Exit MLM

So I quit the MLM I was in. A confluence of events all happened at the same time, as is often the case in life, and I simpkly didn't have time to work on it, and I lost the inertia that I had when I began.
Does that mean I don't believe in the MLM model anymore? No, but I'm not simply not sure. I know it beats tradional employment, but what doesn't? My thinking at the moment is whether MLMs are being honest about what they really are. If the product is the people, why don;'t they say so? Instead of pretending that they're selling a product? I mean, there isn't a single product I've seen being offered by an MLM that I would give a toss about buying. I don't believe in vitamins and all that junk. Herbs yes, but I grow them myself. I just think the concept is misunderstood, not least by the people within them.
So now I'm going into blogging. The big-hitter keywords. The email list. Let's see how it goes.

Tinkering

Currently conducting a pricing experiment with the ebooks I'm selling via Amazon. I was getting about one sale every two days with the pricing at $9.99. I dropped the prices to $1.99. I figure if I start getting at least three sales per day now, that'll be a successful strategy. Let's see how it goes.

Update

So still no signups for the MLM, and indeed I'm not getting any traffic yet on this blog. But what I have been doing is reformatting some public domain books for kindle, and publishing them myself on my own Amazon bookshelf. To date I'm getting paid something like 20 dollars a month for what I've already done. Which is about 6 or 7 books, priced between 4 and 10 dollars. 

After today's work, with a bit of luck I've pushed that up 100% or so. Or, who knows, one of them could really hit a nerve in the market.

Not exactly the big bucks, but it's passive income (although I prefer to call it active income - whereby it's active, I'm passive!). And it all adds up. And I'm giving myself an opportunity to have newer and better ideas.

My first signpost is to pass 1000 dollars a month in online income. And to be able to purchase mutually owned whole life insurance. I'll explain why in a future post.

Getting seen

Well, as for "getting traffic", "being seen", etc, I've decided to go with Gary Halbert:

Nothing is as important as content. No matter how vigorously you promote a book, if that book contains nothing but empty pages, it will never become a best seller. If it is a fiction book, it has to be extraordinarily well written. If it is a non-fiction book, it has to contain honest-to-God, useful and unique information.

And so it is with websites.

If your website is truly rich and contains "for real" useful and unique information... and... it contains a LOT of it... most likely, you won't even have to promote your website. Once just a few people read it, it will get so much word-of-mouth publicity, it will snowball into having more readers than you could ever believe.

There is no website on the Internet that contains more useful and unique information than the one I publish at...

www.TheGaryHalbertLetter.com

And, I have done nothing whatsoever to promote my website. Yet, my readership numbers are staggering.

The other day, a real Internet and website expert was visiting with me  here in Miami. He knows how to get the stats on all of the websites in the entire world including how they are ranked in various ways. He was able to show me how my website is ranked by the amount of traffic that goes to the site.

Do you know that even with no promoting, my website gets more traffic than 50% of all the other websites in the entire world?

Do you know that, in fact, my website gets more traffic than 70% of all the websites in the world?

Do you know that, in fact, it gets more traffic than 90% of all the others in the world?

Do you know that, in fact, my website gets more traffic than 99.9% of all the others?

In fact, www.TheGaryHalbertLetter.com gets more traffic than...

99.999% Of All The Websites
Everywhere On Earth!

This is NOT a category ranking. This IS a ranking of every website that exists.

And with no promoting whatsoever.

How can this be? It's simply because... my website delivers on the Number One criteria of any popular book, magazine, newspaper, newsletter or website. You know what that criteria is?

Have Something To Say!

If you don't have something to say that is true, interesting, useful and unique, you can spend millions of dollars and thousands of hours promoting your website and all you'll ever get is a handful of readers who visit it maybe more than once. Yet, on the other hand, if your website is content-laden, the sky is the limit... even if... you do no promoting whatsoever.

Do you know how stupid the advice is of people who tell you they can get your website to use certain words that will pop up in the top ten hits on a search engine? That's absolutely insane. Imagine this: You publish a website on knitting and someone is searching for information on volcanos. This "someone" types the word "volcano" into their search engine and lo and behold, he or she is "tricked" into going to your website on knitting. Big accomplishment, right? How long do you think the person interested in volcanos is going to read your website on knitting? And how often do you think he or she will come back to your website?

Not much to add to that, really. Uncommon good sense. And 99% of marketing techniques and SEO from marketing gurus is BS - and didn't we all know that anyway, intuitively? So that's it. No marketing, just content. I feel happier about that, too.

