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Resources to
understand your Income
The following table
identifies pros/cons of each business from my perspective. I am
not attempting to "sell" either the product or the business in this
discussion. I do want to work with people who will be
successful.
As you know, any
business requires investment. Even starting your own business will
require more than just your time. Somewhere you need to purchase
services such as advertising, etc. Franchising is very popular
as you can tell from the number of McDonalds and similar businesses.
However, those types of franchises are expensive (McDonalds is
$45,000). For this reason, direct marketing (aka referral
marketing, network marketing, and others) is an attractive alternative
for many of us.
Since the costs of a
McDonalds franchise are so high, success with McDonalds is almost
guaranteed because only people serious about the business enter.
The nominal costs for a home based business are a mixed blessing.
A person has little invested and a surprising number put virtually no
effort into building their business. (Of course, some of them
were "sold" into the business by super-aggressive up-lines, sometimes
with stories of immense incomes)
Of course the advantage
of franchises (including home based business) is the fact that the
business infrastructure is in place. A recognized name,
marketing and sales collateral, a product or service, billing and
accounting, and more.
Home based businesses
stress the fact that all you have to do is to "follow the plan".
I do know people who have done that successfully. I also know
those who tried to follow the plan but not successfully. (And I
know a surprising number of people who joined, made two calls, didn't
make a sell and talked about how horrible the business is.)
Of course the home based
business (in my case, USANA, Ambit, NetTrav, and IVO) wants
success. But, try as we might, we are different personalities,
persons, and temperaments. Prospective customers view us
instantaneously in ways we are unaware of. (Read "Blink"
by Malcom Gladwell.).
A friend of mine is a
Mary Kay associate. She is tall, slender, moves with "grace" and
is so poised in presentations that I would buy Mary Kay. But one
look at my picture will demonstrate that I am not equipped to sell
Mary Kay. And I have this great ability of remembering the right thing
to say after the presentation.
So we need to counter
those impressions. A couple of simple examples: Suppose
you elected to participate in USANA. Suppose you had health
problems all your life, then started with USANA and your health
dramatically improved. Could you demonstrate the value of USANA
without "selling"? Of course you can picture many opposite
stories where your appearance and life would not demonstrate the value
of USANA.
Or suppose you had been
in natural gas, electricity, or utility business all of your life and
you chose to participate in Ambit. Would your friends believe
you had credentials to talk about this product?
The question is one of
finding the business and approach that fits you. You can see the
"tie in" to my TalentAssets system. I started looking at the
nature of a person and am concluding that we have a set of talent
assets. The set we have and the set we want to acquire equip us
for various opportunities.
We should identify them,
develop them and most importantly find the means to employ them to
generate income for us.
Following are some
thoughts on the businesses I am involved with.
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