The 6 years leading up to my discovery of the truth behind Kasp had been a pretty rough ride. All of the Board of Directors had become increasingly and openly hostile to its most successful sales people. Why was this? Well, there are a variety of reasons but I suspect the main one was simple jealousy. I and my fellow agents were able to achieve a level of sales that others could not.

Funnily enough, one member of the board had been a sales agent for a brief period at the end of the 1980′s. His 18 months on the road saw a considerable drop in turnover, this at a time when the British economy was booming, and frankly you had to try really hard to not increase sales. It was more difficult to not get an order than it was to take one. But somehow he managed it!

About 8 years ago a so-called “marketing expert” was brought into the company, having previously worked for a much larger business. Initially contracted as a consultant to oversee a change of premises, he managed to persuade the owner of the business to let him run the company and he finished up as Chairman. Some 6 years ago I had a meeting with him; he told me he had great empathy with self-employed people because he had twice tried to run his own business, and twice failed!

I wanted to ask the question “So how does twice failing at running your own business qualify you to run somebody else’s?” but thought better of it. Unfortunately he of course wasn’t qualified to run that or probably any other business – he didn’t know a hell of a lot about even marketing basics, never mind managing a medium sized company. Unless you call turning a medium sized company into a small company in less than 5 years a success!

The incompetence, the petty jealousy by an ignoramus Board of Directors, the stupid unnecessary politics and posturing by various failed sales managers, and a jobsworth marketing department who didn’t even comprehend the simple basics of marketing were bad enough. That is not unusual in today’s corporate Britain – success is ridiculed, failure is rewarded along the usual socialist principles of dragging everyone down to the lowest common denominator, sadly endemic in this once great nation. Sadly we can see the results of this all around us with the economy in its worst condition for over 100 years.

But when I found out that I had been fed a pack of lies about Kasp, which I then passed on to my customers, I knew I could no longer continue. Most of my customers had become friends. My integrity was, and is, everything. If people cannot believe what I am saying then I have nothing. It is for this same reason that I use my real name on this site and that is actually (sadly!) a picture of me in the web site header. There is enough information in these posts for any intrepid investigator to check out my business history; I am pretty well known within the trade where I was working.

So where to next? In the summer of 2007 I decided that with the Kasp revelation I could no longer continue with this business. The idea of being asked to lie to the market place was the final straw. From the beginning of 2007 I had suspected there was something “dirty” about Kasp and I was already looking for an alternative business to run.

I was attracted to running a business on the internet for the simple reason that this business is mobile, or portable. This was briefly touched on in my introductory post “Welcome to this Blog” – if you have a laptop and an internet connection then you have a business, regardless of your geographical location. With my wife being Turkish, we had had the long term aim of relocating to Turkey anyway.

My research on running a business on the internet had been quite comprehensive. I had tried out a few things, learnt new skills and I enjoyed it. 12 months ago I knew nothing of such things as web hosting, FTP software, creating web sites, creating graphics, etc. Today these are simple tasks I can do virtually with my eyes closed.

In September I made 3 decisions at the same time about the future direction of my life:

1. I would sell the family business
2. We would emigrate to Turkey
3. I would run a full time internet business from Turkey

Bold or stupid? Time will tell….