Confessions of a Discouraged Worker

“Discouraged workers” is term economists use to describe people who are out of the workforce and not really on the radar of statistics. These are people who have given up collecting unemployment (or it has run out) and have given up on the job market.

I remember being in that state for some time. When I was working, I was working a low paying, low incentive, low morale job. Every thing about it was “low” except for the hours. I had to put in 40 hours a week which accounts for a large portion of my waking hours each week.

Things began to change when I changed – changed to a home based business mindset. Oh I still put in 40 hours per week – most weeks more than that. But now it’s something I enjoy doing and that’s a huge difference. I know that a lot of people are out there now who are very discouraged. They may even have jobs like I did. But a job without some sort of fulfillment (other than a pay check) gets burdensome after a while doesn’t it?

So I have gone from a Discouraged Worker to a happy independent business owner!

Download your free copy of How to Select the Perfect Network Marketing Company – and enjoy!

Bank Adds Pleasant Touch to Waiting in Line

One of my pet peeves in life is waiting in line. It has to do, I think, with a larger part of me that doesn’t like time wasters – the kind that waste my time when I’m trying to get something accomplished. Oh, I can mitigate this somewhat by bringing my web enabled cell phone with me, or if I’m really expecting a long wait, my iPod. Or I can try striking up a conversation with someone else in line. Then who knows? Maybe I can get a lead out of the line!

Retail establishments and other organizations with waiting lines often spend lots of effort and money developing ways to make their lines move faster. This is ok – a moving line is always better than a line that only nudges every few minutes.

What about accepting that there will be lines and just doing something to make the time in line more enjoyable? That’s exactly what one of the local Bank of America branches near me has done. Banks often have the worst lines. Not all teller transactions are equal and some of them seem to take enormous amounts of time.

This Bank of America branch simply put up a few large flat screen TV monitors, mounted at near eye level in various places so that you could see the TV from any point in line. It was not that elaborate – I would say the screens were basic 25 or 27 inch models piping a cooking channel from cable or satellite. But it was just a ‘little thing’ that made my trip to the bank less un-enjoyable. Plus I got a great idea for a no-crust, no-bake pumpkin pie!

Lisa and the Macintosh

If you’re old enough, you might remember the Apple Lisa computer that was around briefly in the early 1980’s. Of course, you would have had to have been paying attention to the computer industry because Lisa came and went pretty quickly. Lisa came on about the time the IBM PC was getting started and Lisa put a friendlier face on the computer (a graphical user interface). Lisa was the first commercial GUI computer. Trouble was, Lisa was too expensive at just under $10,000 and few bought into it. By all accounts, the Lisa was one of Apple’s biggest failures.

But do you know what computer came out right after Apple realized Lisa was failing? If you guessed the Apple Macintosh, you guessed correctly. We all know that that computer was not only one of Apple’s shining successes, but the introduction of the “Mac” represented a pivotal stage in modern computer environments.

What on earth does this have to do with Network Marketing? Well some take-aways. They had a huge failure followed by a huge success. Is that a take-away or what? If you are experiencing failure in your network marketing business, that big success might just be waiting around the corner.

The other thing to note is that Apple learned from the failure of the Lisa to make the Macintosh what it was. Likewise, before you wash that failure from your memory, take one last look at it and try to decide what you could have done differently if anything.

As network marketers, we have to get used to a lot of people saying no to us. To some, that equates to failure. In some cases you can learn from the no and in other cases there is nothing that would have made them say yes, and you just move on.

So don’t look at failure as something to be entirely discarded. See what you can learn from it and who knows? Maybe a big success is waiting just behind one of those failures.

Download your free copy of How to Select the Perfect Network Marketing Company – and enjoy!

Looking at the Yoli Business

A friend told me about Yoli a few weeks ago. Yoli’s products are called “blast caps”. The idea is you fill a certain sized beverage bottle with water, attach the blast cap to the top, press — and enjoy! The caps ‘explodes’ into the water creating a drink. The formulation is a proprietary blend with low sugar. It seems at this point, they have only one product.

The compensation plan is a ‘hybrid’ unilevel and binary. They do make a fair bit of detail on their comp plan available to public viewing on their site. Is Yoli just another juice MLM or is it something different?

Well obviously its blast cap features are unique. I don’t know of any other product that delivers like that. Most juices come pre made and all you do is open them. Or else they are a mix and you do the measuring and mixing yourself.

