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The Power of Dreams
Free-Market Motivator 1  2

How do you teach with a CD-ROM?
     Let's take the exam on the computer.  I print the exam and hand it out.  On a CD-ROM player, we play the exam out loud: You're reading it and you're seeing it, with pictures.  Then we swap papers and grade it.
     As we're grading it, I'm walking around with a remote control.  I jump right into the presentation, and I have Lincoln or Andrew Jackson on screen as I review questions.  You could have a disk on the French and Indian War for 10th graders for $29.95.  Precalculus for ninth graders.  Every classroom and library in the country will have a $300 CD player that works through a TV.

What other opportunities are coming in education?
     Retailing.  To give an example, I don't believe most network marketers understand what they do.  They miss the real strength of MLM--it's not the pyramid and the little lines.  It's that they're educating people about new products and services that will improve their lives, and getting the product or service to the people.

What do you mean by "education"?
     Go back to the peddler of a hundred years ago, selling a new plow.  The customer's not interested until he's taught how to use it.  Then it's wow.  Network marketers don't have to physically carry the goods anymore.  That's how Amway can be the biggest distributor of MCI in the country.

Do many products need explanation?
     Look at your VISA bill.  The majority of products you buy didn't even exist 10 years ago.  Someone had to tell you what a CD was.  Think of some friend of yours who's an "early adapter"--he's always got the latest gadget.  You love going to his house to learn about new things.  The network marketing business is this: teach people about new things and let UPS deliver them.

What else will be hot?
     Training.  As people's jobs are made obsolete by technological advances, they need to be taught new skills.  People used to have one or two jobs in their lifetimes.  Soon it will be six careers.  Training these people is the business opportunity of the next century.
     I published an article suggesting we convert all the empty shopping

What's your long-term goal?
     Most people want a better job and to improve their lives.  But the theories of economics they've been taught, they know don't work by other observations.  They don't know what to tell their children to study in school.
     I'm one of the few people in economics today who says there really are answers.  That comes not from economics but from my theology.
     I believe in a world where it is our God-given destiny to find answers.  Since I'm an economist, I've devoted my life's work to finding economic answers.  I'm just now defining the question in terms useful to the individual.

What's the future like, in light of the President's economic package?
     The President has a tremendous effect on the economy.  It's the public perception.  Attitude is reality in the alchemic world.  People's attitudes are what creates the wealth to begin with.  If someone's unemployed and convinced there are jobs, he'll run out and get a job.  He'll go after a job he wasn't willing to take or decide he's qualified for something he didn't dare aspire to.  The current tax bill takes from the producer, instead of giving unemployed people and the poor more incentive to find work.
     The biggest source of revenue for any daily newspaper is the classifieds, the largest of which are jobs.  Clinton thinks we need to create jobs.  First let's fill the ones we have.
     Alchemy really is the key.  That's why some people make fun of Tony Robbins.  They think wealth is oil, land.  It's not.  Tony understands that wealth is the product of our attitude and our creativity.

What's you advice for our readers?
     Plan your next change now.  Ask yourself: What new ideas, what new methods am I exploring today?
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Senior editor Duncan Maxwell Anderson writes regularly on entrepreneurship and management.  He followed Paul Pilzer breathlessly around the country to write this story.