Bill Gates has an interesting description of what we should do and how we should live. I think it’s only fitting that we all look closely at his concept of values. He’s not only the wealthiest man in the world, but he lives by a philosophy that recently caused Microsoft to lose a 90 million dollar lawsuit to their own employees. In 1991 he and his leaders downgraded 12,000 loyal workers and executives to temp status so Microsoft wouldn’t have to provide them benefits. It took those employees nearly a decade to win back their status, but during the downgrade they lost millions in stock options and many are very bitter. The $100 million the court ordered Microsoft to pay those employees was minor compared to what they could have earned had they been valued.

 
Gates says one should, “position oneself in a network of possibilities.” Unfortunately, that also describes Alzheimer’s and dementia. According to computer programmer and author Ellen Ullman, “People have become nonpersons who walk around pretending to say and do all the right things but whose lives are completely empty. We lead machine-centered lives full of automated tellers, portable phones, pagers, keyboards and mice. There is constant talk of teamwork but it’s all phony. In reality we are all creatures swimming along in puddles of time destined for obesity and trivia.” I would add the opinion that values and ethics are down the toilet.

 
Folks, listen closely. I’m not a cynic, I’m a critical thinker who honestly believes that Network Marketing is the last bastion of healthy capitalism. We cannot be downsized or outsourced and our world revolves around relationships rather than machines. But we must all practice a simple rule of excellence if we are to avoid the insanity of traditional business.

I call it Yarnell’s Law of 6 3 2.

Do one thing at a time.
Do it right.
Finish it.

Forget about multiple streams of income and make a ten year commitment to the company you love. Don’t be scattered, and for your family’s sake, turn off the machines for a couple of hours a day and talk to real prospects and customers. Remember, every time you change companies you start from scratch. And every time you start from scratch, you are acting like a temp. In a world characterized by constant change and fluidity, nothing can be taken very seriously and failure becomes a regular event. The so-called prosperity of the 90’s was really a winner-take-all greedy era in which only the upper 10% made all the big money. Network Marketing is a system of relationship building that creates organizations of human beings with deep reasons to care about each other.

 
We are the luckiest people in the world, but we need to remember that our world is built around other human beings and not machines. Those Networkers who earn the most money are consistently building the most relationships with real people. Turn off your machines and turn on your charm for a couple of hours each day. You’ll be glad you did.

Remember, we aren’t middle-class temps in some silly multinational corporation. We are independent distributors who have no cap on earnings and no way to be terminated or marginalized. But we must remain committed to people and focused on relationships…not machines and binary code. No thank you Mr. Gates.