Family and Friends Financial - Marketing Blog

ID theft is on the rise, is your identity secure

2007-08-20T15:57:00.000-04:00

The following is an excerpt from an interesting article on personal data security published on computerworld.com:

Today's electronic world is a risky place for your personal data -- and it's not getting any safer. More than 158 million data records of U.S. residents have been exposed as a result of security breaches since January 2005, according to The Privacy Rights Clearing House, a nonprofit consumer rights organization.

As fast as banks, merchants and consumers add new layers of security to their storage systems and network, say security analysts, new technologies -- or simply careless users -- create new security holes that aggressive and sophisticated identity thieves eagerly exploit. The result, says Avivah Litan, a vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner Inc., is that "things will get worse before they get better."

Click here to read the full article

'Catch Me if You Can' Abagnale & Tech Pros advice on ID Theft & Security

2007-07-09T03:38:00.001-04:00

Experts asked tech-product engineers, analysts, even a former identity thief - what they do to stay safe, both online and off. Abagnale is one such expert, who after five years in jail taught the FBI how to catch white-collar criminals. His story was the basis for the 2002 movie "Catch Me If You Can" starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

read more | digg story

Steve Jobs' Greatest Presentation

2007-07-09T00:20:00.001-04:00

A great write up on how to give an effective presentation. The author, Carmine Gallo, analyzes Steve job's launch presentation for the iPhone, and describes why it contains the blueprint for the perfect pitch.

read more digg story

Annual Conference Recap

2007-07-03T15:36:00.000-04:00

Its been just over a week since our First Annual Conference wrapped up and it feels like the winds of change are still blowing strong around our offices. We launched our new SAFETYnet line of products featuring identity theft protection insurance and restoration services, free and discounted legal services, tax preparation assistance and more. We have also started recommending the Discover family of credit card products and home in addition to Home and Auto Loan products from E-LOAN.

Click here to view some pictures from Las Vegas Conference, and please leave some comments if you were there and have some feedback or suggestions on our progress.

Have a great 4th of July America.

New Products coming soon

2007-05-21T12:40:00.001-04:00

Things have really been moving fast over here at Family and Friends Financial. We are rolling out several new products and services. Over the next couple of months look for the nationwide launch of SAFETYnet, our new product featuring services like: free & discount legal care, financial education, tax preparation filing and advice, and identity theft recovery. SAFETYnet is a significant leap forward in our mission to help our representatives and customers ensure personal financial security.

Be sure to check back here and at familyandfriends.com for more details on SAFETYnet in the near future.

2007-04-10T16:06:00.000-04:00

Writing an Effective Promotional E-Mail

I just read a great short article on crafting an effective promotional e-mail message on PCmag.com and thought I should share it. These are some great simple steps that anyone can implement when promoting products or services. Some of the tips include: personalize the message, start with a question and don't use large images. Based on our research conducted in conjunction with Edgar Dunn and MasterCard e-mail is one of the preferred communication mediums for marketing our recommended credit card products. Make certain that you are maximizing the potential of your e-mails.

If you are a representative of Family and Friends Financial check your Back Office to view some sample e-mail messages that you can use in promoting the income opportunity. If you are uncertain if the message you want to send out meets our compliance standards please e-mail me at marketing@familyandfriends.com

Click here to read the article on PCMag.com.

2007-03-20T12:19:00.000-04:00

A New I.D Theft Scam

A friend of mine who works for a major credit card company recently made me aware of a new scam that carders (people who commit credit card fraud) are perpetrating on the masses. This scam is slightly unique in that they call you posing as representatives of your financial institution and provide most of your personal information to you before asking for the all important three digit security code.

The text below is a description of one such scam:

This one is pretty slick since they provide YOU with all the information, except the one piece they want. Note, the callers do not ask for your card number; they already have it.

This information is worth reading. By understanding how the VISA & MasterCard Telephone Credit Card Scam works, you'll be better prepared to protect yourself. One of our employees was called on Wednesday from "VISA", and I was called on Thursday from "Master Card".

