Learn the SHORTCUTS of how to make a difference on a personal, local, and global level…without all the stress. Make this year the one for getting what you want.

https://braveheart.infusionsoft.com/go/extravganza/somekh1

As with any opportunity that touts the ability to show you the way to financial freedom,  the first thing the reader wants to know is whether this is a legitimate business or just another scam.

Product:

The company’s products include Dream Trips Memberships, Luxury Dream Trips Memberships, Leisure Travel Consultant or a combination.  The main product is a Dream Trips membership.

Organizational Structure:

WorldVentures is a network marketing company.  The company’s growth is driven by its Independent Representatives.  Independent Representatives are rewarded for (1) successfully selling WorldVentures travel products and (2) successfully building sales organizations by recruiting, training, and motivating others to do the same.  The company calls its structure a lineage organization.  According to the company literature, if a representative personally sponsored seven representatives, then he/she has seven different lines (sometimes called “legs”) of lineage.

Compensation Plan:

WorldVentures offers a binary compensation plan. Each representative has two “legs” – a left leg and a right leg.  The representative places new recruits in one leg or the other, with the goal of balancing the two.  Each new representative has two legs as well, and so on down the line.  The binary structure is quite typical in network marketing companies.

The Company requires representatives to purchase a Representative Business System (RBS) for $99.95 and then $9.95/month moving forward.  No commissions are paid out for recruiting new Representatives and purchase of the RBS.

Representatives are required to maintain an “active” status in order to be eligible to earn sales credits, commissions and bonuses. To remain “active,” a representative must do the following:

1) Pay the monthly RBS Fee, and EITHER;

2) Make one new sale of a retail product: (i.e., the DreamTrips Membership, the Luxury DreamTrips Membership, the Leisure Travel Consultant (“LTC”) Package or a combination, to a retail customer or a customer who is also a representative every month. A representative’s active status is determined on the monthly anniversary date of his/her enrollment; OR;

3) Make a Personal Purchase of a Retail Product  and remain current on monthly billing.

If a representative is active, he/she begins to earn sales credits toward commissions and bonuses.

If, however, a representative remains inactive for more than four weekly pay periods, his/her sales volume is forfeited.  If a representative is inactive for more than twelve  consecutive weekly pay periods, that representative’s Agreement shall be terminated and he/she is reclassified as a Preferred Customer.

Conclusion:

Based upon my review, WorldVentures is a legitimate business and not a scam.  I would, however, read the agreement and the compensation plan very carefully.  If you believe you will be able to sell a product every single month and you are willing to work very aggressively, this may be a rewarding business.  As with any networking marketing organization, it takes a good two or three years of very diligent effort to build up an organization that throws off any substantial residual income.

I personally chose to become involved with a company that offers high up-front commissions, creating an opportunity for faster growth.  To read more about the one I chose, you can click on one of the links below.

Lori Somekh is an attorney and a business owner.  She resides in New York and helps women transition into online business ownership.  http://FastProfitWeb.com.

When I got involved with WOW, the company identified itself as an authorized reseller for T-Mobile and stated over and over that it was in the process of negotiating contracts with AT&T and Sprint.  This was in February, 2010.

A key draw was their refer 3, get yours free program.  If you sold phone service to three other people, you got free monthly service for life.  The highest service plan a person could purchase at that time was the $89.99/month plan.  This included taxes and fees.  If you sold three other people the $89.99 plan, your service became free, as long as your three referrals remained customers.  Additionally, there was a monthly autoship of $29.99.

The main benefit was derived, however, by selling the business opportunity.  Liberty International has an octonary compensation plan. This means that you can have 8 legs where you can place people you sign up.

I personally got frustrated by a myriad of SNAFUs and glitches and became inactive as a distributor.  However, I kept the service, since I had previously been with T-Mobile and the service was still coming through T-Mobile.

However, one day in June, my service got cut off.  Come to find out, so did thousands of other people’s.  I had the pleasure of spending hours on the phone with T-Mobile, converting back to T-Mobile.  According to WOW Mobile, there is some big dispute over long distance charges and the two companies are now in litigation.

According to Troy Dooly at a website called MLM Help Desk, Liberty’s merchant accounts were frozen and head of company Randy Jeffers is presently paying distributors’ commissions out of his pocket.  Troy also stated that WOW Mobile does NOT have contracts with any of the four Tier 1 mobile companies (T-Mobile, Sprint, AT&T or Verizon).

A new entity has now been created called Liberty Freedom Network, and it seems that the company is attempting to hold it together and regroup.

