Entrepreneurship Runs Deep In My Family...One Reason I Am a Self Franchised Marketer

Entrepreneurship runs deep in my family…one reason I am a self-franchised marketer

 “The only true wisdom is knowing that you know nothing.” Socrates

A dictionary definition of an entrepreneur is “a person who starts a business and is willing to risk loss in order to make money” and it can also carry an additional connotation of vision and innovation.  

My grandfather and my brother believed in plotting their future to the best of their ability and faith in hard work to gain rewards. I hope to endorse this vision as my legacy, too. 

My grandfather was an immigrant from Russia at the age of 16. He learned to speak English and rather than being part of a communal lifestyle, soon bought some land in the valley, logged it, horse-plowed it into hay fields, built a log house without nails, raised sheep for wool, a garden to sell produce, even had a small mercantile storefront to sell supplies to neighbors. He was the first man  to own a model T-Ford in the valley and in his later years, drove a Volkswagon painted lime green (I don't know why) so he could take his grandchildren on picnics.

He was a master craftsman capable of doing most anything with his hands from making shoes, to sewing a suit of clothes, to baking bread and cooking, to animal husbandry and farming where he lost his foot in a haying accident.

To me, he was my grandfather who spend time teaching me to read and write, to play ball, to fish and wander the woods looking for hazelnuts. 

My brother, Jim, also had many innate talents to master anything he set his mind to do. His education was based on computer technology and when he was downsized from a corporation, his next logical step was to start his own computer business.

At first he worked in the basement of his house, guarded at that time by a large Rotweiller with the loudest bark that didn’t deter his customers who knew of his honesty and skill sets. 

Excellent success here led to buying a 8800 square foot building to grow his business services in town. His success continued into the late 1990's when the Internet of Things  became the juggernaut for any kind of retail business owners. Two years ago, he died at the age of 66 within two months of a cancer diagnosis putting the whole valley into shock. Tomorrow, he would have been 68. 

His memories, however, will never die and he will always be remembered as an entrepreneur with the grandest vision, a business man who never wore a suit, whose handshake was contract enough, a loving father of 3 children and an amazing brother who always had a smile and a generous helping hand.

And then there are my efforts at entrepreneurship. I worked hard at being one of the top students in high school, earned a Bachelor of Education degree and taught for 24 years. When I took early retirement, my focus readily settled on running a home business of some kind to the best of my ability. 

Network Marketing became a natural choice because I believed in its foundation of helping people achieve above average income and lifestyles with minimum capital and time equity based on 3 concepts: plug into a top product, share or duplicate the message and earn residual income with direct and indirect referrals. 

My journey has traveled many routes, some harder than others, especially with the advent of the Internet Marketing Wild West, but my standards of honesty have never been compromised. In fact, for awhile, I wanted to make my brand on the internet to be known as the Fair and Democratic Home Business Mentor…imagine that, understandably drawn from my background.

Internet marketing is now the new mantra and the focus is how marketers can best access, adapt to and profit from the New Digital Economy. This has culminated in becoming a  self-franchise entrepreneur or marketer. In my experience, the old ways are constantly being challenged and replaced and the new ways have to restructure the main principles of network marketing to fully embrace the powers of LEVERAGE and DUPLICATION. 

This vision is alive and well with a mastermind internet marketer and his total marketing platform every online business owner needs.

 If interested, you can read The Self Franchise Report in two parts:

 PART ONE: Three Reasons To Be a Self – Franchise Entrepreneur

PART TWO: Four Reality Checks and Adaptations to Keep IT Real

Questions and comments are always welcome. What does being an entrepreneur mean to you?  Do you think that entrepreneurship may be a worthwhile strategy to cope with the Digital Economy?

Sincerely,

Annemarie

Check out my new website soon to include two new parts: an e-book for teen girls' survival in the social media age and a water sprite's ecological journey for children.