Leave Nothing To Chance

 

As generations come and go, so do the core values along with them. Did you know that those core values that started with generation one are slowly but surely dissipating with today’s generation? Learn how business millionaires of the past, from Mary Kay to John Fleming, rose to prominence. Discover the different generations and how their core value principles differ with Larry Thompson and Ron Henley. Larry and Ron are the authors of the book, The Millionaire Training. Take a journey through history with your host, John Solleder, and his guests Larry and Ron. Learn how Amway opened the business in the 70s, how Mary Kay empowered women in business, and how people need to build their core values up again for true financial success.

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Millionaire Training History Lesson With Larry Thompson And Ron Henley

Most of you have met my good friend, Ron Henley. The Curator and Founder of The Network Marketing Historical Society in beautiful Atlanta, Georgia. We’ve had two incredible sessions with Ron. Bringing us up to speed about the origins of Network Marketing, the history of this business model, and some of the key players in it, key companies in it, and key dates in it, for that matter. I’ve been doing this for many years and I’ve learned a heck of a lot interviewing Ron. We have a credible guest. We have a guy who means a lot to me as a friend. Most importantly, as my first mentor in the business of network marketing. A gentleman I’ve known since 1983. I walked into a room when I was a college student at Seton Hall University, Go Pirates.

On April 18th, 1983, I started in the industry. The month after that, I graduated college and Ronald Reagan was our commencement speaker. Ronald Reagan talked about mentorship that day and how important it was to find a mentor. It happened in his life earlier on. You know his story. He got into broadcasting because a mentor of his suggested that’s what he should do. “Find a mentor, somebody who is interested,” so he did. He became president and our greatest president in my lifetime certainly.

On top of that, about 30 days later, I went to my first real meeting in Hartford, Connecticut with my upline and with several people that we had sponsored into our business. We poured into an old station wagon with a hole on the floor. We drove to Hartford, Connecticut about five hours from New Jersey, where we lived at the time. I’ll never forget that meeting as long as I live. There were about 1,000 people in the room. All I had heard about was this Larry Thompson guy. “He was amazing. He was going to teach this stuff.” Of course, I had listened to The Millionaire Training tapes. I had heard the voice. Maybe because I’m a big guy, I was able to nudge my way into the front of the crowd. I was probably in about the 3rd or 4th row.

I’ll never forget this. I’ve shared this with Larry’s wife, Taylor, on many occasions. I felt like I was seeing Elvis Presley. It was incredible when Larry came out. The oxygen level in the room, you could feel it go up. You knew you were seeing somebody who was going to have an impact on your life and your career. I can’t tell you everything Larry said that day, but I can tell you one thing that I can recite in my sleep at 3:00 AM and that’s, “For things to change, you have to change and for things to get better, you have to get better.”

That became a mantra. That started to change the way that I thought. I thought at that point, the economy or the president or my girlfriend or my parents or my circumstance was going to dictate how my life was going to turn out. I quickly realized that if it was to be, it was proverbially up to me to do so and to adopt some of the skills that Larry shared that day. It changed my life. All these years later, we’re still good friends. We’re neighbors here in Dallas, about fifteen miles from each other. We get together and have a meal once in a while. We break bread and talk about all things. I value Larry’s friendship and his mentorship tremendously. As a matter of fact, in my book, Leave Nothing to Chance, Larry is not only in it but wrote the foreword, too. Of course, The Millionaire Training book, which I’m sure he’s going to mention, is a book that I was honored to be in, as well as Ron Henley, for that matter, who helped to write the foreword of that.

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It’s going to be amazing because you’re going to learn some things that are going to impact your business for years to come. Most importantly, as Larry will share, most of the worth-knowing things in this industry can be learned and retained. That’s what I started in June 1983. All these years later, I’m still learning. I’m still a student first, a teacher second. That’s what it is. Larry, thank you for everything you’ve done for countless other people around the world and me. Ron Henley is going to pick up the story of your career and we’ll go from there. What’s up, Ron?

As far as Larry and I are concerned, it’s funny we both got started knocking in ‘68, but I was only five. He was able to do something with it, but I wasn’t. My dad and grandpa had a network marketing business with a company called Automotive Performance out of Dallas, Texas, where you guys are. Zig Ziglar was the corporate trainer. They were gearheads, so this was an automotive product that injected ethanol and horsepower booster and everything into a car. It was right up their alley. With Zig Ziglar personally mentoring them, they built the largest team in the Southeast in that company. I got to meet Zig when I was five. Being a little kid around that was invaluable.

I did everything I could as a five-year-old to absorb and learn. I took coats, served refreshments, and helped set up and tear down the room. I did everything I could do to be around these people. Of course, I got to see the testimonials that came across the stages. I sat there wide-eyed as a five-year-old getting all that stuff poured into me was invaluable. That’s what I was able to do as a five-year-old kid and that changed my life. The entrepreneur spark that my family gave to me at such a young age, I’ll be forever grateful for it. Speaking of 1968, Larry, share about your time coming in.

I never thought I would come in to do anything except do cement work. I was a construction worker. As I tell the story all the time, I’m a long-haired hippie construction worker with no education, no self-confidence, and no self-esteem. I could tell you the color of your shoes because I was looking down, but I could never tell you the color of your eyes. I was bad and I still have those traits. Those traits haven’t gone away. In front of the camera and on the stage is different from me, there are a lot of musicians and a lot of actors that have the same liability or advantage. I don’t know what it is.

 

John, I want to come back to you here about that introduction that you said about Elvis. That’s funny to me. Most people reading this don’t know who Elvis is. That went over their head. You’re talking about for things to change, you got to change and for things to get better, you got to get better. That’s what got me, too. That statement did not come from me. That came from Jim Rohn. He was the originator. That might have been a real show. Ron would be able to tell more about that than I am. The first trading class that I ever attended in my life was Jim Rohn. I came to that training.

By the way, Jim Rohn and I joined the same company the same night called Bestline Products in May of 1968. We were both there as guests the same night. It’s a little bit different setup there because he came in and back then, everybody wore suits. At the meetings, this might sound strange, but people were drinking whiskey, smoking cigars, wearing suits, white shoes, and driving Cadillacs. The best cars you could get in America back then were a Cadillac or a Lincoln. He was there as a guest. He was there under a little bit of a different set of circumstances because he and Bobby had worked together before Neutral Bio. Maybe Ron can fill in some of those gaps.

He was there because Bobby was a vice president and he wanted Jim to come in and be the vice president of training. That deal was set, but Jim said, “I won’t do that. I’ve got to come in first and be a distributor and build up an organization so that when I go out into the field for the company, they’ll accept me.” That’s something that’s served me for many years. I’ve done that three times in my life. It worked for me exactly that same way. We joined the same night. Bobby Depew was giving a meeting that night. A lot of people don’t know Bobby Depew, but I had the privilege of working with Bobby and Jim up to their passing. It was quite something for me because, for some reason, at that time, I didn’t understand it then the way I understand it now.

They saw something in me that I never saw in myself. Both of you can probably identify with that when you meet somebody and you start working with them a little better and talking a little bit. You can sense that little bit of extra desire, willingness to work, and maybe teachability, humbleness, gumption, or whatever it is. They saw that in me, the combination of all of that and they brought that out in me. I didn’t know it. I didn’t see me the way they saw me. I didn’t feel about me the way that they felt about me. It wasn’t anything we discussed. It was just something that we experienced. That was a big deal. Now, we say, “How are you feeling? Let’s get this up. Let’s work with you over here.” That wasn’t the way it was done. It was done like, “This is how we do it. If we do it like this, you could do it like this.”

