A New Plan: The Home-Based Business Phenomenon

Self-Reliance: Produce your own retirement...Run your own business.

The home-based direct sales and marketing industry has so many advantages over conventional stores, franchises, sole proprietorships, and most professional practices, that it has become the primary marketing and distribution system it is today.

Here are some reasons why it is better than any other form of business.

1. Low Investment: In most home-based businesses, a person can start often for less than a few hundred dollars. Now let's be honest, you can most certainly start the business very inexpensively, but you also have to operate it. You should invest in the products as a customer, that way you speak about them with integrity. There are also expenses for things like, phones, long distance, Internet, advertising etc. These are generally quite cheap.

2. No Boss: This is a big one. When a person is an independent contractor, they can't be fired. To the question, "If you could make the same amount of money running your own home business as you earn working for someone else, which would you rather do?" over 80% answer: "Work for myself!" That pretty much sums it up.

3. Working From Home: The "commute" has lost its appeal. An ever growing group of entrepreneurs would rather work from home. A direct sales marketing business is designed for such a setting: it doesn't need thousands of square feet of floor space, a back bedroom will do.

This means no extra costs of lease, insurance, electricity, furniture, or computer. Except for modest record-keeping and maybe a software program, you have virtually none of the "overhead" expenses of a conventional business. And no commute.

4. Fewer, Flexible Hours: People are way too busy. The Working Poor are not alone on the treadmill. There are plenty of doctors, lawyers, CPA's, and many other "professionals" who, at age 45, want to throw in the towel, quit the rat race, and function in their own home-based free enterprise.

A person in a full-time job or profession cannot toss it all in the air and charge blindly into a different career. They need to develop it "on the side" while keeping their regular work to pay the regular bills. But a home-based business is essentially part-time. Business activity can be done at lunch, for a few hours in the evening, and anytime on the weekend.

5. Time Compounding Through Duplication: (Leverage) One of the best parts of most viable home-based direct sales businesses is that you get an opportunity to develop a "team" of like-minded associates. The advantage of this is that there is most likely a lucrative reward system for developing and training new entrepreneurs into the business system.

6. Minimal Legal Liability: A corporation, or proprietorship, can be liable for the misdeeds of its employees in the ordinary course of business. This is called "Vicarious Liability." The home-based business entrepreneur doesn't have this legal exposure.

7. No Special Licenses or Training: To become a Lawyer, a person must go to Law School for years, and then must pass the Bar examination. Doctors are in "training" for about ten years. Plumbers, and pipefitters, have to "apprentice." The direct costs of those years --  can rise to well over hundreds of thousands of dollars. That's "overhead in advance."

A good home-based direct sales marketing business has none of these excessive costs. But the mark of a good business is not overhead. It is profit.

In the race toward funding retirement, the doctors and lawyers start a couple of hundred thousand dollars "in the hole". A good home-based business has no holes.

8. No Discrimination: In an ideal society, men and women would advance on merit alone. It's not quite that way though.

The direct sales, and Network Marketing, industries does not reward a person because of color, gender, homeland, or faith. It rewards people as they are "effective" regardless of age, sex, color, faith, or any other discriminatory element. It is truly a "level playing field."

9. Tax Benefits: A salaried employee has no tax benefits related to the job. They cannot deduct for the commute to work, their lunch, nor the use of their personal den for work they brought home from the office.

As a business, a home-based enterprise enables a person to claim many legitimate business expense deductions. These can include home office space, payments to children for actual work, travel to presentations, seminars, and business conferences even if at luxury vacation resorts. (Pay attention to this one)

10. No employees: No employees, means no one for whom to pay Social Security, no one to hire or fire, no problems trying to decide whom to promote, no maze of rules to follow from Governmental bodies.

No employees means no money spent while groping for "motivational" techniques to get the lazy ones moving. It also means no worries about insurance for those who work late, liability for their torts while on a business errand, or watching who has access to the cash register. (For those of us who have owned companies, this one is huge)

11. No Risk: The entry cost is trivial. The time investment is equally small, just a few hours a day, a few days a week. Best of all, the home-based business entrepreneur risks little time at all --  and none of his regular job income.

Giving up bowling, golf, one's basement room hobby, or prime time TV for a couple of years for a return of a six figure lifetime income is not anything risked; it's plain old common sense.

