Episode 107: What exactly is the Empower Network? – with Chris Kostopoulos

Episode 107: What Exactly is The Empower Network – with Chris Kostopoulos

Mike: Hi there everyone! Welcome to Episode 107 of The Mike from Maine Show, the place where we do daily interviews with successful online entrepreneurs. This is your host, Mike Thomas. And today on the show, I’ve got Chris Kostopoulos on to talk about the Empower Network. Now, for me personally, when I hear Empower Network, I hear MLM — Multi-Level Marketing. I think, okay maybe it’s a little scammy. It has negative — negative reaction from me personally. So I thought, okay let’s give it a chance. Let’s bring on someone that’s having real success with it. And we can hear a little more about it, maybe some of my biases will be taken down by that. I’d love to hear all of your comments in the show notes below if you’ve tried out the Empower Network or if you have friends who’ve had, if you’ve got good stories, bad stories about it. Make sure you make a comment in the show notes below on mikefrommaine.com. But yeah, I’ve got Chris K. on to talk about all of that and more. Enjoy the show.

Mike: So, we’re here today with Chris Kostopoulos or, as he is better known as, Chris K. How are you doing Chris? Chris: I’m good, Mike. How are you?

Mike: I’m fine. Thank you. Now, let’s do as we always do. Let’s start off by having you tell us about yourself, where you started and how you got up to today.

Chris: Ah, okay. Let me start by first thanking you and telling you that it’s an honor and privilege to be on your show today. Um, you’ve had some of the really big guys on your show and I’m just honored to be here with you today.

Mike: Thanks.

Chris: Um, a little bit about my background – you know, growing up – I’m 32 now, I never really expected to be on the online, you know working from home, make money online niche. And ah, my background is actually finance. I kinda grew up, I got a Bachelor’s of Finance from St. John’s. I worked for an investment bank full time. And both my fiancé and I do healthy 6 figures. But we wanted something that would – want as a spare income and to be there as a safety net in case something was to happen. So, I originally got started by getting involved in a network marketing company. I went to — I went to a home meeting, sold bunch of presentations and then, I get involved in that. It’s a good company. It didn’t work for me because I’m not the kind of person to do home meetings and three-way calls and things of that nature. So, nothing against the industry, just not my preference, especially being really busy was my corporate job. So then, I started to thinking going online, looking for different ways to make money online. And I did stuff from um selling event tickets to Amazon products and then getting into affiliate marketing and eventually kinda finding my way into the online marketing niche. Um, which my main focus now is coaching, mentoring and teaching others how to actually take an existing business or build a new business and kinda do it online, not having to do home meetings and three-way calls and things of that sort.

Mike: So are you still — do you still have a full time regular job or are you all online?

Chris: I do, I actually I still work full time um again, it’s a healthy income. Um, my job is very — it’s a very comfortable job. I work with some great people, have some good relationships there. They treat me really well. Um, and as you can see, I’m pretty flexible with my time so I mean, it’s a Wednesday morning and I’m at home, doing interview with you. I don’t have to worry about running for the office. Um, so the goal is eventually when my online income gets to a certain point, my first goal is to really retire my fiancé. I like to just bring her home first. Um, you know, we just moved into a brand new apartment. Um, top floor, on the water, so it’s a good place. Um you know, eventually we’re thinking about starting a family, so I like her to be home to kinda raise a family first. And then, when the business keeps growing, I’ll probably be done, kinda step back and get into this full time.

Mike: So, you mentioned doing some Amazon stuff and some other things in the past. And you know, when you first started to try make money online, what was — when was the first time that you started any money at all?

Chris: Yeah. It’s actually um, I bring money online pretty quick actually. The first couple of days, I just got into Facebook PPC. I put up a couple of ads and I spent 7 bucks an ad. And I sold the product and for me, I got a $10 commission. So I made 3 bucks.

Mike: Good.