The scam works like this: Person calling says, "This is (name), and I'm calling from the Security and Fraud Department at VISA. My Badge number is 12460. Your card has been flagged for an unusual purchase pattern,and I'm calling to verify. This would be on your VISA card which was issued by (name of bank). Did you purchase an Anti-Telemarketing Device for $497.99 from a Marketing company based in Arizona?"

When you say "No", the caller continues with, "Then we will be issuing a credit to your account. This is a company we have been watching and the charges range from $297 to $497, just under the $500 purchase pattern that flags most cards. Before your next statement, the credit will be sent to (gives you your address), is that correct? "You say "yes". The caller continues - "I will be starting a Fraud investigation. If you have any questions, you should call the 1-800number listed on the back of your card (1-800-VISA) and ask for Security. You will need to refer to this Control Number.

The caller then gives you a 6 digit number. "Do you need me to read it again?

"Here's the IMPORTANT part on how the scam works. The caller then says,"I need to verify you are in possession of your card". He'll ask you to"turn your card over and look for some numbers". ; There are 7 numbers;the first 4 are part of your card number, the next 3 are the security Numbers' that verify you are the possessor of the card. These are the numbers you sometimes use to make Internet purchases to prove you have the card. The caller will ask you to read the 3 numbers to him. After you tell the caller the 3 numbers, he'll say, "That is correct,I just needed to verify that the card has not been lost or stolen, and that you still have your card. Do you have any other questions?" After you say No, the caller then thanks you and states, "Don't hesitate to call back if you do", and hangs up.

You actually say very little, and they never ask for or tell you the Card number. But after we were called on Wednesday, we called back within 20 minutes to ask a question. Are we glad we did! The REAL VISA Security Department told us it was a scam and in the last 15 minutes a new purchase of $497.99 was charged to our card. Long story - short - we made a real fraud report and closed the VISA account. VISA is reissuing us a new number. What the scammers want is the 3-digit PIN number on the back of the card. Don't give it to them. Instead, tell them you'll call VISA or Master card directly for verification of their conversation. The real VISA told us that they will never ask for anything on the card as they already know the information since they issued the card! If you give the scammers your 3 Digit PIN Number, you think you're receiving a credit. However, by the time you get your statement you'll see charges for purchases you didn't make, and by then it's almost too late and/or more difficult to actually file a fraud report. What makes this more remarkable is that on Thursday, I got a call from a"Jason Richardson of Master Card" with a word-for-word repeat of the VISA scam. This time I didn't let him finish. I hung up! We filed a police report, as instructed by VISA. The police said they are taking several of these reports daily! They also urged us to tell everybody we know that this scam is happening.

Please pass this on to all your family and friends. By informing each other, we protect each other.

source

2007-02-28T14:28:00.000-05:00

Concerns in a digital marketplace

Everyone is writing, talking, worrying and thinking about the 460 point stock market drop that took place Tuesday. Many had been calling for this type of correction for some time, and the components are so varied and global in nature that it may be difficult to pinpoint one root cause. Was it inflation and market response in China? Or another negative housing report, with a skyrocketing sub-prime mortgage default rate? It was all of these things and more.

The market had not dropped more than 2% in over 45 months. That is nearly 4 years without a significant correction. Corrections of this magnitude once occurred with some regularity. Complacency is the word that keeps popping up. Complacency for one of the longest bull markets in history, and ignorance to the risk inherent in a digital free market system.

Bob Pisani, NYSE Analyst with CNBC, attributes the nearly 200 point drop that took place at 3pm, in less than two minutes, to a technical error within the messaging system. Pisani says the "trading delays resulted from problems with the New York Stock Exchange's messaging system, not a failure of the new hybrid trading system". Orders got clogged up upstairs at the NYSE for 40 minutes and when they all hit the messaging system it caused an overload. Our first digital stock market crash, probably not our last.