The Power of Then, or 30 Principles of Righteous Exponential Wealth Building

Now that I've given Mammon his due (!), I'm going to lay out what I think are the main principles of real wealth building. It's actually more of a rough draft than something biblical. It's like a napkin or a jotter where I put my random thoughts. So apologies for it being a bit choppy.

Yes, the principles I follow when considering which way to go. See, I believe wealth to be a process, or a path, rather than a "thing". A kind of tension between a future dream, fiercely worshipped, which we may see as our own kingdom of heaven, and the present state, which is already dying every second of the day. In this sense it is similar to the new definition of energy given by Eric Dollard, where energy is a function of time and is a path, not a movement of electrons and so on. It is a rate of change. True wealth can therefore not be stolen either, or taxed or levied, as can earthly treasures:

"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon." – Matthew 6:19–21,24 (KJV)

So it's all about the power of when, not the power of now (sorry Eckhart Tolle!). But it must be a specific then, not a "tomorrow", because tomorrow is moveable. When we act, we act in the present day, and what we serve is our future self, our vision, and we must have a fixed idea as to when that vision is fulfilled. That is belief, and the tension is rather like an elastic band stetched and then released at one end. Rather than bank-money which, as I have outlined, is a kiss of death, erasing all future ties and making people unwilling to leverage their future interests through sharing. 

Bank-money is dead money. That goes for gold too. There was never anything special about gold except that it doesn't corrupt in the hand and so was a fit choice to make a coin. But in monkey-see style, so many then attributed magical powers of value to the metal itself. If you focus on gold, you're focusing on death. 

Bank-money or pieces of gold or silver are perfect payment for, say, a prostitute. Because there is no future interest there: no presumed future relationship, no baby making, just the act then it's done. Or maybe for paying a mercenary or assassin - you know, do this for me and then act like we don't know each other. That goes for the armed forces too. And that may offer a clue as to why we're all engaging in this way - because we're, y'know, warlike and whorelike. But are we that way naturally or are we conditioned to be so?

Anyway that's an issue for another time. So here is a list of my principles of real money:

