Creating a Cash Machine and Enjoying Fine Wines with Eric Carlin and Rory Riccord

Welcome to Real Money Talks, real strategies from the moneymakers and the world changers that you can use to make millions, keep those millions, multiply your wealth, and build your team. Here's your host, author of five New York Times bestsellers, money expert on Dr. Phil, CNN, CNBC, The Street TV, Fox News, and The View, Laurel Langemeyer. Hi, this is Laurel. Welcome back to Laurel's Real Money Talks. This is our podcast where we teach you how to make money, how to keep money, ways to invest money, and how you use a team because doing it alone not only is lonely, boring, but you are suffering because you don't have enough skills to do everything it takes to be an amazing entrepreneur. I bring amazing folks and opportunities and ideas to talk about, to think about, and ways you can make money. Today, we're going to talk about wine, one of my favorite topics. It's, let's say, a habit and a hobby, and there is one of the biggest wine clubs that has been emerging. We've been a part of it for a long time. I have the CEO Rory on, and I have a dear friend and client, colleague, and he's leading the ranks. In fact, you probably heard him on our other podcast. Eric Carlin's on with me today, and we're going to talk about Wine Ambassador, and it's a way for you to drink amazing wine and make money all at the same time. So, Rory and Eric, welcome to Laurel's Real Money Talks. All right. Great to be on here, and this is Eric, and I live in Las Vegas. I've been part of Laurel's community now since May of 2017, and yeah, this is a fantastic opportunity for those who don't have a cash machine or who are looking for an additional cash machine, and even if you don't drink alcohol, you can actually market this business in a very unique way. So I'm very happy to present and introduce the CEO of Wine Ambassador. He's been an internet marketer professionally for 30 years now and has a unique approach in the marketplace that I've never seen in network marketing before, and it's truly revolutionizing the industry. So welcome to the call, Rory Rickard. Well, thank you, Eric, and thank you, Laurel. I got to tell you, I'm definitely a wine enthusiast myself, and to be able to turn something that was an incredible hobby, something that I traveled the world around and made all my vacations about, how many wineries I could go to and learn about the different varietals and the different places, to turn that into a literal cash machine for anyone that wants to join it, that's been an amazing thing to see happen. It took years to develop the actual process that worked right, how to gain customers and how to educate the world. It's one of those things where the need isn't so much, here's wine, I mean, wine's everywhere, but truly amazing fine wines that typically go for hundreds of dollars a bottle. That's not something that everybody has access to, yet it's the best wine for you. It's made the right way, it doesn't have induced sulfites, and it doesn't have the problems that these mass-produced wines that people get at the grocery store, that they think are wine, because it says wine on it, but in fact, they're just really a fortified punch. This gives access to the true fine wines to the entire population, and not only they're in line as a solution to what really has been a problem, but also that solution creates a true cash machine, and when people try a true fine wine, it's really, really hard to drink that punch that they've been drinking before, because there is a huge difference, and it's been a really eye-opening for me, and as a business person, it's been the most amazing thing for me to ever market, and looking at the trends and the numbers, when the direct-to-consumer marketplace opened up for wine, which is literally like seven years ago, more and more states opened up the ability for wineries to ship straight into their state. States control the alcohol border, it's up to the state laws whether they allow you to bring wine in for other states and lines, it's just old laws, and as those have been diminishing down, and there's only a few states left that haven't opened up, and it's on the ballots on several of them for this very year, so as that's happened, it created an opportunity, and the direct-to-consumer marketplace, or DTC, four years ago, was literally three-and-a-half percent, so three-and-a-half percent of all wine sales were direct-to-consumer, and I saw that as, this is gonna be a huge, huge opening for a trend that's gonna last for a long time to grow, last year, it was over 10%, so in four years, it went from three-and-a-half percent to 10% of total sales of wine being direct-to-consumer, and if you look at where we are as a society, we want the ease, we want stuff delivered right to us, and we wanna do it at a fraction of the price, right? So, Rory, talk a little bit about, like, just the wine ambassador, what's different about this, because I know when people, and folks on our podcast are listening from all over the world, and as we open up other countries, again, all of you that, if you're interested in anything on our podcast, go to asklaural, A-S-K-L-A-U-R-A-L.com, and make a request, put information, so if you're hearing this from a place or a state that, you know, doesn't allow it, or a country right now, but you wanna be first in line, through My Connections posted over there, but, Rory, you know, there's a stigma, I'm gonna say, around direct marketing and sales, and your approach, because of the direct-to-consumer, and not