Executive Chat - John Rodgers and MLM Lawyer, Kevin Thompson

All right, John, I think we're live. Hey everyone, Kevin Thompson here. I'm with John Rogers, who's a great client of mine who is the founder of Inspired Living app. John, how are you?

I'm doing good. Kevin, how are you doing today?

Doing wonderful and thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to chat with you today on this hangout because yesterday I completely, completely dropped the ball. I'm so sorry about that.

Alright? Yeah, you bet.

Okay. All right, well everybody, for those of you that don't know, John had a conference call and I was supposed to be featured on the call. He had a thousand callers, maybe more. People gave me a nice introduction and I wasn't there. Eight o' clock call, no excuses, walked home, got distracted with my kids and I just forgot. So I'm going to be on the call next Tuesday with John. And for those of you that were on with John and you were expecting to, I apologize. But hey, let's do this hangout right now. And John, this is my show, so I'm going to leave the.

Alright, sounds good.

I'm going to leave the talk here. And you're making a play in the mobile app space and that is just a hot, hot marketplace right now. What led you to want to create an MLM out of a mobile application? Give us the thought process there.

The thought process was this. I'm real fortunate to have a personal friend of mine, really one of my very best friends, a fellow by the name of John Marr. He's the CEO of Savage Apps and he's been creating applications since the beginning of the whole application explosion. Actually, he started messing around with the iPhone and doing things on the iPhone before the app Store even existed. He's created a number of applications, although I should mention Savage Apps is not technically connected with ila. John Marr is developing the app though. But over the years it's been neat seeing his business grow because they've got literally millions of downloads of their applications. A couple of their applications have been the number one downloaded app in as many as 50 different countries and literally millions of downloads. I thought, what an amazing era that we're living in when it comes to mobile applications. Because mobile applications, that industry, it's not like other industries in this respect. This is what caught my attention with this. Most industries grow, they develop over a period of time and they might start off as a baby, but grow and mature, become an adult if they become multi billion dollar industry. That wasn't the case with mobile applications. I noticed that they came out of the gate. Their first year, they were a $4.2 billion industry. They showed up as a full grown child right out of the gate, just exploding ever since then. So I knew that there was something special there with mobile applications. I was talking with someone who's really industry savvy with a lot of different things. They made a comment, they said, it doesn't seem like there's many hot spots in the market these days like there was with the dot com or like there was with the real estate and all that. I said, you know, I'm going to have to deal with that. Actually, mobile apps, it's becoming integrated with absolutely everything, becoming a part of what we do, how we communicate, how we search for things. It's just, it's a part of things.

So explain. Okay, so how does your business operate? So I have an idea as far as what you sell, but maybe the people watching this video, they don't understand. So where is the opportunity for a distributor? Which that's kind of an antiquated word. Right. Back in, back in the old days, people bought product and they distributed product to the consumers. Nowadays it's a little bit differently, but let's just call them distributors. Where's the opportunity for a distributor in your business to make money selling, promoting mobile apps?

Oh yeah, that's what we're excited about. We've arranged it in a way to where until now, until recently, until ILA came along, any way that a person could, the only way that a person could profit from that exploding mobile application industry was if they learned how to write code. You had to create the thing. But I realized that John Marr, he's got the app background, but I have a background in network marketing. And, and I saw there, I thought, I just know that the first company that shows up on the scene that brings those together, it's going to be a monster. That's what I told John. I said, if this is done correctly, it's a huge win because what we have in the essence of the app, and I might be getting ahead of myself right here as far as what the app is, but it's delivering motivational personal development information. It's a subscription based application that's new to some people. Some people aren't familiar with subscription based applications. They're used to free downloads or maybe $199 for a download. But there are subscription based applications. Actually, my friend created an application that's an industry specific application where a company has to pay $70 a month for each user. Yeah. There are subscription based applications. Well, this being a subscription based application, we made it possible quite simply to where you know what, if someone shares this application with someone, they're going to get paid on their efforts there. So we've implemented the network marketing model and made it possible for someone to get paid by referring people. Not only that, we're making it very, very simple to do so. Because if a person can click a button, send an invitation, they'll be able to do this, they'll be able to refer people. So we've made it very simple and attractive and hopefully beneficially, financially beneficial for sharing the app with people.

