Teamwork in Network Marketing Business
Karen, formerly a pink Cadillac winner with Mary Kay, and one of the strongest female speakers in the business, joined a new network marketing company in partnership with her husband, Bill. She looked upline to her role models – Charlie, Jay, and Marc – all of whom had achieved the top level of their company in record time. She believed that if they could do it, so could she. So she quit her job, Bill sold their business, and they joined up. They achieved the level of executive in the minimum time in January of 1991, the same month the Persian Gulf War erupted. Unfortunately, their four qualifying executives watched the news instead of working the business, and within sixty days all four had lost their vision and quit.
As Karen explains, “Seven months later, Bill and I climbed our way back to having four new qualifying executives, only to have Barbara Walters appear on Nightline featuring our company with the infamous question: ‘Is it a dream or a scheme?’ This television broadcast launched the most intense media and regulatory scrutiny ever encountered by any network marketing company. Over the next ten months, as our company was exonerated after the investigation, we lost three more qualifying executives. Defending our company in the media and to the regulators exacted a heavy toll. After all that work, we had lost a total of eleven executives. Our families were begging us to go back to corporate America. We just couldn’t. We had a dream.
“In June of 1992, we were thrown another curve. Our company diversified, and suddenly we had to go from our comfort zone of being knowledgeable about cosmetics and personal care products to learning about antioxidants, chelated minerals, and metabolic conditioning. But we did it, and by August of 1993, our first full-fledged executive emerged in our organization. It took three more years of hard work, but finally, in September of 1996, we reached the top level of our company,” Karen remembers back to her days with Mary Kay, where she was often told “The greater the individual’s potential for success, the greater the adversity that individual will have to face. Gold is tempered through fire – how can we aspire to the greatness of leadership if our commitment is never challenged?” Karen and Bill, who successfully met the challenge, now live in Redondo Beach, California, freed from the shackles of corporate America and of owning a traditional business. When asked why she was able to hang in when everyone around her fell out, Karen said that it is essential to have your destination clearly in sight, even before the journey ever begins.