Podcast: Play in new window | Download
From Military Wife to Top Earner in Direct Sales
An Interview with Karen Clark
Welcome to the show today and a fantastic interview. Karen Clark is the founder of My Business Presence, a social media training resource for direct sellers. She began her direct selling career as an independent representative who achieved the highest title in her company’s compensation plan in just seven years.
She went the direct sales corporate route after that, before launching her own company. aren has co-authored two books, Incredible Business and Direct Selling Power and enjoys teaching her unique approach to social media marketing through monthly webinars and online courses. She brings a wealth of knowledge to the interview today!
SPONSOR
SocialMediaBackstagePass.com offers you a start to finish coaching and mentoring program to take your network marketing and direct sale business online. From a comprehensive overview of understanding how it all works, to handling the overwhelm of the technical side, avoiding mistakes and getting yourself launched and generating leads – it’s all there, in small, digestible videos and audios, that show you what to do. SocialMediaBackstagePass.com
Let’s get into the interview! Transcript below! Karen’s Quote:
The secret of getting ahead is getting started and the secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming task into small, manageable tasks and starting on the first one. Mark Twain
Resources:
Incredible Business: Expert Advice to Accelerate Your Business – co authored by Karen Clark
Direct Selling Power: Expert Advice to Accelerate Your Business – co authored by Karen Clark and part of the DSWA book series
Also, if you enjoyed the show, please rate it on iTunes and write a brief review.
And, on Stitcher! That would help immensely in getting the word out! Thanks.
<—— Did this podcast help you? If so, it would mean a lot to me if you would share it with others!!! And, share your comments below!
Let’s have some conversation!
EXPECT Success! Jackie Ulmer 
Subscribe to Street Smart Wealth Podcast on iTunes
Subscribe to Street Smart Wealth Podcast by Email – Get Updates in Your Email
Subscribe to Street Smart Wealth Podcast by RSS 
Want more tips and trainings? Get Profit In Your PJs NOW!
Transcript:
Jackie: So, Karen, thanks so much for joining us here today. And I know that our listeners are gonna get a lot out of the call, especially with your experience as a corporate trainer within direct sales and your online and social media skills.
Karen: I’m so excited to be here. Thank you for inviting me, Jackie.
Jackie: Absolutely. So before we start, I would love it if you would share one of your favorite quotes.
Karen: You know one of my favorite ones is by Mark Twain and it says, the secret of getting ahead is getting started and the secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming task into small, manageable tasks and starting on the first one. I just love that one ‘cause it helps me move into action when I’m feeling overwhelmed.
Jackie: You know I think that’s such a great quote and so important for what we do because when you start a direct sales business, be a party plan that we’re marketing or even something online, we are our own boss. We are our own accountability partner. We are so many of those things and it’s easy to get caught up in analysis paralysis as we’ve chatted about, and basically get stuck and do nothing.
Karen: I think we’ve probably all been there.
Jackie: Well let me ask you this. Share a little bit of your background before direct sales, you know, were you a career person? I know you’re a mom. Tell us some of that.
Karen: Yeah. So before direct sales, gosh, I had been a teacher. I had gone to school, gotten my teaching credential in California and I was actually married to a guy in the Navy. So shortly after getting my teaching degree, we were transferred to, well, gosh, lots of different places but kind of fast forward up to just before I started direct sales I had two little kids. One was I think about four and the other one just about one and we were living in Pensacola, Florida. I had been a teacher for a few years out of college and then was staying home. I was the typical mom that said I’m just gonna take one year off and then go back to work.
And then I took a look into those beautiful eyes of my little daughter and said I can’t leave, I just can’t. So my husband unfortunately was kind of like when are you gonna go back to work? When are you gonna go back to work? And I just was like, you know, one more year, one more year. And so I basically was a stay at home mom living in Pensacola, Florida, military wife, had been in, we lived in St. Louis for a while. I come from northern California. We were up in the Bay Area for a while stationed and then living in Florida at that time. So I wasn’t really looking for direct sales. I was actually still thinking eventually I would go back to teaching. I kind of had the idea that I’d home school my kids, but I knew somehow eventually I’d need to make an income to contribute to my family, too. So I was kind of putting it off in a way.
Jackie: I understand that being a mom myself and being in that same boat of being home already but thinking wow, it’s getting tight. How are we gonna do this? How are we gonna do that? And what am I gonna do about it? And I think there are a lot of people out there who can certainly relate to that so, it’s a great, great story. So then how did you find direct sales? What happened?
Karen: Well, it was so funny because I was involved in play groups and mom’s clubs and things like that and, at one of the play group meetings, somebody had tossed a little mini catalog around inviting us to a party and it was for children’s products and, you know, having been a teacher in the past, an elementary school teacher, it really appealed to me. I was like wow, this is really cute. But the date was wrong and I couldn’t make the party, so I said I’ll just book a party.