Now, the way I see your model, I don't see it as being you're not really going to try to poach from other existing network marketing companies because your price point is pretty low, right? It's my understanding it's $10 per month. So this can work in tandem with other programs, but at $10 a month, let me ask you this, because this is the age of the pretty much between $200 to $300 per month is the sweet spot in the network marketing space for a lucrative pay plan. So if you're trying to attract top talent, how do you do it when the price point is $10 per month?

Yeah, great question. The beginning of that question you mentioned, as far as where we're at, we're not in competition with people. I must say, I really like where we're at in this respect. We really not view us as being in competition with anybody. As a company, we advocate, we promote people excelling and achieving great things in life. When we see a company doing well or when we see an individual doing well in a company, we just celebrate that. We say, man, that is awesome. It's great to hear about people doing well in the industry. Is there anything that we can do to encourage you in that? And we offer some support and personal development. You're right. I love the fact that we're not in competition with people. But as far as the question, how can we make it lucrative at $9.95 a month, you're right. There's a lot of companies out there that are working with a bigger margin. And the fact that they are working with a big margin, sometimes they can have more upfront attraction. So what we've done is this. We know that we've got to be creative with what we do with that 995. So we've done two things. We've made it possible for the average person, the average person who may not even have had much success in the industry where if they put just a little bit of effort into and giving them the tools to do it, they can make $2,500 a month for the average person. We like that number because it's not such a, it's not a lofty number where it's like you're going to make $10,000 your first month. We'll never say that.

But they're also not going to buy a jet and fly over the world in their private jet drinking champagne.

It's not going to happen here. But we know that there are some tremendously gifted networkers out there with big organizations. They're used to multiple six figure earners. What can we do for those folks? You know what we've done there, We've made it possible where if a person can build a big organization, they're going to get a bonus match on the production of what those people are earning. So if a person refers 10 or more people, they're going to get a 40% bonus match of what they're making. So we've got people that have literally put on 30, 50, 80, 100 people within one week. It's amazing. It's mind boggling to me. Well, if you've referred 100 people, guess what, over a period of when their organization fills out and they're making $2,500 a month, that's the goal is for people to make $2,500 a month. Well, you know what, 40% of that's pretty good, especially if you've got a lot of people. We've really tried to be mindful of making it attractive to the average person who's they're not a Babe Ruth with recruiting a ton of people, but then also wanting to make it attractive to the professional networker who's accustomed to making multiple six figure incomes.

Okay, tell me in the audience a little bit about yourself. Like where in the space were you baptized?

You know, that's a good question. It's funny, one thing I didn't do is I talked to so many people who it's almost like some stint at some point in Amway. It was almost like a rite of, of entry or something like that. Yeah, my background in a nutshell is the majority of my background is in the ministry. I served as a Bible teacher at a Bible school and as a pastor and I did some media, local media used to have a little bit of a TV show in the area doing some Bible teaching. But I tell you what, I never did that for the Money, because there wasn't much money there, I'll tell you that. So over the years, I've always done sales and marketing in addition to that, just to try to make ends meet. So the last 25 years, with a degree of visibility in my community, my current community and where I lived before this. You know what? I think I had a bullseye on my forehead. It was an MLM bullseye. Everybody pitching me, hey, John, you ought to do this. You do good at this. And I'd look at it all along. For years, I always just passed on it. I never did do any network marketing because I had some common. I had some common misconceptions about the industry. I wasn't too neutral about it. I objected to the industry. I was one of those. But then Something happened about 10 years ago, a friend of mine shared an opportunity with me and I looked at it. I was always kind and looking at things and I looked at this opportunity and I could see the value of the service in and of itself. And I thought to myself, you know what? I could see actually marketing this service without recruiting anybody. Because I always objected to the idea of recruiting people based on misconceptions again. So I came on board with that company and I was really fortunate because in that company there were a couple of people that really educated me about the industry. They did it well. They really did it well. They postured themselves well in the industry. They didn't do a lot of the trickery that a lot of people, other people would do by way of ambushing friends, inviting them over for dinner and whammy, give them a pitch. There wasn't anything like that. Real professional. I did well with that company. I became a recruiter and was building an income with that. Unfortunately, the owners of the company made some adjustments to the compensation plan. That happens sometimes. And boy, that just. They chased off the sales force is what they did at that point. A friend of mine who was a mentor of mine, who still is a dear friend of mine who's the top income earner in that company, left that company to start a new company. Really pleased to go with them and help as one of the founding members of that company. They're still going. It was about three or four years ago. Company's doing really well today. It does me well to see that company thriving and doing well. I've got nothing but love and support for them. It's just a year ago is when I had them for this and decided, you know what? I gotta go, I gotta move forward with this. So that's my background in a nutshell.

