Count on the Truth Radio host Ken Nielson on Logistics and Statistics with Peter Mingils

0:00Welcome to Building Fortunes Radio. Make sure you check us out at buildingfortunesradio.com. Along with Kisk, our keep it simple circle marketing partners, we are here to help our UMungus AM and UMungus FM radio customers build their businesses and make the world a better place. At Building Fortunes Radio, we know how much your business means to you and the people important to you. So join us to make the world a better place. Spread the word, tell a friend, and go make a difference in your world. Now onto our show with your host, Peter Mingles. Take it away, Peter. Hello, everyone. Peter Mingles here. You are listening to us on Count On The Truth Radio with Ken Nielsen. My name is Peter Mingles. Happy new year. This is our first radio show of 2026, but certainly not our first radio show. We've been doing this with Ken Nielsen for a number of years now. I would like to tell the story briefly about how this got started because I think it makes sense when Ken has been a customer of ours forever.

1:03Even before we started Building Fortunes Radio, I believe we would work on this stuff we do for building home-based businesses. We've had lots of conversations and one of the conversations we had before we started the radio show was about some of the challenges associated with, you know, the stuff that goes on in credibility in building home-based businesses is a lot of people that are naturally skeptical and a lot of things like that. A lot of people don't know anything about it. It's hard to find valid and good information about the home-based business industry from people that are really doing it the right way and you hear a lot of the scams and stuff like that. So there's a natural skepticism. So at the same time, I was having that conversation. I showed Ken some things we were doing with some personalized websites and conversation kind of blended together where he said, you know, what can I do? And I said, well, if we did some radio shows together, people would be able to hear your phone friendly voice and hear how great you are and you have a lot of integrity and that you're a good, solid person. If we put together a website, you'll be able to reinforce that as well. And he said, let's do it.

2:03And then it was a question of, what are we going to call it? So he gave me a series of domain names, many of which I really liked, but one really stuck out and it was called CountOnTheTruth.com and I really liked that. So I said, let's use that one. So countOnTheTruth.com is the one we settled on. If you go there, you'll see all the cool things that Ken has put up there. And then also we feed all of these radio shows into that. So if you want to go here, the newest radio shows or the latest radio shows, you'll be able to do that as well. And for all those people that are planning on kicking off 2026 as being that breakthrough or breakout year, you can certainly do that by working with Ken. So we'll kick this one off. He'll go over some stuff. But the most important thing is if you go to CountOnTheTruth.com, you'll see he's got contact information in there, one way or another and all the other stuff, but reach out to him if you're interested in building yourself and maybe your family, a great home-based business because he's one of the people that you could certainly work with and he'll give you the time and commitment and all the stuff that is appropriate with CountOnTheTruth.com.

3:05So Ken, thanks for being here. Hey, Peter. Hey, great to be here and great to be connected because I was extremely Larry at this point in time because of the, we've got a situation with actual weather making technology work or not work. And I appreciate you taking a little bit of time to explain to the listeners and those that we'll be able to hear the episode, the program, when we get to talk about a few things getting ready for the new year, what had happened is along the lines of technology, the company that was doing some development, they've got a new area that was primed for building some homes and so they're getting ready to do some excavating, I guess you might say, in the backhoe dug up one of the lines that was used for the internet and the telephone. So anyways, when they put it back together, whenever it rains now, and not snows, but

4:10rains, the weather gets a point where there's too much moisture, I lose internet connection and the phone connection and I've told the dozen people at this particular company and they just don't get it. I don't understand why it's so hard for them to try and figure out why this isn't working. But anyway, at this point it's working. So again, many thanks for being here and helping me to get some of this information out because I know your experience with them and knowledge is just hard to compare. I can't think of anybody else out there that has been able to see kind of what goes on behind the curtains and certain individuals, how it plays out in the industry and the good, the bad and the ugly, so to speak. So it's just for me, it's a good time because I try to keep up with everything that we hear, we know and bring up some key points, highlights, takeaways, whatever you might want to call them. And so I just wanted to make a couple of mentions here as far as communication goes.

