they are your contacts and loyal to you, not me. You also learn how to do the business because you are an active participant, not someone sitting on the sidelines. It’s a bit of on-the-job training so that eventually you won’t have to depend on me as much and can make the same offer yourself to continue building your team.

Here are some links to help you with your due diligence.
The products: http://www.getmywellness.com – see what Nikken sells.
My view of the business: http://www.getwealthyinwellness.com.
Nikken’s view of the business: http://www.getwealthyinwellness.com/opportunity/

Check it out. You can contact me on this site or through any of the links above.

Wayne Woodworth
Ethical Network Marketing Opportunity

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Online Home Based Business – Are You Looking for One?

Are you looking to start an online home based business? These days it is very easy to set up a business online and start making money pretty quickly. An online home based business has many benefits over one that isn’t on the internet. The biggest is that it opens your market way beyond your local community. You can build a national or international business without having to leave your home.  WordPress makes it easy for just about anyone to create websites and the social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter make it easy to get the word out about them.

If you don’t already have a home based business to take online, I recommend that you look at getting started with a network marketing company that is supportive of online marketing. Not all companies are and most of the companies that do support it  are restrictive to some degree, so make sure you know exactly what they allow before you decide which one to go with.

The online home based business gurus all recommend that you focus on building your brand, not your company’s. I agree that you need to build your own brand. Companies come and go, especially if you decide to jump in with some of these new “pre-launch” upstarts. If a company folds then you have your brand intact and you can easily move to another company. Also, people join people, not companies. To build your team online,  people need to learn who you are, develop a trust in you, and then they will decide to join your team.

As important as it is to build your own brand, it is also important that you start generating a retail profit to support yourself right away because building your own brand will take time. Retail profits are a lot easier to generate if the company allows you to market the products online. If you can sell product online you need to be aware of any limits to where your company will ship product. Anyone in the world can find your website but can you sell to anywhere in the world?

Nikken, the company that I chose to work with, supports internet marketing enough for me to sell online. They do have limits but they can all be worked around. For example, I cannot host any pictures  or have any descriptions of the products. The picture restriction actually works to my benefit because I can link to and display their pictures without taking up any of my disk space. Selling without descriptions was a little tricky at first because how do you sell something if you can’t tell them what it is? Well, if you’ve been involved with selling very long you know that benefits are much stronger than a description of the product itself. You can see what I mean at http://www.getmywellness.com/magnets.

I have one other restriction with Nikken – I can only sell in the US and Canada. That isn’t really much of a restriction at all because all of the US and Canada is a lot of people and they mostly speak English (so I don’t have to deal with multiple languages).

Nikken is a well established company, not a recent upstart, so they will be around for a long time. Because of that I can safely build websites with my brand and websites with the Nikken brand at the same time and benefit from both long term.

Wayne Woodworth
Internet Network Marketer
Online Home Based Business Owner

Find out more about working with me.

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Is There a Best Home Based Business?

Is there such a thing as a best home based business? Of course not! There probably is a best home based business for you though, and it isn’t necessarily the same one as for me or the next person. If the best company for me is also the best one for you, it will probably be for a different reason.

So how to do you figure out the best home based business for you?

Start with your passions. What do you enjoy? If you enjoy sending cards then a card company may be better for you than a wellness company. If you like collecting coins and gold, there are gold coin companies. If you have a passion for wellness, there are more network marketing wellness companies than you could possibly imagine: nutrition supplements, energy drinks, food products, energy-based products. So, decide what your passions are and do a search for companies in that market.

Once you have a list of companies, you need to look at other criteria to narrow your choices. One thing I’ve noticed lately is that there are a lot of brand new companies, so one way to weed out the ones that aren’t right is to decide if you can handle the risks of a brand new company or if you prefer the relative security of an established one. For me, I went with a company that has been around for 35 years.

An obvious thing to look at is the compensation plan. Is it set up in a way that you can make money. If you are going to be slower in building a team then you want a company that will let you make money from retail profits. When looking at selling product, do you have to focus on selling autoship programs or can you make one-time sales to customers. If you know that you can quickly build a team then you might look for a compensation plan that rewards that. Another aspect of the compensation plan is how often you get paid. Some are monthly, weekly, or even daily for different activities. The company I chose pays monthly and offers good retail profits for one-time sales. Great for someone who builds a team slowly.

What kind of support are you going to get either from your upline or from the company? The high ranking people in some companies have nothing to do with new people where other companies they offer any help you need.  If you are someone who would like the support of an upline then make sure that you will have that available when you join. The team that I am with in my company offers all of the support and training that a person could want.

A little about what makes Nikken the best home based business for me.

I am a massage therapist and wellness is a passion of mine, so I chose to go with a wellness company. As I said earlier, there are a lot of wellness companies out there, but most of them seem to focus on one area, like supplements, energy drinks, or whatever. I wanted something with a more general approach to wellness so that I can have a wider customer pool. While the company I chose, Nikken, does offer nutritional supplements, supplements aren’t the only product or even the primary product. Nikken offers products that help with sleep, nutrition, air and water filtration, and offer aid to help relaxation and relieve discomfort. There’s something there for everyone.

As I already said, Nikken has been around a long time. They are celebrating 35 years in 2010 and celebrated 20 years in the US last year. They are very well established with no debt and plenty of operating capital. In other words, a very healthy company.