having to go do the friends and family, carry inventories. Talk about what makes this so different, and then the way that the whole business model is gonna work. Absolutely. So, my background, as Eric brought up, has been online and affiliate marketing for over 30 years, and so, what I've been able to develop, and then be able to share with our wine ambassador family, as we call it, is the ability to take professional marketing, and online affiliate marketing, and take it to the public. You know, we don't rely on family and friends. I mean, if they like wine, great, it makes sense, but we are literally targeting, in a professional manner, people that like wine, are attracted to wine, already part of other wine clubs, that have an interest and a knowledge of wine, and that tends to be a topic that's very easy to market. It's a relevant topic, and I like to state it, because if I talk about wine in an elevator, or if I'm in a room full of people, or a cafeteria, or walking in a mall, and you start talking about wine, people's heads turn. Wine's just one of those things we care about, because it has those attributes, you know, it makes us feel good. Women love wine, I think that's why they start with a W, but it's amazing how relevant that product is. So, when you take a relevant product, you add it to social media marketing, and link post marketing, and literally paid placement marketing, and you can create a lead flow, and then educate them on what we have. The wines that we offer, and the way we offer them, is truly where, I guess, the magic comes together, as far as, we have a solution, people see it, and they want it, and they see the benefit for them, and they sign up. We teach that, and make it available, and one thing that we bring to the table, and it's available right now, as we grow, is, everybody that partners with us, we literally provide paid marketing to feed their engines, and we've got mechanisms, and programming to work smart, to share this with these leads, to help grow the business, you know, and we're all about paying it forward, building everybody else up, teaching the platform, and then we induce it with additional ways to market, and that's where it gets really fun, because not only are we able to market the wine, and everything, but we have other ways to market that prove, that brings other people in for wine, you know, we just know how to market in a mass way, and we teach that to everybody that wants the education, and everybody that comes in and gets involved with us, it's a whole different approach, we have so many different methods, or I call them marketing legs, to market, that it allows us to take somebody with little to no knowledge, or a lot of knowledge, even, and apply it in ways that they can literally generate revenue on a weekly basis, and not just hobby income, but literally career, what I call life-changing income, and we're doing it every day, and it's because we just have a different approach, but also, there's a lot of things that led up to the building of this program, and when we set forth on wine as the product, and we were able to, you know, source our own wines, I mean, these are exclusive wines, they come from probably one of the most prominent valleys of wine creation in the U.S., that it's something that we literally have a door open with that, I mean, a lot of people, you know, they want to go to Napa Valley, they want to go do a wine tasting, and it's not everybody's, like, wishful, hopeless, but we get to bring the wines from the tasting room to them, and that's kind of the romance of what we have, and our angle makes us different than everybody else, but it's also, our wines are truly made by amazing winemakers, and you know, I go out every three to four months to do our, yes? Really quick, I want to separate a couple conversations, so just those of you listening, so this is a direct sale opportunity, I want to talk about marketing separate, and then the wine separate, and actually kind of reverse and start with why such amazing wines and where they come from, what makes it so different, and then let's talk very specifically, like, what are the top two, three, four things that the way we're marketing is so different, but before we do that, all of you remember, this for a lot of you who had a tough time finding a cash machine, finding a business, direct sales, I mean, Eric's been in New Skin and other extraordinary, I mean, professional marketer, really, that's why I love Eric's background, but a lot of you have this weird stigma around what it is, and some of you, you've tried other things, but you've been playing it like a hobby, so no business played like a hobby is going to make it, this is a formal company, you could get a formal entity, which we would highly encourage, so you can legally do deductions, you can legally go wine tasting anywhere in the world now, and write it off as a business trip, because it's part of your business, is wine tasting, and I know when Eric comes to our events, we do wine tastings, like, there are so many ways that you can grow this into a 10, 15, 20, like you said, Rory and Eric, this is a way to make 10, 15, 20,000 a month, and that's our goal, for those that are really serious about it, but let's talk about the wines, Rory, and then we'll talk about marketing strategies, because we don't have a ton of time on our podcast, but I want to really hit the highlights, what makes this so different. Not all wines are equal, by any means, and it starts with the grape, and where the grape comes from, the vines that it's on, the soil