I don’t believe WOW Mobile is a scam.  I think it has the potential to be a good opportunity.   However, it has a few too many kinks for my blood right now.  I’m also not all that impressed with the veracity of the information given to distributors upon joining.  I hope they do better in the future.

I personally chose to join an internet marketing company, where I can make large commissions up front, rather than having to develop an extensive downline as one must do to be profitable in network marketing.

Lori Somekh is an attorney and a business owner (although the information contained herein should not be construed as legal advice).  She resides in New York and helps women transition into online business ownership.  http://FastProfitWeb.com.

One of the first questions many have when considering starting a woman owned small business is “Where do I get the start-up money?”   Actually, there are some resources available for financing a small business for women who are just starting out.  The following is a list of  resources to check out:

Small Business Administration, Office of Women’s Business Ownership
(www.sba.gov/womeninbusiness) – Women still have various obstacles to overcome in business.  The Office of Women’s Business Ownership’s (OWBO) stated mission is to establish and oversee a network of Women’s Business Centers (WBCs) throughout the United States and its territories.  Through the management and technical assistance provided by these centers, entrepreneurs, especially women who are economically or socially disadvantaged, are offered comprehensive training and counseling on a vast array of topics in many languages to help them start and grow their own businesses.  The SBA has prepared “SBA Direct Resource Packets” for every region of the country with up-to-date contact information for SBA field offices, lenders making SBA loans, and counseling services.

Federal Money Retriever
(www.fedmoney.com) – This is a software database containing information on all U. S. federal government grant and loan programs.  The site lets you do a free trial research to see some of the grants that are available.  A  specific grants for women category is available at http://www.fedmoney.com/grants/su0232.htm

Count-Me-In
(http://.count-me-in.org)  – This is a fundraising organization that raises money from women for women.  Available loans range from $500 to $10,000.  Underwriting consideration is given to an applicant’s experience as well as credit history.  This program also offers scholarships for girls.  This looks like a promising program.

Even in this challenging economy, there are still resources available for financing a small business for women who are ready to go for it.  If taking on debt is a little scary, however, there are still businesses that women can start with minimal financial outlay.  There are many online internet-based businesses, where  you can set yourself up in the beginning and then enjoy residual income for years to come.  Those types of businesses will be covered in another article.  To read more about the one I chose, you can click on one of the links below.

Lori Somekh is an attorney and a business owner.  She resides in New York and helps women transition into online business ownership.  http://FastProfitWeb.com.  (Nothing in this article should be construed as legal advice).

 STOP!!

I was browsing through “The 4 Hour Work Week” by Timothy Ferriss, pondering some of the principles he speaks about within his book.  (A book I highly recommend) Personally, I focus on a self analysis from time to time and my current focus is elimination.  In the book he speaks a good amount about Pareto’s Principle, AKA 80/20 rule.  For those who are not familiar with this principle, it has it’s roots in the lat 1800’s during which a controversial economist brought to light the principle that 80% of a countries economy is really generated by 20% of the people.

 This rule applies to almost any area of production, at times even more skewed with 5% producing the 95% results.  So with that theory and principle in mind, I focus my energy on elimination.  Rather than being efficient to do more let’s step back and see what can we eliminate that is not part of the 20%?  As a business owner, evaluate your customers, evaluate your actions, evaluate your employees and measure what action, which customer and which employees are really responsible for the 80-99%.

 Trust me, this exercise will be liberating, revealing and at times humbling as you realize 90% of your problems are coming from the customer who brings nothing to your bottom line, the employee who isn’t worth a penny to the company and actions that do nothing for your business growth.  As a business owner, help eliminate your actions from your day that are efficient, eliminate “busyness” from your employee base and help steer the ship towards the port of effectiveness.

 Employees, this may be a tough one to tackle!  There is a good chance your boss is clueless when it comes to this principle and for them all the “old school” ways of a hustling, paper moving, cell phone talking and a busy looking employees is all they know.  You can’t blame them for this, your job is to help educate them.  Then, take steps towards elimination and liberation as you slowly move towards effective action which is the only action that equates measurable results.

 Think about this.  If you remove 50% of your “efficient actions” and replace it with another 20% of effective action, you will, in theory, double your production while reducing the time you spend by 35%”

With that I say eliminate, liberate and fill your time with moments and actions that fulfill you, not with more “work”.

