Before I get into the real aim of this blog, which is to give you a “live” or almost live commentary on my quest to make an online living starting from zero, let me firstly give you some more detailed background about my former business. This is so you can get to know me a little better and understand where I am coming from. Rather than have one long post I’ll divide this into a few parts to make it easier to read. Don’t worry – there won’t be too many parts until we get to the interesting and for you, more relevant parts.
In Part 1 I’ll give you a few more details about what I was doing until a few weeks ago. In the context of what this blog is all about it’s probably not so relevant, except that I would like to establish some credentials and give you a bit more idea of where I am coming from. As of today’s date (February 16th 2008) I am unknown in the world of internet marketing; I am hoping to change that over the next few months of course (:-)), but just because I am an online newbie doesn’t mean I don’t have my own area of expertise outside the internet!
Just over a year ago, I took the decision to sell my existing family business which had produced a good income for our family for 50 years. My father started the business back in 1957, he became a self-employed sales agent on behalf of a German manufacturing company. He sold hand tools and security products into retail markets, such as hardware stores, builders and engineers merchants. For those of you who know the UK, the geographical area was the North West of England between Manchester and the Scottish border. From being a completely unknown company a few years before, by the mid 1960’s we had become the brand leader in our sector in that part of the UK.
That remained the case for the next 40 years, this was also the German manufacturer’s most successful area worldwide – by a huge margin. In 1985 I joined my father in the business and sales continued to expand until 2000. At the height of the business I also employed 2 staff, a salesman and a secretary. Looking back now, what is interesting is that we used the exact same principles 20 years ago to build and market this business that today are being successfully used by the top internet marketers. For example, in the last 2 years “Viral Marketing” has become the buzz phrase and it is presented as if it is something new. I was using “Viral Marketing” 20 years ago to build a business selling physical products into retail stores only I didn’t call it that! As the French say plus ça change…….
About 7-8 years ago there was a change of management within the company. You know what’s coming next don’t you! Yep, these “gurus” managed to dismantle, piece by piece, what had been a hugely successful business. Every one of our “unique selling points”, those features and benefits of our operation that differentiated us from our competitors was removed. Whole ranges of products that were both selling well and profitable were discontinued. The worst example was a range of security products under a different brand name that were discontinued almost overnight. These products represented 33% of company turnover!! Nope, I don’t have a logical explanation for it either. Experienced staff, and other agents, were either fired or pushed out. The result was that my own sales in 2007 were barely 25% of what they had been in 2001! So the writing was on the wall and at the age of 44 I realised that the business I thought would sustain me until my retirement in another 20 years time, was over.
I’m sorely tempted at this stage to “name and shame” the company who are remarkably still trading, although one wonders for how much longer. In a later post I probably will go into more detail, but frankly these are not the nicest of people, and I will leave posting more juicy details for when I am in Turkey. Bear with me, all will become clear later.
Tomorrow in Part 2 I’ll put a bit more meat on the bones…..