Several years ago, a sports writer watched a well known professional golfer, who earned very large sums of money every year, sink a long putt to win yet another large purse. Another spectator turned to him and said, "Man, I wish I had been born with the ability to play golf like that. It sure would be great to be able to play that good and make that kind of money." He shook his head and walked off.

The sports writer shook his head too, but for a different reason.

Earlier in the day, in a moment when the professional could have been resting, the sports writer had watched him take a bucket of balls and practice putting for over an hour.

How much of our success is simply luck or the result of having been born with just the right credentials, skills, or genes?

Oh sure, to be born a Rockefeller or a Kennedy is a great step on the road to success, but in 1906 a guy named Al started a small home business in his sister's basement on a bench near the furnace. A few people have heard of that guy. His full name is Alfred Fuller, and he founded Fuller Brush, which is still going strong in the 21st Century.

He didn't have a lot of money to start with, just an idea and a willingness to put in the effort required.

I often point to two friends of mine who became millionaires in separate network marketing programs. Neither was anything other than an ordinary guy. One was a bartender in his thirties, and the other was a relatively UNSUCESSFUL insurance salesman in his late forties. Each took about three years to reach a point where their network marketing businesses took off and began producing livable income. Both had the same technique. They put their brochures in the hands of everybody they met. They did this for three years and eventually the law of averages caught up with them. The last time I saw them, they were both receiving monthly checks in excess of $100,000.00 a month.

Both admitted to me that when they started their network marketing businesses, they were very uncertain about what to say, so mainly they let their brochures do the talking for them. However, people did ask questions, and over time, as in any job, they learned the right answers. As their knowledge of their product increased, they became better able to anticipate objections and expand on benefits.

This all came from practice!

By the time they had really begun to make a liveable income from their individual programs, they were able to guide and coach other beginners such as they had once been. These other people built my friends' downlines and helped make them millionaires.

So you see, it's nice to be born into a rich or famous family, or with certain marketable skills, but there is nothing stopping most of us from achieving great success except our own unwillingness to pay the price of practice.

There's an old joke by Henny Youngman, I think. A young man with a violin case stopped a hippie on a New York street. He asked the hippie how to get to Carnegie Hall. The hippie looked at his violin case and then told him, "Practice, man. Practice."