Direct Selling Success

Chapter 9 Harnessing E-Commerce and Social Media to Explode Growth

I got a WhatsApp message from Art Jonak. The title alone had me petrified to click:

• “MLMers on Instagram versus MLMers in Real Life.”

I could only imagine what the link would reveal… The posers and imposters who rent a Ferrari for a day, posting pix like they own it; the beginners earning $400 a month that claim to be millionaires; or would it be a guy with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, promoting a wellness company?

I held my breath and clicked…

False alarm! Fortunately, the post turned out to be a clever Instagram account from a comedienne just poking fun at people’s social media exaggerations in general.

But my trepidation when I saw the first message was real. Very, very real. How many times have we held our breath, or our nose, as we watched someone promoting our business as they stray over the line of integrity?

It’s a whole new world. Now the situation isn’t just some guy bloviating to five people in his living room, or even a sketchy team member exaggerating in front of 200 people in a Marriott conference room. There are people making posts on social media that sometimes get thousands, tens of thousands, or even millions of views. Your events are being live-streamed across the Internet. And there is a digital record of every stupid, ignorant, or illegal claim your people ever make.

So how do we make this problem go away?

We don’t. So let’s get that out of the way right now. Boo.