It's A "Dog Eat Dog World" Even in Small Business

Thinking about becoming an entrepreneur, writer or work in other areas involving the arts?  Be prepared, it is truly a "dog eat dog" world and whatever your field of endeavor you will face competition, setbacks and need to handle controversies.

Several years ago, I tried launching a home based business in order to have income while being my mother's full-time caregiver.  I researched the natural food and nutritional supplements industry and decided that I believed in the products offered by Miessence, Nature's Sunshine and J.R. Watkins enough to not only use this but sell them to others.  

I  developed my network on LinkedIn and Facebook of family, friends, professional contacts and potential customers and began sharing information on the products as well as personal photos of my own recipes.   I even took out Facebook ads to promote my business to a wider audience. I had high hopes.  However like the vast majority of home-based and poorly funded startups I failed miserably.

Why?

It certainly wasn't for a lack of effort or time invested.  The primary reasons that I failed were:

1.  the network that I formed had little to no interest in the products I was selling;
2. my products were in direct competition with more widely advertised products
3. An anti-nutritional supplements and herbal remedies campaign was running concurrent to my efforts to sell products.
4.  I did not present a strong enough argument to convince my network to support my business.
5.  members of my network were also my friendly competitors.

Was I hurt when I couldn't even convince friends and family who knew my financial struggles to support my business?  Sure, but not as much as I was disappointed in myself.  After all, I had once worked in public relations and now I couldn't even convince people to buy salt, pepper and cinnamon, products which almost everyone uses. I truly believed that trying to launch a home-based business was a far better solution to my financial problems them starting a charitable campaign like GofundMe.  For quite some time, I allowed the scope of that setback to completely erode my self esteem.  Feeling like a failure was devastating but as time moved on the experience proved to be an excellent teacher.

Fast forward the clock four years.  I am no longer trying to sell any of the aforementioned products,  or start an eBay store.  Now I have relaunched my blog which runs affiliate ads from Amazon.com.  So, what did I face this weekend but a New York Times article titled "Inside Amazon"  which did not paint that company in the most positive light. 

It light of that article the thought might naturally occur to remove the Amazon ads from my blog , but that isn't going to happen.

Like I said,  I'm older, a little wiser and definitely see the world through far less naive eyes.

It's all just business.

In the meanwhile, you can help support my writing as well contribute to the purchase of a new computer and other home office equipment for my online tutoring business by purchasing products via this website.  Click on the photo below to visit the Lee Store on Amazon.com.  Also mark your calendar's for October 2nd and join Lee Jeans and the American Cancer Society in National Denim Day.