12. No Accounts Receivable: The "Bottom Line" does not sneak up and swallow the "Top Line." Many "professionals" such as doctors and dentists do the work  --  and then, as their patients, insurance companies, Blue Cross, and others haggle over what is covered, they wait to get paid.

Home-based direct sales and Network Marketing businesses are normally "cash-and-carry." One does not tie up capital, and efforts do not go uncompensated.

13. Inexpensive, Sometimes Free, Training: The basic academic training in the major professions costs tens of thousands of dollars. And as one goes forward in their field they are most likely required to undergo mandatory "continuing education" as part of maintaining their license.

In a good home-based enterprise, no costly training is mandatory, but it makes sense to get some. Most marketing companies provide personal mentorship, consultation, books, CD's, business briefings, conference call trainings, and webinars as part of their business involvement, and ususally all for little, or no cost.

14. Early Income: In a "profession", it takes years to recoup one's investment in graduate schooling. With a franchise system it can also take many years to recoup the initial investment, depending on the outlay.

Because home-based direct sales and Network Marketing have deceptively low entry fees, some people look down their noses at them  --  as if high initial investment costs  --  a form of overhead  --  were a mark of a good business. 

Overhead is a mark of a bad business, or, at best, a necessary evil. The real measure of a good business is profit and income.

In a good home business it is possible to recover one's entire initial outlay in the first few months.

15. Unlimited Income Potential: In a J.O.B. or service profession, a person trades a large part of his or her waking hours in return for a limited supply of money. Though "professionals" usually earn more per hour than salaried workers, their income also plateaus out. Some may bootstrap themselves up to higher -- but still flat -- income levels by working 60, 70, 80 or more hours a week.

The only limit placed on the earnings of a home-based business entrepreneur is the one they place themselves. Many "hourly" paid workers have discovered that they could earn more than their company's owner by building a home-based enterprise  --  and not have anywhere near the headaches. They also realized that six, and multiple six figure earnings are not confined to an elite few. It's available to everyone.

16. Inelastic Demand: A good business is one which offers top quality product(s), service(s), and opportunities which people want, need, and can afford. And keeps them growing and advancing.

17. No Regulatory Problems: We are currently having a home built, and the maze of regulatory approvals necessary just to do that has almost taken the shine off of the whole experience. Imagine if we were building 500 homes! Get this one, it could involve nearly 50 agencies.

A good Network Marketing, or direct sales company, will deal with the army of regulators and authorities so that the individual marketer is freed to be creative. This support for one's individual business is worth many thousands of dollars. And, it's all free!

18. Insulated Against Disaster: Conventional businesses grind to a halt, for days or months, when a hurricane, blizzard, tornado, ice storm, or any other localized natural disaster hits. But their overhead continues.

The typical Network Marketing, or direct sales company is decentralized. It's quite "virtual", just like the Internet. A business person with such a company will continue to receive income regardless of local conditions. The laptop and cellular phone has proven this many times in recent years.

19. Time Flexibility of Training and Support: (Now this one is huge) Compared to the time costs of business school, medical school, law school, or any other "professional" training, the time cost of training in direct sales and Network Marketing is laughably small.

Through the parent company, or in association with more senior team members, a "newbie" can have continual access to mentorship, counsel, support, and example of their successful predecessors. Direct sales, and Network Marketing training comes in little time-efficient bursts, a CD on one's car, a team call, a webinar, an evening conference call, a get-together session. No professor taking roll call, and no exams to cram for.

20. Willable to One's Children: Unlike some franchises which cannot be willed to the spouse and children upon the franchisee's death, a direct sales, or Network Marketing business usually can be simply transferred to one's heirs.

And unlike those franchises which can be willed, and unlike almost all conventional businesses, these kinds of businesses often can be transferred estate tax free.

The Wrap Up

The direct sales and Network Marketing businesses have many other direct benefits that worthy of discussion. Here's the Best Kept Secret: This is The New Retirement System!

Just as the old J.O.B. System is crumbling, so is the old Retirement System. It is impossible for over 80% of North Americans to create a "capital fund" large enough to generate $50,000 or $60,000 or more in annual interest over the remaining 20 - 25 years of their lives.

But capital fund is not what Americans and Canadians need. What they really need is the CASH FLOW produced by the portfolio or capital fund.....or by any other continuing source of income.

So anything honest which produces the money will do; an annuity...a rich uncle...a trust fund...or a part-time, time leveraged home-based business.

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Pursue The Means, Live The Dreams