“Take five-minutes every day to picture what you want in life, and ask yourself if you did something that day that moved you closer to your goal. If not, picture what small steps you can do to catalyze that change.”

Amway was founded in 1959 by Jay Van Andel and Richard DeVos. Based in Ada, Michigan, the company and family of companies under Alticor reported sales of $9.5 billion for 2015, the second consecutive year of decline for the company. I can remember in college some students tried their hand at selling Amway products to help pay for college. One thing they didn’t realize is how much work it takes to get this ‘part-time business’ off the ground. They got involved right after college got out in May and built their business through the summer. However, when college started in September, they hadn’t raised enough money to even pay for their books. It was/is a great idea, but only if you have the time and patience to invest in it.

One of my sons took accounting in college with an emphasis on entrepreneur which taught him how to write a business plan. He has shared a couple of them with me and I discovered that he is quite good. He has tried at least 10 new ventures since 2004 and all of them failed. Bad ideas? No, they were/are very sound. Bad timing? To say the least. He gets lots of kudos from investors but no one willing to ‘put their money where their mouth is.’

My son decided to become a personal trainer in order to feed and clothe himself while pursuing these ventures, and only now is he beginning to build a business from it. Twelve years and a lot of trial and error has gone into it, so he has developed the necessary patience to let the business happen instead to trying to force it along.