Poker Training Network Review – Part 1 – Management

With any marketing effort staying focused is key.

The purpose of this blog post is to share marketing tips and techniques that I learn in the hope of opening your mind to what's out there.

I'm writing this review of the Poker Training Network, also known as PTN, for two reasons.

1) Because as I went through the review process of the Poker Training Network, I realized it was the perfect program for me

2) To share with people a viable process to go through when you are choosing your next MLM, whether it's the Poker Training Network, or another opportunity.

There are several ways to go about evaluating a company, and I think everyone has their bias toward what is most important to them. No matter how you look at it, choosing to sign your name on the dotted line, and cast your hopes and dreams out into the universe is quite a big deal for many.

Let's first address some assertions by way of statistics. Now I'm not going to quote chapter and verse and sources, but I can say that these numbers are the ones being bandied around by most network marketing professionals, so we'll assume they are fairly accurate.

The vast majority of people that get involved with network marketing never earn a check. Most numbers you hear touted put this in the range of 90-97%. Now that in and of itself is sad, but I think those numbers are a little skewed.

One thing to keep in mind. Almost all network marketing companies only sell their products at the wholesale price to distributors. Because of this, many people wanting to buy the product sign up as distributors simply to get the discount, without having any intention of doing it as a business. How do I know? I've done it, and I've personally seen countless others do it as well.

Secondly, the cost of start-up in network marketing is usually so low, there is no real level of commitment. If someone invested $250,000 into a business instead of $250 you would see a much higher level of commitment. The fact remains though, that the folks who invest $250,000 or more into a "traditional" business have similar failure rates.

So hopefully I've set the stage here by at least opening your mind up to the fact that the failure rates you're hearing out there in MLM land may be a little high based upon why people got involved to begin with, and the fact that there is a very low level of commitment in the first place.

So, back to the Poker Training Network Review and my thought process.

There are a number of lists, and methods, and ideologies that people share as to the things you should look at when you're checking out a company. I've boiled them down for me as follows.

1) Company - who is it?

2) Product - what is it?

3) Pay - how much can I make?

4) Timing - how does this fit into the current market?

5) System - how is it marketed?

That being said let's take a look at PTN.

1) Company Management

Who are the primary players in the company? (first I'll share info from the company site, and then what should be done next. Google and some other info found) What I'm really looking for is making sure there aren't any huge red flags out there. You don't want to find out the head of the company has law suits pending or some such AFTER you sign up. I usually browse through the first 100 postings.

Dennis Nadeau, Co-Founder and CEO

Dennis Nadeau is a business leader and entrepreneur who helped develop several new industry categories in today's business world. Under his leadership, PokerTrainingNetwork has developed a line of proprietary Poker training and playing environments, analytical poker coaching software, Social Media websites, and a revolutionary Network Marketing Business platform. His broad background in Corporate America and Entrepreneurial business ownership started in 1986. Since that time he has been involved in a variety of ownership and consulting positions ranging from: Video Production, Music Artist Representation and Concert Promotions, Online Marketing and Customer Acquisition, Private Investigation, Computer Tracking and Forensics, Direct Sales and Network Marketing. Dennis is also an active volunteer with the Humane Society.

GOOGLE STUFF:

- Nadeau has been successful in both MLM and traditional business, hitting it big years ago with Quorum before changing his focus to online marketing for fortune 100 companies.

Everything else was pretty much repeat stuff.

Dennis Windsor, President and CMO

Dennis Windsor is an internationally known and respected Network Marketing Executive, Author, Consultant, Trainer and Speaker. He has been a Network Marketing Professional for almost 30 years, spending over 17 years in the field as a distributor building large sales organizations and over 12 years in Founder and Senior Executive roles. He was President of a cutting edge, nutritional Network Marketing company and has served as Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing for three multi-million dollar Network Marketing companies. He is the author of the Network Marketing best seller – “Financially Free” The How To’s of Building a Large, Successful Direct Sales - Network Marketing Organization.

GOOGLE STUFF:

- found him quoted several times in different MLM related articles. No red flags

Since this is a technically driven company and computer related products I felt it important to look at the technology officer as well.

Robert Bruck, Chief Technology Officer

Robert Bruck was the only kid in his 1960's elementary school with a minicomputer at home where he learned 12-bit Assembler and Fortran when he was 10 years old. He went to Harvard at 15 and became a classmate of Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and Yo-Yo Ma. Mr. Bruck got his degree in Biomedical Physics, and was a Computer Science Teaching Fellow at Harvard and MIT. Since college, he’s developed several products such as the Phoenix BIOS (Mr. Bruck was one of the original authors), WaveFrame Digital Audio Workstation, and many others. Robert founded his own companies and led the development of Wills.com, BusinessPlans.com and OLDP, Inc., and has been awarded 13 International and United States patents.

GOOGLE STUFF:

- actually found a Public Service Commission document that spells out Mr. Brock's resume dating back to 1976 totally validating what is stated on the company site, and much more. All computer/software related. Quite impressive.

So, on a scale of 1 to 5 I personally give the company a 5 on their management staff.

As I began writing this article, I realized it was going to be too long for just one post, so I've broken it down into 5 parts.

Next post I'll talk about the Poker Training Network's products.

UPDATE: The Poker Training Network has now launched it's FREE Online Poker room. This is not a gaming or gambling site, but simply a great place to learn and enjoy the game of online poker. You can sign up for free  at Poker Training Network's Online Poker Room.

Tagged As: Marketing, mlm, network marketing, Network Marketing Company, Poker, Poker Training Network, ptn, Tony Logue