Who is Ann Sieg, Author of The 7 Great Lies?
Part 1 described the controversy surrounding Ann Sieg’s ebook, The 7 Great Lies of Network Marketing. This article looks at the person behind the ebook.
Ann Sieg
A few years ago, Ann Sieg was a struggling network marketing newbie. Now she is considered an internet network marketing guru.
I believe that several qualities have contributed to Sieg’s emergence as a pre-eminent MLM guru, including:
• Persistent – During the first two years of network marketing she did not give up as many others do.
• Consistent Learner – Not only did she look for opportunities to attend training events, not only did she seek out coaches, but she sought out opportunities to learn from other experts in the industry. In a lengthy interview, Sieg indicates that a commitment to learning is what she considers to be the secret to success.
• Partnering – She has not hesitated to hire others to handle SEO, copyrighting, and other specialized tasks. She established strategic partnerships with Ken Evoy (Owner of Site Build-It) and Mike Klingler (Owner of Marketing Merge) and others.
• Leadership – She has consistently demonstrated a concern for showing network marketers a way to become successful. I felt this interest when she gave me a surprise phone call shortly after my purchase of The Renegade Network Marketer in August of 2007.
How Ann Sieg Got Started
In the beginning, as a “gung-ho” distributor for a health and wellness MLM company, Sieg participated in all the many activities traditionally suggested by network marketing companies and their upline leaders.
There were Tuesday and Thursday night hotel meetings on various nights of the week, and usually a training at someone’s house on Saturday. I went to all of them. It was my life. But the most important ones were the big monthly state trainings. There were usually 500 or more people at these weekend conferences and this is where they would hand out awards and recognize all the latest achievements. -Ann Sieg in the Attraction Marketer’s Manifesto, page 11
After almost 2 years of religiously going to meetings, setting up appointments and showing the plan, I came to a point in my business where I hit a massive brick wall. For all my hard work, I had nothing to show for it but debt, an abundance of products, and a dwindling list of friends who actually still talked with me. -Ann Sieg in The 7 Great Lies of Network Marketing, page 4
…when my contacts list dried up I realized that I needed to “put my business out there” in some way to get more prospects. I had no clue what I was doing… I set up booths and passed out flyers at college campuses…stuck hundreds of homemade ads on car windshields at shopping malls…left a breadcrumb trail of business cards behind me wherever I went… tacked up “Make $15,000 a month!” ads printed off at Kinko’s on billboards at local coffee shops… slapped company magnets on my car. These are just a few of the antics I tried when I ran out of friends to bother. -Ann Sieg in The Renegade Marketer, page 75.
Sieg describes how she was able to transition from “desperately coercing one person every 5 months into my business… to having more eager prospects than I could handle.” The turning point was a guest speaker at her company’s state-wide event who described a marketing process called a “Health Awareness Seminar.” She thought, “I can try that.” These seminars were lay-level educational events focused on wellness. Products were mentioned at the end, almost as an after thought. After several months conducting these seminars, Sieg found herself selling more products than when she was trying hard to pitch them to everyone she met. More importantly, people were calling her for advice on wellness but also for advice on developing their own business. As the months continued, her business exploded.
What had actually happened? What principles were at work?
- People are drawn to information. Pitching repels; educating appeals.
- People are drawn to individuals they perceive as expert. As the teacher of the Health Awareness Seminar, Sieg had, perhaps unknowingly, positioned herself as knowledgeable, as an expert. As her sales of product increased, other people in the MLM company saw her as an expert distributor.
- People are drawn to others that are perceived as giving. Sieg was giving out free health awareness information and willingly helping other distributors.
Although all three of these factors contributed to a steep growth in the product end of Sieg’s business, she would have had a difficult time articulating those factors at that time. Despite apparent success, Sieg states:
I was selling thousands of dollars worth of product every month as a result of my health awareness seminars, but I was still extremely frustrated because I didn’t know how to use these same methods to sponsor people into my [MLM] business. I asked everyone I could for advice and it was always the same thing: Talk to more people. … I was tired of the all-fluff-no-substance training at every meeting, so I decided to start completely over.
I left the company I was with and went on a long process of mental “detoxification” and re-education. –Ann Sieg in The Attraction Marketer’s Manifesto, page 46.
Ann Sieg’s Time Out for Learning
It was then 2004 and Sieg contacted someone she had heard might be able to help – Curt Johnson. In asking for his help, she wrote: “I feel a true obligation to help my people become successful.” This has typified her outlook throughout her network marketing career. Johnson had joined a networking group whose primary service is helping network marketers grow in knowledge and skills. Johnson then sponsored Ann Sieg into the same group. Johnson describes what happened next on his web page:
We had a great ride of success and growth in our businesses through 2005 and 2006 and both made some dramatic decisions – I went into full time missions work during that season, and she began work on what would become [the] Renegade System Phenomena.
