Now, hear me out. I’m not saying Home Businesses don’t work. I’m saying any business that has an MLM business model will not work long term.

Question: Is there an MLM company that started in the USA in the past 30 years, that grew to 300 million in annual sales, and then continued to grow for each of the following 3 years?

Hmmmm? Interestesting question isn’t it. I have yet to find one MLM that meets that criteria.

Why? My theory: MLM’s have a poor business model yet hundreds of new ones pop up every day. (To replace the old ones that have gone under.)Some people will be successful. No question about that. But they are making serious money at the expense of thousands who do not and who will get hurt.

To your success!

From Entrepreneur Magazine, December 30 2010

By Gail Goodman

For email marketers, there only appeared to be one major trend that mattered in 2010. It’s a game changer that presents both opportunities and challenges for businesses to connect with customers. You guessed it: It’s the impact of social media. You can’t just “talk at” customers anymore. They now expect to be part of the conversation and part of your business story. Social media has irrevocably changed the email marketing landscape.

Persuading readers to share the content of your email content is the key here. This is accomplished by providing content that demonstrates you’re in touch with what’s important to customers and you provide information that not only solves their problems, but also entertains them and asks for their feedback and participation.

Email marketing and social media are complementary. While email offers a way to directly contact your customers via their inboxes, social media provides new ways to share your content and engage in conversations with networks of people. One without the other is an incomplete solution to your marketing needs.

As you plan your email marketing campaigns for 2011, take advantage of the opportunities to reach new prospects, revive existing customer relationships and recruit new fans who can spread the word about your business.

Here are five things you can do to create a more social e-mail experience in the new year:

1. Make every message shareable. Include a Like/Tweet button or a social share bar in every email newsletter. The “Forward to a Friend” feature lets subscribers share your newsletter with another person by email. But by adding social icons at the top of your email, those same people can now share it with their entire Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn networks. That extends your reach to a highly qualified audience of prospects.
2. Kick-start your social presence using your email marketing list. Invite e-mail subscribers to connect with you on social networks. Include links to your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn pages in your e-mail marketing communication. Don’t forget to provide reasons why subscribers should join you on social media destinations — and how that experience will be different from your email communications.
3. Include a “social call to action” in every email newsletter. Don’t rely solely on social media icons and buttons to get readers to visit your social media outposts. Entice readers with a link to a hot conversation you want to continue on Twitter (or another discussion destination), or to an exclusive contest or survey you’re featuring on Facebook.
4. Solicit feedback and find newsletter content. Use crowdsourcing on social media sites to find out what topics are trending with your customers. Invite questions and feedback, and join the conversation. Then use the frequently asked questions and the feedback gathered as material for newsletter content. At the same time, spark a conversation and continue it via email and social media. Don’t forget to include and encourage social media feedback in every issue of your newsletter.
5. Cross-post to all your communication channels. Always post your newsletter content on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Keep conversations going by re-posting different snippets across social media channels. Even better, fan the discussion flames by sending out a separate email letting readers know about conversations happening on social media and inviting them to participate.

You may find one social media channel works better than others for sharing content and sparking conversation, depending on where your customers spend time. But you won’t find out until you dive in, test the waters and monitor your results.

Entrepreneurial activity is increasing among older Americans and falling among younger generations. Scott Shane examines the data

By Scott Shane

Incorporated and unincorporated self-employment rate by age group, November 2009. Source: Created from Bureau of Labor Statistics data

Story Tools

• post a comment
• e-mail this story
• print this story
• order a reprint
• suggest a story
• digg this
• add to Business Exchange

If you want to find America’s entrepreneurs, should you be searching places frequented by senior citizens? The answer, from several data sources, appears to be yes.

Contrary to the popular perception that entrepreneurship is a young person’s game, seniors are more likely than young people to operate their own businesses.

According to a June 2009 report by Dane Stangler of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation: “In every single year from 1996 to 2007, Americans between the ages of 55 and 64 had a higher rate of entrepreneurial activity than those aged 20 to 34.”

Moreover, the 2008 U.S. Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report, released earlier this month, shows that the rate of entrepreneurial activity rose among older Americans but fell among younger ones. From 2007 to 2008, both the total rate of entrepreneurial activity (a measure that combines people actively planning to start businesses and those owning operating businesses less than 42 months of age) and the rate of ownership of established businesses (those more than 42 months old) showed a decline of 8% to 9% for the 18-to-44 age segments and an equal increase in groups aged 45 to 99.

For more current information, I looked at the November 2009 Bureau of Labor Statistics data on both unincorporated and incorporated self-employment. (Incorporated self-employed people are those who respond to a follow-up question about their self-employment by indicating that their business is incorporated.) In the figure to the right, I plotted the self-employment rates for different age groups.

incorporation is a better indicator

For unincorporated self-employment, rates rise with age. Those over 75 have the highest rate of self-employment of any age group, a rate 7.5 times higher than that for people aged 20 to 24 and 4 times higher than for people 25 to 34.

Admittedly, overall self-employment rates are an imprecise measure of entrepreneurship. A lot of people who are self-employed might be independent contractors. For tax and benefits reasons, older people might be more likely than younger ones to be employed this way. Therefore, I took a look at incorporated self-employment, too. (Many economists believe that incorporated self-employment is closer to the concept of entrepreneurship than unincorporated self-employment because businesses are more likely to be true companies if people have bothered to incorporate them.)

The BLS data show that incorporated self-employment peaks in the 65-to-69 age group, with those just past retirement age being more likely to be self-employed heads of incorporated businesses than members of any age group under 65. In fact, the incorporated self-employment rate is 4 times higher among those aged 65 to 69 than among those aged 25 to 34—and a whopping 25 times higher than among those aged 20 to 24.

In the past year, we’ve experienced growth in the number of unincorporated self-employment among those over 65 (an increase of 11.1%), but shrinkage in the number of unincorporated self-employed among those 16 to 64 (a decrease of 5.4%). In fact, among those 65 to 69 (leaving out those over 70), the number of unincorporated self-employed went up 15.1% from 2008 to 2009.

The changes are more muddled for incorporated self-employment because of a 4% increase in the number of incorporated self-employed among those 55 to 64. For incorporated self-employment, splitting the population at age 55 instead of 65 reveals an 8.4% decline among those aged 16 to 54 and an increase of 1.7% among those aged at least 55 from 2008 to 2009.

a few key implications

These data do not tell us why entrepreneurial activity is higher and increasing among older Americans. It might be a cohort effect. People who entered the work force back in the 1960s might be more entrepreneurial than people born more recently. Or it might be an age effect. Older people might be more likely to go into business for themselves because they have developed the industry and work experience that research shows enhance entrepreneurial performance.

So what are the implications of the aging of the self-employed? There are probably many, but here are a few.

• Part-time self-employment is becoming more prevalent among older entrepreneurs than among younger ones as older entrepreneurs seek the flexibility of running their businesses on less-than-a-full-time basis.

• Self-employment is becoming more of a second career as older Americans retire or leave jobs to start their own businesses.

• Self-financing is becoming more prevalent as older self-employed use accumulated savings to finance their entrepreneurial efforts.

Whatever the reasons for the graying of the self-employed—and whatever its implications—a university is probably the wrong place for me to work if I want to interact with a lot of Americans starting their own businesses.

Scott Shane is the A. Malachi Mixon III Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at Case Western Reserve University.

Influence is the “Holy Grail” of all Leadership. Everyone wants and needs it, but few understand it.