1. Copy, duplicate, steal, borrow and otherwise create unoriginal obvious cash-rights. Comprehend and do as life does to regenerate: duplicate and synthesise. Forget originality. Creation is finished - just unfold it, uncover it, copy it, be it. Originality is most dangerous word in advertisers lexicon, as per David Ogilvy, and if that's true for them it probably is for all creators. Great artists steal; do likewise. Leverage nature, history and the self. There's no such thing as theft in the real world - it's just leverage. Who needs to reinvent the wheel? And when you duplicate what you think is great, it'll be different anyway. Do the Beatles and Rolling Stones resemble Chuck Berry and Robert Johnson? Not so much, but that's who they emulated.
2. Just ship it. If you're not embarrassed with the end product, you probably took too long. A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow. Seize opportunities when they are presented to you, not when you think you're ready for them. Money loves speed.
3. ABO - always be offering. Creating potential realities. Everyone creates new money in every transaction they undertake. But under bankers'-agency-drafting, only the seller and the buyer's bank get present cash. So always have offers out there, the more intangible the better.
4. Price it high for cachet. You're selling a future vision, and do you think it's valuable? If so, price the thing high, ridiculously high. This is about aspiration, it's that tension I talked about, it's lifting your thoughts. The world is just ideas flowing around, that bring in cachet (cash). Make sure that a good number are yours, and that they all have a clear call to action and direct response button! Go high-end. High-ticket items. Biggest, smartest, most luxurious. Less competition, less customer problems.
5. Cashflow from day one. Do nothing which requires negative cashflow at any point.
6. Making friends is making money, and making money is making friends. The better the friend, the better the money. The more recurrent, the more high-end. You gotta stop the cyborg-speak like "offer value" and so on. What actually means something to souls is suggestions like: "Make friends, let them trust you and share good stuff with them." Goodness doesn't broadcast, so keep it intimate and duplicate it a millionfold. Deal only with friends. Which means, turn them into friends.
7. Vulnerability is key. Show your vulnerability, don't hide it. A little of it is highly magnetic.
8. Buy fear and sell greed. Classic Buffet 101. Buy when everyones selling. Sell when everyones buying. Lend when everyone's borrowing and no-one wants to lend. Borrow when everyones lending and no-one else wants to borrow.
9. Go where the competition is, which is where the money is. There's no such thing as competition - money is created afresh each time. No pie to take, only pie to bake.
10. Work with people to fulfill their needs or solve their problem. The current state of things requires marketers to induce an attitude of scarcity and lack, which they then offer to fill with their product. That age is over, finished. Ask them first, and then work with them.
11. Nothing down. Do nothing which requires upfront investment of cash. Cash is like Chinese jing, it's chi, its future interest, it should be guarded as closely as your own vital fluids. Plus when there's nothing down you already adhere to the rules of Buffet etc who say, don't lose money. But contrary to Buffet I would say that investing is a sham: it ties up good hard cash over long periods for uncertain paper gain. The only investment is investment in yourself. Opportunity cost is all.
12. Create win-wins. Or win-win-wins. Solve peoples problems. Sell opportunities. Is easy to walk away from win-wins if other party is playing up - because it stopped being win-win. Make them feel good and there will be repeat business and no refunds.
13. Go for intangibles. Rights, mortgages, ad copy, info products. It's not messy, it's low-cost, it's easily scaleable. Who needs more junk from China anyway?
14. Leverage. Internet is leverage. Make it exponentially scaleable.
15. Set unrealistic deadlines for big dreams. Have countdowns, let your unconscious know there's a time this has to be done by. Get it done before your mind and interest moves onto other things.