And I don’t know how many of you out there are military moms or familiar with that lifestyle, but when you’re living on base you’re kind of isolated from your normal friends and family and stuff like that, home parties were like our way to socialize. It was like you could almost go to a different home party every week and just have fun and spend all your money and all that. So it was something new and unique and I thought, okay I know I’ll get friends to come to this party.
So I said I can’t come to this party, but I’ll book a party and the response from me inviting all of my friends on base to this party was phenomenal. I think we had, I’d booked it with my friend, we co-hosted together. I think we had 40 people come to this party and we’re both looking at each other going oh my gosh! This is just crazy.
And come to find out the distributor who was the consultant for the party said that she was actually getting out of the business and joining a different home party company. Of course, we’re thinking she’s crazy. You’ve got 40 people here at this party. So one thing led to another. My friend and I kind of schemed, worked with our husbands to get them into the idea of how we could start our business doing this.
We just kind of saw dollar signs at that time and I did kind of start thinking how this could be a way that I could add to our family’s income without having to go back to work full time, not really knowing what was involved. I had never even considered joining one of these party companies. I didn’t really even understand how it worked. I just knew it was something fun to go to and a way to shop and get together with your friends.
But when the lady said there were just a few people in the state of Florida at that time doing that company, and I knew it was a product that I could get behind ‘cause I just loved it and I saw the response from all my friends, I was like all right, sign me up. So we actually joined together. She eventually ended up quitting and I kind of took off with it.
But that’s really how I got started and it just took off like crazy in the beginning. I ended up getting six bookings or something from that party. She turned that one into a starter show basically once we decided to join. I got a bunch of bookings from there and, unfortunately we got transferred shortly after that. I had been in Florida.
We got transferred up to Washington, but what I found is that it was such a great way to have a business that can be moved anywhere in the country because I ended up having people in Florida that became my loyal customers and then I was able to meet new people later up in Washington, which was our next duty station. So I actually ended up being great and changed my life completely.
I know a lot of people can relate to that like you know, direct sales is such an amazing profession to be in and I just feel like it was such a blessing. It was a way for me to be able to stay home with my kids. I was able to fulfill my own passion with education and teaching little children. I felt like I was contributing to the teachers and daycare providers and moms out there with my products and it just taught me so much about business.
Jackie: That is great. I love that 40 people at a party. I can’t even imagine. That’s a great, great story. But you’re right you know, and I think it brings home a good point. I mean, sometimes you know, I’ve never been the party goer type person in the past. Like I was never the one to go to a lot of home parties and that kind of thing and so sometimes I think that we can look at our own experience and think oh, well nobody’s gonna want to go.
But it’s like you said, there are a lot of women and others who are sitting around, they’re bored and looking for something to do and so we can’t assume that we know what another person is gonna do or not do and that’s why it’s important to invite everybody know for sure. You mentioned getting your husband onboard. So how did that go when the two of you approached your husbands and tried to sell them on the idea? I think those were your words. Tell us a little bit about that ‘cause you know how that can be. Sometimes there’s that negative spouse. Did you experience that or what?
Karen: Yeah. He was very, very skeptical. I do have to, a little disclaimer. He’s a former spouse now, not because of the business. We had some other issues that came out later on, but at the time though, he was very skeptical, but you know it was a very small investment to start a business and so my argument was, where else can you start a business and start bringing in income where I’m only investing $200? I knew I could earn that back with the first party.
So he’s like, all right. Give it a try, see how it goes. Well of course I got the six bookings right away. I was able to get bookings off of those. I was able to sign people up. Once the paychecks started coming in, honestly, I don’t mean to be stereotypical, but for the guys the dollar speaks volumes. So when he started to see those paychecks, he didn’t care anymore. He was very supportive after that and was able to really see that this was something that can replace my teaching income, which ultimately it did.
Jackie: Well let’s talk about your move then, because obviously you got off to a fast start. It went well and all was great, and then you moved and some people could want to tend to use that as an excuse. How did you go about picking up and starting over? What were some of the first things that you did when you landed in the new town?
Karen: Yeah. This was really interesting. In fact, what happened, as soon as I found out that we were getting transferred I was kind of like devastated. I mean I really felt like the rug was being pulled out from under my feet because I had been so successful so quickly. But my cousin, who was a web designer, and this was back in 1998 and the Internet was very new back then, she said, “Why don’t you take it to the Internet?”
I’m like what? And we had already been kind of dabbling in like forums and we had built our own little website. I don’t know if anybody remembers back to GeoCities website. I had a little website about mommying and daycare type topics and things like that. So I’d already been kind of dabbling in that and she said, “Why don’t you take it to the Internet?”
