Spoiler alert: It wasn't just about business.
I've been sitting on this one for a while.
Every so often I'll see something on social media about direct sales, network marketing, MLMs, whatever you want to call them, and sometimes I'll find myself going down a little mental rabbit hole.
The criticism. The success stories. The former leaders suddenly preaching against an industry they spent years defending. The current leaders insisting that their company is different. The people jumping from one opportunity to another like it’s the new DQ Blizzard flavour of the month, declaring each new one the greatest thing that's ever happened to them.
And Oh, the drama.
I spent years involved in direct sales. I built a successful team, earned recognition, qualified for incentive trips, made some incredible friendships, and learned skills that I still use today.
I also witnessed some of the most petty, manipulative, downright bizarre behaviour I've ever encountered from grown adults.
After having plenty of time to reflect on the whole experience, I've come to two conclusions:
The people are what make direct sales incredible.
The people are what make it absolutely fucking exhausting.
I also started to recognize how much the industry itself encourages some of the behaviour I despise.
So, let's talk about it.
We Didn't Build Our Team the Traditional Way
One thing I'll always be incredibly proud of is how we built #glowgetternation.
We didn't follow the typical direct sales playbook. You know the one.
Make a list of 100 people you know.
Message your old classmates.
Reconnect with someone you haven't spoken to since 2007 just to casually ask whether they're interested in an amazing business opportunity.
Hey girl! It's been forever!
Absolutely not.
That approach makes my skin crawl.
Instead, we built a blog.
We created content, built an email list, and worked on search engine optimization before the company had even officially launched. And it worked. Our SEO was so effective that people were finding US.
They were searching for information, discovering our content, signing up for our emails, and reaching out because they genuinely wanted to be part of what we were building.
We weren't chasing people. They were coming to us.
It was unconventional for the industry, but it made complete sense to me. I like creating things. I like marketing. I liked understanding how people found information online. And apparently, I am pretty damn good at it.
We built an amazing community of people who were excited, engaged, and genuinely interested in what we were building.
That community became #glowgetternation and I still consider it one of our proudest accomplishments, not necessarily because of the ranks or recognition, but because we built something from nothing using creativity, strategy, and a whole lot of work. It wasn't a copy-and-paste recruiting script. It was ours.
Perhaps that's why some of what happened afterward bothered me so much.
Apparently, Success Makes Some People Absolutely Feral
Here's something nobody really prepares you for. When you start doing well in direct sales, not everyone is happy for you.
Some people are genuinely supportive. They celebrate your accomplishments, share ideas, help each other grow, and understand that someone else's success doesn't diminish their own.
And then there are the others. The ones who treat every new customer, team member, Facebook group, and spreadsheet like it's a matter of national security. The ones who preach community over competition while quietly trying to sabotage anyone doing something different. The ones whose entire personality becomes their rank within a compensation plan.
I encountered enough of these people to last several lifetimes and the stories are honestly ridiculous.
The Fake Corporate Compliance Incident
Before the company had even launched, we had already built a Facebook community.
We were excited. People were joining. There was momentum.
Apparently, that was a problem for someone.
Another team created a fake social media profile pretending to represent corporate compliance and contacted us, telling us that we needed to shut our group down.
Read that again.
Grown adults allegedly impersonating corporate compliance to intimidate another team before the company had even launched.
Imagine having that much free time and choosing to spend it manufacturing authority over a Facebook group. It was so absurd that I almost have to admire the commitment to being ridiculous. Almost. We invited this “person” to a video call to discuss, and guess what? Radio silence. There was no one named “Alex” in compliance - ever.
What bothered me wasn't simply that someone wanted to interfere with what we were building, it was the lengths they were willing to go to do it. Rather than focusing on their own business, someone decided their energy would be better spent trying to interfere with ours, and that mentality would become a recurring theme.
The Activity Planner That Was Apparently Too Good to Leave Alone
We also created an activity-tracking planner to help our team stay organized and consistent.
It was something we'd put time and effort into developing and designing. Something useful. Something that belonged to the community we'd built. Then someone from another team offered to translate it into French for us.
How thoughtful, right?
Except the situation left us believing that the generous offer was really an attempt to get their hands on our work. Because apparently creating your own resources is considerably harder than trying to acquire someone else's.
And look, I'm all for collaboration. I've always believed in sharing knowledge and helping people succeed, but there's a difference between collaboration and taking advantage of someone else's generosity. I have a sneaking suspicion it was the same group of people who tried to have our community facebook group shut down.
It's especially frustrating when you're operating in an environment where everyone is constantly talking about supporting and empowering other women.
Which brings me to one of my biggest issues with the entire culture.
The Sisterhood Was Giving Mean Girls
If you've ever been involved in direct sales, you probably know exactly what I'm talking about: The endless speeches about women supporting women.