16. Ownership. Own the product. Own the website. Own the unique word used to promote it. Own the financing ledger (as with mutually-owned whole life insurance). Own the rights (equity, option rights, patent rights, etc). That's where the power truly lies. Magical things start happening when you truly take ownership. You can only be liable if you're a caretaker or trustee. Ownership means you do what you like and take ALL the benefits. Be the franchisor. You have control of the benefits, and liabilities are passed to the guardian. Its not what you do, its what you own and how you control it.
17. No liabilities. Don't hold stock, or manage, or pledge collateral. If you do, get rid of it fast.
18. Be the writer, not the reader. Write your own ad copy. Your own books and info products. Your own contracts and trust deeds. Your own mortgages. So be "righteous", and not a "reed-er", reading other peoples' conditions. Set the terms. Offer conditions. 
19. Be the last offeror. My way or the highway. That's how negotiation is done. Bit like being the raiser in poker. Write the rules. Most people will just see rules and follow them, and presume that's "government speaking." Well, it is, and the best kind - Me. This is not unkindness, this is decisiveness.
20. Minimum time and effort down. Focus on leverage and "lazy" techniques. Templates and automation, and recurring lifetime commissions. Make money and time work for you, exponentially.
21. Arbitrage and carry trades. No risk, yes zero. Live in Indonesia, sell in Brazil and Norway. Buy Mexican bonds, borrow to short Japanese. Actually, don't deal in bonds because that's peoples' blood and sweat - all bonds are slave bonds. But I'm making a point. Buy low Bigmac index, sell high Bigmac index. Like corporations do with sweatshops and Swiss boutiques.
22. Be playful. The meek shall inherit (be given) the earth (dirt and graves), but the players (actors) own it, and the water and the skies too. Focus on what you did well, on what you do well, and do more of that. Mistakes are events you're supposed to forget about, because they're usually boring. But a spectacular failure may make a great story someday too. Work is for the little people: Players play, all day and sometimes all night too. Even in their sleep they may be lucid dreaming! Its easy and fun to be  rich, and its hard and boring to be poor. Being easy and fun is being rich.
23. Always be asking better questions. Someone once said asking is selling. I think asking is living. I ask questions of myself and leave them open. We're not in the business of answering questions - that's for schools and the military, and, much like bank-money, answers are always heavy, deathly - and wrong.
24. Make automatically recurring, passive income. Let them come to you. Set up point of contact with plain info and contact button, for all the world to come to you.
25. Plain speaking. He who does so in this environment of uber-design will make his billions. Plain marketing, even slightly ugly marketing. Long copy, serif font, black on white, justified. Direct response, call to action, buy button, do it now while you can. State plain facts and you sell snow to eskimos.
26. Its all the hustle. The weaving of stories that others buy. Make sure the stories out there are your own. That's what selling is - being the author, owning all the equity in the ideas out there, that are spinning cachet for you while you sleep. Do you want your stories to be the ones that shape the world? Then do it - and make them good ones!
27. Fake it to make it. Its not lying its flirting. To be it, be it first. If you want to lose your virginity, the best way is to act like you've slept with hundreds of women. Be it.
28. Test and record results. Aka playing for keeps. Your mistakes then become money and guidance.
29. Network. Fraternities, MLM, secret societies, mutual insurers - all show the power of being for yourself but not by yourself.
30. Watch closely what & who you listen to. This is quite important as the ancients knew that belief comes through hearing. Choose mentors carefully and then copycat and combine in your style.

