Now Launching: “Services”

Hello everyone,

I’m very excited to talk about the launch of Services!

Repetition is the mother of success:

So, before we discuss services, below, let’s do a quick recap on our recent discussions.

Recently, we discussed at length (in a post titled “The future of empowr: We need your vote”) where we think the world is headed:

We made the argument that, thanks to technology and automation, there’s plenty of ecomomic theory and evidence to support the idea that we appear to be headed to a world of abundance, where most everything we want or need, is in our hands fast, for virtually free…

… but only if we get to the future first and exploit the network effect for the benefit of the empowr economy, before other (strictly profit-driven) companies do that first.

We asked for, and received your approval, for a bold set of moves desgined to make us the pioneer in that direction. We promised we would start rolling out those items in the coming days.

Before we got started, we stopped to have a quick discussion about AMCO cash outs, titled “Where’s my cash out?”…

… because a few citizens were showing signs of confusion about how AMCOs worked, so it seemed like a worthwhile pause on our progress to address their confusion.

We were right; a number of citizens were confused, and some were expressing expectations that didn’t match reality, so rather than string them along -- by looking the other way while they continued in empowr with those unreal expectations….

... we decided to slow things down even further…

… by having yet another discussion about cash outs, this time titled “Is empowr the right place for you?”.

This time, we used a hypothetical example about a group of people that move to the Pacific Ocean to pump up dirt from the bottom of the ocean and create a new island country.

Our hopes were that, by approaching the topic in another way (using a story) these citizens would be more likely to understand the disconnect between some of their expectations and reality.

The reality is that:

1.  Thanks to the sheer willpower (hard work, blood, sweat and tears) of the empowr community – YOU -- the empowr economy has been growing at astronomical (record!) rates – literally doubling each month since last summer.

I can’t say enough about this.

Your success really goes to prove what can happen when a group of people put their minds to accomplishing something.  This wasn’t an easy thing to achieve and everyone gave so much of everything they had to this effort. 

I am so very proud of everyone – citizens, success coaches and employees.

2.  How much cash goes out to empowr citizens is a fairly disconnected subject from the empowr economy: 

Specifically:

When Joe pays Sally $100 (to buy something from her) using his empowr earnings, those earnings are not bringing outside (U.S. dollar, Euro or other) currency into empowr.

And then, when Sally takes those new earnings, and uses them to buy something from Henry, that event is also not bringing outside (U.S. dollar, Euro or other) currency into empowr.

And then, when Henry takes those new earnings (that he received from Sally) and buys something from Jack, that also brings no outside currency (U.S. dollar, Euro or other) into empowr.

… and so on, and so forth.

3.   On a side but somewhat unrelated note, outside currency into empowr has also been growing nicely, which has allowed empowr to provide more overall AMCO cash outs to its citizens each month.

4.  However, while the empowr economy (meaning sales between citizens) has been doubling monthly…

… outside currency (in to empowr) has not been growing at that same astronomical rate, nor was it ever expected to.

5.  That means that if someone had an expectation that, with each $1 they sold in empowr to someone else, they would receive an accelerated matured cash out (AMCO) in the approximate amount of $1, their expectation is a false one.

As the empowr economy continues to take off, the correct expectation is that the earnings they received (in exchange for products and services provided) can be utilized in the empowr economy to purchase other products and services…

… which is exactly how a functional economy works.

Just imagine:

If everyone that sold a product or service in, say, France, expected to have matching U.S. dollars given to them (on top of their local currency) the French government would go bankrupt in a week.

Can you see how unrealistic such an expectation is?

Make no mistake, empowr continues to be 100% commited to providing as much AMCO cash outs to its citizens as it possibly can, as it is demonstrating monthly.

But as the empowr economy continues to succeed…

… and the economy’s growth rate continues to dwarf empowr’s cash influx, it should be absolutely expected that the amount of AMCOs given per $1 in empowr sales, will become a smaller and smaller number.

Also, please remember that together we agreed that AMCOs should be used to reward behaviors for “what’s most important now”.

That is, as we move forward with the new set of solutions…

… that have been designed to address the top pain points you have communicated to us…

… pain points such as the cost of acquiring products, plus the hassle and cost of shipping products…

… it should have become very clear (from multiple recent posts) that Services, Sharing and Transporting will now go to the front of the AMCO line.

-----------------

OK, now, with that conversation behind us…

… I think almost all of you will agree that it’s now time to move forward.

As many of you have grown quite accustomed to, we will need to have this conversation again every 90 days or so, as we’ve repeatedly done in the past…

…in order to ensure that the few folks that somehow find themselves with unrealistic expectations, also have an opportunity to figure this out.

But that’s OK. Let’s consider it a shared price we all pay for educating new citizens and ensuring they have the right knowledge, mindset and expectations

Therefore, let’s get started.

Services

As you know, the empowr team has been working day and night to get all of the necessary features and improvements in place to build the empowr economy…

… with a goal of having virtually everything you want or need becoming available to you in the empowr marketplace.

The first of many of these improvements starts TODAY, by enabling all empowr citizens to:

•        List services now easier than ever before

•        Sell services locally (to those in your circle of trust)

•        Secure payment for sales with in-person validation

•        Hit Daily Goals and receive AMCOs based on your service sales 

Why the focus on services?

Many of you have shared your concerns (pain points) about listing products for sale in the marketplace, including:

            … “I don’t have products to sell”…

            … “I can’t afford any out of pocket costs to acquire products”…

… “I can’t afford the shipping costs for products”…

            … “But I have a skill, talent or time that I can offer”…

Providing services to each other can often be done, with less (or in many cases, with little to no) out-of-pocket costs.

And with lots more services soon becoming available, you’ll be able to buy a lot more with your empowr earnings.

For that reason, by making it easy for services to grow on empowr, big changes can begin happening with very little effort.

Making it easier to list services

Of course, you have always had the ability to list services by going to the empowr marketplace and manually entering in all of the details…

… but now, with a new “List it!” feature, listing services (and even products, by the way) is about 100 times easier.

Here’s how:

Simply search for a product or service that you’d like to offer…

…  and then (if you find a service that you too would like to offer) simply click the new “List it” button – to instantly – magically -- list the same product or service into the marketplace…

… using the same photos, title and descriptions used by the original listing:

And since you’re utilizing a previously approved listing, your listing will be instantly and automatically approved for everyone to purchase.

Just make sure all the listing details are 100% consistent with your capabilities and wishes as a service providder, and adjust any and all elements you want to, such as price.

We’ve taken out almost all of the effort of listing a service.  Now, you can just focus on providing an awesome service to your customers and reaping the benefits.

Soon this process will be even easier as you’ll be able to see the most popular listings for sale based on how many people are offering them – all on a “Hot Stuff” page (more on that in a few days!)

Offering services locally

Unlike products that can be shipped around the world, with services, you want the freedom to only sell to people within a certain distance from you.

For example, if you’d like to offer dog walking or car washing services, you only want to offer that service to people within, say, 10 or 20 miles from you – not to everyone in your country.

So, now, with these newly updated buyer requirements, you have full control over who can purchase your services (and products) based on their distance from you:

As a service provider, think about how far you’re willing to travel to provide that service.

Getting and giving credit for a completed in-person service

Once a service has been successfully provided, the seller and buyer will want to use the new confirmation process, which I’ll illustrate in a moment.

By following this new process, they’re:

1.  Instantly marking the service as “Service Received”, so the service provider doesn’t need to spend any time tracking down the buyer at a later time

2.  Instantly releasing funds to (paying) the service provider

3.  Confirming to the empowr platform that the two citizens did, indeed, meet in-person, at the same location. This helps reduce fraud and enables AMCO cash outs for the seller.

Here’s how it works:

For best results, you’ll want to do the following using your mobile device, for reasons I’ll explain a moment.

First, you’ll need to visit the “Marketplace” tab, and go to your I’ve Bought page (if you’re the buyer) or the I’ve Sold page (if you’re the seller):

Note: If you’re using the empowr Android app, click “menu” in the navigation bar, and under the “More Features” section, click “I’ve Bought” or “I’ve Sold”:

Once on the I’ve Bought or I’ve Sold page, locate the service that you’ve purchased or sold, and click the “Actions” dropdown to select “Service Received” (if you’re the buyer) or “Service Delivered” (if you’re the seller).

