If you're one of the elite few who have made it big time in network marketing, this article is not for you. But, if you're among the large silent majority (about 95%) who have struggled valiantly to succeed and are still a wannabe, then you may find this message to be like a bright light shining at the end of a long, dark tunnel.

First of all, in keeping with a long-standing tradition in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and it's myriad offshoots, I want to be completely upfront by telling you, "my name is George and I'm a leadaholic." (That's "lead," not "led.")

Being a retired psychologist and psychotherapist as I am, I often wonder how I could've gotten hooked the way I did. But I figure that if it could happen to me, it can probably happen to most anyone--which, incidentally, I believe it does all too commonly. And, if you've read this far, I wouldn't be surprised if it has happened to you.

My second confession is that I'm also subject to another form of drivenness that sometimes borders on addiction--namely, I get really high on helping other people. It was this very strong motivation, in fact, that gave me the staying power to survive an incredibly rigorous graduate training program in my profession.

Interestingly, this very same strong need was a major factor in getting me hooked on leads.

Here's how it happened. Nearly four years ago, a dear friend introduced my wife, Mildred, and me to a unique and remarkable nutritional supplement. Over a 6 month period of adding it to her diet, Mildred experienced a complete and lasting reversal of chronic and very debilitating symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis that she had been subject to for 18 years.

As you can probably understand, we both became passionate about these supplements and--in keeping with my strong drive to help others--I set out to tell the whole world about them.

Unbelievably, however, I discovered to my dismay that hardly anyone wanted to hear about them--even our dearest friends and family members who I deeply believed could benefit from them tremendously.

Getting a cold shoulder from my supposedly "warm market," as I did, I was led to the next developmental stage in what I now recognize to be a very lawful addictive process. As I tell you about it, it may strike a familiar chord for you.

Recognizing as I did that there are literally millions of people suffering from chronic degenerative diseases of all kinds whose very lives could be saved by taking these supplements, I felt a strong ethical responsibility to get the word out to as many of them as possible, in whatever way I could.

This strong drive, coupled with the hope of also improving our financial situation, led me to redouble my efforts in recruiting prospects who would share my passion for these incredible products and who would happily join my distributional team in marketing them to the long-suffering masses.

My already hot fire was fueled immensely by the endless testimonials I heard on weekly conference calls from others who seemingly were having outstanding success in doing exactly what I wanted to do. If it worked so well for them, I reasoned, it HAD to work for someone as strongly motivated as I was.

Since I live in a very remote area of northern Minnesota, however, it became quickly apparent to me that the only way I could realize such success was to utilize the internet and/or the phone to build my business. Given my very rudimentary knowledge of the internet, that door seemed to be closed for me.

So, as you can probably see, I was ideally positioned in navigating these challenging network marketing waters to be easily seduced by the many sirens singing from the rocks and to get hooked on the easy solutions they promised to provide. Mainly, these took the form of endless leads companies offering a wide array of red hot prospects who were often portrayed as sitting eagerly by their phones just waiting for my call. Many of the terms that were commonly used to describe these prospects seemed quite tantalizing: Phone interviewed leads, 4 question surveyed leads, 8 question surveyed leads, phone verified leads, double opt-in leads, exclusive real time leads, etc.

As with varieties of wine, the implication clearly conveyed by the companies marketing these leads was that their quality was in direct proprotion to their price. As I was to discover, however, (as I have also with wine), the invariable common effect of indulging in them, regardless of price, was to produce an initial rosy glow (of the anticipated positive results), followed by a sobering return to stark, cold reality.

Unlike many of my network marketing colleagues, I was able to overcome the "20 pound phone" effect fairly easily and got so I could spend many hours a day dialing numbers continuously--to the point, literally, of wearing the numerals off the phone buttons.

I developed this process into a fine art and must say I actually came to enjoy it. It was similar for me in some ways to the many enjoyable hours I've often spent fishing earlier in my life-- without catching anything at all. As I became fond of saying, I took each voicemail message, busy signal, wrong number, or flat out "no" as bringing me one step closer to getting that inevitable "yes."

As I engaged in this extremely low reward process, however, I was often reminded of the hapless rats I had observed in a laboratory psychology course many decades earlier. These animals, placed in a so-called Skinner box, were trained to press a lever in order to receive a pellet of food. Then, by gradually increasing the number of lever presses required to get the reward, they could be trained to keep pressing it repeatedly with no reward at all to the point of total exhaustion.

I'm afraid that this is a very telling metaphor for the potential fate of most network marketers who are led down the primrose path of buying and calling endless leads.

It's not that this approach does not bring some small degree of success. It did for me. Over a period of many months, through an extremely high degree of commitment and dedicated persistence, I successfully recruited and enrolled a respectable number of distributors to my team.

But the very tragic bottom line for me--as I believe is true for the vast majority of others using this deeply flawed approach--is that literally NONE of the people I recruited by using it were able or willing to duplicate it. Anyone familiar with the crucial and central importance of duplicatability in all network marketing will recognize that this is, indeed, the Achilles heel of calling leads.

In Part II of this saga, I'll describe the profound epiphany that has led me on a happy path to recovery from this all-too-familiar and self-destructive dead end that I'm now convinced contributes greatly to the failure of huge numbers of aspiring wealth-builders in the network marketing industry.

If you've identified at all with what I've been describing here and are interested in looking at a revolutionary new approach to building ANY network marketing business, without ever having to buy leads again, I invite you to go to my website listed below. I also invite you to learn more about this by reading Part II of this series.