The empowerment quotes.
The inspirational graphics.
The declarations that there's room for everyone at the top.
And then, behind the scenes? Absolute chaos.
I'm talking cliques, popularity contests, manipulation, passive-aggressive comments, and people strategically befriending others based on what they could gain from the relationship.
It was like high school, except everyone had a downline and access to Canva. The hypocrisy was exhausting.
Some of the loudest advocates for women's empowerment were also the quickest to tear another woman down if it benefited them. Just the other day I saw a post: “Maybe I’ll join x company again since that person left. The trash takes itself out.” Disgusting behaviour from someone who has almost 100k followers.
To be clear, I met some truly wonderful women through direct sales.
Women I am still friends with who are kind, intelligent, creative, funny, generous, and genuinely supportive, even OUTSIDE of direct sales. Crazy, I know.
But I also met women who could turn a minor disagreement into an international incident.
Which brings me to one of my personal favourites.
Apparently, Facebook Moderator Status Determines Your Leadership Ability
At one point, someone told me I would never be a good leader.
Why?
Because I wouldn't make her a moderator in our Facebook group.
That was it. That was the leadership assessment. Not my ability to build a community, not the work I'd put into helping people, not the systems we'd created or the success we'd achieved.
My refusal to hand over Facebook moderator privileges apparently disqualified me from being an effective leader.
Ma'am.
It's a Facebook group.
Not a seat on the United Nations Security Council.
I can laugh about it now, but it's a perfect example of how bizarrely entitled some people become.
Leadership wasn't always about actually leading.
Sometimes, people just wanted a title, a little authority, and the satisfaction of feeling more important than somebody else, and if you didn't give them what they wanted, suddenly, you were the problem.
The Trip I Earned but Never Took
Our team became a founding team within 24 hours of launch and I earned an international trip. Something I wanted to take but owed a lot of effort and work to our team as well. So I wasn’t sure I wanted to take it in the first place, so I deferred the trip to the next year to decide.
I decided that I would take the trip the following year. At the time, it should have been one of those exciting moments where you get to enjoy the rewards of everything you've worked toward. I signed up for flights, I paid for my visa, I got everything together like I was going. Instead, it became another reminder of just how uncomfortable the interpersonal politics of direct sales could be.
A top leader had recruited someone from my team in circumstances that, from my understanding, violated the company's compliance rules. Rather than taking responsibility for what happened, the situation was turned around to make me look like the villain. Which is a fascinating strategy when the people involved know exactly what happened.
Then, to make things even better, that same leader was assigned as my hotel roommate for the trip.
Rather than spend an international vacation sharing a room with someone involved in a situation that had already caused me so much frustration, I chose not to go. They went so far as to request their own room in our trip group chat because “She didn’t know who I was.” LOL okay.
Do I regret that? I actually don’t. I went to Vegas by myself instead and it was fucking fantastic and refreshing because I also remember how I felt at the time.
I was tired.
Tired of the politics, tired of having to defend myself, and tired of dealing with people who seemed perfectly comfortable behaving terribly as long as they could justify it to themselves.
I think that's something worth talking about.
Sometimes the biggest cost of being part of an organization isn't financial. It's how much of your peace you're willing to sacrifice to stay involved.
The Cult Mentality Is Real
One of the things that has always bothered me most about direct sales was the culture surrounding it. Not the friendships, not the excitement of launching something new, not even the motivational stuff, necessarily.
I'm talking about the expectation that you should be endlessly positive, endlessly grateful, endlessly available, and endlessly loyal.
Question something? You're being negative.
Express frustration? You need to work on your mindset.
Don't agree with a decision? Maybe you're not committed enough.
Want to establish boundaries? Well, successful people make sacrifices.
There's an entire language built around making people feel as though every legitimate concern is actually a personal failure. While I absolutely believe mindset matters in business, I also believe in being able to recognize when something is bullshit.
Not every criticism is negativity and not every boundary is a lack of commitment.
And most of all, not every person who walks away from an opportunity is someone who simply didn't work hard enough.
Sometimes people leave because they've finally started calculating what the opportunity is actually costing them.
Which leads me to something I don't think gets discussed nearly enough.
Let's Talk About the Money. And the Work. And the Work Behind the Work.
At one point, we were a top 20 team. Top TWENTY. That's something I'm proud of, because I know how much work went into getting there.
But here's the part that might surprise people:
My biggest cheque was around $2,500.
Now, I'm not going to pretend that receiving $2,500 isn't exciting, It absolutely is.
When you consider the amount of time, energy, and emotional labour involved in building and maintaining a successful direct sales organization, it starts to look a little different.
Because you're not just selling products:
You're creating content.
You're answering questions.
