Sometimes we have to hear a message a few times before we are truly ready to understand the full implications of what is being said and so it is with me right now.  If you have read any of my previous content here, you will have gathered by now that this former employee has been actively seeking a new direction this past few years, whilst struggling to comprehend all of the dynamics at play in setting up a new business with no product of one’s own, but plenty of skills and knowledge to begin something worthwhile and lucrative eventually.

First I tried marketing a marketing education system, with a potentially life changing back-end financial education system product tacked in. Then as the time-consuming techy self-education went on, my business was floundering and doomed to failure, even as I believed success to be just around the next corner.  Result: I know understand why under-capitalisation is the BIGGEST source of failure of internet based enterprises and home-businesses.  A hard lesson and one I am still smarting from, but knowledge is not worth having if it doesn’t take some blood, sweat and tears.

So then I have become embroiled in another ‘network marketing’ system, until I got around to creating my own product or finding my own product, or learning sufficiently more to be able to market the marketing systems I had learnt through my own pain….

And then, voices from the past… warnings if you like… have started to creep back into my consciousness…  To be a true entrepreneur – as opposed to intrapreneur – you need to get to grips with the differences of attitude between those who see an opportunity to sell and make money and the ex-employee who maintains that employee attitude of “I will just adopt this ready-made system, created by another entrepreneur and set up my own business”.

I have known INTELLECTUALLY for a few years that having one’s own product is the more lucrative avenue to follow, but I have had to learn the hard way that affiliate programs for others are merely SERVICE PROVISION.  I don’t know why I thought this was anything different to what I did as a public relations professional employee! Sheeesh!

So… What am I going to do about it?  The research is on-going folks.  I know that there have been moments of ‘Eureka’ promptly forgotten, when I have realised what I can sell… It’s there, simmering right now… I can just see it out of the corner of my eye…. I am nothing if not an ‘Ideas’ person… It’s coming…

The latest ‘home-business’ venture has to go.  It hasn’t really got legs… Sure it’s got potential; most things have.  Sadly, there is a fatal weakness in the model which spells its downfall.  The big guys are muscling in on their territory.  Their distributor numbers are crashing and burning.  Even as the parent company throws money at it, I think the writing is on the wall for that MLM.  I want out… I cannot get passionate anymore about products which also do not fit with my ethical and ecological value system….

Next….