Ken Nielson and Peter Mingils on Count on the Truth Radio

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 Building Fortunes Radio. It's www.BuildingFortunesRadio.com. Again, my name is Peter Mingles. We are here on a Tuesday night, 30 ish, if you will. What does it say? February 17th, 2026, I can't believe we're a month and a half into this first new year. So we are here and we're talking with Ken Nielsen.

1:02Ken is the owner of Countdown the Truth. CountdowntheTruth.com is the domain name. Countdown the Truth also was the radio show title. And we are here every week at this time to talk about many different things related to taking a look at building and being involved in home-based businesses. Ken's been a customer of mine forever. It's been a really long time. We've talked for a long time, casually as well as professionally, over the years. And one day I was working on a special project. And I told him about it and he says, I really like that. And then I was talking to him about some of the things that he was referencing relative to building a home-based business. And the idea that there's a lot of skepticism, there's a lot of scams, there's a lot of everything that's out there. Who knows which reel anymore? Especially now with AI and all the stuff that's out there. Who knows what's real? Thing is not believing anymore. So you want to be able to count on the truth. And that's how Countdown the Truth got started.

2:02We were talking about that skepticism which was way less than it was now. Now like I said, it's been accelerated because of all the fake stuff that's out there. But we were talking about let's do some radio shows. And so people can hear you put some sentences together. You'll see that we're supporting everything you're working on as well. You're a good guy. I use the abbreviation swan every once in a while. Smart work hard and vicious and nice. Something I picked up from Brian Tracy a million years ago as well. And that's how this whole thing got started. So we're going to talk about whatever we're going to talk about. But for those people who are listening in, I mean if you're looking to make a measurable difference in your life, whether it's your health or your finances or the community that you're hanging around or the direction you might be going to, check them out. Check out CountdownTheTruth.com and make sure you call Ken Nielsen as well. So Ken, thanks for being here on your own radio show. Hey, hey Peter. Hey, great to hear you. And find out that we've got a good connection. I know that yesterday we had a change in weather.

3:04Of course that's what happens this time of the year. It's not all set in stone at this point. But we had lots of rain and internet and radio telephone connections just wasn't working like they're supposed to. So we've got a weather watch going on right now. We're going to have all kinds of snow coming our way here this evening at some point. So things have changed and are changing shortly. But anyways, great to be connected like I just mentioned. And the reason I say that is because I believe that you have a crystal ball to the industry basically. And you're one of the visionaries that are always a step ahead of everybody and everything else that's going on. And I think it shows in all your services and products and things that you make available to people in this industry if they're just paying attention. I know that we've talked about a whole bunch of different aspects and maybe different angles to the industry and some of the things that I think are pertinent.

4:04And maybe what I'd like to kind of bring up and make available to people listening or get a chance to come in and check out a particular episode is the fact that we know with everything going on out there, companies that are being offered up to other companies and being bought by maybe more viable companies or companies that have kind of seen what's going on on the horizon and see kind of what the future is. They just understand what needs to be done or what has to be provided to the people who are going to build their business or make their business known so that other people will be interested in joining in possibly making a second income or an income that is extremely pertinent to where they want to go or where they need to be want to be. And with that in mind, the reason I brought up the other part about talking about franchising or these other ideas concepts and things that are going on with the companies out there,

5:06we've talked about franchising how much easier it is for the home business people that get involved. In fact, we were on a webinar and I said, this isn't an amazing how people that get involved in this industry could actually be making the same amount as money who own a McDonald's franchise when they get in and they build the business the right way and have a little bit of patience. So there comes a point where you have to understand expectations versus realizations and that's why I've kind of brought up the thing about the evolution of the industry because we know back in the day, it used to be we had the three-foot rule, then we had different meetings where we would invite people to the meetings. We would say certain things to try and get people interested in what we had. And the reason was because the companies that were being promoted or talked about was done by word of mouth