So that's it, but I'm always kind of tweaking it. I like to look at the list sometimes first thing in the morning to remind myself how to play the game. I expect it to look very different in a year's time, but that's the path of wealth, right?

Slaying Mammon, or Why Your Money is on Fire

It's actually easy to prove that banknotes and coins (and by extension bank balances) are not only not real money, but are actually dis-money, or liabilities leveraged against the holder-user.

Consider a little micro cash-economy. Small traders selling small goods for small margin. The same $10 banknote can get passed around ten times without seeing a bank. Now, what has happened here? Transactions have happened totalling $100, yet there is still only the $10 to "show for it."

That little scrap of paper has compounded its own interest tenfold, but for the benefit of who? This is an important question, a huge question.

The other interesting thing that happens is that all future interest for the participants is extinguished by the use of bank-money. What I mean is that usually, when a transaction is settled using bank-money, the transaction is considered to be over, and there is no obligation or relationship remaining between the participants. No friendship, or recognition of mutual support. Just a "thank you and fuck you" kind of thing, pardon my French.

The conclusion here is that the "real money" is created by the participants each time they trade. If each trader were to keep a personal ledger instead of using notes, they would ledger each transaction and it would pop up as a credit-debt event each time. That ledger entry actually IS the money, just as it is for a bank whenever they create a deposit or loan on their books (which is the SAME THING for them, more on that another time).

However the use of notes erases all memory of any equity involved, which makes sense because banks have nothing to do with the equity of the situation: they have no first-hand knowledge of any transactions. It's all at arm's length, and because you are unknowingly acting as a banker's agent, you too are at arm's length. The whole world is at arm's length. And people talk about feeling isolated - small wonder!

Another way to prove that equity has been erased from bankers' dealing is the accounting equation liabilities = assets - owners equity. Well, with every transaction on the banks' books, assets always equal liabilities. Whatever equity the banks carry on the books is secretive in nature, and equal to no more than 10 or 15 percent. For the most part there is no distinction. Ownership becomes a curse (not necessarily a bad thing, interestingly) and control of the financing is all. And who can argue with that, in a world where a man's home, his very castle,  can become his primary liability in mortgages, taxes and sundry fees and maintenance?

The thing to take from this is not that "banks are bad." Even banks do not benefit from the banking system. They are just as tied up as everyone else. The employees all the way to the top are just employees like anyone else, and using drafts like anyone else. The shareholders do not benefit either: they get a dividend, sure, but there's added shares which dilutes it, and plus they're in the same transaction system too. And they likely get ripped off by the board of directors.

It's the system that's leading everyone down a drainpipe. Why is it that only one in every hundred people are considered "rich" upon retirement? It is palpably NOT true that 99 out of 100 people are talentless or lazy. Quite the reverse. In my opinion human genius is more common than water. And there are more two-income households now than ever before, and some of the householders will have two or even three jobs.

It's not even just employees who have the hard time. It's incredibly hard for small business owners, or even big business owners, to survive. We all know the stats about 80% or so going out of business in the first 5 years. And even that other group, the investors, can't make money in this climate - plus they get to tie up all their capital for years for the privilege of seeing it go down in value. Why is this so?

It's the bank-system. With a life of its own, devouring its host. Some kind of mind-virus which starts by dividing people and then conquering. It's like an actual being or organism, like some mythical serpent from an indigenous legend. We created it, and it blinded us with fire so we can't see what it's doing anymore. It creates World Wars, destroys inventors of free energy, and still we stagger blindly on.

Riding the bank-serpent system, the whole thing depends on debt default and increased speed. Everyone's got to make money faster and faster just to stay still, running like the Red Queen in Wonderland, and nobody's allowed to pay their debts in full either. The serpent needs that pledge of more and more future service, till they're all used up, and just drop dead of exhaustion, or loneliness.