The Problem

Are you living in a constant state of stress and urgency, moving from one challenge to the next?  Do you find yourself struggling to get ahead.  What causes the state?  How do you avoid it?  For many, stress is just the cycle of your day to day life and is typically caused by self inflicting reactions to specific circumstances that we all face daily.  Thus, you are always living in the state of reaction to urgency rather than focusing on what is important but not urgent.  This cycle and state you operate in will not allow you to be empowered and often cause many to seek avenues to “remove” the stress by entering a state in which the urgency is temporarily removed.  For some, they revert to alcohol or drugs, others eating, watching TV, working out and the list goes on.  Now most of these avenues are not bad, rather many are healthy and empowering.  (minus the drugs, alcohol and over eating)

The problem is the amount of time spent in these areas to remove yourself from the stress.  Rather, your time should be focused on identifying how to manage your life in such a way that you are not living in reaction.  Living your life in reaction will cause your life to be run on the terms of other people and outside circumstances rather than on your terms.  Often we allow other peoples “urgent” matters to control our reaction as well.  Some are important and must be taken care of, on the contrary, many are typically non important and cause most of us, to fulfill the basic need to be “significant”  and we will enlarge the matter to feel more significant.

The Solution

The key is to spend your time, your #1 resource on the things that serve you and matter to you most.  The way to do this is to learn how to get in the “zone” where everything is flowing for you, things are happening in such a way that you are fulfilled and you are operating at a higher level.  Getting to this zone requires you to step back and break out of the cycle of living from urgent moment to urgent moment.  It takes a realization that you have choices, most stress comes from the belief that we are in a position without choices, we have a to do list of  things we “must do” and this causes stress.   You always have at least three options to any scenario.  The choices as you approach  matters of urgency are the following:  is this urgent and important, urgent and not important or neither urgent nor important.  This is about developing a change in your belief system as to how you view urgency.  Urgency, is not your friend, urgency is the source of stress and the source of living reactionary.

Where do you spend your time on a regular basis?

Evaluate your time and what you spend your time on.  What % do you spend on things that are urgent and important, what % on those things that are urgent but not important and what % on things that are neither urgent nor important.  Learn to shift your time and organize your time to focus on things that are important so that they do not become urgent.  Remove yourself from the belief that urgent = important, often the things that we are making urgent are not important.  When you learn to focus specific time on the things of importance you will not be living in a moment of reaction rather of choice.

As you develop a systematic approach to how you evaluate where your time is spent and you reduce the moments or urgent reaction, you will find more of your time in the zone.  The zone will allow you to be fulfilled, to accomplish more, to live with more free time and ultimately design your life around the areas of importance to you.

Keep On Charging

(Original content provided by Josh Valentine)

Think back to a stressful time in your life. Perhaps it was a divorce, an illness, an employment issue, a family problem, etc. I don’t want you to remember how you felt, but I do want you to remember what you were thinking. Were you saying things like:
 

	What did I do to deserve this?
	I always have bad luck?
	I’ll never be able to get back on my feet after this setback?
	My life is on hold and I can’t move forward?

Statements like these go through our heads when something bad/stressful is happening. Negative talk can create anxiety. Positive talk can help to alleviate that anxiety. Changing your thoughts during the day can help you decrease your stress and lower your stress hormone levels, allowing you to sleep better and be healthier.

Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANTs)

We constantly talk to ourselves. When things are happening, we are carrying on a dialogue in our head about the event. Most of the time we are not even aware of the conversation, but it is there and it is causing us to feel certain emotions.

When we are stressed, our self-talk changes. It becomes more focused on the stressor at hand. It also becomes distorted and focuses only on the negative aspects of the event.

Let’s look at an example. You went to your doctor last week and had some routine blood work done. When you get home from work, you have a message on your answering machine asking you to call your doctor’s office. What kinds of Automatic Negative Responses (ANTs) might you think?
 

	Oh no! The results must have shown something terrible.
	Do I have cancer? Am I going to die?
	It must be horrible or they would have just told me the news on the machine.

ANTs are automatic and require no effort on your part. They typically take things in the worst possible light and jump to conclusions. We tend to see ANTs as the truth or as fact and don’t stop to question their validity.

Let’s look back at the message from the doctor’s office. What other possible reason might there be for the call? It could be that they need some additional insurance information to file your claim. They could be calling to tell you that your blood work came back just fine. They could be calling to tell you that you have something quite minor. Yet, our immediate response is to get tunnel vision and see the negative. Why?

Since it is an automatic response, we must assume that it has to do with survival. In the days of tiger hunting, you needed to react quickly and without thinking to potential danger. If you saw an object in your path that looked like a poisonous snake, you could immediately flee from the situation – even if the object only turned out to be a stick. It was far better to err on the side of negative, tunnel visioned thoughts than it would have been to assume it was a stick and be bitten by the snake.