This backdrop is just to let you know my perspective and opinion is formed out of hundreds of hours of working together with Ann Sieg on business projects. One of these projects was the development of the WorksTeam. She has since launched into great success for which I can take very little credit. We’ve maintained our friendship and enjoyed meeting each others families. -Curt Johnson on his web page.
Who is Ann Sieg? Johnson, goes on:
Ann is a passionate leader with pure motives. From her first communication with me (above) through these years – it has remained the same. She GIVES to see people excel. -Curt Johnson on his web page.
Sieg also reveals in The Attraction Marketer’s Manifesto what she learned during this period. She was amassing skills in talking on the phone, pre-qualifying prospects, internet marketing skills, lead generation skills, and team leadership skills. As she employed these skills, she began her journey to well-known internet network marketing guru. But it wasn’t just skills; it was hard work. Sieg found herself working far more than full time on her business and hired people to help her with follow up. She had also begun working on a plan that would help people learn what she had been learning. By December of 2006, that plan took shape as a diagram, a schematic of how the new “Renegade” system would work.
Ann Sieg’s New Branding as The Renegade
The Renegade system consists of several pieces. As it rolled out in the spring of 2007, it worked like this:
- Free attention-getting eBook: The 7 Great Lies of Network Marketing. This book focuses on the frustrations of the 97% of network marketers that have experienced difficulty and/or have quit. The purpose of the book, in terms of the system, is to empathize with the reader and thus touch on their emotions. In addition, it establishes the author, Sieg, as a network marketing expert in the mind of the reader. Finally, having connected with the reader with authentic experiences and some fundamentally sound information, it encourages the reader to purchase a book called The Renegade Network Marketer to learn how to approach network marketing differently and more successfully.
- A for-purchase network marketing textbook: The Renegade Network Marketer. This book explains in detail the need for a network marketer to focus on marketing and to do it so effectively that an individual is pre-sold on the marketer’s product or service before they even contact the marketer. While the book includes many examples, it is largely theory, ie. what a marketer needs to know. However the book serves another function, it is the basis -the first aspect- of the Renegade system’s funded proposal. The reader is encouraged to resell the book at a 33% profit and thereby provide the reader with an additional revenue source.
- The Renegade System Web Site. The web site comes free with the purchase of The Renegade Network Marketer where the reader is first introduced to its value. So, it turns out that the book purchase includes far more than just theory, but the practical side (the how to) of marketing is all provided at the Renegade System web site. The web site includes:
- Tools and resources for reselling The Renegade Network Marketer
- Many articles on how to market using different online and offline methods.
- A list of additional affiliate products and a helpful system for registering for the affiliate products.
The system certainly was successful for Ann Sieg; far more importantly, it was an entry point for many others to get a taste of how professional marketing worked. As I mentioned in Part 1 of this series of posts, I entered the Renegade system in August of 2007 on the advice of my upline in my network marketing company.
An MLM Guru but Something was Missing
Of the many options for entering the brave new world of internet marketing described in the Renengade web site, I decided to start with a blog. The advice was to choose a hobby or some other area of expertise and develop the blog around that niche. I created a blog based on reading mystery books, but I had no idea what I was doing. I was in serious need of instruction and coaching. My upline leader also had no experience and was in no position to advise me. In fact, within 6 months, my upline leader abandoned interest in the Renegade System. Apart from the mystery books blog, and perhaps a half dozen Renegade Network Marketer books that I sold through Sieg’s system, and despite a personal phone call from Ann Sieg, I also lost interest.
Some people were able develop a successful internet marketing strategy using the Renegade System, but I along with many others were not able to progress. There was a missing piece to the system – training. But several of the more successful users of the Renegade System saw the lack of training and set about to remedy the problem. We’ll see how several people stepped up to the plate, how Ann Sieg joined forces with Mike Klingler two years later, and how my own interest was rekindled… in my next post in this series.
Meanwhile, if you really want to answer the question “Who is Ann Sieg?” or “What makes Ann Sieg tick?” – I recommend that you set aside some time to listen to an excellent interview conducted by blogger Carolin Hauser at empoweredbusinesswoman.com – you’ll discover how Ann Sieg’s leadership is based on strongly held values, discipline, and commitment to learning. Sieg comes through as a network marketer guru with humility and integrity.
Part 3 of this series will look at how Ann Sieg’s partnership with Mike Klingler has enabled her to offer practical resources to accompany her Renegade System and marketing theories.
Related posts:
