Taylor Thompson
Founder | The SheNetwork
CoFounder | LT WealthBuilding Academy
CoHost | Millionaire Training Podcast
Taylor Thompson’s Millionaire Training Story
When I joined Herbalife International in 1993, I started as a stay-at-home mom of a brand- new baby. I basically was hoping to earn $800 a month, I wanted mom care versus daycare. Immediately I was given a bootlegged copy of Larry Thompson’s The Millionaire Training. I was also encouraged to listen to Jim Rohn as a part of my audio routine. At that time, he was a huge part of the Herbalife culture.
Tish, (Larry’s sister) was my indirect upline, and I immediately admired her because she was so real and authentic. It was this kind of environment that allowed for a stay-at-home-mom like me to thrive. I worked hard at making my business a success and as my business grew, I was fortunate to qualify for various meetings at Tish’s ranch where I got to meet and get to know Jim Rohn personally. That is when I learned that it was Larry who brought Jim into the Herbalife family.
I was very proud of my success at Herbalife being a stay-at-home mom of three girls and ultimately a single mom. Shortly after Mark Hughes passed away in May of 2000, I qualified for the Presidential Summit in LA that August. As a bonus, Tish took a handful of top distributors in her group to go and meet her brother, Larry, at his estate in LA.
Riding up to Larry’s mansion in a limo through the rolling hills, I had to pinch myself. I was just a West Texas girl. This was almost unimaginable…like a movie. We arrived in front of this sprawling estate and just as I was walking in the doorway, Larry was descending from this palatial staircase. I had never been star-struck in my life, and I don’t think I believed in love at first sight, until that minute. Little did I know that he felt the same way when he saw me for the first time, but it would be over a year before that was revealed. It was a year and a half later when we would finally have our first date.
I lived in Texas and he was in California; he had raised his girls, I had three little ones; we had a 20-year age difference, and his closet was bigger than my entire house. It didn’t make any sense to either of us. Well, true love with a higher purpose doesn’t always make sense.
To describe Larry from my perspective and my experiences brings to mind the words: genius, wisdom beyond his years, insights, intuitiveness, empathy, humility, always a desire to help others belief in themselves, strong, passionate, and so giving of himself.
In 2005, the five of us, Larry, me and my three girls, went to Maui where we all got married on the beach. It was important to Larry to demonstrate to them how important they are. He has always put the girls first. He is a giver by nature. I brought him into a family lifestyle that he hadn’t been able to experience with his own daughters. My girls were young, and we were going to sporting events, pep rallies and teacher’s meetings.
When we decided to buy a house, we chose to live in a neighborhood in Prosper, Texas. Larry freaked out. His homes previously had gates. I wanted normal. I wanted our girls to have a neighborhood with kids and streets. It was meant to be temporary, but we live in the same home 16 years later.
Larry has told me, “I’ve lived in a lot of houses and I’ve lived in some mansions, but this is my first home.” I moved a lot as a kid, so this has been my first home, too. It’s been important for us to raise our girls around family. One of his daughters, Lari, and his granddaughters, live in Dallas and of course, his sister, Tish, and his nieces. We gather at Tish’s for Thanksgiving at her ranch and always at our home for Christmas.
His daughters, Lari and Leah, seem grateful that Larry has been able to have this experience, because he didn’t have this type of “normal” environment while raising them. We have our home, our family, our community, and our church. It’s normal for us. We love it.
Preach what you practice. Larry is always teaching, always encouraging. He lives what he teaches every single day. His teaching is in the subtleties. It is in the way he treats me that my three daughters have witnessed day in and day out. He will ask, “What can I do for you today? How can I serve you today?”
Our girls have been indoctrinated into the philosophy of The Millionaire Training and all his teachings by how we live life each day, not by listening to the tapes. He has given me tools and philosophies for being a better parent. As the girls squabbled and fought over stuff like girls do, he would tell them, “It’s not about what they did. What are you going to do about it?”
Today, we have three offices in our home. Two of our girls are entrepreneurs and know the concepts of Employ Yourself, Self-Discipline, and Self-Responsibility. They’ve picked up the lingo and basic fundamentals just by watching us and it’s amazing to listen to them engage with clients. I believe more is caught than taught. When I started in Herbalife so many years ago, I had no idea the empowering and positive impact it would have on my three daughters and who they are in their lives.