In my first training class after I joined, three weeks later, there was a training class that Jim was doing for his new group. They were smart enough to open it up to all groups because that was a showcase. I almost didn’t go to that meeting. It was close. It was on a Saturday. I did construction work and I worked most Saturdays. I worked my regular job from Monday through Friday and on Saturdays and Sundays, I did side jobs doing patios, driveways, sidewalks, and stuff like that.

It was a big deal for me not to work on that Saturday, but that wasn’t what was holding me back. What held me back was the price point to come to that meeting and it was $10, including lunch. I couldn’t believe it. I said, “$10?” My wife at the time wanted to go and I said, “That’s $20.” I was the one who went. That meeting was interesting for me because I never ever in my life had thought about doing anything except construction work until that night I met Bobby and Jim. I never thought I could do it to any degree at all until I came back from that training class with Jim. I got away with, “For things to change, you got to change and for things to get better, you got to get better,” like you did, John. I’ve got away with it. That made sense. I never heard anything like that in my life.

The second thing that I got away with was the mental projector. Both of these things are in the book and both of them are in the academy. It’s something that I’ve built on many years ago, John. I was talking about then and still talking about now. That to me is the same way and that still affects me now. I know someone like me, a long-haired hippie construction worker with no confidence, no self-esteem, and no skills at all. I have no people skills whatsoever. It was construction worker language all the way. It was a construction worker personality all the way.

Back then, you had to work to earn your money, but I got away with the nuances of what he was saying. For the first time in my life, I started to believe that maybe somebody like myself would have a chance at doing something like this. I was happy doing my construction work because I was working with my family, brothers, cousins, and uncles. I enjoyed it and I loved it. It might sound crazy to you. I loved it then as much as I love this now because I was good at it. The fact that it was construction work and the fact that I was a cement worker, you don’t mess around with cement. There are certain things you have to do at a certain time to have a predictable outcome in 0.5 or 2 or 3 hours and you’ve got to do it ahead of time.

That thinking helped me in what we were doing, so I’m forever thankful for that. That led me through the end of the ‘60s and the ‘70s. There was a lot of upheaval in the ‘60s and ‘70s in our space because of regulatory issues. Justifiable, by the way. As I shared before many times, Amway is forever. I don’t know what anybody thinks about Amway, but they’re our boys because they fought. All the companies were going out of business. As soon as you got big at all, which was $3 million or $4 million a month, they came and knocked on your door justifiably because of the packages that they were selling back then.

You had a few companies like Mary Kay, Shaklee, Amway. It gets short after that. They ran what I would now call is a legitimate program. You got to realize it wasn’t illegal. It was just not recognized as a way of doing business. Amway fought for the right to do it. Finally, in 1979, they won that lawsuit. They got a consent decree with the FTC and the attorney generals that said, “If you operate it like this, then we will call you multi-level marketing.” To me, that’s the first time that I have any knowledge. Maybe Ron will have some different knowledge that term, multi-level marketing, was ever used and it was in the legal documents that Amway signed. “If you operated like this, we would call you legal.”

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It was a heavy retail, wholesale model where most of the money went to the person selling the product. Generational money, royalty checks, unilevel, binary. Using those terms, it was one generation. One percent is what it was. That’s what they had and when that was signed off on, then it opened up the door and you have some other language in there that looks like you can have more than one generation. When we started Herbalife in 1980, we were big boys. We made three generations of 5% with these new rules that were in. That’s how we started and it’s been phenomenal.

I don’t want to dominate the conversation here, but I could give you a little history from there. From that 1979 consent decree that Amway signed off on and the Federal Trade Commission signed off on, it opened up the door to a brand-new audience. As I said jokingly, but it was true, three-piece suit, whiskey-drinking, cigar-smoking, white shoes, Cadillac-driving, heavy salespeople environment, selling big packages is what it was before. When these new rules came out that said, “They’re saying that we can do this and it can last if we’ll do it right,” it opened up the audience to a different breed of people like the truck driver, waitress, mattress salesman, and carpet cleaner. If you operate and people would listen to you, you have addressed that audience. The language changed. You have to change the way you talk to them.

 

Now, I refer to the talking audience as a Lamborghini bikini top. Showing pictures of your food, vacation, and diamonds. That audience had shrunk back then and it’s drastically shrinking now. That’s why the network marketing industry profession, the network marketing sales model, has been declining over the last few years because the audience, language, and behavior have drastically changed, just like what happened in 1980 when Herbalife got started and the Amway thing. We had that going on.

We had a pandemic type of environment that we were coming out of. Most people have never even taken a look at this in the space nowadays. We have new rules that say there’s a different, bigger working audience out now. If you speak their language, then if they come involved, that creates the behavior to drive your business model. Nobody saw it, but we saw it when we started with Herbalife. I did not understand the audience’s language or behavior the way I’m describing to you now, but that’s what it was. Since we’re coming out of this pandemic type of environment, people were displaced. Due to the Iran-Contra, there was no gas in America. There was an oil embargo on America. You can only buy gas for your car on even or odd days of the last digit of your license plate. There was no grocery store. It wasn’t filled up. Everything was empty. Unemployment was running 25% and interest was 25%.

Millions of displaced Americans would not listen to the so-called multi-level Ponzi environment. Now, they’re displaced and they’re walking for a few extra hundred dollars like Lamborghini bikini. Now, for $500 to $1,500 a month, they will listen to your story if your language is right. That audience was bigger than anybody ever thought. There are some correlations of what’s going on here now to the audience, language, or behavior. For example, there are approximately 7 million people in the network marketing direct sales space, but because of the environment of the pandemic, there are about 60 to 65 million people that have been displaced that would not listen to you before about your opportunity that will listen to you now.

You’ve got to realize the number is bigger, but the behavior and the language have got to be adapted. They’re not looking for the $10,000 a month in the diamond ranks. What they’re looking for is to be able to pay their mortgage payment or pay half of it. What they’re looking for is to be able to keep their kids at mom-care instead of daycare. What they’re looking for is the car payment. If that audience exists, almost 65 million people will listen to you, but you’d better have the right language that would create the right behavior. That’s what I got for you so far.

Let’s go back a little bit. Let’s play word association. I’ll throw some names at you and then I’ll have Ron throw some names at you. Here’s the thing for the readers, there have been significant people that made this industry happen, like Larry referenced the Amway case. Without Amway fighting that battle, none of us are here. This industry, this business, or whatever you want to call it doesn’t exist. It’s not here. We’re all doing something else for a living. There are significant people. When I started, which was 1983, I started to learn about some of these other companies and some of these other people. We’ll play word association. I’ll throw some names and I’ll throw it to Ron. He’ll throw some names of some people and their significance in the industry. You mentioned Amway, so let’s start there. Richard DeVos and Jay Van Andel.

The reality was when I got started in 1968, Amway was looked upon a little bit as a joke because they were conservative and they didn’t have that fancy type of environment where they sold those big packages, $5,000, $6,000, $10,000, or $15,000 packages. They had a legitimate product line that they were selling retail and people were making a retail profit off of it. That’s why they could have a one-generation payout, not six-unit levels. There’s a difference between a unilevel and a generation and very few people understand it.