I checked with the company and they didn’t know any better, to be honest, so they said, “Sure, do what you want.” And so I built my own website from the bottom up. In fact, then we were hand coding everything just in a notepad document.
I learned how to do that, kind of built a little mini website and then I started to take it to the different forums and places that moms would meet online, chat rooms and things back then. I was able to zero in on some places where people up in Washington would gather, like moms in the state of Washington on the work at home moms sites.
So I was able to kind of put out feelers and meet people even before I moved out there. So that’s one thing I started to do was kind of use the online networking before it was called social media. I was able to keep in touch with my Florida people through email and chat and we set up little chat meetings. Everything was very text based back then.
No Skype or anything like that.
When I got to Washington, I held open house right away, and this was in Vancouver, Washington, so kind of in the Portland, Oregon area. I held an open house right away and invited all the people that I had met online first and had a few of them come. But what I actually did that worked the best is something very old school and I actually went door to door when I got there.
I mean I knew, and I was not a sales person. I had never done anything like this before, but on the other hand, that made me kind of open to just try anything because I didn’t know any better. Nobody told me this wasn’t going to work. So I was like, all I knew about direct sales was the Avon lady that used to come and visit our house every other week.
So I’m like, all right, if the Avon lady can do this I can do this, too. So I took a sample of my product and took a little clipboard and I started going around and I was inviting them to my open house. So at the time, I would say to people, “If you want to, you can book your own party, too.” Nobody really booked from the going door to door, but I did get people to come to my open house.
I’m like, I’m new in the neighborhood, I’m offering this great children’s product and I would go and actually look for houses that had evidence that there were children in the house ‘cause this was a children’s product. So you know, car seats in the car or toys in the yard, things like that, ‘cause I thought okay, my odds are better that way.
And I invited them all and I actually had 15, total strangers, nobody other than a couple that had known me online that came to this open house and that really kicked off my business. From there I was able to do a regular demo. I booked some parties off of that party and then I actually had one lady that signed up to sell with me at that time.
And then I was able to kind of start networking amongst those people ‘cause now I had instant friends in the new area, find out about some vendor events and so on. So I was actually working a real in line, in person party business at the same time I was starting to use the Internet marketing at the same time. And I was also still building teams.
What I found online as I was out there kind of figuring out how to get this going, I would find people in other communities and other cities. Our company had been really kind of small at that time. I was able to build little pockets of new business for the company in all kinds of areas. Detroit, we had a huge, huge team, Arizona.
We had all kinds of things that just started building because I found that people were looking online for business opportunities. So it just kind of took off from there. It was a really wild ride there for a while and I was very, very lucky to have gotten that advice to go online at that time before anybody was really doing that.
Jackie: Well, you may have been lucky to have gotten that advice, but you were smart to take advantage of that advice. We get advice all the time and knowing what to act on. You brought up a really good point which is sponsoring ‘cause I know sometimes your party plans sometimes, and I’ve heard this over and over again, there’s a resistance to sponsor because very often there’s that initial kind of closed minded mindset ‘cause you don’t see the big picture that you’re, why would you want to sponsor because you’re sponsoring from your own customer base or giving away your customers? So talk a little bit about that and how that all fits in. Obviously sponsoring outside of your territory is no big deal at all.
Karen: Right. Yeah. It’s so funny because, like I said, I was little naïve to this whole industry and I didn’t know any better and I wasn’t jaded in that way and I think very early on I had listened to a direct selling expert on a recording or something like this. Maybe it was a CD that I’d gotten somewhere that said in order to really make the big money, you have to build your team. And I hadn’t gotten that message from my company at all. In fact, today the company’s still not very recruiting oriented as far as the culture goes.
They’re very passionate about the product. And I could sell that product ‘cause I loved it so much, but I knew if I really wanted to make this a career that would replace my teaching income, I had to do something different. And it just so happened that while I was building that online presence, that’s the response that I was getting was how can I join your company.
I actually didn’t sell anything online for two years of having this website that took a lot of time and a lot work. But I built a lot of downline using that. So what I found, even locally, is building a team is how you make the most money. I mean it’s like you’re duplicating yourself. I had little kids. I had young four or five year old and two year old daughters.
I didn’t want to be doing two or three or four parties a week, but I wanted the income of having two or three or four parties a week. So in order to do that, if I’m creating more of me, little mini me’s around there doing the same thing, it’s as if I’m doing that much more work. So it’s a way to work smarter, not harder. I could be doing two parties a week, but if the rest of my team is working, it’s as if I’m working every single day. So somehow I got that vision and got that message just doing the math and it just made sense to me.
