Work From Home Choices

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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