A Shovel Only Has One Gear

Copyright 2006 Donovan Baldwin

My wife really gets the credit for the title.

Here’s how it happened.

Years ago, she and I were both truck driving instructors for a major national carrier at their Dallas training facility. Every week, we got a new batch of about 30 people to train, most of whom had never driven a truck (that’s a big truck, semi, tractor-trailer). Our trucks had 10 forward gears spread between two ranges, had to be double-clutched (if you don’t know, don’t ask – it takes too long to explain), and all shifting had to be done at specific engine RPM’s. Upshifting was a different technique from downshifting, and we threw in tricks of the trade such as skip-shifting, speed-shifting, and rolling into second (don’t ask, I told you).

Needless to say, many of our students, most of whom were bright and willing to learn, had difficulty learning the shifting techniques. My wife ran a tutor room at night at the motel where the students stayed, and students could come and ask questions about almost anything to do with the course, including shifting. It was a popular place. So popular in fact, that one night she tutored a guy for half an hour before she realized he was training with another company! We’ll save the story about the night the Dallas SWAT team had a shootout there for another time, but just for the record, yes, she did throw a full grown man to the floor.

Anyway, one night a student kept complaining about how hard it was to learn to shift all those gears. She sympathized with him for a while, and gave him some tips and pointers, but he just wouldn’t shut up! She politely responded for a little longer, but finally her patience snapped, and she uttered those fateful words,

“Well! A shovel only has ONE gear.”

I said that most of the students were willing to do whatever it took to learn everything we threw at them, because they realized what the rewards would be. Without dwelling on the trucking industry too long, they had the chance to earn over $30,000 in their first year, and after that, they could double or even triple their income if they handled it right. For people with no formal training in other fields, or with only experience in areas where income potential was limited, this was the way up, and my wife and I got to help a lot of these people get their start.

However difficult the training was, the reward was usually worth the effort to most of the people we trained. We saw our share of the others as well. The ones like the guy who was actually asking why the company didn’t buy trucks that were easier to shift, when my wife shot him down.

I’ve been in and out of network marketing since 1994, and regularly active in internet marketing since about 1999, and I have seen my share of people who wanted the program to be easy…to do the work for them. Just a few weeks ago, in fact, I got an email from a gentleman asking about a business opportunity I was involved with. He wanted to know what kind of income he could expect the business to “earn him”. He even went so far to say that if he couldn’t be told how much to expect to earn and how soon he would begin earning enough to replace his current income, he would consider the business to be a scam.

The earnings anybody can expect to realize from any internet or network marketing endeavor, and quite often the average job, will depend on a lot of things, including how much effort someone is going to put into their new business or position, and how long they intend to expend that effort. As a matter of fact, if I had to pinpoint one major factor of success for most network or internet marketers, I would just have to say such seemingly simple things as, “Stick with it no matter what.” “Don’t give up.” “Try, try again.”

Honestly, if the business, product, or program is good, and if there is a market for it, sustained effort on your part, not only in selling the product or program, but in learning about the benefits of the product or program to the customer as well, will be one of the deciding factors in the success or failure of your venture.

I very often mention two friends of mine who became millionaires simply by handing out a brochure to everyone they met or came in contact with for three years. They never sold anybody anything! Or I can use myself as an example. Even today, although I make a very good living on the internet, I am not a salesman, and have only what I consider to be a basic skill at internet marketing. However, I also have dozens of websites, most of which are simple as simple can be, that I built (after teaching myself html) and promoted regularly for almost three years before I began receiving regular income from the internet. As I have continued to build more and more informational sites, I have made more and more sales of more and more products, and my income has grown.

It’s probably never going to be completely easy, but if you are willing to study, to learn, to practice, and to make the required effort and not give up, someday you will succeed.