Back when I sold Rainbow Vaccums

Last night a good friend asked me about when I used to sell Rainbow Vaccums door to door in highschool. Now I've been known to forget things, but you'd think I would remember that.

If my memory serves. I worked as a Nurses Aide at the Kingsway Lodge Nursing Home, which I followed with stellar career at Joggers, where I spent far more money than I ever made. 

Upon doing some digging into what lead her to believe in my successful vacuum sales days, she told me a mutual friend of ours had brought it up at a New Years party. 

It made me giggle. When you chose network marketing as your profession and you seem relatively sane. Society makes that compute in their heads in some strange ways. The fact that I am so good at sales that I could sell vacuums door to door in high school is just the newest.

Let me confess. I am terrible at sales. TERRIBLE.  When the school fundraisers come home, I just cut a check. I was kicked off my family's charity event raffle committee because I hate asking store owners for donations. In my 6th year of business, I have yet to cold call a single person and it's not in my plans to start.

Last year my team did over a million dollars in product sales. 

How does that happen? By doing exactly what thousands of women do naturally every day, recommending something that works. When I see a boy at the hockey arena with terrible acne, do I run over to him and tell him about our products. Hell no. But if that same boy's Mom shares with me that she feels awful watching her son struggle with it, I am going to tell her about the success we are having with our new acne line and offer to let him try it.

We do it every day. Several dozen people have told me to take my family to see the new Star Wars movie.  Are Disney and Lucasfilms cutting a check to these people? No way. According to iSpot.tv, the studio paid $19.3 million to air the "Force Awakens" trailer on 44 broadcast and cable networks, most of which will be seen on the big four networks and ESPN (1/4 of the budget goes to NFL games alone). Network marketing companies choose to function under a different business model. With little to no advertising budget the companies use what would be earmarked for advertising to compensate representatives for being consumer advocates. 

Which thank goodness I can do because contrary to popular belief, I do not have sales skills required to sell wrapping paper through the school, let alone vacuum cleaners door to door.