Always a nice feeling to open the morning paper (USA TODAY) to see positive news!!  

Well,

If you didn’t think I was crazy when I set the goal of putting 20lbs of lean muschle on a 134lbs body in 90 days, then I will warn you you’ll probably think I’m crazy after this one...

I met with Hulk Hogan for an event we put on together promiting the Body by Vi Challenge and got some private time with him backstage to get some of his personal advice on my goal.

I was hoping for some workout or eating tips…INSTEAD he told me I needed to add the “FEAR FACTOR!”  

NOT what I was expecting… and I’ll be honest, I have had this video done for 1 week and have yet to post it. 

But when it comes to real decisions, you need to draw a line the sand.  With this one, win or lose, no one can say I didn’t commit!

One more sidenote…

I have to say just a few weeks into this Challenge, I have had WAY more people tell me this isn’t even “physically possible” than any other goal I have every shared with people.

I had one very intelligent person whom I respect a lot tell me  ”your goal defies physics, it will be impossible to do.”

Not very optimistic, but definately motivating in its own right.

Personally, I LIKE IT when people tell me something is impossible.

After all, most of the worthwhile victories so far in my life have come from being on the OTHER side of “the odds.”

So Hulk, thanks for helping me step up my game BROTHER!

The stakes just got higher…

- Blake

PS, Get updates real time at:   www.facebook.com/blakemallen.page    &    www.twitter.com/blakemallen

PPS, In case you missed previous videos

View Video 1 here:   http://youtu.be/92YL0F4C2wg    (The Goal)

View Video 2 here:   http://youtu.be/LXlR2S9ULuQ   (Total Blackout!)

View Video 3 here:   http://youtu.be/b25rdTL4xEw      (Week 2 weigh in)

Two weeks into my 90 Day Challenge goal.

At least I haven’t BLACKED OUT again!  Progress!  LOL.

Here is my week 2 weigh in…

-Blake

PS  Get updates real time at:   www.facebook.com/blakemallen.page    &    www.twitter.com/blakemallen

PPS   In case you missed the previous videos in this series:

View Video 1 here:   http://youtu.be/92YL0F4C2wg    (The Goal)

View Video 2 here:   http://youtu.be/LXlR2S9ULuQ   (Total Blackout!)

Founder of ViSalus, Blake Mallen, announced his (insane!) goal for his next personal Body by Vi 90 Day Challenge – to gain 20lbs of lean muscle in just 90 days!

View Video 1 here:   http://youtu.be/92YL0F4C2wg    (The Goal)

______________________________________________________________

(Video2) Blake Mallen’s Operation Transformation: 1st Workout…leads to total BLACKOUT!

OK…

So, my 1st 90 Day Challenge workout did NOT go as planned! Embarrassing…

Not much more I can add, as the pale green look on my face in this video says it all.

Please do not try this at home.

Blake

PS. Get updates real time at:   www.facebook.com/blakemallen.page    &    www.twitter.com/blakemallen

PPS. If this was workout 1, this Challenge is going to get very interesting!

(Founder of ViSalus announces his (insane!) goal for his next personal Body by Vi 90 Day Challenge.  In this first video, Blake explains his goal, has his first Trainer interview, & weighs-in.   Show Blake your support and get updates real time at:   www.facebook.com/blakemallen.page    &    www.twitter.com/blakemallen)

A few words from Blake…

Ok…

So part of the fun of being the Founder of the Body by Vi 90 Day Challenge is I always get to be on a Challenge!

For my first Challenge, I trained and competed in the NY Nautica Olympic length Triathlon.

Now, I had never been a runner… or a biker…

I’ve surfed all my life and played water polo in HS so I figured the swim would come easy.

So I bought the bike, trained, then swam in the Hudson, Biked along the NY river, and Ran Central Park.  Was a blast!  Since then I have done quite a few more Tri’s and recommend everyone try it at least once in their lifetime.

For another Challenge, I climbed Mt Whitney, the highest peak in the continental US.

I had never been a hiker, let alone a backpacker.  Figured if I’m going to start, might as well climb the tallest!