that's beneath it, the mineral beds beneath it, and that's just a magical, I would call it the perfect arrangement of all those in Napa Valley, Sonoma Valley, and that surrounding area, that's why they just produce some amazing wines, and they can just rival anywhere in the world, and it's because of the location, and just the way the soils and everything are, so that's why there's a difference, and I'm not saying that other wines aren't great, like Oregon or Washington, but nothing has the fundamental qualities that they just naturally have there, and we've got amazing winemakers there as well, and we wanted to bring the high-quality wines to the general public. When I was doing my marketing research, most people, the general population don't go into a restaurant and spend $250 on up to $5,000 for a bottle of wine, and yet we can bring that quality of wine to them if you literally eliminate a lot of the middlemen that are in the cost, so we literally have the wine created, we have a bottle, it's our own labels, we literally just stepped it up to where we could deliver those quality of wines at a member price to give it to the population, so these wines are, by all means, amazing. I'll tell you, they will literally knock your socks off, we put our guarantee, you don't like it, give us a call, we'll replace it, we just rolled out a sparkling wine that will definitely rival like a Veuve Clicquot, I had hundreds of people say, Rory, I like Dom, but this was so much better, I said, well, it's made in the right way, we took months and months to make it properly, and then put it out there, and we are able to do that based on our size, and the bigger we get, literally the more access we have to create these amazing opportunities to try vintages, and right now we just focus Napa and Sonoma Valley, but these wines, if people were to buy them individually in the retail marketplace for over $100, and for a membership of 100 a month to get four bottles like that, we are really sharing greatness, and they literally get it at the same price that you get some of these crappy wines, and I say crappy because they're wines I wouldn't consume, they're not healthy, they've induced artificial sulfites in them, and they cut corners, there's articles right now with arsenic, high levels of arsenic in a lot of the brands people buy, we've been saying for the last years, that wine isn't really proper, there's a right way to be made, and they've been cheapening it, and we just get to be the voice of reason, and it's something that's been happening with food, people are waking up, but wine is something you consume, and you want to have good wine, and we just have a really good way to do it, and as far as the quality, you're not going to beat Napa and Sonoma Valley, I mean, we have three second and third generation winemakers and wineries on our team, if you will, making it for us, and it's just amazing that everything came together over the last several years to put this together, but we want a great quality product to take out to the people, and that's, we have that, when the product's right, now it's about marketing, and we can go into that. Yeah, so, you know, again, I think a lot of folks think, you know, I got to go talk to my friends and family, this is a lot bigger, and a lot of social media marketing. Eric, anything you want to jump in and add before we go through specific marketing techniques? Yeah, let me, let me jump into that, because I've been a professional network marketer for 22 years, and no matter how good you are, eventually, you're going to run out of friends and family to talk to, it just happens no matter who you are, and then you've got to be resourceful and walk and talk and create friends or do your own marketing, whatever, and what is very unique here is that we have a elite generation program that somebody can literally start, instead of saying, hey, Laurel, you come on board, give me your list of 100, here, it's your business, you can, you know, start with your reward market, or you have the leads program that people are literally starting out with the leads, and enrolling two to three affiliates per week, and pocketing an extra $500 per week. And I've never seen in the direct marketing industry, a program this complete, that it truly makes this like a franchisable program, that the only way that somebody can fail is if they are lazy or afraid of rejection. And that's really the key, so why don't you talk a little bit about this leads generation program, Rory, and why you made part of this company? This is probably my favorite part, so I'm just going to start off by, as you know, the reason what I'm about to say happens is, my wife and I, I'll bring her name, it's Tanya, you'll hear her come up, and she talks about things, she likes to cook with wine, she loves her wine, right? But my wife and I have been very blessed, and I own several lead generation companies, so I've been professionally creating leads for different markets for years, and I mean, all over the world, and it's something that's benefited us in a very big way, and we were able to take a lot of our blessings and put them into our philanthropy project, which is we literally fund all the marketing for those that come in and get trained on how to work our marketing to build the business. And it allows anybody, regardless of their cashflow situation, if they're willing to do the work, they're willing to be trained in our system, and it's a system, not a suggestion, so you've got to be a really good student and follow it line by line. We give you all