While Yoli blast caps certainly look fun, I have to ask myself how long will this last? How long before the ‘novelty’ factor wears off? How soon will people get unexcited by the blast cap? How long before people get tired of using a custom made bottle to attach a custom made cap to? How long before someone else comes along with something similar and/or better?

While Yoli has other things going for it (for example it is sweetened with Stevia Reb-A a newer plant based sweetener), I have to wonder if it will survive in an already crowded juice and beverage marketplace.

A few weeks ago, I tweeted this question because I was curious: Will Yoli Blast Caps fit on any bottle? If not, why not?. One gentleman by the name of Jim Bishop responded and said “Because the cap is a certain size (Same as Vitamin Water), so it does fit other bottles but only one size.” So I guess that means you can re-use those Vitamin Water bottles too. One thing that was fascinating was that as a result of that one tweet, I got a whole bunch of Yoli Twitter followers.

That along with buzz I’ve been hearing leads me to think that Yoli has a lot of pre-launch hype. Yes like the Donald Trump Network, it hasn’t even launched yet. So it’s a bit of wait and see for me. In the meantime it does look fun and it looks like something kids will like too. Not to mention the inner kid in me!

Download your free copy of How to Select the Perfect Network Marketing Company – and enjoy!

Tired of a Looking for a Job? Create your Own!

Are you searching for a job and not having any luck? If so, you aren’t alone these days. New figures are out for September job data and they indicate the unemployment problem is still increasing. What if you could create your own job?

Well a network marketing business isn’t exactly a ‘job’ but it can replace a job in terms of making income. The best part of a network marketing home based business is that you will be in control of your situation.

The worst part of looking for illusive high paying jobs is that you are only partially in control of the situation. Especially now, your success in such an endeavor will likely depend on things like luck, timing, and who you happen to know.

With a home based network marketing business, those things help as well. But your success depends primarily on the effort you put into your home business.

So if you are tired of looking for those elusive high paying jobs that may or may not come your way, give some thought to a home based business. In that scenario, you are the boss!

Download your free copy of How to Select the Perfect Network Marketing Company – and enjoy!

Hoping for a Better Future

According to Zig Ziglar (and I believe it’s true), all people want certain things at a basic level. I’m not talking about food and shelter; no, not quite that basic. But about things people want in their lives. One of those things is to have hope that the future will be better.

These days with so many things wrong with our economy and so many people out of work, people have trouble maintaining this hope. They tend to feel helpless about hoping for a better future.

The best way to have hope for a better future is to take some control over the situation. And what better way to take control over a situation than with your home based business. A home based business, especially a network marketing business, puts some power in your hands to guide the future. This alone will do a lot for someone’s hope. It can replace a feeling of ‘hopelessness’ with hope and strengthen their outlook.

You can’t just join a network marketing business, do nothing, and expect that to give you any hope. You will also need to expect to take some action. The action in turn will produce results, which will fulfill your hope for a better future. Action is how hope turns into results.

If you are just waiting around for things to get better, hoping somehow that phone will ring and bring back good times, well, that may be a false hope. But starting a network business will bring action if you work the business.

Download your free copy of How to Select the Perfect Network Marketing Company – and enjoy!

Jobs are Losing Benefits Now Too

Not only are jobs getting more and more scarce, but the quality of the existing jobs is rapidly diminishing. We’ve already heard about pay cuts and forced furloughs this year. Today I read in my local news that Boeing is cutting back drastically on tuition assistance for its employees and that Group Health Co-op is eliminating vacation accrual for the remainder of the year.

Benefits used to be one of the main reasons for taking a job. But now even that advantage seems to be disappearing. I held on to my job long after I should have let it go just to keep the health care benefits. Now I pay my own health care premium and of course I get no vacation accrual although I can take off whenever I want. Oh and of course there’s no tuition assistance for me either, but that’s something I can write off if ever choose to return to school.

The point is, working a job is becoming less and less attractive. Not only are they paying less now, but they are giving fewer benefits. I expect this trend to only increase and drive up people’s interest in starting a home based business. People are going to find fewer and fewer incentives to go work for someone else. And starting their own business is going look more and more attractive. I hope that anyone who reads this will consider a network marketing home based business. Network marketing is a business that has a low cost of entry and a high income potential.