So I bought the gear, trained, and not only make to the top, but took the “mountaineers route” which ended with class 3&4 free climbing. 

Was insane. Loved it!  And recommend that to anyone who likes the outdoors.

For my last Challenge, 9 of us competed in a ToughMudder.com event.  It was a 9m British Special Forces Marine Style Obstacle course at 11K foot elevation.  Mud, freezing water, walls, ropes, barb wire, 10K volt live wires… insane.  But an absolute blast.  The photos on the FB page are worth the look! Definitely recommend as a great team building experience! 

Soooooooo…

I thought long and hard on what my next personal Challenge Goal should be.

Wanted to really Challenge myself.

Well, I have never been a gym person.
Don’t really like lifting weights.
I have been small/light all my life.
So why not try to do something in that direction…

So my next 90 day Challenge Goal is to

PUT ON 20 LBS OF MUSCLE IN 90 DAYS!

(… all natural, just from diet, exercise, & ViSalus Products of course!)

I know, I know you are thinking two things right now:

1.  Q: Why…?

                A:  Don’t really have a good answer here. LOL.    It’s a Challenge and I want to see if I can do it.

2.  Q: Is it physically possible?

                A: I’m not sure. But I’m going to give it my all and we’ll see where it gets me over the next 90 days.

Keep an eye on my FB/Twitter for updates.  I’m a bit nervous about this one and will need your support.

Let OPERATION TRANSFORMATION begin..

Blake

by Josephine Gross, Ph.d..

Blake Mallen is cofounder of and Chief Marketing Officer for one of the most dynamic network marketing companies in the U.S. market today.

A 30-year-old Gen Y, Blake got started as an independent distributor when he was a freshman in college. After building a successful business for five years, circumstances forced him to change course.

In 2005, Blake cofounded a new company with two friends, also in their mid-twenties, around a common vision to revolutionize net- working marketing. Despite the high failure rate for start-ups, especially during the recession, their company has seen solid growth, thanks to its focus on technology and innovation.

Blake believes the changing economy and the evolution of the Information Age are forcing businesses and individuals to reinvent themselves. Technology, he says, is leveling the playing field by providing low-cost and high-leverage tools anyone can learn to use.

Blake’s goal is to attract first-time entrepreneurs of all ages looking for a powerful vehicle to live their dreams. His commitment is, as he puts it, “to continue doing what works”: investing in technology and listening to the young generation for evolving the networking profession.

Shifting Paradigms

Blake Mallen grew up in a strict, conservative household; his mother was a school principal, his father a policeman. The message he received early on was to follow the script: go to school, get good grades, find a good job.

Blake remembers stressing out about grades as early as fifth grade. He received achievement awards all through elementary and high school, and went to a top university where he graduated cum laude in three years. As he was advancing along this academic path, one day Blake’s world flipped upside down when he received an instant message from an old high school friend saying, “Hey, interested in making some extra money?”

When Blake learned it was network marketing, he didn’t really know what that was, but, being open-minded, he agreed to attend a meeting. He even grabbed a group of friends from his dorm to come with him, because it looked like it might be a fun thing to do.

“I thought we could all learn something and meet some great people,” he says. “I was always looking to sharpen my skills and add something different to my résumé. I also thought, who knows, if it worked out, maybe it would help pay some of my college bills.”

Blake followed his intuition and initially went with an attitude of “let’s see what happens.” But as he got involved, he fell in love with the business model and the challenge of learning something completely different from what he was used to.

“What inspired me was how this business could transform people’s lives,” he says. “All I had known since childhood was over-achievers focused on grades and building résumés. I quickly learned that entrepreneurs think differently, and I enjoyed the practical business and success education I was getting.”

Blake continued attending college and simultaneously built his business. As he moved up in the compensation plan, he realized he was probably never going to need his degree. Yet, after all the money and time he had invested in school, he wanted to finish what he had started. He crammed his classes in so he could graduate early and do the business full-time.

Growing his business while increasing his course load required significant focus, discipline and commitment. It also took a lot of sacrifice.