the marketing you can eat, so you literally, we bring you the people just to talk to and present to as much as you can. So realistically, on a part-time basis, yes, you can bring in two or three new partners through our model every week, and we have some that bring in five and six a week, because they're doing it even more, and it's just, you know, a lot of people have the desire to do it, they're teachable to do it, but where everybody's always falling short is the leads of people to talk to, and that's something that you've got to generate usually by spending money and creating lead capture funnels or a program. Well, I have all those programs in place, and I have them literally in spades, and we found a way to fund it because of the way that we've set everything up and got everything so conducive to grow this business, and because of all the extra things that we do, which we cover in the training, it'll blow your mind away, because it starts here. We literally teach you how to be the best affiliate marketer possible, but we also, with that education, Danny and I come behind it and just say, here's our philanthropy, we're going to fund you with the leads and bring them to you, you just got to present new things the way we teach in the system, and we're going to build with you together, you're our partner. And because of the true methodology that's always been meant to be with the network marketing payout, we all win when you win. And because we win, we're able to reinvest that to keep the leads going and continue that. So not only is it great for you, but anybody you bring in can partner with this the same way. And if you think about it, I'm just going to do a really quick A and B comparison. Traditional network marketing is, you know, family and friends, and you talk to their family and friends, and it takes a while to get something to go, and it's really hard for the average person to really make a good income with it because of time. It takes you two months, three months to bring somebody in, it's going to take them at least that long to bring somebody in, maybe you add four people a year. That's not building a business, that's not even really a hobby, that's kind of a waste of time. And that's why 95% of people that enter network marketing fail. It all comes down to the same reason any business fails, no marketing. When you take what we do, and we'll call it B, we literally get you trained, get you going, bring you the leads, and you're bringing in two or three people a week, those people can then in turn get trained, and it might take them a couple weeks to get trained, but then they can start following the exact system and bring in two to three a week. And then you've got 10 people, 20 people, 30 people, all bring in two to three a week. Now we have a professional growing organization with marketing that never ends to grow that. That's why we grow the way we grow, and that's why the opportunity is so amazing. And it's one of those things that sounds way too good to be true, but you guys, I've had 30 years to get here, and we've been creating more leads than pretty much anybody out there. I think my lead companies are probably the largest in their space, just because we've been doing it so long, and this is something that we are able to take anybody, and regardless of their marketing budgets, we can propel them into a successful full-time career income, and then you get all the blessings that are available of passive income and building residuals and building that retirement income, because everybody's been trained, right, so the people you bring in don't need you to babysit them all the time. Eric, I'll have you speak, and you've seen my training and how we put things together. We teach independence and strength. It's a total business-building program that literally educates and builds income, and all you've got to do is tap into it. Yeah, and that's the awesome thing here, is that everything is systematic, and in a direct sales network marketing business, it can't be guru-dependent that, oh yeah, I'm under this guy, he's so great, or I'm under Laura, but you've got to have a system that helps you when that guru's not around, and that's really what this is all about, that the average person can be empowered to actually be successful themselves and have the leads that they never run out of people to talk to, and if they never run out of prospects to talk to, why would they ever quit? And now they want to talk to friends and family, not because they have to, but because they want to, to tell them about this fantastic program. Yeah, Eric, one of the things I've noticed in being around this for a while, when somebody builds our way, right, and they make about $500 a week, it doesn't take a lot, right? When they're getting $500 a week consistently, you talk to family and friends, it even gets better, because you're like, look, I got something that works, here's what I'm doing, and it's not a matter of, well, is it working for you? No, it's working for me, just wanted you to know, like, hey, you can get involved with this if you want to. You're coming from a position of strength, and network marketing, traditionally, when you go to family and friends, it's the worst road to go, because they have the best objection in the world, and they always say, well, how's it doing for you? And you're like, well, I just started, and they're like, well, let me know when you're making, you know, $1,000 a month, and we'll talk. I mean, it's an easy excuse, because they don't think you're going to get there, because if they