41 | Managing Expectations for Your Network Marketing or Social Selling Business: 5 Ways to Avoid Frustration From Your Team
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Hi, friends. And welcome back to the call to lead podcast. So today. I'm going to be sharing some real facts with you guys and sharing some, maybe some tough love and some tough information, but the goal is to help manage the expectations for your business and to help guide and serve your team and to help avoid the frustrations and disappointment that come from mismanaged expectations.
So I'm gonna be sharing with you guys, my top five areas that you need to have some expectations and ground rules to know what to expect as you build your business and network marketing or direct sales or social selling so let's get into it
So today's episode is going to be. All about helping you avoid frustration and disappointment through managing your expectations. One of the most important lessons I learned actually from our pastor at church was that. Every bit of frustration and sadness and anger and all of the hard things that typically come to us in life are caused from the gap between what we expected to happen in our life or in relationships, or certainly in business.
Versus what actually happened. And of course, none of us can plan the future. We can try to be as proactive and planning as possible, but at the same time, Managing your expectations. And especially if you are a leader, managing expectations for your team and for yourself is going to be one of the most important things that you can do in your business.
And so today I am going to help you. Just discern some of the expectations that you're going to experience in your business. If you haven't already. And my goal is this is something that you can even share with your team as what is called a third party tool, which a third party tool is just something that's something other than yourself. Right?
You might not have time or the ability, or even the knowledge to be able to share what some of the expectations are for what to expect in this business. But you can certainly share this episode with your team or with maybe a teammate who is struggling and experiencing some of the frustration that is inevitably going to come when their expectations are not met.
And they didn't know what to expect from this business. So I'm going to share five different ways an areas where you should manage your expectations for the business model of network marketing, direct sales, social, selling, whatever. Whatever that is. Okay. So we're going to dive right in and start with number one.
And that is that people will let you down. Even really good people, even me, even your leader, your mentor, your upline, your sidelines, your teammates. You're CEO of your company, maybe your top leaders, your corporate people are going to let you down. And why is this? It's because we're all human. We're all fallible. Nobody is perfect. We're all trying to do the best that we can.
And instead of looking to people, whether that's your upline or again, to your corporate team or to your CEO or for whatever it is You know, the new products instead of creating this kind of idol out of the person or the people, or even your company or your product. And looking to them for your satisfaction or your you know, your gratitude for your business.
I want you to look to the Lord instead, because I can promise you that just like you and the mistakes that you're making in your business or in your leadership. So is your upline. So is your CEO. They are all going through these hard times, these mistakes, these failing forward opportunities. As I like to talk about, to build and grow as a person, as a leader.
If they are a Christian they're, they're growing in Christ, they are experiencing the sanctification that we all need by going through some really hard times and making some really hard decisions. So, if you can start your business from the place of knowing that you're likely going to be let down. And kind of just wrap your brain around that for a minute and realize that you shouldn't be looking to people.
Especially if you are kind of idolizing them in some way to bring the fulfillment for this business. If you go back to episode 39 and my leadership toolkit. Where I talked about the different ways that you can use some biblical wisdom to kind of equip yourself, to serve your team and to grow your business.
You know, that you should be listening to the Lord for inspiration and taking action on all of those ideas. And while it is incredible to be blessed with an amazing upline. To be blessed with a CEO that just absolutely gets it and is on point with every decision and a corporate team that just has it totally figured out.
While that is an ideal situation. It is often not the case. And so I just want you to focus on the things that you can control, which is your time. Your energy. It's the way that you can have gratitude for the hard things, not just in yourself, but also know that the hard things that others are experiencing is also for them to help them grow.
So the first way you can manage your expectations is realize that people even good people will always let you down. Okay. So that's the first one. The second one. And this is probably going to be a little bit counter to what you've heard from people in the industry, but it's honestly one of the things that gives the network marketing industry, a bad rap.
And that is that most people Mo. Like the vast majority, like 98% are not going to make a ton of money in this business. They're not, they just aren't, but I'm here to tell you that profitability is totally possible for every single person in this business. They just have to look to these simple systems. They have to dive in by taking action and choosing faith over fear in their business. And they have to be laser focused on making back that initial investment and remaining profitable in their business model. So I'm going to use my numbers just because it's an, it's an easy reference and I'm definitely a little bit of a numbers nerd, but my team just recently topped over 4,000.