As a buyer:

Once you’ve clicked “Service Received”, by clicking “Confirm” on the next page, you’re acknowledging that you received the service provided and will be releasing your funds to the seller:

As a seller:

Once you’ve clicked “Service Delivered”, by clicking “Confirm” on the next page, you’re acknowledging that you provided the service and are ready to be paid.

Once both buyer and seller click “Confirm” empowr will verify the transaction in seconds.

Once the transaction is successfully verified, both buyer and seller will be notified thatthe transaction was successfully confirmed!

Congats buyer!

You’ve received a wonderful service and are a happy customer!

(How do we know that the service was, most likely, a wonderful service and you’re happy? Stay tuned – I’ll explain that in a moment).

And Congrats seller!

You’ve successfully sold and delivered a service; the funds have been transferred to you, and you’ve even confirmed with the empowr platform that you did, in fact, meet in-person with the buyer.

And you truly enjoyed working with this customer! (How do I know that? Again, I’ll hit that subject in a moment).

Tips:

•        Remember – as a buyer and seller, whenever possible you’ll always want to confirm the transaction at the same exact time, with both of you at the same place.  Among other factors, both parties’ GPS locations are recorded, and this is an important factor in the AMCO calculations.

We recommend you confirm the service immediately after the service is provided, to reduce the chance of any issues. In this manner, sellers never need to work hard later, to get the buyers to press “Service Received”.

•        Also, for best results, you’ll want to confirm the transaction from a qualified mobile device.

Qualified mobile devices must be iPhone 5 or greater with an operating system of 8.0+ or an Android device with a Marshmallow operating system (6.0 or greater).

If the seller is not available to confirm the transaction for any reason, as a buyer, you can still move forward with confirming and paying the seller for the completed service.

As a seller, if you’ve provided the service and the buyer is unable to confirm the sale, you’ll want to contact the buyer and make sure that they mark the service as “Service Received.”

If after 72 hours the buyer still has not marked the service as “Service Received” you’ll have the option to file a dispute against the buyer.

Remember – marking the service as both “received” and “delivered” is a crucial step in the process, and it ensures that both the buyer and seller receive credit for the transaction.

As a service provider, always do your best to communicate with the buyer so they mark the service as “Service Received” prior to raising a dispute.

New dispute process

We have heard you! You are frustrated with the dispute process, and have asked us to improve that process.

I’m happy to tell you that a totally new, streamlined dispute process has been designed from the ground up.

And, the engineers have completed development and testing and – guess what -- it has just launched!

Expect a new blog post in the next 24 hours, about the new dispute process – after everyone has had a chance to read this blog post.

RATINGS are about to become EVERYTHING on empowr

Many people have commented about “bad sellers” and “bad buyers”. You’ve made it clear that this is an issue that you want addressed.

We’ve heard you and, as you’ll soon learn, ratings are about to become an incredibly critical part of being an empowr citizen.

Product or Service providers (Sellers, Sharers and Transporters) with bad ratings will very quickly find it difficult to get new customers, as the marketplace and even the profile feed stories will stop showing them and their items to potential customers.

Even one bad rating will hurt…

… and just a couple of bad recent ratings and they’ll find life getting much more difficult.

And the customers (of the Sellers, Sharers and Transporters) that don’t behave well, will also soon find themselves unable to buy much in the marketplace, as they’ll be blocked from bidding, buying, using and transports.

Even one negative rating will hurt them…

…  and just a couple of recent bad ratings will lock them out of the exploding empowr marketplace.

The result will soon be that virtually ALL the business will be going to the BEST product sellers and sharers, service providers and transporters…

… the ones that are most honest, prompt, effective, courteous and best know how to treat their customers with the respect they deserve.

And the ENTIRE marketplace (products, services, sharing and transports) will soon only be available to the best customers..

… the citizens that are most honest, prompt and respectful of the hardworking product and service providers, sharers and transporters.

In addition to blocking poorly rated citizens from participating in the marketplace…

…  the marketplace and profile feed algorithms are being redesigned to push the top-rated sellers to the top of marketplace searches and profile feed stories.

That means that someone with a 4.9 or 5.0 overall rating will be many times more likely to be seen and purchased from, than someone with a, say, 4.5 or 4.6 average rating.

Again, we have heard you, and we agree that it’s time to protect the economy and marketplace that you have been working so hard to build and make successful.

In the coming days and weeks, empowr is about to become a place where we’ll only encounter highly legitimate and effective sellers -- and only incredibly respectful and responsive customers.

Ratings transparency

Along with everyone’s ratings being used by the empowr platform to block all buyers, sellers and transporters that are not rated well…

… everyone’s ratings will soon appear at the top right of their profiles, making it transparent to all, the kind of person they’re dealing with.

Again, we heard you on this topic, and you’ve got our word that the quality of marketplace participants is about to rise dramatically.

Expect a blog post on this topic (ratings) in the coming days.

Right now, all you need to do is simply take a moment (one single click!) to rate each other (1 to 5 stars) as honestly as possible, after each transaction.

And this is your chance to start fresh with an awesome (5 star) rating, as a product or service provider, and as a customer.

And finally…

•        Services will now count towards your AMCOs

For the first time ever -- your confirmed service sales in April will go towards your May AMCOs.

To maximize your AMCOs from your service sales, you must be sure to confirm your sales with your buyer at the same time, and the same place. 

If you are not in the same place, you will still earn from your service sales – but you won’t earn AMCOs from those sales…

… so be sure to communicate with your buyer to ensure you are able to confirm at the same location.

Yes, we know that this approach has a flaw – that certain types of services that are not offered in-person will still not be elgible for AMCOs…

… so we promise to keep thinking about solutions for how to accomplish that, without being overrun by fraud.  As always, if you have any ideas, please don’t hesitate to share them.

•        Services will also count towards your Daily Goals

Another feature we’re redesigning, based on your feedback, is the “Daily Goals” feature.

You’ve asked for more flexibility and choice in the activities required to hit Daily Goals…

… and we’re working on bringing you that.

For now, your confirmed ("Service Received") service sales will count towards the listing portion of your daily goals, exactly the same as your product sales do.

For every three $5 (or larger) product or service sales that are marked “item/service received”, you’ll be credited with hitting your daily listing goal.

Note: In order for your service sales to count, you’ll need to confirm your sales with your buyer at the same time, and the same place.  

Haven’t sold anything recently?

As you sell more items throughout the month, the system will backfill your daily listing goal for any days in the past you may have missed – so that you are always receiving credit for the sales and transports you make.

Soon, you’ll also be able to hit your goals for transporting and sharing as well.

Earning a piece of empowr (with stock options)

As a reminder – over the next 3 months (April, May and June) – your stock option points will be tripled for every Daily Goal that you hit. If you hit 80% or more of the possible Daily Goals in that period, empowr will then double that final (already tripled) number. 

That means that you could earn 6 times more potential empowr ownership by hitting your Daily Goals at least 80% of the time, in the next 3 months.

If you haven’t started on this yet, you should start today to ensure you don’t miss out!

Summary

I hope you agree that now, it’s time for this community to rise up and do for services what, together, we did for products:

•        It’s now super-easy to list services – you can now list many services in just minutes

•        You can be assured that only citizens that live close to you can purchase your services

•        And with the new confirmation process, you’ll receive your earnings instantly, as soon as you’ve provided the service

•        For every three (3) $5+ service sales that are marked “Service Received”, you’ll be credited with hitting your daily listing goal.  

•        The new confirmation process also allows empowr to confirm that the provider and buyer were at the same location, based on their GPS location, helping to block fraud and opening up AMCOs to you

•        And with the new focus on ratings, the time is now to achieve 5 star ratings and become among the first to catapult yourself to the top of the marketplace directory and profile feed stories, making life much easier for yourself going forward

Any questions? We’re here for you.

Your President,
Brian Woosley

Note:  Your comment may be deleted.

This post is NOT about cash outs or any other topic but Services. We’ve spent a lot of time recently discussing cash outs, and we can all agree that it’s time to allow our citizens to focus on other topics without having to read through a barrage of comments that do not relate to this post’s intended topic.