So that was always a focus and I really believed in that. And I also found, for me, the most rewarding part of it, yes the product changed lives. I saw little kids who never sat still that were able to focus using our product. It was a wonderful product, but I felt like I was making a bigger difference by taking moms like myself or women who had felt disempowered in some way or felt trapped or whatever and giving them this business. That just lit them up. So I mean I’m getting goose bumps even thinking about how we can change lives by offering that business opportunity and I got that immediately from my very first recruit.
So that gave me a charge and helps me keep going and the most fun I had was working with my team and supporting them, doing coaching calls and all that kind of stuff. That was my fun part of my business. I enjoyed the home parties and the online marketing as well, but that really gave me a sense of fulfillment. So right from the start I kind of got that feeling and I really, really enjoyed it so I just never looked back and didn’t even consider not building a team.
Jackie: I love that. I can hear that. I can hear the passion in your voice when you say that, like what you can do to empower other women and that kind of thing. It comes clear. It gave me goose bumps, too. So I love that. Now how long did you say it took you online to start having some success?
Karen: I did not actually make any sales, product sales, for two years. Like you know, random people coming and finding my website and purchasing. I could certainly take people that I met in person and send them to my site to purchase something, but I actually started recruiting people using my online presence either through forums or my website directly probably within the first two, three months ‘cause people, even today, those key words of business opportunity, home based business, work at home mom, you know, those kind of key words out there, people are out there looking for ways to supplement their income.
So I was getting success in the sponsoring part almost immediately, but the sales it took a long time. And it’s still one of those things where I would never tell people, you get the replicated website from your company. You can’t just build it and they will come. You have to get out there and market it and send people to your site and all of that. You’re not gonna get a lot of random stuff from the very first day that you put out a website.
Jackie: Good advice. That’s my favorite quote, too, about the Internet. You know, if you build it they will not come. It’s not like you build a dream. You do have to market it and, for some reason, some people think that the word system means that you just put the website up and people are just gonna show up.
Karen: No, no. It doesn’t happen in real life. You wouldn’t build a store and just sit there. You’d have to get the word out.
Jackie: Exactly, very true. Well very good. Gosh I got some really great questions from that. So it would be easy to say, yeah good for you. Woo, woo. You had immediate success and it just went like crazy, but I’m sure like most of us you had some challenges and obstacles to overcome. We’ve already heard about one which you breezed right through which was relocating pretty quickly. But tell us about some of the challenges and obstacles that you faced along your journey.
Karen: Yeah, so it’s funny because from the very beginning I did not have upline support. I had obviously the lady that I booked the party with, she left to go sell something else. Never heard from her again. I can’t even remember her name. I mean literally she did the party, gave us our free products and stuff and then never heard from her again. I did have my upline’s upline. It took me about three or four months for her to even connect. It was one of those situations. I didn’t even know any better. Literally, I did not know that I could call the company and find out who I’m supposed to be talking to. I didn’t know what I was doing.
So I’m just going on along. I read the manual. I did what it told me to do and then about three or four months later I get this phone call from what turns out to be my director and she said, she was just looking at her paycheck and noticed these big numbers from somebody named Karen Clark in Washington and she was down in San Diego and she decided she better give me a call. So at that time I was already in a very independent mode, but it was very isolating not having that kind of support.
She was supportive after that, obviously. I was a big money maker for her and she ended up being one of my biggest supporters and best friends, but it was very isolating not having that support. One of the things that I did from the very beginning was seek out people. Like I would go and search for the CDs and the tapes back then and the books on how to do a party plan business and I was kind of a self-starter that way and really had to find my own resources. I was able to find some business networking groups and then I’d run into a Mary Kay lady and then I’d say, “Hey, let’s go have lunch and talk about how you do your business.”
And I’d learn from people that I would meet along the way. But having that lack of support was a challenge just because I didn’t have somebody to help cut my learning curve, so there were some things I would try that didn’t work and then later I’d find out oh yeah, nobody does that. That doesn’t work. Or I’d not do certain things that probably I should have been doing earlier on.
Another challenge was just the simple fact of not knowing anybody. Now that I’m back in my own home town, I know what it would be like now if I were to start in a direct selling company. It’d be a completely different story because I have a very wide network of family, friends, old high school buddies, friends of friends and friends and friends and friends, right?
So when you’re in an area where you’re moving around a lot or you’re going someplace where you literally have nobody, and I actually, people find this hard to believe it, but I’m by nature an introvert. I’m a very, very, like I would not normally go and seek out people to talk to or to go have lunch with or to ask questions of. So that was a challenge that I had to overcome.
