This is mainly an update for TTI members however for the rest of my team present and past it will serve as an update as to what’s been going on and where we are headed from here.

Even for current TTI members I encourage you to read all the way to the end. The logic behind what we are doing here, and the history behind it, is important to understand for shaping your brand (and conversations) going forward.

I have had numerous inquiries over the last few weeks from people along the lines of:

“So Jeff, rumor is you’ve fixed what’s broken with the whole ‘make money on the Internet’ thing… Is that true? If so, how?”

Well it’s a more involved question than I can tackle in one email but the short answer is yes, we have assembled what I believe is the most complete system for creating that fabled “rising tide” that we hear so much talk about (but haven’t seen anywhere online for the last 2 years).

The reasons for this come down to understanding a few fundamental changes that have happened online in the last year or two and being willing to meaningfully adapt the way a marketing system works tot he new paradigms. This unfortunately is not something many marketing systems were willing to do since these companies had sunk so much money and brand equity into technology that worked in certain ways and instructional content that taught these ways.

A few examples:

• Reliance on replicated sites – I discuss this more later in this email but basically while there is still some merit to an individual using a “replicated site” to promote an offer to their own list or through some privately-known alternative traffic source, as a general principle for building a marketing system that supposedly offers widespread promise the replicated site is dead.

  Period.

  When a quick Alexa search of the 100 largest websites on the Internet reveals 90+ sites that do not accept advertising that points to replicated site you know the Internet tide has turned against “carbon copy” style marketing and any system that makes this the core of their marketing approach is in denial.

  TopTierIncome.com takes a completely different approach… one that dovetails into the next paradigm shift in online marketing:

• To become a truly self-sufficient entrepreneur (and really tap into the massive ’7 figure’ promise that the Internet holds) marketers will have to learn how to create their own sales funnels. This reality has actually been known for a while but nobody wanted to really admit it due to the widely-held viewpoint that teaching “newbies” to deal with things like web hosting, website design/management, offer creation, copywriting, etc. was a recipe for having a bunch of pissed off people claiming “this is waaay more complicated than I signed up for!”

  And frankly, given the resources most marketing systems are dealing with there was and is a lot of truth to that concern. Building your own sales funnel is a fairly involved process and given how much the “make money online” industry is built around promising “easy” “duplicatable” “carbon copy” methods it would have been undermining to start telling people that this is what they would need to do.

  Unfortunately though for the last two years it has also been dishonest to pretend otherwise… Whether we’ve all been in willfully misleading or simply in denial is splitting hairs… the point is I’m calling BS on the whole “our members are not capable of doing the things we actually do, so let’s teach them to do things that don’t work because they make our business sound easier.”

  (Anyone tried generating home business leads with social media lately? How’d that work out? Exactly. So why is every guru and system out there teaching it as a viable method for lead generation?)

*Note I’m not saying social media doesn’t have a place in an online funnel, but that place is not at the front end lead generation for affiliate or network marketing offers.

And there are a myriad of other ways that things have changed… in a perfect world I’d take a year off and write a book but with the way the Internet is going by the time the book was done we would need another book. Suffice for now to say that TopTierIncome.com not only acknowledges the ways in which the online home business industry looks nothing like it did a year or two ago but we actually have built a new approach that works (instead of sweating bullets of denial as we row upstream and wonder why conversions are down and nobody’s getting results).

We have things like:

• A Traffic co-op. We work together to get better leads at better prices instead of teaching our members to go compete with each other in the marketplace and drive prices up.
• A closing system. We don’t try to convince you that we’re gonna turn you into a ‘prospecting’ or ‘closing’ machine. The bottom line is that some people are cut out for phone sales and some people aren’t but rather than sell solutions promising to turn you into the next Tom Hopkins we make you an offer… we’ll close all your high-end sales for you for in exchange for 25% of the commissions. it’s a win-win, especially when you consider that you are currently giving up 100% commission on every sale you’re not making!
• An easy way for people to build their own funnels. This one’s a biggie. Remember what we said above… for over a year now nobody has wanted to confront the necessity of teaching people to build their own funnels since using widely-available tools to do so (like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Squarespace, Blogspot, and other online platforms) was next to impossible. All the systems out there are built for either blogging or content sites, but there was nothing that made it easy to build the range of page and site classes needed to create an online funnel (capture pages, one-time-offer pages, exit pop ups, sales letters, shopping cart pages with upsells, hubsites, jump pages spread through a funnel,multiple domains, etc.) Until now. With the HubOpus website builder system (included with your TTI membership) all these things and more become as easy as checking boxes and clicking buttons. HubOpus is the ONLY content management system (CMS) website platform out there that is built do to the things marketers need to do, without requiring custom programming.
• Training that is linear and not confusing. With the Internet changing as much as it does other systems seem to have taken the approach that to keep up they need to put out a new training each week on “What’s Working Now”. What’s ironic about this is that it’s a self-perpetuating problem that goes like this:

1. Current methods aren’t working (or more precisely current methods have gotten too expensive or complex to teach to beginners)
2. Let’s find something new we can teach
3. Okay found it, let’s have a training on it
4. Okay we just showed it to 500 marketers on a webinar
5. Okay the cost to do what we were doing just quadrupled because 500 people are now competing with us (and each other)
6. Okay the owner of whatever marketing method just banned us from their platform b/c our members flooded their support with inquiries, half of which were complaining about the wait time or price increases brought on by the recent flood of our members.
7. Okay find new method
8. Repeat cycle

Get it? it’s ridiculous. And it all stems from one main problem we alluded to earlier… the traffic sources that DO have enough capacity to accommodate thousands of marketers (like Google, Facebook, YouTube, etc.) require sophisticated, unique, standalone funnels to advertise on and are primarily interested in advertisers who can spend $10K a month or more. So new marketers are left fighting over the scraps of advertising that are still available to them, and whenever some little untapped pocket is identified that does produce steady quality leads it had best be protected or else it will be destroyed as soon as word gets out.

The only question I have is: Why do other “leaders” in this industry not see the value in facing up to the way things are???

Since myself and our team got out of denial and started dealing with things as they are we have seen exponential growth, both in team size and also in sales per team member. We have launched our own system, TopTierIncome.com, which is now seen by those in the know as the best (and perhaps only) way to make real money online for the average person getting started now.

Between the co-op, closing support, website system, and revamped training approach TopTierIncome.com now contains all the pieces needed to deliver on the much heralded “turnkey marketing system” we have all been hearing about for years. And all it took to create it was a willingness to see things as they are and challenge the status quo a bit.

Reminds me of the song by Muse called Knights of Cydonia.

The opening lyrics go:

Come ride with me
through the veins of history.
I’ll show you how God
falls asleep on the job.

And how can we win
when fools can be kings?
Don’t waste your time or
time will waste you.

Translation: The Internet marketing Gods (gurus) have been asleep on the job, appointing fools for kings (trainers) and wasting new marketers’ time learning methods that don’t work or won’t work soon.

Over the last few days I have received many calls and e-mails from all of you inquiring about Jeff Lerners departure from PRO, and how his departure would affect you in regards to your new Marketing Partner’s leadership, support and coaching. In accordance with PRO’s policy and since Jeff has been on my team since he joined the PRO community 3 years ago… his team and members will now be my responsibility for which I accept with honor and humble gratitude.

I can assure you that myself, as well as my right hand Mark Hayes will be here for you in anyway we can to empower and ensure your success here at PRO. For those of you who do not know me or my history with PRO I feel it’s important to give you a little background so that you feel comfortable in knowing that I will be present and available for you as your new Marketing Partner. I have been with PRO since the beginning (just about five years now). My commitment and passion for this community and my team members is one of the reasons I have the highest duplication of any member or team, and have the largest team overall. To date I have made more sales than any other single member or team in the last 5 years, and at least half of the Marketing Partners are on my team and of course this included Jeff as well.

I will send out a separate email highlighting many more ways in which I can help you achieve your goals with weekly webinars, one-one-one coaching and training as well as many other things I do uniquely for my team, most of which is in the back office in special sections. Meanwhile visit www.MyPrivateTeamTraining.com and www.MichaelForce.com… and standby for more to come.

Now in regards to Jeff’s departure… As I mentioned above due to the overwhelming amount of inquiries I feel it’s necessary to now send out a response to each of you. I know Jeff has reached out to many of you too with many emails, calls and webinars. And also Jeff and I have talked a few times for an hour or so as well and our relationship continues to remain intact. And know my only wish is for you to have all the information and or or points of view from both sides as requested so that you can make the best decision for you and your business moving forward. Jeff Lerner was a Marketing Partner for PRO, which required that he enter into a number of agreements with the company with respect to loyalty to the PRO community – protecting YOUR interests, your confidential information, your ability to succeed.

These agreements are in place to ensure that when someone is trusted with the responsibilities inherent to the MP position, they will understand that at that level it’s not about just them anymore – it’s about everyone depending on them. Over the past few months, Jeff violated both the spirit and the letter of these agreements, primarily because he placed his own interests ahead of and above of anyone else at the company, apparently in order to enrich himself at the expense of his team and the company that has supported him for years in a variety of ways (remember, Jeff has held many different hats during his time with PRO, from member, to Loyal 9 member, to PRO Manager, to member again, to PRO Marketing Partner etc.)

When PRO discovered Jeff’s actions, he was given two options: resign, or try to work within the company. He chose to resign. PRO like any company had to protect its interests, community and membership and keep in line with it’s core principles of teamwork, synergy, integrity, and loyalty which we believe contribute to the growth of the whole rather than going solo. A rising tide raises all boats as most of us well know.

