Every day I wake up and feel like clicking my heels. I just love this business. 
Warren Nelson grew up in Kansas City, Missouri. He was the oldest of five children born to “very young, struggling, selfless, enduringly good parents who were pretty far below the poverty line,” he says. The year Warren was born, his dad started undergraduate school. He painted in the daytime, running a crew and went to night school to get a law degree. His mom worked as a registered nurse from 11:00 PM to 7:00 AM— put the kids to bed, worked all night, got up and got the kids back up. Warren says he has no idea when she slept.
“They took on too much,” Warren says. “They were overwhelmed.”
NULL “My mom left my dad behind in Kansas City and went back to Wisconsin with kids when I was in sixth grade. By then she’d had a fifth baby. My dad followed after and was depressed for 10 years, because he given up his dream of the law practice.” “So there was this combination of his dream being crushed,” Warren said, “their hard work, their goodness, their selflessness. They were broke. What little they had they devoted entirely to the kids.” “Fortunately kids have their own resources,” Warren said. “You know, in their community, at school, if they at least have enough to eat and have some clothes, you know? So we kids all pursued the strategy of high achievers: Academically, class leadership, sports, all that. It was then, as a kid, I actually found my passion.” “I was a 12-year-old guy in a small town,” Warren said, “delivering newspapers on his bicycle. And old Herb, the sales manager, called me in and said, ‘Hey Warren, about 10 years ago there was a paper boy here in town… The Milwaukee Journal is going to have a contest. You can write up new subscriptions to the paper.’ Then he added, “And that guy 10 years ago? He won a whole roomful of prizes.” “Herb painted a picture for me,” Warren said, “I played Little League and I had this old dumb glove that didn’t even have rawhide for the fingers. Herb said, ‘You can win a glove and a bat, baseballs, fishing rod and reel, fishing tackle, tennis racket.’ Then he said again, ‘This fellow, 10 years ago, had a whole roomful of prizes.’ I was absolutely entranced by that vision.” “So he sent me out and I sold subscriptions on my paper route, and then after all the other boys said they’d sold all they could, Herb told me, “Okay, you did the best on your route, so now you can go all over the whole city, no matter who’s route you go to,’ And he told all the other boys and they were all fine with that, because they knew nobody could sell any more subscriptions in that town.” “He picked me up in his car and we’d go out and he said, ‘Okay, go down this street. There’s somebody that doesn’t subscribe. Go talk to them.’ I kept signing up subscriptions at kind of a record pace.”
“He never gave me a single bit of training— no script, no approach, nothing. All he did was paint that picture and I did better and better and better.”
“Long story short,” Warren said, “I won the contest for the whole state of Wisconsin. They flew me in to watch a professional baseball game in Milwaukee. I had my picture taken with the governor. All I did, you know, I just worked hard at this thing, because I wanted to be in a roomful of presents. And it was an adventure. Exciting. I loved it.” “What I learned was I had some passion for that kind sales and achievement,” Warren said, “but I never pursued that because I thought technology would be my way out. That’s what my mom told me. You know, the space race was on and they said you could make a lot of money in science and engineering. That’s how I was going to avoid the kind of grinding lifestyle my parents got trapped into.” “So, I went into the wrong field,” Warren said. “Got a master’s degree. I just drove myself; night school, working full-time in the design and development of jet engines, and I married my college sweetheart, too.” “I learned a lot about what it extracts from you to subjugate your real passion,” Warren said. “I know the spiritual and emotional penalties. At that point I decided that project management, development, science, mathematics wasn’t for me anymore. So I went back and got an MBA at Harvard Business School, went into marketing and sales. There you have unlimited upside, you produce, you travel, more adventure. And that takes me right up to when I got involved in Network Marketing in 1988.” “My wife Mary plays a big part in my life and career,” Warren said. “She was a big hitter with Re/Max in the Chicago suburbs. She worked way too hard. She came home one night and said she’d found something to do where she could get out of real estate.”
“Honestly, I only looked into Network Marketing to keep her from doing it.”
“So that Saturday I had my first ever exposure to the business. I went to this meeting and John Sexsmith was the presenter. He was a big Blue Diamond in the company. That’s the first time I’d ever heard that J-O-B stands for the Journey-Of-the-Broke.” “With my math background, I immediately saw the idea of geometric growth. I saw the idea of residual income and the distribution model. It actually looked darn good. That company had done about maybe $25 million in the previous year. I was pumped enough to look deeper.” “So, I talked to the owners, looked at their distribution strategy, product/marketing positioning, everything I’d learned at Harvard. I became convinced they would become a big, big, several hundred million dollar company. And with that I told Mary, ‘Let’s do it together.’ And that’s how we got started.” One thing that really hooked Warren on that first Saturday morning meeting was the statement: “In Network Marketing, you only succeed by helping other people succeed.” For Warren Nelson, corporate was, “Frankly dog-eat-dog. I knew full well that the corporate world is mostly politics and conformity. If you’re entrepreneurial, you treasure freedom, you will really have a hard time being there. You also have a hard time helping people that work for you or who you work with do really well, because they’ll use that to their advantage and you’ll lose out in end. It’s a zero-sum game.” “So I loved the model of win-win, helping other people,” Warren said. “I just was on fire when I saw the freedom, the ability to go fast, work with who you wanted to. And with my MBA background, I was really confidant that little company was going to turn out to be something big.” “It was an adventure,” Warren said. “Imagine you are allowed to pick out a dozen of your best friends, the people most exciting, uplifting, inspiring, in your life and say, ‘Hey, let’s go on this wonderful adventure.’ And you go out and just have great time and you all receive large financial rewards from it. It’s fabulous.” “That’s what it was like. It was like the greatest fantasy adventure that one could ever have in a lifetime. And learning from seven upline near-savants; every one of them was a million-dollar earner, all were brilliant at Network Marketing: Bill Hyman and Kay Smith, Jerry Campisi, Richard Kall, Craig Bryson and Craig Tillotson and Clara McDermott. Not recognition-driven type people: Giants of training, how-to and production. Good cheer, good humor, incredible work ethics, and in those three years I learned pretty much all the natural laws and principles of this business.”