Therefore, I am asking customer service to join me in deleting any comments that don’t directly relate to this post’s topic: Services. 

Hello everyone,

We have VERY BIG news that we’ve just be dying to share with you.

As you know, a few days ago, we launched Services. You can read about that here.

And this morning, we launched the first version of product sharing & transporting. Please stay tuned for a post about those in the next 24 hours.

A key aspect of these new ways to earn is that they are local in nature.

That means that to maximize your earnings – to benefit from these new ways to earn…

… you need to have enough people around you locally.

Now, many of you do not live in areas where there are lots of empowr citizens… yet. 

So, what can be done to get your services and shared products in front of lots of people – to bring you lots of paying customers?

Are you sitting down? J

empowr has acquired a massive marketing budget to promote your services and product sharing, to the people in your community.

We’re talking about many millions of dollars from a highly interested party…

… someone we all know, that wants to do good with his money and success…

…  that’s become very impressed with what you’re trying to accomplish (the empowr mission)…

… and even more so with your recent successes in growing the empowr economy 100 times…

… he’s SO confident in the future success of our marketplace in fact, that he wants to help it grow even further…

… and believes that with a bit of marketing help, it will do just that.

In fact, he has not asked for, and will not receive ownership in empowr (we didn’t sell your soul and future to investors)…

… and there’s no interest payments (this won’t eat up your AMCOs).

Don’t worry. Our community is not giving up its soul or anything else.

He doesn’t even want recognition for his assistance.

Just like you, he’s simply worried about where the world is headed, and – also just like you – he wants to do all he personally can, to ensure we continue to succeed.

So, how will all of this work?

Here’s how it works:

A.  List the services, and the products that you want to share

B.  empowr’s marketing team will immediately get to work, using the marketing budget to promote your services and shared products to the people in your area, using a variety of global marketing mediums that they have been very busy securing over the course of the last 6 months.

C.  As all those new people from your area join empowr in order to utilize your services and shared products, treat them well and welcome them to your circle of trust.

Keep in mind that these people will, at first of course, be new citizens to empowr. So you’ll want to be a extra communicative and help them succeed.

These people are, quite literally, your neighbors. As they succeed, so too, will you.

D.  As those new people launch their own services and shared products, even more of the marketing budget will be applied to your area, bringing even more customers to you and your circle of trust.

Simple, right?

So, what can YOU do to get the lion’s share of that marketing budget now – and tons of new customers?

How to ensure more of the marketing budget is spent on YOUR stuff:

Maximizing YOUR marketing budget boils down to doing only two (2) things:

1.  List tons of stuff

The more things (specifically services and shared products) that you have listed, the more marketing dollars will applied to promoting your stuff, naturally.

To get the marketing team and budget working for you, I would simply try and get 30 to 50 (or more) services listed quickly.

(To be clear, that’s 30-50 or more listed, as opposed to sold. I’m saying simply have lots of services or shared products available for sale).

The Hot Stuff page lists the best selling products and services – the things that empowr citizens are looking to spend their earnings on!

If you think you can offer the same service too, simply click “List It”…

… change any settings (such as price) and, voila!  Now you’re offering the same service too (but to the people in your area).

2.  It’s ALL about your Ratings, Ratings and Ratings!

You want to absolutely make sure that each customer you receive gives you a 5 star rating.

To be clear, the ENTIRE marketing budget will only be spent on the citizens (service and product sharers) with the best ratings.

Why?

It makes no sense to spend any marketing funds on anyone that doesn’t make customers happy.

Some citizens will notice that, if their ratings drop, they will have less new customers from all sources:

·         From the empowr marketplace

·         From their profile feed

·         From the new marketing mediums that empowr will be using to bring them new customers

I cannot stress this point enough.

It’s ALL about your ratings.

We have heard your guidance and feedback:

You have made it 100% clear that you want participation in the empowr marketplace limited to only the very best sellers, providers, sharers, buyers, users and transporters.

Tip: The very best thing you can do to satisfy customers – and gain their 5 star ratings – is to communicate:

Truly listen to them, especially when they’re not totally happy.

Let them know you care, and will do everything in your power to make it right.

If you blow them away with your RACE (radically awesome customer experience), they will be disappointed that there’s no 6 or 7 star option to rate you with!

The concept is called “reciprocity”:

As human beings, we cannot help ourselves but want to do good back to people that we think truly care about us.

If you sincerely care about your customers, they will feel that, and the rest will take care of itself.

 And that’s it. 

Many millions of dollars will now be spent for you, promoting your stuff, to people in your local community.

Simply:

List as many things (services and shared products) as you can…

…  and when a customer comes your way…

… think of how you like to be treated as a customer…

… (you like to be treated like a king or queen: “The customer is king”!)

And with that thought in your mind, you should have no problem truly satisfying them and scoring a 5 star rating from each of them.

NOTE:  Even one or two poor ratings will drop your overall rating enough to dramatically lower your customer flow.

So, what if your ratings do drop?

If that happens, you’ll need to focus and work harder to get new customers.

But if you ensure that they are all super-happy...

… so that they give you 5 stars…

… you’ll be able to get your ratings back up to the top.

When your ratings get back to the top, the marketplace, profile feeds and marketing budgets will all start working for you again.

Quiet before the storm

The marketing push will begin in the coming days, in a small way, and then will start to gently ramp up to a higher level every few days…

… until it’s going at full steam.

Within just 2 to 3 months from now, it will be going at full speed, at the rate of many millions of dollars being spent each month…

… promoting the best empowr citizens, as determined solely by their ratings, number of successfully sales, and their number of available services and products shared.

So, this is the quiet before the storm.

This is your chance to get your services and product shares live…

… and earn as many 5 star ratings as you possibly can from each other…

… to unlock the marketing budget for you and your area.

As marketing effort and budget ramp up, you’ll already be at the top of your game:

·         You’ll already know how to totally satisfy customers and get 5 star ratings every time

·         You’ll know which services and products work best for you

·         You’ll know which services and products DON’T work great for you

What does this massive marketing effort mean for the big picture of empowr?

The objective of the huge marketing push is for the empowr economy and community to continue to grow and succeed.

That means more of everything, including more products and services available for you to purchase with your empowr earnings, more AMCO cash outs, and more citizens that live closer to you.

It will also mean more resources for empowr – so we can hire more engineers and attack all the bugs, issues and missing features that you deserve and have been so patiently waiting for.

Together, everyone has worked so very hard for success of the community, economy and mission — and this should help accelerate and solidify those gains.

And finally, it should help generate more value for your stock option (ownership) potential in empowr.

As you can imagine, keeping this news quiet has been really, really hard for us. 

We are so excited to open up this opportunity to everyone.

The bottom line is that you have worked so very hard, and, based on the incredible results (100X growth!) you’ve achieved, you have earned this opportunity. 

We’ll do another post on this topic in just a few weeks, as I’m sure by then you’ll have more questions, ideas and feedback. 

Any questions?

We’re here for you.

Your President,

Brian Woosley

Improving the empowr marketplace dispute system

As you know, thanks to your hard work, the empowr economy has grown 100 times larger in the last few months.

Along with 100 times more earnings for sellers, and 100 times more purchases for buyers, this growth has also, naturally, meant 100 times more disputes.

The dispute process has been frustrating for everyone

We’ve heard your frustrations - and our engineers have now launched an entirely new dispute system.

But first….

When should you dispute a transaction?

While the empowr dispute system is in place to help mediate any sale made on empowr, it's important to realize that filing a marketplace dispute should be a last resort – after you’ve done everything in your power to ensure a successful transaction.

Of course some situations are unavoidable, and in those cases a dispute must be made.

But as a buyer, or seller, you should always do your best to communicate with the other party first, to see if you can remedy the situation to the satisfaction of both parties…

… and provide each other with a strong (5 star) rating.

As a reminder, Ratings about about to become everything in empowr.