6:12so that they didn't have to pay for the advertising. And one of the examples I gave last week was Verizon, where they spent, I think I said 17 billion a year, it's 12 billion per year, that they advertise to keep their business viable and bring new people in and keep people there, just as an example. But with that in mind, so here's kind of the question, Peter. One of the things that I was told when I first learned about the industry or the question that was asked to make me pay attention was this, what if I could show you a way to make more in a month than most people make in a year? Would that be something that interests you? So that was one of the main questions that always kind of stuck out in my mind. Of course I'd be interested in something that you can make as much in a monthly period as most of the people make in a year. Do you recall going back in time a little bit here, Peter, what the questions were or a question that made you interested in hearing more about a particular company

7:16or why the industry was promoted the way it was promoted? Any thoughts on that, Peter? You know, I don't know if there was any one specific question because it'd been like in this forever. So most of the times it was an open-ended question where people would say, do you keep your options open? Something like that, something thought-provoking would be something that usually would catch attention. Now, it's a little bit tougher for me because I was not new to the industry. Like I taught this stuff forever when I was in direct sales and direct sales management because when I was in direct sales, we always would hire, train, motivate, and develop. Those are the things that were worked on every day. So hire, train, motivate, and develop a sales force. So in MLM, it kind of just switches around a little bit instead of hire, you recruit. And then you go to train, motivate, and develop. So it's the same thing. So I was always doing some things when I was walking around like the three-foot rule

8:17with something I always used when I was in direct sales with elective luck. So I kind of spotted anybody that would, you know, basically ask me an open-ended question like that. And probably the most common ones are the ones that you just mentioned or a variation of it. And the other one is something like, do you keep your options open? I know that those are the most common ones. Yeah, I know that lately, in fact, some of the people that have told me because there's a couple of new opportunities out there that I know of anyways, I'm sure there's more than that. But that's one of the questions that's kind of interesting because you remember, or I remember saying that, you keep your options open. And when these people have called me, that's one of the questions they still ask. And I kind of chuckle, and they go, why are you laughing at that? I said, well, I've asked that question many times. And now you're asking me, do I keep my options open? And I would like to think that I'm still open-minded towards some of these things

9:17because we always want to know what's available out there or what is being promoted at this particular point in time. So of course, when we did get the positive answer and get a chance to maybe give up some information or explain to people what they need to know why this was being done, I don't know when it got to the point where it seemed like once you got people invited or wanted to take a look, the question was, how much information did you give them? And was there somebody better at presenting than you, which was usually the case? And so you would try to get them to a meeting or to some type of presentation so that they could find out what really was behind the whole process. So that was kind of my next question. If you got people that were referring or relating to what you were saying, what was kind of the next step that you had them do? Was it a presentation by somebody that was maybe like your upline or just somebody that was in the company

10:26or did you actually take them to some place where they were having a meeting on a weekly basis to try and get those people to really understand the entire process, the big picture, so to speak. What was the next step for you, Peter, after you got them to finally say, yeah, they were interested enough that they would look into it further, take a further step to move towards what you were trying to help them understand. Any thoughts on that, Peter? Sure, so because I'm older and my background again is in direct sales and direct sales management, many times when I was in direct sales we would bring them into the office to do an interview and then sometimes we'd even do an in-home interview with them as well. So we would interview, for this is for a management training position, we would interview them in two or three separate locations, meaning they might come into my office and I might go visit them in their home and then maybe, because that gave me a chance to see where they lived, who they were around, what was important to them,

11:31I got a clear picture of who they were. When I started doing the MLM stuff, I decided that, you know what, I wanted a home-based business, my own home in this business. And I didn't necessarily want people coming into my home because I have young kids and a dog and everything else like that, and I want to do mostly over the phone. So for me, the transfer of information is what I used to call it. So step one was, you know, you have to do your icebreaker and then your interview, then you have to do step two, which is your transfer of information. I decided that transferring information was going to be over the phone or through the computer, and that's how I would do it. So this way I was still in a home-based business, my home, and I didn't have to leave my home to be in a quote-unquote home-based business, which is always perplexing to me. How in the world could you call it a home-based business when you're never home? You're always up all over the place. So my method of choice was to use technology to transfer the information.

