Lisa Adams a registered Nurse since 1993, with extensive experience in both hospital and community settings. Lisa is a qualified Lecturer in Health and Social Care. Lisa also practices aesthetics, delivers clinical sessions on menopause retreats and has implemented a local menopause wellbeing group. Lisa now works with Forever- a global, direct sales health & wellness company. Lisa talked to Elizabeth recently to throw some light on the MLM business model and debunk some of the myths and negative press this type of business receives.
What is MLM?
MLM is multi-level marketing and it’s a business model where there are individual distributors that market their own products. So they’re selling their own products and their own service. So I’m in a team of colleagues working alongside myself, and we are all doing the same thing with our own customers. We then sell our products, and we have a profit for the products that we sell. Forever Living is a business where you are encouraged to grow your team because you’re encouraged to develop your leadership and management skills. So in that sense, if I was to introduce you to the business, I would then show you the business model of how it works. And then the actual company would then reward me with a 3% bonus and you can progress, like in any other business to supervisor, to assistant manager to manager, and as you progress, that means that you’re introducing more people, so then your team-building bonus increases.
What we don’t do is we don’t take any profit off any products that anybody else in the team below us sells. It’s all our own profits with our own customers. Basically, it’s happening in all different areas. It’s happening sideways, so with my colleagues. It’s happening above me with the person that introduced me to the business. And it happens below me with anyone that I introduce to the business. We’re all doing the same thing, and that’s where it gets the name of multi-level marketing from, because it’s happening at different level.
Why the bad press?
I think it comes from businesses and people doing it badly. In the sense of businesses doing it badly where years ago it was competitor, and what was known as pyramid schemes.
That was when people would profit off other people and almost bringing them in under false pretences. Pyramid schemes are actually illegal. They do carry a jail sentence and they do not involve any products. So this is very different to a pyramid scheme. With the multi-level marketing companies, you become a member of a Direct Sales Association, which means that you have a license to directly sell your products. To be part of a legitimate company, you have to have that license. And that’s because there’s a code of ethics with what you are doing.
Getting started
I got started through a friend who has been working with this particular company for four years. We never really used to talk about business, she was from a corporate background, so completely different to mine. I knew that she’d researched this. Before she went into it, she researched it inside out, back to front, upside down, because that’s how she is, whereas, I’m the kind of person that will want someone to do that for me and tell me that it’s okay!
So I knew that she’d done that, and she was doing it over four years. I trusted that that was OK. I was feeling “There must be something else I can do? I just fancy doing something different.” I asked my friend “What is it that you do?” She then told me about it and because it’s in health and wellness, obviously with my background as a nurse means that I’ve always had a genuine interest. My degree is actually in health studies because I qualified as a Nurse before the Nursing degrees, I then went back to uni and did a health studies degree, it involved a lot of health promotion. So I’ve always had that interest. Often with this I don’t have to go out and talk to people at such, because people will say, “What is it you do? How do you look well? How do you do this?” So it’s always just constant conversation. You don’t have to have any qualifications because there is full-training, provided by a panel of advisory doctors, vets, nutritionists. Forever have their own scientific team where they do their own research. So they have a panel of experts that provide free training. Obviously it’s all online now. There’s as much training or as little training as you want because it’s your business, so you can put into it much or as little as you want to. There’s no payment for the training. No. There’s a payment to join. What you actually do is you pay £199. For that £199 you get your business in a box, In that box, is 20 of the most popular selling products. The products are actually worth just under £300. You get paperwork, you get your direct selling association license. You also get your own webstore that’s all set up. So you’ve got your online commerce set up. Everything is just basically on the website for you. You have also got head office there to support you. That £199 is your business in a box to get your business started. You can either use the products yourself to get used to them. You can sell them and make your money back if you want to. But you actually get that business there to get you started to actually then grow your business of what you need to do. There’s live trainings every week, a few times a week. There’s different presentations. They’re all available. They’re all recorded so they’re all available on Catch-up. There’s more information there that you can look into. It’s all there to support you in your business because you are a member of a team, you’re not on your own. They have events teams so when we we’re doing events, you’ve got your own events team, you’ve got your own HR. You’ve got basically everything that will support a normal business. I always say to people, “You get me in the box as well.” Because then I would coach a new team member, I would coach and support them until they really didn’t want or need me to do that anymore.