The Chinese market start going down, and adversely affects all of the other global markets. At the same time imagine that the Dollar is weakening against the YEN and Yuan which is then tipping the interest rate of the 30 year T-bill down, and just for good measure commodities like gold and oil are going in the dump too. This is exactly what happened yesterday, and we would be fools to ignore such a broken system, when all of the self correcting measures seem to fail and we teeter on the brink of oblivion.

Ah, but Wednesday was better, up 100 points and looking bright overnight. Fed chairman Ben Bernanke made a statement to the congressional budget committee that the market was stabilizing and his people did not foresee an extreme failure of the system, but the longer term issues of social security reform and a national personal savings average in the negative were major concerns that demanded timely resolutions.

The digital market crash was not political or religious; it demonstrates a need to safeguard our economic operating system. The free market economy 2.0 may need some more time in Beta before we announce that it is the system of the future. One thing most observers noted was the lack of experts available to place the orders once the system had broken down. This is where the complacency word comes back into play. Granted any amount of manpower would have had difficulty with a seamless pickup of the clogged orders. What does this say about our reliance on machines and how we cannot expect machines to operate perfectly at all times? Margins of error and doomsday events should be planned for and contingency plans developed. Without backup even the best system is vulnerable.

Family and Friends offers an innovative income opportunity to help you manage the economic down cycles by generating a supplemental income on your own time. Family and Friends Financial also offers free credit knowledge through our membership program. The goal of this program is to help you and your friends and family achieve a greater understanding of responsible credit management. Click here to learn more.

2007-01-25T12:22:00.000-05:00

Six Degrees of Separation, Connectors and "The Tipping Point" continued...

I am finishing up Malcolm Gladwell's national bestseller "The Tipping Point" and would like to talk about one of the most important topics in the book: Connectors. Connectors are the people who transcend normal social groupings and merge individuals with ideas, products and people that otherwise would remain outside the sphere of knowledge.

Connectors are the "cool kids" in school, the ones that everyone knows and that seem to know about everyone. Connectors get new ideas from Mavens, and may in fact be Mavens themselves, then serve as the conduit through which the new idea/product/person is introduced to the masses. Finding connectors is the key to building a successful network marketing company so please read the following excerpt from "The Tipping Point" to see how important the role of the connector really is.

"In the late 1960s, the psychologist Stanley Milgram, conducted an experiment to find the answer to what is known as the small world problem. The problem is this: how are human beings connected? Do we all belong to separate worlds operating simultaneously but autonomously, so that the links between any two people, anywhere in the world, are few and distant? Or are we all bound up together in a grand, interlocking web? In a way Milgram was asking the very same kind of question that began this chapter, namely, how does an idea or trend or a piece of news - the British are coming! - travel through a population?

Milgram's idea was to test this question with a chain letter. He got the names of 160 people who lived in Omaha, Nebraska, and mailed each of them a packet. In the packet was the name and address of a stock broker who worked in Boston and lived in Sharon, Massachusetts. Each person was instructed to write his or her name on the packet and send it on to a friend or acquaintance who he or she thought would get the packet closer to the stockbroker...Milgram found that most of the letters reached the stockbroker in five or six steps. This experiment is where we get the concept of six degrees of separation...How did the packet get to Sharon [Massachusetts] in just five steps?

The answer is that in the six degrees of separation, not all degrees are equal. When Milgram analyzed his experiment, for example, he found that many of the chains from Omaha to Sharon followed the same asymmetrical pattern. Twenty-four letters reached the stockbroker at his home in Sharon, and of those, sixteen were given to him by the same person, a clothing merchant Milgram calls Mr. Jacobs. The balance of letters came to the stockbroker at his office, and of those the majority came through two men, whom Milgram calls Mr. Brown and Mr. Jones. In all, half of the responses that came back to the stockbroker were delivered to him by these same three people. ..Six degrees of separation doesn’t mean that everyone is linked to everyone else in just six steps. It means that a very small number of people are linked to everyone else in a few steps, and the rest of us are linked to the world through those special few."
(pg 36-37, Gladwell)