Nowadays, 4, 5, 6, 7 unilevel, that money is moved down away from the sale. That was looked upon as a joke. A joke is too strong. It wasn’t looked at as anything that was of any significance because it took longer to make money. Not only did Rich and Jay fight for this, but Amway was a personal development company. That’s where they came from. Rich DeVos was so strong and unbelievable. Compassionate enterprise and commercial, his language, and the stuff that he taught were powerful.

It was a personal development company that had biodegradable soap products. Clean, organic soap products were the platform for him to bring people in to do this personal development. He was big on free enterprise in America. That changed as they got that consent decree changed and signed off on. For me, it changed. I had such high respect and still do because it influenced the way that I put the structure together for Herbalife tremendously and wrote off in their coattails.

How about Mary Kay?

Mary Kay was an exciting thing for me because Mary Kay was a woman. She was the first woman out there in our type of space or any type of space that was strong and vibrant. She never forgot the woman’s place. She always created that environment for the woman. The product line was significant and they sold like crazy. Amway and Mary Kay sold a lot of products on a daily basis that people loved. Back to Amway, biodegradable soap products. There was a river in Ohio that was on fire because of the pollution. They had biodegradable, organic, clean products back then, leading the pack. The same thing with Mary Kay, leading the pack with high-quality, clean as you can possibly get back then in cosmetics and stuff.

One of my favorite things about Mary Kay is that she never stopped her commitment, passion for women, and her place in the marketplace. When they made the story in the movie about her, it was played by Shirley MacLaine. Most people don’t know who she is. You got to realize she lived and died on her products and lived and died on the effects of women in the marketplace, on themselves, the family, and in the community. She tiptoed up and kissed her son on the cheek. She said, “Never forget, it’s not about the product. It’s about the woman.” That’s contradictory, but not to me at all. The product has to be there, but it was about the woman and the woman’s place. That was a long time ago.

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In the middle of your training phase, which you got referred to and a lot of people are still referred to, that was recorded on February 21st, 1981. I talked about the role of women in our space many years ago. I talked about the role that it was going to happen and what was going to take place. Now, over 70% are women. The growth of almost every company is coming from women now. Back then, women were allowed to do the registration table upfront and set up the display. Man did all the work. That was significant. That was there recorded in 1981 what’s going to happen. Incidentally, the first two millionaires graded in Herbalife outside of Mark and I were Geri Cvitanovich the grocery checker sponsored by Mark, and Tish Rochin, the lady truck driver sponsored by me. That’s a little bit off subject matter here, but that’s what this show is about.

I’ll never forget the first magazine in my distributor kit in April 1983, Tish Rochin.

On the cover.

I got an autographed copy that she gave me when we did our thing. That was 2012 when we did The Millionaire Training event here in Dallas together. Let’s keep going. One point on Mary Kay for our readers and you are aware of this is, Mary Kay was starting that business with her husband. He passed away of a heart attack as they started the business. I don’t know if it’s still there. The Mary Kay Museum here at their home office in Dallas, you go through it. That canceled check to start the business, I don’t remember how much it was, but it was a minuscule amount compared to what it costs to start a company now. It’s an amazing story. The other guy in that sphere that helped create what we think of as modern network marketing to me would be Dr. Shaklee. You grew up in that area, too.

Doc Shaklee was strong, powerful, and passionate about supplementation. Shaklee, in the crowd that I ran with, was looked at from a higher greater perspective than Amway was. I don’t know why that was. I can’t explain it. I look back on it and there’s no explanation I can come up with, except maybe my own bias. I’ve got no idea. Doc Shaklee was important. Shaklee was a major force and Mary Kay still is a major force. It was a major force out in the marketplace and aggressive. The first ones to lead the pack here with any significance with supplementation. I don’t know what else to say about it other than that.

I’m going to throw out two more names. I’m going to turn it over to Ron. He’s got a list of guys who he wants you to respond to. The next one, a guy I never met, but I followed a lot. You and I both have great respect for him. We compared notes on them in the past. It was Art Williams, the founder of AL Williams.

 

Art Williams was strong and powerful. How he was conducting the business at the end of the ‘70s going into the ‘80s was dynamic. Quite frankly, I was a little bit intimidated by it because I’m the one here who hit the construction worker. Know the color of your shoes, not your eyes. The power of that was a little bit intimidating for me. His impact on our space and his message was extremely valuable. I never met him, but I’ve met people that were involved with him. Their reverence for him, the respect, and their appreciation for what they learned were unparalleled to me.

It is another one of those companies, even though Art sold in a course and it’s morphed a couple of times into what it is now. However, it’s still going and it’s still making money. It’s amazing. It was a paradigm shift in a little bit in network marketing because it was the first pills, powders, and potions that could make a multi-level model work with something different. The last one I’ll throw at you here is your former partner and good friend, Mr. Mark Hughes.

I will forever ever be thankful to Mark for giving me the platform to do what we did with Herbalife. He gave me a clean slate. You were there and you know what it was. He gave me that and entrusted me with that. I’m referred to a lot as the cofounder of Herbalife, but I’m not a cofounder. Mark and I had a partnership, a 5H/3H split partnership on it. Remember I said Jim Rohn and I joined the same company the same night in 1968. Interesting story about Mark, in 1978, ten years later, Mark Hughes and I joined the same company the same night. Larry Huff had started a company called Golden Youth Marketing and Larry Huff was in my upline in Bestline.

He started his company and I happened to run into him at the airport. I didn’t know he started a company. There was no communication like we have now. When we lost the guy’s phone number, that was it. He was gone forever. He tapped me on the shoulder at the airport and he told me what he’s doing and said, “Come on down.” I wasn’t interested in doing anything at that point. I came down to the meeting. I’m like, “Why not? I like Larry. It’s fun. It was entertaining. He’s dynamic and all that stuff. He started a new company I wanted to see.” I came to the meeting that night and Mark Hughes came to that same meeting and we both joined the company that night. It was a new twist, exercise equipment. Not lotions and potions and things.

Jane Wyman was an actress and she was their spokesperson on TV. It was a unique piece of exercise equipment and simple. Mark joined that night and I joined the same night. Within 90 days, I’m vice president of sales and training. Mark’s the number one distributor, so I had the privilege and honor of working with him. We were there together. One day, we came into the office. At the office, they had a training room in the back and stuff. We had smaller offices where guys use the phones and stuff. The padlocks are on the door and to this day, I don’t know why that happened and what took place. We’ve worked there for almost 1 to 1.5 years.

Shortly thereafter is when Mark wanted to start his own company. I got a memory, pretty boy Mark. He looked like Donny Osmond. They don’t know Donny Osmond either. He had that look and everybody loved him. When Mark gave a meeting, every grandmother there wanted their granddaughter to go home with Mark. That’s the way it was. He had that personality to go with it and he had a lot of charisma. He came to me and said, “I want to start my own company.” I thought he was crazy. He was inexperienced, naive, and not worldly, but he had that personality and had that work ethic. I enjoyed working with him in Golden Youth a lot.

By the way, he helped me in Golden Youth. Not only with the building of the company, but his approach and his thinking, I sensed it and I started to incorporate it and I could see the difference it made. I didn’t think he could pull off the deal with Herbalife. I said, “If you get your money put together, then we’ll talk.” I didn’t say that arrogantly. I just didn’t think he would ever do it. He came back in a couple of weeks and said, “I got it.” $25,000 is what the company was started with.

