There is always a lot of talk in network marketing about your why.  Why do you want to do this business?  You whys determine almost your entire motivation and you whys are what you keep you going when things are maybe not great.

Some of you may wonder if I am in a business separate from Robin's.  Now, I know that, given his list, it looks like there is not room in our house for yet another business.  But you would be wrong.  I do indeed have my own business.  So, how did I came to get into another business?  As you may recall, when I first met Robin I signed up into the business he was in at the time.  I was new to the whole home based business-thing, so being with someone who knew the ropes seemed to make the most sense.  However, this business was not something I was particularly interested in.  To make matters worse, I didn 't really like some of the people that were involved in the higher levels of this business.  This created quite a few issues between Robin and I in the early years of our marriage to the point where rather than learning the ropes, I wanted to hang him with it! 

About three months after Robin and I got married, I was laid off from my job during a "reorganization."  While I was not totally surprised by this, I was pretty unprepared, but hey, I've got this great homebased business that I don't even like to fall back on--right???  After having some intellectual "discussions" about how I could do this business if I wanted to, etc., I was not any more on board than I was before.  There had to be something I could do that I really liked!  Around this same time it seemed like I was going to a lot of events that required me to bring food--church potlucks, meetings, etc.  I was tired of the same stuff, so I went to my cupboard and there were some products of Tastefully Simple that I had from my when my sister sold it.  Not thinking about it, I just made stuff and took it to the meetings.  A strange thing happened--everyone really liked it and asked me where I got it.  I offhandedly said, "Oh, it's just Tastefully Simple."  (I'm from Iowa and Tastefully Simple is very well known there.)  They looked at me and said "what's that?"  After this happened about two or three times, I got on the web and looked.  There were only 24 consultants in the entire state of New Mexico (where we were living at the time) and only about five in Albuquerque (a city of about 800,000)! I couldn't believe it. (By comparison, there were about 650 consultants in the state of Iowa.)  Suddenly the opportunity to bring Tastefully Simple to New Mexico was staring me right in the face.  What a business opportunity!  Now all I needed was a sponsor.  I called my sister and asked who her sponsor had been.  She gave me a name of a woman in Iowa.  I called that woman and told her who I was and where I was.  After about about a full minute of dead silence she said, "there's nobody there." I said "yeah, I know."  So, in January of 2006 I became a consultant for Tastefully Simple.  There have been a lot of challenges along the way with changes in our household and moving, but one thing that has remained the same--I really love Tastefully Simple products and I really love the company.

As I mentioned before, direct sales companies in general are not the same as MLMs.  Recruiting, selling, training, company philosophy--everthing is different.  Not always better, just different.  One of the rules in my company is that I can't link from this blog directly to my website.  However, if you want to look at the company you can google Tastefully Simple and you'll get there.  If you put in my consultant number 0048261 in the consultant search, you can find my site and you'll even see a picture (a little dated, but not bad) of me.  Hey,  you may even want to try something.  The bucket drinks are fun, the Vanilla Bean Chiller is to die for and the Almond Pound Cake just melts in your mouth and you can freeze it so you always have it on hand...oh, sorry, got carried away there.

The point of this is that your home-based  business needs to be something you are interested in and can be passionate about. Maybe you could make more money elsewhere or maybe another companies compensation plan is better, but you won't have the why and you will struggle. As the saying goes, do what you love and the money will follow.  Robin and I still disagree sometimes about how a direct sales business should or could be run (but hey, a little healthy "discussion" is always good for a marriage right?).  I've done pretty well in this business and more importantly, I have enjoyed being part of Tastefully Simple!

Thanks for reading! 

P.S.  If any of you have anything particular you are dying to know, tell me and I'll do my best to answer your burning question.