Only after you’ve exhausted your ability to reach a conclusion with the buyer or seller:

As a buyer, you should dispute a transaction when: 

• the seller has failed to ship the product (or provide the service) to you within the agreed upon amount of time, but you still would like the product or service

• the seller shipped a product (or provided a service) that was not as described and you'd like a refund

• the seller will not fulfill delivery of the product or service and you'd like to cancel your order 

As a seller, you should dispute the transaction when: 

• you have successfully delivered the product or service and want to be paid for it, but the buyer has failed to mark the item as “Item Received”.

• you cannot successfully deliver the product or service for whatever reason, and want to cancel the sale

How does the process work?  

Every empowr citizen has the right to dispute marketplace transactions (as a buyer or seller) if they are not satisfied with the outcome of a sale.

Once you've determined that a dispute is necessary, you’ll need to visit the “Marketplace” tab, and go to your I’ve Bought page (if you’re the buyer) or the I’ve Sold page (if you’re the seller):

Note: If you’re using the empowr Android app, click “menu” in the navigation bar, and under the “More Features” section, click “I’ve Bought” or “I’ve Sold

From there, locate the purchase that you want to dispute, and choose “Dispute this transaction” in the “Actions” dropdown menu.

To initiate a dispute, you must wait at least 72 hours after the product or service was paid for. This is to ensure that both the buyer and seller have enough time to communicate and come to a resolution on their own before disputing.

Should you attempt to begin a dispute prior to 72 hours after the payment date, you will be shown the current status of the item, and how much time remains until you can begin the dispute.

From there, you must select a reason for the dispute from a dropdown menu:

Dispute reasons for buyers:

•        Item not received: I still want the item

•        Item not received: I want a refund

•        Item received: Refund (Doesn't match description)

Dispute reasons for sellers:

•        Item delivered: Buyer hasn't marked "Item Received"

•        Cannot deliver item: Refund buyer

As the initiator of the dispute, you should only provide information that relates directly to the dispute; information that may help with resolving the case quickly and correctly.

Once a transaction has been disputed, an inbox message is sent to all parties involved, including the buyer, the seller, the buyer's Success Coach, the seller's Success Coach and an empowr representative.

Your Success Coach’s Role

Upon submitting the dispute, both the buyer and seller will have the opportunity to add details regarding the transaction and why they feel they should win the dispute.

During this process, the buyer’s Success Coach and the seller’s Success Coach are responsible for reaching a decision based on the information presented before them.

Each coach will then make their final decision regarding the dispute – siding with the seller or the buyer. 

In order for a final judgement to be made, both Success Coaches must agree on the same outcome.

In the event that both coaches do not agree on a final decision (or if a decision is not made by both coaches within a week or less), the case will be escalated to a top-level Judge who will make the final decision.

And that’s all there is to it – with a more streamlined dispute process, you should have be able to resolve any issues you come across in as little as 24 hours.

Democracy and the Judge

For now, May Ram, the leader of the SC program, along with several empowr representatives are acting as the Judges, residing over disputes when the two Success Coaches cannot agree on an outcome.

Soon, the judge will be an elected position, where you, using your democratic vote, will elect the judges locally, so that our community will have the final say in the judicial process.

As you may remember, you have asked us to complete a series of improvements (which we are starting to roll out now) before turning our focus to installing all the democratic mechanisms that will accelerate empowr down the path towards a true democracy.

Before we leave, I’d like to provide you with a few tips on how to avoid disputes:

As a seller, always do your best to:

•        Make sure your listing information is as accurate as possible

•        Ship your item as quickly as possible

•        Communicate with your buyer throughout the transaction process

•        Provide tracking information

As a buyer, always do your best to:

•        Always read product and service descriptions before bidding or purchasing

•        Only bid or purchase items that you actually want or intend to purchase

•        Communicate with the seller throughout the transaction process

•        Mark the product or service as “Item Received” or “Service Received”

As I mentioned in my last last post, Ratings are about to become EVERYTHING in empowr

You should be doing everything you can, to bend over backwards for your customers, in order to achieve and maintain a 5.0 rating.

By doing that, you, your profile and your products and services will be seen many times more in the marketplace and feed stories.

And as a customer, you should be doing everything possible to make the sellers, providers, sharers and transporters super-happy as a result of working with you.

Why? Soon, buyers with anything but a steller rating will be blocked out of many, most or virtually all marketplace opportunities.

It should be our common goal to ensure every transaction on empowr results in a positive experience for everyone.

In the rare times when that doesn’t happen, we want to make sure disputes are resolved as quickly and fairly as possible.

With the new dispute process now in place, you can expect the resolution time for disputes to drop significantly, to as little as 24-48 hours.

Indeed, now that the new process is live, we’ve already seen the average resolution time drop from 25 days, to less than 2 days.

Now, let’s all focus on SUCCESSFULLY buying and selling products and services from one another in the marketplace.

If you have any questions about opening a dispute, ask your Success Coach and they would be happy to help.

Any questions? We’re here for you.

Your President,

Brian Woosley

P.S. For everyone that is asking what to do with previously created disputes, a software update will be released within the next 6-12 hours that will allow you to resubmit those disputes in the new system for a much faster resolution.

Thank you for your comments! Stay tuned for an update after the release is live.

Update: You may now re-dispute outstanding disputes that have not yet been resolved. We thank you for your patience! 

Now Launching: “Services”

Hello everyone,

I’m very excited to talk about the launch of Services!

Repetition is the mother of success:

So, before we discuss services, below, let’s do a quick recap on our recent discussions.

Recently, we discussed at length (in a post titled “The future of empowr: We need your vote”) where we think the world is headed:

We made the argument that, thanks to technology and automation, there’s plenty of ecomomic theory and evidence to support the idea that we appear to be headed to a world of abundance, where most everything we want or need, is in our hands fast, for virtually free…

… but only if we get to the future first and exploit the network effect for the benefit of the empowr economy, before other (strictly profit-driven) companies do that first.

We asked for, and received your approval, for a bold set of moves desgined to make us the pioneer in that direction. We promised we would start rolling out those items in the coming days.

Before we got started, we stopped to have a quick discussion about AMCO cash outs, titled “Where’s my cash out?”…

… because a few citizens were showing signs of confusion about how AMCOs worked, so it seemed like a worthwhile pause on our progress to address their confusion.

We were right; a number of citizens were confused, and some were expressing expectations that didn’t match reality, so rather than string them along -- by looking the other way while they continued in empowr with those unreal expectations….

... we decided to slow things down even further…

… by having yet another discussion about cash outs, this time titled “Is empowr the right place for you?”.

This time, we used a hypothetical example about a group of people that move to the Pacific Ocean to pump up dirt from the bottom of the ocean and create a new island country.

Our hopes were that, by approaching the topic in another way (using a story) these citizens would be more likely to understand the disconnect between some of their expectations and reality.

The reality is that:

1.  Thanks to the sheer willpower (hard work, blood, sweat and tears) of the empowr community – YOU -- the empowr economy has been growing at astronomical (record!) rates – literally doubling each month since last summer.

I can’t say enough about this.

Your success really goes to prove what can happen when a group of people put their minds to accomplishing something.  This wasn’t an easy thing to achieve and everyone gave so much of everything they had to this effort. 

I am so very proud of everyone – citizens, success coaches and employees.

2.  How much cash goes out to empowr citizens is a fairly disconnected subject from the empowr economy: 

Specifically:

When Joe pays Sally $100 (to buy something from her) using his empowr earnings, those earnings are not bringing outside (U.S. dollar, Euro or other) currency into empowr.

And then, when Sally takes those new earnings, and uses them to buy something from Henry, that event is also not bringing outside (U.S. dollar, Euro or other) currency into empowr.

And then, when Henry takes those new earnings (that he received from Sally) and buys something from Jack, that also brings no outside currency (U.S. dollar, Euro or other) into empowr.

… and so on, and so forth.

3.   On a side but somewhat unrelated note, outside currency into empowr has also been growing nicely, which has allowed empowr to provide more overall AMCO cash outs to its citizens each month.

4.  However, while the empowr economy (meaning sales between citizens) has been doubling monthly…

… outside currency (in to empowr) has not been growing at that same astronomical rate, nor was it ever expected to.

5.  That means that if someone had an expectation that, with each $1 they sold in empowr to someone else, they would receive an accelerated matured cash out (AMCO) in the approximate amount of $1, their expectation is a false one.

