Tony Zolecki: Helping Modere Go To The Next Level

Listen to the podcast here

Watch the episode here

With the pandemic, many businesses tried to thrive in the market. Although some may have closed down, some brought their business to the next level. But how can you position yourself to scale your business? In this episode, Tony Zolecki, the Social Marketer of Modere, shares his insights on how you utilize social media to bring you to the next level of your business. Bringing authenticity into what you post helps market your business. Learn how you navigate through digital marketing to grow your business. Tune in to this episode and live out your dream!

---

Tony Zolecki: Helping Modere Go To The Next Level

I am with Tony Zolecki. Tony, you and I have run into many each other many times over the years. You’ve been in the networking industry for many years with over $500 million in the last several years in your organization alone. You know the space well. It’s awesome to have you on the show.

Patrick, I am so excited to be here. I build a business in Modere. I am a Field Social Marketer. I want to make sure we’re clear on that. It’s been great. Network marketing has been in my blood for a long time. It’s the best thing in the world.

We mix it up a lot. We’ve got a lot of different people. Some are from the software, consulting, legal, and compliance side because we have a lot of readers that are big-time leaders, so they’re on the enterprise side. When you get somebody that’s running a company, you see a lot of different aspects and you’re still involved in the field side of things, which is not always the case. It’s exciting to see and learn from you.

Network marketing is the best opportunity on planet earth now. The world needs network marketing now. I started my mom’s taco truck when I was nineteen years old in Chicago, Illinois. I’ll never forget it. I went to an opportunity meeting at that time. I heard so many stories that inspired me. I was lost in life. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I said to my mom, “If this is real, I can do this.” She says, “You can do this,” and we all started as a family that night.

That is an important part of the industry to remember. That was my story too. There are so many people that need a different vehicle, almost in a sense, or maybe not even different. I was dyslexic and failed fourth grade twice, but my story was the same. What is it that draws so many of those people? Is it a lack of other opportunities to win big?

What it did for me is it allowed me to be somebody and go and create whatever story, plan, or dream I might have shelved. It gave me that opportunity. I remember sitting and talking to the person that did the presentation that night and said, “Do you mean to tell me I can make as much money as I want and there’s no cap or no limit I can build globally?”

I had friends in different parts of the world. I’m like, “I can sign my friend up in Germany and make a percentage off what that team does.” I thought it was the coolest thing ever, but it was a simple concept to me. I said, “I don’t get this opportunity in a lot of different businesses I see now where you need to invest way a lot of money and sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions to start a business.” With this, you can start for a little couple hundred bucks. You can have unlimited income potential, which I thought was awesome.

A lot of changes in the industry are happening now. Over the last several years, it seems like it’s nonstop. Social plays a big role, like the internet and the digital marketing space. How have you guys adapted to that? We chatted briefly about what happened during COVID. Why do you think you had the success that you had there?

That’s a great point. Now, if your business isn’t online, you’re dead. If you’re not using technology, you’re dying. What we were able to do is position ourselves with social retail or this online presence. Instead of just recruiting, we looked at, “Let’s get real living and breathing customers that order every single month. It doesn’t need to be a lot. It can be as little as a $10 product or something less. Let’s get customers virally sharing. Also, let’s use social media with promo codes where people are able to make posts and build a network and a customer base online.”

If your business isn’t online, you’re dead. If you’re not using technology, you’re dying.

The old school that I was brought up in was running around cities, states, and countries doing meetings. There’s nothing wrong with that because that stuff still works. Now, if you’re online, you have the ability to scale faster and create more story, volume, and what we call customer pods in our business, but more importantly, more people win. If you have an online system, anybody can do it. People can do it from their phone, their tablet, or their computer as they take the kids to school, cook dinner for the family, or whatever the case is. If they can do it with simplicity and earn money that same day with daily pay, you now crack the code for a lot of people with financial stress.

How do you deliver that culture that’s necessary? We see a lot of people jumping around in the industry, and part of it stems from this social selling atmosphere and brings their influence. Some companies, in turn, are changing the comp, so it becomes only a 4 or 5-level comp. They’re not paying in depth because they see people jumping. People are doing social sharing. How do you bridge working in social but creating a culture in depth?

It’s a great point too. Leaders and leadership are needed more in this world and will be rewarded more than at any time in history with the times we are in. We’ve been able to create a culture where we have a home for everybody. We created a comp plan where it’s dual-sided. If you don’t want to build a network and just get customers, we’re going to pay you up to 36% to do that every day and pay you twice daily. Now, if you want to build a team, we’re going to pay you in depth. We’re going to put bonuses in there. We’re going to reward you for building a network and a team. If you want to do both, you can have the best of both worlds.