That's neat. That's a neat path. So are you following the stories at all? As far as the space being under attack by what's going on in wall street in particular, I don't know if you know about ackman. This guy placed a billion dollar bet that he was going to short herbalife. Basically betting that herbalife was going to go down to zero. Calling him a pyramid scheme. Do these sorts of conversations, do they hurt your business? Or are you sort of playing at a different level? What are your thoughts on this?

Well, you know, it's a great question, and I'm going to answer the question. I'd be personally interested to ping pong that back to you. Also to hear what your thoughts would be on this. With the developments of that, as well as the downfall of another really large, prominent company, the appropriateness of using names, I don't know. People who are familiar with the industry Know that there's an auction, a penny auction company that came down. Here's what I found. Boy, people are wound up really tight. They want to know that, hey, what makes you different? What makes you different? What are you guys doing that differentiates yourself from that? What I can tell those people is it's our intention to be in the marketplace and to represent the industry well. That's what our heart is. We have no interest whatsoever. And having a mentality of saying, you know what? Let's see what kind of a run we can make with this. Let's see what we can do with this niche in the market. Make a good run for it. That's not the case at all. In fact, it's because of that that I reached out to you. And I talked with a number of different gifted lawyers in the space. And I just really resonated with unithm. And I said, kevin, we want to do this well. And as far as I'm concerned, you're the boss legally. You tell us what to do, we're going to do it. Because what we want to do is we want to cultivate a culture. It's not so much just about a company, but our vision is to cultivate a culture that has a positive impact in society. Yes, helping people financially. But you know what? More than that, more than that, I tell people this. There are certain phrases that seem to be cliche. They seem to be mentioned so much that it's almost as if they've lost their tread. The idea of, oh, we want to make an impact in people's lives, you know, what we mean that we don't say that in some kind of a frothy, emotional sense. We want to make an impact in people's lives in such a way where people may have maybe attracted to the company because they see the. The possibility of profiting from the mobile app industry. But then, after a period of time, we want something to happen in that person's life. And stories to come that say, you know what? I came because I thought I could make some extra money. But something happened because of the material. It's made an impact in my life. I heard some things out of those modules, out of the personal development stuff that's really made an impact on our life. The goal is to have a reputation in the industry. Where, no matter who it is, if it's people with a different company or people outside of the industry, they could look at it and say, you know what? Those folks, they're doing it right. That's where our vision is.

Well, that's impressive.

If I might ask you this, from your perspective, if I might ping pong back to you, what do you see in this? Because you're interacting with people in the industry so much, you've got people asking you these things. How is the industry? How is it affecting the industry from your standpoint?

