Tales of Unordinary Madness from Tommyville

Hopes & Dreams Sold Here

“Network marketing all about the products!” Bullshit.

It’s all about making money. Every business is.

  I fell in love with the network marketing model almost 20 years ago when I first saw it. It was brilliant. Instead of me having to do a lot of work, it was about a lot of people doing a little bit of work. I’ve always loved the idea of large potential gains from small, consistent, measured…

Your Problem is That You Don’t Understand the 30-30-30-10 Rule

During a network marketing convention, in my early days, I listened intently as one of our company’s young Generation X leaders, Jeremy Rose, took the stage and explained the 30-30-30-10 Rule. I don’t know if he hypothesized it himself, or was recycling a message he’d heard elsewhere, but it stuck with me and has directly influenced my life for the past 15 years.

Here’s the rule:

It doesn’t…

BEWARE! WORKOUT SCAM EXPOSED!

To all my friends! Do NOT go out and join a gym this year. I know a guy who tried that and it didn’t work.

Enjoying a cup of coffee  on the couch this January 2 morning, my wife was watching Kathy Lee and Hoda interview the experts on metabolism, how to get in shape, lose weight, etc, etc, etc. And I almost got suckered in!

Lucky for me, I did some research and discovered that going to the gym…

When the Tables Turn

  A week before my 20th birthday, I requested that day off from my job at the hardware store. But when the new schedule was posted, I noticed that it wasn’t granted. I asked the boss (let’s call him Al) about it, and he told me that I was low man on the totem poll.

So, in classic Tommy Wyatt form, I decided to take that day off anyway and did so in vintage Ferris Bueller fashion. Not only did I…

Do You Choose Hatred?

There’s a lot of talk about hatred going on these days.

This phenomenon occurs daily, but really spikes up in four-year cycles when people appoint themselves political activists and take to the airwaves running their mouths over something they (mostly) don’t know much about.

I’ve never been an expert on politics, but I’ve observed that our political opinions are based largely on which television…

“What is it that you love about leadership?” That’s a question that was posed to me this morning by a woman on Facebook and, strangely, one that I hadn’t heard before. As I sipped the day’s first cup of coffee, it didn’t take me long to realize the answer. My first hero, as a little boy, was Joe Namath. Joe was the quarterback of the New York Jets who were a huge underdog in Super Bowl III.…

When was the last time you were betrayed?

Was there ever an instance where you believed so much in somebody or something that you ignored the “red flags” and all the well-intentioned advice of your close friends only to learn the hard way?

Trust is an interesting virtue.  

  In the fable, “The Frog and the Scorpion,” the scorpion asks the frog for a ride across the river.

“If I let you on my…

Nature’s Way of Cleaning House

Up here in Connecticut, we got hammered by a crazy thunderstorm last night. Yeah, its February, but torrential rains all day long were accompanied by temperatures in the high 50’s and gale-force winds all night long. Lots of people lost power and many schools in the area were closed or delayed.

As I walked up my driveway this morning, I marveled as I kicked aside literally  hundreds of scattered…

Are You Afraid? Me too

People start network marketing ventures every day, and join their new businesses with all the verve of a quarter horse bounding around in the starting blocks. Why, then, do most people never achieve their goals? Well, there are many answers to that question, but one – most certainly – is fear.

What, exactly, do we fear? Again, probably lots of answers. Yesterday morning the family and I drove to a…

When you root for a favorite sports team, what exactly are you rooting for? I’ve been doing a lot of pondering on the topic lately. We would laugh at somebody who likes a team because of its colors, or the team logo. But don’t most of us do that? The question I’d like you to ponder is; what is it about “your team” that you actually love? Do you root for certain players, or coaches, or owners, or…

People Don't See Things Your Way??

I’ll never forget how I felt the day I joined my first network marketing company.

“Everybody I know is going to do this!”

I mean, you’d have to be an idiot not to, right?! All you have to do is join the business, get a few customers, and get the people you know to sign up and do the same thing.

I remember imagining how if everybody would just listen to me (and join), then everybody would get…

It comes from the top down and its non-negtiable.  “We don’t do that here.” “This is how we conduct ourselves.”

We hear that word “culture” thrown around a lot these days. What, exactly, does it mean?

If you should find yourself in a stadium during a football game you are certain to witness beer drinking (they actually sell it there), loud and obnoxious fans of both teams, foul language (for sure),…

Imposing YOUR Goals Upon Others?

When I first attended a network marketing opportunity meeting, I was told the story of a guy in that company, a former high school gym teacher, who was earning over $1 million every month. It was the story that changed my life. My initial thought was “wow, if I could do just one-tenth that well . . . and nobody’s ten times better than me at anything!” It was that night, March 1, 1998 that I knew…

I’ve always been baffled by the people who claim they could “sell ice to an eskimo.” Yeah, I get it. They’re so good at sales that they can sell somebody something whether they want it or not. But is that good? Or is that part of what gives sales a bad name?

Having been in network marketing for so long, I’ve progressed through several “phases of evolution” along the way.

As a young buck, I was…

No Excuses. No Regrets.

I ran into an old friend last week and spent three delightful hours, not catching up on the 15 years since we’d last seen each other, but on the 15 previous years in which we had. Lash Ashmore had been the varsity soccer coach at Newtown High School and I was the sportswriter from the town newspaper. It was a lifetime ago since he retired and moved to the mountains of Montana and I retired and…

The Road Less Traveled

When I was a kid, my mother always used to tell me to “take the High Road.” To a kid, especially a boy, that usually meant being a wimp and letting somebody get away with something. Clint Eastwood would ride into town with is cigar and his pancho, and exact his revenge on all the bad guys. I’m supposed to let them all off the hook? I never understood. We live in a society that glamorizes an eye…

Attention, all you goal setters! Have you ever been so focused on a goal that it consumes your every thought? You can “see the end from the beginning” and you forge ahead obsessively. You desire victory so badly that you almost “wish away the time.” There’s a magic to that, but there’s also an unfair illusion at the finish line. When you finally succeed in reaching your desired result, you learn…