June 1999
First Word
It's Weird, but No One Ever Thinks About It - Uma Sackett
That's classic Tom Schreiter right before he's about to nail you with a casually-mentioned mind-blowing observation. If Len Clements is the greatest critic of the industry, then Tom may be the greatest critic of the business and how it's done. For those of you who read him regularly in Fortune Now, you know what I'm talking about-- Tom's a guy who, when he says he has four insights about Network Marketing (or anything else for that matter), cocktail conversations stop and a circle immediately forms around him. The freshness of his writing and his thinking are a delight to me, and a delight to share in Upline.
This is an issue that, as Tom would say, asks you to "sit back, turn off the distractions, read and ponder," so I hope you're reading this in a hammock outside under blooming June flowers or poolside with some fully SPFed time on your hands. In addition to Tom's "Four Strange Insights," you're going to hear Jan Ruhe's "nothing fancy, just what works" answers to the most common questions distributors like you have been asking her over the last year. The majority of questions people ask her are about goals, she told me, so it's no surprise that her answers begin (but by no means end) with "Fire Up!" And by the way, Jan was just honored as the top Diamond Distributor yet again for Discovery Toys, so know that these answers come from a leader who's still "working" the business-- prospecting, sponsoring, and selling.
Mel Kaufmann will give you a new way to understand the value of your time, plus some tips for leveraging it. Michael Clouse, in his trademark short, sweet, and to-the-point style, shares the results of an informal survey of top earners and the surprising conclusion he's drawn. Kevin Vincent shares the no-show story from hell, and a surprising amount of good humor about it to boot. I was intrigued when he wrote me saying, "I thought your readers might enjoy this tale of Networking woe, especially those who have fallen victim to a prospect who doesn't show up for a presentation." I think you'll find that it may come in handy one day for putting no-show experiences into perspective.
And there's more... but back to Tom and his insights. In honor of him and them and the fleeting indulgence of sunny June afternoons, here's an insight to contemplate from someone else who saw the world from a slightly different angle than the rest of us-- Mr. Walker Percy, in The Second Coming:
But first, his "revelation." As he sat gazing at the cat, he saw all at once what had gone wrong, wrong with people, with him, not with the cat-- saw it with the same smiling certitude with which Einstein is said to have hit upon his famous theory in the act of boarding a streetcar in Zurich.
There was the cat. Sitting there in the sun with its needs satisfied, for whom one place was the same as any other place as long as it was sunny... the cat was exactly a hundred percent itself, no more no less. As for people nowadays-- they were never a hundred percent themselves. They occupied a place uneasily and more or less successfully. More likely they were forty-seven percent themselves or rarely, as in the case of Einstein on the streetcar, three hundred percent. All too often these days they were two percent themselves, specters who hardly occupied a place at all...
There was his diagnosis, then. A person nowadays is two percent himself. And to arrive at a diagnosis is already to have anticipated the cure: how to restore the ninety-eight percent?
Perhaps this business is part of that restoration...
-- UO
Reprinted with permission from Upline, The First Word - June 1999, 888-UPLINE-1, http://www.upline.com
