From my retail days, to my decade in direct sales, to coaching my daughter’s softball team, I have always loved leading, managing, and helping others develop their skills. I tried starting a couple of small businesses prior to having kids, but I really committed to and fell in love with the world of direct sales & network marketing when our oldest child was born.
I had been in various management positions with different retail companies for almost 10 years at that point, and I absolutely did not want to raise a child while working evenings, weekends, holidays, and overtime. I had my psychology degree and had long been looking for jobs in that field, but we lived in a very small town and the nearest available jobs were 1.5 hours away. My husband was in the Army at the time, and had an even worse schedule than I did. We definitely needed two incomes, as we were already barely scraping by even with both of us working full time, so my only options were to either put our newborn baby in daycare OR figure out a way to replace my income while working from home. As much as I loved running a business and LOVED the team I had at our store at the time, I couldn’t stand the thought of going back to work, away from my baby.
As I was desperately trying to figure out what to do, I had a friend invite me to a Facebook party she was hosting with a rep from a direct sales company. The products seemed right up my alley, but all I could afford was a $15 order. Honestly, it was irresponsible for me to even spend $15 because money was so tight. Once my ONE product order arrived and I loved it, I chose to join the company myself. I had all the math figured out to know what I needed to sell by when in order to immediately make my small $200 investment back. I went ALL IN on booking as many parties as I could and inviting anyone who would listen to join this company with me. Failure was not an option if we wanted to have money for groceries. Not only did I make my $200 back right away, but I replaced my entire monthly income (around $3000 back then in 2015) that FIRST MONTH! I ate up all the trainings I could get, hired a coach, kept learning and using the systems that were working for me, and I ended up consistently being the top seller in my state, and even had a small team growing. Flash forward two years, to me being pregnant again, my husband getting out of the Army, us moving a few hours away, living with family while we shopped for and purchased our first house, my husband leaving for two months to train for his new job, and the movers bringing all our belongings BROKEN for me to unpack by myself, while 8 months pregnant and chasing a two year old. A friend reached out to me one day to tell me about a new company that was launching. I had clearly lost all sanity at that point, because I decided to join, help launch, and hit the ground running. I did Facebook parties, opportunity calls, and trained our team with a baby strapped to my chest 99% of the time. A couple of friends and I created a Facebook party template, script, and training which was shared with teams across the company. Over the next couple of years, I would grow and lead a team of just under 1,000 which had some of the strongest performance indicators in the industry, resulting in me getting paid more than some leaders with teams triple the size of mine. I was fortunate enough to be trained, coached, and mentored by some of the best leaders and coaches in the world.
Not only was I succeeding, but I was able to teach others how to do the same thing I was doing. The celebrations of rank promotions and new goals being hit within our team was constant. I was invited to be a speaker at our annual conference, and did multiple virtual trainings for our 100,000 rep company as well as for large teams both within our company and from others. I had the honor of speaking on stages to rooms full of hundreds of incredible leaders who I had always admired.
As my time with that company came to an end, I thought I would give one more company a try, since they had products that were perfectly aligned with my values and passion for health. I walked away from the incredible team I spent five years building, confident that they did not need me in order to keep succeeding because the leaders in my downline were fully equipped with all the systems and strategies which I had personally used.
I started fresh with the new company, did NOT bring my team to it with me, was NOT given a team, did NOT get a bridge, and again organically replaced my monthly income in a matter of weeks even though their structure was completely different and I had to use new methods to find leads. At this point, I was also homeschooling both kids (5 & 7 years old then), so only had little windows of time throughout the day to build my new business.
A few years have passed since then, life has taken some wild turns, and I’ve felt more and more called to create something of my own which I can use to help those who are where I’ve been. The Legacy Leadership Hub is based on all the things I wish I knew and wish I had back when I first got started, scrambling to replace my retail income so I could be home with our new baby boy. Everything you’ll find in the Hub is built not only from my personal experience and what I’ve learned within the direct sales / network marketing world, but also from my psychology education as well as what I learned during my time managing retail businesses and teams.
Wherever you are on your leadership journey, my hope is that I can provide you the tools to work smarter instead of harder, help you feel fulfilled by leading, and empower you to build the life of your dreams without working your life away…so you can ultimately pass all of that along to those on your team as well.
This is my legacy as a leader. What will yours be?