Art Burleigh

How did you first learn about and get involved with network marketing, Art? I was in my garage on a hot August night laying on a piece of plywood on top of the engine of my '69 Buick Skylark. I was changing an electrical relay on the firewall of the car, so I could save fourteen bucks and not have the local garage do it. About every year my air conditioner would go out in the car because of this relay, so I had learned to change it myself.

I was doing that and my wife said, "Hey Art, our neighbors across the street are having a little party and they've invited us over." So, I cleaned myself up and we walked across the street. This guy named Mohan, our Indian neighbor, was talking, so I asked him what he did.

He proceeded to describe network marketing to me and I discovered he was with a company called NSA. They marketed water filters. I was pretty intrigued. It sounded to me almost like a legitimate 'chain letter' because there was a product attached to it.

I thought,

"Well, here's a leverage model that might be pretty fascinating and apparently it works!" So I explored it and decided to become involved.

At the time I was working with a friend of mine marketing office equipment and office supplies across the country. Before that I had started out in the mail room at Universal Studios back in 1971. I worked my way up through the law department, went to law school at night, and got my law degree. I was also over at United Artists for awhile as a Business Affairs Executive.

The movie, Heaven's Gate, rolled through and it was $25 million over budget, the studio wasn't that big and it blew the studio apart, because it was such a bomb at the box office. So, my boss lost his job and I lost my job and the studio dwindled.

I ended up having to find something else to do. I got involved in marketing. I liked it a lot because while the movie industry is fascinating and fun when you're on a productive roll, the competition is intense and it's a tough arena. I liked marketing. I was working with a friend, making some nice money and helping a lot of people.

But I was always looking for something where I could create some equity in what I was doing and eventually have some residual income from it.

Network marketing looked like a way I could do that. I got involved with NSA and I learned about the products and embraced them and sold a bunch of water filters, bought a bunch more and got up to a level where I was car qualified. I went to a lot of trainings. That was also my first exposure, on a larger scale, to personal development.

The company had a number of trainers who were leading field distributors. They'd come into Los Angeles to do regional training schools, and some traveled around the country on a rotating basis, to NSA's different cities of activity. So, I attended those events and I ended up doing some presentations in the front of the room for our local group. I enjoyed that, but I never achieved the level of income I was looking for with NSA because it was a non-consumable product and it was my first exposure to the business.

I really didn't understand how to make it work. I eventually was involved with about 11 different companies— sometimes for several years, sometimes for just a few months. At one point I was involved in a situation where we worked our hearts out trying to launch a company that just started and we quickly created a very strong downline. We were doing a great job at that, creating a lot of impact, having a large, growing number of local meetings, and then the company fell out from underneath us. They were poorly managed and the product wasn't priced right, and they never paid us. They just vaporized, and it was very annoying… and demoralizing.

But at the same time, it was very educational. We learned a lot and met a lot of interesting people. I got involved with other companies after that and we made some money and lost some. Then this company called Essentially Yours Industries came along.

My friend, Jay Sargeant, who I met when he was doing training for a company called Jeunique— The One Day Diet— back in 1992, contacted me. Jay had been hired as their corporate trainer. I got to know him and I liked him. We related well and he kept me in his database.

A year after the big earthquake here in Los Angeles in 1994, we had to move to a new place. In December of 1995, I got a fax from Jay saying, "Hey, I've launched a new company, I've discovered a great product! It's positioned well in the marketing arena; you can make a lot of money with it. We're the only company that has this product. It's a binary, so if you come in now, everyone is under you!" I was intrigued and happy for my friend Jay, but I didn't do anything with it because I wasn't in the mood to get involved with a new company right then.

Jay kept dripping on me, which was brilliant, and he just did it through faxes. Two weeks later he sent another fax with stories from people using this product. A couple of weeks later he sent me another fax.

I pulled the fax up and was reading it in bed with my wife, Marlyn, and I said, "You know, Marlyn, here are some amazing product success stories, and I think they're true." Because, John, in this industry sometimes owners of companies will create stories that aren't true. I said, "If these are true I think we could have some fun with this. Here's a weight loss product that's unique, because it's a liquid collagen protein food supplement and it's very easy to take and explain and it's affordable!" I mean, there was a story from a grandmother who had been dieting for 57 years and she took this product over the course of the Christmas/New Year holidays and she lost ten pounds, reshaped her body and dropped two pant sizes and a dress size! Another story was about her friend, Ava, who was 50 years old and she used to have chubby thighs and after only 3 weeks her thighs didn't rub together anymore. She was thrilled; she lost weight over the same holiday period and also lost inches from her waist.

I immediately felt like we could see some real duplication from this. And duplication is something you must have for a network marketing organization to grow with any momentum.