In fact, that’s probably one of the biggest personal growths that I’ve experienced by being in this industry was that stretching of my comfort zone because I knew if I was going to succeed I was gonna need to do that. So having that isolated feeling, not knowing anybody and having to figure out, just, okay, what am I gonna do to actually meet people? I can only knock on so many doors.
And I did get some doors shut in my face by the way. I shouldn’t say it was that easy. I did get some people that I woke up. I guess they worked at night and they were you know that kind of thing. I got a lot of noes in the beginning. But I was able to kind of figure out, you know, like I had my daughter who I had decided to home school her through at least kindergarten.
So I found a home schooling networking group. I found mommies groups. I found women success groups. I was able to go out and meet people, but that was a challenge in the beginning and it took a lot more work than it would have, I think, if I was local and had an existing network. I also eventually had marital problems with my ex. He was an alcoholic and I just, at one point, cheated on me and I said I’m not taking this anymore.
So there was a year or so there where I was in immense personal turmoil dealing with am I gonna actually leave this marriage and I have two little kids and I have this business. I don’t have a steady income. Am I gonna have to go back to teaching? What am I gonna do? My family was far away in California so I had to figure out how to work my business amidst all of this turmoil.
And if anybody out there has been through that, it’s one of those things where you just want to crawl into a hole and shut down. And I actually used it as an impetus to focus on my business even more because I knew if I wanted to be there for my kids I’d have to make this work enough to be able to support myself in California where the living expense is a lot higher than where I was in Washington ‘cause I certainly wasn’t gonna stay there.
So through all of that, I took these types of challenges as a way to grow and opportunities to learn something new and try something different and figure out how I can overcome what’s been thrown in my way. And it actually created a stronger business for me. The best months of my career were in the midst of that divorce because it gave me something constructive that I can work on and something that I felt like I can control when the rest of my life was kind of spinning out of control. And I was able to make that transition of being a single mom and supporting myself with my business, which is amazing now that I look back on it.
Jackie: Yeah, that is and that is really a powerful story. There’s no doubt about it. It jumps out at me just listening to your story how powerful and committed you were to your reason why, which of course was your children, don’t let me put words in your mouth. Correct me if I’m wrong. Being there with your children. And it’s so, I don’t know, validating for me to hear anyone who can dig down deep within themselves and make that such a huge priority that they’re willing to literally do whatever it takes and just quitting is not an option and just keep going. So what role do you think that mindset and having that powerful why, what role do you think that plays in a successful business?
Karen: Oh gosh. It’s everything. It’s everything and I have to say it’s not something that you ever like achieve the perfect mindset to where you’ve got it all figured out. It’s constantly evolving. I have this little thing. My daughters actually came up with this when I was starting a blog several years ago and it goes, imagine, believe, take action, succeed.
And that has been kind of like a motto for all of us, my family and myself in my business, that you’ve got to imagine it happening, believe that it can happen and then actually take action to be successful. Sometimes you fake that belief. You know, sometimes you really have to use the affirmations and those kind of things where maybe not deep down you don’t truly believe that this is gonna happen, but you kind of psych yourself into it. And I’ve had to do that. And I’ve gotten to the point where I just visualize everything as if it’s done.
I even write this all down. I’ll write myself a letter dated next year, I do this every year, that very vividly describes what I’m doing, how much income I’m making, who I’m spending time with, those kind of things and I got into those habits because I knew that I had to take big leaps and bounds from where I had been starting from every year.
And I think that mindset is everything and truly seeking support from others made a difference, even if it’s an outside coach. I use those a lot and then coaching yourself to kind of snap out of it when you find yourself really kind of drifting back into that negative talk and going back to your why all the time. I mean I always had my children as my primary focus and then my own independence became also another focus for myself as well.
Jackie: I like that. That’s important. That’s so important with women especially. That personal independence. And that doesn’t mean you can’t be in a great relationship ‘cause I know you are now and those kind of things. It doesn’t have anything to do with that, but I think it makes you a stronger companion, mate, wife, whatever when you’ve got that personal independence and you’re not needy and put yourself in a secondary role or something. So I like that. I love that. Well did you ever want to quit?
Karen: You know, during that dark period, during the divorce I thought about it. I actually did go back to teaching part time once I got settled back in my home town and my mom was able to babysit and things. But there was a time when I was like chasing new leads, ‘cause again, now think about this, I divorced, moved back to my home town, had never done my business here in this home town, ‘cause I had to start all over again meeting new people and all that. But I did luckily have a support network, but not as a mom with kids and this is children’s products. So I hadn’t been in that world here in this town. I had been away for 15 years, I had been married to the guy in the Navy. So it was a whole new world to me and, at that point, I’m like this is so much work. Do I really want to start over? And I did consider quitting at that time, but that was when I kind of dug down deep and decided wait a minute. I’ve already got this huge downline. They’re making money for me. I have to just do a couple of parties a week or even one party a week to kind of keep my minimums up and continue to support my team and I will be able to keep this going. And once I made that revelation, it was easier for me to kind of restart with fresh new eyes and I looked at it as a new challenge. But that was probably the biggest time where I felt like, you know, this is so much work. It would be so much easier to just get a job and get a paycheck, but I knew that was limited. There’s only so much you can make and teachers’ salaries, sure it’s a great living but there’s a ceiling to what you can do and network marketing, direct sales, there is no ceiling at all and I knew I had big dreams. So I was able to kind of pull myself up from my bootstraps and get going again. So I didn’t actually give up on it at that time.
