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The Strong Don’t Take Shortcuts!

Being busy is not the same as being productive

The messages are everywhere: “Make $100,000 a year…in your spare time!” “Retire early!” “Earn BIG BUCKS at home.” Hesitant about “making that important call” for an information-packed booklet about the program, or can’t make that upcoming meeting about this “ground-floor opportunity” because it doesn’t fit into your schedule? Don’t worry, there are countless late-night infomercials to give you all the simple, easy steps to financial freedom and riches. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That’s the signpost up ahead. Your next stop: The Multilevel Marketing Zone!

Multilevel marketing (MLM) is the type of business in which you not only personally sell products but also recruit other people to help you sell the products, and those people likewise recruit others to help them sell. The higher up you are on this pyramid-type system, the more money you make because you get a commission off the sales of everyone beneath you – your so-called downline.

I decided to bring up this topic because nutritional supplements are a major product in MLM programs – vitamin supplements, special juice drinks, food bars and even water purifiers are all peddled via distributors who are unqualified to attest to the nutritional or medical merits of their wares. Prospective distributors simply listen to the company’s training video or attend a short training seminar, and then it’s off to work offering solutions to everyday medical problems with fruit juice and overpriced vitamins. But the major recruiting point in multilevel marketing programs is not about the satisfaction of doing good work and providing a valuable service or product. Nope.

MLM is about making money – lots of money. Case in point: One of the main features of monthly meetings held for MLM executives is not about how to more effectively run their businesses. No, the meetings focus upon the glowing testimonials of those who have had faith in the system and have been rewarded with riches that are providing them with the good life.

However, despite creative marketing and alluring promises, the truth is that few people actually make a profit doing MLM. There are estimates that as few as one percent of those who begin a MLM business make a significant income from it, and those few must make it a 24/7 obsession, an obsession that is overwhelmingly characterized by failure and disappointment. Unless they have unlimited time and energy to invest in their enterprise, many distributors find that they are forced to buy and use those grossly overpriced products themselves – stuffing their cabinets with a lifetime supply of worthless products – to enable them to remain distributors; that is, until the time is right and they can devote enough time to this exciting “business opportunity.”

Financial struggles aside, probably the saddest truth about individuals who become involved in MLM is that they look upon their family and friends as “marks” for their products. They are always selling, and the consequence is that their efforts often alienate those closest to them to the point where their only “friends” are those above them in the organizational pyramid – the upline, so to speak – who are benefiting from locked-in commissions from those downline distributors who struggle beneath them.

Just like those opportunistic unfortunates who are motivated to enter the multilevel marketing game, there are countless people I’ve met through my travels who are focused on making a lot of money to get happy. They are certainly entitled to pursue such goals by just about whatever legal means they choose. But in my line of work I have also met thousands of successful, wealthy people; and they tend to have one quality in common: they focus on doing the type of work that makes them happy.

If there is a secret to success, it’s to focus on doing what you love and going about it by means of proven methods that bring results, not pie-in-the sky shortcuts. Get a good education and work hard in the field you love. This secret also applies to training.

The Lifts Less Traveled
If you look at early YMCA photos, you see very simple weightrooms and regimented training sessions of calisthenics. These images often make us laugh; but what you don’t see in these photos are overweight children or teenagers. Back then there wasn’t even such a term as “childhood obesity.”

Now schools have elaborate workout rooms with the latest cardiovascular machines that allow kids to multitask on the Internet, and resistance-training machines modeled after the aesthetic designs found in the Matrix movies. And the presence of TVs in school weightrooms (unheard of in any weightroom until recently) is more often the rule than the exception. The result of all this sedentary screen watching is an epidemic of obesity so extensive that the average child will not live as long as their parents and one in three will develop diabetes. Let’s take another example.

In the Rocky movies the most famous scenes are the training sequences, and the most bizarre of these is in Rocky IV. Here the heavily favored Russian champion is shown working out in high-tech weightrooms with computerized treadmills; Rocky is shown lifting farm equipment in a barn and running in the snow. The reality is that, if anything, it’s the other way around.

Just look at early photos of a Russian or Bulgarian weightroom…or for that matter, pretty much any current weightroom in those countries. For instance, IronMind Enterprises sells a tape of Randall Strossen’s trip to Bulgaria to watch their national team train – and consider that since the early 70s, Bulgaria and Russia were the dominant men’s weightlifting teams for the next three decades. This film gives the impression that the Bulgarian national training center – and maybe the entire country – is broken: The food is horrendous, and supplements are simply a luxury that few can afford. I’ve got to ask: “If the Eastern European training centers are that bad, how do you explain how they still manage to produce so many weightlifting champions?” Come on, when was the last time the United States’ national anthem was played for a gold medal winner at a men’s international weightlifting competition? And, sorry, Rocky, for the past five years athletes from European countries (including several Russians) have been dominating the major heavyweight boxing titles.

The point is many trainees in the West don’t achieve the results they want because they, like the network marketers, are always looking for the easy way out or think they need something special. The marketing of these training programs is self-contradictory: High-intensity people are shown training harder than anyone else, but the message implies that the results are easy and fast; of course, those trainees might need an energy drink to be up for their 22-minute hardcore training session!

Another way of looking at it is to say being busy is often confused with the idea of being productive. To see what I mean, let’s look at two workouts:

Workout 1
A. Single-Leg Extension: 4 x 10-12, 4011, rest 90 seconds
B. Leg Press: 4 x 10-12, 4010, rest 90 seconds

Workout 2
A. Back Squat: 4 x 10-12, 4110 tempo, rest 90 seconds
B. Drop Lunge, on a 4- to 6-inch platform: 4 x 10-12, 40X0, rest 90 seconds

In my PICP courses, I might ask the attendees, “Which of these workouts is going to make you bigger with more functional strength?” The answer is obviously Workout 2. As they say in MLM programs, “Let me tell you more!”

The basic program design problem with Workout 1 is exercise selection, but it’s more than that. The first workout relies on machines, and the second on free weights. The machine workout looks extremely productive, especially when they stack on those huge 45- and 100-pound plates on that leg press. Oh, and how those thigh muscles bulge when you extend each leg in the leg extension! Both workouts require that you train hard, but Workout 2 is about training smarter. Workout 2 is more effective – and functional – because of such factors as the recruitment of more motor units and the higher anabolic hormone output. What’s interesting, and often missed by my students, is that both workouts require exactly the same amount of time.

Want to earn more money? Then focus on doing the type of work that makes you happy, and the money will come. Want to fulfill your physical potential? Then put your energy to work in productive training, and the results you want will come.