Let's talk about how the concept of six degrees of separation relates to Family and Friends business model and more generally success with network marketing. The idea proposed my Milgram's research is that connections are not equally shared amongst all. Instead, there are key connectors who serve as a link to the rest of the world. To build a successful marketing team or company you can go out every day and try to recruit every person for whom you think the opportunity is a match, or you can do some homework, practice your pitch and go after those people that hold a prominent position within several different social networks: the connectors. Spend more time recruiting people with a diverse range of contacts and interests and watch your team size grow exponentially. Successful recruiting is the key to success in network marketing. Make your next recruiting push a drive to recruit key connectors, who will act with integrity and passion in building your business.

To learn more about Family and Friends Financial go to www.familyandfriends.com or to try our innovative income opportunity for a FREE Four Month Trial call 866-895-6550 (9am-5pm EST M-F)

2007-01-04T19:29:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year From Family and Friends Financial

Be sure not to miss our CEO's Quarterly Update Conference Call. Magnus Sublett, our CEO and Founder, will make some special announcements regarding our company.

Thursday January 4th at 8pm Eastern Time
Dial (712) 432-3000
Bridge# 349907

Click here to join the webinar for a visual presentation during the call

2006-12-21T12:13:00.000-05:00

"The Tipping Point" for network marketing companies

I am currently reading "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell and have found it to be an enjoyable investigation of social phenomena such as epidemics, direct marketing, fashion trends and social behaviors. Gladwell starts by talking of Hush Puppies re-emergence as a trendy brand, then moves to the patterns of a syphilis epidemic in Baltimore, and then jumps to Paul Revere and how he was able to create a social phenomena through his personal charisma, and knowledge of key persons in each New England town. The point being that thanks to his status as a "Maven" and a "Connector" one man was able to kick-start the American Revolution using good, old-fashioned word-of-mouth.

"Paul Revere's ride is perhaps the most famous historical example of a word-of-mouth epidemic. A piece of extraordinary news traveled a long distance in a very short time, mobilizing an entire region to arms. Not all word-of-mouth epidemics are this sensational, of course. But it is safe to say that word-of-mouth is - even in this age of mass communications and multi-million dollar advertising campaigns - still the most important form of human communication. Think, for a moment, about the last expensive restaurant you went to, the last expensive piece of clothing you bought, and the last movie you saw. In how many of those cases was your decision about where to spend your money heavily influenced by the recommendation of a friend? There are plenty of advertising executives who think that precisely because of the sheer ubiquity of marketing efforts these days, word-of-mouth appeals have become the only kind of persuasion that most of us respond to anymore."

(Gladwell pg 32)

The Tipping Point is a fun read and really validates what we are doing with Family and Friends Financial. I give this book a shining endorsement for anyone interested in the workings of social phenomena. "The Tipping Point" is a New York Times #1 bestseller and should be readily available at your local bookstore or online.

2006-12-01T10:45:00.000-05:00

What a week. Busy, busy, busy. We are working on a number of initiatives over here at Family and Friends Financial to further enhance our offering to you, our representatives. We are in the process of refining our training programs. We are also expanding the way we will be delivering training to you, employing channels such as webinars and live events. There are a few other projects that we're getting close on as well, which we'll announce at the appropriate time.

Speaking of webinars, some of you may have already participated in one of VP of National Training Mike Lindstrom's Opportunity Call webinars. Mike has been using the webinar format very effectively for several weeks now. This medium has greatly enhanced Mike's ability to communicate the power of the opportunity we're offering to prospective representatives. Remember to steer your recruits to this webinar held every Wednesday evening at 8pm Eastern.

