Copyright 2006 Donovan Baldwin

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison

What do these people have in common? Walt Disney, Winston Churchill, Thomas Edison, Abraham Lincoln, Joanne Rowling (Author of the Harry Potter books), just to name a few.

Well, I'll give you a hint. You might say they all attended the same school. Took some of the same courses, in a manner of speaking.

Every one of them is famous today, and is considered to be the model of a successful person. However, at times in their lives, and not just during the early years, they had pretty much either failed, or had not achieved anything of note in their lives.

They all attended, in one form or another, the school of hard knocks. But, they learned in that school, and they eventually accumulated enough knowledge, enough common sense, enough experience, enough guts, maybe, to rise to a point where their names have been recorded as a part of history.

Oh sure, circumstance played a part. Had not World War II happened along, Winston Churchill would have remained a has-been rather than becoming one of the world's most famous statesmen. Had Abraham Lincoln caught a fatal disease in his youth, we would never have known his name, and how much of our world would be different?

We have to look at our lives and our circumstances in this light. I AM here now, and I CAN make various choices. One of the choices is to do nothing. One of the choices, however is to take a stand, give it the old college try, go out swinging...pick your literary cliche.

In the world of network marketing and internet marketing, those with experience and "success" can almost to a person tell story after story of failure, embarassment, defeat, rejection, and depression. I've never met a person yet who joined a program and was making appreciable amounts of money in just a few days. I've HEARD about such things, and I am sure that there are a few who have either had the skill or luck to create a huge network business practically overnight. However, it doesn't happen to most of us.

What DOES happen to most of those who sign up for a network marketing program is that while we AREN'T experiencing overnight success, we DO experience failure, embarassment, defeat, rejection, and depression, not to mention other "...slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." This combination of negative pressures without any offsetting positives (I'm talking about income) in the early stages of a network or internet business causes most of the so-called "failures" and drop-outs in the networking world.

The sad part is that most of these people do not truly become "failures" until they actually give up. Yes, some will never be successful, but that is true about anything from brain surgery to law to flipping burgers. Some people are just not going to be good at certain things. Some people are going to be in the wrong place at the wrong time almost every time, but that does not mean that they are failures or should be branded as such by themselves or by anyone else.

Temporary failure, if we can see it that way, is not just a course in the school of hard knocks, it is a coach. Just as a coach may pit a boxer, wrestler, or entire team against a tougher opponent in hopes of teaching them to overcome such opponents, failure gives us the opportunity to learn new skills and to unlearn old, useless skills. Those who continue to grow through this process are the ones who will eventually be labeled "successful".

It is necessary to see the obstacles that a new marketer faces as training experiences, not as an insurmountable or immoveable objects.

The sad part is that so many people recruiting for network marketing programs go out of their way to play up the potential gains of the business while failing to prepare the new player for the difficulties of the game. Many of us who have achieved varying degrees of success in network marketing or internet marketing can tell many of the same stories. We tried all kinds of programs, methods, and techniques. We bought, or bought into, all kinds of books, programs, software, and miscellaneous mumbo-jumbo. We did it because we were ignorant, and perhaps a little greedy, but eventually we learned, and eventually we succeeded.

I now make a living off the internet, the mystical target, the six-figure-income. However, beside me is a bookcase full of books, on top of my work station are all kinds of software, loaded onto my computer are many programs, tucked into nooks and crannies around the room are folders full of papers. Among all of these are many things that I use to promote and grow my business, but, to tell the truth, I could probably dispose of ninety percent of it and never miss it. I have spent so much time following the wrong paths, and so much money (my term is "accidental tuition") buying things that did little or nothing for me. And yet, I cannot truly regret all that because I never gave up the idea that some day I would succeed, and each "failure" just was another lesson learned. Eventually, all those lessons reached the point where one day my wife looked at me and said, "You know all those ads you use to read to me about making a six-figure-income?"

I replied, "Yes. What about it?"

She said, "You are."

I had graduated from the school of hard knocks, at least for the time being, but I did not grauate because I was brilliant. I graduated because I didn't give up.

Wow! Me and Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln.....! Okay, I'll shut up now, but I started with a quote and I'll end with one.

"The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do." -- Walter Bagehot