How we were able to scale so fast and present it where people get so excited is for once, if you’re not a good recruiter, you can still win here. If you want to use a promo code, get people to try the product, and do it that way, you can win here. If you want to make a little bit of money, you can win here. There’s a lot of money you can win here. We’ve checked the box. That was a big thing for me because I love the profession. I grew up in the profession, and I know it works.

Here’s what I love about the profession and some of the advancements that need to happen in the profession that if we can marry these two together, you create the perfect company or the perfect online business. More people scale that way and say, “We got to shift the customers. We got to be online. This promo code’s a great idea.” I even see companies changing comp plans and taking all the money away from the big recruiters and networkers, and building big teams. They say, “Let’s put some of this on the front end.”

The majority of people, as we know, are not good recruiters. They’re not going to build big networks, but they’re going to go out and share a code, a product, or a service. If you can pay them or it’s worth their time, now they’re not doing Uber, Lyft, or doing this online thing outside of our profession because they’re like, “This is it. I found the Holy Grail, network marketing. They’re doing it better than anybody, and I can do it from my phone. I’m in.”

This is great. Get your perspective. Being from the field, you’re dealing with compliance, the legal side, and all of that. How do you feel about people jumping companies? There are a lot of changes in that space in the last several years. Back in the day, in the companies I was with, that was not only frowned upon, but that was, “We’ll hold your check. We’ll terminate you.” How are you managing somebody that wants to come in and sell and want to be in three companies?

We got values and ethics here. If you’re authentic, humble, extraordinary, got compassion, want to do something disruptive, and got a good heart, I want you here. The thing about our business is if people are happy, they deserve to go anywhere they want to go because, in my opinion, you should be happy doing what you’re doing. Where it gets sticky is if you’re in a company and you’re with other companies. You’re bringing people over, selling other stuff, and going under leaders. That’s where the confusion starts.

How I see that is you’ve got somebody who’s working hard, making money, and following the rules in our business. There are the rules the companies have and then the rules the field has. Every networker knows this. They know what’s right and wrong. If they cross the boundaries, then we have a talk, and we might have to scale up and have another talk. If they repeatedly keep doing things that hurt the company, other people in the company, and the existing business, then they’re asked to leave. More than anything, if people find something good, they’re not going to screw that up.

The people they bring in, whether it’s a consumer who’s happy with the product or service, or it’s other people they brought to the table are happy, they don’t want to screw that up. We ask people, “Treat this business ethically with high character and high standards. If you do that, you’ll attract more people anyways and make more money because of who you are and who you become.” People follow the good people in our business.

There’s bad volume like there’s a bad volume in real estate. I worked on Wall Street, and there was a ton of bad volume there. There’s bad volume anywhere, but people want to be around good people and people that consistently give value, impact, and make a difference. I look for that people. If people can match that, it’s going to be great.

It’s hard because they got one Facebook page where they’ve got all their followers. Let’s say they make a good run and got a decent team. For whatever crazy reason, they move to another business as long as they don’t cross-recruit and try to take their team, but they’re on their Facebook page. They announced they’ve gone to work for some other company and don’t say a single negative thing. They move in some other direction. This is a struggle that so many companies are faced with. A lot of them are still stuck in some old methodologies, and it’s creating some real problems.

There’s a lot of scarcity thinking where it’s like, “You’ve got to be abundant.” There’s enough to go around for everybody and then some. People have the right to make their own decision and do what they need to do for their families and themselves.

That’s refreshing to hear. More companies are realizing, “Abundance is the key. Let’s stick to our values.” That’s good stuff. Talk to us about the social sharing side of things. The average person has 250 to 350 contacts on social. If I get started in the business and I’m not a digital marketer or an influencer, but I need to leverage social, how do you bridge that with them? How are you helping them to get started and leverage some of that both through the back end in purchasing and the front end in terms of prospecting and follow-up?

What we’ve been able to do is like the McDonald’s example. If you go into McDonald’s, you order something, and they push buttons of the Happy Meal, the Big Mac, or the fries. They don’t even need to figure any of that out. It’s all done on the buttons. That’s why a fifteen-year-old can work as a cashier. Here, what I figured out is that you’ve got to give people what to post, and what to say, and help them with engagement, curiosity, and attraction.

We’ve got one of the best online systems in the world, and we give people all that. We give people exactly what to say, what to post, how to respond, and how to create so more people are coming to their page, and building their personal brand. Personal branding is bigger than anything I’ve ever seen. We teach people how to build their brand inside of their network marketing business. We have this step-by-step approach where we don’t have them think about anything. We don’t have them try to figure out anything. We have it figured out. It’s working and scaling so fast now. The team did $500 million in sales in the last few years because of this system.

