The Home Business Success Academy – Is Home Business Success Academy training up to par?

The Home Business Success Academy (HBSA) is an Iowa-based corporation that helps struggling network marketers take advantage of technology, positioning, and targeted marketing to grow their business. While it has earned a reputation for being an outstanding company, not everyone approves of its training methods. Let’s take an unbiased look at HBSA and see what its methods are all about.

History:

HBSA is the brainchild of Martin Lightbowne and Joshua Fusion, two very successful independent network marketers. As a collaborative effort, Josh and Martin organized a “home study” type course to teach network marketing on a global scale, as Josh resides in the US and Martin resides in the UK.

HBSA is accredited by the Better Business Bureau and has received an A rating. BBB notes, on its website, that the reason for the rating (not A) is “Amount of time the business has been in business.” I would expect this to update after reaching the BBB standard.

The course:

HBSA markets 2 training courses, the Basic and the Elite. The basic course focuses on positioning the student on the web with their own website, understanding targeted traffic, and directing targeted traffic to that page through social media, Web 2.0, and article writing, just to name a few. . The student’s goal in the basic course is to create 5 to 15 leads per day and to start adding 1 to 3 people a week to their business.

The Elite course comes after the student has finished the basics. Now the student jumps to “warp speed” to really start moving the business forward. This includes understanding and using paid advertising, sales letters, newsletters, funded proposals, advanced prospecting and closing methods, and especially team building. The goal of the students in the Elite course is to generate more than 100 leads per day and start adding 10-15 people a week to their business.

HBSA – The Good:

HBSA has moved completely away from the “friends and family” approach of years ago and has focused on knowing your product, your potential customer, and leveraging technology to help you succeed. Your curriculum consists of workbooks and DVDs, your classroom is your office, and your class schedule is when you can spend that time on your business. There are also online sessions, as well as role play and question and answer sessions using a conference call room.

The marketing principles taught here focus on the student knowing their target market and how to “reach” that market. Those skills involve the use of the telephone, the written word, and especially the Internet. These are all stable items used by most high-level marketers.

HBSA uses state-of-the-art technology to “walk” the student through the settings of their personal web page and drive traffic to that page. His emphasis is not only on mechanics, but also on the psychology of network marketing. Once the student is comfortable, he guides him again (in the Elite program) through more advanced techniques of Internet advertising and automatic responses. If you can write an email, you can master this technology.

One of the most unique features of the HBSA course is that they offer a performance guarantee to all of their students. With the Elite course, the student has a goal of adding 700 people to the business in one year. If they don’t reach that goal, they will continue as students until they do. (The Basic course has the same performance guarantee, but only a level of 100 people)

It seems that HBSA can stand up to this guarantee, because it provides each student with their own professional marketing mentor to help them every step of the way. Almost every Olympic gold medalist has had their own personal trainer, and HBSA subscribes to that same winning philosophy.

HBSA – The Bad:

HBSA expects each student to commit to spending an average of 5-10 hours a week working on their business to achieve these results. HBSA goes so far as to require this commitment with an electronic signature on the guarantee document. For those people who are not prepared they make this commitment, and to “risk it”, they do not “walk in the door”.

This course is very detailed, with workbooks, DVDs, online sessions, and a personal mentor for (at least) 1 year. For those hoping for a “cheap fix” to their marketing woes, perhaps they should invest in a $ 19.95 e-book somewhere on the Internet.

Also, although HBSA notes that they have students in more than 30 countries, the course is only in English. For someone outside of the English-speaking world, this would not be attractive.

If you’ve read any of the articles posted by Josh or Martin, you know that these gentlemen are very “down to earth” and “straight forward” when it comes to network marketing, and I hope their training is the same. If you are shy or offended by someone whose methods might be “in your face” when necessary, then perhaps this course is too harsh for you.

In conclusion:

This course could almost be called a “no brainer” for those who are serious about their marking business. The structure of the course, the use of technology and especially the support they provide speak for themselves. Without question, HBSA cares about the success of each and every student it works with.