There are a lot of times when duplication just doesn't occur, because something is not right in the company's formula or the elements are not there in the mix of the products, services, pricing, comp plan and everything else.

Stories are also critical in the successful building of an organization. People love them and relate to them, it's just our human nature.

So we started building with an increasing flow of compelling testimonials from the use of this product called Calorad. The thing that was fascinating about Calorad was something that we termed, "New, Old, and Only" because it was new to us, and really new to the world, too, because we were the first company to market it actively and intelligently. But at that point the product had been around 13 years. It came out in 1983 or so and was invented by a guy named, Michel Grisé, who was a French- Canadian formulator and scientist who worked for Abbot Laboratories at the time.

He was approached by some veterinarian friends of his, independently of his work at Abbot. They knew he was putting together product formulations that would help animals work better and they were having a problem with chicken farmers, whose chickens weren't laying eggs and the farmers were suffering a financial loss. The chickens had fatty liver syndrome, so the eggs weren't coming out of their chutes and they wondered if Michel could come up with something.

Ten days later Michel revealed the first version of Calorad, which was a granulated formula they sprinkled in chicken feed— the chubby chickens waddled to the trough and within four to five days were laying eggs again. Chicken farmers were elated, news spread and pretty soon the hog farmers and cattle farmers heard about this product called Calorad and they wanted it too, because it builds more lean muscle mass.

Michel started wondering if it would work on him, so he went to a friend who was an obesity specialist, Dr. Shofair, and Dr. Shofair monitored Michel for 90 days. After the first 30 days Michel had lost inches in his waist and he gained volume in his chest, to the point where he had to buy a new sport coat. He was feeling slimmer and better, so they ended up doing a test on this product with 350 people. Out the 350 they found that during the first 30 day, 50% of the people experienced positive fat or inch loss and over the next 25 days another 25% saw similar results. By the end of the 90 days all but about 12-14% had experienced positive results.

It was a huge success and a short while later there was a company in Ontario that started marketing this product for only about 16months. They did about $12 million in business, but I guess they were poorly managed so the growth momentum overwhelmed them and they folded.

Eventually Essentially Yours got the rights to Calorad and started growing this business in 1996. We harvested stories, testimonials, and put them out in a little newsletter that was faxed to everybody initially. Then I put together an eight page publication called Avalanche of Real Calorad Stories.

I had to create that at night on my computer which was set on a plank between a couple of milk crates in my son's bedroom. Every time I tried to print a page it used up so much RAM that my computer crashed, and my sleeping son would groan at me again from the printers' noise!

I finally got the thing out. I printed a thousand copies in hot pink and we distributed that. I gave the original file to all of my key distributors with my blessing for them to print off any number they wanted. So, it got distributed widely and quickly. People loved those stories and our business started to grow. It exploded to the point we attracted 150,000 distributors to our organization. We have over that now, and they've moved over $93 million in sales and taken home over $55 million in commissions so far.

And all from collecting the stories and circulating them? Well, all from promoting the product and growing the business, which certainly included collecting the stories and circulating them. I worked with my leaders after identifying them, and we supported them in lots of ways.

Our main job as network marketers is to identify and work with our leaders. Too often we're distracted and we work too much with people we have the highest hopes for but they don't share our same hopes for themselves.

We were blessed to have some people who had been involved with other network marketing companies come on board in our organization. Marlyn and I sponsored about 12 people when we first got involved and some of them were very close friends of ours. They had been in our wedding, we went to college with some of them— and of those 12, eight of them went to sleep, four of them went to work with us and from that little group of four, grew our big organization.

As it happens, that group of four knew some people who quickly appreciated and promoted Calorad and our income opportunity. I knew a woman named Mona, and my friend Jay Sargeant also knew Mona. He actually knew her better than I did and so he had lunch with her down in Long Beach after I'd set everything up. Mona loved what she saw and she quickly got involved and sponsored a couple of women and some of them knew some strong people who'd been involved with other companies and it just grew! First here in Los Angeles, then in Texas, Hawaii and Arizona and eventually all across the country.

It's fascinating when things grow like that. We had bi-weekly conference calls, with Jay interviewing people who had had great success. Whether they were doctors or housewives, they all had dreams and they all loved Calorad.

The weight loss that occurred from Calorad was phenomenal and that was just exciting. So, we created collections of other testimonials and we had events, conventions and regional trainings, but conference calls ended up being a key tool for the growth of our company.