When I was interviewing the people who shared their stories in this book, it became clear that just like in our family, their families and friends have also been impacted in many positive ways because they took the time to metabolize The Millionaire Training on a deep level. Trey Herron followed in his father’s footsteps at Herbalife. Jeff Roberti and Dan Stammen, friends since high school, have both created network marketing legacies that impact people around the globe. The deep gratitude each of these people have for Larry and the difference he and The Millionaire Training have made in their life is profound.
As we were talking, I also witnessed a common thread – most of them listened to The Millionaire Training over and over and over. I think back to that time when they received The Millionaire Training in their Herbalife distributor packs, there was no internet. There weren’t a million podcasts to choose from every morning. There were no shiny objects to distract them. They had this cassette training, and they listened to it, took notes and listened to it more until they knew every word.
All were students of The Millionaire Training and continue to be students to this day. That kind of deep understanding of the fundamentals of network marketing is missing in our industry right now.
We are in an era where we have all the information we could ever want at our fingertips, we have all the technology, we have all the tools, but we don’t have the kind of results that the lady truck driver, Tish Rochin, and the waitress, Karla Ingolio, had in building legacy businesses. Why is that?
So much of the training today is based on marketing training, not network marketing training. Marketing training is evolving constantly, changing day-to-day and not the foundation. It changes on things that we have no control over like algorithms that come and go. The latest marketing techniques on social media change so fast; few of us keep up.
Network marketing training is timeless. It is about people and how people relate to each other through sharing stories and wanting to help each other. That never changes.
Most people are more comfortable hiding behind their computer gathering more information than getting out and talking to people. They want it all automated. There is nothing wrong with knowing how to do all the marketing stuff, but the stay-at-home mom, the waitress, the long-haired hippie construction worker would not be successful if they had to learn marketing BEFORE network marketing.
For those of you who love to do social media and are good at it, it is even more powerful when you can apply the solid network marketing fundamentals that I am talking about to what you do best.
There is no one alive today who understands the fundamental principles of network marketing better than Larry Thompson. Few people know that Larry did something similar with a reel-to-reel recording of Bobby DePew. In his third 90-days as a new distributor with Bestline, Larry was selected to take on a new territory in El Paso, Texas. As I think about this from a distributor perspective, I cannot even imagine how hard it must have been for him. He was there with no family, no friends, no conference calls, no zoom meetings, no downline and no upline.
Long-distance was too expensive to make phone calls back to family or his upline. I don’t know that I would have made it, I truly believe most people would have quit.
It was during those long nights with tears on his pillow that Larry listened to Bobby over and over while focused on what he was putting into his own Mental Projector. He stayed focused on the basics, even when there were so many moments he wanted to quit and go back home to California. Larry lived these fundamental principles first-hand. It was there that he learned for himself, that the Daily Method of Operation, The 10 Pennies, and S.I.N.L.O.A. are real.
If Larry hadn’t pressed through those challenges and fully understood these principles in his darkest hour, it is very likely he would have gone back to construction and never would have delivered The Millionaire Training that day. And, if that training had not been delivered, we would not have the network marketing industry as we know it today.
El Paso was a historical event in network marketing and one that also made Larry a great mentor to many distributors worldwide.
When you become a student of something timeless like The Millionaire Training, The Thompson Rule 80-15-5, and The Six Pillars, it changes your character. When you change your character, you change your life. When you learn the message, the psychology and understanding that people are people whether it is 1960, 1980 or 2020, however you go about delivering that message doesn’t matter. You become that person with a briefcase full of skills that you can take with you anywhere and be successful.
Larry and I see new distributors overwhelmed by all this information, thinking that the more they know, the more success they will have. The problem is, they want to learn more to do more and they never learn enough and consequently never truly get started. You cannot allow yourself to get bogged down by information overload, you must get into, and stay in, purposeful activity. Activity is the only way you will achieve success in your personal growth.
If you want to become Arnold Schwarzenegger, you can read all the same books as Arnold will read. You can watch all the videos of him working out and you can study his techniques. You can read every bodybuilding article, listen to every podcast ever created on bodybuilding. Yet, until you go to the gym and lift the weights for yourself, nothing will happen. You have to lift the weights. You must do the activity. The same is true in our business and personal growth.