5:10In fact, back on this day in 1838, I think most people know about the name Samuel B. Morse. And of course that for me, being an I'm an amateur radio operator, been one since 1970 when I was just a kid, it used to be that you had to know how to send and receive Morse code. So many words per minute and that determined the license that you would hold. And you would start out at an office at five words a minute and then you could be a general, well, a technician was five words a minute also. But then you could work your way up to a general and then you could get to the extra class. In the extra class you had to know 20 words per minute so you could use all the frequencies on each particular band. So the thing that kept people from getting their amateur radio licenses was pretty much knowing Morse code and being able to send it and receive it at a certain speed. So and even now, because of the way technology has evolved, the Coast Guard has done away with Morse code because they have all the satellites and they have GPS tracking and all the

6:17different things that are associated with the newer technology. They just really don't need, I don't know if they even still teach Morse code, but it's not a requirement and then you have to be able to hear it, receive it, send it at so many words per minute. So I thought that was kind of an interesting thing that associated with this day in history, clear back in 1838 and of course people are going, what's that got to do with anything? So maybe I kind of bring that up real quick. And then in 1959, USSR's Luna 1 became the first spacecraft to escape Earth's gravity. And I know that a lot of people, their attention was like when the USSR put Sputnik into orbit around the Earth, they thought, oh my word, Russia's got the advantage over everybody because of that moment in history, of course that wasn't on June 6th of January, I'm worried about being in June already, on January, that was a different day.

7:20And the other thing that a lot of people will relate to just to kind of end up as far as today on this day, because I mean there's so many different things, we can talk about birthdays and deaths and all kinds of different things in history. But I'm sure that you remember this, let's say today in film and TV, in 1975 the TV game show Will of Fortune debuted on NBC. So just a few things to throw out there Peter, any thoughts on the Will of Fortune real quick while I had mentioned it, does that ring a bell to you? Well sure, rings a bell, but besides pretty women or pretty girls, I didn't really want to will of fortune, it wasn't my thing, or a jeopardy guy, I think I'm going with a jeopardy guy. Okay, okay. Yeah, kind of, it was interesting because I know those two programs that seemed like they were on at the same time and one took a little more press and it's over the other just

8:21because of the way it's played and maybe the simplicity or the way we associated with those programs. But I got, I heard that on the radio and I thought, man, 1975, wow, talk about going back sometime. 1975, let's see, I graduated from school, I think in 1980, so I was probably in the early parts of freshman year or something like that in high school and probably hanging out with my friends at eight o'clock at night. How are you not going to watch them too much Will of Fortune? Yeah, I'm going to say back in the period of the day and age when the streets got rolled up at what, nine o'clock at night, maybe a little bit later, but man, if you were out past 10 o'clock, that was a crazy deal. You were out after those types of, after that, you were out after that, right? Or like after midnight, anything that happened to you was all your fault. Yeah, there you go. That went out that late at night, that went out from the world was a different place.

9:21Yes. In fact, I just had a quick story when I was the parts manager for a local Honda dealership back when we were racing motocross. We were handed gentlemen used to come in and he was in the new 750 motorcycles that we had and he wanted one of those really bad and anyways, he finally had worked a deal with his bank that they would loan him the money to buy this motorcycle, so he bought this motorcycle and we were in a particular address out on Main Street and it was a place where they were going to put a new 711 store and we were all kind of sitting with a group of us sitting there talking and believe it or not, it's after midnight and we ain't got nothing better to do with like a bunch of fender lizards and we hear this siren coming down Main Street and I thought, oh, somebody's in trouble now. And of course, that wouldn't make sense but the siren got closer and we could see the lights were actually on. Here come a guy on a motorcycle flying down Main Street and I mean he was moving.