In today’s world, however, we are faced with many stress responses and we don’t need to act automatically, nor do we always need to act negatively. When we do, we elicit a full-blown stress response that will affect our health and our sleep.

The Positive Reframe

Sometimes a negative response is the right response to a situation. If a loved one dies, it is normal and natural to grieve and feel loss. If you lose your job, it is normal to feel upset. However, these feelings are usually time-limited.

The problem arises when the negative emotions are excessive, unhealthy, long-lasting, and create excessive stress responses. When this happens, sleep, motivation, and health are adversely affected.

The key is learning to change your ANTs and reframe them in a positive manner. By doing so, we can keep the stress response lowered.

Recognizing ANTs

Before you can make changes in your ANTs, you are going to have to learn to recognize them. The best way is to write them down. In this way, you will be able to see what you say to yourself and objectively examine the statements so that you can see how distorted and negative they are.

Try this exercise:

	Choose one or two situations that occurred where you had negative emotional reactions. Describe the situation briefly under a column you call “situation.” It might be something like “Traffic jam on way to work” or “Argument with daughter about homework,” etc.
	In the next column, write your ANTs. Ask yourself, “What were the negative thoughts going through my head while this situation was going on? What thoughts contributed to my stress?”
	Do this for a couple of days until you become more aware of your ANTs. Once you can recognize some of your ANTs, move onto the next step.

Four Methods For Reframing ANTsYou are now ready to add a third column to your exercise. Name this column “positive reframe.”

Black and White To Gray

The first method for reframing is changing all or nothing, also called black and white words, to gray words.

Let’s take an example. If you said, “I always have bad luck” you used a black and white word – always. Very rarely is always or never true. Instead, you could use a gray word – sometimes – to reframe this ANT. “I sometimes have bad luck.” Now it doesn’t seem so awful.

Here is a good list of black and white words to help you:

Catastrophe
Must, must be
Impossible
Always
Incompetent
Bad
Evil
Powerless
Unjust
Complete disapproval or complete failure
Never

If you find that you are using black and white words in your ANTS, then you can change them to gray words. Instead of impossible, you can say that it is difficult, but that you are up for the challenge. Find a way to reframe your thoughts without the “all or nothing” words.

Ask Key Questions

Another method is to ask yourself key questions about the ANT:

1. With an open mind, can I rationally support and prove this ANT?
2. What evidence exists that proves the falseness of the ANT?
3. Does any evidence exist that proves the truth of my ANT?
4. Is what happened really as awful and intolerable as my ANT suggested?
5. Why is the ANT unrealistic?
6. Why is the ANT unproductive?
7. How does the ANT keep me from getting what I want?
8. What pain has the ANT caused me in the past?
9. What pain will the ANT cause me in the future?
10. If I told 100 people my ANT, how many of them would tell me that it is realistic and productive?

These questions will help you see the inaccuracies and falsehood of your ANTs. They will help you see your ANTs as thoughts and not facts. As you answer these questions, develop a positive reframe about your ANT.

The Comparison Technique

A third method for creating a positive reframe is to use the comparison technique. We are typically much harder on ourselves than we are on others. So, look at your ANTs as though you were saying them to a friend. Would you? If not, then what would you say? Write this down as your positive reframe.

Look To The Past

And finally, look to the past. You’ve probably experienced something similar in the past. How did it turn out? Was it a total catastrophe? No, or you wouldn’t be here now doing this exercise. By looking to our past we can prove to ourselves that the situation is not as bad as we are making it out to be. You can create a positive reframe by comparing the current situation to a past one.

The Positive Automatic Response (PAT)Now that you can identify your ANTs and you know how to make a positive reframe, you need to start doing so more automatically, rather than by writing them down at the end of the day. There are three steps to the PAT technique:

1. Stop. When you find yourself in a stressful situation, say “Stop.” This will help you to stop your ANTs before they get out of hand.

2. Take Five. After you say stop, practice a “Take Five.” This will relax you and direct your attention away from the stressful event.

3. Positive Reframe. Reframe your ANTs using one of the techniques described above.

This PAT technique is useful, but hard to learn since our ANTs are so automatic and ingrained. But with practice you can give yourself a PAT instead of filling yourself with ANTs – and everyone I know would rather have a pat than be crawling with ants!

The more you practice them, the better you will become at decreasing the stress in your life. And as you decrease the stress, you will find that you are happier and healthier.

About The Author

Teri Clark’s interest in the new and different has led to a successful online writing career as an editor, researcher, ghostwriter, and author. Learn more about Teri by going to www.teribclark.com.