Excel Phenomenon: The Astonishing Success Story of the Fastest-Growing Communications Company -- and What It Means to You

Rating:
Summary: I was able to feel the "heart" of these people in this book.
Review: This was no ordinary "how did this company get to where it is today". This is a story about "heart", that one ingredient that makes people rise above all to achieve their dreams in life. From the founder's first entrepreneurial dreams to all others' involved in this astonishing success story, James Robinson captured the real "why" behind this company's story. I left feeling as though I had made wonderful, life-long friendships with more visionary people than I would meet in a lifetime. This will probably be just one of many books that will be written about this company, it was a pleasure to read the first

Rating:
Summary: A political communicator as the author
Review: Many of the reviews seemed to consider more the network marketing aka MLM in general than the book itself. I think that the Excel Communications was a very well timed and well implemented business idea that worked.

Unfortunately, I cannot say the same about this book. Especially the first half of the book is painful rhetoric about the glory of Excel Communications. Somehow I had a feeling that the author was a professional writer, maybe a journalist. I could not believe that any journalist would write as one-sighted text as this book, and I checked the background of the author: a veteran speech-writer and political communicator. Well, that explained a lot.

The book repeats over and over the same positive claims of working for Excel: Be your own boss, be with your family, and with the hypocrisy of a Miss World candidate the story that although I make a lot of money, the most important for me is that I can help the others to succeed as well.

When you open the book on an arbitrary page, you get the feeling that the book includes facts as there are so many numbers and dollar signs. By reading the text, the reader notices that 95% of the facts are irrelevant like how much the person earned before joining Excel or how much one can gain by saving 20 years with 8% interest rate. The latter fact got 3 pages in 225-page book. The other facts were mainly related to the environment or society, not to Excel. The book had also some relevant facts like how many percentage of the Excel representatives succeed or fail, but those facts have to be dug out from a lot of noise around them, and in those cases the facts are not statistical from the Excel book-keeping but individual opinions.

What I was missing are the facts:
How much of the Excel income come from the telecom services and how much of it comes from training and other MLM supporting services.
How many customers Excel has compared to the representatives.
How Excel is sharing the customer revenue between the person who sold the service, the person who recruited that sales person and Excel.
How a typical representative income stream is composed, how much comes from getting customers, how much customer calls, how much recruiting others, how much from recruited persons recruiting new ones, and how much of training and managerial tasks.

Rating:
Summary: 21 years old and almost financially free with Excel
Review: This was a recap of the history of Excel. If growing to 1 Billion in sales faster than any company in history doesn't impress you maybe this will. I think that most people who bad mouth this book or MLM in general have failed themselves. Maybe only a small percentage of people find financial independence in MLM, but that's the same deal with any new venture. Those that fail have quit, because the only way to fail in Excel is to quit. If your new Micky D's franchise fails, does that mean that Micky D's doesn't work. I think the problem is, YOU DON'T WORK. People by nature hate blaming themselves. I am 21, a university student and well on my way to never working again for the rest of my life. If you want to learn how, i'll tell you my big secret, I WORK!

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Summary: An Excel Rep, Biased but Financially Free
Review: This book was obviously written to not only to give a historical view of the company but to promote it to others. Excel and network marketing are amazing in the way they give motivated people the opportunity to have money and time freedom. I am a 21 year old college student and i am well on my way to never working a real job again. Those who are nay sayers or bad mouth this company or MLM as a whole are the ones who have failed. They'll be the same ones after they open a million dollar franchise who fail and tell you franchising doesn't work. I've got news for you, YOU DIDN'T WORK! MAYBE THE FACT THAT YOU CAN'T BLAME YOURSELF IS THE REASON FOR YOUR FAILURE!
Whether its Excel or another MLM company, get in now and never quit.

Rating:
Summary: Do you research first!
Review: This book is a logical, in-depth review of the company, the marketing plan and several reps. Read between the lines and you will see yourself... someone who wants more out of life.... not necessarily money, maybe time freedom. Understanding how simple the EXCEL strategy is will be the hard part for most people. It is simply a team of people who have decided to work together rather than struggle in isolation. EXCEL may or may not be for you.... but if it isn't, what will you do to hedge your life against insurmountable odds that you will be downsized, right-sized or simply capsized by "Corporate America". Buy the book, invest some time and you could reap the rewards hidden between the covers.