Tuesday
£10 In A Tin To Full Time Employment
| I have been asked about how I became self employed, how I started publishing magazines and my involvement with network marketing. Here goes: The first time I really heard about network marketing (sometimes called multi-level marketing) was back in 1985 when a friend, Ian, knocked on my door all excited about how he was going to make lots of money. He was bubbling with enthusiasm. He came in carrying a cardboard box, sat down and started to tell me all about Herbalife.  I can't say that he converted me straight away. My immediate reaction was of pyramid selling, American style hype and other typical responses. I couldn't grasp how on earth selling shakes to make people lose weight could earn me lots of money. It really didn't seem to be my scene at all.Ian was persistent! After a couple of more visits, and being made to watch videos of Americans jumping up and down and whooping, I gave Ian £25 for a distributor kit. I think at the time it was more to shut him up than any vision of earning extra money. But, of course, it didn't shut Ian up! He was hooked. He could see what I couldn't at the time. He was on the phone. Had my wife and I tried the products in the distributor kit, had we placed adverts in the newspapers? He kept on and on about how I had to take the products, speak to people and wear the Herbalife badge (button). Wear the badge! He must be nutty I thought. How could I go out with a badge saying: Lose Weight Now Ask Me How.  My wife and I started taking the products and, though neither of us were much overweight, we lost about 7lbs each and had to admit that we felt good. "Okay," I thought, "lets try a few ads."We placed two in the local paper. One for the product and one for distributors. I know, nowadays, many people won't believe this but the response was incredible. This remember was back in 1985. There wasn't really many networking opportunities and most of the similar diets seemed to be full of chemicals. Herbalife was offering a natural product. The advert we used for the product was one that, I believe, is now 'outlawed' by Herbalife but it sure pulled in a response. The ad simply said: Wanted 100 overweight people to try new, natural, herbal weight loss programme. I started to get a bit excited and ordered some of the products for retail sales. It was decided that my wife would do most of the retail sales and I would concentrate on building the business and sponsoring new distributors. After much studying of the distributors manual, and other literature, I was beginning to see the possibilities of how money could be made from multi-level marketing. Then we went to a big Herbalife meeting. What a culture shock! There were now British people whooping and such excitement and enthusiasm in the air. It was all so beautifully stage managed. My wife and I sat at the back wondering if we were really part of all this. After the meeting we got talking to a guy called Alan Lorenz, who was a solicitor, and was earning unbelievable amounts of money as a distributor. He also told us that all of the successful distributors sat in the front at meetings and said we ought to make sure that we grabbed a prime position next time. Business was really unbelievable in the first part of 1985. We hit the top level, and discount rate of 50%, and were retailing over £3000 worth of products each month. It was the right time for this type of weight loss programme, there wasn't that much competition. Though Herbalife wanted to be known as a health and nutrition company I could see that it was from weight loss that the money was to be made. When we received our first Royalty Cheque I must admit to having my first whoop. Not too loud, of course! I learnt so much from the likes of Jim Rohn  , Larry Thompson and Mark Hughes, the Herbalife founder. They were exciting times.Then I had a problem and a decision to make. At the time I was manager of a finance company. They weren’t happy with me selling Herbalife and having a car plastered with various Lose Weight Now signs. I had to choose between my secure position or Herbalife. I possibly made the wrong decision. I stuck with the world of finance and loans. I think that at the time I wasn’t convinced that Herbalife was long term. Looking back it is a case of what might have been. Our Herbalife business ticked over for about a year by itself but gradually dwindled, as you would expect, with no proper input or promotion being made. My wife went back to dress designing and I became disillusioned with my full time employment. There were new directors and there was intense pressure to produce more and more business. I wanted a new source of income. Living in Cornwall, where employed incomes are generally low, I couldn’t see myself getting another job with a similar salary and benefits, so the only answer was to do something myself.  