Unlock the Secrets: How to Select the Perfect MLM Opportunity for Your Success!
Recently I got all kind of hate when I mentioned my side hustle selling Young Living products because it’s an MLM. I don’t really use Young Living as an MLM because I don’t actively recruit team members; it’s more like affiliate marketing for me since I just share the products and coupon codes with my link (example: use SHAREYL for 10% off your first order). However, it meets my requirements for choosing a Multi-Level Marketing company and I’ll briefly outline that in case that’s something you’ve been wondering about.
Although right now it’s very fashionable to talk about how MLMs are “scams” that “prey” on women, I had great success with the business model. While I was learning doll repair to grow my doll business I worked for an MLM and I know it was instrumental in my success with dolls. This is because I learned the essential basics for any business: book keeping, public speaking, email marketing, customer service, and closing sales.
Honestly, working for an MLM can be a little mini-business school if you have a motivated person above you. Really ambitious people in MLMs are focused not only on building a team through recruitment but training their team to sell well, so it comes with business coaching included. I rose to the top 5% of my MLM worldwide before its founder died and it was shut down by the new owners. Then I took what I learned and started my doll shops and hospital and I’ve had great success there as well.
In the (free) Your First Funnel Challenge, Daymond John of Shark Tank teaches how he makes millions of dollars selling other people’s stuff and why it’s such a great business model. If you want to launch a business but don’t know where to start an MLM can be a wonderful option. You don’t have the astronomical cost of building factories and distribution chains, building a brand, hiring employees… all the things you must do to start a really big business yourself.
Unfortunately some bad actors have tainted the MLM reputation, most recently with the leggings company scandal (if you’ve been alive for the past decade you know who I mean). That company left their distributors stuck with moldy and damaged inventory and enormous bills after their nepotism and in-fighting ran the business into the ground. Many of my friends fell for it and I am so sorry for them. However, I would never have signed up for that scheme in the first place (and I flatter myself I stopped a couple people from joining) because they didn’t meet my basic requirements for choosing an MLM. Here they are:
1) Economical: The cost to join the MLM should be a great deal. For example, Young Living’s starter kits range from $100-$250 but the value of the products is much higher. The most expensive one is about $288 but has a retail value of almost $800. A lot of people who are already distributors buy the starter kits repeatedly because it’s so much cheaper than buying those products individually. Launching a business for a couple hundred bucks is pretty much impossible any other way. The closest I can think of is how I started my first eBay store selling things around my house. That was free, but it was a ton of work and made way less money at the beginning. Don’t sign up for MLMs that make you purchase a bunch of inventory to sell. The aforementioned leggings company cost thousands of dollars to join and they sent you random inventory you couldn’t choose. Unsurprisingly many people couldn’t sell the leggings they received and then they were just out all that money. All you should need is a small “kit” of best-selling products to demonstrate to customers.
Passion-Driven: You should already love the product you’re going to sell. You should already be using it and be so passionate about how great it is you want to tell everyone about it. Don’t choose things you aren’t using because you won’t have authenticity and your customers will sense that. Although I don’t actively recruit team members, if you join Young Living using my link and want to start a wellness business I am happy to train you. Several years ago I had a new member who kept whining that she couldn’t sell anything because everyone said it was too expensive. Now, Young Living is expensive because they produce essential oils in accordance with their Seed to Seal pledge, meaning they develop the plants from seed and grow them to use in their oils whenever possible. They own a network of farms all over the world, which is not cheap. (Incidentally if you find a cheap “essential oil” don’t buy it. Essential oils take thousands of pounds of plants for just a small yield of oil and if they’re cheap it means they are either diluted with olive oil or something or they were produced using dangerous chemicals or they’re just outright fakes, like regular oil scented with fragrances.) Anyway, when I investigated I found this girl was trying to sell the oils at the flea market. So, I counseled her about audience expectations. People aren’t at the flea market for gourmet products; they’re looking for deals. I suggested the Farmer’s Market, which has a much bougier hipster clientele, exactly the people who would want all-natural organic essential oils. But she wouldn’t ever try that. Instead she just moaned and groaned for months about the oils being too expensive until I finally realized she didn’t believe in the product. Because she didn’t believe the products were worth the money she was never able to sell them to anyone else. I finally suggested she go with a different company she actually loved and breathed a sigh of relief when she left.
Fulfilled By THEM: Don’t sign up for an MLM that makes you buy and store inventory. I’ve known people with entire garages full of products they bought and couldn’t sell and were stuck with. Choose an MLM that gives you a code or website where people can order products that are shipped straight from their warehouse. This is the greatest thing about doing MLMs right ~ you don’t have to package and ship orders or store inventory and you don’t have to pay any money upfront for products to sell.
Supportive: Choose your upline along with the company. If you go to a home party, for instance, and you love the products but don’t really like the person presenting them, don’t sign up with that person. That’s the person who will be directly above you and who will be training you. Instead, find a group, like a Facebook group, of people who sell the products and ask who has the best team. Then sign up with them. As I said before, I was fortunate to have a terrific hands-on trainer who taught me how to run any business.
Ethical: You should be able to make money just from selling the MLM's products. Your success should not require you to recruit members. If you can't make money unless you recruit new members and make them recruit new members then it is a pyramid scheme, not an MLM and it is actually illegal.
These tips will also work for affiliate partnerships. An affiliate partnership is when you promote a business, usually with a code of some sort, but you don’t sell products for them. ClickFunnels is a business that offers affiliate partnerships. They are a software company and I am an affiliate for them so I get a commission if you sign up for their software using my link. Affiliates are a great way to bring in passive income while you run your main business. Any service I use, like my website provider, my email provider ~ flodesk ~ and really enjoy using I see if there’s an affiliate program so I can promote them.
