The challenge of this article, at least for me, is writing it and avoiding the obvious cliches and tropes.
Oh well, if I don’t like it I guess I can change it! It is commonly thought that most people resist change or anything that disrupts our comfort or picture of how things should be.
Is this true? Perhaps, but if it is, the opposite is as well. We are THROWN to change when our reality doesn’t match what we are committed to. Change is with us whether we like it or not. If you live, you change; physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually.
If my late mentor, Mike Smith, were asked about change, I’m guessing he would say:
“It is not people, events, circumstances, or changes that truly affect us, it is our relationship to them.”
And how right he’d be. Our inability to change certain things: mortality, time, and gravity, for example, are sometimes the unreasonable source of human breakdowns… UNTIL we realize all the things that we DO have the ability to shift or impact; Our physical well-being, our mindset, our relationship to a higher power, and especially, our contribution to others.
Many years ago, I discovered an amazing possibility for owning my own business; without the assumed criteria of special knowledge, education or degrees, and an exorbitant amount of capital.
It was called “Multi-level marketing.”
It makes me feel old to say that at that time, what is now a $200 Billion dollar a year profession was barely two and a half decades old. There was no Herbalife or NuSkin. Amway, barely 20 years old, was predicting one billion in annual sales in the “near” future. Mary Kay Ash was the queen of cosmetics. Avon was “calling!”
Opportunity Meetings were spectacles held in hotel rooms.
Frontloading was commonplace. I had personally never experienced anything like it. It was exciting, fun, lucrative…and quite frankly, a little weird.
If I was to learn how to do it well, I needed to change. I needed to change the way I thought about business; both how it could be done and a new possibility for what success looks like. I needed to learn the tips and techniques of the trade.
Over the next decade, I watched a business model evolve and change. As soon as I thought I knew what I was doing, something would occur that made me think, I didn’t. I was tortured and ridiculed by friends and family for wasting my time, money, talent, and education on pyramid “pipe dreams.”
Then something wonderful changed, I did...
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Russ is the Founder and President of Success by Design Global, LLC and a contributing editor to The Network Marketing Magazine
His own sales organizations have set records and standards for the MLM Industry. Mr. DeVan is the author of state-of-the-art training methodologies and concepts used by thousands of network marketing professionals worldwide.
PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
WE ARE HONORED TO HAVE RUSS AS A KEY MEMBER OF OUR TEACHING CONTRIBUTING EDITORS.
The thing that I want you to know about Russ is, for years, I have admired the book, The Greatest Networker In The World. The “greatest networker,” that John Milton Fogg created the character from, in this classic story, was Russ DeVan! You know that you will be getting incredible wisdom for yourself and your business. I am honored to be working with The Greatest Networker!
Welcome aboard Russ!
George Madiou
CEO & Publisher of
TheNetworkingMagazine.com
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