Do you ever feel stuck and hopeless?

Do you ever curl up on the couch in a day-long funk? Do you ever wonder in agony how things are going to get better for you?

You might just be on the verge of a breakthrough bigger than you ever imagined.

Imagine you worked in a chicken processing plant with 1,000 other people. Imagine hardly anyone spoke the same language as you. Imagine the inescapable stench of guts, feathers, and blood in every nook and cranny. Imagine working there for 540 minutes a day … chicken people live in minutes.

What you do there is cut up the chickens as they zoom past you at 38 BPM. You cut the breast off, the legs, and finally the wings. Your knife is flying for a stretch of 90 minutes times 38 BPM. You CANNOT fall behind. Not even one bird as you will then jam up the production line of 20 other cutters. You have to keep up no matter if you are tired, bored, cramped, or just have to pee.

Imagine you’ve been doing this for four years and you have 36 years left to go before retirement.

Everyone at the chicken plant counts the minutes, the days, and the years to retirement … when they can live off a modest income and not have to go to work. The idea is intoxicating … sort of.

Oh, sorry for the vernacular. BPM = Birds Per Minute.

That’s where I was in 1977 at the age of 22 after scratching out a 1.9 grade point average in high school. And the sad thing is, I actually liked it there. I was moving up in rank, teaching other people how to cut 38 BPM. I thought I was “cutting it.” Get it?

I think a lot of us have a chicken plant in our lives. Do you? What is it?

“With every adversity comes the seed of equal or greater benefit.” - Dr. Napoleon Hill

One day my chicken plant mentors, Mike Hoyt, and Wayne Packnit called me into their office to give me the bad news. Foster Farms, the largest poultry processing plant in the world was changing its policy. One could not advance in management anywhere in the company without a four-year college degree. My life, my retirement was over.

I was in shock. I actually loved Foster Farms. I guess we learn to love our prisons for the alternative is to go insane. I had my whole retirement plan laid out and now I was lost.

A month earlier, Steve Spaulding, a high school buddy had called me about coming to a “meeting.” Steve actually got me the job at Foster Farms four years earlier and then left to go to work at the Ragu Spaghetti Sauce factory. Steve wanted me to come to a meeting to learn how to make a lot of money. I wasn’t interested and I told him NO. He called back even more insistent. My second NO was even more convincing. He tried again a week later. I didn’t even respond. Why? I was comfortable at the chicken plant; I had a plan. As insane as it was, I believed in it.

Making “a lot of money” sounded very uncomfortable to me.

But, now the game had changed … the world pivoted on me without notice. I found myself in Steve’s living room listening to him explain how circles on a yellow pad equaled unparalleled wealth, fame, and freedom.

I didn’t say YES to joining, but I did say YES to keep looking … which I did for three weeks. Three weeks and a dozen “looks” at 4 who get 4 who get 4 who get 4. This bizarre mathematical diagram was supposed to lead to success. It took three weeks of a crash course in compounding and exponential growth before I got it … I didn’t do well in math class.

I suppose most people don’t give themselves 3 weeks and a dozen looks at the opportunity. They just stay with their initial NO … a fateful decision.

I finally enrolled, on ignorant fire and tried to recruit everyone at Foster Farms. They fired me. Now I was full-time with no bridges or boats. And although that’s often recommended as a success principle it wasn’t a wise one for me. I’d just moved from the chicken business to the people business only to find out that I didn’t like people, didn’t trust them, couldn’t commentate well with them, and hated the idea of selling. I was drunk on the idea of 4 who get 4.

So, I struggled mightily for 30 months. Network marketers live in months.

I sold my home, my cars (they actually took my cars), and everything else of value. When I finally broke through, I was driving a borrowed car living on my sister’s couch earning about $300 a month.

One of the coolest things about Network Marketing is on a scale of 1-10 in your ability to “do it,” you and I can be a 1 yet enroll a 10. Or a 1 can just enroll a 3 and improve their station in life. My 10 was Jerry Schaub.

Jerry lived about 3 hours away and called for another bottle of the product I was selling. I was desperate so I drove it to him hoping to sell him a case. I timed the delivery so that perhaps we could have lunch … on him. It all worked out at the Village Inn in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on a freezing Thursday in February 1979. Jerry invited me to lunch. I showed him the circles just like I had 200 times before.

Jerry looked at the yellow pad and said, in a way I had never heard it before, “I can do that.” I had never said it like that. No one I had enrolled ever said it like that. He believed it.

Jerry went on to earn me $100,000 in the next 12 months. This was 1979/1980. It was the equivalent of you enrolling someone today that earned you $500,000 in the next year. $40,000 a month.

I parlayed my success with Jerry into enrolling 3 more people almost as potent as Jerry. By the time I was 28 years old I had 30,000 active people on my team and was earning $40,000 a month … the equivalent of $200,000 in today’s money.

The rest of the story is a cliché … history. Success Magazine did their first-ever (and last) feature story on the success of Network Marketing and chose me for the cover story in March of 1992. I owned my own Network Marketing company for 30 plus years, traveled the world, spoke to hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs, coached some to their own epic success stories … some more prolific than mine. I wrote best-selling books, produced videos, and became wealthy in not just income but assets.

People see and hear the story and think it’s unachievable for them. And I like to remind them of something. All I ever did that was remarkable was drive 3 hours to deliver a bottle of the product. Jerry did the rest. Jerry gave me the confidence. Jerry gave me the income to launch a career. Jerry gave me the momentum and the story to tell.

Here’s a question for you: If you enrolled someone this year that earned you $50,000 a month next year do you think you could go on to carve out a good life and successful network marketing career? Of course, you could. Anyone could.

I guess the question is, are you willing to initiate the next invite?

Do the next presentation, the next enrollment of someone that is probably just going to quit until YOU FIND YOUR JERRY SCHAUB?

Are you? That’s a question for you to answer every day. And if the answer is yes, you’ll get off the couch and into action … sustained consistent compounded action.

Today, I live on the largest private island in the world, Lanai, Hawaii. With a 200-degree ocean front view, a world-class golf course, and a beach out my back door with the woman of my dreams, Kimmy. When I met her, she was earning $100,000 a month in her 4th year as a Network Marketer.

I made it in four years. She made it in four years. You can make it in four years and four years is going to fly by anyway. Most people don’t … 99.9% don’t. The question is, are you the 0.1%? Only you can answer that.

I’m a long way from Foster Farms (although the owner lives just one island over). I’ve lived more in the last 40 years than most people do in 400; met more fascinating people, been to more amazing places, achieved more success, and believe it or not experienced more failures.

All told Foster Farms made a good choice to mandate their four-year degree for advancement. It inspired me to create The Four Year Career® of my own. You can too. Or not.