Distributors in the United States and in Canada. And these are numbers that I have been tracking for a really long time. So this is relatively consistent. And actually last, last month was not one of our strongest months. It typically isn't. And we'll talk about the seasons of business in just a second as well, but. Looking at last month
The average distributor on my team sold $331 worth of our product, which at our compensation plan, a baseline 20% commission that winds up being just over $66. Okay. So while that's not a ton of money, it's certainly not going to be the type of thing. That's going to get somebody really excited to join your team. Right. It's still $66. That was not only put in their pocket.
But our only monthly minimum is a 1295 in the us. And I think. We have 1495 in Canada. I'm really bad with the Canadian numbers, but anyway, it's not a lot that absolutely covers that and puts about $50 in their pocket, which covers. Bed care, pedicure. It covers a little bit towards a car payment. It covers birthday party expenses, maybe a date night with the hubby. And it's absolutely running from a place of profitability in their business. And if you multiply that out over the year, it's about $792.
So who would not want to make an extra $800 a year? If you were to get that raise from your, your career, your, you know, your salary, you'd probably be, you know, relatively excited about that. Right? So. I know that's not the most exciting number, but I do want to show you that that is average of 4,000 people, but also here's the thing we thankfully, in our company, we do not have a requirement for people to quote, get active in their business, though. I do recommend.
Pretty much everyone, if they are, even if they're a Walker, a jogger or runner. Getting active and your business, whatever that looks like is a really worthy goal to make for your business, because you can, again, run a profitable business and make a little something, even if it's just on the small end for your family each and every month. So getting active is an amazing goal for you.
No matter what. You know, your pace is in the business and you should embrace your base. Go back to episode 39 a if you haven't listened to that yet. And so just so you know, of the over 4,000 for it's like 4,040, something just under 800, got active. Which does not take much. It's just maybe two new, like new customers
You know, buying our makeup. With a makeup company or maybe five reorders. If they're looking for residual income. And essentially these are the people who are actively working their business and it's okay that they're not. And again, embrace your pace, embrace the pace of your team. But I want to look at the numbers for those who are actively working their business. And if you're listening to this podcast, that's likely you and trust me, you have got probably somewhere between 20 to 40% of your team who are doing this to.
And they sold. Get ready for this on average, over $1,400 last month in a little bit of a rough slower summer Over $1,400, which equates to. $430 in commissions per our comp plan. And that is just on their own personal cells because we don't have any kind of requirement to build a team or, you know, anything like that. So that's not including any downline commissions. That's just on the.
Effort and the work that they put in. So every team, every company, all of it's going to look different, but who do you know that would not love an additional $430 added to their monthly budget? And while that's not 4,000 or 40,000, or I guess there are people making 400,000, I And while that's not like a crazy amount of money, it is absolutely a blessing for each and every one of those 800 people on my team who put that work in hard work and effort into their business and are able to provide for the bottom line of their family. Right? So I want all of you guys to manage the expectations for yourself and for your team and for your teammates that we've got to stop this, this dangling of the carrot of you can make millions here and you can make thousands a.
Because can you absolutely. You can. And if you follow the processes that I teach on this podcast, and that could be you two, you could be in that 2%. And if you're an achiever like me, you're the type that knows if 2% of people are doing it, then you can do it too. And absolutely any of you can, you can, but it's okay if you don't and it's okay. If the people on your team aren't because the average person on your team is bringing home.
A profitable amount of money to serve their family. So that's where I'm at. Number two. Tip is to manage the expectations that most people will not make a ton of money in this business, but profitability is totally possible. And that should always always be your goal in business. In fact, I, as a traditional business owner, there were many, many, many months where I lost thousands of dollars, thousands of dollars down the drain because I had a negative profit in my business.
And I would have been so grateful to just been operating from a place of profitability in my business. So keep that in mind. All right. The number three tip is it's going to be hard. But guess what? Nothing comes easy in life, right. Especially if you are trying to grow and you have experienced this, I'm sure in your faith as well.
But it's going to be hard. There's going to be hard times. You're going to have people quit. You're going to have people return your product. You're going to be disappointed with a company launch you're again, going to have an upline or a leader or someone let you down. It's not going to be easy. No business, no job ever is, but it's going to be worth it.
And the reason I say it's going to be worth it is as you are growing your business, you are also growing yourself as a person and how are diamonds refined through heat and pressure. And so you are going to become a better person through the hard things that you go through, not just in this business, but in life.
