Mind Shift

Once again it’s been a while since I posted. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. The day after I made my last post I found out that friend from the neighborhood that I grew up in died of brain cancer. It was hard to believe that something like this could happen to one of my friends. He is the same age as me. I always admired his intelligence and he became successful as the director of a local television station. The world has lost one of its best. Recalling the memories of my childhood friend sent me into deep contemplation of my own life, what I have done, and what I will do.

Around the time that this happened I was doing some environmental scanning for what could be one of the next big significant trends. I came across the webpage for Paul Zane Pilzer. He claims that the next trillion-dollar industry will be in the health and wellness business. That seemed plausible to me. But reading deeper I found that the health and wellness industry mostly comprised of people peddling vitamins using multi-level marketing (MLM) tactics, also known as network marketing. He claims that this is going to produce a significant number of millionaires. Pilzer seems like a really intelligent guy, but I’m just not buying it. I do believe that the health and wellness industry is going to be huge. This is in large part due to the baby boomers wanting to maintain their health as they age. But I don’t get the MLM connection. Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki have a book out called, Why We Want You to be Rich. In there they also promote MLM as a way to attain riches. Frankly, I don’t want to live in a world where I am constantly being approached by MLM’ers. The thought repulses me and I don’t believe that it is a good path to being a millionaire any more than winning the lottery.

Scott, you say, where are you going with all of this? Well, these things combined had me thinking about what defines success, how money is made, and how I measure up. While I’m not a big fan of the MLM model I do believe that if you want to make money sales is the place to be. I read an interesting line in some literature on the Landslide website: “A company doesn’t exist to make things. A company exists to sell things.” I thought that was a very powerful statement. I also believe that the health and wellness industry will be as big as Pilzer says it will be. This is definitely a trend to watch. But, there is much more to it than peddling vitamins. Health (and youth) is what people are after. Really, the best thing that anyone can do is exercise and eat a healthy diet. That is what I try to do. Yes, I take some vitamins too, but they are more for enhancement than a foundation (see Joel Garreau). Unfortunately, most everyone has heard and understood the message but they still won’t do what it takes to be healthy. The even bigger trend is biotechnology and new methods of diagnosis and new surgical methods. My conclusion is that, while it is perceived that futurists like to dream big dreams, my personal emphasis will be on sales strategies. Sales is a more complex field than most imagine and it is evolving everyday. Sales is about offering solutions and solving problems. If you don’t know how to sell your solution you don’t make any money and people’s problems don’t get solved. Being a success requires being successful in sales. This is true whether you’re trying to convince a colleague in the next cubicle to "buy" your way of doing somehting or if you are trying to sell the next breakthrough in biotechnology.

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