We give them it, and they get it every day. They post and learn it. What happens is they get better the more they do it. The more you do something, the more comfortable you get. We have people with no social media background or social media experience who, all of a sudden, become social media experts inside of our business because all the framework is there. They put their gifts and personality inside of that. All of a sudden, they’re moving at a speed that they never moved before.

What is that brand? You see a lot of people teaching how to be a brand on social media. I got to be honest. I’m sitting there, and I’m like, “That’s harder than building network marketing.” I’m supposed to identify this target market fit for my personal brand, create the images, become this brand, and influence all these people. Is there some fine line there that becomes more complicated than building the business themselves if they all have to have a personal brand?

The crazy thing about that is everybody has a brand anyways. You have a brand, whether you ever thought about it that way or not. This is how simple it is. It’s based on what you post or the content you put out like the videos you do. I have people do this little exercise, “Put down the things that you get inspired about, love talking about, or what are you known for.” They’ll put inspiration and motivation, “I love network marketing. I love cooking. I love sports.” I have them take their top five things, and it’s as simple as that.

I then say, “Patrick, start posting about cooking. That’s what you love to do. Do some videos about cooking. Do some posting around cooking. You also like sports. Talk about your favorite team. Talk about what’s going on in the NBA if that’s your jam,” or whatever it is. People think that it’s so hard to put content together, but you put content around the things that make you who you are.

Most people will start with, “I love reading. I love playing with my kids. I’m a family guy. I love my spirituality.” Whatever those things are, we have them start with their top five and have them start their content marketing around the things they’re comfortable doing that they do, talk about, and share every day. People then say, “Tony, this is who I am. I’m not doing anything uncomfortable because I’m doing everything I love.”

They then start bringing in people into their world that are family people or are all about this sports team. The World Cup is a great example. We have a lot of World Cup fanatics inside our business. They’ll post about their favorite team and, all of a sudden, their audience gets bigger and bigger. That’s how simple this can be. We keep it very easy for people.

It’s a lot of reposting of things they’re already passionate about.

That’s the authentic part about it. They might admire somebody that does what they do well. They might reshare and repost some of their stuff. It’s what’s in their blood. It’s not like we’re having them talk about things they’re uncomfortable with. They’re talking about the five pillars that get them alive and energetic every single day.

People admire somebody they like, who does what they do well. That’s the authentic part about it.

What percentage of them would you say are comfortable with creating a video and putting that out there?

It’s probably 30%, but we always have people start with stories. Stories sometimes work better than video. Ninety percent of people are comfortable doing a story. We sell so many products through the story.

A written story or what kind of story?

It’s a Facebook story or an Instagram story. You can upload it right on Instagram, and it shares right on Facebook. I look at the trends and the trends change all the time with technology, but there’s a big trend with short videos now. This is how cool this is. You can grab your phone, put it up, and talk for 30 seconds. You then can share that short video. You can repurpose it through your Facebook Reel, Instagram Reel, YouTube Shorts, LinkedIn Reel, or TikTok. You can put it on five of those platforms, and those are the five I consistently use. It takes you a couple of minutes to shoot a 30-second video and you’re on five platforms immediately.

Isn’t that something? Twenty percent of the time, they work something on the product or usage of the product.

Yes, with very little selling. I always tell people, “Less than 10% should be selling and recruiting when you’re online because that turns people off,” because people are then like, “Here he is again, Tony talking about selling and recruiting.” I always try to add value, solve problems, give solutions, give great advice, talk strategy, and talk about what’s happening in my world and my life that other people can use. Ten percent of the time, I’ll slip in about my business and my product. It will be very professional and very exciting that people will accept that message versus push the message away.

That’s awesome. A lot of the reach becomes Messenger, text, or reaching out a little bit more personally and directly behind the big screen.

That’s it. Engaging is everything. What’s working fabulously on Instagram now is you have those little bubbles. Instead of saying, “DM me. I can’t wait to connect with you. I’m looking forward to talking more,” in your video, you can say, “Check out my second bubble on my business.” It could be two minutes of something. All of a sudden, they’re messaging you, “This business looks so cool. What is it?” You can also say, “Check out this bubble on my family or some of the things I like to do like travel and lifestyle.” You can keep giving them something to watch, something to view, and something to find out more about.

The name of the game here is if you’re real, you are who you are, you’re coming from your heart, you’re a good human, and you’re adding value, you’ll have more leads and to do with it. It’s going to take some time. It’s patience. Many people are like, “I didn’t get all these leads, views, or DMs.” You’re warming up your world and your business.

For some people, it happens faster than others, but consistency is why people get better results than others. The best networkers in the world have this baseline of consistency, and they never go below that baseline. They’ll always keep that baseline or spike up at times. They go on different runs or things that are going to create fast momentum in bunches or whatever it is.