Jackie: I love that. You know just quickly, I want to come back to this and it really does play into the why, but one of the things that I heard from what you said, I mean, it’s so interesting that you classify yourself as an introvert and yet you were willing to go door to door and you were willing to put yourself out there and again, I think that really speaks to the why and I wanted to take note of that because when you’re so committed to that why, you are willing to do whatever it takes.
Karen: Yeah and you know I’ve learned, too, that there’s a term called ambivert where you are an introvert in certain circumstances and then an extrovert in other ones. And that’s really what I think I am because my true nature I think is an introvert. Like when I’m at a party, I’m the one where I wait for people to talk to me. You know, like a social party, right? And I get kind of peopled out and I get energy being by myself. I get like the heebie-jeebies if there’s too many people around, but when I’m in a business mode, it’s like I become the extrovert because I’ve learned that that’s what it takes for me to be successful and I actually get energy from people. I love being at events. I love being in front of an audience. I love having the interaction around topics that I believe in and that I’m passionate about and that I can speak to. It’s the situations where I don’t know somebody, I’m not sure where they stand on things, those situations I tend to be a little bit more shy and again I think that’s more on the personal level, but when it comes to business, it’s the opposite.
Jackie: That’s a great term. I’ve never heard that, ambivert. I like that. Very good. Well it’s kind of funny. I’ve been called a dinosaur myself because I took my business online back in 1999 and now I’m hearing you back in 1998. You were truly a pioneer and today you’ve transitioned to teaching others how to use social media and online tools. Tell us a little bit about that. Tell us about that transition from working your direct sales business to what all that looks like.
Karen: Okay, yeah. It’s kind of interesting. Flash forward to about four or five, actually I’d say five years ago in my business. Some changes had happened at the corporate level that were giving me the feeling like it was time for me to move on. Let’s just say I felt like I could do more and reach more if I was out on my own. And at the same time, I had kind of started to outgrow the product. It’s a children’s product and even though I had remarried and had another child and all that, I wasn’t really in that mode anymore. So rather than starting with another direct selling company I was kind of just saying I was frustrated with my business. I felt like I’d hit a ceiling and kind of talked to my friends about it.
I was very involved in the Direct Selling Women’s Alliance back then and we had chapter meetings and we’d kind of sit around and talked about what’s going on in your business and things. And people were like, “Why don’t you start teaching people how you do that Internet thing?” And I’m like, “What do you mean?” And they’re like, “You know, like have us come over and teach us how to do that.” And I’m like, “Okay. You mean like charge money for that?” And they’re like, “Yeah, we would pay you to teach us how to do that.” So I actually, while I was working my business, I had for about a year, year and a half, I was holding what I called bring your own laptop parties.
I was thinking, okay, I’m gonna have these little workshops and it’s gonna be almost like party plan business in itself. So I actually had hostesses that would host these little parties. Everybody’d bring their laptops. I’d how to do Facebook or I’d teach them how to do SEO or teach them how to start a blog or something like that and they’d pay me to come in and do that and it was so much fun because we’re still in community. We’re still kind of having fun. The hostess got her stuff, her little lesson for free.
And then I’d have like little products or something that she’d get as well and I also, at the same time, had come across an author who was teaching Internet marketing in a book that had about 52 chapters. And so I decided I’m gonna start a meet up group working on these chapters. He actually said at the end of his book, the book was called “Webify Your Business.” It’s now, it’s morphed into something else. But at the end of the book it said, “If you like what you’re learning here, start a meet up group.”
And I said, that’s a good idea. I’ll do that. I already knew the topic but this kind of gave me some structure. So I had a meet up group once a week where we would work on different social media Internet marketing topics. I wasn’t charging for that, but my thinking was from there I could get clients to then do either one on one training or come to these bring your own laptop parties and things. But somewhere along the line I came across, I was kind of doing these little things on my own while I was working my business, and at the same time kind of putting feelers out there to see if I could sell my downline or my website.
