The Rules have changed

Everywhere you look you see evidence of it. The rules of the marketplace have changed. Mass marketing is quickly dying. The big thing now is one-on-one marketing.

Hmmm. One-on-one marketing. Where have we seen that before?

Ad agencies, magazines, cable companies, phone companies, marketers, manufacturers and all the other people who have a stake in the status quo -- mass marketing -- are scrambling to adjust to the new realities of the marketplace.

Last May in his keynote address to the American Association of Advertising Agencies, Procter & Gamble's chairman, Edwin Artzt, stood the advertising industry on its head with his declaration that "Our most important ad medium, television, is about to change big-time. And from where we stand today, we can't be sure that advertising-supported TV programming will have a future in the world being created." This was coming from the chairman of a company that spends more than $3 billion a year in advertising, 90% of it on network television.

Since that time, the advertising industry has been in a frenzy, trying to comprehend and adjust to what's going on. They're looking at alternatives which include interactive media, on-line services, CD-ROMs, satellite and telephone-delivered television and more.

Marketers are beginning to understand that they need to become downright intimate with their customers. They're collecting mountains of data on individual preferences, developing presentations that customers can interact with, trying to reach customers by phone and computer and cable.

In the end, the marketers that survive will be the ones who discover what network marketers already understand. That the best way to reach a fragmented, fast-changing market is to let the market be the marketing.

Network marketing companies are already there.

If your marketing is done by the market itself, you are quickly aware of changes in preferences, quality problems, perceptions. You have a loyal customer base. You have the powerful ability allow your products to find their own customers, through word of mouth referrals. Your relationship with the market is less adversarial and more personal.

Network marketing was born out of necessity. Early network marketing companies had little choice in distributing products, because they lacked the capital to compete with huge advertisers like Procter & Gamble. And for years, network marketing has been steadily plodding along, gaining more and more market share, learning how to do it better.

Now the world is changing dramatically before our eyes. We're seeing the demise of large institutions and the empowerment of the individual. We're seeing the blossoming of people-to-people communications with the Internet, cheap long distance, affordable air travel, fax machines, cellular phones, pagers, voice mail, high bandwidth fiber optic communication lines, ISDN and on and on and on. All of these things facilitate the type of person-to-person communication that network marketing thrives on.

Network marketing has paid its dues. It has been ridiculed endlessly. It has been the butt of countless jokes. It has been looked on as a profession of last resort by those who consider themselves above having to ever "sell" anything. Network marketing has been attacked as a fraud and a scam. It has been abused by those seeking to take advantage of others.

And it has endured all this and more. Network marketers have learned from the hardships and mistakes. If there's one thing network marketers do, it is that they DO. Successful network marketers don't sit around and analyze something, they take action. Sometimes that gets them into trouble, but they quickly learn from their mistakes.

More than 40 years of this trial and error, this learning experience, this fighting against the status quo, have given network marketing a powerful legacy. In this day in age, when huge corporations are spending billions to learn more about the marketplace, and marketing experts and computer gurus are devising flashy new ways to interact with the marketplace, network marketing has a 40-year head start. Network marketers have been interacting with the market since day one. Interactive marketing, sexy buzzword that it is, is nothing new to network marketing.

Network marketing works so well because of incentive. Why do network marketers become such good students of the marketplace? Because they are paid to do so. Why do they take action so readily and learn so fast from their mistakes? Because on a daily basis, their income depends on it. It is the free market, everyone acting in their own self interest, and discovering that their own self interest is furthered immensely by learning and accommodating the interests of others. That is truth. That is power. That is what is being demanded by today's sophisticated marketplace. And that is exactly what network marketing delivers so well.

It is said of network marketing that "the only ones who lose are those who quit." And if you're in a decent company with a quality product line, that is very true. If you stick with it, just use the products and occasionally recommend them to others, you will eventually be successful. It may take a long time, depending on what you are willing to put into it, but eventually your business will start to take on a life of its own. People will come around when they see your commitment. After maybe a year or two, if you are still using the products and can testify to the benefits they have given you, the people who see you doing this cannot help but want to try them. And then it may take them a long time before the people they know try them. But if you, and they, stick with it, it will happen. You can accelerate this process greatly by injecting a little excitement and fear of loss and those kinds of things, but you don't have to.

