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Spotlight: Cheri Tree

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Cheri Tree has discovered who she is through the many experiences that have become rungs on her ladder of success. The story of how she created her lucrative B.A.N.K.™ Personality Sales Training System is both inspiring and thought provoking.

Her path began as she earned a BS degree in recreation and leadership with a minor in business and entrepreneurship from Brigham Young University; her entrepreneurial journey launched when she worked as operations manager for a Fortune 100 company, then later accepted a position at REI, followed by a stint with Franklin Covey, where she was responsible for building the international sales channel for the Asia-Pacific territory and interacted directly with the company’s franchisees.

Inspired by her mentor, Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, Cheri chose to build her business in the direct sales and network marketing industry and joined Primerica Financial Services. Over the next five years, she was immersed in the world of money, banking and investing. Cheri achieved the coveted rank of Regional Vice President and ran her own financial office, where she had millions of dollars in assets under management for her clients.

While working, she decided to apply one of the principles from Rich Dad Poor Dad that tells you to get from the left side of the CASHFLOW Quadrant, which stands for employee and self-employed, to the right side, which represents business owner and investor. The right side has money work for you, whereas the left side makes you work for money. “I was completely indoctrinated to the fact that money could work for me instead of me working for money. My entrepreneurial spirit came alive. I had jobs in corporate America that paid my bills so I could be a financial advisor. However, even though I had a business with Primerica, I was still frustrated because I hired coaches and mentors, trying to get better at selling, who told me you have to get more ‘nos’ to get more ‘yeses.’ That’s the definition of insanity! I thought, ‘What if I thought outside of the box and got more yeses?’ That’s when I envisioned B.A.N.K.”

Cheri had always been fascinated by personality tests and thought that if in fact people are different scientifically, they must make their buying decisions differently. She heard a great quote from Anthony Robbins, “Let your prospect determine your presentation,” that validated her belief. “I used that in my sales practices and the next year my income went from $72,000 to over $500,000. I created my own personality-based version, specific to the sales process, working with clients. I basically figured out what the buying formula was for each personality type and how they made their buying decisions,” she detailed. “I invented a system that would tell me their personality code in less than 90 seconds. I altered my presentation accordingly and it worked. I made over $1 million in three years.”

During this time, Cheri began working for a real estate investment education company. She used the B.A.N.K. selling technique and soon began training her sales team. Her fate took a strong turn in 2008 when she decided to start out on her own. Simultaneously, she resigned from the real estate company and the economy tanked. “I had built a real estate portfolio of $8 million and I was aggressively investing in real estate.

Unfortunately, my real estate went upside down overnight. I was $60,000 a month in negative cash flow; I was not able to successfully launch my new company and filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy. I had nothing left.” On top of that, Cheri had put her remaining possessions into five storage units and received notice of auction because she didn’t have the money to pay the rent for the storage units.

“My friend, Morgan Westermann, helped me rebuild myself as an entrepreneur by building myself into a brand. I’d always sold other people’s stuff. He told me to make my personality system my brand, and in late 2008 the B.A.N.K. brand was born!” she smiled. “I started to solicit my training expertise to companies. One company brought me in to speak at their sales convention and had me train on stage. I didn’t have anything to sell. I had no product yet. Everybody in the crowd went wild and wanted to buy it. A vendor in the audience came to me and said it was an amazing presentation and if B.A.N.K. was a product, I could have sold the entire room.”

That was in March 2010. The vendor offered to manufacture it if she would pay for it. That is when fate smiled on Cheri, and a client, Jenny Luetkemeyer, bought a ticket to come to a live B.A.N.K. training the next month. Jenny paid for the workshop and the two became best friends; Jenny believed in the system and decided to bank on Cheri.

“She loaned me the money to pay my storage unit debt and we found a 1,600-square-foot industrial storage unit in Newport Beach, California, for $1,000 a month. I was able to take all my storage units and merge them into one. Well, in the very back of the unit was a tiny little loft and all the sudden I had an idea. If I could live in the storage unit, I wouldn’t have to pay rent somewhere else; I could save the money to invest into the manufacture of my new B.A.N.K. product. I was so motivated to be an entrepreneur and not work for someone else; I knew I’d figure it out.”

The two women became roommates in the tiny storage unit loft and, subsequently, business partners. All that money went completely into the production of B.A.N.K. The storage unit had no heat or running water, so they bought a 5-gallon Luggable Loo, a camp toilet, and then bought a small space heater. For 18 months they lived there and even joined a gym so they could take showers.

Their first production of the B.A.N.K. system came off the line in May 2010, and they took it to an event where they had a booth. They sold out 100 percent of their product inventory. “I was connecting with key decision makers and using my B.A.N.K. sales techniques to earn my way out of that storage unit,” she remarked.

The rest is history. In April 2012 they moved to Las Vegas to a penthouse suite in Veer Towers at City Center. They have expanded into more than 30 countries and have more than 400 people in the process of becoming certified trainers to teach it all over the world, and their 2015 business projection is $18 million. They brought in additional key players and relocated to Scottsdale, Arizona, where they are currently headquartered.

“When I lost everything, it stripped 100 percent of my ego out of me. I lost my attachment to money and grew my attachment to people. I want to help people and make a difference. In life, every single human has a personality code. If we can learn to communicate and see things through their perspective and modify our approach, we can not only create more sales, we can create world peace,” Cheri reflected.

B.A.N.K. is different from every other personality-based program in the market today. Cheri’s concept is focused on the person you’re interacting with, whether for business or pleasure. She has spoken at Harvard University and UC Berkeley and in 2014 she received the prestigious ARWEY Woman Entrepreneur of the Year award. B.A.N.K. is personality based, people focused and profit driven and has been described as “The Language of People™.”

To find out more about this successful sales and communication tool and to crack your own personality code for free, visit playbankcode.com/soulprofits.