Baby Boomers and This Miserable Economy – What To Do?

I'm a Baby Boomer. I grew up with Howdy Doody (in black and white of course), '55 T-birds, the Everly Brothers, blue jeans, Keds high-tops and crew cuts. Bread was twenty-five cents a loaf and gasoline was often less than that per gallon – and regular gas was 95 octane. Those really were the good old days, at least in economic terms.

My dad had the same job (with promotions) for 44 years. It was much the same for nearly everyone we knew. Those days are gone. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, most of us will have worked for 11 or more employers before hitting 65. And that fact has played merry hob with our retirement prospects.

Even if the economy were in better shape, our prospects for employment would be less than optimal. Which is a shame, because, on average, we have a wealth of valuable experience and – according to some – a better work ethic than is commonly found nowadays.

Which is why, more and more, we see Baby Boomers involved in entrepreneurial endeavors, such as network marketing, affiliate marketing and the like. These offer great opportunities to turn those personal assets into income. That's good. These kinds of businesses can be really profitable and can more than make up for non-existent retirement funds.

Those who take this path, however, eventually discover that there are two elements to such a business: the product or service and the marketing approach. The most common experience by far is to join a company first and figure out or learn a marketing approach next.

And this is putting the cart before the horse. Every tradesman knows to assemble his tools and plan a course of action before starting on the work. As Michael Dillard famously observed, network marketing is usually undertaken by people who have no training or experience in marketing. It would be a lot smarter to learn something about marketing before committing to any company, no matter how appealing its offerings may be.

However, as many have discovered, there is a lot to learn; it takes special skills to be successful. Most of us did not pick up those skills on our way to senior citizenship. They can be learned, but it's important to have a good teacher. A quick Internet search reveals that there are lots and lots who claim to be just that, offering sure-fire systems to take you to the top. All for a price, of course.

A good education isn't free, but how is one to sort out the wheat from the chaff in all this? Well, after looking at a fair few of these “gurus”, and paying some of them for their stuff, I developed some guidelines.

1. If there are breathless claims of instant success, keep looking. It's not impossible to start making money right away, but your common sense will tell you that it's not very likely.
2. Ignore money-back guarantees. Even if the information is worth its weight in gold, the real money probably won't start coming in until after the trial period has expired.
3. Make sure your sponsor or mentor (they're not always the same person) is available and shows a real interest in seeing to it that you “get it”. Have some conversations with the people with whom you will be working before you commit.
4. Find out if the program has a day-by-day, step-by-step action plan. I was always willing to do what it took, but I didn't know what that was. You don't know what you don't know, and you don't even know you didn't know it until you know it.
5. Those promoting the should be giving away some valuable information for free. This will keep you from buying a pig in a poke.

If you can plug into a system like this, then it almost doesn't matter what your primary business is. Take this free 3-day video training “The Secrets Behind Social Media” to make sure you put your marketing horse before your business cart.