And I came across the National Speaker’s Association and I went to a meeting and I was like what? You mean people get paid to go and teach this stuff? I mean I really had no idea what I was doing. Long story short, I got involved in their yearlong program that basically teaches you the business of being a professional speaker and being paid to go and speak at conventions and do key notes and things like that. And once I realized the potential of what I was already doing on a smaller scale, and I mean, looking way back into my history, I’m already a teacher, I had been doing that. I feel most comfortable in front of groups more than small chit chat like you mentioned. I was just sold and I found somebody in my downline who was willing to take over my website and all that kind of stuff.
I flew out to New York, taught her how to do everything, told the company I’m transitioning out on my own and the rest is kind of history. I just absolutely fell in love with professional speaking. So since then, I’ve been a member of NSA and going out doing key note speaking and convention speaking. At the same time I still do one on one coaching as well. I’ll like go into people’s homes here locally in their offices or sometimes people fly me out and just help them set everything up or I’ve started online classes, webinars and those kind of things. So my primary love in business is the professional speaking and then I have products and services that serve the audience members after that.
So basically I kind of in the beginning was serving all kinds of different audiences and I decided my home is in the direct selling industry. So for the last year or two I’ve been turning away business that’s in the non-direct selling world because I feel like audiences in direct sales really resonate with me and they know I speak their language and I just enjoy being in that atmosphere. It’s a way for me to still go to conventions and things and have fun and get that rah, rah fun pump it up feeling, but I’m not actually one of the sales people. I get to just see all the different companies. I’m just having so much fun doing that.
Jackie: I love that. One of the things I love about this part of your story is that I’ve always said network marketing, party plan, whatever it is you’re doing, in the words of Robert Kiyosaki, he sums it up best in that network marketing is one of the best things that you can do as a business to train yourself on good business skills, on working a system and discipline on all those kind of things. And yet at the same time, it doesn’t have to lock us into that forever. So get involved. Build a successful business. Learn those skills and then let it launch you into other passions that open up for you as you’re growing.
Karen: Absolutely. And you know it’s not for everybody. I’m now missing the part where I can get a free trip and I’m missing the free products and I’m also missing the company creating all the marketing materials free. So I have to do all of that myself. There are certainly advantages and I have been tempted a few times to get in with another company and do that again.
But I feel like I reach so many more people by working with a variety of different companies so I’m choosing to stay with it this way, but I could not be doing what I’m doing today if it had not been for getting involved in direct sales. It taught me everything about business and my ability and just my self-esteem, everything has just been amazing since being involved in direct marketing.
So I totally love that Robert Kiyosaki supports the industry. He’s right on the right track with that. It’s a great doorway into other things or it can be a career for a lifetime for a lot of people.
Jackie: Let me ask you a question about your journey and what you just were sharing about all the things that you learned and how you grew. Were you aware of it when it was happening? Or was there a point kind of where you looked back and went, oh, wow. Look at me. Look at me saying this or look at me doing this. All of a sudden like I’ve grown.
Karen: Yeah. You know it’s funny ‘cause I don’t think I was really aware of it until looking back or working with a coach. You know I’ve learned like they’ll say, “Karen, take stock here.” ‘Cause I’d be kind of like oh my gosh I haven’t done what I want to do yet. You know a lot of us feel that way, like oh but I’m not there yet. You know, I thought I’d be there by now.
That kind of feeling. Like whoa, wait a minute. Let’s take a look back, you’ve done this, this and this. And I’d be like, what? Oh I guess I have. So it really helps to have like a sounding board to kind of reflect that stuff and but no, I definitely don’t think I was aware of it at the time. I know that people would kind of remark to me like, “Wow, you seem really different now.”
Or people would be surprised when I’d stand up and speak up at different things when they hadn’t seen that part of me, especially like my family and things. So yeah it’s kind of funny how it happens. You just kind of evolve and you’re just living your life and then you look back one day and you’re like wow. I mean I look back at pictures from back before I started direct sales or just in my prior marriage and I think oh my gosh. I was just a totally different person. I call that phase one of my life. I mean it’s just like literally a lifetime ago because I’m a completely different person today than I was then.
Jackie: That’s fantastic. I love it. So if you were just getting started today with the knowledge that you have now, what would you do? What would your advice be I guess? How would you launch a new person? How would you launch yourself? You’ve got the knowledge now that you’ve accumulated over all these years. What would be your advice?
Karen: Yeah. I would say definitely seek out a variety of marketing avenues. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. I know some people are saying I’m only gonna do the online marketing or whatever. I still pick up the phone once in a while. That is a trap that I see a lot of people getting into is putting all their eggs into one thing. We should have a mix of marketing avenues.