Chris: Yeah, it’s not huge but in my mind I was thinking, if I can make 3 bucks once, I can do it multiple times per day. So, I started scaling up my Facebook PPC and I realized quickly that — that initial test run was probably just a little bit a lot. So, I started losing a lot of money in paid marketing very quickly. Um, so from there, I had to step back and kinda really dig down and kinda start analyzing things. And I started kinda going the free route, through article marketing and SEO which is very manual back then when I

was first starting coz I really didn’t — you know, I had the money. I didn’t wanna sort of investing a lot of money in the business coz I know a lot of other people out there that are getting started, they don’t have that money to invest.

Mike: What time — what year are we in by the way? Coz um, when you say — Chris: So, this is probably um about 16 months ago.
Mike: Okay.

Chris: So, it’s just a little under a year and a half. And I knew people getting started don’t have the funds to really throw out the business. They wanna start small and scale up. So my whole philosophy was well, I need to start really; I have this person’s who’s gonna start coz if I didn’t succeed there I can show — Um, so then I got into SEO and blogging. And I started by doing other affiliate products. Um, products that are valuable, I will buy them first, do an honest review and then promote them to people. Um, and that’s when I got um — I got started to sell different products on Amazon, things that I own, that I use. Then I started looking for affiliate marketing niche. Um, and then I eventually landed in Empower Network. Um, I landed in Empower Network on when it launched, actually. October 31st of last year. And the reason for that was just the — mainly, the commissions structure struck me in first. And then, the leaders and the training behind it really got to me. So, I started really focusing on it. And I — what I would say is, what I’m wondering about is that even though I’ve gotten involved October of last year, I really wasn’t focusing on it coz I thought it was just an affiliate — another affiliate product that I was kinda market on the side and kinda see where it went. Then, I’ve gone June of this year, so it’s — we fast forward about 8 months from when I actually joined. I realized that the income is just, it’s rolling in, it’s increasing and I’m really spending no time on it. So then June of this year I decided, well I need to focus on this a lot more because it’s doing way better with less effort than anything else that I’ve been doing. Um so now, my main focus is based on Empower Network. I do a few other things as well but that’s my main focus and kind of the platform I use to train new people into online marketing.

Mike: Okay, now you’ve mentioned the Empower Network which some guest have kinda mentioned before, that to be honest with you, I am not that well-educated about what it is. I’ve heard things about it, I’ve — to be honest with you, I’ve heard some negative things about it before. It kinda has one of those — for me, the initial feeling is that it’s one of those things where you, like a multi- level marketing where you sell to other people and they get involved and it — I don’t know, maybe you can understand where I’m coming from there. But then, the people that are doing it rant and rave about it – of how great it is. So Chris, change my mind about it. Tell me what is the Empower Network and what have you been doing with it?

Chris: Okay so, Empower Network can be perceived as a network marketing with a multi-level marketing company um, because it has a paying structure that’s similar but we’re technically not and I’m a lot more network marketing company. Um, and as we know a lot of those companies, some very successful ones, also have some kind of bad reputations out there. It’s — all people just perceive network marketing as in industry in the whole that they just don’t like. Um, so Empower Network kinda falls on that — in that industry. Um, I was the same way years ago. I always thought of what’s this? You know, pyramid scheme, people are trying to make money off from me. Um, the thing is I sit back and I researched. I always well, there’s 4- to 500 companies that are network marketing companies invested by some really big people out there. So, you realize there’s a legitimate business out there. So, it’s an opportunity. It’s basically like buying a franchise. You’re buying in and your goal is to distribute your products or services to make an income. In Empower Network, the big change in Empower Network is that we’d pay 100% commissions. So, for any product you own that you then resell, you earn a 100% of the — of the cost of the product. That’s a big change compared to other affiliate programs or network marketing companies out there that — because you need to cover a lots of overhead and make your own profits, they pay much more commissions. Now the way it works that it can kinda becomes a multi-level is that there are pass-ups in Empower Network, but people are passed up to you. So technically, even though a pass-up can come from 10 levels down or 20 levels down, they sort of become your first level again. So the whole MLM structure, that kinda looks like a pyramid, it’s a similar concept but it’s not actually there in terms of the payout structure. Now what Empower Network does offer though, it’s different than in other company, is um — our basic product is it’s a viral blogging system, which comes with high authority and being — you have a blog Mike, I’m sure you know how hard it is to get your blog ranking on the search engines, to get high authority and high page ranking on it. So in Empower Network, ranks will come in. In Empower Network blog now, I believe on alexa.com is on the top 500 in the world. So, that’s really powerful for someone new coming into the industry to start over from blog and have a ranking of 500 all over the world in alexa. My personal blog that I’ve been working on for about a year and a half now, it’s on about 100,000. And I kinda know that I’m good coz I started at SEO and I really know my stuff. So, for me to recommend another blog as oppose to starting your own from scratch and building it for a year a half for it to get to 100,000, there’s a lot of power behind that. And now only, I mean, it’s $25 a month and that covers your Word Press posting, your themes, any changes that come down and pipeline for all affiliates. So, for $25 a month, you get this powerful platform that you can use to push traffic to your business. And then from there, there’s multiple other products that we scale up our business with.