Then emailing started to become increasingly more popular and practical to use, and then websites became more useful, and we adopted those powerful communication tools and improved on them over the years. Like most companies, we've had our ups and downs, and we're on the rise again toward another big peak with a new product that was just acquired this past year. I think it will have huge impact. It's a water filtration pitcher that removes arsenic, nitrates, nitrites, lead, mercury, cadmium and other heavy metals and a host of other pollutants from ordinary tap water. Very unique because it's affordable and also consumable because the replacement filter cartridges are used up after 40 gallons, so they need to be replaced about every month. That creates a lot of on-going, back end residual profit.

The product's called Code Blue, and this countertop unit is also very convenient - because it can be used anywhere, even when traveling, and it completely eliminates the hassle of schlepping and storing gallons and gallons of heavy bottled water, which 4 out of every 5 people are now paying a fortune for. Plus, it delivers drinking water that's both better- tasting and safer than most bottled water AND a whole lot cheaper - since bottled water costs much more than gasoline, we can help most families save up to $1,200.00 per year!

Because of all that, Code Blue is now propelling EYI's new seamless international expansion - with our launch of Hong Kong this month, and the opening of other Pacific Rim countries to follow. Code Blue's exceptional importance has already been recognized by mainland China's 4th largest company, CEIEC, as they've signed a $210 Million contract with EYI for direct distribution of Code Blue units there during the next two years.

EYI even created a juicy, new, bonus, annual profit sharing program that's fed by all world-wide sales of Code Blue units, and any committed distributor can arrange to tap into that. The top level could generate an annual payout of up to $25,000.00 per person, so that's grabbing lots of attention now. All in all, I believe Code Blue will create enormous impact, and it'll trigger lots of increased awareness and appreciation of the rest of our unique nutritional/wellness product line - so, we expect to attract many new people to EYI who are looking for better health and a very powerful and compelling income opportunity.

Arthur, are there two or three things that you can put your finger on that are the real keys to your success in network marketing? Focus! I worked this business part time for maybe five years and even though I was making a lot of money after about two. As Richard Brooke pointed out, if you do this business and you keep your day job and you start to have several more thousand dollars available to you through your network marketing income, you're in great financial shape because you have your day job income and you still have those contacts and you've got your network marketing income coming at the same time. So I didn't quit and go full time in network marketing for a long time.

I liked my day job and enjoyed the people there but I was very focused on building my network marketing team all the time.

I always invested 15-20 hours a week on building the business, attending local meetings, doing conference calls, doing mail outs, prospecting, doing 3-way calls, and I never took my focus off this one company.

There are some people in this industry who are involved in several companies at the same time. I think that's a mistake. Certainly my family and I enjoy using products from several network marketing companies, but we don't try to build them. My company doesn't carry every product we use and I find that usually network marketing companies have some fabulous, cutting edge products.

Personal development is another big thing, because your business will only grow as fast as you do. Unless you tune into personal development, your chances of really expanding your business are limited because you're not expanding yourself, your abilities, your insights, your skills.

One thing that helped me a lot was about two years into this company, we were making enough money that we could take a long vacation. We were up at Lake Arrowhead for a week, where we go yearly to the UCLA family camp, and a week after that we came back to LA and packed our brand new luxury car and took off for a five-week driving vacation cross country. We drove from Los Angeles to Cape Cod and back, It was terrific, it was just the three of us, Marlyn, Seth and I and we drove at whatever pace we wanted. We saw five major league baseball games along the way. Stopped to visit family and friends, stayed in motels or hotels when we needed or wanted to, ate at restaurants when we wanted to. Saw national parks, the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, big city sites, and cool museums. Our neighbor took in our mail and deposited the network marketing checks at our bank for us so we simply went to any ATM machine and took out the cash we needed. But before we even left I spent $300 buying the Conversation with the Masters Tape series and I bought the Women's tapes from Upline®.

And we listened to those in the car as we drove all across the country. It was the first time I had been introduced to industry leaders like Randy Gage, Richard Brooke, Jan Ruhe, Reeny Yarnell, Sandy Elsberg, Steve Spaulding and Tom Schreiter— you know, all of these people that had been leaders in the industry for many years. They shared their success stories on these tapes where you, John, interviewed them brilliantly and I got a lot of information out of those. And so did Marlyn and Seth, so that was neat!

And another great thing about that trip was that we got paid the whole time we were gone!

Also, we got to see many special friends and relatives— we had lunch with the parents of our company's president in Cape Cod and then we drove twenty minutes up the road and had dinner with cousins of mine I knew from my childhood.

So Arthur, what's the very best thing about network marketing for you? Time freedom. Financial freedom. It relieves stress because we have the income that allows us to be flexible. We can travel almost whenever we want to. We work seriously at our business, so we're certainly not traveling all the time, but I believe that travel is not a luxury; it's homework for a meaningful life. When you can expose yourself and your children to travel, especially at an early age, I think it has a very positive and important impact on them.