As the empowr economy continues to take off, the correct expectation is that the earnings they received (in exchange for products and services provided) can be utilized in the empowr economy to purchase other products and services…

… which is exactly how a functional economy works.

Just imagine:

If everyone that sold a product or service in, say, France, expected to have matching U.S. dollars given to them (on top of their local currency) the French government would go bankrupt in a week.

Can you see how unrealistic such an expectation is?

Make no mistake, empowr continues to be 100% commited to providing as much AMCO cash outs to its citizens as it possibly can, as it is demonstrating monthly.

But as the empowr economy continues to succeed…

… and the economy’s growth rate continues to dwarf empowr’s cash influx, it should be absolutely expected that the amount of AMCOs given per $1 in empowr sales, will become a smaller and smaller number.

Also, please remember that together we agreed that AMCOs should be used to reward behaviors for “what’s most important now”.

That is, as we move forward with the new set of solutions…

… that have been designed to address the top pain points you have communicated to us…

… pain points such as the cost of acquiring products, plus the hassle and cost of shipping products…

… it should have become very clear (from multiple recent posts) that Services, Sharing and Transporting will now go to the front of the AMCO line.

-----------------

OK, now, with that conversation behind us…

… I think almost all of you will agree that it’s now time to move forward.

As many of you have grown quite accustomed to, we will need to have this conversation again every 90 days or so, as we’ve repeatedly done in the past…

…in order to ensure that the few folks that somehow find themselves with unrealistic expectations, also have an opportunity to figure this out.

But that’s OK. Let’s consider it a shared price we all pay for educating new citizens and ensuring they have the right knowledge, mindset and expectations

Therefore, let’s get started.

Services

As you know, the empowr team has been working day and night to get all of the necessary features and improvements in place to build the empowr economy…

… with a goal of having virtually everything you want or need becoming available to you in the empowr marketplace.

The first of many of these improvements starts TODAY, by enabling all empowr citizens to:

•        List services now easier than ever before

•        Sell services locally (to those in your circle of trust)

•        Secure payment for sales with in-person validation

•        Hit Daily Goals and receive AMCOs based on your service sales 

Why the focus on services?

Many of you have shared your concerns (pain points) about listing products for sale in the marketplace, including:

            … “I don’t have products to sell”…

            … “I can’t afford any out of pocket costs to acquire products”…

… “I can’t afford the shipping costs for products”…

            … “But I have a skill, talent or time that I can offer”…

Providing services to each other can often be done, with less (or in many cases, with little to no) out-of-pocket costs.

And with lots more services soon becoming available, you’ll be able to buy a lot more with your empowr earnings.

For that reason, by making it easy for services to grow on empowr, big changes can begin happening with very little effort.

Making it easier to list services

Of course, you have always had the ability to list services by going to the empowr marketplace and manually entering in all of the details…

… but now, with a new “List it!” feature, listing services (and even products, by the way) is about 100 times easier.

Here’s how:

Simply search for a product or service that you’d like to offer…

…  and then (if you find a service that you too would like to offer) simply click the new “List it” button – to instantly – magically -- list the same product or service into the marketplace…

… using the same photos, title and descriptions used by the original listing:

And since you’re utilizing a previously approved listing, your listing will be instantly and automatically approved for everyone to purchase.

Just make sure all the listing details are 100% consistent with your capabilities and wishes as a service providder, and adjust any and all elements you want to, such as price.

We’ve taken out almost all of the effort of listing a service.  Now, you can just focus on providing an awesome service to your customers and reaping the benefits.

Soon this process will be even easier as you’ll be able to see the most popular listings for sale based on how many people are offering them – all on a “Hot Stuff” page (more on that in a few days!)

Offering services locally

Unlike products that can be shipped around the world, with services, you want the freedom to only sell to people within a certain distance from you.

For example, if you’d like to offer dog walking or car washing services, you only want to offer that service to people within, say, 10 or 20 miles from you – not to everyone in your country.

So, now, with these newly updated buyer requirements, you have full control over who can purchase your services (and products) based on their distance from you:

As a service provider, think about how far you’re willing to travel to provide that service.

Getting and giving credit for a completed in-person service

Once a service has been successfully provided, the seller and buyer will want to use the new confirmation process, which I’ll illustrate in a moment.

By following this new process, they’re:

1.  Instantly marking the service as “Service Received”, so the service provider doesn’t need to spend any time tracking down the buyer at a later time

2.  Instantly releasing funds to (paying) the service provider

3.  Confirming to the empowr platform that the two citizens did, indeed, meet in-person, at the same location. This helps reduce fraud and enables AMCO cash outs for the seller.

Here’s how it works:

For best results, you’ll want to do the following using your mobile device, for reasons I’ll explain a moment.

First, you’ll need to visit the “Marketplace” tab, and go to your I’ve Bought page (if you’re the buyer) or the I’ve Sold page (if you’re the seller):

Note: If you’re using the empowr Android app, click “menu” in the navigation bar, and under the “More Features” section, click “I’ve Bought” or “I’ve Sold”:

Once on the I’ve Bought or I’ve Sold page, locate the service that you’ve purchased or sold, and click the “Actions” dropdown to select “Service Received” (if you’re the buyer) or “Service Delivered” (if you’re the seller).

As a buyer:

Once you’ve clicked “Service Received”, by clicking “Confirm” on the next page, you’re acknowledging that you received the service provided and will be releasing your funds to the seller:

As a seller:

Once you’ve clicked “Service Delivered”, by clicking “Confirm” on the next page, you’re acknowledging that you provided the service and are ready to be paid.

Once both buyer and seller click “Confirm” empowr will verify the transaction in seconds.

Once the transaction is successfully verified, both buyer and seller will be notified thatthe transaction was successfully confirmed!

Congats buyer!

You’ve received a wonderful service and are a happy customer!

(How do we know that the service was, most likely, a wonderful service and you’re happy? Stay tuned – I’ll explain that in a moment).

And Congrats seller!

You’ve successfully sold and delivered a service; the funds have been transferred to you, and you’ve even confirmed with the empowr platform that you did, in fact, meet in-person with the buyer.

And you truly enjoyed working with this customer! (How do I know that? Again, I’ll hit that subject in a moment).

Tips:

•        Remember – as a buyer and seller, whenever possible you’ll always want to confirm the transaction at the same exact time, with both of you at the same place.  Among other factors, both parties’ GPS locations are recorded, and this is an important factor in the AMCO calculations.

We recommend you confirm the service immediately after the service is provided, to reduce the chance of any issues. In this manner, sellers never need to work hard later, to get the buyers to press “Service Received”.

•        Also, for best results, you’ll want to confirm the transaction from a qualified mobile device.

Qualified mobile devices must be iPhone 5 or greater with an operating system of 8.0+ or an Android device with a Marshmallow operating system (6.0 or greater).

If the seller is not available to confirm the transaction for any reason, as a buyer, you can still move forward with confirming and paying the seller for the completed service.

As a seller, if you’ve provided the service and the buyer is unable to confirm the sale, you’ll want to contact the buyer and make sure that they mark the service as “Service Received.”

If after 72 hours the buyer still has not marked the service as “Service Received” you’ll have the option to file a dispute against the buyer.

Remember – marking the service as both “received” and “delivered” is a crucial step in the process, and it ensures that both the buyer and seller receive credit for the transaction.

As a service provider, always do your best to communicate with the buyer so they mark the service as “Service Received” prior to raising a dispute.

New dispute process

We have heard you! You are frustrated with the dispute process, and have asked us to improve that process.

I’m happy to tell you that a totally new, streamlined dispute process has been designed from the ground up.

And, the engineers have completed development and testing and – guess what -- it has just launched!

Expect a new blog post in the next 24 hours, about the new dispute process – after everyone has had a chance to read this blog post.

RATINGS are about to become EVERYTHING on empowr

Many people have commented about “bad sellers” and “bad buyers”. You’ve made it clear that this is an issue that you want addressed.

We’ve heard you and, as you’ll soon learn, ratings are about to become an incredibly critical part of being an empowr citizen.

Product or Service providers (Sellers, Sharers and Transporters) with bad ratings will very quickly find it difficult to get new customers, as the marketplace and even the profile feed stories will stop showing them and their items to potential customers.