“While my buddies were off to parties, I was attending trainings,” says Blake. “While they were out drinking, I was reading leader- ship books. Whenever my car moved, a personal growth CD was playing. I was willing to sacrifice some of what many consider the best years of their lives, so that my best years would last for the rest of my life.”

By the time Blake turned 21, he had graduated from college and become a top earner in his company.

Overcoming Challenges

One of the biggest hurdles Blake experienced in his early days was the battle going on in his mind between what he thought he was supposed to do and what he felt inspired to do.

He remembers at his college graduation party family and friends asking him, “So what are you going to do now?” and their reactions when he told them he was going to build a home-based business.

“They thought I was off my rocker. Going against the expectations of everyone around me was a big challenge and I wavered back and forth many times, wondering if I was doing the right thing.

“I finally came to the conclusion that I had to break free from that script. I developed a personal philosophy that the moment you stop doing what you think you’re supposed to do and start doing what you were truly meant to do is when that script ends and life begins.”

Blake continued to follow his passion for entrepreneurship and applied the habits he learned in school to become a student of success. He ended up building an organization of close to 20,000 people, when all of a sudden a whole new level of challenges hit him and his partners.

“About five years into the business, we thought we were on top of the world. Being a surfer, I was living on the beach in Del Mar, California. My residual income covered my life- style and I thought I had made it—until my world turned upside down again.

“We were preparing a big event to take our team to the next level. We had just invested about $100,000 in the website, sales tools and training materials we were launching. On the Wednesday before the weekend event, we received the phone call from our company owner that nobody ever wants to get. He told us the company had been losing money, the investors were done funding us, and he was closing the doors.”

Blake and his partners were blindsided by this turn of events. Yet after investing five years of their lives into this company and creating a vision that thousands were following, they weren’t about to give up.

For a while, Blake’s old doubts started haunting him again, making him wonder if he should go back to the old script of relying on his degree to go down the traditional path.

However, he and his partners were emotion- ally attached and naively committed to what had been their first company. After much negotiating, they decided to acquire the company’s assets, with the intention of running the company.

“What hit us hard during this time was the realization that leadership comes with a responsibility to those who follow you,” says Blake. “The people who believed in us counted on us to find a solution. Overcoming this challenge helped us develop the core beliefs that still guide us today, one of them being, ‘The greater the challenge, the greater the reward.’”

As Blake and his partners attempted to save the company, it became apparent that the business model was broken. For eighteen months, they tried to figure out what to do, living off their savings as they tried to hold their teams together while no one was receiving a check. As Blake says, proudly, “From those ashes, the company we own today was born.”

Prospecting Secrets

Blake says he is often asked how he was able to build a sizable business and solid team out of his college dorm room. Reflecting back on those early days, he clearly remembers having a dual focus.

“As a network marketer, you are always wearing two hats,” he says, “personal prospecting and training or duplication. How do you balance the two? The answer starts with forcing a calendar.

“Everybody loves the idea of time freedom and being one’s own boss, but most people are poor employers of themselves. The best way to learn this is by filling up your calendar.

“The biggest challenge for the younger generation looking to build a network marketing business is learning to delay gratification. If you are always chasing what makes you happy right now, you will never develop the habits of doing the things you need to do in order to get what you want in the long term.

“Once you master delayed gratification, you can focus on the consistent activities that will lead you where you want to go.

“Whether you are a college student, a professional or retiree, everything starts with creating

your list of warm market contacts. If you don’t feel comfortable talking about your business to the people closest to you, you are probably in the wrong vehicle. You should be so passionate about your product and opportunity that you would feel guilty if you didn’t share it with the people you care most about.”

Blake built his business by talking to his friends and continuously expanding his warm market. He calls it “lifestyling,” the art of constantly building new relationships while going about his day.

“I am not an advocate of going out to try to recruit someone,” he says. “I like to have fun and be social, and sharing what I do for a living comes as a natural part of that.

“Thanks to today’s technologies and social media, the process of meeting new people and building relationships is easier than ever before. Facebook and Twitter are the most dynamic list- builders that have ever existed. Regardless of their age, networkers are missing out if they are not utilizing the tools they have at their finger- tips. The same concepts that apply offline, work online—just a lot more efficiently.”