When our son, Seth, was fourteen he had the opportunity to go to Europe with an organization called Student Ambassadors, and it was a soccer tour— some thirty kids from all around the US met at the Los Angeles airport. They flew to London and toured southern England, Amsterdam, Germany, Holland, Belgium and France and they played soccer games with other students their age in all these different countries. They had the chance to go sight seeing and they happened to be in Paris the day the French won the World Cup. At fourteen it was great for him to be able to go to Europe on his own and it was nice for us to be able to easily afford that experience for him.

When our son was sixteen we took him on a flying safari to Africa. A friend and leader in our company called me up and said, "Hey Art, my brother, who has been to Africa 63 times and runs a safari company is going to Kenya with our family and a few others. We are taking a small group and want to know if you guys want to go too?" So I said, "Sure!"

That was like a $24,000 decision and I could make it right on the spot because of the time and money freedom this business provides.

So we got to take this great, luxury safari to Kenya and it was fascinating to see our son, with his head popped out of a safari vehicle, snapping photos of animals in the wild.

On that same trip we got to meet some Samburu natives and toured their village. At the end, after the tour, the chief's son brought us around this corner onto the pathway back to our vehicle and all the women of the village were lined up along it. They had spread out their wares and they wanted us to buy everything that they had! Jewelry, trinkets, bows, arrows, spears and all this stuff. It was both breathtaking and heartbreaking, because with their poverty, you want to be able to buy from everyone but realistically of course, we couldn't do that as there were only about 10 of us and over 60 of them— we had a limited amount of time and of the right Kenyan shilling notes with us, so we bought what we could.

What's really great is that our son learned the value of hot and cold running water on that trip. He experienced the contrast between how we were traveling and how these African natives really lived. It was an eye opener and I think it's very valuable to get that kind of first hand experience, especially when you're young— it really expands ones perspective.

A few years later Marlyn had the chance to take her mom to New York City. She was trying to figure out what to give her mom for her birthday. She was about 80 at the time and had grown up in New York City, but she hadn't been back there in 60 years. She had come out to California as a young bride so Marlyn took her back. It was wonderful that just the two of them could do that together. Two years later her mom died. Without the income from our network marketing business, Marlyn and her mom wouldn't have been able to share that very special experience.

Because of our successful home-based business, my wife was also able to retire early. She taught elementary school for 30 years, she did a great job and loved teaching and the kids and classroom, but she got tired of all the state-required testing, the politics involved, plus the time required outside the classroom spent grading papers or attending classes herself.

That same year our son started his first year of college at UC Berkley, and two months later, Marlyn and I celebrated her early retirement by taking a 6-week vacation to Australia and New Zealand. Once again, our residual income flowed into our mailbox every pay period while we were away!

Another benefit is being able to pay off some credit cards in their entirety instead of having to make payments and getting socked with interest.

We were back in Australia again this fall in this little town on the peninsula south of Melbourne, where our friend got married and Marlyn and I saw this beautiful, antique, seven foot long, dark red, Chinese sideboard. It was just exquisite, 150 years old with beautiful black distressed markings, and my wife said she didn't even want to see the price tag, figuring it would cost just as much to ship it home all the way from Australia. Well, the clever store owner overheard us and said, "Well, you'd be surprised." It was only $350 to ship it home, so we bought it with a credit card. It's just here in LA now clearing customs and we were able to pay off that credit card in full. The kind of freedom to be able to do that is great!

Being able to live your life in a comfortable, flexible way is a huge benefit of network marketing! Freedom!

It's not easy growing a network marketing organization; you have to be blessed by having found the right company— one that's got excellent management, great leadership, a strong product line, ideally consumable, that creates a positive impact on the quality of people's lives with a good marketing plan and strong support from the company.

You want a flagship product with uniqueness and exclusivity and appeal, ideally some sizzle that can create impact and duplication. Some buzz in the marketing arena, thus empowering a lot of other people so that they can create success for themselves and grow an organization too. It's a lot of fun when all those key elements come together!

Art Burleigh and his wife of 27 years, Marlyn, live in Chatsworth, CA where they raised their son, Seth, 21, and built their network marketing business. Art has achieved the title of Double Diamond Executive as one of the top income earners with Essentially Yours Industries, and he's served as the chairman of EYI's Executive Advisory Council for over five years.

ATTACHMENT COACHING | LEADERSHIP | TRAINING | SKILLS Build Yourself Into a True Leader— Then Empower Others into true Leadership 12 Key True Leadership Ideas that will help you build yourself and others into better leaders. by Art Burleigh 2616 words | 10 pages