Should you leave your network marketing company?
How do you know when?
How do you know if you should?
Is it the right time?
I get asked this on probably a weekly basis from some amazing women and entrepreneurs. This is something that not a lot of people feel comfortable talking about publicly. I understand why; it’s hard to go to the people on your team, even your upline, and genuinely ask them. They’re part of your company, so of course they’re going to tell you to stay. So, I really want to give you an objective, outside opinion and hopefully one that is pretty split down the middle.
I used to be in network marketing, so I understand what the setup is like. I’ve also coached hundreds of women who are in network marketing across the board all sorts of different companies. Isagenix, Arbonne, Advocare, Beachbody, Lipsense, Direct Cellars. So, I just want to be transparent with you because I know you all are very curious about how I knew when to leave and what my thought process was.
Before I seriously jumped in with my network marketing company, I had taken some online courses about how to create your own products, programs, and services. That lit my freakin gut on fire! I wrote down on a piece of paper that I was going to create and launch my own program and make $100K. That was my goal. This was a few years ago and at that time, I didn’t really have an expertise. I saw a network marketing company that I had already partnered with in the past, and I thought, “I can do that. That can be my way out of being a broke actor in the restaurant business. That could be the thing that I’m able to monetize for now.”
I ended up getting really, really excited about what I was doing. I was having a lot of fast success.
As you might say, I “drank the Koolaid.” But, I wasn’t casually sipping it… I was full blown guzzling that Koolaid.
I had a great time. I learned a lot. I’m super, super grateful for network marketing and for the experience. It was truly a life changer. So I have nothing but good things to say about it in that respect. But, for me, I started to feel really out of alignment with what was being taught in the company.
The set-up, to me, seemed very militant and masculine.
It was all about recognition, and I lost my sense of purpose because I was chasing significance. I was chasing numbers every month as opposed to leading with my true passion and integrity. That’s just real deal.
It really came down to the final straw. It was New Year’s Eve at 9:30 PM, and I was late to a party. I was sitting there at my computer, making last minute phone calls, trying to get a certain amount of points to hit a goal that I had been keeping up for an entire year. I wasn’t about to let it drop. So, I was almost late to see the ball drop because I was trying to hit this goal, and my stress levels were through the roof.
I was such an anxious person all the time, especially at the end of the month. You all know it: in network marketing, if you’re not at your goal by the end of the month, you’re in this crazy/ravenous/Hustler’s go-go-go.
Do as much as you can.
Reach out to as many people as you can.
Follow up with everybody.
That was just not a fun energy for me anymore.
I remember going to the party, and of course I hit my goal. I was in a really good mood… but I realized in that moment, “There’s got to be a different way to do this.” Pretty recently, I spoke to my boyfriend of 10 years and he straight up said to me, “When you came to that party, I was genuinely concerned. I was thinking to myself, ‘How are we going to do another year of this?’”
I just was not being the person that I knew I could be.
Also, for me, I was in a health and fitness company, I started to recognize that I was constantly reliving my story of emotional eating and that rollercoaster. It just wasn’t emotionally serving me because I was always revisiting that negative energy. I just didn’t want to do that anymore.
Personally, what I loved to do every single day was make videos.
I just wanted to make training videos about advanced business strategy, but all the people in my company were like, “No, you can’t do that. You have to recruit. You have to send messages. You have to invite people. That’s what you need to be doing everyday.” And I was like, but that’s not what I want to do! I just wanted to teach. I wanted to educate. I wanted to be learning new things and then communicating that to my tribe; finding new, creative and different ways to deliver information. But, no, I couldn’t do that. So then I thought, how do I create my own business and how do I create my own platform, so that I can do the things that I love? AKA… What I’m doing literally right now.
So, that was that. My decision was to leave, and it was not an easy decision to make. I really felt very guilty about leaving my team.
But, at the end of the day… it’s just you. You just have to get really intuitive and trust your gut.
Honestly, my life is so incredibly fulfilled right now. And I still work with network marketers, but I’m able to do it in a more authentic way. I’m able to help people who are really hungry to achieve across companies. Before, I was always bringing up the newbies, always teaching people how to be an entrepreneur. And I was like, man, I want to talk about the strategy. I want to go deep. And, when I started to do that type of work, things took off very quickly for me.