You're training.
You're troubleshooting problems.
You're organizing groups.
You're developing resources.
You're motivating people who have lost interest.
You're responding to messages at ridiculous hours.
You're celebrating everyone's wins, managing interpersonal conflicts, and constantly figuring out how to keep people engaged.
You're basically running a marketing department, customer service department, training department, and emotional support hotline.
Because your income depends, at least in part, on the activity and success of other people, there's always something else you could be doing.
Another post.
Another training.
Another follow-up.
Another incentive.
Another person who needs help.
The work never really ends unless you deliberately decide to stop.
When you step back and consider the return on that time, you start asking yourself some uncomfortable questions.
How many hours did I actually work?
What was I making per hour?
What could I have earned putting that same energy into something I owned outright?
If this is what success looks like near the top, what does it look like for everyone else?
I'm not suggesting everyone has the same experience, and I know there are people who earn substantially more.I think there's something important about discussing the financial reality behind the recognition.
A title doesn't pay your bills and a rank doesn't necessarily reflect profitability. A stage full of people clapping for your accomplishments doesn't tell anyone how many hours you worked to get there.
In hindsight, I sometimes wonder what I could have built if I'd redirected all that energy into my own business instead. Something where I owned the brand, the products, the systems, and the long-term potential, because I clearly have the drive and I clearly have the skills.
And I was already doing an awful lot of the work.
I fully believe if we put the same amount of energy into our own business instead, it would be wildly more successful.
Then the Products Changed, and So Did My Passion
Here's another thing people don't always understand about leaving direct sales:
Sometimes it's not one dramatic incident, but a gradual loss of enthusiasm.
For me, the products were a huge part of why I'd gotten involved in the first place.
I genuinely loved them. I enjoyed using them, talking about them, creating content around them, and sharing them with other people.
That's what made the marketing feel natural. I wasn't trying to manufacture excitement about something I didn't care about. I actually cared. But over time, the company began discontinuing completely, reformulating and relaunching products, including many of my favourites.
Sowly, I lost interest.
When the products you fell in love with are no longer the products being sold, it's difficult to maintain that same enthusiasm. Especially when you're expected to promote every change like it's the most revolutionary thing that's ever happened. Integrity is incredibly important to me and I couldn’t in my right mind tell someone the new CC Cream was REVOLUTIONARY, when the original was better, less expensive, and came in bigger packaging.
At some point, I just couldn't summon the excitement anymore and I couldn’t fake it.
That's something I have always believed about marketing:
People can tell when you're passionate about something, but they can also tell when you're desperately trying to convince yourself that you are.
I wasn't interested in becoming the latter.
The Company Hopping and Reinvention of the Same Old Personalities
One of the things I find particularly entertaining now that I'm outside the industry is watching the revolving door of direct sales leadership.
A company launches.
It's the BEST opportunity anyone has ever seen.
The compensation plan is revolutionary.
The products are life-changing.
The leadership is unlike anything they've ever experienced.
Everyone is going to retire early.
Everyone is getting in on the ground floor.
Everyone is building generational wealth.
Until they're not.
Then, suddenly, there's a new company.
And wouldn't you know it? THIS one is the best opportunity anyone has ever seen.
The compensation plan is revolutionary.
The products are life-changing.
The leadership is unlike anything they've ever experienced.
Sound familiar?
Now, I understand that businesses change. Companies close. Compensation plans evolve. People have every right to move on to something that better suits their goals.
That's not the issue. It's the way some people rewrite history with every move. The company they defended with their entire chest six months ago is suddenly terrible. The leaders they publicly praised are now the villains. Their former teammates become the competition. People who once posted inspirational quotes about loyalty and integrity are now publicly tearing each other apart.
Meanwhile, their newest opportunity is apparently going to change absolutely everything.
Again.
I sometimes wonder how many times a person can announce that they've finally found their forever company before the word forever loses all meaning. Why anyone would sign up with these “leaders” without any integrity is beyond my understanding.
Watching grown adults engage in public feuds over these things? It's embarrassing.
There are legitimate criticisms to be made about direct sales companies and how they operate.
There are serious conversations worth having about compensation, recruiting practices, transparency, and sustainability.
But watching people throw personal insults at each other because someone changed companies? Please.
At some point, it stops being about business and starts looking like a group of adults who never emotionally graduated from high school.
But Here's the Part I Refuse to Forget
For all the ridiculousness I experienced, I don't want this to sound like the entire experience was terrible, because it wasn't.
I met people I genuinely love.
I developed friendships that existed beyond product launches, compensation plans, ranks, and sales targets.
I worked alongside women who were supportive, creative, hard-working, and genuinely excited to see other people succeed.
There were late-night conversations, exciting milestones, shared ideas, celebrations, and moments when it really did feel like we were building something special.
