Off your ass and into the street,

Out of the shade and into the heat,

Forget about Facebook, or email or tweets,

It's only through hard work and focus we eat.

Blow off the texting, exit the screen,

Stop eating grease bombs and drinking caffeine,

Control all your urges to act like a teen,

Stop dressing like children who love Halloween.

Through effort there's no goal you cannot attain,

It's not your degrees or the size of your brain,

You'll not win through beauty, no need to be vain,

Cling to your youth and you'll wind up insane.

So get off the couch and out of the chair,

Wipe off the sour puss and drop the despair,

Knock off the whining, there's wealth everywhere,

Just get off your ass and go grab your share.

The ability to serve as a television talk show celebrity or play in the NBA does not qualify an individual to land a fighter jet on an aircraft carrier or build a large organization in MLM.

 I don’t know what there is about MLM that causes rational adults to completely ignore the qualifications and experiences necessary to run a major corporation, but many people abandon all common sense when they decide to join a company.

Read this closely folks…tacit wisdom is not transferable. Either the owners of an MLM company have significant experience in the MLM profession or they don’t. Period. End of the story.

The fact that they are brilliant lawyers or quarterbacked a team that won the Super Bowl or perform as respected celebrities is of zero value when trying to manage an MLM company through hyper growth and international expansion.

Tacit wisdom is gained by significant repetitive execution of specific skills in a specific domain. Mediocre tennis pros can destroy world champion table tennis players on a tennis court.

We all understand that fact intellectually. So why do people join MLM organizations run by people whose successes have been in totally different fields of endeavor? I don’t know, but they do.

In the next blog, we’ll explore three more examples of Epistemic Irrationality.

Until then, may you only consider companies in which the leaders, products and owners have been fully researched. That’s a good start.

Rational adults will generally fall into one of two categories when exposed to an MLM opportunity…either they decide to join a company and sell products with no proof of efficacy beyond absurd testimonials or they refuse to join a company and sell products with stacks of scientific validation until they can themselves “try the product.”

I’ve enjoyed this industry for 25 years and every day it feels more and more like I’ve fallen down Alice’s rabbit hole where everything is backwards and Mad Hatters rule.

I’ve met doctors who join companies that sell magic wands and diet candy and blue collar workers who refuse to join companies selling remarkable technology with hundreds of double blind scientific studies that prove product efficacy. One example should put this in perspective.

I showed a very respected scientist a product line in a ground floor MLM company in mid 2011 with over 90 published articles in scientific journals. In spite of the fact that she needed the product and certainly needed the money, the doctor declined.

A couple of months later, she insisted that I meet her for breakfast so she could talk to me about something critical. I met with her and her husband and after few social niceties she pulled out a small silver wand that looked like a Cross pen and asked the waiter to bring us a lemon.

She told me that her magic wand from a new MLM company would turn the lemon “sweet.” It didn’t and I haven’t heard from her since. Perhaps she thought I would pretend that the lemon tasted sweet. It simply didn’t.

So, remember this. Either the product has been studied scientifically and the results published in legitimate journals or it hasn’t. If it hasn’t, don’t risk your honor and credibility on a handful of biased testimonials.

By age 30, people should be long past the age of believing in magic wands, diet candy or therapeutic foo foo powder from distant countries. But they aren’t. ‘Sup W’ Dat?

Stay tuned for Part Four…

EI (Epistemic Irrationality) Factor #1

Rational adults join stupid companies because total strangers, family members or friends with no verifiable credentials ask them to do so.

I have no idea why rational adults who read labels on virtually everything they eat or drink will buy a business kit and join an MLM company under any relative who calls them even if that relative has never held a job higher than assistant manager of Arby’s.

Some prospects will actually quit good jobs to follow failures with zero business experience into really stupid companies. What’s the solution?

If anyone contacts you about a “big money, free-time MLM opportunity,” ask him or her to either verify their own credentials or put you on the phone with a leader who is making the big money.

If he can’t, you’ve got a problem. Either no one is making the big money or they will not be accessible to you. In either case, you’re hooped.

MLM is a team sport. Without access to a successful coach or competent owners, no team can possibly compete no matter how many individual stars are on the team. The same thing is true in MLM. Without credible mentoring you cannot “luck” your way to $100K a month, no matter how talented you are.

If, on the other hand, you can gain access to company leaders or if your friend or relative has a great track record in the industry, move to the next step of due diligence. Whatever you do, don’t abandon your due diligence yet if you can be mentored by a true expert because that’s one of the most important elements of MLM success.

But remember, even if you gain access to competent leaders, that’s just the beginning. Warren Buffet and Bernie Madoff are both financial planners and investment experts. Let’s just say that one of them is eating a lot more macaroni and spam than the other!

'Sup W’ Dat? They both managed billions for other people.

Stay tuned for Part Three...

After twenty-five years in this industry I feel like I’ve learned enough to explain why some make millions while many others fail.

I will begin by introducing you to two words that you’ve probably never heard or seen. If there were more simple terms I’d use them, but there aren’t. Stay with me because at first I too found these terms a bit complicated.