10:25And so anyways, we kind of watched the motorcycle guy go by and then here come the police officer following him and said, man, whoever that is is really trucking things pretty quick. So to make a long story short, they'd set up a barricade, probably two miles out on the outskirts of town where the development had ended and they made a mistake. They didn't have any lights flashing or any indicators for him to stop. So he puts on the brakes, puts a bike in a skid and ends up crashing into one of the deputies cars, you know, he swallows these tongue and the guy said he had to reach down and police tongue out so the guy could start breathing again. We found out that this motorcycle rider was up in the hospital and it was a gentleman that we sold the motorcycle to and I thought, man, he's only had it for two days and he's already causing problems. But they had him clocked at doing 107 miles an hour down the Main Street where we lived

11:27and it's interesting because the lights were set up so that they changed. If you went down this Main Street and you were driving 25 miles an hour, the lights would just automatically go from red to green and so you could just kind of maintain and it was actually about 22 miles an hour. As long as you went 22 miles an hour, you just kind of went through the whole town but he said he was trying to hit all those lights as they were changing and his eyes were watering because he couldn't get his goggles on and make the turn where he wanted to go up the canyon and lose this officer and they wouldn't be able to keep up with him and chasing down. But his eyes watered so bad and he had to just keep going and hope that nobody was going to blow through a light that was kind of in between making it stop and go. But I still think about that story and I go, well, you know, I had the chance of doing Wheelies down Main Street when we welcomed Santa Claus one year and one of the officers told me to not be doing Wheelies and that was kind of an interesting confrontation in itself. But to think of driving a motorcycle down that street at 107 miles an hour is just absolutely

12:29crazy. Anyways, good thoughts, good times, crazy things that happened back in day and age, so to speak. And so kind of getting off of that subject and moving into something for the new year, I had made a comment last time we were on here, Peter, about some of the dynamics that are associated with the home business industry and one of the things that we come to learn and know that really makes a difference in people being able to be successful or not be successful. It really has to do with the compensation plan and maybe what we refer to as a rewards program because like so many other things that we've talked about, we talked about the advertising budget of Verizon, which was just absolutely crazy with another episode. We talked about how much they spend yearly to bring in new customers, keep their customers to make the business viable so that it still exists. And I know I kept mixing those numbers up, but it was $17 billion a year, which is still

13:34a ridiculous amount of money because back in 1996, I know that when we were working with different companies, we had, well I won't name a whole bunch of them, but AT&T, which comes to mind, spent $96 million to try and persuade people to come over from different telephone providers, long distance providers, et cetera, and make them join their company and they learn that it took 10 times the amount of money to persuade somebody, for example if you have a particular restaurant that you like to go to or maybe a franchise that has to do in the restaurant business, et cetera, it's a lot of advertising and marketing to really persuade somebody to make a change or even take a look unless it's brand new and it's kind of like the big, bad, the new thing that's just kind of come up. And so that's the beauty of the home business industry is we are rewarded for doing the

14:35marketing and advertising for the company instead of paying for the advertising like they do traditionally. When we help get the word out, we spread the information and say, hey, you need to take a look at what's going on. You're rewarded for building a team, building a group and it just kind of, it grows upon itself as people learn to use their skills and their talents and in fact we kind of get away from that now because of what the technology is providing at the current time and we've referenced that to AI which is artificial intelligence which is another part of the industry right now. And one of the things that I wanted to bring up before I forget is the fact that I had mentioned that we used to say once we had been around different companies and different compensation plans, you go wide for show and deep for dough. I try to tell people when we're talking about certain things and I'll just bring this

15:36right up and say it, I'm not a fan of the Unilevel and I think the Unilevel has some serious flaws in it and I know that there's companies that still promote Unilevel and I still, I just don't understand why they would promote a Unilevel especially if you're in a town where you're trying to build your business locally and you bring people into the business and the next thing you know, you've got five people that you brought in and maybe you have a meeting where you get together and talk about the business and all of a sudden it seems like those like people that you brought into the business are actually competing against each other when you could have a different compensation plan and actually have them working together and helping each other instead of working against each other. So there's some good sides to compensation plan and there's some red flags you might say as far as compensation plans go. So to be able to expound on that and carry this a little bit further, I think maybe we will do, we'll go to commercial break, come back and then kind of proceed with a little

16:38bit more insights to what I'm referring to as logistics or dynamics of certain compensation plans or certain businesses within the industry itself Peter. So I'll turn it to you so we go to commercial break. Here we go for our first commercial. Thanks for listening to Building Fortune's Radio. You can hear us on all the UMongas AM radio and all the UMongas FM radio stations. Listen in, whether we are on Amazon Music and Apple's iTunes or I Heart Radio and Spotify, you can hear us everywhere popular news and information is shared. If you sell a product or have something to share with the world, you should advertise with us or learn about hosting your own show on Building Fortune's Radio and the UMongas ad network. For more than 25 years, PM marketing has helped entrepreneurs grow their businesses and sell more products by building customized websites, driving targeted traffic and advertising through the UMongas ad network and radio shows. Visit BuildingFortionsRadio.com or call Peter Mingles directly any day from noon to midnight

