Things Past

I have been on this rock for a pretty long time and have tried numerous income opportunities over the years. Way back in the 80's, my wife and I went the Amway route. That was our first effort in MLM. While there were and are plenty of people making a go of Amway, I can't say that we had any success. Even 20 years ago, the "stigma" associated with what is probably the most recognized MLM of all time proved to be a major stumbling block for us. Additionally, I was uncomfortable using some of the methods my upline suggested for getting past people's initial resistance. I felt that I was always bothering my friends and family and before too long, we washed out. Failure in that venture certainly wasn't due to a lack of effort either. We hosted dinner parties, attended meetings, made cold calls and everything else we could think of. The dinner parties were particularly difficult for me because of the way we were coached to go about them. We were supposed to get friends over for a "friendly get-together" and then "spring the opportunity" on them once they were a captive audience. I never could bring myself to do that. I would always tip everyone off about what we were up to and as a result, attendance to these events always suffered. I've never been any good at deception. A few years later, we gave A.L Williams (now Primerica) a try. Went to school, got the license to sell insurance and everything. I truly feel that this was a legitimate opportunity. Circumstances of the time along with my lack of sales skills contributed to less than spectacular results. Around the time we were getting started, A.L. Williams was under a LOT of negative publicity mainly funded and fueled by the insurance industry. A.L. Williams was selling term insurance and teaching people how to save on insurance and invest the savings. A very solid plan at the time, but they were just too big of a threat to the mainstream insurance companies who were selling universal life and whole life products with ridiculous comissions. As a result, the industry soiled the name so much that they eventually changed their name to Primerica, but by that time, much of the damage was already done. I know Primerica is still around, but I don't know much about them these days. Fast-forward a few years to the late 90's and I found myself approached by an educated professional gentleman and he convinced me to give Nikken a try. For those of you who don't know, they're a Japanese MLM company whose products are mostly based around magnetic therapy. The presentations were first class, the literature was slick, the products were extremely well made, but it's magnetic therapy for crying out loud. Long story short, I don't know what the heck I was thinking. Fast forward to today. We now have this extremely powerful tool known as the internet that was not available during most of my previous ventures. I'm still looking for a better way. Through this blog, I'll keep everyone posted on my progress in my quest for financial freedom.