If you happen to follow Seth Godin’s blog, you might have noticed this post about a master of design named Garr Reynolds.
And if that name sounds vaguely familiar, yes, this is the same Garr Reynolds I quote in the epilogue of The Zen of MLM — and also here, in this online excerpt.
Here’s what Seth says:
“Every once in a while, a guru appears. Garr is that guru. His work on the cutting edge of the intersection of presentations, communication and PowerPoint is a model for how anyone can have an industry. His hard work, clear writing and persuasive point of view have changed our world for the better.”
You can read more of Seth on Garr at this Squidoo lens.
I talked today with Terry Savage, Emmy-winning CNN commentator and bestselling author of The Savage Number and The Savage Truth on Money. She said something fascinating: “The baby boomers are the first generation who are completely responsible for their own retirement planning. The reality has changed, and we’re the first generation to go through it.”
In The World Is Flat (2005), Thomas L. Friedman made the point that for the first time in history, an individual can conduct business globally. In the past, that was a capacity reserved for kingdoms, armies or corporations. Today, a teenager from Piscataway can manage a global empire from his desktop, laptop or phonetop.
In The Third Wave (1980), Alvin Toffler coined the term “prosumer” and made the point that the roles of consumer and producer were beginning to blur. (Toffler later claimed that his book was the #2 best-selling book of all time in China, coming only after The Sayings of Chairman Mao.) His latest, the 2006 book Revolutionary Wealth, chronicled just how far that prediction has come true.
Hmm. Put those three converging trends together, and what do you have? A compelling convergence of trends supporting this thing called network marketing.
Update: according to 2006 data, network marketing is a $109 billion industry, making it an economic bloc roughly the size of Egypt or Hungary, with a worldwide force numbering about 59 million, equivalent to the population of Italy or the United Kingdom. Looks like we are becoming a decent-sized country.
Remember Success magazine? The magazine whose cover Richard Brooke dreamed of gracing (a dream that eventually—famously—came true)? The magazine that boldy went where no mainstream journal had gone before, when it began offering regular positive coverage of the network marketing industry in the early 1990s?
In the late nineties, it was both sad and darkly ironic when the old Success went under. “Did you hear what happened to Success?” “No, what?” “It failed.” Similar quips floated around earlier this year when Business 2.0 bit the dust (“Did you hear what happened to Business 2.0?” “No, what?” “It went out of business 2.0.”).
Well, quip no more: Success is back.The iconic journal begun more than a century ago (in 1891) by Orison Swett Marden, and whose parade of esteemed editors has included such remarkable characters as Napoleon Hill, W. Clement Stone and Og Mandino, is resurfacing this spring, under new ownership: none other than VideoPlus, the people who brought us Business Is Booming, The Slight Edge, The Next Millionaires, and Robert Kiyosaki’s Business School.
For a few years now (since I turned fifty), I’ve been claiming that the first fifty years is just for practice. Maybe it’s the same for magazines as it is for people, just a different number: life begins at 116.
This new incarnation promises to be the best Success yet. Check it out: www.successmagazine.com.
