The first assumption is that you would go to people who are already extremely successful in life. That’s not a bad approach and I encourage you to do it. However, my experience is that very few leaders came from successful backgrounds.

The prospects I talked to who were already making good money with their jobs or another business were already fairly content.

Most of my leaders were people who were NOT making very much money at all, and were extremely unhappy with their financial situation.

In looking for “entrepreneurs” we’re not necessarily looking for people who have been successful business persons in the past. We want to find those that have the entrepreneurial SPIRIT.

Most of these people will be UNHAPPY with their current situation in life. They usually have some type of pain that motivates them to run from. This highly motivates them to change their station in life.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that the best prospects come from skid row!

They must also believe in themselves and the possibility of doing better.

They must be SELF- disciplined and SELF-motivated.

It’s true that you should never judge a book by its cover. Your next leader can come from anywhere. Spend the time with each prospect to find out who they are, how they are suffering, and how motivated they are to change their life. It’s their determination to make a major change that is more important than anything else.

In his famous book, All You Can Do Is All You Can Do But All You Can Do Is Enough! A.L. Williams summarizes all of success into one word: “DESIRE.”

The good news is that these people are the easiest to sponsor! They believe in themselves, they are open to a new opportunity and they are highly motivated. In fact, these people ARE going to join a business, it’s just a matter of which one.

Appearances can be deceiving. Take time to know your prospects. Talk to them, get to know their thoughts, feelings, pains, struggles, hopes and desires. It’s what in their heart that matters.

But I’ve never thought that was a very good name for this business. It describes the structure of how we’re compensated, but misses the unique aspect of our business.

MLM would better be understood as “Multi-Leveraged Marketing,” because leverage is the key to success in this business, as it is with any other (as described in the last blog entry).

With real estate, investing and traditional business, leverage comes with a huge risk, but in MLM that risk can be avoided.

• In real estate we are leveraging a tangible property.
• In investing we are leveraging an investment.
• In traditional business we are leveraging other people’s time and skills.

In MLM we are leveraging “OPE:” “Other People’s Entrepreneurship.”

If you fail, you do not have a huge, illiquid property to try to unload, you don’t get a margin call, and you don’t have to worry about paying back a business loan.

It’s the only business I now where you get the leverage without the risk. That is a dreamy combination!

Because no matter how you live your life, having money always makes things easier.  It may not solve all of your problems, and may even create a new set of problems.   But have you ever heard someone say they would have LESS problems if they had LESS money?  I doubt it.

There’s Only ONE Way to Get Stinkin’ (I mean “Fragrantly”) Rich!

What is the key to getting RICH? I don’t mean, making money, just getting by, or making a little more today than you did yesterday. I mean making truck loads of money, and making it over and over and over.

The key has always been summarized in one word: “Leverage.”

Real Estate has probably made more millionaires than any other business. One reason is that it allows you to use tremendous leverage: Buy a property with 20%, 10%, 5% or even with NOTHING down, and you control an expensive asset.

The financial markets have made many millionaires. Stocks, and especially futures and options allow a person to own part of a company or a market, with 50%, 25%, 5% or in the case of currencies, as little as 2% down. Again you control a lot of financial power, without having to use much of your own money.

Of course, this was before the markets crashed and the housing market fell.

Traditional business also allows you to use leverage. You use the leverage of your employees time and skill, pay them a little less than what they’re worth, and you can become very wealthy.

Leverage is clearly the key to becoming wealthy. But all three examples have the same Achilles heel: Leverage is a two-edged sword. You can control a large financial stake with very little of your own money, so when you win, you win big … but when you lose, you can lose more than you have!

If you bought a $1 million property with no money down, because you didn’t have any money, you may be excited. But if the property goes down in value $200,000, and you can’t rent it out, and you can’t afford the mortgage payments, then you’re stuck having to sell it for a loss … plus transaction costs.

In short, leverage turned bad, can make you lose MORE money than you have!

MLM is the one business that allows you to have leverage, but without that type of “lose everything and MORE” risk.  I’ll explain it in detail in the next post.

In the meantime, this makes for good reading…Think and Grow Rich