Lastly, I would like to say that I am very passionate about PRO and what we do here as a team, as individuals, and as a community. I’m proud to be surrounded by numerous individuals that are constantly striving to be on the cutting edge of this industry and remain innovative in every way, every day. I am most proud to be a part of a group of people who care so much about others, and are willing to do whatever it takes to empower and inspire others to realize the potential that lies within them. Which ever path you choose wether it’s a new journey with Jeff or to continue on this journey with PRO, in the end I wish you much success and happiness always.

Yo Force,

Not gonna take issue at all with the idea of you sending an email to your team to facilitate this transition.

However I do ask that if you’re going to get into the business of sharing details with people (which don’t really matter anyway and are gratuitous to share in the first place) that you at least get the story straight regarding 4 particular statements.

1. “In order to enrich himself at the expense of his team…”

Now now Force, we both know that’s not true (you in particular since you have been receiving healthy residuals on several levels of my team’s sales). Enriching ourselves at the expense of our teams would be to continue to insist that our team should just “hang in there” with the abysmal conversions we’d been getting with the system funnel for the last year, and the continued insistence on teaching people to market replicated funnels (which Google, Facebook, and every other major traffic portal have banned).

My silo was doing the most business of any silo in PRO for the last 4 months, thanks to the system I built, yet my personal income was lower than ever. We both know I made a lot more money when I was paying off $300,000 in debt and solely focused on making money for myself. I could easily have been consuming the majority of the traffic I was generating but was instead rotating it out to the team through the co-op, one among many reasons why my team was blowing the other teams out of the water in terms of consistent sales spread among more than just a few people.

And for the record I used to preach to you guys on calls about how with the new MP Outsource Option we should be focusing on providing traffic to our teams more than to ourselves. The fact that this suggestion was laughed at is reflected in the fact that most of the MPs earn more commissions by themselves than the entirety of their teams put together (which number hundreds of people in some cases). Seriously go look at the numbers and if anything I’m saying is off please correct me (I admit I can’t go look up the exact figures since they shut my account down).

Tell me that you and the other MPs don’t earn more in most months than your entire teams put together. How big is your team again???

Ponder this: My funnel represented about 6% of the total members in the PRO community yet was doing almost 20% of the company’s business (even after you subtracted out my personal sales). I’m also the only MP who consistently represented less than 25% of the total production of his team. That means my average team member was doing over 3 times as much business as the average PRO member and I was the lowest percentage of total team production of any MP. Both these statistics are anomalous in a good way when compared against the other MPs and indicate that my system was doing exactly what it was designed to do… take care of my team in a way that no other MP did.

Dealing in actual numbers is a bitch, huh?

2. “Jeff Lerner was a Marketing Partner for PRO, which required that he enter into a number of agreements with the company with respect to loyalty to the PRO community”

Show me a signed Marketing Partner Charter with any of our signatures on it. Last I checked we were all still waiting to see the final versions of it (7 months after we all met at the James Hotel and created the Marketing Partner program) which puts it right in line behind the new BlackBOOK funnels as possibly the slowest development on any project ever. I didn’t sign mine, did you sign yours?

3. “When PRO discovered Jeff’s actions…”

I spent two hours showing Jay everything I was doing and fully disclosed my intention to charge people to use my system to continue to sell PRO memberships. I wasn’t doing anything in secret… I went to PRO in full transparency as soon as it was ready to show. i spent two hours the day before the MME walking Jay, Jay, and Alan through my system’s back office, and showing them the other product lines it was integrated with. I also fully disclosed that I had spent a considerable sum developing my system (to make up for what I perceived as the deficiencies in the PRO system) and wanted to charge for it for two reasons: 1. To recoup and cover development and management expenses, and 2. On the principle that people should not be paying for two systems when the majority of their results were coming from one of them. Your email strongly implies that I was working in secret, which I suspect reflects more your personal feelings about not being included than any actual secrecy on my part in regards to PRO.

Think about it… I built my system to sell the PRO line of memberships. How exactly was I going to pull that off in secret considering I was going to need PRO’s technical cooperation to make it work?

4. “He chose to resign…”

Now that’s a doozie… I had my marketing sites and back office access shut off because I would not give PRO administrative access (including permission to have their compliance department edit my content). Are you gonna give them editorial access to your team training site anytime soon? Let me reiterate this… they shut off not only my back office but the entire system through which I was generating traffic for over 50 of my team members. I’ll assume for now that you flippantly used the word resign when in fact you meant “was terminated”. If I am mistaken and you actually meant to imply that I resigned then well, I resign myself to being lied about

Force we go way back and we have no problems. But please be careful how you paint this to the outside world. I know you are fiercely loyal to these guys and you have kind of a club with them but frankly I’ve put more money directly in your pocket than any of them have…

If you’re gonna have a Kool Aid party and then go send an email please keep my name out of it next time.

Thanks bro,