12:36And then, and this segway is a little bit to what we spoke about before we started the radio show. I like acronyms. I came up with an acronym called Ahamia. Always, handle awkward moments in advance. Ahamia, what else would you call it? Yeah. So what I would say before I would transfer the information, I would handle the awkward moments in advance, such as, hey, I've done this a couple of times. So if I were talking to you, you can, hey, Ken, I've been doing this a couple of times. I want to send you to some information whether it's a website or a webinar or whatever. But I want to handle some awkward moments in advance. You know, since I've been doing this, there's a couple of different things that happen. Some people go and they get very excited. They join or they buy or whatever. That's a great thing. Other times people never go. And then, you know, then they, they beat. They go to you. They don't call you back. Whatever you feel like you're chasing them and stuff like that.

13:36I don't want any of that stuff. So let's handle that awkward moment in advance. So I kind of address that. So it's kind of like I squeeze that in between just before I give them the information where I'm transferring the information. So that always worked out a little bit better because this way, I kind of handled that awkward moment. Like, you know, I would say to somebody, if you saw it, and what, you know, what should I do in your instance, if you don't look at it? You know, what should I do if you say you'll look at it on Tuesday and you don't? Should I call you back? Should I keep calling? You know, there's another word that I call it's a number called until. The number until means until you get me. So it's kind of like what, like if there's an emergency, you know? Yeah. I try to, I try to text you. I try, well, what the, I sent you an email. What, you get, you do whatever you have to until you reach me with my style and the way I would teach other people.

14:36So the people, servers got their own particular styles and those are some of mine. Yeah, brilliant. In fact, I'm glad that you brought up the fact that maybe you say until you get a phone call or connect with somebody or you send an email and they finally get some, they take another step. And I know that with the technology that we have, one of the things that was really, I thought a cool feature is when they started coming up with auto responders. And auto responders were made to make that connection somehow, some way. And of course they say that the only way you're going to find out of somebody is really doing their homework or what they need to do or what you need to do. It's going to take anywhere from five to seven emails just to kind of keep their attention and get them to do what is necessary to move them along the timeline from the first time that you meet somebody to the point where they have to make a decision.

15:36So just kind of wanted to get some thoughts on that too. But maybe before we do that, maybe we should take a commercial break and then we'll come back and we'll kind of talk about, a little bit more about the evolution of the industry and some of the things that makes it work and some of the things that maybe don't work. So I'll turn it back to you and then we'll kind of go from there Peter. Perfect. 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.

16:40Visit buildingfortunesradio.com or call Peter Mingles directly any day from noon to midnight eastern 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. And we are back Peter Mingles here with Ken Nielsen. We're talking about Countdown the Truth so Ken, take it away. Alright, thanks Peter. Yeah, I just had mentioned the fact that you brought up some things about being able to work with people and find out where they're at, maybe a percentage of their interest. And of course I've heard the different approaches like ABC. A, they've heard enough, they're ready to get started so where you go. B, they have some questions. Once you get the questions answered, then it's time for them to probably get enrolled and moving forward and get them into the point where they can kind of do some presentations or get other people interested.

17:47And then see, not really that interest, it's not for me to see you later. So that's the ABC. The other side was on a scale of 1 to 10, where do you think you would be after they've gotten so much information as opposed to being part of the opportunity? After you know what the presentation, the information is on a scale of 1 to 10, where are you right now? And that would kind of give some feedback. So you can kind of get an idea of whether they had to go watch a video or you had a tape or a CD or whatever it was that they wanted to listen to somebody who had been in the business long enough to catch all the aspects of it. So anyways, you had mentioned email as one of the forms of communication and I was really excited when they had first come out with the software, which was called an auto responder. And we got the point where we knew certain things, they had certain ratings, actually, when you put an email together, there were words that you didn't use, there were words that you were supposed to use.