So manage your expectations that it's not going to be easy. You will have hard times. You will want to quit. You will have other people that want to quit or that, that do quit. And probably the hardest part of this business is when your teammates are let down in some way, whether that's from you or from, you know, a decision that your company made when you got disgruntled or disappointed teammates.
Again, it's really, really hard. And in that case, you just need to manage their expectations and send them this podcast. So that's number three. Number four is it takes time. To do big things in this business. It just does. You have to be consistent. It doesn't mean you have to go crazy and you have to just enroll like 50 people a month and you have to sell $10,000 worth of your product every single month. You don't. I can promise you. Cause I don't, that's not how I built my business.
You don't, but it absolutely does take time. It takes years. In fact, Eric Warry, he is the author of GoPro. It's a fantastic book that really just includes some of the old school principles that, that just work in this business. And he says that it takes a year to figure this out. So literally a year to figure out the business model to figure out your product.
Do you just figure this thing out? Basically it takes one year, one year. It takes three years. On average across the industry to make a part-time income. So again, that's not looking at that $300 a month. That's looking at probably that, you know, a thousand to $2,000, which again, the active artists that are on my team are making that part time income, but it takes years to get there. He says three years.
And, you know, that's an industry average. It takes five years to replace your full-time income five years. And you might be looking to quit your job, or you might be looking to replace your full-time income that you have right now. And that is a worthy goal, depending on the you know, the, the, the situation with you and your family, but you have to manage expectations. It's going to take time.
You guys, every other business model that is out there where you have the potential to make the kind of income here, you have to go to school and pay tens of thousands. If not hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. To go to school for 2, 4, 5, 10 years. Paying. Often going deeply into debt to get there.
What if you took that same energy, you made your $66 a month or your $430 a month and focused on just putting your head down and doing the hard things and taking action by choosing faith over fear. What would your business look like in five years? Because absolutely you could replace your full-time income.
It could even happen quicker for you, but managing expectations. That it's probably going to take five years to make that happen. It's going to help you be able to put your head down, because again, you know, if you want to be a doctor or an attorney or an engineer or a You're going to have to, you're going to have to work hard. You're going to have to spend a lot of money and you're going to have to spend a lot of time to make that happen. So why don't you focus that same energy in this business model? If you want to do big things here, why don't you put that same energy and effort?
Keep it simple. Focus on consistent small actions that are going to require you stepping outside your comfort zone and just do that for five years and see what happens. Okay. And then lastly, he says it takes seven years to become world-class. So those are gonna be your, you know, six and well, and seven figure earners you know, depending on the company and the person and all of those things. So those are going to people who are making like just ungodly amounts of money.
And that obviously is a goal that people try to strive for. And that is often a carrot that people dangle that you can have that too. And again, can you, yes, but you have to be incredibly consistent and do just, you know, treat this thing, like a business for. For seven years or more. In order to experience those results. And most people don't do that. And so you have to manage the expectations.
That. It's just going to take some time. It's going to take some hard work. It's going to take some effort. And when you can realize that, and you can just put your head down and fail forward, my friends, you can see those results in your business as well. And then lastly, There will be seasons for your business and for your company. And they're not always going to be pretty. I think we have, especially if you are with a newer company and like for us, our company is still only.
Five and a half years old coming up on six years. And so, you know, we did experience kind of straight up groceries for a second. Right. But no business, I don't care. What kind of business model it is or what kind of entrepreneur you are? No business goes straight up forever. It just does it. Month to month is going to look different. You're going to have like an up above then you're going to have a down month. You're going to have an up, you know, another up, not that you're going to have another down month.
And if you were to kind of map it out and do like a plot graph. You're going to see that it's not this straight up line. It's going to be up and down, up and down. Right. And it's going to be quarter to quarter. It might even be year to year as you and your company kind of figured this out. And one of the other things that is just an absolute game changer. I am so thankful for my friend, Jody, who is an amazing leader at another company. And I'm actually going to be sharing an interview that I did
Her name's Jedi Watkins and there'll be an interview coming up here, not too long, where she shares a little bit more of her story in some tips. But after we did that interview, she told me about a book that is one of my favorite business books for every leader, especially if you are leading a team of, I would say.
40 50 people plus, and you're like, well, I'm a little overwhelmed. Or again, if you have been in your business or your company has been in business for about five years, you need to read this book. Let me tell you it's called renewal for field leaders by Brett a Blake. And it is, it can be a little tough read because what he does is he manage his expectations for the life cycles of a direct selling company. And he has worked with some of the best in the business and some of the biggest as a consultant. And he's been a part of them, him.
