I’ve had a few emails this month and it’s the flux. Several of them had the same question -- “When do I think network marketing will really take off”?

Well, I don’t know where these folk have been, but it already has! However, an exchange of emails, clarified that what the questioners meant, was when will people stop making fun of them and when will the government and the city accept networking as a serious economic vehicle? I think the short answer to that is when Peter Mandelson gets interested in it!
Let me put it another way. I don’t know if you’ve seen the recent advert for the government’s ‘New Deal’? It begins with the loony on the train. (do you think the nutter on the bus was too down-market for them?) Anyway, the chap wanders up and down the train, telling anyone who will listen, and not many will, about the New Deal for job seekers.
As the advert builds momentum, the voice over says something like -- “When one company signs up for the New Deal people think he’s mad and ignore him. Now ignoring the blatant sexism - I thought New Labour were against all that -- did I miss something? It’s sad, but very true isn’t it, that enough men and women, need to not only make enough noise about something but also prove how much money there is in it. Until then the British will totally ignore it.
The voice over continues “When two businesses sign up, we think they’re misguided and laugh at them, when 10 sign up, we call it a cult. When a 1000 sign on, it’s a movement and when a 100,000 employers register for the New Deal it becomes a revolution”

Now, this is a column about network marketing, so let’s put to one side any political beliefs we may have and I’ll do my best to avoid most of the cheap jokes about the similarity between the voice over for the New Deal and New Labour’s rise to become the government that commissioned the advert. Especially as we networkers could learn a lot from them!

I’ve only been involved with network marketing for 19 years now. (This month actually, if you’re interested.) But fifty years ago, in the beginning, there was Shaklee. A supplement network and many jokes about misguided lentil-eaters! This was in the early 50s before nutrition became a forty billion dollar annual market. Then, out of Nutrilite (another vitamin company) came Amway and volumes of humour about the moonies, brainwashing and prayer meetings. That was before they took on the American judicial system, won the right to continue trading their way and boosted their turnover into billions per year! Thanks to some of the groundwork they laid over the last 40 years many of the insults have slowly subsided. I don’t know many networkers, that as opposed as they would be to being involved with Amway themselves, are not grateful for the good they’ve done for our industry. Now we’re at the point where many respected business people are just becoming aware that really interesting amounts of money are being made.
Continued . . . .