For network marketers, the future looks very bright indeed, because there are economic trends already in process that will drive more and more people to participate in this business in the years ahead.

People Want More Freedom

Gone are the days when a person takes a job at age 25 and stays there for life, doing as he's told to keep that job secure. Today, people want to be more mobile and have more choices. They want the freedom to live their lives on their own terms.

A part-time network marketing business offers people more control over their lives; ultimately, it provides more freedom. It provides a low-cost-of-entry, ready-made system for those anxious to make a change.

People Want to Be Rich

During my parents' generation, the rules said, "If you work hard, the older you get, the more you'll be paid, earning ever more money (within tightly proscribed limits) through incremental pay raises." As you approached the end of your life, however, those rules reversed: when you retired you expected your income to go down. In other words, the assumption for my
parents and their contemporaries was that one would work hard all one's life--and retire poor.

No more. Today we have 25-year-olds who've never held down a job in their lives, yet have become billionaires by building a software company. At the same time, we have 50-year-olds looking for jobs, hoping to get back to a place where they can earn $50,000 a year. What's worse, these same 50-year-olds have little or nothing to set aside for retirement; indeed, they may never be able to retire. These 50-year-olds don't need jobs; they need the opportunity to get rich enough to provide a sustainable
level of income for the rest of their lives.

That opportunity is exactly what network marketing provides. Network marketing companies offer this possibility by providing the necessary education, mentoring and business systems to assist these 50-year-olds build their own B quadrant [business-owner] businesses.

Robert Kiyosaki on the Perfect Business

By the year 2010 (not that far away!) the first of 75 million Baby Boomers in America will reach the age of 65. Many will come to network marketing as a means of building that lifetime of security which their jobs did not provide.

Indeed, beyond meeting the basic needs of minimum-level financial security, a person who successfully builds a network marketing business may potentially join the ranks of the world's ultra-rich, becoming far more wealthy than highly-educated and hard-working professional people, such as doctors, lawyers and engineers. They may even become wealthier than
many sports stars, movie stars and rock stars.

If you are already an established network marketer, what does this mean for you? This is the best news of all: as the year 2010 approaches, many people who are already network marketers will do exceptionally well as millions of Baby Boomers come their way.

Individual Retirement Portfolios Will Be Wiped Out

Never in the history of the world have so many people bet their retirement years on the stock market. This is a recipe for financial disaster.

During my parents' generation, retirees counted on the companies they worked for and the federal government to provide the income stream to support their retirement years. They didn't have to worry about managing their retirement portfolio: the companies they worked for did that for them.

Today, more often than not, when you retire you're on your own. Millions of Americans have 401k's or similar retirement accounts--and that's all they have. If your 401k runs out of money when you reach, say, age 78, you won't be able to go back to your former employee and ask for help.
There'll be nowhere to turn.

There's also a strong possibility that the US stock market will collapse by the year 2010--if not sooner. If this happens, many 401k retirement plans will collapse along with it, which will mean that millions of people will never be
able to retire--or at best, they won't have the pleasant retirements of which they had so fondly dreamed. Suddenly a person with $2 million in mutual funds in his retirement account may find that portfolio cut in half. On top of that, he may be stuck with a capital gains tax that could bankrupt the remaining value of the retirement portfolio. That's the risk of betting your retirement years on paper.

The number of people who have bet their lives on the stock market is at an all-time high: if there is a crash, millions of people will be seeking other sources for financial security--such as building the kind of B quadrant business that network marketing can provide.

The Rules Have Changed

In 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down and the World Wide Web went up, the rules of the world changed forever. According to many economic historians, that's when the Industrial Age ended, and the Information Age began.

In the Industrial Age, the rules were that if you worked hard, your company and the government would take care of you. In the Information Age, the rules are different: the new rules say, you had better be planning to take care of yourself. How? Starting now, by investing in your own network marketing business.