Attention Job Seekers

Get over it!

The Great American Job as we know it is fast becoming a thing of the past.

ITEM 1: The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, January 24, 1995, page B1. In Hal Lancaster's column, "Managing Your Career", management expert Michael Hammer, co-author of Re-Engineering the Corporation (the definitive book on corporate downsizing), makes this prediction:

"I think there are a lot of people who will never find a job again. The market is over for bureaucrats. If you can't design or sell products, if you can't do real work, I'd get real nervous."

ITEM 2: The Wall Street Journal, Wednesday, January 25, 1995, page A2. An article titled "Census Bureau Confirms Eroding Wages: Low Pay, Fewer Benefits Shadow Employment Gains" reports that "despite strong gains in employment, many new jobs don't pay as well as former ones." The Census Bureau surveyed 20,000 U.S. households and found, among other things, that "from 1990 to 1992, wages of men who left and then returned to full-time work fell by an average of 20%, to $423 a week from $529." And the decline was even more pronounced for women, with wages falling by 23%.

In a related survey last year by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, of the 7.6 million workers who permanently lost their jobs between 1991 and 1993, only 31.4% were able to find new jobs at equal or higher pay to their old ones.

Why?

Global competition, automation, computerization, corporate re-structuring, productivity increases. Corporations are getting lean and mean and very profitable. For the stockholders, that is, not for the workers. Workers are becoming unnecessary to a frighteningly large degree.

Do you know anyone who is secure in their job? Here in Austin, less than a mile from my house, there is a giant IBM facility that employs thousands of people. As recently as five years ago, a job with IBM meant security for life. It was probably the most secure private sector job one could have. That is no longer true. Because just down the road there's another big computer company. This one was started just a few years ago by a kid working out of his dorm room. A company by the name of Dell Computer that is lean and mean and is forcing IBM to shed layer upon layer of unproductive middle management. Now those formerly secure folks who work for IBM are noticeably cranky and irritated and scared to death that they will be the next to go.

The world is changing, and it is changing profoundly and rapidly. Those who don't adapt will be left behind in the dust. Jobs are a thing of the past. If you are depending on a job to make the mortgage payment, feed the family, keep you warm, put gas in your car and clothes on your back, you are at risk of having it all taken away from you in an instant.

It will come as no surprise to you that in my opinion, network marketing is your best way out of this fix, your best hope for the future. Network marketing gives you a way to build your own future. A way to work hard and build yourself an income that can't be taken away from you by corporate downsizing. There is really no such thing as complete security, there never has been (unless you are dead -- that seems to be a fairly secure state). Network marketing offers you more security, though, than just about any alternative.

Think of it. Never any employees. No large capital expenses. Very low overhead. You are in control. You are your own boss. You decide how much money you make. You get rewarded based on your efforts and the efforts of those you help to become successful, too.

Obviously I'm preaching to the choir, saying these things in a newsletter that goes to network marketers. So why am I doing it? Because the best way to recruit, the best way to get people committed to doing this business is to help them see the reality of the situation. The more we drum it into people's heads, the more people will realize that network marketing is the future. There are a lot of people out there that want to think that someone will always be there to take care of them. They think that somehow things will work out. Somehow life will be better one day. And those are the people who end up broke, homeless, dependent on Social Security or relatives or charity just to get by. Social Security? Do you really think there will even be any Social Security in 20 years?

You can talk all day about techniques for doing this business: running ads, phone prospecting, meetings, opportunity cards, etc. etc. etc. But all that really does is complicate a business that is fundamentally very simple. It all boils down to this: the facts are there, and all we really have to do is make people aware of them. We just have to believe in this business, commit ourselves to spreading the word about it, and the rest will take care of itself, because all the megatrends are in our favor.