17:43eastern time for details. Call 3-8-6-445-3585. That's 3-8-6-445-3585. Ask about the Kisk book and websites. The Kisk, keep it simple circle, can be your key to success. Now, let's get back to the show. Take it away Peter. Perfect, so thanks everybody for listening in. Ken, back to you on the count on the Truth Radio Show. Alright, thanks Peter. Well, I hope I don't catch you off guard here by too much, but I just kind of want to ask a question because I know how deep your experience goes and the ability to understand what's going on behind the curtain, so to speak. I know that you had the chance to be involved with what was originally called Distributors Write Association and which later became the Association of Network Marketing Professionals.

18:43I know how critical that this could be because there's, like you had mentioned, the first part of the program here, the skepticism that's involved with this industry, and I bring this up because it seems to me with all the different companies that are out there and that people create or have maybe come and gone, I mean, they're still staples or the ones that are grounded, that are still available and been around for a number of years, but there's been so many that have come and gone. In your opinion, do you think that sometimes there's just too many companies to choose from when it comes right down to it, when you really should be maybe focused on maybe the top 10, so to speak, because I know it's pretty easy to actually point out a hundred companies that have been around for quite some time, but don't you think there's too much competition in the industry for some people to take a look at and maybe get lost and wonder what's going on with everything that's associated with all the different businesses that are

19:46available out there, Peter? There's a couple of thoughts about that. So the idea of having lots of choices is a good thing, meaning that if there's a few hundred or a few thousand companies, at least you have a choice of maybe what you might be looking at, but after you've made that selection, so the idea that there's lots of choices in itself, a good thing for choices, but a bad thing if it comes to focusing on building your business. So, if you heard during the commercial and even in the introduction, we talked about our kisk, our keep it simple circle, it led you to the idea that, you know, once you make your decision, there's probably about a dozen things or seven or so different things that you need to focus on to be able to become productive in your business. So that there's a lot of choices is a good thing, but once you make that choice, you better stick to your choice, because if you are not, you're probably not going to make it. So, you want to specialize in whatever company you decide that you're going to work with.

20:50It's very difficult for people to build multiple companies at the same time, especially starting out. So that's what I'd have to say about that. Okay. No, no, no. And I think that, yeah. Go ahead. As far as the distributor rights association, we started that because a lot of people would just check the box, you know, we all do it when it says, you know, do you agree to terms and services or policy procedures or privacy policies and stuff like that. I don't know many people who actually read those things. Even lawyers don't read those things for the most part. So, meaning lawyers when they're checking off, I'm sure that every lawyer who's ever used like an internet service or a telephone service probably didn't do it there and read all of the policies and procedures in terms of conditions and all the other things associated with that. But there's reasons why you need to know your rights as a distributor. And that would be a common thing that we take a look at and we try to change the industry in a positive way by helping to standardize and not have predatory practices against distributors

21:52because whoever writes the contract, remember, is probably has the upper hand. So if you're signing it and you have a Reddit, you probably gave away a lot of your rights and that's what the distributor rights was so trying to do to kind of even out or distributors and companies and things along that line. Okay, no, very good. And I know that some of the things that we hear about or maybe even tell some of the people that we get a chance to talk to, we say, if you chase two rabbits expecting to catch both of them, they both get away. So kind of along those lines. And the other thing that I think is critical, I mean, that's with technology and everything that's going on, I know the industry has evolved. I know for, well, it's kind of like the gold rush, you might say when people were on their way to California back in the day and they were hoping to find, make their claims with gold and find their riches and become wealthy, et cetera.