If you did a short video for the next 30 days every day, repurposed it on those five platforms, and push that out there, that 30 days of consistency of doing video will reward you with engagement, customers, recruits, and people that become great and dear friends to you that you met online because of your content. The more I push out content every day, the number one thing that I get is people following, saying thank you, and saying, “This helped me tremendously. I shared it with 3 or 4 of my friends.” It made an impact on them.

The majority of the messages I get are about the value that I add and the difference I’m making in people’s lives. That is what it’s all about. You’re going to get your leads, customers, recruits, and people that want to join you and work with you because they’re going to ask a ton of questions about you, but you got to start with the whole, “I want to go and just add value. If I get business, that’s a plus.”

Go add value. If you get business, that’s a plus.”

It’s still going to make you a friend. I remember listening to Bill Bailey, and that has been several years ago in Texas. He makes two friends a day. Social is making it easier. Are you creating tools to help your team with reposting, or are they using Hootsuite or other tools to post those videos?

We use an app called Shout. That’s been great for us to scale, get people’s buy-in, and get things moved pretty quickly. We also use a lot of Facebook groups, which we have our guides in there.

How do you address the issue, “Use Facebook, but don’t be used by them?” Facebook is selling advertisements. If you build some connection around any product or service, it doesn’t matter if an inferior product gets marketed. It’s going to get marketed. They’re paying for advertising. Facebook knows what the conversations are, and they’re turning around and creating noise for the distributor who’s trying to close. Do you do anything to help them generate the lead on Facebook but get it into a private channel at all?

Our big thing with that is once we get them set up through Facebook or engage through Facebook, our goal is to put them in different programs that we have in technology that we can help scale, whether it’s Telegram, WhatsApp, or the different things outside of that Project Broadcast. There’s a list of them. What we have found from taking it out of that or from where we start is the leader has picked their favorite thing. We see a lot of them pick Project Broadcast for their customers’ communication. A lot of them pick Telegram and WhatsApp, the big international channels that people love to use. We have found that the leaders like their thing, and we let them run with the thing they like.

In your role, anything you’ve read that puts you on your heels?

I do a lot of podcasts. I’m an Ed Mylett fan. If you listen to him, he has some great things about separation season. He’s got some great and very smart people that he interviews.

Is it personal growth stuff or business stuff?

It’s business stuff. Lewis Howes is another one, The School of Greatness. He’s got some of the smartest people in the world from all walks of life, doctors, athletes, celebrities, and business people on his podcast. Those are my two favorite podcasts.

Going back to personal development and the culture side, you’ve got a great model. It’s growing like gangbusters. What are you doing to drive culture with fewer events than what it used to be? What are you doing on that front to maintain the culture and the relationships that make the business sticky?

We do a lot of online events. We’re social retail, so we do a lot of touching people online. It’s not the same as in person. What we’ve done the last few years with all events being smaller and not happening is that we put a big full-court press on our online world with events, opportunities, get-togethers, and mixers where we get together and meet all the new people. It’s nothing about business. It’s more like we were to go out to a bar, have a couple of drinks, and hang out with everybody. We’ve created that online.

We’ve now shifted back into the event world for 2023 where it’s full-court press, where we’re going to be everywhere with events in person. There’s nothing that takes away from a live event. To touch people, hug people, break bread with people, have coffee with somebody, spend time with them after Friday, and have dinner in person is everything. A lot of people want it. We’ve opened it up.

Are you investing the same in incentives, trips, and those kinds of things?

Everything is a full-court press. It’s like we got this green light like NASCAR. When the flag goes down, you go again. That’s how we’re going in 2023. We’re going to probably shift from 80% online and 20% in person and flip for us this 2023 where we’ll be doing a lot more live events, masterminds, face-to-face, and a lot more stuff and still keep our online stuff, but it won’t be ramped like it’s been in the past.

We want to be touching people, be there with people, and get the best of both worlds. Many people dismiss one or the other. They’re both very powerful. The world we live in and what’s happened the last few years lead the person out there in the marketplace to say, “I want to see you in person. I want to be there. I want to book my airline ticket. I want to go to that city.” That’s what the person is telling us now.

That’s exciting. Tony, congratulations on the success. It’s been a privilege to have you on the call. It’s exciting what you’re doing, and wishing you all the best.

I’m looking forward to it. Thanks for all you do and your footprint and impact on the profession. You’re doing great things. I hear your name brought up in your company all the time, and people rave about it. Thank you.

Thank you, Tony. We’re having fun. Bye, everybody.

Important Links

• Modere
• Shout
• Project Broadcast
• Ed Mylett
• The School of Greatness

About Tony Zolecki