I tried lots of things and, though they brought in some money, it wasn’t sufficient to replace my regular monthly salary. I ran holiday caravans, bought and sold various things and dabbled in Flea Markets. It was all good experience, and enjoyable, but wasn’t the answer.Out of the blue in the first part of 1987 I decided that some sort of mail order may be the answer. I put £10 into a tin and labelled it as My Business. I said that this would become my full time employment. I decided that every week I would place £10 into the tin until I had a business that would support itself. I’ve always been an optimist! I had no idea where this would lead or what I would end up doing. It was a bit of an adventure. All I had in the way of office equipment was an old fashioned typewriter (it was 1987 remember). My first £10 went mostly on stamps and envelopes answering various opportunity adverts. The replies were of mixed interest. Some were well produced but much of the literature was very poor. Amongst the mail was a business opportunity magazine, now long out of business, and a few adsheets. I thought having an adsheet was a good idea, so I started my own. This was made up using dry transfer letters and my trusty typewriter. It wasn’t all that profitable but I started to exchange ads worldwide and began to get sales for a couple of money making manuals that I had bought with resale and reprint rights. By now I had received several business opportunity magazines and most of them were poorly produced. I reckoned that I could at least do as good as these other magazines and decided to start my own. The first issue of the magazine wasn’t anything special. Like the adsheet it was made up using transfer letters and my typewriter. It had twenty pages and was A5 size. Everything was printed on a photocopier which I had access to. I made up 300 copies, which took me some time. I didn’t have a big armed stapler so each staple had to be pushed in the centre fold and then bent over with a ruler. This first magazine had a little editorial, adverts and a few penpal listings. I printed ads in the mag, which I had received for my adsheet, and exchange adverts. There were no paid adverts. All in all mailing them out got rid of most of the money left in my tin. I was still putting £10 in every week. I was delighted when a few adverts for the following issue came in. It felt like I had won the lottery or something, though in actual fact I made a loss and also on the second issue. The third issue also lost money and I was beginning to have my doubts about whether the magazine was a good idea. What I was getting was a lot of penfriend adverts. I decided to put these into a separate publication, which I called Drifter. My penfriend magazine started doing much better than my business magazine so I developed this side of my business as well.  I actually started to make a profit and bought an electric typewriter, which improved the look of my magazines, and started to get them professionally printed. I no longer had to put £10 into my tin but all of the profits went back into my business. The tin became a bank account but I didn’t touch a penny for myself for ages.As time passed things went well and I also joined various money making programs to promote in my magazines. Some worked and some didn’t but I began to see a regular income developing. Gradually I purchased a couple of computers, printers, photocopier, fax, desks and the such like - all from profits. Everything that I needed for a full time business. At last I was ready to go full time. My business opportunity magazine now had paid subscribers and advertisers and it turned into a glossy covered A4 size publication with 40+ pages. The penfriend magazine also sold well. I said goodbye to the world of finance and being employed. That was a great day! I went on to publish eight different publications. My business went well and I eventually decided to sell the lot and retire early. I am now fortunate enough to be self sufficient and can do what I want, when I want - thus my dabbling with blogs. I have probably made it sound all very easy. It wasn’t. It was a bumpy ride at times but the journey was worth the effort. I’ll end by saying: If you have a dream follow it. All things are possible in life - providing we know what we actually want. Good luck, Mike. Further Reading: Publishing Penfriend Magazines Money Making Test: FriendFinder Group Money Making With Personal Ads The Money Doubling Principle  Subscribe to Mike's Money Making Mission Subscribe to Mike's Money Making Mission by Email  Labels: Herbalife, Money, money making, multi-level marketing |
Tnx for sharing Mike.
was nice to know little bit more about u ;)
interesting!
Very insightful potted history. Cornwall sounds like it was a very dynamic and enterprising place in the 80's, at least in your house.
Fantastic and inspiring story. Thank you for sharing. Now I understand how you can do the money-making-blog-experiment-thing so relaxedly.
I'm a new follower. Apprentice perhaps?
Great post, its great to see how you got your calling.
Wow! I love to read this. This is like gold to me @@".. thanks for sharing mike! Good stuff!
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I LOVE to hear success stories such as yours. It's not even about how much $ you made, it's about the fact that you enjoyed your work and made your dream come true. Thanks for sharing Mike. I think I'll borrow that $10/week idea. Also, thanks for your encouraging words.
Take care,
*nonymous
i also love to hear success stories, but it has just totally inspired me to do something like yours. i mean you started with one idea and it expanded to a big thing. i am thinking of maybe making trying something new, but dont have any ideas, does anyone have an idea?
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Very Good article , you make some interesting points .
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Really interesting and informative story Mike. Thanks a lot for sharing this.
I've just read your blog post "Shoe Money". Learned a lot of good tips! Your story is fantastic! Thanks a lot for sharing your story, really inspiring.