Warren went full-time in Network Marketing in January 1990, and for that he has to thank his wife, Mary.
“I was running an electronics company at the time, I had a very strong income, we had two young kids, and Mary said, ‘Resign and do Network Marketing full-time.” She had no
qualms, no doubts. Probably not many wives would do that, but Mary’s courageous, she’s a risk-taker, she’s optimistic and she sees the upside of things. I went forward with her full support and confidence and we worked that business together.” “It was pretty much Mary built half and I built half,” Warren said. “We worked a lot of in-home meetings, sometimes seven nights a week, two on Saturday. Tuesday night we did the tele-meetings for everybody in the Chicago area, whether they were downline or crossline or anybody. They all came, we did ‘Super Saturdays.’ It was just a phenomenal adventure.” “So, during the first three years,” Warren said, “I developed the ‘why’ that really propelled me for the next 17-18 years:”
“The adventure, the freedom, the people, the lifestyle. It’s been a joy. Every day I wake up and feel like clicking my heels. I just love this business.”
“Here’s a great thing I learned in the beginning,” Warren says. “It’s easier to build it fast. Go as fast as you can for a year or a few years.” “And I mean fast both in terms of numbers of people you talk to and the hours you work,” Warren said. “You’re going to put more hours into it to start, so work at it more then and get it going fast.” “You think of it like a snowball,” he said. “You roll it a little bit and it stops. You’ve got to keep rolling it, rolling it, rolling it till it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Now it’s starting to roll down the hill and it picks up size, and it gets as big as a house and you can’t stop it if you wanted to. But if you don’t push it fast enough, it doesn’t get big fast enough to start rolling on its own.” “The sooner you do that the sooner you get positive reinforcement,” Warren said. “The sooner you feel a little sense of, ‘I’m getting somewhere,’ some accomplishment and pride. All of us who have built to the top level, maybe we don’t convey the fact that in the beginning we might have gotten discouraged if we hadn’t gotten those little successes along the way. You can only go so long with discouragement.” “I was willing to persevere long and hard, even if I hit a flat spot and got discouraged,” Warren said, “because I had enough successes. I feel a lot better when I get successes and if you build it faster you simply increase your odds of getting successes and more of them, too. That feeds you.”
“Success begets success. When you build fast, you have more success faster.”
“And yet a person can only run a 100-yard dash for so many years before you kick back a little bit and take some deep breaths,” Warren said. “I can never stay away from this business for too long. It’s not my job. It’s my passion. It’s a lifestyle.” “When you do something you have passion for,” Warren said, “it inspires you and propels you forward. And then you begin thinking of the excitement of other people who can get that adventure, freedom, that lifestyle, too. They can develop some financial independence,” he says. “So they can begin to live where and how they like to live, and you care about them.” “I mean, the people in this business, they’re just people that I deeply care about so much. I want them to be successful. And I mentor them; I talk to many of them every day, frequently, more than once a day. And it’s the commitment to friends, loved ones that become like family over a period of time.” “And a family business it is,” Warren adds, “with our daughter Beth Nelson Allen building her own successful Networking business with today’s technology. What a joy!” “It’s excitement, it’s adventure, and it’s satisfying, and it’s inspiring because of the people.”
“Because of the people that Mary and I help and serve.”
“And I know a lot of people hear that but, but when you really get that lift from serving somebody… to my mind one of the greatest missions anyone can have is to start with the words ‘to serve.’ ___________________________ From The Greatest Networkers in the World
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He is the founder and former Editor-in-Chief of the highly regarded publication Upline®... was a Contributing Editor to SUCCESS magazine... the founder and former Editor-in-Chief of Network Marketing Lifestyles magazine... founding editor of Networking Times... the founder of GreatestNetworker .com... co-founder of TheNetworkMarketing Magazine.com and is the creative force behind TransformingMLM.com.
John is the author of the best-selling industry classic The Greatest Networker in the World, which has been read by more than two and a-half million people around the world and he has edited and contributed to far too many books to be mentioned here.
He has spoken around the globe, through out Canada and the United States, in Australia, China, Costa Rica, Crete, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore, Trinidad and the Ukraine.
John is married to Jekaterina (Katyusha), has a daughter Rachel 28, son Johnny 23, daughter Eleonora Milena (Ele) who's 7 and Anais Polina (his 'last child') was born in March, 2006.
- Carolyn Wightman– Who Leads the Leaders by John Milton Fogg - September 1, 2013
- Ørjan Saele– Seeds of Greatness by John Milton Fogg - August 1, 2013
- Sarah Robbins – The Big Picture by John Milton Fogg - July 1, 2013
