You’ve all seen the want ad: “Executives needed. Set your own hours, earn huge bonuses, 6+ figure income, travel. Prior management, college degree, and experience required.”

It sounded great, but you weren’t eligible. You either didn’t have the management experience needed (they wouldn’t count those 4 years of directing your first spouse’s life) or you weren’t sufficiently educated. When I graduated high school, the upwardly mobile immediately entered college, no matter what the sacrifice. It was their ticket to possibility.

Today, teenagers who understand software programming and computer related technology are snapping up the highest starting salaries. The catch in riding that wave is that you must be knowledgeable about computers.

If that’s not you, don’t despair. My headline, “Adventurers needed: No Experience Possible. Unlimited Salary Potential,” advertises the career possibility of becoming an independent contractor in MLM.

Some of you are rolling your eyes now. You want to inform me that your MLM career has not been lucrative so far and that your biggest adventure has been trying to collect a paycheck.

Dear readers, take heart. You (yes, you!) have the potential to be the Bill Gates of MLM. Right now, in the year 2005, you are at the brink of an industry still in its infancy. This is the magnetism of MLM --- and if you can hang in there, learning the nuances of a young industry --- then you can be one of its brightest superstars in time.

Only a handful of people in the world understand this embryonic niche field the way pros like my husband, Taylor Hegan, and I do. Few people in the world have made both a four figure income or higher with several companies and earned in excess of a million dollars as a distributor, thus having a diversity of MLM experience with the “credentials” to demonstrate it.

Whether you count yourself in on that elite group or not, you can train with those who have that fundamental understanding of our industry, and you will then be qualified to call yourself on the “bleeding edge.”

To prepare yourself for extraordinary accomplishments in MLM, you must focus on industry mastery, not the end result of that mastery (money and the numbers of people). When I mention the importance of this to typical industry “students,” if they are successful already they agree, “Absolutely, no question!” If they have not yet made any money in the business, they reply, “Oh those so-called masters are all alike. A lot of hype about nuts and bolts and no substance."

Use this checklist to get yourself in the MLM game more powerfully:

1.) Read and listen to current industry experts and personal development mentors at least 20 minutes daily;

2.) Attend all your company’s major functions;

3.) Use your company’s products and/or services everyday;

4.) Focus on your potential customers’ needs;

5.) Learn every aspect of your craft from retailing to training to marketing;

6.) Be the sponsor you wish you had;

7.) Never knock a system until you have given it an adequate trial test;

8.) Maintain all the business elements that you master as you take on new skill sets one at a time;

9.) Do exactly what your top company money earner is doing for at least 6 months without any deviation;

10.) Eliminate criticism, emphasize positives;

11.) Notice all the exciting, yet ordinary, accomplishments you see --- an ice carving on a buffet, decorated cake, beautiful painting --- and consider the many futile tries that probably preceded the “masterpiece”;

12.) Stay focused, focused, focused and driven to be the best you can be in the industry, NO MATTER WHAT!!!

At best, only 2 out of 100 people reading this will do more than shrug off this advice. But, if you are one of those 2 people, you’ll feel richly blessed knowing that I wrote this column just for you . . . And reading it will have changed your career in MLM forever.