don't sign up, you're not going to make any money. We don't operate that way. We operate in a professional manner, the same way any business out there. If you look at any successful business, they did not get there because they're from, they got there usually because of extreme amounts of marketing. You know, even McDonald's spends millions of dollars a day to market, and if they don't, their revenues drop. Insurance companies have to market severely, a car, every, you look at the big companies out there, even Apple, as great as, you know, Apple has been in branding, their branding is good because they advertise all the time. They can't stop. You've got to keep doing that, and so we just treat this the same. We don't ever stop. The difference is, we've figured out how we can teach anybody how to do it across multiple avenues of marketing. Some of our paid marketing, we teach you how to do SEO, search engine optimization marketing. We have a very powerful blog education that we tie you into, and we literally help you get free organic traffic, and it's a long-term plan. We look at this as, you know, wine's not going anywhere. It's probably the best foundational product I've ever seen, and that's why I went all in on it, and that's why we're running it, and, you know, from the helm down, I can tell you I've marketed a lot of products, and I've made a lot of money, but wine is just special, and it's a catalyst that opens up doors for so many other avenues of income, and this one cash machine expands to more, and that's what you guys are going to see with this is that wine is kind of like the opening. We teach you how to just, the sky's the limit. I get really excited going over it. It sounds like amazing, but it's one of those things you just got to get in as soon as possible and learn. You know, if you're really looking for that wealth bubble, we've got a really good solution for you here. Well, what I was going to add to that is that I've been in skin care and nutrition marketing and in direct sales network marketing for over 20 years now, and there are a lot of companies out there in that space, and I'll never badmouth another company. I think part of the challenge is that there are so many great companies out there that have so many fantastic products that the consumers are frankly confused on how to differentiate one from another, and there's a lot of samples and demos. Let me try this and see if it works. If I lose weight, then I'll tell people about your product. Let me try this on my face and make sure that I don't break out, blah, blah, blah. This, and so you end up running all over town doing samples and demos and everything else, spend a lot of time and money, and it's really inefficient. What I saw with wine is something that you could actually duplicate over the internet using webinars, using the phone so that in this home-based industry, you actually have a home-based business that you don't have to be everywhere except for home with your loved ones where you want to be or on the beaches of the world building this, and that's what is so unique about this, right? Oh, no, absolutely agree, and I always tell everybody out there, it's nice to have the guru background and stuff behind it, and Eric, we've been friends for a while now, but I'm here at the helm. I'm constantly adding more and more marketing and things and trainings for this, but this is one of those things that it's my life's work. We're driving this, and we know how to do the professional marketing, and we know how to do that, but we really are here to, like, how many families can we help? And wine has just been the perfect fit for that direction, and it's something. We have a lot of people that don't drink wine, but you got to realize hundreds of millions in the U.S. alone drink wine, and I'll just put this out there for those that it's one thing that does come up, but you don't have to be a part of the product to make a product. In my online marketing, I sell a lot of lingerie, for instance, and I don't wear it, but I sure get a lot of money off of it, and wine's the same thing. I do drink my share of wine. I love it. It's an amazing thing that I have a glass every day, but we have some of the most incredible wines, and the experience of that with food is tremendous, in which you see, honestly, this here, and I'll pass it back to you, Laurel. We know how to bring customers in and keep the customer growth going on. It's something you just totally teach, but you're going to learn so much about internet marketing, search engine optimization marketing, keyword placements, link posting, and then paid marketing as you're building the business here, because we hit every aspect of it to do that, because this has been the one product that I've ever seen that I can put everywhere, and it works, done right. Awesome. So, we are going to just put a link on to the podcast, and again, if you want to go to asklaurel.com, A-S-K-L-O-R-A-L, we'll have a form. You can get signed up. We have a, actually, formal presentation on the business and how the marketing's going to go, and I think what I love, well, I love wine, so now you get to, I would say, right off your habit, your hobby, and make it a formal business, and for some of you, it's just an additive part of your business, like whether you're in real estate, another direct sales company. I know a lot of folks that are doing our games are using it as a networking opportunity before the game night, so I know real estate agents, brokers, you can use it anywhere as a way to create that social engagement, so