His grandfather, Larry Hughes, was retired from one of those big dairies that were down there. They delivered milk to the homes. Four of his cronies retired the same time they built that thing up as internal executives. Larry was a great guy. Everyone put up $5,000 apiece, including him. I know the way he did it later on, he guaranteed their $5,000. If it didn’t work, he was going to give them their $5,000 back. After that, there was an additional partner that came in. It was Ned Whiting, Kathryn Whiting’s dad. Kathryn Whiting and Mark were an issue at that point. That was Mark’s first wife about 1.5 years later.

He came back with the money and he said, “I got the money.” I never thought it was going to happen. I said, “You got to get your manufacturing set up.” He did something interesting. He went and found the manufacturing through Dick Marconi down in Orange County. He got them to front-load all the products for him. In other words, they did all the research and development. They did all the packaging, labeling, and all the stuff and they had it sent over in the corner in the warehouse. Whatever he sold, they’d give him a week’s supply at a time. Whatever he sold on that week, he would go down there and give them the money, given what his anticipated sales for the next week. I inherited that job.

When I first got to the Herbalife, I was driving down there every Monday. I had a new Cadillac Seville back then with those leather seats. They were all scratched up, sliding those boxes in the backseat, in the trunk, and in the passenger seat. It was cool. I had a great suspension. It was very low. I had some trick wheels on and stuff, but it was real low by the time I got back there. He got the product set up and I said, “This is something.” He said, “I want you to come and be the vice president of my company.” I didn’t want to do that at all because I wanted to get back and be with my daughters, so I said, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Mark. I’ll help you set this thing up.”

I knew he needed cashflow, so I said, “You’re going to have to adapt to this 1979 Amway stuff. Now you need cash flow, so I’m going to draw this up for you here and do it.” I never thought it would extend. Not that I didn’t believe in Mark, but things didn’t last back then long. He got moving. I drew that structure up for him in the beginning, and then about every 2 or 3 days, he’s calling me on the phone. I’m back in Dallas and he’s calling me on the phone, “What about this? What about that?” I ended up putting brochures together for him.

He wanted to talk about something complex, drawing up these brochures. Not FedEx, not Amazon, not UPS, but mailing it to Los Angeles and saying, “This is what it is,” and then mailing it back. Making the corrections on it and telling them the color tones and all of that. He flew me out in March of 1980 and then in May of 1980. We were on the phone 4 or 5 times a week minimum of talking things through. When I was out there, he and I shook hands and said, “We would do this thing together with the 5H/3H split.” I knew we were going to have to mix the adaptions to what the Amway rules were and had some great ideas to do it. He got the product selling. It is similar to Mary Kay, Doc Shaklee and Amway with people selling the product a lot. Not recruiting, yes, but the emphasis was selling that product.

In May 1980, we shook hands with a 5H/3H split. I was going to come out there in June and it took me until October to get there. I flew back and forth a couple of more times. I had gone through a divorce a couple of years before that and I wanted to get back around my daughters, who were teenagers at that time. It was hard for me to leave, so I hesitated. Not only that, I’m in Texas and it’s a spiritual belt, the ray of the world. I first got exposed to the Lord at that time. My spiritual life started to develop. I was very scared that if I went out to Beverly Hills that I was going to get tainted.

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My spiritual mentor told me there was no problem at all. Do this and this. I finally got there in October, and I started building an organization. Most of the work was done right there around Beverly Hills and a little bit in Orange County. I started building my team. Mark wanted to bring me in, “This guy’s going to help us.” I said, “No.” because I learned from Jim. On January 2 of 1981 is when we announced that I was Vice President. He and I already shook on the deal. That was already in place. We announced it to the field on January 2 and 3 out in Palm Springs, California.

At that point, I put in the marketing structure that I knew that we were going to have to have according to the rules. It worked like magic and it’s still working like magic now. They made some changes on it along the ways, not necessarily that I agree with but that’s still working. In our fourth year, we’re doing $100 million a month when they hit us with the government and stuff. We won that deal, but we lost 100,000 distributors in one day. It went from $100 million a month to $10 million a month. It’s a win the battle or lose the war deal. We lost the war but won the battle. It took us seven years to rebuild. Mark has a simple, naive mind and I say that as respectfully as I can. His simple, naive mind, next with experience and I got from Bobby and gentlemen, coming out of all the stuff that I came out of, what combo it was. Personality-wise and training-wise, it was magic. You guys know and a lot of people know it.

 

There are two points. One is a question I want to ask. How old was Mark when he started Herbalife? I got the question from some of my young distributors.

Twenty-four. He was born on January 1st, 1956. He started in February 1980.

I don’t think he knew that because he always said 23. We were both high school dropouts. That’s the first time I’ve even connected those dots.

Originally, he meant to launch Herbalife on January 1st, which was his birthday, but there’s paperwork in the corporation or something and he had to go on February 1st.

I do want to make a sounding point for our readers. Mark Hughes is a smart guy. Maybe he lacked the piece of paper that said it, but the guy had such wisdom at such a young age that he and Larry decided mutually, “To get the respect of the field, I got to come in and show I can build an organization.” Even though you’ve done it previously, it’s like, “Let me come in and show this group of people,” many of which were young. Friends of mine were there. Some are still there, somewhere in other companies. Now we’re all senior citizens. The point being theory versus application. Talk about that a little bit.

Almost everything that goes on in the network marketing world nowadays is a theory because they only know what they know from what they’ve been through. I put a training class together. It’s an academy called The Four Generations of Network Marketing. Talk about each generation and what happened. I will tell you that over the years, we’ve been in the fourth generation called dissipation, where the fundamentals have been completely dissipated. I got this four generations thing from Jentezen Franklin, who’s a young minister out of Georgia. He was talking about the four generations of a spiritual awakening. If you have a spiritual background, there are certain times in history, spiritually that things exploded. It just took off. It’s been multiple times in history that has happened.

He was talking about a spiritual awakening. He said there are four generations of it. He said, “The first generation is where you come up here and you build on your foundation on what you believe. Your policies, your breach procedures. You got to build on that core value principle of what you stand for. If it’s right, people will accept it. You never get growth out of generation one with a spiritual awakening.” Take a look at Billy Graham. You take a look at a lot of these guys. You can see this through history multiple times. It starts with a group of people that are totally committed to core value principles of that spiritual awakening that they have identified, that they believe is the right thing, that they’re going to dedicate their lives to, do or die, to make sure that it can get done.

He said, “Growth never comes from the first generation. The growth comes from the second generation.” The second generation is where you develop your leadership. Where the core value principles, the core values that are there are firmly entrenched in those original people, that they have now transferred depth to that next generation, which is bigger. That’s where leadership is developed. That’s what happened here, in The Millionaire Training. The growth of our industry was in generation two, where the core value principles that it stands for is where the leadership is developed.

He said, “Now, that leads you into the third generation, which is speculation, because you’re farther away from the original core values. It’s the second generation you get the growth from and you get the leadership from, but it isn’t as tight as that first generation. This third generation of speculation is where they start speculating on those core values.” A little bit of dialing it in. GPS, dialing it in, rerouting it a little bit. He says, “The fourth generation is called total dissipation.” The core value principles have been established. He says, “They’re still there in language, but they’re not there in behavior. They dissipated what the core values are all about.” He said, “There’s only one way to correct it. You got to go back to the core values and start generation one all over again. It takes multiple generations to get that to happen.”

