There’s this copy & paste post that keeps on coming up on my social media and I simply HAD TO respond.
I screenshot the post in 3 images in this post and below the images I will provide a reply with some easily researched facts…
My Response:
YOUR MLM IS NOT YOUR SMALL BUSINESS
Why? Because you’re an independent contractor and you are a sales commission only representative or distributor for that mighty big corporation.
Most MLM organisations have revenues of multi million or multi billion U.S. Dollars!
Here’s just a few I quickly researched:
Arbonne: estimated annual sales revenue of $847 million in 2020.
Legal General Counsel get paid $248,200 annually, other corporate jobs - half the salaries are above $113,349
Mary Kay: $2.8 Billion annual revenue 2020, Corporate CEO makes $450,000 a year
DōTerra: $1.9 Billion revenue, highest earning Corporate executive makes £950,000 a year (likely the CEO)
Beach Body: revenue $880 Million, Corporate Vice President makes about $305,000 a year.
Nu Skin: $2.58 billion in revenue, average Corporate executive compensation is $226,622 a year.
Tropic Skincare: 2020 Annual Revenue $129.55 million
It goes on and on…
Let’s face it if you ‘OWNED’ the business, then you’d be the one paying those executives at those corporate offices their wages, or rather you would have an HR department doing this for you.
The only legal standing you have to this claim is if you are registered as Self Employed with HMRC (U.K.) and you should be - and as such you can claim that ‘small business’ but you have no control over what you do in your small business, so you’re more like an independent contractor.
If you were really a small independent business owner, then you would be in charge of
• the name of the company,
• the products you sell without limitations,
• the prices you buy your products at and
• the prices you sell your products at,
• you wouldn’t be paid a commission,
• you may at most get a wholesale discount if you bought inventory from suppliers that give you a bulk buy discount.
• you wouldn’t be ‘ranking up’ or
• have to pay to ‘maintain your level’ or
• place a minimum order to ‘stay active’ and
• you wouldn’t be earning a percentage commission based on the sales (purchases) of your team or downline,
• all the sales turnover would go directly to you and only if you had someone working for you who gets paid wages, then your employee would get paid out of the turnover of your business.
There are many more details to pick apart as to why you’re not really running your own small business.
So if you’re in an MLM, Direct Sales, Network Marketing, Fake Affiliate Marketing (another story) or any type of organisation that makes you believe you run your own business, but they give out ranks, present an opportunity where you get others to ‘join your team’…
Sorry to burst your bubble.