Mike: Okay. It’s interesting that you say “we”, which is — it’s not, it’s kinda like you’re an owner in it kind of. Is it the way it’s kinda structured, like you’re an investor in the Empower Network? Is that how that works?

Chris: Well, I say “we” because I consider us a team. And, not just the people in my team but even cross line. I’ve helped tons of people in Empower Network there are — there’s no direct relationship to me or my business. Ah, but we’re all very helpful. All the leaders that I worked with, some do multiple 6 figures a month. Some of them, I’m not even their downlines but they’re willing to kinda reach out and give you a hand up. So, I’m willing to go out there and help others crossline or downline. Um, And that’s the great thing about Empower Network. We consider ourselves a team and we just wanna change the industry. Um, because I’ve seen on other companies where you have people crossline and on different teams. Instead of helping each other, they’re competing with each other. And I just feel that’s — that’s bad for the industry as a whole, not just the company. So, I consider us a team. And by being kind of an owner, I guess technically, you’re kind of an owner of the company in a way because any product you own, you’re getting a 100% commission on it. So, in that sense, it’s like a franchise that once you buy it to the franchise, you own that franchise and you own that income. Similar concept in the Empower Network, I think.

Mike: So, if I go to chrisksite.com and to sign up for the Empower Network through your affiliate link, I would initially start by paying $25 a month and you would, initially, you would get that $25-commission, correct?

Chris: It would either come to me or be passed up, depending on where you came in on the sign up. So, the way that the pass-ups work is um, your 2nd, 4th and 6th person that you sponsor and then every 5 after that gets passed up. So, initially people that are new to the industry say, “Well, I’m making all these pass-ups, how is that fair?”. Well, the fairness comes in that we’re gonna basically teach you and train you to be able to market online the way we do and then you’re gonna be the one getting those pass- ups. So, I kinda — I came from that mindset of the lag in the beginning of my business where I would think, “Well, how come I’m only getting 10% commissions and why am I making these pass-ups?”, to the mindset of abundance now, I realized that there’s so much out there for all of us that it’s gonna come back to you ten-fold. So, that’s kinda how the structure works. If you went to my site, signed up through my link, among the other bonuses that I offer to my team and sign-ups there, you’re basically gonna get ongoing training from not just myself but a couple of 6-figure millionaires we have on our team. And we do trainings weekly.

Mike: Do the training through webinars or through videos? How does that work?

Chris: Yeah, mostly webinars and videos. And then, we’ll do some um, some live calls actually once in a while. We’ll do small group calls, usually with — once somebody shows a proficiency and kinda able to follow what we’re saying and actually take action on it and we see are getting some results, we’ll do some smaller group calls that are more private because there’s probably a lot of people online, they don’t take it seriously. It’s only $25 to get started. It’s a pro, it’s a con coz to most people are like, well $25 a month to get started. It’s not that big of an investment. I’ll try it out for 30, 60, 90 days. And if it doesn’t work, I’ll just move on. But if you come with that mindset, it’s not gonna work coz you’re not taking it seriously and if you’re not gonna put in the effort in it, it’s just not gonna work for you. So, once we see someone serious and they’re putting effort into getting the results, we’ll do a smaller group call of 5 or 6 people in the call just to help them get into that next level.

Mike: If I signed up under you, would you be able to have direct contact with me afterwards? Would you see that I was your — I guess I would be in your downs, your downline? Is that how that that would work?