So yes - holding onto big bank balances or wads of cash never did anyone any good. There's quite a few films exploring this idea - like A Simple Plan and No Country for Old Men. Oh yes, there's always the bible as well - "Ye have sold yourselves for nothing, and ye shall be redeemed without money." It's best to convert these liability-signs into growth vehicles or give them to charity as soon as possible, like they were on fire. That's what the rich of every age have done. They know there's no good inherent in money - quite the reverse. But there is good in friends, and generosity networks. And so that must be our focus if we are to finally slay the great dragon. We've just had St George's Day, after all.

My Top Tier Business Program (MTTB) begins... Or, 44 Reasons Why You Should Quit Your Job 5 Minutes Ago

I'm setting out to be wealthy and my journey starts here. To be more specific, I am setting out to be financially free, in the sense that money as a concept is not an object or an obstacle to acquiring or moving in any way I wish to - but rather it multiplies itself and unfolds ever more delightful modes of living.

I'm going to lay out my philosophies and the concepts I use, so that anyone can duplicate them and do likewise. The hope is that this blog will serve as a starting point to build a network of like-minded clear thinkers and sharers of bits of wisdom on the path. I wish to make friends, in short.

I don't really go for complex ideas or show-offy jargon. Ideas either work immediately, from day one, or they're binned. This will be a plain-speaking blog of virile language!

To be more accurate of course, this isn't the very start of my journey. I've been dabbling in internet commerce for some time, making some beer money and travel money, and before that I was an employee in the supposedly lucrative financial sector.

But I decided to educate myself financially, and I discovered, naturally, that everything I thought about money and wealth was wrong. And I loved that. How wonderful to know that all my cynical, conditioned thoughts were completely wrong, and that there is another world out there - a strong, hopeful one.

Two books I'll quickly mention to anyone who doesn't yet fully understand the power of thought: "As a Man Thinketh" by James Allen, and "The Power of Awareness" by Neville Goddard.

And so I came up with a handful of formulae for making some big money using the power of the internet. And the one I have settled on to use first is some kind of online MLM or duplicable franchise system.

So I just joined Matt Lloyd's My Top Tier Business online program, and I'm going to be blogging about it, giving an honest account of what it is, what I'm doing, and whether it's worth your while to do also.

MTTB is a kind of update of his old system, called MOBE (My Online Business Empire), and has elements of MLM to the commission structure. This last point is never explicitly stated in the literature, or the other phrase "network marketing", and I can understand why. These concepts are still poorly understood by the "man in the street", as we can see recently by the attacks on Herbalife, including the public bet against it by an influential hedge-funder, and the subsequent investigation by the FTC which has just started. Still, I expect them to be exonerated, just as Amway has been over and over. Pyramid schemes are notoriously difficult to define anyway, and as some have pointed out (including  Robert Kiyosaki), it is traditional corporations that most resemble pyramid schemes, where the value and remuneration flow from the bottom to the top while the orders flow the other way. The military is the same - cannon fodder on the bottom, a few authoritarians at the top.

MLM on the other hand is more like interlocking wheels, and if there is anything pyramidal it is more like an inverted pyramid where the remuneration flows to the bottom and the value flows the other way - sponsors essentially "working for" the new recruits in terms of providing them the tools to get rich themselves. And the product is not as important as the medium in which everyone works - which is a mutually beneficial arrangement where everyone is encouraged to think wealthy thoughts. It's only natural that your average employee-type might view this as being "like a cult." Little do they realise they're a member of some kind of suicide cult known as "traditional employment". I'll develop that idea in a minute.

Matt Lloyd himself likes to refer to the system as one of franchising, and that's okay too. Franchising and MLM actually started around the same time, and in the early days franchising was also attacked as being a scam - difficult as that may be to believe in age where the high street is dominated by franchises. Thing is, whereas 95% of businesses go bust in the first five years, 85% of franchises succeed. That's because its a turnkey duplication of a proven formula, that anyone can follow.

And when you're talking about an online franchise/MLM, you're talking serious power and serious leverage. The internet was truly made for exactly this kind of business. No more do wannabe MLMers have to order dubious health milkshakes and vitamin tablets in order to justify a network of sharing. No need to try and push this stuff onto your families and friends, or start acting like some kind of door-to-door Jehovah's Witness type. No, now we have the might of the internet and the intangible products and info products which itself help to spread the word further. Perfect.

See, I believe that this is the age where paradigms are being bust wide open, and wealth is going to flow like a gushing geyser into everyones' lives. The internet plays a large part in all this.

As a leveraged network of enormous power, the internet has created an explosion of information all over the planet, and the next stage is to take all this data, separate the wheat from the chaff, and turn that quantity into quality.

