No big deal. No doubt you [like me], get invitations to ‘get in early’ on the next new thing.

With the advent of the internet MLM opportunities abound. And the power of leverage through duplication has reached new heights through this medium.

What still fascinates me is the stigma or bad rap that attaches itself to MLM.

For every opportunity, there seems to be somebody when reckons it’s a scam, or it won’t work, or there’s no money to be made and so on.

And I am sure you a familiar with these scenarios.

MLM does offer a way for Mr and Mrs Average to go into business for themselves with relatively low capital or risk.

So why are so many people closed to the idea in these times of job insecurity of creating an ‘insurance policy’ against possible lay off, or just building a nest egg for the future?

There are many, many  answers to that question so I won’t bore you with a whole raft of explanations.

What I will say is this:

Any new venture requires consistent application, dedication and perseverance.

You go to work don’t you? You spend on average 40 hours every week in exchange for wages or a salary.

How many hours per week do you or would you put into a new venture that holds the promise of additional, maybe replacement income on a consistent basis?

How many people do you know that have told you that it [the new venture] got too hard?

How many of you were just ‘3 feet from Gold‘?

Was there a written goal statement with a time line. Was there an action plan? Was there a burning desire and faith in yourself to keep going no matter what? Were you persistent and consistent, passionate even.

One thing MLM consistently offers is a path to personal development, an opportunity to develop yourself by learning from others and going out and doing the business.

The upside is always a better you a more positive you and maybe a more secure you. The upside comes with consistent application.

Robert Kiyosaki and Jack Canfield among other luminaries espouse the benefits of MLM.

One way to really benefit is to study carefully Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich and begin to apply the lessons to your own life. For many of you that is not an easy thing to do.

I am revisiting these teachings and seeing them in a new light.

If you would like some help fill in your details and hit the send button.

Everything starts with an action – take some action today.

Our brains do not need to lose function. In fact we can improve our brains by being challenged and stretched!

So you are not the same we were a few moments ago, a few days ago or even last year or the year before that! You are always in a sate of change. So is the world. The only constant is change.

If you look back on your childhood to where you are now, what has changed? The way we do business, banking, how we connect [e.g. Web 2.0], even what we eat.

When I was a kid, shops closed Fridays [except the corner dairy and some gas stations], and reopened Monday. Same at Christmas – you would need to buy supplies to last pretty much from 24th December [Christmas eve] thru to after New Year!

We did not have refrigerators, or TV, a transistor radio was a thing of great marvel. When Fax machines arrived we could not believe how we ever did business without one! We travelled in airplanes with propellers.

Now we have TV on our computers we have friends we have never met all around the world, we can communicate from one hemisphere to another and get a reply in minutes, send movies on our mobile phones and have access to as much information as we could possibly ask for on any given topic.

Experienced online marketers can write and promote a book to bestseller status inside a week!

And then we had 9/11.

What a significant event and how quickly the world changed in response! Terrorism took on a whole new meaning. The world is no longer the same as it was.

Now we have the financial markets meltdown. And again the world is radically changing. It is fair to say that the old model/s to a greater or lesser extent, and this will depend on how you might be affected by it all, won’t work quite the same way. Business will change or perhaps the rate of change will indeed accelerate.

Print media are reformulating their online plans and strategies as traditional revenues dry up. Many traditional news businesses have already succumbed.

Blogs are proliferating at a phenomenal rate. Many of you will follow a blog or several at the expense of newspapers.

Barack Obama used modern technology to mobilize support in ways never done before.The world is not the same any more.

Have I experienced change? You bet!  Have I changed as a result? Yes, you bet! How did I go about it? I asked questions, I observed and I started reading books on personal development.

Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, John Kehoe and others became my role models. I accidentally embraced self – development. I attended courses on personal development. 

• I trained as a Life Coach.
• I learned NLP to Master Practitioner level. I am a Reiki Master.
• I practice EFT and dabble in Numerology.

I guarantee you I shall continue to learn and grow and change.
My world – view is now completely different. In many ways it is quite different from that of my parents [our generation tended to mirror our parents], but my values are still intact!

And it won’t ever be the same – it never was. Get used to this key idea.
As Ghandi said all those years ago: ‘You must be the change you wish to see in the world’.

How can I do that you ask, as the pace of change seems to accelerate? How can I influence change?

What’s the use? Things and events will happen with or without me. Yes they will.

Have you noticed how powerful personalities or entrepreneurs get to the top, and seem to be influential?

What is about them? What makes them different? Maybe the question you ought to ask yourself is ‘How?’

How can I be like them? How can I influence people and events? The answer is always the same: Through personal development or self – development.
Firstly, there was a dream or a vision and then a desire and then some form of action was taken.

A goal was set.

There is no ’secret’ to success. History is littered with role models of success. There is no limit to how many of you can be successful. It’s never crowded at the top. It sure as heck is crowded at the bottom.

Phil Linklater