available capital. Sad to say, neither of these strategies works for most people.
The young, who have the time in which to accumulate, rarely have the disci-
pline to do it. The older folks, who have the burning need and some limited
resources, just do not usually have the time left to reach their goal.
It has become clearer every day that just working at a job is not the an-
swer. The old idea of working 40 years on the job and retiring with a gold
watch just does not work today. We are living longer, working harder, and
making less, and have even less to show for our efforts. Nine out of 10 fami-
lies now need two working members just to make ends meet. Surveys also in-
dicate that 85 percent of all Americans would like to own their own business.
With that in mind, let’s look at how many people are effectively addressing
the problem.
In the United States, someone starts a new home-based business every
10 seconds. More than 25 percent of all Americans are involved in some sort
of home business, and the numbers are even more dramatic in other parts of
the world. The average successful home-based business generates more than
$50,000 yearly in income, while the average working wage is only $22,000 in
North America. The reason for the great disparity, to a great extent, is due to
the concepts of residual income and leverage. We will touch briefly on lever-
age here and get into a more detailed discussion of residual income shortly.
The concept of leverage was most clearly stated by J. Paul Getty, the oil
industry billionaire, who said, “I’d rather have 1 percent of 100 people’s ef-
forts than 100 percent of my own.” It would be hard to state this principle
any more clearly or have it make any more sense. Since network marketing is
all about word-of-mouth communications with others, it epitomizes the prin-
ciple of leverage. You tell someone something that you feel strongly and pas-
sionately about, and they tell someone, who tells someone, who tells someone
... and so it goes. Before you know it, you have an organization building
your business while they are building their own. Remember, most people are
involved in network marketing now; they just aren’t getting paid for it. Isn’t
that what happens when one recommends a restaurant, movie, or product?
How much would you have made if you got a check every time you made a
recommendation? Well, you can... with network marketing.
I became deeply involved with network marketing about 25 years ago
when I was doing some research for a financial planning client. He was about
60 years old and was about to leave a job that he had been at for more than
30 years. His company retirement plan was to give him an income for life of
about 50 percent of the salary that he barely survived on while working—not
a very promising prospect. At his request, I looked into several network mar-
keting opportunities and discovered something incredible from a financial
planning perspective. That was, it seemed reasonable to assume that within
two to four years in network marketing, my client could build a residual in-
come that could equal or exceed his retirement income, and this income could
144 THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO NETWORK MARKETING