Combining NHS work
When I started the business, I was working full time. Then I went to part time. My last nursing job finished in the end of June when the contract finished, and so I’ve just been doing this since then. I’m starting another NHS job next week. Mainly it’s carrying on to maintain my NHS pension as well. So Forever is ideal because it fits in pockets of time.So if you only have an hour a day and you got children and you want to do it when the kids go to bed, if you want to fit it around your current job, there’s no targets. So you can actually invest as much time as you want to, and you can do it in pockets.You’re only accountable to yourself, and you’ve got to have that motivation to achieve your goals or why you came into the business. You wanted to do this for yourself and your family. And again, that’s the sort of thing that I coach my team members to help them, with the time management and doing that.
Confidence
I would say that my confidence has grown enormously since I have been in this business. However I think that to be a nurse in the NHS you have to have a certain level of confidence to do the job and face the daily challenges that comes along with it. Coming from a Nursing background is definitely a help to going on with this kind of business. You can take those skills and develop them even more.
Ultimate Goal
A lot of people come into the business because they want more time freedom. There’s a lot of people who come into the business who are earning six figure salaries, but they don’t have any time freedom. This allows that to happen, because you can work from anywhere in the world. You can work online. So I like to travel, so we’ve always had nice holidays and travelled. My goal is to do this full time, and to have a life where… it’s an uncapped salary. If I put the work in, I get the benefits. Whereas in any other job… in nursing you’ve got your scale and that almost denotes your value and your worth in that role. And when you get to the top, then it doesn’t matter how hard you work, you don’t get any more money. I would like the time freedom, and to have that to spend with my family, and to have the benefits of the income that it brings to enjoy with my family, doing the things that we enjoy. I think there comes a time when you think about yourself a little bit more, and think “well, what am I getting out of this?” As much as I love nursing, it’s always overworked and undervalued, and you can only really carry on. I just didn’t want to accept that for myself as a long term plan. That just wasn’t in my long term plan.
Regrets
To be honest, I say that I regret not finding Forever earlier, but in hindsight, looking at it I wouldn’t have had the confidence to do this. So I think everything comes to you when the time is ready for you, doesn’t it? So the so the time was right for me to do this now, for me. I just think I wish I was in this place earlier than I was maybe.
Key Nursing Skills
It’s only in hindsight, when you’re transferring Nursing skills to a completely different market, that you look back and realise. I have a list of skills:
- Knowledge
- Professional ethics
- Communication skills
- Caring
- Organisation
- Time management
- Team working
- Leadership
- Attention to detail
- Adaptability
I don’t underestimate my skills. Sometimes going into a new venture with your business, it’s very daunting. Your comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing grows there. That’s what they say, so just realizing your worth, and what you actually have got to offer. I think if you’ve done nursing you can do pretty much anything.
The value of creating a business
I think it’s added value in the sense of… for myself, for me developing myself, and growing as a person. It has also brought value into my family life, into my personal relationships. My children are learning from seeing me doing what I’m doing. I’m proud that I’ve taken that kind of leap to invest in something for myself and for us. Definitely the time freedom of being able to spend more time together. It’s been a massive plus. And just that value of just recognising your own worth, knowing that you have got almost a bit more to offer than you thought., even in the world of selling, if you’re in it to sell a product, then really you’re not in the right market.
I think one of the biggest values is realising that we are actually capable of pretty much anything that we turn our mind to. The biggest thing in our way is usually us. Isn’t it?