Work From Home Choices

In Wave 4, Richard Poe brings up a fact that I have never considered: the meaning of the word “job”.  He quotes economists James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg who claim, “ The twenty first century will see the death of jobs as we know them.”  The author goes on to explain that it has only been the past few generations that considered a job a permanent form of income. In days goes by, a job was a task that had a beginning and an end. For instance you may be paid to repair a wagon wheel and once that wheel was repaired, the job was over. 

Our modern view of a job came with the industrial revolution. Suddenly there were assembly lines always running, always needing manning. The task never ended, therefore the job didn’t either.

The job market today is not governed by the industrial revolution however. We are in the beginning of the Information Age. It is the Information Age that is molding the current employment situation. The Information Age is making jobs no longer permanent.  The Information Age is taking jobs back to the day when they were simply tasks that had a beginning and an end. 

The Information Age is ushering in at light speed and changing the economic landscape just as quickly. Obama and McCain cannot stand in the way of this force. No politician can change what is happening. We can only adapt.

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Richard Poe’s Wave 4 continues to be a source of great information and has me considering me aspects of MLM. One such element is “The Turnkey Revolution”. Speaking of this revolution, Poe quotes Michael Gerber saying, “Not only is it changing the way we do business in this country, but it is changing who goes into business, how they do it, and the likelihood of success.”

Poe adds, “Turnkey systems have shown the same McDonald’s-like ability to replicate themselves thousands of times over, even in non-franchised businesses. Network marketers gain the benefit of proven systems and trademarks, just like franchises. But they replicate even faster.”

What it all boils down to is that network marketing is turnkey because it is duplicatable.

However, only certain aspects of network marketing can truly be duplicated by the masses and therefore only certain aspects are truly “turnkey”.

Tools are turnkey. Hurray for turnkey tools! I have a few e-commerce sites as part of my business opportunity package, which would have cost me six figures to have built. The company stocks the sites, handles customer service, drop shipping, etc. This is turnkey because anyone can let someone else build a site, stock that site and handle all of the issues that arise with e-commerce.

However duplication ends with tools. People are not duplicatable – especially people who are good at presenting an opportunity or closing prospects.

Several years ago, I was a distributor for a nutritional supplement network marketing company. I was desperately working with my highest of my upline members to find a system that anyone in our group could use.

My upline devised a script. It was an EXCELLENT script – the best I have seen. I would call a prospect, 3-way a five minute pre-recorded sizzle message, and then go through the script. What could be more simple?

I spoke with a woman who was genuinely interested in my opportunity. I got to the end of the script and then asked her the closing question, “Could you do what I just did?”

She responded that she didn’t think that she could.

I responded back, “All I did was call you, 3-way a five minute pre-recorded message, and then go through the script. Could you read a script?”

“Yes, I can – but I wouldn’t sound like you when I did it. You sound really good.”

Her response typified my problem in my last company. Tools, not people are duplicatable. Therefore, the tools provided by a home-based business opportunity company are all that is truly turnkey.

(It would take a few more years before I would find a tool that could solve the people duplication problem.)

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My friend Alisa was tossing out some books and wanted to know if I wanted some. I love books, even when I am too busy to do anything but have someone dust them. However, when the box arrived yesterday afternoon, I set all else aside and began reading. I had read through / skimmed through two of them and then decided to start on Wave 4. I figured it would give me plenty of material for a blog or two.

I am probably the only serious network marketer on the planet who has not read it yet. After the first few pages, I understood why. It is the kind of stuff that those of us in the MLM industry revel over. The pages are filled with proof you knew what you were doing when you got involved in the industry.

My husband and I were sitting on the couch together reading this evening – He was reading the Holy Scriptures and I was devouring Wave 4. (Not sure what that says about the two of us.) I turned to him and read a quote from the book. We discussed its implications and then my dear husband said something that stunned me.

Suddenly from his mouth came the profanity, “I hate network marketing.”

Just to help you understand my dismay, let me explain that our LIVELIHOOD comes from network marketing. We are neck-deep in this business. Without MLM, we would be mighty hungry right now.

(Silence)

“No, you don’t.”

“Yes, I do. I hate traditional network marketing.”

Traditional was an important description that he managed to leave out of his first statement. Now I understood. What he meant was that he hated the practice of marking up items seven to ten times and making them impossible to retail. (He wasn’t acting too impressed by a book that would defend this practice either.)

Fair enough. I get embarrassed to think that I once bought into it and caused others to do the same. Sure, I had all the great excuses for the outrageous prices – exclusive patent, expensive research, etc.

I wasn’t heartless however. Because of the out of reach prices, I sold product at wholesale –not a great business model. (I am sure Donald Trump would have fired me.)

Being in a hybrid MLM that doesn’t mark up their products sometimes makes me forget that the rest of the network marketing world still operates by this out-dated business model.

Wave 4 is defined in the book as an era when network marketing is a universally accepted legitimate form of business that is spreading like wildfire.

I don’t know if the author, Richard Poe, ever envisioned a day when gas was well over $4.00 a gallon and inflated fuel prices would be understandably abhorred. The traditional network marketing industry may want to swig some of their magic drinks and put on their thinking caps - America is impatient with over-inflated prices.

Right now, oil speculators and oil companies are an enemy to happiness. Overinflated traditional network marketing products – as wonderful and amazing as they are – may soon follow down the same unpopular path.

Is it my crazy fantasy that hybrid MLMs’ popularity will grow as a result of inflated product prices in a suffering economy just as hybrid car popularity has jumped suddenly with fuel prices inflating?

No, I don’t have to fantasize. It’s happening.

Maybe hybrid network marketing will usher in Wave 5????

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On Thursday, Team Everest unveiled their new Premium Free Member Benefit Plan.  (It has better coverage than I anticipated that it might be able to.)

The following slide show tells you all about it.

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If you chuckled at this presentation, please vote for it while visiting the link below.

World’s Best Presentation Contest

You may think because of the previous article that Team Everest is
trying to be the MLM version of Overstock.com. It is a great idea, but
almost impossible to achieve. Even Overstock’s prices can be beat if
you look hard enough online. No one company can have the best price on
every product that they carry every day of the week. Team Everest soon
realized that while “product A” beat the competition most of the time,
“product B” may sometimes be a dollar cheaper on eBay or some other e-commerce
store.

Reality being what it is, Team Everest decided to focus mainly in
areas that they could beat the competition on a regular basis. Travel
is one of these areas. (Team Everest travel will be discussed in a
later article in this series.) Health products are another. Because
Everest’s pricing structure, they blow the competition out of
the water – even beating other MLM’s at their own game.

Everest’s Extreme Buys have featured products from other MLM
companies, like Xocia Chocolates, at prices WELL BELOW what Xocia
distributors pay for them.

The same company that makes Team Everest’s essential oils also makes
oils for another well-known MLM, who charges 2-4 times as much for
them. The list goes on and on.

You can learn more about Team Everest’s health products by visiting
http://www.squidoo.com/Team_Everest_Home_Business_Opportunity.

You also find anything from affordable handmade mineral cosmetics to golf clubs at Team Everest.

Services include a lead generating program for insurance agents and discount programs on many financial  services.

As fortune would have it, Everest has been blessed with the right to incredible market fuel saving devices - so incredible that the savings is hard to believe. Everest corporate even tried it on several cars first before choosing to participate.  The devices are the HAFC and PICC.  (Imagine being able to get 100 miles per gallon in the near future.) They will also be discussed in another article.

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