Compare to what we’re doing. I then start looking at our space. I already saw what was happening in our space. That helped me connect the dots of explanation to myself so I can connect those dots and explain them to other people. Generation one, I say it’s 1960, but we know it goes back before that. I established in 1960 to 1980. It was the core value principle generation. 1980 all the way up in 1990 was the leadership generation where we have that exposure.

What I mean by that is all of those people that came into Herbalife that learned this stuff like yourself, like when Herbalife got hit, when we went from that $100 million a month to $10 million a month overnight. We lost everybody because they had to protect their check. They had to do something. You were the most talented people that the world had ever seen in this type of space because of those core values that you came from. That’s how the industry was built off of the shoulders and the backs of those guys that came out of Herbalife. It’s in the book and it’s very descriptive.

1960 to 1980 is called generation one, for simplicity. 1980 to 1990, it was the way we developed the leadership. 1990 to 2010 was speculation. Unilevel, binaries, putting in minimums. Your minimums to get your check isn’t based on the daily method of operation and your job description. It’s based on a minimum purchase, not a minimum sale. No matter what you may page it up or what all the people are selling, we all know better. We know what the truth is, and you know it, too. Minimums become your maximums. The only way you can get bigger money to people is to move money away from the person making the sale at a unilevel and take it to the 5, 6, 7 levels. You pay out all of this and you take the money away from the people making the sale.

Works like magic. Why? It’s speculation. It’s new. It’s like the new girl that comes to high school. She’s blonde hair and got low-cut white blouse on. It looks great. It looks sexy. All of those came and unilevel that came up. I think it was four levels, and it became 5, 6, 7. After that, the binaries came in. Speculation, again. Now, there are three new blondes in town at this high school. We got lots to choose from. All of that stuff, in speculation, grows quickly because it’s the shiny object. Guess what happened from 1990 to 2010? We find ourselves in 2010 in total dissipation of the core values.

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The only thing from 2010 and 2015, the sales in the direct sales space peaked out in 2015. The reason it did that, it would have peaked out earlier except for social media. Social media came in. Now, you could reach people faster, quicker, better. Let me tell you something. Social media has been with us forever. Social media is a way to reach more people faster, quicker, better. That’s all. What we used as social media back then was flyers at Walmart on door handles, little business card flyers, then we had audio checks, then we had video kits, then we had conference calls. We fax for our broadcast. What the heck is a fax machine? It was faster, quicker, better.

There’s nothing wrong with social media. It’s with us then, it’s with us now. It’s constantly changing. Audience language and behavior are constantly changing no matter what. You cannot build your business off of something that’s going to change that rapidly because you keep people this way. After a while, that wears off and there’s something new coming in. How would you like to build your business now based on just flyers at Walmart? Would it work? It would work. What if you did it with a fax broadcast? It would work much slower, but it would work. A video that I’m talking about is not one that you can send over your phone, but one that you got in the mail. How about going on satellite TV with USA Today? We went on television every Sunday night, live. We built the USA Network on social media.

Let me tell you what happened to you. If you build off of that without the core values, it’s going to dissipate quickly. 2015, at peak here in America. We had a bump in 2020 because of different reasons, primarily in our space. It primarily happened because of the Asian companies. If you take a look at the direct sales numbers that came out here at the top 100, those sales went up because of Asia. If you look at the top 50, the majority of those people were Asian companies. What’s the significance of that? This dissipation hasn’t caught up with them the way it’s caught up in America. Through social media, it grew so fast because you reach many people fast. People talk about duplication in our space. There have been few duplications from 2015 forward.

There’s been an addition, where one who gets one. The influencer, all the influencers. Instagram, TikToks, all of that stuff works like magic. Social media has always worked and it will always work. If you build it off to the social media technique that’s going to change and change rapidly, guess what’s going to happen two weeks from Thursday? You’re going to have a massive slow down. Now, these companies don’t know what to do because they’ve never been in the field. They’ve never experienced these things. They don’t know what they’re doing. They’re trying every shiny object in the world. You go get this distributorship from that company, move over here we’re guaranteed money.

Guaranteed death rattle after six months or a year. It may not happen death round. The death rattle is there, the death may not be. Look at all these companies that have done that. Look at all these companies that are out there now, say go get influenced. Tell that to the lady truck driver to go get an influencer. Everyone’s an influencer. They may be an influencer over 3, 30, 300, or 3,000. Everybody’s an influencer. I have no problem getting the influencer. Is it the TikTok influencer? That stuff works like magic for addition.

 

Duplication doesn’t happen much. I’m talking about core value fundamentals, you don’t go from 0 to $100 million a month in four years unless you have core value fundamentals in place and build off of those core value fundamentals. You get it because of multiplication. Nobody’s got the guts with their hair on your chest to talk about multiplication now. Duplication? Show it to me, it doesn’t exist except for a small group of people. The audience is not out there. The audience of those 60 plus 65, 70 million people, I haven’t got to quantify that number just yet.

That audience that’s out there is huge. They’re not looking for a Lamborghini bikini. They’re looking to help pay the mortgage. They’re looking forward to being able to college tuition or looking to be able to get an apartment and move out from their parents. They want that car payment. If you can get them in that environment and they can make that money in a reasonable amount of time, now you can incubate them, and then the 80%, 15%, and 5% rule of Thompson, thanks to Ron Henley, who named it that. Eighty percent of those people are going to be completely satisfied with $500 to $1,500 a month. Fifteen percent of them will incubate and want $500 to $1,500 a week. The rest will incubate and 5% will want $500 to $1,500 a day.

What are they doing now? Lamborghini bikini, talking to people. People that would go for that are going to do well, but it’s a smaller audience with a different language and different behavior. These so-called executives wear suits and ties that have never sold the product, never sponsored a distributor, reliant on a so-called leader as a master distributor brings this. They talk about their 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 years of experience. One year of experience repeated 10, 15, and 30 times. That’s what they got. They haven’t grown up in this environment.

It goes back to the point that we made in the field because I see it in companies repeatedly. Somebody comes in and they’ve been in corporate and they’ve got a resumé and a claim that they grew sales X percentage in another company. They come in and you realize they never sold a thing in their life. They never sat across from somebody who asked for their credit card. I go back to the wisdom of Mark Hughes and, frankly, Charlie Regan, who you introduced me to. Charlie made me do the same thing. I had to go out and pitch the business. I didn’t build an organization there. I was going to be corporate from day one.

However, he said, “You’ve got to go out to about 30 meetings.” That old-school thinking said, “Now I get what we’re selling.” Every company’s a little different in respect to product, compensation, language, everything you’re talking about. If you don’t do it, you’re going in and you’re theorizing it versus coming from application. When you said theory versus application, this was way back in about 1994. I heard you say theory versus application. It’s stuck with me. I felt that strongly about it. It’s the reality of being able to do versus theorize what somebody else should do.

How do you go from theory to application? They come up with these theories in the boardroom. The distributors are famous for saying, “If we only had this.” It’s something they had in the previous company. The company that they’re with now doesn’t understand. It didn’t work over there or they wouldn’t be with you now. Whatever that was, it didn’t work. Your favorite pet. Your favorite child. Your favorite girlfriend came with you. It didn’t work over there, so why is it going to work over here?