22:54There wasn't necessarily the people that were looking for gold that made the most money. It was the people that sold the tools, the picks and the shovels and the sifters and all those types of things. They were the ones, and even the clothing, kind of when Levi Strauss came around and sold their clothing to those people because it was pretty, it was a pretty much rugged life to be up in the mountains and trying to find gold and the rivers and having to go to different places. Quite a backstory as far as that type of thing goes, but having the tools and what we refer to as, excuse me, the contact management systems kind of came along. And what that is is the ability to keep track of people in your particular groups and business as it grows because it's just, it used to be, you keep things on paper and you try to write down everything and know who's working with who and know who kind of brought so and so into the business and what times you're going to make during the week. In fact, that might be something we could just mention real quick here.

23:57It used to be that you knew you had a meeting on Wednesday nights, for example at 7 o'clock, 7 p.m. And if you were going to invite somebody to go find out more about the business, that's what you do. You say, hey, we have a meeting at this particular location and we'd like to invite you to come so that you can kind of get an idea what's really going on. So that's all quite a few problems because you could see the energy that was associated with the business. You could see the type of people that were associated with the business. And you could find out what the leaders were teaching and doing and find out and actually find out who was making the difference amount of money which could be very shocking, very shocking at times because I know a couple of the meetings that we used to go to. And the checks that were kept in loose leaves that the top leaders would keep if somebody said, well, is anybody making any money? And they'd grab this loose leaf and they'd open the pages and show some of the checks

24:57that they had received during the previous month. And I'm telling you, it was pretty eye-opening to see some of those checks that were $20,000, $40,000. In fact, and I tell people, for me personally, the biggest check that I've ever seen, it was right there that I could hold, was $261,000. And I told them, I said, you know, that's pretty impressive. You're 38 years old and you're making $261,000 a year doing this and the other three people kind of snickered at me. And they said, you better read that again. And so I looked at it again. I said, I must be missing something. So I looked at it and scanned over again a little bit more serious in the next go around. And down in the bottom left-hand corner, it said 30-day paper, and I said, I looked up at the guy and I said, you're 38 years old, you're making $261,000 a month and he goes, yes, that's correct. And I don't know if I would pass out, but I almost had to sit down and think, what in

26:01the world is this kid doing to be able to make that kind of money in this industry? So that was an eye-opening adventure or experience for me, and which just made it so you could say, you know what, there is some great potential, great possibilities in this industry, which is really quite shocking. And I know that you've been able to rub shoulders in and talk to different people in the industry and I know that they've used your services, Peter, to build their businesses. Is there anything that sticks out in your mind that you think that is extremely critical for the new people to also take a look at other than the fact that we're talking about compensation plans? I was going to get a little more into that talking about maybe buying areas in the two buy. A lot of companies use the two-by-twelve matrix, the two-by-sixteen, some are a little bit smaller, maybe a three-by-seven, a three-by-eight, or a five-by-something as far as matrix

27:02has go. Is there anything that maybe comes to mind that is critical for the new people to pay attention to that will help them to maybe not get sent down the wrong path or the wrong road, so to speak, Peter? You know, I guess, in a general sense, a compensation plan works like this. If you sponsor and sell a whole bunch of people, you're going to make a lot of money. If you sponsor or sell a small number of people, you're probably going to make a little bit of money. So, a lot of it has to do with the volumes of people that you generate and you sponsor and you sell. You know, by the product and, you know, sponsor in and then develop the sales team and the key to this whole thing is selling a product and building a team. So, which ones are favorable or which ones are not, you know, the old, amway type, the stair-step breakaways, you have a tendency of being, you know, kind of old and crusty, but somewhat secure, but hard to build.

28:04Right. So, you got to live long enough to be able to build one of those. Right. Sometimes, the sexy ones are the binaries because you can make a lot of money fast because they cycle so quickly, but the matrixes have their own benefits and unit levels. There's a couple of different types of compensation plans and I'd say that the most important aspects of a compensation plan for me would be that number one, whoever makes the sale gets the most commissions, so that would be an important thing. And it's got to go down deep, meaning you have to be able to be paid on lots and lots of levels because whether you like it or not, pretty quickly, your organization is going to grow to be deep whether you like it or not. You want to make sure you get paid on that depth. Yeah. So, whatever kind of a compensation plan allows you to do those types of things, I think, are super important. All right. Very good. Well, and watch out for the fluffy stuff.