Blake teaches that if prospecting were a three- legged stool, with the first leg being your list, the second leg is your system—a simple set of steps anyone can follow to get a result.

“Building a network marketing team is not about how good you are,” he says. “If you make it about you, you will never build a large organization, because people cannot be duplicated. Only systems can. Focus on building a business that is system-dependent, not person-dependent, and a key element of this system should be the use of marketing tools.

“The best recruiters don’t explain and are not into selling. It’s not worth their time. Instead, they promote tools that can do the explaining for them. Marketing tools can be anything—websites,

magazines, videos or three-way calls—as long as anybody can use it anytime, anywhere.”

Finally, the third leg of the prospecting stool is consistency. Blake was fortunate to learn this trait early on, as the following story illustrates.

When Blake was 19, his upline mentor put him on an accountability program that required him to talk to three prospects a day. One night his mentor called him late at night in his dorm room. Blake was about to fall asleep after studying for a test he had to take the next morning. His mentor asked, “Did you get your three today?”

Blake hadn’t gotten around to contacting three people that day, and all he wanted to do was go to bed so he would be sharp the next morning. But he answered honestly, “No, I didn’t. I only got two.”

His mentor asked, “Are you willing to do what needs to be done to reach the goals you have set for yourself?”

After they hung up, Blake got out of bed, determined to contact his third person before the day was over. Walking around campus late at night wasn’t going to work, he thought, so he turned on his laptop instead. This was before Facebook, but his university had a student directory with email addresses. Blake started clicking around and sending out messages saying, “Do you want to make some extra money?”

He kept cutting and pasting, until someone finally replied, “Sure.”

By now Blake was really ready for bed, so he wrote back, “Okay, give me your number, I’ll call you tomorrow.”

The next day he called his new prospect and skateboarded over to his dorm room after class. This student ended up joining Blake’s business and building his largest team in that company. He also became one of Blake’s closest friends and later introduced Blake to the person who would become a cofounder and the CEO of his current company.

“My mentor taught me a valuable lesson about consistency and accountability that night,” says Blake. “You never know who will dramatically change the course of your business. I tell our distributors, you may be only one person away from that person. In my experience, it’s those times when you go the extra mile, even if you don’t feel like doing it, that end up making the biggest difference in your business—and your life!”

Training and Leading

Another question Blake gets asked a lot is how he acquired the leadership skills necessary to spear- head a large organization and a new company at such a young age—and whether he learned these things in college. This last question usually makes him laugh.

“I didn’t learn any of this stuff inside a class- room,” he says. “But I did learn a very valuable lesson from all my years of schooling: I learned how I learn. This lesson alone was worth every- thing I spent on my education. Because once I learned how I learn, I could apply this outside the classroom to more practical things such as leader- ship, communication, people skills and business.”

According to Blake, success and knowledge have little to do with age. Instead, he believes in the principle Malcolm Gladwell describes in his book Outliers: anyone can become a master at anything if he or she is willing to put in the 10,000 hours required to develop the skills and learn the trade.

Despite his young age, Blake has already logged eleven years of reading books, attending seminars and learning from the masters.

“Leadership can only be provided by example,” he says. “It starts by looking in the mirror and raising your own leadership lid. Leading comes down to asking, ‘How can I provide the most value to my team, my company, my profession?’”

In answer to this question, Blake and his leaders developed a comprehensive training pro- gram for their distributors to help create an environment of continuous education.

“We offer local, regional and national events focused on teaching people things like mindset, emotional intelligence, and practical skills and strategies for avoiding the potholes we all run into.

“We are big into using online video for marketing, training and promoting, or just to have fun. With people reading less and attention spans shrinking, we have found this to be one of the most efficient ways to communicate with our distributors, customers and prospects.

“In our back office system, we offer a success curriculum consisting of short videos, five to ten minutes long. Distributors can only watch the series suited to their rank level, and when they move up in our compensation plan, they can access their next training module.