Distributors always say, “If we only had this.” It took me years to understand this one. Give it to him because they’re your pets. You’re the one they rely on and we only had to give it to him. Three weeks after they get it you say, “How are you doing with that?” They say, “Good. Thank you. You guys are so good at supporting us. Thank you so much, but if we only have this.” They go from theory to theory. The corporate executives buy it because they don’t know any different. Here’s something worse than that, the corporate executives getting a management and consulting firm telling them what needs to happen. Taking that instead of putting it in a small focus group of 15 or 20 people in an isolated area and trying it out like every major company in America does.

Do you think that car that you love so much didn’t have a focus group on it before they brought out the advertising program? No matter what it is, they put a small focus to try it out, to flesh it out, to see if it’s real. The majority of the focus groups that come out in almost every major company, what they started with agents they didn’t go with. They modified it as they went with 2, 3, or 4 focus groups. Yet the corporate executives now, that’s not what they do. They created and told the field that this is how it’s happening. Sometimes it works. Most of the time, it doesn’t.

Let’s move on, Larry, because I know Ron has got a list of people he wants to ask you about as well. I can’t wait to hear your comments on some of the folks that Ron’s going to mention here.

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I’m curious. You and I’ve never talked about this. Without this man, the business model we now know would not even be in existence because he planted the seed that got the whole thing germinated and that’s Carl Rehnborg with Nutrilite.

I don’t know much about him. However, I do know about the Nutrilite story and how that started way before the 1960s deal. The answer is yes to that. He is the one who started that whole thing.

He got the whole thing started just trying to figure out a way. Nutrilite had been in business for ten years. In sales, he had less than twenty distributors. They were all right there in California. He started coming up with different ways and the override, he blows the planet down. When Rich Schnackenberg came in, he exploded the thing. The second one I know is a good friend of yours. Too many people do not know this guy’s name and they should. Let’s talk about John Fleming.

John and I are very close friends. He joined the same company that I joined, and Jim Rohn did in 1968. He joined in 1969. Les Brown joined in 1972. They knew us around that time. John was an architect. These things got to have structure. John became very successful in Bestline. He did it based on his architectural degree thinking. The best part about John for me is his understanding of how he put those two pieces of pie, that structuring foundational from start to finish. I have never had the ability to do that. He became successful there. John, they tapped him on the shoulder, one of those Ponzi guys.

Avon products were number one. If you take a look at them with their merger, they’re still number two in the world. They tapped John Fleming on the shoulder to help them implement multi-level marketing, and to Avon. It took about a year and a half. John had that same training and background that I did with Bobby and Jim and Bill Bailey, Jerry Brecksville had all that training. He told me a story that I didn’t know, because we started working on this project in 2018. He’s the one that got me all the information on the gig economy. Avon was very conservative. New York City stock company, they’re a big stock company. Suits and ties all the way. Forecast, all that stuff. Not starting from the trunk of your car and like we did with Herbalife. He said every meeting that they have before they decided, they always have a button on their conference table.

Every one of them had a button in front of them, the lose-weight-now-ask-me-how button. We even referred to this at the Direct Selling News Awards. They wanted to know what was the magic behind that button. What was the sale psychology? Almost everybody has missed it. John Fleming, because he had the same DNA that came out of the Bestline days that I had. He understood that there was psychology and a philosophical approach and he stayed on it. As best as they could, they incorporated what that magic was. That’s for a different conversation. That magic still exists now about that lose-weight-now-ask-me-how.

Who can use your products? Anybody. Who can wear a t-shirt or button? Anybody. Who can tell their story about the results and the products and their customers or their friends? Anybody. It freed somebody up to take what was in their hand the day they started to not have to know anything. They did not have to get trained on a three-way, not get on a Zoom, not go through seventeen videos, not go through eighteen scripts, and not become a social media influencer. The lady truck driver could start this morning and make money this afternoon.

John wrote a book, it’s called Ultimate Gig. He was commissioned to write about this mystery called the gig economy. He put his whole team on this thing and the book was released. It’s getting huge results. It’s on our website at TheMillionaireTraining.com, so someone can get it. It identifies a lot of the stuff that I’m talking about, the 65 to 70 million people are out there and the audience, language, and behavior. I got hooked up on a project in 2018 and we’re working closely together. One of the smartest, brightest guys I’ve ever worked with that has a complete understanding of what’s going on.

John, you nailed about everybody I wanted to ask Larry about. Those are the only two that I can think of off the bat. We’ve already talked about Jim. We talked about Bill. All the ones that made a big difference, we’ve already discussed.

You’ve got a lot of companies that have gone up. Let’s look at everyone. This is great. This company and that company, they’re all the same. You can put a blindfold on someone and have ten different companies in ten different rooms side by side and go in and say, “You tell us your CEO story. You tell us your product story. You tell us your company. You tell us your world vision story.” They’re all identical as far as the suit goes. They have a different shirt and tie on them because this is all they know. When you have that differential of something different, Amway, Mary Kay, Shaklee, Herbalife, you have those differentials. Nu Skin has lasted a long time. They’ve been able to get through it.

You got to keep focused on the core value principles and you got to keep focused on it from a distributor’s perspective of what their debt distributor is going through daily because they’re working their tail off. It’s hard for them to go out there and be part-time and make this money. It’s hard for them to go out and make 5 or 6 figures. The disappointments, the heartaches, all the stuff, and the drama that’s out there are difficult. If you don’t understand that distributor and what’s going on in their daily lives, how can you do anything? That’s all you got a shot at.

Ron, there are a couple of people. Let’s talk about a couple of Larry’s key students and there have been so many and the list with The Academy certainly continues to grow.

It’s quite a long list.

Ron, help me out here. I’m going to throw out some names and I’ll probably miss a few of the guys and gals. Larry, you know these people so well. Many of them have been in your life for decades like I have. Let’s start with Dan McCormick.

Dan McCormick is a great example of a guy that understands network marketing. He has done a tremendous job. He’s instrumental. He was a low-level player at Herbalife. When we had our trouble, he went to Body Wise and was number one. He was locked in and did a tremendous job. He then migrated over to Nu Skin and became at least the top ten distributors, I’d say. Dan McCormick is in the book. We have fifteen contributors along with Ron. Ron’s got the history in the book. The big deal is to come up with books and take contributors or have contributors pay you to get in the book. Everybody that’s in this book, there’s nothing. They wanted to be in this book and they told their story.

There’s a common theme between these people that’s in this book and TheMillionaireTraining.com. There’s a lot of common themes. Do you know what it is? They were students. They can tell you every single word that’s in this training. You could have a table and take a clock, 1, 2, 3, 4 and you can start saying, “The Goldmine story.” You can go, “Stop right there. Now number two on the clock, finish that story.” Everyone in that room can do it. They were students. Jeff Roberti, the number one guy, the $100 Million Man in Juice Plus+. Chairman’s Club Member, Dan Waldron at Herbalife. The lady truck driver, Chairman’s Club member.

 

I started mentoring him back in 1993, 1994. He went to $1.7 billion in his company. He learned how to speak English through my training classes. I could go Dan Stammen, Lisa Grossman, Jay Bennett, Jeff Weisberg, Frank McKay. I could go all over these guys that are in the book. The industry was built on their shoulders. They came out of generation two, core value leadership. That’s where these guys came from. The growth starts there. It started dissipating through speculation and anticipation.