I learned them in fabulous book written by fifteen of the world’s most respected psychologists/brain experts called, Why Smart People Can Be So Stupid, Yale University Press, 2002.

Those brilliant researchers coined the words Epistemic Irrationality to describe the root cause of stupid decisions.

Simply put, when people decide to take action they usually consider any relevant evidence that could impact their decision. Epistemic irrationality occurs when people refuse to take action even though all available evidence supports the fact that they should or when people take action even though all available evidence suggests that they shouldn’t. That’s when smart people make stupid decisions.

I can assure you that epistemic irrationality is an epidemic in our field.

In fact, were I hired to create a marble entryway with a universal slogan about our profession to be placed above the front entrance of every network marketing corporate office, it would read, “Abandon All Common Sense Ye Who Enter Here.”

Blaming the industry because many people fail to earn big checks is like blaming Orville and Wilbur Wright when the space shuttle blows up.

I can accept the fact that many people fail at MLM. What we need to understand is why they fail and more often than not, failure in MLM can be attributed to epistemic irrationality.

People simply refuse to weigh the preponderance of evidence about a particular company before they either join it or refuse to join it. Then, they blame the industry for their own foolish actions or inactions.

People violate one or more of several specific “common sense” factors. In future blogs, I’ll explain some of them. I call them EI Factors because they all revolve around epistemic irrationality (EI).

Stay tuned for Part 2...

 So I find myself at an intersection of interesting options. To follow path A is to content myself with the accumulation of knowledge for the sake of curiosity and personal wisdom. To follow path B, I must agree to sacrifice precious reading time on a regular basis in order to write a digital summary of my intellectual adventures so that others without the luxury of time freedom might gain from my accumulation of insights.

 After considerable reflection, I've chosen path B for two reasons. First I do enjoy writing. Second, I have to believe that a market for intelligent blogs does exit. By market, I'm not refrring to a group from which I might derive a diverse cluster of economic gains, but rather a diverse cluster of intelligent folks who actually appreciate knowledge for knowledge-sake.

You'll be happy to learn that when I recently turned 60 I made the conscious decision to abandon my efforts to become general manager of the universe although in my youth, especially during my drinking days, I was fairly certain that I would one day achieve that goal.

I don't want your money so you need not ever fear that by reading my blogs you will be added to a data base and one day asked to join me on a special prosperity cruise for "Yarnell's Secret Inner Circle."

 I am not interested in politics, have no new book to sell and could frankly care less about persuading others to believe what I opine. I intend to write for the pure joy of writing and if you like to read, I hope you'll enjoy my blogs. I also hope that my research will be interesting enough to some readers that they will actually (OMG) buy the book that I've written about and read it.

 Of course that's asking a lot in a world where we can zap bloodthirsty zombies 24/7 on a hand held mini computer more powerful than the ones that put us on the moon. Why exhaust our brains with the effort required to gather information through old fashion reading when we can become wizards in binary wars (not withstanding their sheer irrelevance or the fact that they lead to zero "real world" competencies)?

 I'll tell you why. Because reading is fun, rewarding and a marvelous strategic advantage to those who prefer to excel in a very competitive global economy. And unlike the results of participation in the digital pandemic, reading real books does not lead to social isolation, diminished spontaneity, stimulus-driven ADHD or cyber emotional abuse, the latter of which is supposedly responsible for a massive increase in teen suicides.

A pandemic is defined as a widespread, fast moving epidemic that affects all people. Unless you have been living in a cave for the past decade, you've probably noticed that most people cannot walk down the street without using a hand held screen. At least half the population is tethered to a wireless feed drip of irrelevant minutiae every waking hour.

Therefore, in the next blog I will discuss the marvelous new book by Dr Mack Hicks, founding member of the American Board of Neuropsychology and lead research scientist for the National Institute of Mental Health. The title of his new book is appropriately called The Digital Pandemic: Re-establishing Face-to-face Contact in the Electronic Age.

 Until next week....happy tweeting. Oh, and one final thought - did you turn the stove off?

Now that I’m living in British Columbia, that’s in Canada just toclarify that for my U.S. friends, I am privileged to get informationearly because of the willingness of the media up here to actuallyengage in investigative journalism. The facts I just read were sofrightening that I decided to send them to my readers in a blog. Thisinformation could save your life, so I suggest that you take itseriously.

Itwas recently discovered that a specific coffee drink, a double/double,caramel frappy, somehow causes a mental state similar to that whichresults from two shots of hundred proof vodka.

Evidently,the coffee mixture is problematic enough to have been banned in severalprovinces and thirty foreign countries. In several locations itliterally cannot be consumed legally by drivers.

What’smade this coffee so dangerous has been the media’s unwillingness todisclose these facts until recently. Evidently, research has come tolight that proves that this coffee has caused the deaths of 159 BritishColumbian citizens in just the last year. That’s a published statistic.

Believe it or not, people up here are still drinking this coffee and the publicity about the deaths has made it seem cool.

Aslong as it’s legal, the death toll is bound to rise in spite of thefact that half those who died were innocent victims of some fool whoswerved over the yellow line and hit them head on.