“We purposely keep it simple so people learn only what they need to learn, when they need to learn it. This allows them to grow at their own pace and not get overwhelmed.”

Most of the training material is provided by Blake and his fellow cofounders, as well as their top field leaders.

“It’s been an interesting growth process,” says Blake. “Eleven years ago I started as a student, taking journals full of notes from the top income earners in the profession. The irony is that due to the momentum our company is in right now, some of these leaders have become our distributors. It’s a funny feeling to enter a room and see my men- tors in the front row, taking notes.

“I still look up to them because they forever impacted me, and it also makes me realize that learning never stops, regardless of your success level. True leaders know they can learn some- thing from everyone and never miss an opportunity to stretch and grow.”

Valuing the Younger Generation

To build a thriving business, Blake strongly believes in partnerships between older and younger generations.

“If you look at all sectors, all businesses, all industries, we are in a time when the rules are drastically changing, and the younger generation can add value by bringing a fresh perspective.

“That’s not to rule out the insights and wisdom that long-term experience brings. We all benefit from working with people who come up with different ways of looking at things, even if they sometimes collide with our own views.

“What do Apple, Google and Facebook have in common? They were built by young people who revolutionized their space. I’m not saying young people know everything. It’s a give and take. In our company this works well: my two cofounders and I are in our early thirties, and we have partnered with a company that’s been around for nearly thirty years. We combine their slow, methodical, controlled approach with the perspective of the younger generation that challenges the status quo and is in tune with today’s emerging trends.”

According to Blake, youth refers to an energy more than an age.

“Everybody wants to feel young. We all want to have fun and be hip. The days of the old-school, suit-and-tie, stuffy sales culture are over.

“The culture we promote is one that says, everybody loves youthful energy. Nobody wants to sit around and feel old—especially not the baby- boomers. They want to hit the ski slopes until they are a hundred years old!”

Despite the young age of the company founders, the average distributor in Blake’s company is 45 and the average customer is 55.

“If you adopt the feeling that young energy brings and spread that to all demographics, you’ll find that you are not limited to any age bracket. Hollywood and traditional advertising figured this out a long time ago. They sell youth and trendiness to all age groups. That doesn’t mean that they are trying to attract only youthful, trendy people; it’s because those are the qualities that everybody wants to have and to follow.”

Even though Blake’s company is attracting people of all demographics, he listens first and foremost to the younger generation for bringing innovation and charting the future.

“When it comes to technology, social media, the Internet and all the trends that are dictating the new rules of business today, we have to look at the younger generation for guidance. No industry was ever revolutionized by the older generation. It’s only a matter of time before we see a major evolution in network marketing, and when that happens, I’m sure you will find younger generations leading the way.”

By: Barbara Seale

Founder and CEO Ryan Blair says that he and his two co-founders spent the company’s first five years learning what not to do. Now that they have found the formula, they’re celebrating a year of 500 percent revenue growth.

When entrepreneur Blair combined forces with his ViSalus co-founders Blake Mallen and Nick Sarnicola, they had noble intentions to build a health-based business that would benefit business owners and customers over the long term.

Blair says: “We spent the first five years learning what not to do. Then we spent last year not repeating the same mistakes we made over the first five and doing what works instead. The economic downturn forced us to get focused on what works, and now we’re at an all-time high in every category. By early 2011, we’ll be in the neighborhood of $10 million a month in sales.”

What turned everything around was a long-lasting flash of marketing brilliance called the Body by Vi™ Challenge. The Challenge has been so successful that it has become the company’s foundation.

Shaking Things Up

The simple 90-day program lets participants take advantage of ViSalus health products and support tools to transform their bodies. As a marketing tool, as well as a health-transformation tool, the Challenge has been wildly successful. Since its launch in July 2009, ViSalus estimates to have helped people lose 3 million pounds.

The core ViSalus products are low-calorie, high-nutrition meal replacement shakes. But because of the Challenge, distributors don’t focus on “selling” the products. Instead, they issue a friendly weight-loss challenge. “Let me tell you about these great weight-loss shakes” has transformed into “I’m working on losing 20 pounds in the next 90 days. Anybody want to join me?”

