Did you know that . . .

More than one in eight U.S. households includes a home-based business?

Every month, about 1 million Americans go through some type of job change or loss?

Seventy-two percent of all adult Americans would rather work for themselves than for another company — and 67 percent think about quitting “regularly” or “constantly”?

What’s more, the #1 reason they give for wanting to work for themselves is: “to be more passionate about my work life”?

Where am I getting all these factoids? From an article entitled “Why You Should Start a Business Today,” coauthored by me and Erin Casey, and appearing in the current (June/July) edition of Success magazine.

You can find an abridged version of the article online — but truthfully, the abridgement is so severe, it’s worth picking up a copy of the print version for the full text. It should be at your local newsstand.

The cover story alone—“The 50 Greatest Entrepreneurs of All Time”—is well worth the cover price.

“You can trust me, honest.” “I don’t want to influence your opinion, I just want you to hear me out.” “I am not a crook.”

What do all three statements have in common? They are all trying so hard to convince that they are wholly unconvincing. (For example, if the speaker is genuinely trustworthy, would he need to tell us that?) What about this one:

“This opportunity is incredible! We are going to the moon on this one—I’m telling you, there’s never been a comp plan like this, ever!”

Nope, I’m not convinced. In fact, the very effort to convince me contains within it the seeds of its own undoing. The word convince derives from the Latin vincere, meaning to conquer. To convince means “to overcome in argument.” It is said, “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.” And really, is there any other way to be convinced than against your will?

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” says Queen Gertrude in Hamlet (Act 3, scene 2). In Shakespeare’s time, “protest” did not mean to deny or object: it meant to assert, as in “He protested his innocence,” or, “I do protest with all Vigour the Goode and Comely Virtues of our Companie’s Hybrid Comp Planne.” The queen’s dry observation is that the lady was making an emphatic assertion—and the queen was not convinced. Me neither. . . .

This is the first half of my latest editorial in the May/June edition of Networking Times, which just went online (and on the newsstands) today.

I have always had (as readers of The Zen of MLM know well) an aversion to what in sales and network marketing is called “The Three-Foot Rule.”

If your interpretation of that rule is, as Scott Allen put it when I interviewed him in 2006 for Networking Times, “Anybody within three feet of you is worth getting to know a little better,” then you and I have no argument whatsoever. However, if it is more like the classic version, “Anyone within three feet is fair game for me to pitch my opportunity to, whether they ask for it or not,” then we have issues.

Seth Godin recently put this beautifully in his blog. Seth isn’t talking here about network marketing, but my oh my, it fits like a glove:

The end result of spam (email spam, blog spam, Twitter spam, Squidoo spam, comment spam, phone spam, politician spam [or prospecting spam—JDM]) is that it eats away at your brand. If you don’t have a brand, you might make some short term cash, but it gets tiresome creating annoyance everywhere you go. If you do have a brand, you don’t notice the brand erosion . . . until it’s too late.

Here, it’s simple:

You can contact just about anyone you want. The only rule is you need to contact them personally, with respect, and do it months before you need their help! Contact them about them, not about you. Engage. Contribute. Question. Pay attention. Read. Interact.

Then, when you’ve earned the right to attention and respect, months and months later, sure, ask. It takes a lot of time and effort, which is why volume isn’t the answer for you, quality is.

That’s a great way to get a job, promote a site, make a friend, spread the word or just be a human.

The bottom line here is your brand. In network marketing, no matter what company you’re aligned with, the core of all your activities is that you are either building your brand, letting your brand coast (read: atrophy), or ruining your brand. Make the three preceding paragraphs your personal brand bible, and you’ll build it.

Do you remember the hullabaloo a few years ago surrounding possible legislation that might hamstring a network marketer’s ability to prospect? In case you missed it, the concern was over proposed FTC rules that would require the disclosure of comparative information so extensive that it would bury even the most casual prospect with pounds of intimidating paperwork, effectively crippling the process.

Well, good news. The Federal Trade Commission recently announced that the “New Business Opportunity Rule” proposed two years ago, in April of 2006, has since been significantly revised.

According to the FTC notice, “The Business Opportunity Rule would still cover those schemes currently covered by the interim Business Opportunity Rule, and it would expand coverage to include work-at-home schemes.” Most significant to our businesses, the FTC goes on to say, “the revised proposal, however, would not reach multi-level marketing companies or certain companies that may have been swept inadvertently into scope of the April 2006 proposal.” (emphasis added)

Within the revised new rule it goes on to streamline the required discloser information by “eliminating requirements to disclose the number of cancellations and refund requests that a business opportunity seller receives or the litigation history of sales personnel.”

We don’t know who influenced this shift towards common sense, but for whomever it was, we have a message: Thank you.

(Thanks also to Art Jonak for alerting us about the notice.)

In troubling economic times, what are the best stocks to pick? That is, which are the companies you can most count on? According to “Mad Money” host and bestselling financial advisor Jim Cramer, direct selling companies are hands down the way to go.

So says a piece Cramer aired last Friday, March 14. Here is a summary, titled “Recession-Proof Stocks” and posted by CNBC’s Tom Brennan on the CNBC site:

“Not every company struggles during a recession. In fact, direct sellers like Avon tend to do quite well. As cost cutting forces employees out of traditional jobs, the company’s door-to-door sales force swells in number. 


“Not to mention, direct sellers enjoy high gross margins, low capital intensity and lots of free cash flow. And there’s plenty of room for growth here, as Avon and peers like Herbalife and Tupperware expand overseas. The weak dollar benefits all three companies, Cramer said, in markets with no real competitors.

“So who’s the best in the group? Cramer said he leans toward Tupperware. The stock’s up 6% since Jan. 30 despite this difficult market, which might be no surprise considering 85% of TUP’s business is international. Even still, Tupperware’s pulled back 10%, leaving investors a great opportunity to buy in.”

Thanks, Cramer.

The new issue of Networking Times, on “Financial Literacy,” has just hit the stands (and web site). This issue I interviewed Chicago Sun Times financial columnist Terry Savage, author of the national bestsellers The Savage Number and The Savage Truth about Money.

My editorial, “Putting Money Together,” traces a connection from Bucky Fuller to syntropy (the opposite of entropy) to the etymology of “consider” to what holds networks together (and tears them apart) to . . . financial literacy. See the logic of that thread?

P.S. Sorry I’ve been such a bad blogger lately! I’ve been way busy blogging over at my other blog and with the launch of The Go-Giver!

Perceptive readers might note that The Zen of MLM has shown up on Amazon, and even gotten a customer review. Another customer (of identical last name: I sense spousal connection) also just posted a very sweet review of the book on her blog, naming it “2007 Networking Marketing Book of the Year.” An excerpt from that post:

“Get this book into the hands of anyone investigating the business of network marketing for the first time. I wish I had this under my pillow when I began my journey.”

Thanks, Kelly!

The latest issue of Networking Times has just hit the stands and gone online.

This issue is on Generation Y, and I got to interview two extremely bright and fascinating people of the younger variety: Tami Walsh, woman with a mission and teen life coach extraordinaire; and Rory Vaden, an amazing young man who recently took the silver medal in the Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking.

You have to be a paid subscriber to read the features—but you can read my editorial, “Generation What?” just by registering as a free member. If you do, you might recognize it from a post on my JDM blog from early November (I had 19 on my mind at the time).

And while I’m at it, here’s “A Wealth of Possibilities,” my editorial from the previous issue, which I forgot to announce here when it came out (oops!). This one is on my first encounter, at the age of 12, with Buckminster Fuller.

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.