Maybe this is a slightly biased opinion, but I wanted to give you the real deal.
There are some questions that I think you need to ask yourself, because nobody can make this decision for you.
Number One: “Where do I see myself in the next five to 10 years?”
I have many close friends and clients of mine who are top ranking people or top income earners in their companies. I really do. And I am very supportive of them growing that business. I think that they’re doing it in a really beautiful way. But, do you see yourself doing your work in the future?
Number Two: “Am I passionate about creating and building a team of business builders?”
Are you passionate about teaching people business? This is a very important question that you need to ask yourself. Getting into network marketing can be a life-changing experience. However, a lot of people are just focused on selling products because they really enjoy the health and fitness aspect of what they’re doing. But, they’re not recognizing that the actual way to build sustainable, long-term, impressive income is to build a team.
If you’re not building a team and you’re wondering why you’re hustling every month to hit commission’s goals, it’s because you’re really treating your network marketing company like an affiliate marketing situation.
You’re basically treating it as if you are a sales rep for a company and you’re making commission. Network marketing only comes into play when you actually start building a team beneath you. Right? For some reason, so many people are not making that connection. They don’t have a strategy behind what they are doing in network marketing, and so they set income goals ($1000 a week, $5000 a month, etc.) without considering how many people they need beneath them to generate volume.
You need to know your numbers in your business.
So, if you go right now and look at your numbers, and you’re thinking, “I don’t really feel passionate about signing on another 50 distributors or coaches this month in order to hit my goal…” then, maybe you should reflect on this.
I’m not saying that to be mean.
I’m just saying: every one of us has so much passion, so much to give, so much purpose. It’s just a matter of identifying what that’s going to be for you.
Number Three: “Am I passionate about selling products?”
Now listen I think that selling products, programs and supplements can be a beautiful thing. But, many new network marketers really treat it as if they are just an Amazon store and then they’re wondering why they don’t feel fulfilled. They’re wondering why they’re not hitting their income or business goals.
How are you building your business? Are you passionate about selling products, or are you feeling pulled to be a teacher/coach in some other way?
This is what I really want you to ask yourself based on the work that you’re doing right now: What are you getting paid per hour?
Now I caution you with this question. Of course, any time you’re starting a business, you’re not going to throw up posts on social media for three days and become a millionaire. So many of my students (who I absolutely love) get frustrated when people do not buy their program, even though their business is just a month old and they did live videos for two whole weeks straight.
You need time to build an audience! Trust and rapport with potential clients takes time.
But, you still need to ask yourself what your current hourly rate is. I talk with probably thousands of network marketers who are feeling really freaking stressed out. They’re only making $100 a week, even though they’ve been in this business for three years. “I’m doing every single thing this company is telling me to do, and I’m still only making a hundred dollars a week.” One of the women who I coach is brilliant, but she left her network marketing company. She was one of the top ranked people, but was making $300 a week because of her placement and her downline.
There are realities that network marketers sometimes do not want to address. And I think it’s important to talk about them.
I don’t think that there’s any reason to shun somebody for talking about it. You’ve got to crunch the numbers.
Because, if you’re:
-getting on the phone with people five times a week
-spending 6 hours a day “coaching people” who bought a product/program through you and you’ve only made a $30 commission
-spent the last 6 months allowing those clients inside your coaching program for free, but they’re not buying any products.
You’re not making any money!
That’s not a sustainable way to run your business.
I think there are better ways to run your business.
First of all, set boundaries. I don’t want to see the network marketing business model abuse. I get very frustrated when I see amazing women who are literally working their bums off, pouring into people on a daily basis and then they’re like, “I can’t even afford to buy groceries.” It doesn’t make any sense at all.
If you’re not interested in building a team, why not blend your network marketing stuff with something else?
Maybe you are doing outside coaching, and then you’re also recommending your products (let’s say, you’re a life coach and you love essential oils, so you market them). That really comes down to you building a personal brand.
If you have a personal brand, then you are set.
