Six Figure Mentors | 100% Independent Review

Six Figure Mentors – Is It A Scam Or Genuine Business Opportunity?  Here’s a 100% independent review of the Six Figure Mentors offer by Nicola Cairncross, who is a 5 x Author, International Speaker, and 3 x Podcaster with 22+ years experience of making a full time living online.  

** This post was originally published on 23 July 2010 and updated many times, most recently on 17 December 2018 **

I was originally approached to become a “Founder Member” of Six Figure Mentors by people I know, like and respect.  They were heavily involved with the Six Figure Mentors launch.

So I got some more info and watched a short video (I’m not going to link to it – you can find it all over YouTube and Facebook).    I knew their offer includes hosting and website production tools among lots of other things.

All well and good you may think….except I don’t need hosting and website production tools. I have those already, I use the “best of breed” tools, appropriate for my level of business (see list below).

But If I Want To Get Online, Isn’t It All Useful Stuff?

However many other people do need those kinds of tools, and it’s a slick looking operation.  From the outside, it looks like Kajabi meets affiliate marketing meets coaching meets Multi-Level-Marketing (MLM).

I was still thinking about it….I have a big responsive list and I’ve always wanted to make MLM work for me, as Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki apparently both say that, if they were starting again today, knowing what they know now, they would START an MLM company not join one.

And believe, me I’ve tried to make MLM work in the past, everything from water filters to Success University.

And as someone who’s been online 20+ years, who’s bought a half-million-pound hotel “no money down”, who’s made over £160,000 from an empty room in Mayfair in under 6 months….well, I’m more likely than most to be able to make a success of it, surely?

So if I can’t make MLM work, with my marketing and sales skills, my speaking ability, my mailing list….I don’t know who can!

No seriously, it seems to be the people who are great at networking and face to face sales, that make network marketing work.

So Maybe Six Figure Mentors Will Suit The Introverts?

But I’ve always put that lack of success down to my aversion at the idea of selling to family and friends, hosting meetings in my house, but most of all down to my lack of consistency and my horror of HAVING to do anything on a repetitive basis.

Perhaps Six Figure Mentors would work for someone who is an introvert, who wants to set something up online but who can’t figure out all the moving parts, who has failed at all the other MLM opportunities before?

Because, let’s face it, internet marketing is brilliant for someone who’s not good at doing things on a consistent basis. Generally speaking, you do the work once and then it works away in the background and you don’t have to “be there” all the time, after all.

And then I remembered what my ex-business partner in The Money Gym, Judith Morgan says (herself a qualified accountant and genius with figures), about MLM.

It’s an awful lot of work for not very much profit margin. And worse than that, you are building someone else’s business but not your own business.

The rug could be pulled at any time by the owner/founder, by the government, by the tax office….the list goes on.

(The only way to avoid that happening when working MLM is to maintain an independent mailing list on an independent list host for example, squeeze your prospects through your own optin page first, and only then jump them to your MLM optin page).

And then it hit me again!

Robert & Donald said they would START an MLM company, not JOIN one.

Do You Want Your Income Locked In & Dependent On Someone Else?

Aye, and in the course of the conversation……then came the rub with The Six Figure Mentor deal and, to be fair, with any other MLM type deal.

You can only make money from commissions selling the system to other people, if you first join yourself and pay the recurring fee.

Then keep paying the recurring fee. You stop paying your membership, your commissions stop too.

That’s totally different to affiliate marketing where you can make money from reselling the products without having to use the tools yourself. I would obviously only recommend you sell things you have used yourself, but even if you stop, or move to something better, you can still recommend the products. Here’s an example…

When I started online, I used aWeber, then Infusionsoft, now I use Drip for my email marketing. They all work, but they suit different people. So I recommend them all to different types of people through an affiliate link (so I get a commission) but I actually use Drip now as it suits me best.

Actually, I prefer to sell my own courses, products and services (there’s more profit & control that way) and, of course, I’ve got my own online community for aspiring internet entrepreneurs, my Clicks & Leads Academy, which is a mentoring membership site.