18:48And sometimes the way that you said it, if you said certain things too many times, the internet provider would actually block some of those emails or send them to spam. And so the secret was it's trying to figure out how to write the emails, do the emails the right way so that they got through and weren't just checked off as not being that important. But they would actually make it through so the people were able to see and hear what you were trying to present to them in a fashion that didn't seem like it was going to make them just automatically say I don't want any more information. And of course that's you're trying to give them information. And for some people, I mean for me, if I had an email every other day, I'm good with that because I want to know what the continuation is. Other people, that's too much. So I mean, there are guidelines and specifics. So when the auto responder software systems came out, just kind of some of your thoughts on that, Peter, a good thing, a bad thing, just depends on how it's used. What are your thoughts on that, Peter?

19:52Well, one of the first companies to come up with an auto responder in this industry was a network marketing company called Pro Step. They were a lead generation company and they were really the first ones to do an auto responder. And it made sense that a side out of mind, you know, anything in front of somebody. And automation was important, right? So you don't have to do certain things. So this is the first level of automation and personalization and all that sort of stuff. And it started off with, believe it or not, text email, you know, just words. And then it became HTML. I'll never forget when we had a guy named Dr. Mike, who thought that HTML is going to be so that's the cutting edge stuff. And I'm like, Dr. Mike, in six months, your grandmother sent text, you know, HTML email, HTML email, meaning something with maybe colors or different fonts or different pictures, stuff like that. So auto responders, I knew we're going to be really important for at a side out of mind. That was the, that was the pro side. The negative side was there was a certain mentality in this industry where

20:56we were sending email every day, like every day, and bombard them. And the mentality was treating more, treating people like humans, but treating people like numbers. You send something every day, and then eventually, you know, they're either going to get pissed off and unsubscribe or do something. And the problem was is that too many people would be pissed off. And you basically blow in out a whole industry because everybody's loading up everybody with more email upon email. And that's basically been the case. So emails are not as effective as they could be or would be based on people just abusing the system. So I think an automated email delivery is really good when well done. And we found every day was too much. Every third day was too little. Every, every other day was just about right. It's a little bit like Goldilocks.

21:57So every day or every, every other day was probably the best. Every third day, you could work with that. But anything more than that was better than nothing, but not as effective. And also, we knew that people did not read email like they were reading chapters in a book. They were stand-alone. So any email needed to kind of stand by itself. It wasn't like, oh, I sent you this on Monday. So now I'm sending you this on Wednesday. And to understand Wednesdays, you had to read Mondays in that order. We found that it didn't matter. That didn't matter at all. So each email kind of stood on its own. But that's a little bit about my autoresponder experience. No, excellent. In fact, that I think it should be very enlightening for some of the people that are already in the business and maybe using their automation techniques. As opposed to somebody who's just maybe wanting to know why it's done that way or what is available to help them as far as making their business grow.

22:57And I know that they've gone from autoresponders to CRM's contact management systems. And they keep track of the information that's taking place with a particular prospect where when it comes to promotion, they talk about, in fact, they get pretty specific. They can talk about how long or or show how long a person has been on a video watching the video, how many emails they've been through. In other words, they keep track of the statistics for you, which makes it a lot easier. And that was the advent of AI that's come into play. I know that that's an important feature, depending on how far along on the cutting edge that these people that are still doing this type of thing in the industry have their own ways of knowing how to approach somebody. In fact, because of the way that their information is given to them. So interesting that you brought up the fact that every day is too much. Every third day wasn't quite enough, but the main thing was like reading a book where if they didn't read the email the day before or two days or however many days before they were they were caught behind.

