The Next Trillion...
An Interview with Paul Zane Pilzer By John David Mann and John Milton Fogg
"Why Network Marketing is Poised to Drive the Next Major Economic Powerhouse!"
Every generation, among the thousands of brilliant and merely-bright social commentators, the human race produces one or two visionaries whose stunning insights burst the bounds of their own specialist's expertise and cut across all disciplines. We have our Benjamin Franklins, our Buckminster Fullers - and Paul Zane Pilzer, the man who sizes up seismic shifts in our economy.
Pilzer is quick to assert that he has no crystal ball: it's all in the data. But the three-times New York Times best-selling author and economic advisor to two presidential administrations has an uncanny knack for assembling masses of facts and figures and seeing the forests those reams of trees represent. His penetrating insights have attracted the attention of network marketers for over a decade.
Now he's back, with a new message: We are witnessing the explosive birth of a new trillion-dollar industry, and network marketers everywhere are poised to be the vanguard of that explosion.
After two centuries of economic opportunity for the pioneers of manufacturing, we have entered the age of distribution. Today, the greatest opportunity for wealth awaits those who can deliver what Paul Zane Pilzer calls " INTELLECTUAL DISTRIBUTION " This Intellectual Distribution of valuable information causes Product Distribution automatically on a more regular basis with re-orders & hence a more regular income. Thus your intellectual knowledge creates constant regular income.
Q : Paul, you were the first well-known economist to have anything kind to say about network marketing. What got your attention about the business in the first place ?
I think it would be more accurate to say that the business found me. It started with my 1990 book, Unlimited Wealth, which analyzed different sectors of our economy and projected some interesting changes by the year 2000.
In the 70's and 80's, we were told, "What's wrong with America is that we don't make things." So, the bright young people of that era started to make things - and they did it so much better, converting all the expensive raw materials and labor into plastics and flexible automated manufacturing processes, that they completely restructured the economics of retail.
Take a typical $300 item; it could be anything-say, a television, camera, or dress. In the 1960s, the manufacturing costs of this item would be $150. About 50% of the item's cost was in manufacturing with the other 50 percent in distribution.
By the 90's, the same item still sold for $300, but it was a far superior product with a great many more features -yet its manufacturing cost had fallen from $150 to $15 or $20! Now 8o to 85 percent of the product's costs was in distribution; only 15 to 20 percent was in manufacturing.
By 1990, I explained in Unlimited Wealth, the greatest opportunities for wealth were no longer in manufacturing but in distribution. The book projected that this would continue for the next decade at least. That's why the richest people in the world in 1990 were people who found better ways of distributing things, versus better ways of making
things.
Q: Can you give us some examples of those "richest people" who made their fortunes in distribution?
Back in 1961, Sam Walton started a company that was committed to never make its own Drand, that would sell only other name brand goods. By 1990, not only was Walmart the largest retailer in the world, Sam Walton was also the richest person in the world - a man who made his living distributing things that other people made. (Sam Walton, by the way, thought very highly of Unlimited Wealth and emphatically endorsed the book.)
In 1990, Fred Smith was the most successful airline entrepreneur of the day. Back in 1976 he had started an airline with its own fleet of planes and pilots - yet it didn't fly people! The only purpose of Federal Express was to move packages: distribution - an unheard-of thought
in 1976.
Ross Perot was one of the wealthiest people in the world in 1990. Perot built a $3.5 billion computer company that made neither software nor hardware. What did EDS do? It distributed other people's hardware and software.
Q: How did your observations about wealth and distribution get network marketers'
attention?
I did three shows on "Larry King Live" that year. I was explaining the book on one of those shows; a man named Donald Held happened to be watching. Don, a Senior Executive Diamond with Amway, brought the show to Dexter Yager's attention. Dexter and a number of his people read the book and said: "Hey, here's an economic analysis of why our business works. This guy has no idea what network marketing is - but he knows why it works!"
I had no idea what Amway was. I didn't even know what network marketing was. I wasn't trying to promote anything: perhaps that's one reason my research rang true. I was just using empirical data, analyzing distribution in America and the world.
Dexter's people decided to book me as a speaker and have me explain to their people what I said on "Larry King Live". That's how it all started.
Q: That was over a decade ago, and you've since become a household word to thinking network marketers everywhere. Obviously, your thinking hasn't stood still; what has happened in the ten years since?
I've changed my focus a good deal. Back in 1990, the opportunities still lay in physically distributing products; since 1990 we've seen a dramatic shift. In my new book, The Next Trillion, I break distribution into two functions: physical and intellectual.
Physical distribution means getting the product to the consumer-products that the consumer already knows he wants. That's Walmart: You know exactly what you want when you walk into Walmart; you go in, pick it up, and get out of the store. You don't learn about anything new there.
Intellectual distribution is where you learn about a new product or service that you didn't know existed before.
Up through 1990, the great opportunities to earn fortunes in distribution, the opportunities for the Fred Smiths, Ross Perots, and Sam Waltons were in physical distribution. Today, the great opportunities are in intellectual distribution.
