"The Next Trillion: An Interview with Paul Zane Pilzer," by John Milton Fogg, Network Marketing Lifestyles Magazine, September 2001.

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The Next Trillion:

Why the wellness industry will exceed the $1 trillion health care (sickness) industry in the next ten years.

This doesn't happen overnight. It may take three, four, five, or six conversations with different people before you actually change your mind. That's why wellness, which is so clearly paradigm-changing information for so many people, really works best in a one-to-one interactive environment--like network marketing.

NML: What do you see for the decade ahead, Paul?

I see a one trillion dollar wellness industry by the year 2010.

I see great opportunities for network marketing and network marketers.

I see certain network marketing companies, because they're the fastest way to get the new information out there, leading that industry.

I see great opportunities coming for the network marketing industry because network marketing is clearly the best vehicle we have today, in the United States and around the world, to educate people about new products and services. There's a great window of opportunity for network marketing companies to educate consumers about wellness products and services.

I also see great challenges ahead for successful network marketing companies, particularly those involved in wellness, as the technology continues to evolve. Network marketing companies need to remain flexible so they can stay ahead of new technology. The best wellness products and services of yesterday may not be the best products and services tomorrow.

The personal computer industry is an apt analogy; entire companies have come and gone because they made, say, the best fax software--until someone came up with a better fax software, or because they made the best high-end monitor card--until every computer started coming with a high-end monitor card already built in.

Many of today's network marketing products will go to retail fairly quickly. You're already seeing that with glucosamine and a number of the other supplements: they're starting to get into the conventional retail channels. To stay competitive, network marketers are going to have to stay ahead of the new technology.

I see consolidation in the industry. Many of the smaller network marketing companies will not have enough money for the R&D they need to compete with the new technologies. I see merging of companies, as well as companies enlarging their product offerings. Companies who can serve more of their customers' needs will be the most successful.

I see real clinical trials. The products of the wellness business are moving toward an era of greater quality control. Today, a third to a half of the bottles in retail stores do not have in them what is on the labels because it's not a regulated business. The company whose sole business is wellness has a lot more to lose if they make a mistake: they often have better quality control. Ultimately, none of the successful wellness companies can afford to have a bad quality product out there.

NML: As a part-time rabbi and someone who has been vegetarian (as you say in your book, for spiritual reasons), you've become pretty passionate about wellness, haven't you?

It has become something of a mission for me, and I think it is for network marketers as well.

As much as we focus on the financial and lifestyle benefits of the business, the real benefit is what you can do to change a life--and the lives of all the people who are touched by that life. If you can add five, ten, fifteen years to someone's life, think of his children, think of his spouse. We're wonderfully interrelated in the world today, and when you can give someone the gift of wellness, improving the quality of that life every day and increasing the length of that life, it's a truly wonderful thing.

Make no mistake: there is a crisis, a trend of epidemic proportions going in the other direction in the rest of America. Right now, network marketing is the only force I see on the horizon that has the potential to make this kind of huge change.                                         prev