The reason that our space is here now is because of the people that are in this book that carry that forward. The guys that are getting started then in speculation, they don’t know what to do right now. The guys in disapprobation, they have no clue except how to do social media and do this and that. That thing is going to change forever. I’m not being critical. I love social media, but it’s got to be mixed with the core value and fundamentals. I don’t know if I answered your question. I don’t remember what it was.

One of the things that Larry is talking about, I don’t know if you’ve heard this story or not, but it happened. Me, Weisberg, Roberti, Larry, and Taylor were one of Ray Higdon’s events in Orlando, Florida. We went out to eat one of those nights and we were sitting around the table talking. This happened. Roberti would start with something about The Millionaire Training and I would finish it. I would start something and Weisberg would finish it. Larry is looking all around the table like, “Can you believe this is going on?” We knew the stuff so well and it was so much a part of us that when somebody stopped, the other person could pick right up.

It surprised me because I can’t do it.

I’ll give you another one on that. It’s years ago, but it’s posted on Facebook. I don’t know if you remember this, Larry. We had dinner the night before with you and me. Ralph was there. Dan McCormick and Jay were there. Taylor was there.

Tish was there.

We all compared notes because most of us, at some point in our career, had to switch companies. When you switch companies, you start at zero income and zero distributors if you do it legitimately if you’re not bought or paid for by somebody. We had all done it at some point in our careers. Most of us started at Herbalife and we weren’t there even at that time. The point being, every one of us came to the same conclusion and that was, what do you do when you start new? DMO. I’ve had the question asked to me. I’ve built five organizations over the years. Every one of them, I’ve achieved the top rank in the company.

I’ve had people say to me, “How have you done that?” I go, “Let me go back to how I was trained by Larry, Mark, and Jim a little bit as well indirectly.” You and Mark primarily. Daily, method of operation. I got that because, like yourself, I came from a family that build things for living. My father was an electrician. I grew up on job sites. I was a summer helper, winter helper, and weekend helper on job sites. How was the building built? You don’t start building at the roof. You start the building at the foundation. That daily method of operation has to be passed along to the next generation of people in this industry, those twenty-somethings now.

My son is starting in the industry part-time. The guy in Atlanta that you talked to, John Carlos. The young guy I started on my chiropractor’s office. They need to understand the daily method of operation. When things go right, it’s easy to build these things. We’ve all seen companies grow up and explode overnight and millionaires made and all the other Lamborghini bikini. We’ve seen that bad movie. What happens when a you-know-what hits the fan and you got to start from zero because the company’s not there anymore? Better yet, the company is still there and you’re committed to the company and the product, but your distributors left you. They’re down the street somewhere else.

If you don’t understand the daily method of operation and how to employ yourself, another great principle that you’ve taught many of us, you’re dead in the water. You’ll be out doing whatever you were doing previous to network marketing. I was blessed because I started young in the industry. Most people had something they did before network marketing for a living. You’ll be back doing that and hoping that you even have a job in the economy that we’re going to be living in going forward COVID. Larry, comment, if you will, on those two principles a little bit. First of all, the daily method of operation.

How to employ yourself is vital and it’s in the book. TheMillionaireTraining.com, you can go over there. There’s a whole resource center over there that’s free. TheMillionaireTraining.com is a resource center that’s loaded with all the stuff that we’re talking about for free. It’s sponsored by the LT Wealth Building Academy to give people a chance to see what’s available to them. It’s different. It’s the real deal. If they want that, they can make a lot of money from that free resource. If they want to join our academy, they can.

How to employ yourself is vital. John, you went to college. Do you remember the teacher, the professor at that college or high school? Do you remember how he taught that lesson on how to employ yourself? I don’t think so. I don’t think they know how. It’s seven pages long in the book and that’s all it is. It’s simple. How to employ yourself has got to be coupled with your job description. Your job description is not training. Your job description is onboarding new members and new customers every single day. That doesn’t always happen every day, but that is the objective every day. If you’re on a diet, you don’t always adhere to that diet, but your objective is to increase activity and decrease calories every day. You don’t do it, but you know that if you do that, you’re going to lose some weight barring the exceptions of all the diseases that we have and all the problems that the body has. How to employ yourself, what a valuable lesson. It’s in the book. It’s in the free resource center.

The daily method of operation boils down to onboarding members and customers. You choose the number. Mine was to talk to ten people a day and not send out ten posts a day of my food and me driving down in my Lamborghini. I’m not doing all of that. Do you know what I’m talking about ten a day? Yes or no? Yes, I want to find out about your business, or no, I don’t. Yes, I want to find out about your products or no, I don’t. You’ve got to have ten of those types of presentations a day if you’re full-time for me. That might be five for other people. That might be twenty for others. I don’t know. You have to choose that number, whatever that number is.

You’ve got to employ yourself a simple concept, Larry one and Larry two. Who’s the boss? Who’s the bossy? Would you employ yourself with the activity level that you did this week or would you have a concern and say, “We got to talk.” We’re going to continue to get this much money. We got to talk about adjusting your money or adjusting your attitude in your work effort. How does that happen? That’s what we all know how to do because of the stuff that’s in here. It’s in a free resource center. That job description is essential. How to employ yourself is essential. What does that lead you to? A daily method of operation that’s decided upon the individual according to their desire and willingness.

Another big thing is leadership, a distorted word in our place. We rank up. We’re now a leader. How ridiculous that you’re a better leader now because you ranked up than you were yesterday. Now you’ve got a different job description, how ridiculous. Your job description never changes. Our basic place in Herbalife was called the supervisor. Everybody was a supervisor. You might be gold, silver, or platinum-based on the rank, that only changes income. It does not change your job description. It’s as supervisor. Everyone has the same.

In network marketing now, “I’m a leader. I’ve got promoted up here.” How can you have a different training class for silver, gold, platinum than your basic, which we called supervisor? What’s the difference? We got to help our people, if you did it this way. That’s the way they do it. People out there reading, this is like talking in tongues. They don’t understand this stuff whatsoever. That’s the reason that the place is dissipating, core value and fundamentals. That’s why we started LT Wealth Building Academy. That’s why we sponsored TheMillionaireTraining.com free resource center to show people what they can get and make money for free. All the stuff I’m talking about is in that free resource center.

If you want to tone it in and GPS it in, get in the academy. How much does it cost? It’s about $1.30 a day. If you want to get serious, it’s not $5,000 masterminds, not $20,000. There’s nothing wrong with that. You don’t have to know more. In our space, they got personal growth at the league. Personal growth is a result of the activity. Jerry Brassfield said in the Direct Selling News, “Trying to buy a course or going to a mastermind to learn how to grow personally is like sitting by the pool while the teacher is swimming and saying, ‘Watch me.’”

You’re talking about a guy that was worth $5 million when he was 25 years old. That’s the environment that I came up in. I believe in personal growth, but personal growth is activity. It’s the only way you learn it and the disappointments and frustrations of doing your job description. If you’re doing the difficulties in your job description that you experience daily, you grow personally. I didn’t want to get crazy on you, but that’s the way it is.

Ron, last comment. You’re in and I’ll wrap up.