As well as the month by month commissions I earn, I have had some pretty major successes with Affiliate Marketing special promotions too, including making over £3300 in one weekend from just one mail out (for Laura Betterley’s excellent Local Social course, as I remember).

So my main problem with Six Figure Mentors is, that you ONLY get paid your ongoing commissions if you STAY joined.

Even if you are no longer using, or getting value from, the product.

So it’s actually MLM dressed up as internet marketing tools and mentoring.

Well, it was only a matter of time.

But is that a bad thing?

Well, if you have tried and failed with internet marketing, perhaps the Six Figure Mentors is for you.  If you want to get started online, want a set system to follow, someone to tell you what to do, perhaps it WILL work for you.

But make sure your “introducer” or “mentor” knows how to use the system and they will be sticking around to help you.  Or that you can make contact with people further up the line than you, so they can help you if your “mentor” drops out.

What About The Sales Tactics Used By Six Figure Mentors?

I’ve heard a lot about the sales tactics some MLM companies use.  Some of the comments I got on this post originally make it sound like selling anything is evil but, if you want to become successful, you have to get over yourself about the horror of selling or being perceived to be someone who markets or sells.

Selling is just providing a solution to a problem.

In lots of ways you could say that Six Figure Mentors are providing a solution to the problem that a lot of people need, which is to make a second income, they want to do that online and they don’t know where to start.

In order to start a business that solves someone’s problem, you have to exchange your solution to that problem, for money.  Or you won’t be in business long.

And it’s true that the internet marketing industry is getting more and more popular and more and more hyped, with people on large seminar stages using all the same emotional tricks that the MLM people use too, to motivate and sell – all the NLP, repetition, hand gestures, hypnotic language etc.

And there is a lot of people selling absolute rubbish in the internet marketing space from the stage too, believe me.

But you have to ask yourself, who is actually responsible for you reaching in your wallet, taking out your money and buying?

YOU ARE.

If you are going to an event, just don’t take your credit/debit cards to events if you don’t want to buy.

Don’t be pressured into buying on the spot for fear of missing out.  There’s ALWAYS a way to buy later, believe me.

The best offers will stick around, the best mentors will still be there 2, 5, 10 years later.

In Conclusion, Is It Worth Joining Six Figure Mentors?

I’m 100% not saying that The Six Figures Mentors is wrong, or a scam or any way underhand.  In fact, knowing the people who introduced me, I think it will probably deliver enormous value to the RIGHT kind of people.

The right kind of people are those who take action and ask for help repeatedly from their upline (the person who introduced them) and who then don’t rest until they get that help and take the action.

Creating an internet business is all about doing the learning and the work once and then letting your online system do the work over and over again for you.  In that way, it really is magic.  But you have to do the work once first!

If you really can’t manage to learn the basics of internet marketing (specifically Affiliate Marketing which I highly recommend for starter aspiring online entrepreneurs) then it might be useful for you. That link, by the way, is to watch some free videos made by the only person I recommend to learn affiliate marketing from.

What DO I Recommend Then?

If you don’t have your own product or service, I personally like the Affiliate Marketing method over any others, because I have a real aversion to  my future income being dependent on ANYONE except me – that’s why I chose to become an entrepreneur anyway, for freedom and control.

The thing that worries me about any MLM company – not just the 6 Figure Mentors – is that everyone will be locked in, regardless of whether they are still getting value, and having to keep paying, in order to keep making their commissions.  But I’m sure the people who have built big downlines don’t mind paying that recurring fee.

I worry about the large numbers of people who are still paying the recurring fee out of hope that either a miracle will happen or that they will, one day, take action and make it big.  How can they recommend the very thing that they are not using themselves with any integrity or success?

I would just PERSONALLY prefer to make my money by recommending something that I actually use myself, or have in the past.

You are reading this blog post because my online system works.  You found my blog post listing on Google and you came and visited my site.  You might sign up for my free book “The Money Gym” or watch one of my free videos while you are here.

