If "Anyone Can Succeed in This Business," Then Why Doesn't Everyone?
January 2001
Network marketing is shot through with contradictions.
"Always be there for your downline; you are responsible for their success—and don't do anything for your downline that they can do for themselves." Got that?
"It's all about leadership ... and the best part is, it takes no special skills, anyone can succeed!" Okay, I think.
"Be the best you can be, strive to be exceptional—and make sure everything you do is totally duplicable." Say what?!
As contradictory as it all sounds, this is not evidence of a fatal flaw. In fact, anything of lasting value is founded squarely on paradox. That's how life works. Network marketing is a celebration of the exceptional lurking in and revealed through the ordinary ... for example, Dexter Yager.*
The man is a legend of positively Paul-Bunyanesque proportions. You don't get any bigger.
I have never met Dexter Yager; before we did a story on him for this issue, I really knew very little about the man. But I had heard ....
Of course, I knew that he has one of the biggest distributor organizations in the world—perhaps the biggest. I had heard that he pioneered the basic elements of what today is reverently called "the system" and forms the foundation of network marketing methodologies throughout the profession, from the biggest "boot camp" to the tiniest startup distributor manual. ("Doing a Yager," in some circles, is shorthand for" creating your own comprehensive system and group culture, independent of the company.")
These are all true.
I had also heard that he was basically an unremarkable, ordinary guy who just happened to get lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time.
That last is not true. It never is.
In this business, you'll hear the "Oh, he just got lucky" story turn up with all the annoying regularity of a flat tire's thump-thump-thump. Both tire and story carry about equal weight.
In the course of doing our piece on Dexter Yager, I learned quite a bit about this "unremarkable" guy who fooled all his doctors and recovered from a devastatingly hopeless stroke through sheer determination and will—after first offering his wife a divorce (declined) because he didn't want to be a burden to her.
Ordinary guy. Uh-huh, right.
Are there ordinary aspects to Dexter? Of course. And don't let that fool you for a moment.
The myth is that in this business, ordinary people accomplish extraordinary dreams. Not true. What happens in this business is this: People who up until now have held themselves as ordinary and have presented themselves that way to the world stop holding themselves that way. What happens is that "ordinary" people step up to become extraordinary people.
Your dreams cannot become extraordinary without the whole of you making that same shift. Your dreams are not something that exist independent of you; they are an extension of you. Your dreams are the expression of who you are today, minus the limitations (real or imagined) of your current reality.
Dexter began his interview with us by saying, modestly, that he was an ordinary guy with extraordinary dreams. I say, Dexter Yager was always an extraordinary man. When he discovered network marketing, he stopped masquerading as an ordinary one.
And Dexter's not the only one. I've watched thousands of caterpillar-ordinary people step through the chrysalis of this business model and unfurl hitherto-hidden wings of extraordinary quality and breathtaking ability.
Seeing that happen is the single thing I love most about this business.
* The cover story of the issue of Network Marketing Lifestyles in which this piece first appeared (January 2001) was a story on Amway and its legendary lead distributor, Dexter Yager.
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