Is it Meditation or Toothpaste?

Many years ago now, a very good friend of mine, Joe, called me up to say that he was starting up a nice little home business. He’d found a good “Teach Yourself Meditation” package in the USA. He was, with the author’s permission, re-writing it to make it more English, re-packaging it to make it look nicer, and then he was going to sell hundreds if not thousands of these meditation packs and make a nice little earner. Joe had been a meditator for some years, and found it of benefit.

Joe was a hard-working and conscientious man, and he was hugely assisted by his equally hard-working and maybe even more conscientious wife, Rebecca. They worked at this home business for many years. They financed it 100% themselves, and paid royalties (or residual income?) to the original author. They did the re-writing, production, publicity, marketing, selling and distribution all themselves. And despite the fact that they are two of the neatest people I ever met, you frequently couldn’t get into their house for stacks and stacks of meditation packs.

I thought about them a lot, and came to realise that, if you’re going to run your own home business, you need to understand whether you’re selling meditation or toothpaste.

What I mean by this is: are you selling something that everyone already knows about. Something that everyone knows they need? In other words, are you selling toothpaste, or coffee, or gas & electric? If that’s the case, you don’t have to persuade people that they want what you’re selling; they already know that. All you have to convince them is that, for some reason (cost, quality, customer service, convenience), yours is better.

Or are you selling meditation? By this I mean, are you selling something that most people don’t know they want. Have you got to create the need first? Joe was helped by the fact that some researchers found that meditation helped people with M.E., so Joe had a group of potential users, and he had external credibility. But the end result was that I doubt that Joe and Rebecca ever covered their costs, let alone got paid any reasonable amount for the huge amount of time they put into the business. And that’s often the case. People who work for themselves usually have dreadful bosses who make them work very long hours for very little money.

And if you’re selling meditation it’s at least twice as difficult as if you’re selling toothpaste, because you have to establish the need in people’s minds, then you have to establish that meditation will meet that need, and then you have to establish that your brand of meditation is better than the others.

My wife and I have been there. We had a home-based business that sold magnetic bracelets for pain relief (we’ve still got the business, and we’ve still got a substantial stock of magnetic bracelets, should you want one). We were persuaded that the bracelets were a good thing, and really worked. We had lots of anecdotal evidence that they worked, and one or two scientific studies. But I have to tell you, it was quite an uphill effort to get someone to part with £100 to buy one. Interestingly, the £100 models were in gold, and had a design that was reminiscent of a Gucci logo. I’d have had no problem selling the ladies a gold Gucci-imitation bracelet that wasn’t magnetic for £100, because they understand bracelets, and they understand Gucci. You would have thought they would have gone for it, not withstanding the magnetism. If I’d have sold “Gucci” rather than “magnetism” I’d probably have shifted the lot on a week. As it is, they’re still in a case in the living room.

Nowadays we spend most of our time in a different business. We don’t have stock, we don’t have to handle money, and we don’t have to persuade people that they need what we’re selling.
It’s a much easier life, and a much more fun business to run!

And Joe and Rebecca eventually just shut down their business. I think they gave the remaining stock away.

The Big Small Businessman