Chris: Yeah, for sure. I would see. Even if you’re a pass–up, I still see you coming in through because I’m technically your sponsor regardless of where you get passed up to. Um, and generally, most of — most of the people that are coming in my team, they will get a call either from, from me or my assistant. Um, just to welcome to the team, make sure they get log in coz I have a whole training camp set up for them, make sure they get that information and they get to starting off from the right footing.

Mike: Can everyone in your team also see each other in the system?

Chris: No, that’s one thing. You can’t see each other. You can only see the people that you bring in because the information that’s there ah, it’s usually name, email, phone number. So, the phone number is a little personal. So generally, unless you’re the person sponsoring them, I guess you don’t wanna look and see everybody’s phone numbers.

Mike: How many people do you have in your downline right now?

Chris: I’m about at 40 right now. Um and honestly, that really all started back in June. I really started taking it seriously coz in June I think I only have 2 or 3 people. Um, and — but it was constantly, from those 2 or 3 people started really performing. And I wasn’t really doing much at the time, you know. I was only providing a lot of training. I was taking — like I said, it was a little side affiliate form to me. And those 2 or 3 people were performing without really much training from me or mentoring. So I decided, well there’s

power here. So then, from June to about I would say October or November, I got to 30, 40 people. Um, but that’s, well I think the last couple of months, I’ve been going through some personal issues um, so it’s been really tough to kind of focus on the business the past couple of months. Um, but even the last few months, the whole purpose behind the system is — there’s a residual part of that system. So, even though I have some months where I’ll make several thousand dollars, even when I do nothing, um I have a residual of about $2500 a month rpllong in right now. So, 2500 a month isn’t really a huge number, especially living in New York, it’s not a huge number but it’s about 30,000 a year. Um, and that’s residual, meaning that I wouldn’t have to do anything. Whether I work on my business or not, that money’s gonna keep coming in. And the way my team is performing now, it’s probably only gonna increase. Um, because my team is really performing now. And I see new people coming in daily that they’re able to just take our training and run with it and within the first couple of weeks or months, really start seeing results.

Mike: How’s your retention rate go?

Chris: I think our retention rate is huge and our company again — I don’t have any of the exact figures on hand, obviously. And we always like throw big income disclosure income out there. So, for anyone looking for specifics on income and disclaimers about it, go look at our income disclosure at our site. Um, from what I’ve seen, our retention rate is huge. Just from my personal downline, I’d say I have an 80-90% retention rate out of my members. So, there are people that have come in, have come to my team. And I had people that within the first two weeks just cancelled. And ah, you know, it kinda gets me off guard coz I’m like, what do you expect to do in two weeks, really. Um, that’s like saying, I wanna become a doctor and you go to school for two weeks and then you realized they won’t give you a medical degree. Um, so I mean, you have to be willing to put some work into it. It’s not gonna happen for you with no work. So there’s people, I’ll give them a call and they’re basically, you know, screaming it’s a scam, it doesn’t work. And my question is, “Have you gone through any of our training?” And they’ll go, “No”. And some people at that point decide, why don’t we check out the training and welcome back to the team. Some people just don’t wanna deal with it because they want some kind of magic button that you’re just gonna push that button and money’s gonna fall out of the sky for you. But people who are willing to do work, they stick around and start seeing results.

Mike: The sources of revenue from the Empower Network are people primarily making their money through referring other people or is there a way that once you’re in the program, you make money by selling to other people outside the Empower Network. How does that work?

Chris: Yeah, I mean. Both ways, right. So, that one thing that we in Empower Network always say is, if you come to Empower Network, we’re gonna teach you how to market any business. We recommend that you use our platform to do it because everything’s set up for you. The capture page, sales funnels, emails. The whole system is set up for you so we recommend you start there. But once you started getting more advanced, the whole goal of Empower Network is to teach people how to market any business, mostly network marketing companies. We have some traditional people, like dentists, photographers, that are learning how to market their businesses using Empower Network strategies. So, once you really start learning how to build Empower Network, you are able to not only earn commissions from people in your downline that you sponsor, but then you can actually go out there and start marketing other products more effectively coz now you know the whole concept of how to market online. And that’s where it comes down to. What you really need is — you need traffic, to be able to generate traffic from one source, convert that traffic into leads and then sell those leads into some kind of product or service to make your sales. So to me, it’s three simple steps but everybody gets it very confused and it gets convoluted. So we break it down. We keep tons of strategies on how to go about that.