“The Body by Vi Challenge is the business. It’s the only thing we talk about,” Founder and Chief Marketing Officer Blake Mallen says. “It’s a simple conversational message that draws lots of responses. There’s nothing to sell or explain.”

ViSalus crafts products from high-quality ingredients that taste good. Then they develop packaging to conform to Challenge-participants’ goals. For example, the basic “Balance Kit” is targeted to people who simply want better nutrition. It contains 30 servings of the Vi-Shape™ Nutritional Shake Mix for once-a-day balanced nutrition. The kit includes an assortment of Health Flavors, which add flavor variety and even more health benefits to the shake. The Shape Kit includes 60 servings of shake mix, enough for 60 slimming meals—two a day that result in weight loss. The Transformation Kit includes the 60 meals, plus additional products to help people transform their bodies as quickly as possible. The Core Kit helps support the active lifestyle with one shake a day, healthy energy and nutritional supplements. All of the kits come with recipes, meal plans, exercise plans and more.

“Ours tastes really good—sort of like cake mix. We know that if you enjoy it, you’ll stick with it,” says Senior Vice President of Marketing and Brand Development Audrey Sommerfeld. “When mixed as directed, in the shake you get 22 to 25 grams of high-quality protein and a full serving of fiber that keeps your blood sugar level and makes you feel full. Those are the amounts of nutrients nutritionists recommend most. We recommend blending the shake mix with fruit. That makes a 200 to 220 calorie meal that saves you money and is much better for you than most American breakfasts. Use two shakes a day to melt the pounds away.”

The basic light sweet cream flavor that Sommerfeld describes as “like cake mix” is a foundation. It can be enjoyed alone or with added Health Flavors, such as chocolate, cappuccino, banana, orange or peach. Each offers specific health benefits as well as flavor variety. Craving something crunchy? ViSalus also has Nutra-Cookies made with their exclusive Tri-Sorb™ protein system, prebiotics, fiber and antioxidants to support a healthy immune system, healthy digestive system, and help curb appetite. More products are in the works for 2011. Mallen hints that new products will support energy and fitness.

Free Products

The products and the Body by Vi Challenge keep the business opportunity simple, and the Three for Free promotion lets distributors get their products at no cost.

“The whole message is super simple: Lose weight, get fit and save money because you’re replacing meals with our shakes, literally saving people a couple hundred dollars a month,” Mallen says. “Then we layered in Three for Free, which removed all financial objections and barriers. We let our customers and our distributors refer three other people. Then their own products are sent to them free. We’re averaging over $400 in monthly product revenue for every distributor in our company. That’s unheard of! And our retention is dramatically better than the industry average.”

Retention results from several factors, including a strong compensation plan that lets new distributors promote quickly.

“We pay out up to 80 percent payout at the highest levels,” Blair says, “and we have a car bonus at the lowest rank of any competitor we’ve looked at.” More than 1,500 distributors have already qualified for a BMW, making them members of the company’s fancifully named Bimmer Club.

But the comp plan is intentionally skewed toward the bottom and middle ranks of producers, helping them quickly earn income that makes a real difference in a family’s budget.

Youthful Energy

ViSalus distributors’ average is similar to many other companies, but they have a broader range of young, middle-aged and older persons. The top 10 distributors today tend to be slightly younger than the industry average, possibly attracted by the company’s 30-ish founders, but the age of those high achievers ranges from 31 to 75, Mallen says.

“What’s dramatically different is our image and energy,” he says. “In my opinion, young is no longer an age. It’s more of an energy. Everyone wants to feel young, be young, be around a young, vibrant culture. That’s why we attract people of all ages—we attract a young energy. That’s duplicated throughout our leadership and our whole culture.”

The youthful approach embraces the use of technology. In December, ViSalus launched a powerful new generation of Vi-Net™, the private website that its distributors use. Mallen describes it as “like a private Facebook. It will have a front-end marketing site system, the normal back-office genealogy, real-time commissioning and cool stuff for managing your business. But then it layers in an online community, literally like Facebook. People will be able to see everyone’s challenges and fitness goals. There’s a live community feed. It wraps an entire online community around the Challenge. It’s really big when you see that kind of support.”