Because we did.
And none of the ugly experiences erase that.
I also learned an enormous amount.
I learned so much more about content marketing, search engine optimization, email lists, community building, leadership, customer relationships, and how to create something people actually wanted to be part of.
I learned that I'm capable of building something successful without following someone else's prescribed formula.
I learned that being unconventional isn't necessarily a disadvantage.
Most importantly, I learned that I actually enjoy the work of building a brand.
The creative side.
The strategy.
The problem-solving.
The satisfaction of turning an idea into something real.
Those skills didn't disappear when I stopped being involved in direct sales.They're still mine.
That's one thing no company, compensation plan, or petty Facebook group feud can take away.
So Is Direct Sales the Problem, or Is It the People?
For years, I probably would have said it was the people, and to some extent, I still believe that. People can make an experience wonderful, They can also make it completely unbearable. You can create an environment of encouragement, collaboration, and genuine support, or you can create one driven by jealousy, competition, manipulation, and ego.
I've experienced both.
But I also think it's a little too convenient to blame everything on a few bad personalities, because the structure of the industry deserves scrutiny too.
When someone's income, social standing, recognition, and perceived success are closely tied to recruiting, team performance, and rank advancement, it's not exactly surprising that things can become competitive.
When a business opportunity encourages people to blur the lines between friendship and financial interest, relationships can become complicated.
When loyalty is treated as a virtue and criticism is dismissed as negativity, people become less comfortable speaking honestly.
When the promise of future success is constantly dangled in front of people, it's easy to convince yourself that working harder, sacrificing more, and tolerating another round of nonsense will eventually be worth it.
That doesn't excuse unethical behaviour. People are still responsible for how they treat others, but I think it's worth recognizing that some environments are particularly good at rewarding the worst instincts in people, and some people are particularly good at taking advantage of that.
The Biggest Thing I Learned Was That Success and Happiness Aren't the Same Thing
I used to think reaching certain milestones would make all the effort feel worthwhile.
The next rank.
The next incentive.
The next achievement.
The next big launch.
There's always something to chase.
When you're surrounded by people constantly celebrating advancement, it's easy to feel like you should be doing more, even when you're already doing plenty.
Especially when you're already doing plenty.
But being successful at something doesn't automatically mean it's still good for you.
You can be good at something and no longer enjoy it.
You can work hard to build something and eventually decide it isn't worth maintaining.
You can be proud of your accomplishments without wanting to repeat the experience.
You can walk away without considering yourself a failure.
I didn't stop building direct sales business because I was incapable of succeeding.
I'd already proven that I could.
I left with a much clearer understanding of what I wanted to spend my time doing, the kind of people I wanted around me, and the kind of nonsense I was no longer willing to entertain.
There's something incredibly freeing about that.
Would I Do It Again?
That's a complicated question.
Would I go back and build #glowgetternation again? Absolutely.
Would I want to experience the excitement of watching something we'd created grow organically through our blog and email list? Without question.
Would I want to meet those amazing women again? A thousand times, yes.
Would I willingly subject myself to the manipulation, pettiness, power struggles, and endless emotional labour again? Not a fucking chance.
And if I could give myself one piece of advice, it would be this:
Take the skills. Keep the friendships. Celebrate the accomplishments. But never become so invested in an opportunity that you start sacrificing your peace to protect it.
No rank, recognition, or potential commission cheque is worth surrounding yourself with people who make you miserable.
Let the people who make everything a competition compete.
Let the people who feel threatened by other people’s success be threatened.
The ones who need a title, a downline, or a Facebook moderator badge to feel important? Well, bless their hearts. I've got better things to do.
One Last Thought
I know there are people who will read this and assume I'm bitter. That's fine.
There's a tendency in direct sales circles to dismiss former participants as bitter, jealous, negative, or unsuccessful whenever they share experiences that don't fit the inspirational narrative.
Criticism and bitterness aren't the same thing.
I can appreciate the opportunities I had while acknowledging the parts of the experience that were deeply frustrating, I can be grateful for the friendships while being honest about the people who behaved terribly and I can be proud of what I accomplished without pretending that every moment was empowering.
And if there's one thing I've learned from the entire experience, it's that a person's rank, income, audience, or ability to deliver a motivational speech tells you absolutely nothing about their character.
Watch how they treat people when there's nothing to gain.
Watch how they react when someone else succeeds.
Watch how they handle being told no.
And most importantly, watch what happens when they no longer have a financial reason to be nice to you.
That will tell you a hell of a lot more than any leadership title ever could.
As for me, I'm grateful for the experience. I'm proud of what we built. I'm happy to have moved on.
And I'm very, very happy that I no longer have to explain to grown adults why they can't be moderators in my Facebook group.