Even one bad rating will hurt…

… and just a couple of bad recent ratings and they’ll find life getting much more difficult.

And the customers (of the Sellers, Sharers and Transporters) that don’t behave well, will also soon find themselves unable to buy much in the marketplace, as they’ll be blocked from bidding, buying, using and transports.

Even one negative rating will hurt them…

…  and just a couple of recent bad ratings will lock them out of the exploding empowr marketplace.

The result will soon be that virtually ALL the business will be going to the BEST product sellers and sharers, service providers and transporters…

… the ones that are most honest, prompt, effective, courteous and best know how to treat their customers with the respect they deserve.

And the ENTIRE marketplace (products, services, sharing and transports) will soon only be available to the best customers..

… the citizens that are most honest, prompt and respectful of the hardworking product and service providers, sharers and transporters.

In addition to blocking poorly rated citizens from participating in the marketplace…

…  the marketplace and profile feed algorithms are being redesigned to push the top-rated sellers to the top of marketplace searches and profile feed stories.

That means that someone with a 4.9 or 5.0 overall rating will be many times more likely to be seen and purchased from, than someone with a, say, 4.5 or 4.6 average rating.

Again, we have heard you, and we agree that it’s time to protect the economy and marketplace that you have been working so hard to build and make successful.

In the coming days and weeks, empowr is about to become a place where we’ll only encounter highly legitimate and effective sellers -- and only incredibly respectful and responsive customers.

Ratings transparency

Along with everyone’s ratings being used by the empowr platform to block all buyers, sellers and transporters that are not rated well…

… everyone’s ratings will soon appear at the top right of their profiles, making it transparent to all, the kind of person they’re dealing with.

Again, we heard you on this topic, and you’ve got our word that the quality of marketplace participants is about to rise dramatically.

Expect a blog post on this topic (ratings) in the coming days.

Right now, all you need to do is simply take a moment (one single click!) to rate each other (1 to 5 stars) as honestly as possible, after each transaction.

And this is your chance to start fresh with an awesome (5 star) rating, as a product or service provider, and as a customer.

And finally…

•        Services will now count towards your AMCOs

For the first time ever -- your confirmed service sales in April will go towards your May AMCOs.

To maximize your AMCOs from your service sales, you must be sure to confirm your sales with your buyer at the same time, and the same place. 

If you are not in the same place, you will still earn from your service sales – but you won’t earn AMCOs from those sales…

… so be sure to communicate with your buyer to ensure you are able to confirm at the same location.

Yes, we know that this approach has a flaw – that certain types of services that are not offered in-person will still not be elgible for AMCOs…

… so we promise to keep thinking about solutions for how to accomplish that, without being overrun by fraud.  As always, if you have any ideas, please don’t hesitate to share them.

•        Services will also count towards your Daily Goals

Another feature we’re redesigning, based on your feedback, is the “Daily Goals” feature.

You’ve asked for more flexibility and choice in the activities required to hit Daily Goals…

… and we’re working on bringing you that.

For now, your confirmed ("Service Received") service sales will count towards the listing portion of your daily goals, exactly the same as your product sales do.

For every three $5 (or larger) product or service sales that are marked “item/service received”, you’ll be credited with hitting your daily listing goal.

Note: In order for your service sales to count, you’ll need to confirm your sales with your buyer at the same time, and the same place.  

Haven’t sold anything recently?

As you sell more items throughout the month, the system will backfill your daily listing goal for any days in the past you may have missed – so that you are always receiving credit for the sales and transports you make.

Soon, you’ll also be able to hit your goals for transporting and sharing as well.

Earning a piece of empowr (with stock options)

As a reminder – over the next 3 months (April, May and June) – your stock option points will be tripled for every Daily Goal that you hit. If you hit 80% or more of the possible Daily Goals in that period, empowr will then double that final (already tripled) number. 

That means that you could earn 6 times more potential empowr ownership by hitting your Daily Goals at least 80% of the time, in the next 3 months.

If you haven’t started on this yet, you should start today to ensure you don’t miss out!

Summary

I hope you agree that now, it’s time for this community to rise up and do for services what, together, we did for products:

•        It’s now super-easy to list services – you can now list many services in just minutes

•        You can be assured that only citizens that live close to you can purchase your services

•        And with the new confirmation process, you’ll receive your earnings instantly, as soon as you’ve provided the service

•        For every three (3) $5+ service sales that are marked “Service Received”, you’ll be credited with hitting your daily listing goal.  

•        The new confirmation process also allows empowr to confirm that the provider and buyer were at the same location, based on their GPS location, helping to block fraud and opening up AMCOs to you

•        And with the new focus on ratings, the time is now to achieve 5 star ratings and become among the first to catapult yourself to the top of the marketplace directory and profile feed stories, making life much easier for yourself going forward

Any questions? We’re here for you.

Your President,
Brian Woosley

Note:  Your comment may be deleted.

This post is NOT about cash outs or any other topic but Services. We’ve spent a lot of time recently discussing cash outs, and we can all agree that it’s time to allow our citizens to focus on other topics without having to read through a barrage of comments that do not relate to this post’s intended topic.

Therefore, I am asking customer service to join me in deleting any comments that don’t directly relate to this post’s topic: Services. 

Is empowr the right place for you?

In my last post we attempted to answer questions about cash outs.

I promised that, in the next 24 hours, you’d be seeing another post, as we move forward with the next stage.

However, based on some responses, I can see that a few people may be confused about how empowr works.

In this post, I will:

1.   attempt to explain what I see as a major area of confusion

2.   ask some citizens to consider whether it’s time for them to leave empowr

Let’s get started.

For this post, I’m going to use an example of a hypothetical country. (All the numbers mentioned are simply examples too).

1.  A group of people are worried about where the world is headed

They see that half the world is living for $2 or less per day, while the 8 richest people have as much wealth as the bottom half of the entire human race.

They see that the problem is only getting worse, with more and more of the wealth going to the top people.

They understand that the underlying reason is that there is a network effect in motion…

…  that is now accelerating (getting worse, faster) due to network technology.

That means that, as time passes, the scales will continue to tilt…

… ensuring that the rich will continue to get richer, and the poor will continue to get poorer.

They worry that, as time passes and more people join the ranks of the poor…

… that eventually the masses of people will have no choice but to rise up and destroy the very democracies that, in the last century…

… at great expense to the human race (millions of lives & billions of dollars)…

 … the world had succeeded at establishing…

… overcoming the fascist and communist governments that had created so much misery for people around the world.

2.  They decide to form a new country

They have some experience and understand what can be done with technology.

Their idea is to use technology to create a better, more equitable and fair country…

… where the hard-working people will be rewarded for their efforts…

… but where new network-based mechanisms can be installed…

… to ensure the network effect is working for the many, not just the few…

… in order to stop half the country from becoming slaves to just a handful of citizens.

Using nothing but a boat, a pump and their bare hands…

… they start pumping dirt up from the bottom of the ocean…

… to form an island in the southern Pacific Ocean, about 800 miles South East of Hawaii.

It’s a long and laborious process.

3.  As the years go by….

… and little by little…

… a pile of dirt finally starts to appear on top of the ocean.

4.  Some people hear about the project.

A few even decide to move to the pile of dirt, to join them and help them dig.

When their friends and family members ask why they would go to the trouble, they say:

“It’s not every day that we hear about a group of people trying to create something as complicated as a country…

… one that’s being built from the ground up to attack the growing inequality issue… 

…  all the while saying NO to banks and investors so that the country can stay true to the reason it’s being built.

I want to join them and help them succeed”.

5.   Nearly 20 years after they started, an island country is starting to form

They have a currency.

A small economy has formed, with people buying and selling thing to each other.

Despite the lack of infrastructure…

… and with so many everyday things still missing…

… more new citizens are arriving.

They too, are concerned by what they’re seeing in their own countries and around the world..

… that is, growing inequality…

… and are ready to help make a difference.

Some volunteers are even acting as teachers, helping new citizens get situated and become productive in the economy.

6.  The new country has revenues

Some people that move to the new country, bring a little money with them (let’s call that money Euros) from their old country, which they are able to convert into the local currency.