Mike: How long does it take for someone to start earning once they’ve joined the Empower Network?

Chris: Funny question. You actually have start earning the same day and there are people — again, it comes in disclosure unless this is probably not the norm, there’s people that signed up and in their first day, they sponsored someone and already started making income. But I’m not saying sponsored someone as in you know, their called – you know, their brother or their cousins or something. They actually went through the system. They bought the blogging platform, they put up a blog, they pushed traffic to it and they got someone to sign up into their business that they didn’t know from their blog online. So that’s — I mean, that’s really powerful when you’re able to come in and make money your first day. Generally, people aren’t able to do that, people aren’t coming in with big list or already have a huge database of contacts. Um, and they’re able to get a lot of interest. They hear the new person can come in, learn how to push traffic and start generating an income.

Mike: One thing that I think is interesting about the Empower Network from what I’m understanding, correct me if I’m wrong, but you can’t just go and promote it unless you’ve actually bought the product. Is that correct?

Chris: That’s correct. And we feel that’s just good business. So, I know there’s other people out there that would go out and they will promote any type of affiliate offer, just trying to make a buck. And our philosophy is, if you’re gonna promote a product, you should

own the product, have used or reviewed the product and be honest about the product. So if you’re not gonna be using the product, why are you promoting it? Um, and I’ve bought tons of products online, just trying to find my way around kinda the online, you know, industry. And there are products out there that are extremely good, have tons of value and I do recommend and I promote them. And then, there’s other products that are not reliable and you almost feel that, you know, a person putting it together was just trying to make a buck. And those products I won’t promote them. Um, I consider them an investment to learning what not to do in any products. And when people asked me about them, I advice them to go turn to better product. So yeah, I mean if you’re gonna just try and — and then, what happens when someone — when you’re trying to promote a product, let’s say it’s a $100 affiliate product and the person you’re promoting it to says, “What do you think about the product? What do they really teach in there?” If you haven’t bought it or go through it, you can’t even answer that question, honestly. You know, so our point-of-view is whatever you own, you can market and get a 100% commissions off it.

Mike: You have a product that you are — well, at this time that we’re speaking, you’re gonna be putting out. And by the time that this interview goes up, it will be released by then. It’s called Video Marketing Exposed. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Chris: Sure, yeah. Video Marketing Exposed is actually the way it came about, wasn’t even my original intention. What I started doing was getting into video and Youtube marketing online to start helping me build my online business, Empower Network and a few of other affiliate products out there that I’m really promoting. And what happened was these videos really started taking on a life of their own. Um, I have — I have one cha — I have multiple Youtube Channels set up. Um, and I discussed why I do that in the product but just one on my channels alone has gone, you know, over 6,000 views. And those 6,000 views obviously turned into a ton of leads and those leads turn into sign-ups and sales. And the great thing about that is that those videos are out there marketing for you 24/7, 365. You don’t need to be at your computer doing anything. You don’t have to be on the phone, talking to people. You don’t have to be doing home meetings. The videos are doing the work for you. So, a lot of people in Empower Network, we had a live event in San Diego. I flew out there. And a lot of people really wound want to see how I’m getting my results. And I told them, I’m doing videos. Then, we got into this conversation and before I knew it, I was surrounded by 20 or 30 people at the event, just kind of discussing video marketing and Youtube marketing. And then, one of the leaders comes up to me and Lawrence Tam, and he’s one of the No.1 earners at Empower Network. And I’m on his team. He’s been coaching me and he’s like, you know you should just turn this into a product. He’s like, take your knowledge, turn that into a product. And ah, you know, it’s someone like him, here’s a good idea and you run with it. So I kinda work from just giving away that valuable information to decide to package it into a product. There’s several modules in it. I’ll teach you from, whether you have a business or not already, I teach you how to build it online, how to properly create your videos to get more traffic, how to increase your conversions and how, if you have a product or not, how to find products that you can actually promote that you don’t feel that you need to learn some new skill. So, the main example I use — I have someone on my team, he’s a golfer. He loves to golf. Now, do you know you can actually make money just by talking about your passion which is golf. And you know, at first, people aren’t really sure how but I — I’m like, what kind of golf clubs do you use? And he’ll tell me. And I’m like, Why do you use those golf clubs? And he’ll explain his reasoning. That’s a perfect video or blog post. And then, pretty much any product you can think of is sold on Amazon. You can become an Amazon affiliate and you can earn a small income off that from Amazon. So, there’s so many strategies that I kinda discussed with strategies, I discussed how to use the video marketing in Youtube to really generate a business online. And most of it are really free. I mean, Youtube is a free platform. It’s got so much authority and power. And Mike, as you know, you do a lot of videos. Videos are so powerful when it comes to converting, capturing attention and really building relationship with cold traffic. So I mean, video marketing in 2013, Cisco came out with this statistic basically saying that 90% of consumer traffic online will be video traffic. So, if you’re not building your business using videos and – at the upcoming year, you can be losing a lot of business, um and just a lot of leads and traffic and money from your business.