If something (God forbid) happens to your company, you are set. Because, if you build a personal brand, you have an audience. They fall in love with you; not you as the distributor, not you as the coach under this company name. They fall in love with you as a human being, and when you leave that company or when you transition into creating your own thing, it doesn’t feel weird. They trust you, because you were the person they built a relationship with.
I was chatting with Ryan Yokome, and he’s been in multiple network marketing companies. He mentioned that he was with a company, things were going really well, and he was making $15K a month. Then, all of a sudden, the company was only making that amount in a year. So there was a state of panic,
“Well crap, our income per month just halved. Now what?!?”
That’s the real deal. I know that you have your own your own sector of the business as a network marketer, but the real deal is you are still under the rules of the bigger company that you’re with. You don’t set the income goals. They create the structure, the promotions, and the new offerings.
Therefore, I think it’s smart for every single one of you to start thinking a little bit more outside the box. Your company is not going to give you this training. Not because they don’t want what’s best for you, but because that’s just not in their interest. They are a business.
But, the top people in network marketing across the board have a personal brand.
They have other platforms where they teach.
They have a podcast.
They might have a successful YouTube channel that has nothing to do with their network marketing company.
They have additional streams of income.
There are some companies that don’t allow you to have additional streams of income (promoting multiple companies on the same social media platform, for example), so you’ve got to check out the rules and regulations of your specific company. It’s important that you know, and it may be a bit frustrating, but it’s what you signed up for.
So, you can do network marketing and treat it as affiliate marketing. You can go to a different affiliate program, like Amazon, where you can sign up and get a small commission. It doesn’t cost anybody anything extra, and you get a small commission from what you sell.
And maybe there are some of you who are saying, “I DO love building business builders and I’m very passionate about that!” Cool. Go all in on that. That doesn’t mean you can’t have a second stream of income.
If network marketing lights you on fire, I’m so glad I can give you some clarity on that and help you see what exactly you wanted to do.
If you were thinking about your next steps, will you go all in on it and create those systems that you need to actually grow successful team?
Position yourself; not just as a network marketer, but as a business leader, mentor, and coach.
I’m going to be real with you. Before I decided to leave my network marketing, I was in a coaching program with Jen Sincero. (Author of “You are a Badass” and “You are a Badass at Making Money”) I asked her, “I don’t know what to do. I’m thinking about leaving my company, but I don’t know if I should.”
She said, “I can’t make that decision for you.”
There’s a million different companies and products, so get crystal clear about what feels good to you. You can go and ask all sorts of experts, but remember:
nobody can make this decision for you.
So, get in your gut and do a gut check. If there are certain things about the way that you’re currently running your business that feel icky or inauthentic, that doesn’t mean you HAVE to leave. That just means you need to step into your own power and say, “I love these products, but I don’t like the way that they teach social media or sales.” Cool. I’m glad that you recognize that doesn’t mean you have to do everything the company says. You can go and find some sales training and learn how to become a really amazing sales ninja.
Every single person in the online space needs to be a sales expert in order to make money.
Maybe you can find a sales coach and you do your own thing, and then that’s something that you can turn into your own training and pass that onto your team and do. You’re going to be crazy successful, because you’re not doing what everybody else is doing. There’s a difference between duplication and being cookie cutter. So, if you’re feeling really inauthentic in what everybody else is sharing, you don’t need to do any of that. You need to get real clear about your goals, and then get intuitive about what feels good to you. Decide for yourself how you want to grow and run this business. That’s it!
If you found this powerful, please feel free to share it with a friend. Share it with your Network Marketing Team. This is not something that people talk about. Some of you might have really been offended by some of this, and that’s okay! Because, if you were offended by it, it means you feel really called to serve and show up in your company. So, like I said, I’m glad I could give you that clarity and I’m glad that you’re all in.
If you head to SocialMediatoSales.com, I’ve got a sweet little something for ya! It is a dual strategy trading on how to create and map out a month’s worth of content in just literally about an eight minute window! So go ahead to SocialMediatoSales.com and share it with your friends.
And remember, no matter what you decide:
To be successful, believe in yourself, in the business, in the products, in your team, and believe that the compensation plan is actually going to help people make money.