If you really appreciate using a product or service you’re probably already telling people about it ~ why not get paid? I can’t understand people who pay all kinds of money for luxury brand products with the logo all over them. They’re literally paying to advertise for someone else! You and I know we deserve to get paid to market someone’s product!
Want to learn more about starting and scaling a successful business? Tomorrow, April 2nd, Grant Cardone's GrowthCon starts and it's FREE for the first time! Plus when you upgrade to VIP you get the Unbreakable system included. I paid thousands of dollars for that course, so I'm trying not to be resentful. I attend weekly coaching calls with my mentors at Cardone Ventures and I can attest to the value of this event. I am not an affiliate for them so this is not a paid post, just a recommendation.
Unfortunately some bad actors have tainted the MLM reputation, most recently with the leggings company scandal (if you’ve been alive for the past decade you know who I mean). That company left their distributors stuck with moldy and damaged inventory and enormous bills after their nepotism and in-fighting ran the business into the ground. Many of my friends fell for it and I am so sorry for them. However, I would never have signed up for that scheme in the first place (and I flatter myself I stopped a couple people from joining) because they didn’t meet my basic requirements for choosing an MLM. Here they are:
1) Economical: The cost to join the MLM should be a great deal. For example, Young Living’s starter kits range from $100-$250 but the value of the products is much higher. The most expensive one is about $288 but has a retail value of almost $800. A lot of people who are already distributors buy the starter kits repeatedly because it’s so much cheaper than buying those products individually. Launching a business for a couple hundred bucks is pretty much impossible any other way. The closest I can think of is how I started my first eBay store selling things around my house. That was free, but it was a ton of work and made way less money at the beginning. Don’t sign up for MLMs that make you purchase a bunch of inventory to sell. The aforementioned leggings company cost thousands of dollars to join and they sent you random inventory you couldn’t choose. Unsurprisingly many people couldn’t sell the leggings they received and then they were just out all that money. All you should need is a small “kit” of best-selling products to demonstrate to customers.
Passion-Driven: You should already love the product you’re going to sell. You should already be using it and be so passionate about how great it is you want to tell everyone about it. Don’t choose things you aren’t using because you won’t have authenticity and your customers will sense that. Although I don’t actively recruit team members, if you join Young Living using my link and want to start a wellness business I am happy to train you. Several years ago I had a new member who kept whining that she couldn’t sell anything because everyone said it was too expensive. Now, Young Living is expensive because they produce essential oils in accordance with their Seed to Seal pledge, meaning they develop the plants from seed and grow them to use in their oils whenever possible. They own a network of farms all over the world, which is not cheap. (Incidentally if you find a cheap “essential oil” don’t buy it. Essential oils take thousands of pounds of plants for just a small yield of oil and if they’re cheap it means they are either diluted with olive oil or something or they were produced using dangerous chemicals or they’re just outright fakes, like regular oil scented with fragrances.) Anyway, when I investigated I found this girl was trying to sell the oils at the flea market. So, I counseled her about audience expectations. People aren’t at the flea market for gourmet products; they’re looking for deals. I suggested the Farmer’s Market, which has a much bougier hipster clientele, exactly the people who would want all-natural organic essential oils. But she wouldn’t ever try that. Instead she just moaned and groaned for months about the oils being too expensive until I finally realized she didn’t believe in the product. Because she didn’t believe the products were worth the money she was never able to sell them to anyone else. I finally suggested she go with a different company she actually loved and breathed a sigh of relief when she left.
Fulfilled By THEM: Don’t sign up for an MLM that makes you buy and store inventory. I’ve known people with entire garages full of products they bought and couldn’t sell and were stuck with. Choose an MLM that gives you a code or website where people can order products that are shipped straight from their warehouse. This is the greatest thing about doing MLMs right ~ you don’t have to package and ship orders or store inventory and you don’t have to pay any money upfront for products to sell.
Supportive: Choose your upline along with the company. If you go to a home party, for instance, and you love the products but don’t really like the person presenting them, don’t sign up with that person. That’s the person who will be directly above you and who will be training you. Instead, find a group, like a Facebook group, of people who sell the products and ask who has the best team. Then sign up with them. As I said before, I was fortunate to have a terrific hands-on trainer who taught me how to run any business.
Ethical: You should be able to make money just from selling the MLM's products. Your success should not require you to recruit members. If you can't make money unless you recruit new members and make them recruit new members then it is a pyramid scheme, not an MLM and it is actually illegal.
These tips will also work for affiliate partnerships. An affiliate partnership is when you promote a business, usually with a code of some sort, but you don’t sell products for them. ClickFunnels is a business that offers affiliate partnerships. They are a software company and I am an affiliate for them so I get a commission if you sign up for their software using my link. Affiliates are a great way to bring in passive income while you run your main business. Any service I use, like my website provider, my email provider ~ flodesk ~ and really enjoy using I see if there’s an affiliate program so I can promote them.
If you really appreciate using a product or service you’re probably already telling people about it ~ why not get paid? I can’t understand people who pay all kinds of money for luxury brand products with the logo all over them. They’re literally paying to advertise for someone else! You and I know we deserve to get paid to market someone’s product!
Want to learn more about starting and scaling a successful business? Tomorrow, April 2nd, Grant Cardone's GrowthCon starts and it's FREE for the first time! Plus when you upgrade to VIP you get the Unbreakable system included. I paid thousands of dollars for that course, so I'm trying not to be resentful. I attend weekly coaching calls with my mentors at Cardone Ventures and I can attest to the value of this event. I am not an affiliate for them so this is not a paid post, just a recommendation.
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