You hear all the time right now about unemployment.  People are going through layoffs, downsizings and rightsizings as companies seek to find a way through the current economy, or give up entirely and close their doors.

On the other hand, if you travel in small business / entrepreneurial circles, you hear people talk about being unemployable.  I’m not talking about people who have no skills and no ambition.  These are bright people with a lot of skills.  So why are they unemployable?

Because they choose to be.  They are of the mindset that they cannot be employed by another person because they have chosen to set their own course, take responsibility for their own results, and not allow any external agency to set limits on what they can accomplish.

I first heard this term in August 2008 at one of Loral Langemeier’s Cash Machine Workshops.  If you have never heard of Loral before I suggest you take a look at what she teaches.  She has come to be known as The Millionaire Maker and her best selling books are published under that title.  One of the things she teaches is that everyone should build a Cash Machine, a way to quickly make money with skills you already have.  Once you do that and have money coming in based solely on your own efforts and ideas you will understand what it means to be unemployable.

So, what are you going to do?

Wayne Woodworth
I’m becoming unemployable too.

You’ve heard about self-made millionaires before, right? Have you ever met one? Were they really self-made, as in they did it all by themselves?

I’ve been studying Loral Langemeier‘s programs again and she puts out the idea of team-made millionaires because you cannot really become a millionaire all by yourself. In reaching that point you will run into things that you don’t know how to do or things that are better left to others so that you can stay focused on making money. You need a team to take on those tasks, such as bookkeeping or cleaning your house, so that you can stay focused on the tasks you need to be doing. Besides, you are supporting other businesses in your area by hiring out those tasks.

I see this as a big problem in network marketing. To be successful we need to treat our network marketing as a business and teach our downlines to treat it as a business too, which means creating a team to take care of things so that we can spend our time prospecting and creating new business partners and selling our products or services.

For more business-related info, checkout by revenue modeling post at www.diversifymyincome.com.

Wayne Woodworth
Network Marketer
A home-based business is still a business

April 15th has come and gone and tax season is over for another year.  Were you happy with how much money you gave the government or would you like to decrease it?  Now is the time to look at that and prepare for next year.

I don’t mind paying my taxes every year but I definitely don’t want to pay more than I have to.  The best way to reduce your taxes is to be in business for yourself.  If you have a regular job then you know that you pay taxes on the amount of money you make then you pay your expenses with what’s left.  Did you know that businesses do it differently?  They pay their expenses from the money they make then pay taxes on what’s left.

In case you didn’t get that, let’s say you are an employee who makes $3,000 each month.  The government taxes you at 25%, so they take $750 and leave you $2,250 for the month out of which you make a $500 car payment.  You have $1,750 left.  Now let’s say you are a  business that makes the same $3,000 each month.  As a business, your $500 car payment is a business expense leaving you $2,500 in income.  That amount is taxed at 15% (you dropped to a lower tax bracket) for $375 and leaves you $2,125 to get through the rest of the month.  You have an extra $375 each month just because you are a business.

Starting a business sounds good now, doesn’t it?  But what are you going to do?  It has to be a legitimate business.  How about network marketing?  It is easy to start, has very low cost, and you can do it from home (which saves you even more money because your home office is a business expense).  I can offer you two good choices of network marketing companies to look at. One in wellness and the other in greeting cards.

Wayne Woodworth
Network Marketer
Saving me a fortune.

One more thing, I am not a financial advisor.  I strongly encourage you to talk to one about your situation so that you know everything you need to know for your area and what you want to accomplish.

The company that I currently work for has an upside down pyramid for their corporate structure.  The customers are at the top because a company cannot exist without customers.  The next layer down has the regular employees who support the customers by taking orders, providing technical support, and handling accounting issues.  The next level are the team leads whose job is to support the regular employees.  They provide the employees with everything they need to get their jobs done.  Below them are a handful of team captains who support the team leads.  Then at the bottom is the company captain.  As you can probably guess by now, his job is to support the team captains.  The company is doing well even in this recession because they have very loyal customers and extremely low turnover in the workforce.  The company exists to provide good service to the customers and give the employees a great place to work.

Imagine what the world would be like if all companies were like this.  Every where you went you would see smiling faces offering excellent customer service.

This inverted pyramid is also how the successful groups in network marketing work.  They don’t describe this structure exactly but this is the way Nikken, the network marketing company I joined, encourages the teams to work.  For my upline to be successful they need to support their downline, me, and I need to support my downline.  For me to make a lot of money with Nikken I need to support a lot of partners who can make a lot of money.

So maybe instead of calling my sponsor an “upline” I should call him my “downline”.

Wayne Woodworth
You future network marketing downline?

With the economy the way it is and unemployment rising, many people are looking for opportunities for employment.  As painful as it is for those people who are directly affected, some experts say that what is happening is actually a correction.  One of the principles America was founded on was entrepreneurialism and since the industrial revolution our society has moved away from small businesses to where most people now work for large companies.  Our food comes from industrial farms instead of small family farms.  The things we use are made in large factories and sold at big-box stores instead of made by craftsmen and sold in mom-and-pop stores.

Now things are changing.  Since jobs are disappearing from large companies, people are creating their own jobs by starting their own businesses.  A small business is better able to offer more personal service and take better care of their customers.  They are also more accountable to their customers because if customers don’t like the service then the business will quickly disappear.

One of the easiest ways to start your own business is with network marketing.  They provide a ready-made product or service and usually a business plan.  All you have to do is decide to join the growing ranks and start taking good care of your new customers.

Wayne Woodworth
network marketer
sharer of small-business opportunities