The new ViNet is fully integrated with Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. Its energetic executives and distributors use it as a standard way of doing business.

Mallen himself sets the standard for activity on social networking sites. He posts videos on Facebook a couple of times a week with content that distributors can share with their personal networks. He often gets about 1,300 views in 24 hours. Technology also supports business presentations, and pre-recorded conference calls are available daily that support distributors’ businesses.

The future is exciting for ViSalus. Mallen says that the eventual revenue goal is $1 billion a year, a figure he believes is attainable within a few years. The ViSalus product portfolio is built years in advance, and the company plans to introduce new products that complement its existing line in 2011. International expansion is also on the horizon, beginning with Canada. And they plan to amp up their consumer-to-consumer business. But through it all, they’ll continue to try not to mess up the formula they’ve refined. It works.

“Our goals are really the same as when we started,” Blair says. “We want to add more value to customers and distributors; we want to get better and make the experience of our customers better. But basically, our ambitions are to continue to help the world lose millions of pounds.”

www.DirectSellingNews.com

You read that right! ViSalus & the Body by Vi Challenge hit the mailboxes of 1.7 Million WSJ Subscribers today! Hard work really does pay off!

For those of you who value your Facebook Friends network, I recommend that you protect it from various marketers out there who may have an interest in friend poaching your valuable list.

It’s a little tricky, but here is how you do it:

1. Go to your Facebook Profile.
2. Scroll to the left sidebar and click the small Pencil Icon in the upper right of your friends box
3. Click “change visibility settings”
4. Scroll to My Friends and click  “Custom – Edit”
5. Click the drop down and select “Only Me”

That should do it!

Happy Facebooking…

PS.. be my friend   :)

http://www.facebook.com/blakemallen.visalus

Everywhere I travel these days, its seems people really gravitate to my tips on using Social Media to promote themselves, their products, or their business ideas. 

I find myself teaching the same basic principles over and over again on how to first establish your brand online, then strategically build a LARGE relevant list. To me everything else is a giant waste of time until you get these first two things right.  Once you have done that, you can then move onto the more fun aspects of posting, socializing, and engaging your list.

I will be recording some webinars at some point to cover all of this (so I can save my voice! haha), but here are some quick tips that you may find useful.

Engaging people online is done through your messaging.  In today’s “Attention Age” where multi tasking and ADD seem to be the status quo, good messaging must be two things: 

1. Simple

2. Intriguing

I used to spend a lot of time teaching people what kinds of posts generate the most interest and results, however to help those just getting started, I now recommend a much simpler approach involving extensive R&D… and by that I mean the more entrepreneurial definition of R&D - “Rip Off & Duplicate!”  LOL 

It’s kind of like Social Media Training Wheels!

Or just like learning how to play a new musical instrument, first you learn by playing the music of others, and after a while you start composing your own!  The simplest way to do this on Facebook & Twitter is to become friends/follow those you  look up to, or have a similar messages or brands that you want to create for yourself.  Then simply create a Facebook Friend/ Twitter List of these people so that you can easily monitor what they are posting.   Feel free to share, or retweet anything you like, and it won’t be long before you get the hang of what works online and start posting your own unique ideas & media.  In general, the more personal and social the post,  the better.  Content that offers real value is good, and humor is always appreciated. And above all, frequency and consistency are critical!

I am compiled the list below of popular Authors/Speakers from the business/marketing/leadership world.

I recommend selecting a few that your desired brand can personally identify with and adding them as FB friends, and following them on Twitter.  Note that not all of them are up to speed on Social Media yet, but most shouldn’t be too hard to find.

Have of course, if you are promoting the Body by Vi Challenge, or building a Home Based Business, I highly recommend adding/following:

Ryan Blair   (@ryan_blair)

Nick Sarnicola (@nick_sarnicola

oh, and of course,  Blake Mallen (@blakemallen)

Hope this list helps, and please comment if you have some other recommendations of people who post create stuff!

Happy Posting,

Blake