So social media might be one of them. Blogging might be one of them. Going to vendor fairs, bridal shows, making one on one appointments and having coffee with people, doing postcard mailings, even paper mailings. Have a variety of marketing avenues. That is something that I think it’s easy to kind of get sucked into one and think well this is working. I’m just gonna go with this. But then if something happens to that or it’s not sustainable, like for example, Facebook is changing so much.
Don’t put all your eggs into Facebook. Make sure you’re doing something else as well. Another thing that I would really advise, and something that I didn’t quite catch early enough that I wish I had, is to truly, and we hear this, treat your business like a business. But I mean like you are the CEO of your business. A friend of mine just said the other day, I was talking about how working from home is such a challenge ‘cause I’ll stop and do laundry. She like, “Does the CEO do laundry? No.
You are the CEO of your business.” And that is something that, when you’re working from home, you often treat it like it is a hobby just because you’re in that home environment. Set your office hours. Do your books. Balance your cash flow. That’s something I did not look at early enough on. I just figured if I had money coming in, I was doing well.
But I didn’t actually look at my expenses versus my income and I think people need to really get a handle on that. Seek out help if you need to kind of get yourself going. The other thing, I’ve touched on this a couple of times, is to get help. Either your upline, if your upline’s not supportive or clueless or not really doing what they should be doing themselves, go above them to their upline or your director or executive director. If you absolutely don’t feel like there’s somebody who resonates with you within your company, it’s okay to go outside and get a business coach.
Invest in yourself that way. It will cut the learning curve and it will give you some insight into your business that you can’t get because you’re too close to it. So really tap into the people out there that are there to serve you. And definitely use the resources that your company has. Most of your companies have resources that you’re just either not aware of or you’re thinking oh I’ve heard that all before.
But get help. They’re invested in your success. Your upline wants you to be successful for a variety of reasons, not just because she wants to make money off of you. It’s because she wants to have you feel successful. I know that feeling of really truly wanting somebody to be successful and I would have moved heaven and earth for somebody that had come to me to ask for help.
So make sure you’re seeking that help out. Don’t let time go by without feeling supported in your business. I guess those are probably the main things I would suggest to somebody kind of in the beginning or struggling at all. Get help, treat your business like a business and spread your marketing efforts out into a variety of different ways.
Jackie: Great advice. Awesome advice. Do you have, does one particular book come to mind that you would recommend to anyone new or even in the trenches for a while would need to read?
Karen: Oh my gosh. There’s so many great things. One of the ones that was really a big influence on me is “The Success Principles” by Jack Canfield. It’s not specifically for direct sales, but it’s about business in life and kind of touches on the mindset things and the habit things. It was like my Bible for the longest time. Another one that I happen to have a chapter in, you might have heard of it.
It’s called “Direct Selling Power.” It is a book written by 20 different direct selling experts. When I was asked to participate in this book it was because I was involved with the Direct Selling Women’s Alliance, but I was literally like star struck. All these people that I had sought advice from over the years, and bought their CDs and tape, are on this book. It’s one of those resources that teaches you about all kinds of different team building, sales, coaching, doing vendor events, and then I have a chapter in there on online marketing.
That can be kind of like a little mini guide book and I even know leaders that will use that as team meeting topics. They’ll take one of the chapters each month and go over it as a training. But that’s one that’s really good specifically for direct sales that I love.
Jackie: Awesome. Great resources. Thanks for sharing that. Well, Karen, gosh, how can we learn more about you? Where can we go online to learn more about you?
Karen: Well I’ll just go ahead and have you guys go to my website.
It’s mybusinesspresence.com and then on there I’ve got all kinds of information. In fact, there’s a tab at the top. It says resources. There’s some free training calls that I’ve done that you can listen to that are great about online marketing and business success in social media. So definitely check me out there. Connect with me anywhere on social media. I usually give out daily tips on all my marketing and really enjoy connecting with people in the field out there.
Jackie: Great. And that website will be in the show notes, too. So if you’re driving or walking or at the gym listening to this, don’t worry. You can always come back to the show notes and you’ll be able to find that. Well, Karen, thanks so much for spending some time here today. Any final thoughts that you have before we close out?
Karen: You know, one thing I do like to make sure people think about when they’re looking at online marketing, and I’ve talked about the relationships and how connecting with people is so important, but it’s really that online marketing, social media marketing, is about connecting with people, not collecting people and that a little buzz phrase I like people to think of as they’re out and about. It’s not broadcasting your message or seeing how many likes you get. It’s about the connections that you’re making online just the same as it would be offline.
Jackie: Very good advice. Well thanks again so much for being here. I so appreciate it. Your story is empowering for any woman, certainly anyone going through challenges and single moms, but truly anyone can glean a lot from the advice that you shared and the journey that you’ve taken and where you are today. So thanks so much.
Karen: Oh, thank you so much for having me.
Leave a Reply