24:13And then sometimes for me, I can see that as being a distraction trying to go back, especially with all the different emails that are available today from all the different businesses and all the different things. They've kind of polluted the email system and you're like, well, I'm glad some of this has gone to Junk Mel. And the stuff that I do want to read is in Junk Mel when it shouldn't be. And it's hard kind of keeping track of that and people seem like they always tell you, well, make sure you check spam because if you haven't got what I've sent you, it's probably in spam. And it could be just because of a simple phrase and the way the internet providers are paying attention to that. And the points that are scored or subtracted from the way that the email is written. So you almost have to be careful or have somebody who is professional been around this for some time to be able to make the correct email. The email presentation in itself so that people, it actually gets through so people can see it. I think there's still two or three places that you can go where you actually, you go ahead and write your email, you go over and submit that to the place where they look at the saying what's good in that email or what's bad and they give you a rating.

25:29And I say, okay, this is probably not going to make it through to the inbox, it's probably going to go in the spam. So you've got to change some things to make sure that it doesn't end up in the spam side of your email and it actually gets through to the prospect. And I know that you've worked with that also, Peter, it's quite an interesting feat involved there. So, and then I know that the other thing at one time you had a calling service, were you able to make not just a couple calls per minute, but I think it was either five or ten. I don't know how many calls it was per minute, but you could, once you finally got some of the basic information and you really wanted to make a connection, you could put these numbers and information into where you were calling. Once you got through to those people, it was a lot easier because you had made the connection and you could finally talk to them, find out where they were actually at, what they were thinking and what they thought they needed to do to continue. Because I know when I got started and finally got involved in some of this with the, before the auto responder things came about, I remember trying to set a record of calling 50 people in one day.

26:41And the closest I got to that was 47. And I remember the reason I didn't get to 50 is because there was actually a few at a certain time in the evening that, of course, they answered their phone and we got to talk to them so that that conversation went a little bit longer. And then when you start getting at a certain period of time at night, you just knew that it was, if you weren't calling the West Coast after 830 and it had to do with the East Coast, you just, it was just not a good time to be on the telephone. Talking to people. So back then it was easy once you got comfortable talking to people on the phone, but I always thought that I was going to surpass that number that I had of 47 and make it to 50. But how many people, actually, when you got them involved in the business, how many of them really wanted to do what you were doing? I can't take of anybody when it comes right down to it. Unless you were doing a three-way system, a three-way call with them, they were very reluctant to just call on their own. So if you weren't willing to get on the phone, it was really hard to get people to make those calls. And I'm sure that would fall under where you talk about higher train, motivate and develop, would be under the motivation and developing part.

27:53Did you ever get to the point where you were on the telephone trying to make X amount of phone calls, for example, 20, 30 in an afternoon and an evening and trying to build the business with phone calls? That ever happened with you, Peter. Yeah, that's primarily the way I build for business and still the way I do my business today. The phone is a great tool. It's kind of a great tool. It's something you have to learn how to manage. And for you, don't you think that you kind of get a feel for what the person that you're talking to on the other phone, you kind of find out how serious they are, what they have in their thought process? I mean, it doesn't take too long to figure out who's probably going to be successful and who's not. Right. You can't get that same feeling. Yeah, you kind of work through that. You don't necessarily have a crystal ball because you never really know. You know, sometimes there's a lot of people that say just say less to more people. That's the basic approach. You know, basically do the numbers again.

28:58I always found it was kind of tough because I would probably spend more time than I should with most people on a first call, only because I wasn't interested in prejudging them either in or out of a business. So, and that meant that you weren't able to make those 50 conversations in a day to make 50 dials, but it's kind of like that's a little bit like art. If you if you will, you just look at it and you say, well, you know, it's in the eyes of the beholder that he looks good or doesn't. So it's kind of like an individual thing that you base on experience and knowledge and a little bit of luck, I suppose. But one of the things that I've always done is I'm learning how to manage my time. I have a believer not a very old egg timer in front of me. Like literally if I hold it close, you'll be able to hear it tick-tock. I don't know if you can hear it tick-tock. Yeah. And if someone does that.

