A Never-Fail Business Opportunity

Everywhere you look online, someone is touting a new, fully tested, impossible-to-fail method of making more money than you’ve ever dreamed possible.

And if you’re the type to fall for the flash and sizzle of the marketing claims, you’ve tried enough of them to know that it ain’t always what it’s cracked up to be.

Actually, I get a chuckle out of many of the get-rich-quick schemes that flood my email inbox on a daily basis.  Even though some of these proposals do seem to have some validity, I know enough about the true secrets of prosperity to know when a proposal is a genuine business opportunity, and when it’s just a baited lure on the end of a fishing line.

I learned this from personal experience.

When I was still in high-school, my dad helped me get into a business that sounded great.  In only a matter of months, we would be earning well over $5000 per month, and after a year, we’d be earning over $20,000 per month.

The company we talked to gave us newspaper clippings and industry reports to show the demand for what we would be producing.  They gave us pages of numbers showing us just how easy our product would multiply and grow in value.  They gave us so much information that we just KNEW that we could succeed in the business of earthworm farming.

Right now, I’m imagining that most people who read this will be rolling on the floor with laughter.  I understand completely.  Even now, thinking about that time, I can’t believe we were so foolish to think that we could make that much money with worms.

My dad and I spent over a year building special boxes in which to keep the earthworms.  We watered the soil every day and sprinkled corn meal and alfalfa over it before we broke up the soil to give those little guys room to move around.

But after a year, we built a contraption to separate the worms from the dirt, and hand delivered our first year’s crop of worms to the company we bought the starter package from.  I don’t remember how much we got from that transaction, but I can say with absolute certainty that it was less than $1000.

Where did we go wrong in that venture?

First of all, we never investigated further to see if the information that was given to us was valid.  The company that sold us that starter package could have been telling us lie after lie just to get our money.  Those pages of numbers could have been completely made up for all we really knew.  And the newspaper clippings?  I know now that there are companies that offer printing on newspaper stock for a fee.

Another mistake we made was not checking with other ‘earthworm farmers’ about their experience.  If we had talked to others who had pursued the earthworm farming opportunity, we would have learned that the money wasn’t going to be rolling in as we thought.

In short, our main mistake was not having enough information to make an informed decision.  Had we spent a few days (or even a few hours) checking into the claims made, we would have known that it was a waste of time and we’d be better off in another business.

Before you jump into another business opportunity, make sure you have enough information to know you’re not biting a flashy lure.