So, synthesis of the best stuff is what we're after, married to plain-speaking common sense.

The time truly is ripe for people to make money online. More and more people are waking up to the fact that traditional employment is a one-way ticket to hell, in just about any way you care to mention. There are truly no redeeming qualities to "having a job" at all. This applies even to the self-employed to some degree, since you're still being employed by a customer or client instead of a boss.

In fact, just for fun, let's list the qualities of a JOB (Just-Over-Broke) and then compare them with those of an online business such as MTTB.

Characteristics of employment lifestyle:

1. Trade your time for money. Now look up the definition of the word "slave." This isn't semantics, and this is not a joke. Well, darkly humorous, maybe. Time - you know, that overarching asset that once spent, you will never have again, ever? Talk about opportunity cost...
2. Give up the Spring and Summer years of your life to be free in the winter of life. And, by the way, accelerate the aging process while doing it.
3. Necessary submission to conditioning, domestication. This will feed into all the other areas of your life decisions.
4. Linear income. Paid x for y time, unless you do commission work or get (often largely arbitrary) bonuses.
5. Remuneration often largely arbitrary and based on politicking, not merit. This is even celebrated as being "realpolitik" or "Machiavellian". Time to put an end to all that nonsense.
6. You don't get to automate any processes unless you want to put yourself out of a job. Do it all manually (or is that menially?).
7. You don't get recurring lifetime commissions or bonuses, and if you do you might end up being fired just so someone else higher up can collect them.
8. You're utterly expendable. You're just a cog in a wheel, and even in the most sophisticated industries a monkey could probably be trained to do much as you do.
9. You're a liability to the company. A drain. Or as the accountants would have it, a "cost centre." How's that feel, hotshot?
10. In the employee world, being good to one another is not a smart way to rise. You're expected to "compete" in a dog-eat-dog way, but suck up to the boss as much as possible. It fosters the illusion of competition, and this mindset pops up again in immigration opposition, tribal sports and warfare.
11. If you act as a healthy man does, and show an interest in the opposite sex around you, you put yourself at risk. So you suppress it. Your balls shrink, in other words. 
12. You can't be playful. Instead, you have to treat your job in a kind of poe-faced way as if its very serious and whatnot. While you're there, anyway.
13. You become politically correct and a liar. Dalrymple puts it incandescently well: "Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to."      
14. The more pointless or aggressive make-work you can conjure up, the more jobs get created.
15. No passive income. Only get paid while you're at work. And, as is often over-looked, get paid at a time period after you've done the work - sometimes up to a month later.
16. Taxed at source. At source, mind you, so if you get to reclaim some, it may not be until a year or so hence. Time value of money, anyone? And taxed at a rate which is, essentially, stupefying. 20-50%, when all is told.
17. Highly risky and insecure. All your eggs are in one basket. Your only income stream. No insurance against redundancy, which also happens to be at the whim of just one other person above you acting unilaterally.
18. Unscaleable. There's only one of you, and only so many hours in the day.
19. Time away from family and friends. And then, instead, frequently you're with dickheads instead. If you're the average of the five people you spend most time with, what does that make you? Being in the company of the same people, you will become like them. Mannerisms, tics, jokes, lifestyle decisions... all a carbon copy of the little people around you.
20. Time away from yourself. A lack of space, time you cannot spend alone in contemplation, or daydreaming, or listening to your body or allowing new better dreams to crystallise.
21. Often you're dealing with tangibles in a brick and mortar business, requiring your physical presence and shipping physical goods with all the associated liabilities. 
22. An attitude of lack. Employees tend to act as if they're all competing for slices of a pre-existing pie, rather like dogs or other animals would set up a pecking order for dinner. This is exactly the kind of mentality that invented the notion that energy cannot be created or destroyed. So why be creative anyway, right? Right?
23. Cost of transport to and from job, in terms of money, time, stress, and dignity, when you have your head jammed into someone's armpit at rush hour.
24. Inbred social life. You tend to be forced to socialise with your fellow office workers.They often even marry each other. Sexy? Really?
25. Erosion of virile qualities such as courage, free-thinking and self-sufficiency. You become a bitch to HR's rules and regulations.
26. Unoutsourceable. You can't get some guy in India to do it for you at a fraction of the wage. Unless, of course, management decides to do just that and you're gone.
27. Unleverageable. Unlicensable. You can't recruit someone to do as you do and share in the profits or wages. You're neither the sponsor nor the direct beneficiary of your own labour or that of your co-workers. By extension, you have no reason to support or encourage them either.
28. No ownership rights, no equity. No control.
29. All future interest handed over and lost forever. This is a point I will develop in future posts. This may be the single most crucial aspect of all, when thinking about wealth creation.
30. Narrow range of experience. As even Adam Smith observed (yes, he - the "father of economics" and postulator of the divsion of labour as the source of the benefits from trade), the man who has a job doing the same thing over and over again becomes about "as stupid as a man can be." Erosion of imagination. Process of solving problems reduced to a company manual, and anything else leaves the employee slack-jawed.
31. You've got a boss. You have to do what he says, or you're fired. And according to the Peter Principle, he's likely already risen to his level of maximum incompetence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle).
32. Must beg to raise your fixed income, and even then you might get some more scraps no more than once a year at best, and often not enough to even cover inflation.
33. Very little freedom or autonomy. You may find yourself asking permission to piss.
34. What you do is essentially meaningless to your own life, except in the extremely limited sense of indirectly causing a periodic wage to come in.
35. Maybe two short holidays a year. Lucky you.
36. If you're sick or hungover or worn out, fear still drives you into the office so you can get more worn out. And on the reverse side,you get sick people coming in to spread it to you. And I'm not just talking physical sickness, either. 
37. Promotion of the effete human qualities. For one reason or another, the victim mentality works incredibly well in the employee system. You can be given many things if you claim victimisation. Indeed, you become the biggest bully of all.
38. You aspire to be like your boss. He's your future, if you're a good boy. Think about that.
39. You're essentially just a messenger boy for the corporate flag (logo).
40. It's a hard slog, and its all in vain as its not aligned directly with your own interests. 
41. It's a kind of conspiracy against the public. You use psychological techniques to induce sales whether  or not the product is any good for the buyer.
42. You're by yourself and not for yourself. There's no-one to cover your ass, but there's plenty wanting to take your credit.
43. Is all about divide and conquer, as is the whole political arena. Compartmentalisation. Cubicle hell. Left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. Confusion. Isolation. Handing off of of responsibility to "experts" who are anything but.
44. Become a coward and a whiner. Indeed, what else is left?