We want to hear from you about your thoughts on Family and Friends Financial and how we can improve on our marketing materials and communications. We feel that training and, as Mr. Lindstrom says, "modeling successful behavior" are important in building a new business and realizing the full potential of the Family and Friends income opportunity.

Hope that you all had a great Thanksgiving, and have a happy and productive holiday season.

2006-11-20T15:33:00.000-05:00

We are making progress on the Organization Package which will allow organizations to use our credit card marketing program to generate revenue. I can't really say much more as we are still testing out some program elements, but stay tuned.

You have hopefully heard our message "Always Be Training" and now I would like to supplement that with another, "Always Be Prospecting". You should constantly be thinking about people that you can develop into qualified leads. Go beyond just sending a impersonal e-mail to your list of contacts by picking up the phone and setting up further discussions. Ours is a relationship driven business, the more successful you are at developing relationships the more successful you will be in Family and Friends Financial.

E-mail is a powerful and efficient tool for staying in touch, but its effectiveness wanes daily. With the proliferation of spam/junk e-mail, and spam filters e-mail should not be the only tool you use. So pick up the phone, set up some meetings and build your business to the next level. Spend time really qualifying your leads and developing your personalized pitch and watch your success rate skyrocket. Remember we have three main communications to convey to potential prospects: credit cards, income opportunity, and free membership. Go into the meeting with your approach mapped out and be prepared to change course based on the immediate feedback that you receive. Personal marketing has always been and will always be the most effective. Good luck and Happy Thanksgiving!

2006-11-07T10:48:00.000-05:00

Did you get out and vote today? If not you must be one of those smart people that voted early or submitted an absentee ballot. During election campaigns we often hear about inappropriate government spending, but I recently read an article in the St. Pete Times about a government funded program that deserves a bigger budget.

Ways to Work provides a means for parents with credit challenges to secure financing for an auto loan with a decent interest rate. The article by Nicole Johnson suggested that the program dealt with some issues managing default rates when they started serving Pinellas County in 1999. Through experience and refinement of their selection criteria Ways to Work has been able to operate successfully since last year. In addition to assistance with auto loans, Ways to Work provides counseling on rebuilding credit. The vision behind the program focuses on providing reliable transportation as the foundation of getting your credit on the right track.

Family and Friends Financial offers a free membership program providing credit knowledge and information on personal finance. If you are not already a member click here to sign up for FREE.

2006-11-02T12:30:00.000-05:00

I just returned from a conference in NYC hosted by the Interactive Advertising Bureau. The conference was highly informative and I would like to share some of the highlights with you.

Keynote Address by Fran Kelly - CEO of Arnold International

Fran spoke about building "Breakaway Brands" (also the title of his new book), as the developer of the Volkswagen "Drivers Wanted" campaign Fran sure knows a thing or two about this. The key point of his address was the need to be the best in your space, to become a category of one, by developing your distinguishing factors and answering the question: "What makes us different?"

Taking Control of user Generated Content
panel featuring
Mary Bremel - Director of Interative, Hewlitt-Packard
Dean Harris - Chief Marketing Officer, Kayak.com
John Trimble - Director of Interactive, Fox Interactive Media

The panel addressed everything from Myspace (Fox/NewsCorp was on the panel) and blogging to future movements in television and radio. The key point from this discussion was the acceptance that due to the ease of communication and pervasiveness of information in our digital world every individual consumer represents an entire channel. The discussion brought some heated debate as to whether or not current trends in user generated content (i.e. Myspace) really represented a paradigm shift or simply an enhancement to the channels and efficacy of communication. I believe that the ease of spreading your own content does amount to a paradigm shift because at no time before in the history of mankind have the masses been able to directly influence the news and media with no more effort than taking a picture or writing a letter. The average citizen has in effect become the producer and reporter of news and current events through tools such as blogs and CNN's iReport.

Representatives of Family and Friends Financial may want to leverage blogs and social networking tools like Myspace and Linked In to grow their networks and build teams through effective communication. Just a thought, please let me know what you think.