You know, some of them himself, and he maps out for some of the biggest names in this industry, what their, their company growth and in some cases decline, and then either complete destruction or renewal has looked like, and he gives some incredible tips These companies have paid him a ton of money to. You know to to share with their team and with their leaders to turn the business around and some of the principles are just absolutely incredible
And I may need to do an entire episode devoted to the principles in this book because it's so good or better yet. If I could. Maybe book an interview with Brett. So if anybody knows him or has a connection, my goodness, I would love to meet him because this book is just so amazing. But I did want to touch on the main principle that he bases the book around, which is the stages of the life cycle of a direct selling company.
And so they all start with a launch and then they get into hypergrowth where you've got that kind of straight up. You know, Shooting for the stars everybody's like on fire and people. Regardless of how they're doing their business or having wins and people are ranking like crazy and, you know, sailing like crazy. And it's like the straight up growth.
And that's usually in the first couple of years and then about like maybe three to four years in, they get to a spot where the sales kind of level off. And so then they enter something called the growth by promotion phase, where they are really maintaining or in some cases growing their sales by having incentives or discounts or launching specials.
Because a lot of times that's why leaders or the field feel like. That's what's lacking in their business, but really what's happening is things are just stabilizing and the ones who did not have the proper systems in place to serve their business and serve their teams or the ones that. And again, I talked about this in episode 39.
The people who built their business the wrong way by doing it. By convincing people to. Basically serve their business rather than focusing on how they could serve their customers and serve their teams. A lot of their teams start to crumble, which leads to the fourth phase, which is the shakeout phase. So what happens is those leaders who built their business on a weak foundation who were not focused on.
You know how they could best serve their team or the slow and steady growth they were focused on. Just achieving their goals at whatever costs that looks like they will often leave. And sometimes that does create a decline and they may hop to another company. You'll see. That's where a lot of people do, company hopping.
And so what happens then is the company is in a place where they have a decision to make. They can either get serious, make some of these changes. And the book is fantastic because it talks about so many of the different. Ways that you can focus on building back your business. And so either they wound up having a continual decline or.
Renewal, which that is always the goal, which is to go up and that's where companies might be generating, say 300, 200, 300 in revenue million in revenue. And then they might have that slight decline with the shakeout, but then people get serious. They start focusing on their systems and doing their business the right way.
And then what happens is the company not only grows, but it grows to exponentially higher levels into that kind of billion dollar company level. And so that's where he has seen time and time again, that you know, a lot of the big companies that, you know, that have been around for a long time,
Oh, he also talks about how there's different product launches and, and things that create different aspects of momentum and growth over the longterm. Growth cycle. But ultimately the reason I include this is because I want you to manage the expectations for yourself. And again, for your team that not every month is going to be an up month from the one before. Not every year is going to be an up month from the year before.
But if you really believe in your product, if you believe in your business model and you are committed to this thing for the longterm, it is well worth. Focusing on doing this business the right way, which again is on the right foundation of what I believe is faith in taking action and choosing faith over fear and focusing on simple systems. So.
Read that book, unfortunately, it's not available on audible, but you I'll include a link to it on Amazon. And I'm sure it'll get to you super quick and it's definitely worth. Worth reading, especially if you are a leader. So I hope this was helpful. I hope it wasn't a little bit of a Debbie downer episode. This is coming from a positive Patty over here, always, but at the same time, I just have learned that if we focus on just all of the amazing, wonderful things about this business model, but if we only focus on those and instead we don't manage the expectations of some of the hard things, that's what tends to lead to the.
People out there that complain about the business model and have bad experiences with the business model. And it does not have to be that way. I don't know many industries where you can have people that are consistently actually making money and putting money back into their pocket for their families.
And in some cases making four or 500. Thousand $2,000 a month. And then in a very few cases, it can be a life-changing income for some. And that is amazing too. Again, without having to go to school for years. It just does involve putting your head down, staying consistent and doing the right thing for the long run. So I hope this is helpful for you guys. Let me know what you think. I would love for you to check out my telegram group, which is the scale without social for female entrepreneurs.
And we have some conversations in there each week about the different Podcast episodes. And just you can hop on there and ask me anything so i hope you guys have a fantastic week and i hope this was helpful for you and your business and i will see all later this week