Hm. That's a longer list than even I intended. And I could have gone on. Still, as anyone with a brain will conclude from the above, the cost of being employed is far, far higher than the cost of being unemployed with zero income (in the bum-freeloader sense that people think of that, although in actuality the very richest people on the planet are both unemployed and receive no income as such). It may even be preferable to starve to death than be an employee. "Freedom or death" is more than a cute catchphrase.

The employee mindset, which has been carefully nurtured by giant industrial overlords, who are also slaves in their own way, is the dismal grey shadow spread across the plant like some kind of Mordor, stoked and sustained by a dismal stream of dismal, violent and hopeless "news reports" from media outlets sch as the BBC, which justify mass churlishness and suspicion of one another, along with a kind of fatalistic adherence to a routine which is torturing them lovelessly into a grave which will be gratefully received. The fact that the "news" is fake and fabricated from nose to tail is almost irrelevant - it serves its purpose admirably and incredibly successfully. People want to believe it. They ask for it. After all, no-one has to switch the TV on.

Now, let's compare point-by-point to the online business models such as MTTB. Bear in mind I haven't received any income from it yet, but I certainly expect to:

Characteristics of networking lifestyle:

1. Money and time work for you, and create more money and time.
2. Get to enjoy the Spring and Summer years of your life, and end up very financially abundant in the Autumn and Winter years too. All while staying youthful in outlook and body.
3. No submission to conditioning, domestication. Indeed part of your mission is to help others to overcome these kinds of thought-disease.
4. Exponential or geometric earning potential. Unlimited, sky's the limit, etc.
5. Is all merit. You get what you deserve, no question.
6. You get to automate as much of the menial stuff as you wish.
7. You get recurring payments with no extra work.
8. You are you business, and your business is you. You are irreplaceable and unique and essential.
9. You're an asset to the business, indeed the primary asset. There are actually very few liabilities in the business at all.
10. In the networking world, biblical admonitions such as "treat others how you would be treated" actually make sense, and they work. And not in a suck-up sense either, but a mutually supportive sense. You become inherently moral. We know there's no such thing as competition. You do well, I do well. Period.
11. You get to goof around whenever you like, and wink at girls wherever you find yourself. If you want. You get to keep your balls. 
12. You get to remain playful, and hence learn and create faster and better.
13. Lies and political correctness become anathema to your mission.
14. You can and should eliminate everything from your life and business which is not necessary. Streamlining in a Tim Ferris 80-20 kind of way becomes fun and profitable.
15. Passive income. Get paid while sleeping, while sitting on the beach, while partying, while meditating, while eating shrooms. And you can set things up to receive incomings before needing to pay outgoings, like Walmart does.
16. Not taxed at source. Indeed, many of the benefits may be untaxable.
17. Low risk. Small overheads, diversified income streams. Can't be made redundant, obviously.
18. Scaleable. You can make as much as the amount of people you can reach out to in a positive way.
19. Get to spend time with the people that mean most to you. And that includes meeting new mentors who you most wish to emulate.
20. Get to spend time with yourself, and dream (and dream big!).
21. No brick-and-mortar tangible goods to ship.
22. An attitude of abundance. Networkers know that wealth is created, not taken from anyone else.
23. Home business, no stressful demeaning transport in human cattle compartments.
24. Expansive social life. Meet the most generous enlightened interesting people from all over the world.
25. Development of the virile qualities. No more a bitch to anyone else.
26. Outsourceable. This applies to many internet businesses, although not so much specifically to MTTB. This is not as much a benefit to me as it is to many as popularised by Tim Ferris. Being an employer is almost as abhorrent to me as being an employee.
27. Leverageable. Licensable. Duplicable. This is key. I can recruit someone to do as I do and we all share in the profits or wages. We can be sponsors and direct beneficiaries of our own labour, and hence have good reason to support and encourage them.
28. Ownership rights, equity, control.
29. Future interest recaptured and retained by the mutual network.
30. Wide range of experience, many and varied new friends and time to develop new skills.
31. No boss. 'Nuff said. In MLM, you get a sponsor who works for you and who does well when you do well. In MTTB I got a coach. Admittedly, he hasn't had to do a great deal, but we'll get to that.
32. No need to go cap in hand to anyone in order to raise your earnings. Quite the reverse, in fact.
33. Full freedom and autonomy.
34. What you do has meaning. Take this blog. I can talk plainly, maybe make friends, and in the process help others to become wealthy and happy.
35. Your whole life is a holiday.
36. Don't have to work if you don't feel like it. Funny that such a simple thing should be so significant. And you don't get sick and morose people coming into your house either. 
37. Promotion of the noble qualities. Rather than looking for victims (or looking to be one), you look for good people to share good stuff with.
38. You aspire to be like the best version of yourself that you can think of. He's your future.
39. The medium is the message, and you are both. You are the sharer of the product, and the product itself, but in a good way.
40. It comes easy and is aligned with your best interests.
41. Is a wealth creation and wealth sharing vehicle. People really do come first, finally.
42. You're for yourself but not by yourself.
43. Is holistic. The network is more than the sum of its parts. You're tapping into the same power that made the Masons and all those other annoying secret societies so powerful.
44. Become increasingly rich and happy.

I think I've made my point.

So, what about MTTB, then? When I joined up I got allocated a coach, who opened up access to the 21 steps.

The 21 steps monthly consists of videos which lean heavily (and correctly, in my view) on mindset, and the benefits of the IM lifestyle, which to me was admittedly preaching to the converted. However, Matt and his partner Mike impressed me with their obvious knowledge and vision, as well as coming across as genuinely likeable.

I also got a coach, who admittedly has done little more than open up access to the various extra steps as I progressed, and then the 30-day traffic programme, which I have yet to go through (instead I thought I would just start blogging here).

So I finished the 21 steps, and was presented with a number of banners in order to promote MTTB to the world, and thereby score commissions. I'm not going to show any, at last not yet, because the blogspot bots might decide this blog is spam. But they're pretty good.

So again, we see that Matt knows what he's doing. And really, that's just the point, and what I'm saying. Find a guy with a vision and a system, and duplicate the system. Easy-peasy. The same thing that makes torrents so powerful in file-sharing is now being used to make money. And in the most ethical way possible: Through the sharing of a powerful, mutually beneficial idea.

If Ray Kroc (the McDonalds founder) were alive today, I reckon this is what he'd be doing. And I can't think of a better compliment for Matt Lloyd and MTTB.

So that's that. I'll update this regularly, and feel free to post whatever you want in the comments section.