You might give Six Figure Mentors a try, then later decide to create your own online business and one day, when you need help with that, come back and ask me to mentor you.  You can join my Clicks & Leads Academy which costs less than your investment in a cup of coffee each day.

Getting Started – Online Business Action Checklist

All you need to do to create your own online business is the following Action Steps, in pretty much this order.  Full disclosure, some of these links are Affiliate links but you pay no more because of that.

• Download my  “How To Market ANY Business Online” book – it’s 100% free.  You’ll get a really good overview idea of how it all works online then – how to make money and how to avoid any traps.
• Think about which of the 4-5 main markets you want to get into as an Affiliate. Buy a domain name at Namecheap for example.
• Now you need to decide if you want to use the “best of breed” tool for each part of your online business or if you want to use one of the “all in one” solutions like ClickFunnels (if you click that link you get a Free 14 Day Trial) or ActiveCampaign.  Let’s assume you are going for setting up each part separately.
• Buy the best, low cost hosting; you can start with BlueHost (always good to keep your domain & hosting separate) which I used to use, or the ones I now use, which are LiquidWeb (membership site forum hosting) and the “Rolls Royce” of WordPress hosting, WPEngine.
• Install a WordPress blog in one click, from the control panel in your hosting (ask your Support, they’ll help)
• Use one of the default themes installed or buy a nice premium theme from somewhere like StudioPress
• Add valuable content on your chosen topic to your blog regularly – everything from YouTube videos to podcast content (you can share other’s good stuff, not even write your own but it’s best to sprinkle a few personal posts in there too).
• While you’ll attract a small trickle of traffic to your website by adding content and sharing it on social media, you’ll need to do more, much more to make a living online.  You will either pay for traffic via Google Adwords, Facebook Ads, YouTube Ads or something similar.  Or you’ll have to work for traffic, via an extensive Social Media plan.  I have created a free webinar called  “How To “Be Everywhere Online” (In 20 Minutes A Week Or Less)“  and you can register for that here.
• Connect up Facebook Page, Twitter & Instagram accounts and share links to your blog content on them (use Buffer)
• Create a Lead Magnet (free gift) or buy a PLR (Private Label Rights) one to use.
• You’ll want to be looking at ClickFunnels or Leadpages now, to create your Optin Pages, Thank You Pages, Sales Pages and Webinar Registration pages – nothing I have ever used converts as well as Leadpages or ClickFunnels do.
• Set up a mailing list using the very sexy list host/automation software GetDrip which is very affordable and trounces Mailchimp as it has so many more features based on what actions people take.  Both integrate with Leadpages.
• Get a pop up lightbox on your site (Leadpages and GetDrip  make it easy if you use them!), or you can use the excellent OptInMonster with other mailing list hosts, then build and nurture that mailing list with great follow up emails.
• Create a low cost product of your own ($7 to $27 usually – audio or video content is quick and easy) or recommend other people’s products (this is called Affiliate Marketing).  This offer weeds out the people who are willing to buy, from those who are just seeking free stuff all the time.
• You can get a couple of great free videos on how to get started with affiliate marketing by Sarah Staar.  I recommend all of her trainings very highly.
• Create a higher ticket item product (or find one to sell as an affiliate) and offer that to the people who buy Product 1.
• Create a series of follow up emails for those who don’t buy, offering them great low cost products from other people. Create a series of follow up emails for those who did buy, offering them your next product.
• Start split testing the headlines and calls to action on your own key optin and sales pages (without having to change your own web pages) using Improvely
• Share your learning, which boosts your own online income from sales – by teaching others to make money online in the way that you have.  People want to learn from people they know, like and trust.

Earnings Disclaimer: Some of these links are affiliate links, you’ll pay no more but I might make some commission if you buy.  I use all these tools myself so I can recommend them personally.

Whichever path you choose to get started making money online, I wish you every success.  It’s well worth it!

Here’s one of my heroes – Gary Vaynerchuk – talking about how to become a success online nowadays, it’s changing all the time.  In this video, he’s specifically talking to a large group of MLM practitioners in this video so it’s very relevant.

Gary Vaynerchuk | The Current State Of The Internet