Mike: Well Chris, I just want to thank you so much for taking the time out and coming on the show today. Is there anything that we didn’t touch upon that you wanted to make sure that we talk about before wrap it up here?

Chris: Yeah I mean, I like to — I’m really big on mindset. So, one thing I like to kinda just throw out there for people um, looking to build a business is that it’s a phrase I kinda coined a while back, it’s “Life is always gonna get in the way”. And what that means is if you’re always waiting for the right time, trust me it’s probably not gonna come. So, stop procrastinating and start getting it done. And my personal dent with that is that back in September, took my girlfriend at that time to Paris where we got engaged. So, we got engaged in September and then have to start planning wedding stuff. We were in the process of buying our new apartment where we’re in now. So we had to deal with closings and moving. And in the process of that, we had a couple of family members, we each have a family member laid in the hospital. So, we spent weeks in the hospital. Thankfully you know, any prayers out there, we appreciate it. Thankfully, they’re both recovering and doing much better. Um and in the mean time, we both have full time jobs and I’m still building a business on the side. So, in the last three months, a lot has happened in my life to kinda realized that it’s still possible before that going on, to build a business on the side coz my business is still increasing. So when people tell me – when people tell you they don’t really have the time to build a business and all they do is go to work 9 to 5, that’s just an excuse that they’re not — they’re not really fully believing themselves to be successful. So, don’t let them hamper you because I see these people

come home at 6 o’clock, they watch TV for 4 hours, they play around in Facebook for 3 hours and they’re not really building anything long term. So, don’t let that stop you. Stop procrastinating and just start today. If you start today, the potential where you could be 1, 2, 3 years down the road is huge.

Mike: Great advice, Chris. Good advice. Where can people reach you at if they wanna get in contact with you?

Chris: Yeah, definitely it’d be on my blog. It’s chrisksite.com; C-H-R-I-S-K-S-I-T-E dot com. I’m always updating that with new videos and content, things of that sort. Um, it’s been a little stagnant lately, again I’ve had a lot going on. I will be getting back there. I have my Youtube channel, my Facebook account, all the infos on my site. You can contact me there. And again, look out for that new product that’s gonna be coming out coz videos are gonna be huge in 2013 and you wanna get on that.

Mike: Great. Thanks again, Chris.

Chris: Mike, thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Mike: I hope you enjoyed the show with Christ today. Go ahead and check out his website. It’s chrisksite.com. That’s where he talks about all his different business thing — just his blog, you know all how that works. And also, if you go to mikefrommaine.com/chrisk, you can go ahead and check out his Video Marketing Exposed website where he get to talk about the power of using video. I obviously believe in that type of thing as well coz I use tons of video for my business. Well yeah, check that out. Have a great weekend and — oh stay tune tomorrow, on Saturday, I’ll be sending you a video about the — I had my Youtube channel from mikefrommaine.com banned. I’m gonna send out the video that I think might have been responsible for getting me banned. I’ve put it up on Vimeo so yeah, I’ll send that to you tomorrow. Have a great weekend.