30:00So I have that. So it is a visual stimulus right in front of me that I'm like, watch my time. And sometimes I even playfully say, okay, I could go on for a really long time. So I'm going to set this for five minutes no matter what we do we're done. Yeah, literally, I've got it this time or so. It was just a way from me to remember to manage my time. Yep. And have a little bit of fun with as well. No, great point because it's easy to spend way too much time on some of the aspects that don't need to be. Well, they're just presented over and over and you could get really carried away. But then you lose the opportunity probably with maybe some other people too that understand that there's other ways to do the presentation that are already taken care of. Well, okay, very good. I know that time is kind of snuck by, but I just wanted to make sure that people kind of just got an idea. And the reason I wanted to bring these things up is with all the technology and everything that's available right now, the object is to get people into what they refer to as the funnel.

31:12And I know some people get tired of hearing that. But we want to just find out who the, I guess the more serious people are already to take a look at what is available. Why it's available and what is going on at this point in time? Because the industry is changing. We've got companies that just aren't making it. I know that we have talked about Modere. Hard to believe that Modere shuts down. And all those people with those serious incomes, all of a sudden it's just gone. And so you wonder how that's all come about and you wonder which companies are surviving and why or maybe why some of the new companies are doing as well as they're doing. And I think it's the ability to understand the economy, the trends, especially the trends, and why they have what they have to offer. Because some things are antiquated or just not going to survive the way that they're set up. It's failure right off the start when there's others that are going to thrive and surpass anything that's been out there for some time.

32:17And like we used to hear our mentors say when he would get people on the phone when we were doing, I was a team leader for a gentleman making 900K a year. He would always tell people the past doesn't equal the future. And those who live in the past are going to die in the past. So it's time to take a look and see what's really going on because the opportunities are there, the options and all the good stuff is there. It's just a matter of taking the time to find out. So that's what we do. We take a small amount of time as we can, bring up the most important points, let those people take a look. And if there's something that catches their ability to understand which I think is pretty simple right now, they're definitely going to be interested. It's just a matter of they want to fit themselves into the program and do the things that are necessary. And the rewards are pretty incredible when it comes right down to it. So that being said, Peter, I'm going to die, well, hopefully that kind of tied the ends up to this. But just for the fact, I know that I keep saying that we've got these videos, et cetera, et cetera.

33:23And with the webinar that we had yesterday, I was hoping that the latest video that we have done would be on the website tonight. Well, it's not there because they're adding a couple of touches to it. And it should be available by either Wednesday or Thursday. So I'll make sure I get that on the website. But very, very clean, very to the point, very focused, and it just makes so much sense. And if people are ready, they'll just say, hey, I need to know more if that's not what's going to work for them. Then that's great too, because then we just, we don't waste people's time with too much of the wrong information or trying to make them understand. But it's just something that's not, it's just not going to work for some people. But others, it just will make total sense. And they'll go, aha, now I get it because of just a couple of things that are involved in the video. So with that being said, and I don't know if there's anything else you'd like to add to it, Peter. But I think time has caught up with this. And so we'll call it good for this session back to you.

34:26So we're good to go. Yeah, make sure you check them out. Go to count on the truth.com. Count on the truth.com. And you'll be able to hear previous radio shows plus the things that Ken has posted before and the stuff he's going to do in the future. We'll catch you next time. Thanks everyone. You've been listening to building fortunes radio on building fortunes radio.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 fortunes radio.com website to listen to your favorite shows. You can also hear us on UMungus radio and wherever you find your favorite podcasts. It's been our privilege to have you listen in. By building fortunes radio, we wish you the success you deserve and are willing to work for.