It’s always great to get together with you guys. I’ve heard things from Larry that I’ve not heard before. It depends on who you’re around and the questions you get to come up and the topics that get tossed about. You never know what’s going to come out of it. I appreciate you having me on and letting me be a part of this. It’s always great to hang out with you guys. I’m always up for another one. All you got to do is call.

I got to say this about Ron’s Historical Society. We’re big fans of that. Ron and I have had many talks about it. We’re supporting that thing financially. This is going to be a full-blown museum for our space called the multi-level space. It might have a tagline of network marketing, but for our space and all of that stuff that’s there, this is coming in Atlanta. It’s going to be a full-blown thing. It’s going to take some time to put that together. Pay attention to Ron’s posts. Pay attention to what he’s doing on his social media sites and stuff. Support this thing with things, knowledge, tapes, videos, and brochures that are laying in the garage somewhere. We don’t have to worry about financial support. We’re going to get that covered.

Ron, share the link if you would on how to get up to speed and up to date.

The best place is NetworkMarketingHistory.com. You’ll learn about the project, how it got started, and the background. You’ll learn about the Historical Society and the plans we’ve got for the museum. It’s going to be cool. First of all, Atlanta has become a huge city. It’s the East Hollywood. Blocks from my house, there are TV shows and movies being filmed here. It’s a giant hub. Everybody’s heard of Six Flags over Georgia. My plan is to get this thing going near Six Flags. If you can come out with your corporate event or whatever you may come to Atlanta for, you can come and see the museum, hang out with me for a couple of hours, get a personal tour if you need it. Whatever you want to get, partake, absorb, and then have a fun day with your family on Six Flags. It’s right down the street.

It’s not this little thing. There’s been a lot of planning and strategy into it of how to best not only create it but how to serve the profession. There are many people that get me. I talked about this. If you go to NetworkMarketingHistory.com, you’ll get a glimpse of what I’m talking about. Many people who have been in this profession for decades have amassed their collections of stuff. They don’t know what to do with it, but it means something to them, so they hang on to it. It doesn’t mean that much to their kids or anybody else’s. It’s for them because it’s their history. They hang on to it or some of them move out of their big house and downsize.

They don’t know what to do with this stuff. It goes in a landfill. I can’t tell you how many stories. It makes tears to my eyes because I’ve heard about this. They hang on. They pass away and then their kids throw all the stuff in the landfill. There’s no recognized historic entity for this thing we call network marketing. The history is worth preserving. My whole goal is to make people aware. We’re in the awareness stage. Nobody knows about The Society, only a few.

It officially launched on July 15th, 2020. The museum is going to be a culmination of all of these efforts that I cannot do by myself. I need ears and eyes on the ground from people who know of others who have these big collections and don’t know what to do with them. We’re going to give them a place that can be displayed, enjoyed, and maintain for the benefit of all. Anybody that donates anything, collections, pieces that we use, will have their name on it as the donor for this piece. They’re going to be remembered for anything they do.

This is not about Ron Henley. This is about our history together and where we came from. Once you understand where we came from, you can understand how bright the future is. This is to educate and entertain. I imagine a big thing, an exhibition hall. Not only with the museum in it but if people want to have meetings or some events, they’re at this exhibition hall. They can tie all that in together. I imagine people coming into it doing their Facebook Lives, doing interviews with each other at the museum. All of these different things I’ve gotten my hands on are a way to serve. It’s worth the effort. It’s a monumental undertaking. Nothing like this has ever been done before. This is all new waters.

It may be as simple as a brochure that’s faded. Don’t take anything for granted. I am guilty of moving and getting rid of stuff that I wish I hadn’t.

It’s an awareness thing. If this thing was up and going when you got ready to move, it would have been in your head, “I need to let Ron or whoever know about it.” That’s where we’re at right now. Go to NetworkMarketingHistory.com. Familiarize yourself with what’s going on. All of my contact information is there. If you have any questions, any ideas, anything to say at all, contact me, and let’s talk about it.

Ron, the perfect illustration is one of the things we referenced early on in this particular episode about that 1963 check that Mary Kay Ash wrote. That’s in the Mary Kay Hall of Fame. People want to see the origin. I can’t wait. Hopefully, I’ll still be here by the time that my grandkids that I don’t have yet are old enough to appreciate it. They go to your place there and they see not only about a little bit about me and my interest in the industry but certainly my mentor, Larry, Mark Hughes, and some of the other great people we talked about. Also, the countless others we didn’t have time to talk about because there are so many of them, frankly. They get a chance to see, “This is where this thing came from.” Once again, thank you.

I can’t understand why Herbalife hadn’t come up with their museum. I got started May 1st, 1981 in Herbalife. I’ve collected everything since that day. I’ve got the history of the company. I’ve got the original career book. Mark used to talk about it. You take it out and pages fly all over the place. I got it. It’s over here.

I got to ask you something. We knocked off Amway’s policies and procedures. For a couple of years, you could still find Amway’s name in there. It wasn’t completely redacted, so you probably have one of those.

It’s in there.

How cool would it be when we’re talking about how Mark got together to financing to start this thing? Nobody knows about Golden Youth unless they talk to Larry or a few other people who were around at that time. How cool would it be if we’re able to walk into this museum and see five checks for $5,000 that started Herbalife? That’s the impact I’m talking about having. That’s down in the trenches’ items, memorabilia, and artifacts that built this profession, this business, whatever you want to call it is worth preserving. I need your help.

We’re going to help support that. John, if you’d be kind to put TheMillionaireTraining.com in your post and your deal, then they can go to that free resource center and they’re going to see a whole lot of stuff that connects these dots that Ron is talking about. All of that stuff that’s free there, it’s mind-blowing what you can make money with. It’s a real core value fundamentals that start there. If they like that, they can get into the academy if they wish. If they don’t want to, it’s okay.

First of all, I have to thank both of you for your contributions to my career and the thousands of other people’s careers. Larry, when we compare notes with some of our colleagues, they’re like, “When is Larry going to finally retire?” I said, “Here’s when Larry is going to retire. On the way to the cemetery, he’s going to be on the phone, pitching somebody. I guarantee he’s going to have one more call before they close that box.” That’s an inspiration to me and for countless other people. It’s not the money. Jim Rohn always said, “It’s not the money. It’s what you become.” We have a responsibility.

I represent all three of us when I say this. We feel like we have a responsibility to that next generation. They got to learn this industry right. They got to do the right things. They got to be ethical and moral and go through some of the ups and downs that we’ve all gone through and still standing. Larry and I kid all the time about that Elton John song I’m Still Standing because we don’t come through our times when we shouldn’t have been. Maybe we shouldn’t have answered the bell when it said to get back up, but we did. I want to thank you, Larry, first of all, for being my mentor and my friend.

Ron, what you’re doing with the museum is needed. We want to get this message out. Please share this show. It lives on LeavingNothingToChance.com. That’s my website. All of these podcasts that we’ve done are on there. This one will be on there. Please share it. If you’re in this industry and you believe in it as we do and this is something that you love and you want your family, you want your kids or your grandkids to have a future in this industry, share the information that we shared with everybody that you possibly can. Thank you very much.

Important Links:

• The Network Marketing Historical Society
• The Millionaire Training
• Leave Nothing to Chance
• The Millionaire Training
• Jentezen Franklin
• Ultimate Gig
• TheMillionaireTraining.com
• Dan McCormick – LinkedIn