The compensation plan offers an excellent retail profit as well as additional commission based on rank. You increase in rank at first by selling product then later by bringing more people onto your team. This lets you make money and increase in rank immediately while slowly building your team, which makes this a great option for someone new to network marketing. Nikken pays out every month on the 15th.

Finally, what kind of support does Nikken offer? A lot actually. They have a personal growth seminar and a business training seminar that everyone is required to attend before they reach Silver, so it isn’t an immediate requirement. They also offer monthly corporate calls, quarterly events, and an annual convention to keep everyone up to date with what is going on. The team that I am on goes all the way up to 2 of the highest paid consultants in Nikken and I have had the opportunity to meet them and had an hour of one-on-one time with one of them (not bad considering that we live in opposite corners of the country). My local Royal Diamond has weekly meetings at their home open to anyone, in their downline or not. It is a very open culture.

Feel free to check out Nikken, ask me questions, and join my team if this looks like the best home based business for you.

Wayne Woodworth
Network Marketing by Passion

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Why Are Some MLM Companies Better than Others?

There are tons of new network marketing, or MLM, companies popping up all the time. There are so many new pre-launch opportunities that you can’t possibly keep up with them all. In a few years though, a lot of them will have closed down. It’s just a simple fact that most new businesses fail within the first 5 years or so. Only a few manage to stand up to the test of time and prosper. Why?

For some, the company will just nail the product. It will be the right thing and the timing will be perfect for it. Other companies will have a strong management team that does things right to keep the company going long enough for it to get properly established. The compensation plan will also be important. The people who join a company as distributors have to know that they are taken care of.

I’m with Nikken, a wellness research company originally from Japan that has been in business for more than 30 years. I recently had the opportunity to talk to one of the top earners with Nikken, Reid Nelson. He shared some interesting things about Nikken and the MLM industry in general. For most companies there is a lot of turn-over. People will be with one company for a few years then jump to the next big opportunity then the next. At Nikken people generally stay. Better than 80% of the people who have reached leadership levels in Nikken stay with the company. Reid Nelson has been with Nikken for 19 years. More locally, I’m only 2 steps down from people who have been with Nikken for more than 15 years. Nikken has only been in the United States for 20 years, so they must be doing something right for people to stay this long.

One of the reasons for Nikken’s success that Reid Nelson shared with me was that they attract people who genuinely want to help other people. It isn’t just about chasing the dollars for us. The products, especially the magnetic products, help people live better lives.

Another reason is that it is possible to make a lot of money and save a lot of money with Nikken. If you show commitment to building a Nikken business they will help you cover your two biggest expenses as well as pay you what you earn. Once you reach the Gold rank Nikken will pay for a car (you own the car and they send you a check toward your car payment, so you don’t lose it if you decide to leave. It’s your car). At Platinum, Nikken will begin sending you a check toward your house payment.

Finally, Nikken listens to the distributors. I often hear my upline talk about improvements that they were able to have a hand in because the company listens. You don’t often get that with a lot of companies.

So, if you are tired of jumping from one company to another and are ready to find a place to call home, ask me about Nikken.

Wayne Woodworth
Nikken Wellness Consultant

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Facing Our Terror Barrier

Bob Proctor says that if he gets an opportunity that doesn’t create some amount of fear then he doesn’t do it. Loral Langemeier says that it should make you want to throw up. The good opportunities should stretch you, take you out of your comfort zone. Stepping out of your comfort zone, facing your Terror Barrier as Bob Proctor puts it, causes you to grow, and if you aren’t growing then you’re dying. That’s how the wealthy do it.

My wife and I are rapidly approaching a choice point in our lives. Do we go forward with our business and all of the related big plans and dreams, or do we fall back, keep the job, and shrink our life back down to what the job will support?

Going back means staying with the job, taking my daughter out of the new school that she loves, and giving up the vision for time and money freedom because a job can’t support them. The difficulty with doing that is that we already have a taste what life can be like.

Going forward means facing a lot of fear. It requires leaving the presumed security of a job, and all of its associated benefits, to open up time to grow our business. My wife also brought up our parents. What do we tell them, because they definitely won’t support the idea of quitting a good job for something they see as very risky. But their dependence on a job is why they are still working and wondering if they will be able to afford retirement. A job doesn’t guarantee any security anymore, either that you will be able to keep the job, keep benefits, or be able to afford retirement. A job can be risky now.

Going forward is a big change. We are completely responsible for our results. It’s not like being in a job where we can coast along this week knowing that the paycheck will be there no matter what.

There are two ways to respond to the fear. We can let it win and we turn back, or we can use it to drive us forward.

I can tell you what we’re going to do. We’re going for it. It’s more exciting to go forward, and life is supposed to be exciting. We get to look at things differently. When we want something, there are two questions to answer. How do we write this off as a business expense (anyone want to take a trip pre-tax)? What do we have to do to make the money to pay for it. Change “can we afford it” into “how do we afford it”.

What are we doing? We are building network marketing businesses with Nikken, a wellness technology company, and Send Out Cards, an online greeting card company. We also supplement our income through affiliate programs with several of our mentors, such as Loral Langemeier, Bob Proctor, and Bob Doyle. We are also both massage therapists and can fall back on that if we need or want to. I think we are in great shape to succeed.

What about you? Do you have any dreams and desires that can’t be supported by what you are currently doing? Have you ever wondered “what if”? Join us on this exciting journey.

Wayne Woodworth
Entrepreneur

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