Be excited about the products/service/opportunity you represent and get into action. When I say action, I mean talk to people about what happened to you and what has happened to others. It doesn’t matter what company you choose but choose the one that you feel passionate about and get to work. Quit scrolling. Stop looking for the magic dust. Quit getting ready to get ready. Get into the right activity, the income producing activity.
We have some trainers in our space who don’t know and understand the fundamentals because they have never been taught. They don’t understand the concepts on which this industry was built. They are trying to turn everyday people into marketers instead of network marketers.
Take the time to learn the fundamental concepts of network marketing. Network marketing is the average person’s best chance. It is fun, simple and magical. I was always taught, If they can do it, I can do it. And, If I can do it, they can do it.
Just as Larry predicted 40 years ago during The Millionaire Training, women are truly a force in network marketing. Today, 70% of people in network marketing are women. We are searching for ways to provide more for our families without giving up our time away from home.
Women understand The Six Pillars instinctively because we love to tell stories. We take self-responsibility naturally as we care for our families and loved ones. We love to share and collaborate. It’s all in network marketing. I know that as women, we still often take a backseat to men. Testosterone does not make one a better leader, especially now. Female leadership is vital to the next generation of network marketing.
Being able to take the stage and train these concepts with Larry has been an experience like no other. He gave me the right to be on stage with him long before I thought I deserved it. It gave me the opportunity to go to the gym and lift my own weights so speak. I have learned so much in the process of working side-by-side Larry. One example is, You don’t know it until you can’t forget it.
It is so powerful to be able to complement each other, finish each other’s sentences and be congruent, succinct, and fluid. No notes. No PowerPoints. We pray together before every training that God may use our voices to speak what people need to hear. It’s humbling to be used as a mouthpiece for the Lord and we both feel very strongly about that.
Larry has always believed in the possibilities of others. He has a way of inspiring and encouraging…it is his gift. He always answers the phone, no matter who is calling. He will invest hours of time and never have a concern.
Larry was a long-haired hippy construction worker whose potential was recognized by two people he never knew before – Bobby DePew and Jim Rohn. Bobby and Jim wrapped their arms around Larry, and he has never forgotten that someone else saw in him what he did not see in himself. Larry looks for the same in others; he looks for their strengths and instills possibilities.
There is so much to be grateful for in our marriage and our time together. He has taught me to be a giver at all levels without expectation. He gives without attachment, with no expected outcome or advantage. When I watch him with people, he gives. He teaches what he lives. He is one of the most forgiving human beings I’ve ever met. When you are a giver, it is easy for people to take advantage of you, and I have watched him overlook and forgive the unforgivable.
I am deeply grateful that God brought Larry into my life. I’m grateful for how he has loved me and cherished me as his wife. I’m grateful for the man and role model he has been for our family. I’m grateful for the joy and happiness he has brought to my life as my husband, best friend, business partner and my soulmate. I will never have the all the words I need to convey our incredible journey together and how much Larry means to me.
There is something I often think about and don’t often bring up in conversation. I know there was no coincidence that when I met Larry for the first time that we felt the same way about each other even if we didn’t say it. Personally, as a Christian, I don’t believe in such things as coincidence. There is no Hebrew translation for the word coincidence, which leads me to know there was no coincidence when I met Larry.
And, speaking of coincidence, I feel compelled to ask you…
Was it a coincidence in 1968 that Larry joined his first company on the same day, at the same meeting as Jim Rohn did?
Was it a coincidence that Jim spent more stage and personal time with Larry than anyone else in his career?
Was it a coincidence years later in 1978 that Larry Thompson and Mark Hughes joined Golden Youth Marketing at the same meeting? Where Larry became the Vice President of Sales and Mark the #1 Distributor?
Was it a coincidence that in 1979 Golden Youth closed its doors, the United States opened trade with the Republic of China which allowed them to bring in herbs for consumption, and Amway won the fight to legitimize multi-level marketing with the federal government?
Was it a coincidence in 1980 that Mark Hughes asked Larry to help him start a weight loss company from the trunk of his car that we now know as the multi-billion-dollar, global giant Herbalife International?
Was it a coincidence that Larry brought Jim Rohn to Herbalife where he touched thousands with his timeless business philosophies to become a global household name?
Was it a coincidence that at Larry’s very first training for Herbalife International, Mark Hughes decided at the last minute to record that training?
Was it a coincidence that Mark Hughes decided to call that recording The Millionaire Training?
And is it a coincidence that YOU are reading this book RIGHT NOW?
I think not.