29:08So the benefits of like, we're going to pay for your house or we're going to keep your car. Those are many times, you know, icing on the cake that you may never see or they have their own, how would I say, hidden agendas because a car paid for by the company is often the company saying, hey, go buy a car, put the lease in your name and you're going to, we'll reimburse you based on whatever performance for that month and you won't lose it or you might quit that company and then that company really isn't paying for your car. So you got to look at the fine print when it comes to bonuses that sound really nice. So just, you know, put the buyer be aware and that's, you know, can this the whole reason why I do this radio show with you is because you can help people stay away from the things that they might not really understand. Well we hope so. That's exactly part of the reason why we've got this going and try to get the information out there so you're correct about that.

30:10Okay. No, that's some great points, Peter. And yeah, we try to make sure that people understand why some things are good, why some things are bad, even, I mean, the goal is, of course, financial freedom when it comes right down to it and it's very enticing, so to speak, because we know, well, I know firsthand the potential that's, that's, that's, we're capable of here and I could, I could get real quick into the Jimmy Smith story because I know you're familiar with Jimmy Smith, the butcher and the fact that, the fact that what he was making in his company on a weekly basis is just, you know, kind of mind-boggling, so to speak. So we might have to bring that up a little more in detail on one of our next episodes. But being the time is flown by. I just wanted to mention this real quick before we close things up, Peter. We, on the radio, they were talking about New Year's resolutions and I was surprised

31:12that there's actually a percentage of people that keep their New Year's resolutions year round. And they said the reason that people don't keep their resolutions is because their goals, their ideals or concepts are just too lofty, they're too far out of reach. And so when the least little thing goes wrong, they, they tend to think, well, it's not possible, so they just kind of let, they let it go. And I thought, so we're supposed to strive for a lower quality of life or something that's not quite as good as we expect. And I guess you could go from one extreme to the other extreme, but they said that the percentage of people who keep their New Year's resolution is 4%. And I thought, oh, that's kind of interesting. It seems like anything that's worth having or worth fighting over or worth trying to make happen in some persons life seemed like it's always 3%, 4%, 5%, just really not that big of a percentage. So hopefully if there's anybody out there looking for New Year's resolution and they're

32:18ready for some financial independence because of the ROI that's associated with this industry, return on investment because it's really, really substantially lower than anything else out there, but has the potential for being something incredibly good. This is the industry to be involved in, get with the right company, get with the right people, and you'll be amazed at what you can do. So I've got, we've got one of our new videos. We've had some technical problems with the internet and telephone, but we're finally back online here. So I'll get the latest video on the website here, hopefully tonight, some time or tomorrow, excuse me. And we'll be able to let people see that and it has to do with associated with AI, artificial intelligence. You'll be happy to know that we're here to help you grow the business and be successful right from the gate instead of, we're not going to set you up for failure, but we're going to set you up for success. So don't know if there's anything else you'd like to throw in there, Peter, but I know

33:19time has flown by and time to get ready for the next few days coming up before we get ready for next week. So what would be you for just a few moments? Well, for those people that want to make 2026 a New Year and a better year, then you need to do stuff and you might as well start early, as a matter of fact, if you're starting now, you're already a little bit behind because usually the New Year starts with the production that you did in December. So you want to make sure that you just start earlier and take advantage of the tax advantages of a home-based business, the cold weather, the darkness, more people being home, more people. Basically, we have no major holidays in the way, so it's a perfect time, no distractions. This is a really great month to build your future in a home-based business. So take advantage of that and make sure you can go to count on the truth.com, count on the truth.com is the website you'll be able to go to and can actually do another great radio show. Thanks for all the stories and all those other things, but most of all, thanks for those

34:20people that are listening in to make sure you call Ken and talk to him about whatever it is. If you want to reference asking questions about building a home-based business, and can that table catch everybody next week? You can make me a building fortunes radio on building fortunesradio.com. Thanks for listening. Building fortunes radio is part of the UMungus AM and UMungus FM radio network. Be sure to check out the building fortunesradio.com website to listen to your favourite shows. You can also hear us on UMungus radio and wherever you find your favourite podcasts. It's been our privilege to have you listen in. To building fortunes radio, we wish you the success you deserve and are willing to work for.