The new country uses that outside (Euro) capital to pay for things it cannot produce on its own; things like nuclear reactors (to create energy), water pumps (so citizens can have running water and sewage) and light bulbs (needed to light up the streets). 

But for the most part, the incredibly creative, motivated and hardworking people of the new country are able to build and maintain most of what they need…

… without needing to go outside and purchase many things from the outside.

7.  The country is generating more cash than it spends

Thankfully, the government’s employees have all signed up to work for very little money, because they all truly believe in the country’s mission and reason for existence.

The government is also able to keep its costs low because those same government employees are willing to work double shifts.

Some act as construction workers in one of their shifts…

… followed by another role in their 2nd shift – working as police, judges, garbage collectors, and/or office clerks.

Because of its low cost structure, the country has more Euros coming into it from the outside, than it is spending.  Let’s say that “profit” amount is $100,000 (in Euros).

The government is eager to distribute that extra cash to its people, which is the spirit of why the country was founded in the first place.

After discussing the opportunity with its citizens, the country decides to provide that cash as rewards to its citizens for doing certain types of activities that would most help the community.

The activity that makes the most sense to reward, seems to be the providing (selling) of items of value (products) to each other – in order to accelerate the growth of the local economy.

8.   Together, the citizens of the country rise to the occasion

In one month, they successfully sell $50,000 in products to each other!

That means that citizens (buyers) pay $50,000 (in local currency) for all the stuff they buy.

And of course the citizens (sellers) receive $50,000 (in the local currency) for the stuff they sold.

(To be more precise, the government collects a tax of 10% on sales -- or $5,000 – but we’ll ignore that in this example, to keep the math simple).

9.  The country distributes the “reward” Euros to its citizens

As mentioned above, the country has $100,000 (in Euros) to distribute, so it is easily able to provide $75,000 to the sellers (as a reward for selling $50,000 to each other)…

… which means it can provide sellers a reward of $1.50 (in Euros) for each $1 (in local currency) of products they sold!

To be clear, for each $1 of goods the sellers sold, they have already received $1 in local currency, which they can spend locally.

So the $1.50 (in Euros) that the country rewarded them, for each $1 they sold…

… is IN ADDITION to the $1 in local currency they have already been paid by the buyer.

Think of this addition as an extra bonus or stimulus package -- a way for the government or community to say, to its citizens, Thank You for their support and efforts to make the country better.

Now, the country still has an extra $25,000 in Euros that it has not yet distributed.

Remember, it had a total of $100,000 to distribute, of which it distributed $75,000 to sellers. So it still has $25,000 more that it could distribute.

With those extra Euros, perhaps the country can pay some citizens that attempted to sell something, but failed?

The logic with that is that at least they are trying (and it really wants to distribute that extra $25,000 due to its mission).

After all, those non-sellers successfully got out of bed many times during that month (an average of 10 days per citizen).

Many of them even opened stores and put things on their shelf, even though none of those things actually sold.

So perhaps these people just needed to be encouraged. And that’s why the $25,000 is distributed to them…  Let’s call that $25,000 “encouragement funds”.

When the government has extra funds to distribute, it must make tough decisions on how to best reward its citizens.

As you can imagine, this can be a difficult process because the government wants nothing more than for ALL its country citizens to be happy and prosperous…

… as evidenced by the nearly 20 years they have invested to make this country a reality.

If citizens are not happy, that would suggest that they have wasted much of their lives…

… at great expense to their families and, in many cases, their health.

10.   The citizens work harder, and the economy grows

A few months later, the local economy has grown from $50,000 to $1,000,000…

… meaning that the citizens of the country are providing $1M in products to each other…

… which means that they are also receiving $1M in products from each other.

The people of the country celebrate their victory:

They had set out to build an economy, starting with nothing.

They are so excited to see that their hard work is paying off!

In addition, they enjoyed $1M in products that they were able to buy (from each other) with their local currency.

And the country’s (Euros) profits have grown too!

The country has been able to increase its Euro “profits” from $100,000 to $200,000! 

Of course the country is eager to distribute this profit to its citizens again.

This time, in addition to the $1 each citizen received (from buyers) for each $1 they sold, citizens are given $0.20 (in Euros) by the government. 

(Remember, there were $1,000,000 in sales, and $200,000 in Euro profits – so that’s $0.20 that can be distributed as a reward, on average, for every $1 in sales).

A few citizens are not happy. They had grown accustomed to receiving $1 (from the buyer) plus $1.50 (in Euros) from the government (for a total of $2.50) for each $1 they sold.

In addition, this time every penny needs to go to the successful sellers.

There was no cash remaining for “encouragement funds” that could be distributed to support the citizens that were trying but not succeeding.

11.  The economy continues to grow

A few months later, the local economy has grown to $10,000,000

… meaning that the citizens of the country are providing $10M in products to each other…

… and also receiving $10M in products from each other!

Many citizens celebrate again.

Some recall how many years it took just to earn the right to call what they had built, a pile of dirt.

But now, citizens enjoyed $10M in products!

In addition, the country’s Euro “profits” have also grown:

The country has been able to increase its Euro “profits” to $300,000!

This time, in addition to the $1 each citizen is receiving for each $1 they sold, they are also rewarded with $0.03 (in Euros).

(With $10,000,000 in sales, and $300,000 in Euro profits –that’s $0.03 that can be distributed as a reward, on average, for every $1 in sales).

Some people are really not happy. A few had become quite accustomed to the extra Euro bonus on top of their selling earnings, seeing those funds as a basic “right” that they are entitled to.

OK, wait…. What was that?!?

Only a $0.03 (Euro) reward for every $1 they sold - in addition to the $1 they received from the buyer?

Who can ever be happy in this new country?

Let’s take a look at another real country, say, the United States. 

When someone sells something for $1 in the U.S., and receives $1, they don’t even think about the government throwing in some Euros rewards too.

They are happy with the $1 they earned, because they can turn around and spend that $1 on other things in the economy.

(There are a lot of things for sale in the U.S. economy – that they can buy with their local money).

But how does that relate to empowr?

It very much relates. 

If you cannot sell products in empowr, without requiring an additional $X in “Euro” awards from the government (in addition to the empowr earnings you gained from the sale)…

… then selling products in empowr (today, at this moment) may no longer be for you.

“But I have out-of-pocket costs!”

·      -- I need to acquire products from “abroad”. I need those “Euros”.

·      -- And I need to pay “Euros” for shipping.

True, understood. And very much appreciated.

But that doesn’t change the math one little bit. 

In other words, just because you need to pay for the product, or have shipping costs, doesn’t cause money to magically fall out of the sky into empowr’s bank account -- that it can then use to reward you.

So, what can be done?

Here’s what we can do:

We can continue to work our butts off, to build the empowr economy, until virtually everything you want or need is available for purchase in the empowr marketplace.

And that’s exactly our plan:

A.   We can launch Services, so that we can provide services to each other. 

Providing services to each other can often be done, with less (or in many cases, with little to no) out-of-pocket “Euro” costs.

And with lots of services soon becoming available, that means that you’ll be able to buy a lot more with your empowr earnings.

B.  We can launch a new earning “empowr transporter” role.

That will help sellers cut their shipping costs…

… which means more products will become available for you to purchase with your empowr earnings.

It also represents a new way for empowr citizens to earn (both empowr earnings and AMCOs).

C.   We can launch product Sharing

Now, instead of selling (and saying Goodbye to your products permanently) you can earn recurring revenue from your goods – by Sharing them.

And yes, some of you have security concerns: “What happens if my item is damaged?”  This is fully addressed by the platform, as you will soon learn.

When people Share products, that means that you can Use their products (paying with your empowr earnings).

D.  We can open up our platform to thousands of application developers to create hundreds of new ways for empowr citizens to earn…

… and for others to receive products and services in exchange for their empowr earnings.

This means that soon, you (whether you’re an application developer or not) can use your mind and ideas to create opportunities for yourself and others.

E.  After those things are live (in just the coming days and weeks) we can continue to work our butts off, reporting and fixing bugs and issues, and building missing features.