it can also be a business next to a business that you're already doing that's just going to enhance and have more money, and what I love the most, probably, is the marketing training that everyone's going to get that they can apply in other places of their life, as well as get the leads, so super excited, super excited to be part of this team, and invite any of you to join again, especially if you're listening from other parts of the world, please go to askloreal.com, let me know which country you're at, and if you want to be first in line as we head your direction, and we open into those countries that you'll be part of it. Rory and Eric, any last words of wisdom before we end our podcast today? My dad's actually made over $60 million in the network marketing industry with Nu Skin because he got in very early in 1985, a year into the inception of the company, and he was very fortunate to sponsor somebody who helped open Hong Kong and Taiwan, and he now has a large portion of the Asian revenues in his organization, and so timing was a key factor, and so right now, Wine Ambassador's only in the United States, but we've got some aggressive expansion plans into Australia and several other countries, and I'll let Rory talk about that, but that's one of the key things, is to be early and be at the beginning, and that's where we are, so it is the right time, right place, with the right system to help anybody be successful, so Rory, would you add to that? Oh, absolutely, so we've got stuff going towards Canada and Australia right now, and I'll be making some corporate announcements, but we are taking this worldwide, and wine is one of those products that's already worldwide, and once we get established where we can tie it into our program, that's where we're going to go, but definitely let Laurel know if you're interested because we've got a way to pretty much set you up and get you positioned for as you open that country, but we also got a way to get you involved where you can literally use the leads and the training and get ready for it when it comes there, but also get you into the income streams in the countries where we are operating, so even if you live in Hong Kong, for instance, you can literally market in the U.S. through our models and build. We've got something so dynamic that way, we could literally talk about it for two hours of training, but if you're interested, just take the step, fill out the form, we'll get the information to you, and go, and then I'll tell you, a lot of times, one of the biggest things is people talk about timing, right, and get in from the very beginning, and obviously, if you're there at the beginning, you've got a longer time to make it grow, but I promise you no one ever said, look, get in, we're gonna fund your marketing, and we're gonna fund the marketing for the people you brought in. That means the sooner you get started, the sooner the people you bring in can get started, all with the paid marketing and the system to grow. You've never had that before in anything, I promise, it takes somebody that is going to use philanthropy to put it forward. We're spending literally millions of dollars to fund the growth of this, and look at it this way, how much of that do you want? I'm willing to train you, my staff is there to, you know, we've got the most amazing support team, it's 24-7, we've got online support, we're building things up for the future. I'm gonna put this on the World Wide Thing, just so you guys know, we already have offices in Sydney, Australia, and we're positioning ourselves so we can open up Asia and support it in the same method that we support it here from the US, we're 24-7, and we have support that helps train and back up everything that comes in, so maybe you're really good at bringing people in, but you're not really good at the training, that's okay, we have a solution for all of that, we've perfected this model, that's what I want, you guys just know it, wait till you see it. Awesome, so I appreciate you guys both, you can tell we're all excited about it, look forward to working with any of you that are interested, again, go to asklaurel.com, put in your information, we'll also be putting up a link with a formal, you know, presentation and the minute you want to jump in. Here's what I would say, even if you don't like wine, you can give it away as a gift, the cost to get this kind of marketing is something you just need to consider by yourself, so super excited about working with Rory and Eric as we continue to build this out, and I look forward to working with the rest of you. So again, you're listening to Laurel's Real Money Talks podcast, we're talking about how to make it, and boy, we have a lot of ways on this podcast for you to make it, so I look forward to working with you, and here's till next time on Laurel's Real Money Talks. Thanks for listening to the Real Money Talks podcast. Your host has been Laurel Langmyer, author of five New York Times bestsellers, Money Expert on Dr. Phil, CNN, CNBC, The Street TV, Fox News, and The View. Want to learn more about off-Wall Street investing, tax strategies, and multimillion-dollar business strategies? Visit liveoutloud.com slash podcast for past episodes, show notes, and resources. For some special wealth-building gifts only for Laurel's podcast listeners, visit liveoutloud.com slash podcast gifts. Do you have a burning question for Laurel? Visit asklaurel.com to submit your question, and it may just be covered on a podcast episode. So stay tuned and be sure to subscribe to get new episodes every week.