I appreciate the question. I think the conclusion. I'll start with the conclusion. The change that is going to happen Is going to help people like you. Right now, it's really easy for an entrepreneur to launch a business and sell thousand dollar lemonade. And they can make an argument based on the ocean of gray in the law. Separating good companies from bad companies. They can make the argument that their company is legal. Hey, look, we're basing commissions 100% on the sale of this thousand dollar lemonade. Now, what's happening? Herbalife is very much publicly under attack. They're a publicly traded company. And there's a prominent hedge fund manager named bill ackman. Bill, essentially, I'm not exaggerating, he bought a billion dollars worth of herbalife stock, and he shorted it. His target price is zero. He is saying they're a pyramid scheme. What he's doing is he's exploiting the ambiguity in the law. He's stitching together quotes from an article written in 2002 and a case written in 2004. And he's sort of stitching together this argument that, hey, herbalife has problems. That has led to a conversation in wall street. Now, on wall street, herbalife is winning. People are saying, hey, they're a great Company. The economics are great. The numbers are great. They're growing. They sell a valuable product. They're not going to be shut down by the ftc. This doom and gloom message, it's inaccurate. So they're betting on herbalife. They're betting against ackman. So herbalife's value is actually going up. That's good for the space. What is happening, though, is that there's a conversation at a much higher level. One thing I've learned in this experience, the people with money, they influence everything. And so ackman does have influence at congress. There are conversations about more regulations. What results from those conversations, we don't know. But I suspect, number one, the industry is not going anywhere. So, john, you're going to have a business next year. Don't worry about that. But I think quality standards are going to improve. So you can no longer sell thousand dollar limited. You need to sell a legitimately valuable product or service. We need that. We do need cleaner standards. So I think that is good. I think the question I asked you was whether or not this conversation is bad for your business. And you gave me an answer. My opinion. I think people will always look for good opportunities. And I think the network marketing industry will always attract a certain segment of people. For me, personally, just kind of a tangent. I competed in the decathlon in college. I love the decathlon event because if you jump over the bar, you get a certain number of points. You can't phone a friend. You can't call your daddy. You can't ask for a favor. You have to do the work, you have to perform. And when you perform, you are rewarded. The same is true in network marketing. You make the sales, you get paid. I think. I think that is always going to be an attractive message. So the industry is never going to disappear. I do think the industry is going to get stronger. Right now, you might lose a prospect or two Based on the ponzi scheme that you referenced earlier. That has left a bad taste in people's mouth. But here's the benefit. And I'm going to go ahead and say the name zeke rewards. The benefit of zeek rewards going down is that the marketplace is smarter. People are actually starting to look for legitimate products that they want, that they can use, that they can sell. The problem with zeek, amongst many problems, Was that out of the billions of bids that were sold, nobody used them.

Right.

It was a thousand dollar lemonade. So I think the marketplace is getting more advanced. Long story short, I think that we're going to have a Controlled burn in the jungle, so to speak. And the existing ecosystem is going to thrive as a result, if that makes any sense.

Yeah. Fantastic. Well, let me ask you this. Sorry, this will be my last question.

My show.

Yeah, I know it's your show. What makes this different from your. From your legal standpoint? Because we get the question all the time, you know, how do you differ from what recently happened with Zeke? And there's a way that I answer. But how would you say, as far as. What would you say about the legality of what we're doing and how will we have things put together?

Oh, my goodness. As far as your program, I think just to start with the obvious.

The.

Most somebody will pay in Your business is $10 per month. So give me a break, zeke. It was $10,000 or more. Huge difference from the consumer standpoint, from a structural standpoint. So if I were you answering that question, I would just lead with the price of the membership for the price of literally a couple of these things that are horrible for you, by the way. You get a good product. Then I would talk about your model. I would say that it's subscription based and people only earn commissions when they're actually using the service. Here's the main point. People can advance in your program without ever having to pay $10 a month. So if they don't want to buy it, they don't have to. They can make a customer sale to qualify their position. So from a structural standpoint, your model's on pretty solid footing. And then, of course, talk about the marketability of what you got. I mean, it's an opportunity in the mobile app space that's pretty powerful, trust me. On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being $1,000 lemonade company, 10 being party plans like Tupperware, Avon, Mary Kay. Mary Kay is not so much a party plant company. Stella and Dot, I put you up there with party plans. You've got a really clean program.

Fantastic. Hey, back to you. I dominated for a couple of questions.

No, no. Well, you know, I think we consumed a lot of time and hopefully people, they learn a little bit more about you, about what you're doing. And I certainly appreciate you doing this call last minute. I apologize for not being on the show tomorrow. I will be on your call on Tuesday. I'm going to have an email reminder, text reminder. You're going to call me, my wife's going to call me, and I'll be sure to be on that show. And I tell you what, also, personally, you've been a pleasure to work with. I have a lot of clients. People say, who's your favorite? I don't have favorites. Just like, I don't have a favorite child, but I do have some kids that behave better than others. And you're definitely great to work with. I can tell you have really high values. You want to do things right. You learn fast. I've just been impressed. So I want to thank you for giving me the chance to be a part of your journey. I don't know. I want to have a long relationship, so I'm proud of you and just want to say thanks.

Thank you, Kevin.

All right, that's a wrap. Let's end the broadcast. See you later.