Thirty days is too short to judge anything. A year is too long to wait before deciding. Ninety days - roughly four catalogue cycles - is the first point at which the evidence means something.

This plan runs in three phases of thirty days, each with a different job. Total time: two to three hours a week throughout.

Days 1-30: competence

The job of month one is to become genuinely useful in one narrow area. Nothing else.

  • Choose one category and learn eight to ten products in it properly
  • Order for yourself: things you already buy, plus one or two to try
  • Use them, and write down honest impressions including the disappointments
  • Tell three or four relevant people, once, without a pitch

Do not: recruit, set income targets, buy stock, or attempt the whole catalogue.

End-of-month test: can you answer a stranger's question in your category without looking anything up?

Days 31-60: rhythm

Month two is about proving you can sustain it, which is a different skill from starting.

  • One order per catalogue cycle. Mostly repeats, one new item
  • Twenty minutes per cycle on what changed in the new catalogue
  • Expand to a second category, lightly - the map, not the detail
  • Follow up with anyone who ordered through you. Not to sell again: to ask whether it suited them
  • Answer questions properly when they come, in private, without switching into pitch mode

Do not: increase your time commitment because month one felt slow.

End-of-month test: did you do the same things twice? Consistency at a low level is the thing being tested, not volume.

Days 61-90: signal

Month three is when you find out whether anything is compounding.

  • Continue the month-two rhythm unchanged
  • Notice whether anyone came back - a repeat order, a second question, a referral
  • Notice whether you got faster at answering things
  • Have one conversation with someone genuinely interested in the partnership itself, if such a person has appeared. If none has, do not manufacture one

End-of-month test: is month three different from month one in any way other than the calendar?

The three questions at day 90

Answer these honestly, ideally written down.

1. Did I do what I said I would? If not, the plan was too ambitious. Halve it and run another ninety days rather than concluding it does not work.

2. Is anything accumulating? Repeat orders, growing knowledge, people who now come to you. Not income - it is too early. Accumulation is the signal; money is a much later consequence.

3. Did I enjoy it? This one carries the most weight, because the activity only works over years, and nobody sustains something they dislike for years.

The three honest outcomes

Continue. Things are accumulating, you enjoyed it, the rhythm is sustainable. Keep the same scale for another ninety days - resist the urge to accelerate.

Reduce. You liked the discount and the products, the business side did not appeal. Keep ordering for yourself and stop everything else. This is the outcome for a large share of registered consultants and it costs nothing to hold indefinitely.

Stop. It was not enjoyable and nothing accumulated. There is no penalty, no obligation and nothing to unwind. Deciding this at day ninety is far better than drifting for two years.

All three are legitimate. The failure mode is not choosing - continuing at low effort while feeling guilty about it, which produces neither results nor enjoyment.

What is deliberately absent

No income targets appear anywhere above. For nearly everyone, ninety days produces very little money regardless of effort, and measuring by it at this stage tells you only that ninety days is a short time.

For what the earnings picture actually looks like over longer periods, see the honest breakdown in the business section.