I’mnot sure about whether this particular coffee is being offered in U.S.coffee shops but if it is, please don’t take any chances with itanytime you are planning to operate a motor vehicle. 159 deaths is anunbelievably sad statistic given the small population in one of theCanadian provinces and all of them were needless.

So I must urge my Canadian and U.S. friends to learn from the unnecessary grief thrust painfully into the lives of 159 families.

Waita minute… I apologize. I wrote coffee. What I meant to write was cellphones. Pardon the error. Everything else was accurate.

Another MLM Fairy Tale from an Industry Outsider

By Mark Yarnell

I’ve had about enough self-righteous opinions from financial sector capitalists who, perhaps embarrassed about their own performance, insist on criticizing legitimate professions.

One such asset manager, David John Marotta, took a shot at multi-level marketing (MLM) or network marketing recently in this journal and his analysis was so flawed, unsubstantiated and preposterous that I simply couldn’t let it slide. Like so many other self-appointed pseudo-experts, Mr. Marotta evidently decided to hold court outside his own domain and, in so doing, embarrassed himself and his profession.

David is probably a wonderful asset manager, but I humbly suggest that he focus his energy on rehabilitating his “Madoff World” and leave multilevel marketing to the experts.

In case you missed his editorial, here are a few of his bits of wisdom.

“MLM is a non-sustainable business model because it simply provides a product that has been marked up in price.”

Sorry David but last year alone, as a matter of public record, Amway did 8.2 billion in sales and Mary Kay, Herbalife and Primerica each did in excess of 2 billion. Those are just a few examples of companies that have been extremely profitable for dozens of decades. So much for non-sustainability.

Oh, and by the way, on planet earth every product that is for sale has been “marked up in price.” You see David, that’s how capitalism works. According to your bio, you do fee-only financial planning. Your fee, David, is a mark-up. Instead of anything tangible, you mark up a service that may help people or wipe them out financially. Either way you make money.

Among other things, David goes on to assert that MLM is “not really a business,” “we offend our friends and families,” create “no real value,” and “endlessly recruit hopefuls who churn at the bottom of a pyramid,” while “only those positioned at the top” collect big checks. He closes by calling our profession a “distraction from a genuine vocational calling.”

Although the editorial rules in this journal request substantiation, Mr. Marotto offered not one shred of support for his Wikipedia-style distortions. Why? Because his ramblings lack credible research and support.

As a best selling author I’ve met thousands of wonderful men and women since 1986 who, like me, joined established MLM companies at the very bottom and became wealthy through hard work and perseverance. We started with no money, special skills, or credentials and delivered superior products and services to people all over the world by word-of-mouth advertising. Many of us have earned millions over the years and given huge amounts to charities and multiple worthy causes.

My international MLM business has taken me to every continent. Unlike financial planners, we don’t just sit at home and collect fees by moving money around, we build international distribution organizations that allow common people with very little capital to prosper based on their own hard work and character. Many of our products and services are far superior to the crap from overseas that people purchase from big-box superstores.

David closed with the following delusional comment, “There are hundreds of legitimate business opportunities available for entrepreneurs who want to build companies that provide real value.” Sorry David, but you need to read a few books by legitimate writers. There are no options for millions of boomers who have been hammered relentlessly into horrible debt loads by unconscionable casino capitalism just in time for retirement. Others have worked diligently for decades only to have their assets “managed” into oblivion by people in your world.

Many have seen their assets converted from 401Ks to 201Ks by people in your profession. The only time I turned over $300,000 to an asset manager it was down the toilet in 3 years thanks to stupid, high-risk investments. Fortunately, I’ve managed the bulk of my MLM income over the years and have been comfortably semi-retired since the late 1980s.

There are good people and bad people in every profession. I’m going to assume that David is more like Warren Buffet than Bernie Madoff because ignorance is not always an indication of malice. So, David why don’t you pick up the phone and ask Mr. Buffet why he calls MLM a great field. Better yet, ask him why he owns The Pampered Chef. He might be able to teach you why so many experienced asset managers regard MLM with respect.

If you are going to offer bogus advice about any additional profession, may I humbly suggest that you do so on blogs and Twitter where everyone expects to read irrelevant minutiae from clueless writers. Why embarrass yourself, your clients and others in your profession by writing in a legitimate journal when you can spread inaccuracies online and even fabricate your identity?

If you enjoy concocting inaccuracies about MLM, think of the fun you can have online by pretending to be any expert in law or medicine. The possibilities are endless. You could write one week about dangerous surgical techniques secretly used by pediatric cardiologists, and the next about legislative challenges in tort reform.

I’d like to end by thanking Adam Rombel, editor of the Central New York Business Journal for his professional integrity. In an age when many periodicals pander only to special interests, his journal is obviously engaged in presenting both sides of issues. It’s refreshing to have access to a legitimate journal with no hidden agenda or stereotypical biases.

Mark Yarnell is author of the Random House bestseller, Your First Year in Network Marketing and former Contributing Editor to Success magazine. Contact him with questions at vbates@telus.net or 250-769-3214.