F.  And when we’re done with that, we can continue to innovate & invent… and optimize & improve, like we always have.

G.  And in the meantime, we can ensure that community members get a piece of the country – ownership in empowr…

… because isn’t that why empowr was founded in the first place?

Not good enough for you?

Not worth your time and effort?

I can respect that. 

Of course we are not where we want to be. Not even close.

Look:  When empowr started, it was not even a pile of dirt in the ocean.

Nearly 20 years later, we invented many of the things that enable social media.

This happened not by using a massive R & D (Research and Development) budget…

… but by the sheer willpower of citizens (employees, success coaches and citizens) working for mostly nothing for most of that time.

Blood, sweat and tears is how the empowr platform has been built, brick by brick.

Remember, AMCO cash outs didn’t even exist a year ago!

The bottom line is that, believe it or not, everything happening here is good news:

     Your success is overwhelming the stimulus (or outside capital) available to us. 

In reality, the stimulus (or outside capital) is going up nicely.

     But our economy is growing at even faster pace.

The amount of products, services and other things that you can get with your empowr earnings are not only growing...

     ... but they are now about to explode at an even faster rate...

... with all the new enablers that are launching in the coming days.

That is exactly what success looks like, when an economy begins to succeed.

(To those of you mostly measuring success by the amount of cash you can extract from the empowr economy, I understand that this may not be reassuring...

... but to those of you that primarily judge success here by empowr's viability and ability to satisfy its mission...

... so that it might actually be around to serve you and others in the long run...

... this is all simply proof that you are succeeding). 

Together, we’ve come a long way.

But we’re also not where we want to be yet. 

A few of you are very quick to point out that we have issues, bugs and missing features.

That’s great! It’s really good to hear that you care enough to use the products and notice these issues (most of which are painfully obvious to us).

There are literally thousands of such issues. And we’re running as fast as we can to take care of them.

But with a small staff…

… purposely kept small so that funds can be pushed to you instead of more employees…

… we can get less things done per month, than a company with a bigger staff (that has simply taken investor capital).

Did you know that Facebook received over $1B from investors (that’s $1,000,000,000) before it became profitable and didn’t need more investor capital?

As a result, Facebook gives you NOTHING…

… and their 30,000 employees work for a salary…

… and for a purpose (whether they realize it or not) of making about 5 people (but mostly 1 person) richer and richer:

Good for him. Facebook provides a valuable product that benefits people and we wish them no harm.

But if you think that empowr couldn’t EASILY do the same thing…

… raise a ton of money, and turn its citizens all into slaves – getting them to spend all their time there, in order to create a handful of billionaires…

… you’re dead wrong.

So, your standing on the sidelines and yelling over and over again about this issue or that bug (that we already know about) is not always helpful.

So, what IS helpful?

Thank you for asking.

1.   Actions speak louder than words. Stop complaining and get to work, helping where you can!

Can you sell? Provide a service? Can you coach others? Share? Transport?

2.    Can’t do any of that? Understood. Then LEAVE so that those of us that can, are able to focus on the things that you need fixed.

Come back in a year or two and, I promise, we’ll still be here, and we’ll be better.  

We’ll be MUCH better.

Don’t believe me?

Just ask anyone that’s been around for a year or two. Or five years. Or ten years… or more. Ask them about what we are able to accomplish, starting with nothing.

What’s it going to be?

Can you focus?

Or is this the end of the road for you, for now?

In my last post…

I attempted to make it clear that Sharing, Servicing and Transporting will go to the front of the AMCO line.

Did you catch that?

That means that, most likely, there will be no AMCOs for simply hitting your Daily Goals (like there wasn’t this month)…

… and probably less or possibly even no cash for product sellers – because cash will need to go out to people Sharing products, Transporting and providing Services.

For humanity’s sake, stop the complaining.  

If this is not the place for you, I can totally respect that.

What I cannot respect is you staying here, and complaining, complaining, complaining…

… because you’re not helping, and worse, you’re distracting the others that are trying very hard to stay positive and focused:                      

So, take a moment to ask yourself why you're here.

Take some time to think about that...

    ... and then...

Please make your decision: 

1.  You can do this. 

2.  Or you cannot. 

Sticking around but continuing to complain – well, that’s just a “leave” decision without the courage to be decisive and make the decision.

I’m sorry if I sound irritated, but I wouldn’t be doing my part if I wasn’t being honest with you.

We’ve come too far to sit around and let a handful of people ruin the mood for those citizens that are very clear about the challenges…

…  and simply want the opportunity to work on them, without having their energy, optimism and time endlessly drained from the small group of complainers.

Don’t these citizens deserve that?

I mean haven’t they earned that right?

Some of them have given everything they have to this project, and to you, our community, for half or more of their entire lives.

Again – trust me – we hear you. We hear your frustration and your paint points.

But now it’s time to make a decision for the benefit of the community.

I’ll hold off announcing what’s next and moving forward until the people that cannot be here, do the right thing for themselves and the community, and depart.

My respect, in advance, to those people, that raise their hand in the comments of this blog post, and say “I’m out. Goodbye”.

Your actions are highly admirable and we look forward to seeing you again in, say, a year or two.

You have got my word on behalf of the community, that we simply won’t stop until all the issues you’re aware of are overcome…

… and the platform has become everything you believe it should be.

Once the complaining has stopped, we’ll start moving forward again.

Where’s my cash out?

Hello everyone,

Some people are asking “Where’s my Cash out?” and similar questions.

Rather than answer such questions on a one-off basis, let’s discuss it together here so that the newest community members can benefit and learn.

(And then let’s get back to the incredibly busy month that’s coming everyone’s way).

In this post:

What are AMCO cash outs and how are they determined?
What kinds of activities trigger maturity acceleration, and which are prioritized higher?
Where’s my cash out?
Why am I not notified ahead of time?
What AMCOs can empowr guarantee me in the coming months?
What can I do to maximize my AMCOs in the coming months?
Why should I hit Daily Goals?
empowr is on your side
Are you ready?

Let’s get started.

What are AMCO cash outs and how are they determined?

Before we can discuss AMCOs, let’s quickly discuss:

What is maturity and why do we need it?

As you know, all earnings must mature for 90 days before they are eligible for cash out.

The purpose of maturity is to give everyone’s profits a higher chance of being spent on the things YOU’RE providing (that is, YOUR products, services and blogs). 

When more of the things you are providing are being purchased, the empowr economy is stronger.

Definition of economy: Production, distribution and consumption of products and services.

Building a strong economy is a critical component of our mission “to empower people by enabling opportunity, hope and influence”. 

The stronger our economy, the

A) more people we can help, and the

B) better we can help them

Summary: Maturity is one of empowr’s many inventions – and its main purpose is to empower you and make you stronger.

So, what is an AMCO?

AMCO = Accelerated Matured Cash Out

Every time the end of the month arrives…

… if empowr’s bank accounts have cash left over…

… empowr needs a way to get that extra cash to its citizens…

… in accordance with its mission.

To meet that need, not long ago (not even a year ago) empowr invented a way to accelerate the maturity of earnings in your balance...

… so that some of your earnings act as if they are at least 90 days old.

That’s why they’re called Accelerated Matured Cash Outs.

How are AMCOs calculated

As a community, we decided that, instead of simply spreading the cash to citizens equally…

… it made more sense to provide AMCOs to the citizens that were doing the most to build the empowr economy, based on what the economy most needs at the time.

When launching the new feature called AMCOs, we tried very hard to make it very clear that “what the economy most needs” will constantly change, as the empowr economy grows and matures… and faces challenges, opportunities and obstacles.

The first thing the economy needed was for citizens to start listing products (for sale).

As a community, we came up with the idea of “Daily Goals”.

Those goals included listing products for sale, as well as buying (IE: bidding).

The result?  Product listings doubled, then doubled again.

Then, they doubled again, and again and again.

In fact, in the few months since we launched AMCOs, product listings have doubled 7 times…. which means they’ve grown over 100 times in just recent months.

Next, we noticed that some people were listing products, but never actually selling any of them.

Therefore, along with simply giving AMCOs for hitting Daily Goals, we started carving out some of the AMCOs to reward you when your products actually sold.

The result? The sale of products doubled in the month that followed.

Then, they doubled again. And again. And again.