The only ones who lose are those who quit. People will eventually come around if you persevere.

That holds true for individual network marketers. And what's fascinating is, we're seeing now the same process at work on a much larger scale. Now the whole world is "coming around." The one-to-one concept of marketing is becoming the sought-after holy grail of the business world. And the whole network marketing industry -- individuals, companies and the industry itself -- has stuck around long enough and hasn't quit and is now beginning to see the payoff.

But there's more. Not only is the marketing world aligning itself with the concepts of network marketing, but another very powerful force is building momentum. Productivity, downsizing, automation, re-engineering, global competition and other such turmoil have made millions and millions of workers unnecessary. And at the same time, we're experiencing unprecedented economic growth. The bottom line is this: we're fast approaching the time when the goods and services we need can be produced with almost no human labor. What a deal. We'll have machines doing all the work, and we won't have to. This is really going to happen.

But wait! For thousands of years, we have distributed wealth based on work. When no one needs to work, how will we fairly and equitably distribute all the wealth that the machines create for us? Will it all wind up in the hands of the highly skilled and highly capitalized "lucky ones" who design and own and operate the means of production -- a small, elite minority? Well, that's one option, but it certainly is not realistic. Can you imagine the wealth disparity in such a situation. Can you imagine the social turmoil. Society would surely implode (or ex-plode).

Well, what if we tax the bejeebers out of the minority of producers and give the money away to everyone else? Well, I believe that's been tried already -- like in the Soviet Union, the "Great Society" and others. We've seen what can happen when people have no incentive, and it isn't a pretty sight. Whether we admit it or not, everyone has a need to be challenged, to be productive. If you take that away, you destroy people. I don't care how much money you give them, the lack of challenge in life destroys people. I attended an exclusive private university and had fraternity brothers who came from very wealthy families -- multimillionaires many times over. Some of them had been given everything they ever wanted, whenever they wanted it. They were some of the most horribly despondent people I have ever known. I vividly remember one in particular, who used to sit with a loaded .44 Magnum pointed at his head, listening to "Suicide is Painless" on the stereo. Take away the BMWs, the ski trips, the gold cards, and that's exactly what you have in the ghettos, too. People desperately need to be challenged, they need purpose, and proof of this is all too easy to find.

In a world where wealth can be produced without human labor, the need for people to be productive does not go away. So what we need to do is change the concept of productivity. For thousands of years, we have defined productivity as the ability to produce things. But what is increasingly needed in today's world is the ability to intelligently consume things. (Please, environmentalists, don't hate me -- I'm not necessarily talking about material things.) Think about it. Consumption is a challenge, too. I'm not talking about wanton consumption. I'm talking about meaningful, intelligent, life-enriching consumption.

What if we paid people to consume goods and services instead of to produce them? And what if we paid them even more to teach other people to consume things? That would allow all the wealth to be distributed to people who wanted and needed it, and it would provide productive employment.

And that's exactly what network marketing is. We're getting paid to consume and promote consumption. Network marketing is not a panacea by any means. It is not for everyone. It can, however, go a long way toward solving a vexing problem that is becoming more and more evident every day. The marketplace is aligned with us, and there are millions of people with a need to be productive who are looking for a challenge. Our job as those who have already seen the light is simply to get the word out.

Every network marketing company talks about a "momentum growth phase" and of course they all say they're poised to undergo it, next month. That's the standard pitch. Many individual companies have undergone or will soon undergo this phase. And it has and will continue to create a lot of wealthy people. Now the timing is right for the industry as a whole to undergo a global momentum growth phase like nothing we've ever seen before. There will soon be enough people who "see the light" and understand what network marketing is all about, to create a critical mass that will spark a new phase in this industry.

And for those who persevere and don't quit, it will be the ride of your life.