Download your free copy of How to Select the Perfect Network Marketing Company – and enjoy!

Residual Income, Passive Income and Network Marketing

Network Marketing is one of the few industries (some people will argue it’s not really an industry, but that’s the only word I can come up with now) that offers both Residual and Passive incomes. Both of these kinds of incomes are superior to the “time for money” type of incomes you might get with a job. What are they and how do they differ?

Residual income is income you get long after you already done the work for it. A real world example of this would be recording artist. They get paid long after they’ve done the work to make the recording – sometimes for decades after.

Passive Income is income you earn by doing little or nothing at all. A real world example of this would be a sports star who lends his name to a product for promotion purposes. He hasn’t really done any work – but he’ll get paid usually on one some ongoing basis for the use of his name.

You might be saying: But I’m not a recording artist or a sports star! Network marketing usually offer both of these advantageous income types. If your network marketing product is sold with an Autoship option, that means you get paid long into the future for one sale. This is residual income because you do the work once and you keep getting paid long into the future. Passive income can be found in your network marketing team building. Presumably your team is doing work; bring in customers and building their own team. You will get paid on their efforts!

Passive and residual income are both far superior to ‘paid by the hour’ income. When you are paid by the hour, you are simply trading time for money. And time is something that there never seems to be enough of. Often when you are working a low paying job, money is also in short supply. Trading time for money and not making enough money – that doesn’t sound good does it?

So we are very fortunate to have network marketing where both types of income are present. With some work and dedication you can build both passive and residual income streams in network marketing.

Download your free copy of How to Select the Perfect Network Marketing Company – and enjoy!

Are you Waiting for the Recession to End?

I keep running across a lot of people who seem to be in waiting mode. They’re waiting for something to happen. What they’re waiting for varies, but a lot of people seem to waiting for things to ‘get better’. They don’t want to start a home based business because these are challenging times. What purpose does waiting have?

If you are waiting for better times ahead, you may be waiting a while. A lot of experts feel that we are beyond the normal predictable cycles of recession and recovery due to varying factors (like more government control in public companies). The last recession following the Dot.com bust has a phony recovery when you think about it. That ‘recovery’ was based on the housing/mortgage market – need I say more? That was smoke and mirrors.

If you are waiting to high paying jobs to come back; again, you may be waiting a while. High paying jobs were few and far between in the last recovery cycle. Most jobs that were added were low paying service jobs. So you shouldn’t expect any different in the future. There is already indication that pay scales are shrinking. They are not only shrinking in relative terms (compared to what it actually costs to have a decent lifestyle) but in absolute terms (actual dollars).

So why I am going on about economics? Because it leads back to the idea of a home based business. There are no guarantees with a network marketing business, but there is something very close to a guarantee. If you are diligent about finding the right network marketing opportunity and you put in the effort necessary to succeed, it will be difficult for you to fail. And once you find success with a network marketing business, you can ride them through the various economic cycles. So what are you waiting for?

Download your free copy of How to Select the Perfect Network Marketing Company – and enjoy!

Look Who’s Number One!

Or I should say look who’s #18. Inc Magazine recently published their “Top 500 fasted growing company” list. You can view the entire list here. There is a Network Marketing company in the top 20 of this prestigious list. Can you guess which one? Hint: It’s number in the food and beverage category.

MonaVie! Congrads to MonaVie teams.

Some other honorable mentions:

Send Out Cards at 158
5Links at 274

I could find no other network marketing companies in the Top 500. Of course I only browsed the list which requires that I know of the company (there are no flags that say “this is a network marketing company”). Hardly very scientific – there may very well be other network marketing companies hiding in there that I don’t know about. Check it out and let me know if you spot any others.

But that aside, it’s good to see some growth among network marketing companies. This list is based entirely on business growth and any business that is growing these days deserves some recognition. Most of the more established, well known network marketing companies did not make the list. You won’t find Amway, Herbalife, Avon, Arbonne, USANA, Melaleuca, Forever Living and most of the top are missing from this list.

Does that mean these more established aren’t doing as well as they should be? No, that is not what that means. Well established that are not on this list simply because they are not experiencing the kind of exponential growth that a newer growing company might experience. This list is also restricted to privately held companies. A lot of the more established network marketing companies (like the many of the ones mentioned above) have gone public. Check it out!

The INC 500/5000 List