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NMBJ 1 August 2008 Spotlight On ... 2,005 views No Comment Print This Post  Email This Post

Rick and Brenda Ricketts have spent the past five years and eight months building their Your Travel Biz (YTB) sales organization. Rick, who had been in Excel in the mid 1990s, has personally recruited 100 people over the last five years and now has an organization of over 50,000 Referring Travel Agents; 12 of Rick’s personally sponsored people are Directors, the highest position in the company. Rick describes this as “unusual” within YTB and something he has celebrated as a big deal. Rick says, “It is uncommon in life to be able to help other people become financially free while still helping yourself.”

Rick describes YTB as a fun business. “It’s like Expedia with a face. You can be your neighborhood, church, family or friends’ travel agent. They book their travel on your site and you earn the commission for it. The great perk for being that neighborhood travel agent is, of course, you get to go to great places and events, while receiving the commission back, plus it is a business trip so you get the tax advantages of a travel-related home-based business. “There are many people in my business that don’t necessarily like network marketing but love YTB. This business is doable by the average person, everyone loves to travel,” Rick says. The opinion of the average person is, not everyone can build a network marketing organization and make money, however, there are not many companies in network marketing where the product is used and enjoyed by almost 100 percent of the entire country. Rick maintains that with YTB’s marketing plan, new recruits can start making money right away, just by doing what they always do, and that’s going online and booking all your travel needs.

The Ricketts joined Excel in 1994, built a large sales organization and became the number-two earners in the company. Prior to Excel, the Ricketts were in the furniture business for 26 years, owning three furniture stores and working to produce $6 million in sales a year. But prolonged roadwork on an overpass in front of their flagship store destroyed the business and they needed financial relief. With YTB they make more money in one month than they did from all three furniture stores for a full year. Rick adds excitedly, “With no inventory, no employees and no overhead, what could be better than that!”