If you've never run a business, it can be hard to grasp how expensive professional help is. A coach, a nutritionist, a personal trainer or a business consultant charges well for their help. Don't get me wrong, it's often worth taking that help if you're at a point where you need to fine tune something in your life or in your business plan.
I started my career as a CNC operator in industry, after three years of upper secondary school aimed at the engineering industry. When I later chose to start educating myself in direct selling, there were people around me who thought I should be content where I was. Some thought I should go on studying in a traditional way if I really wanted to do something else, but I was looking at it more long term than that. Oddly enough, that kind of advice often comes from people who have studied for many years and still don't know where they're going in life.
One friend chose to spend a number of years studying further, with a student debt of hundreds of thousands of kronor, and another acquaintance invested considerably more than that in his company when he started it. My path was to spend a few hours a week starting to build a direct selling organisation alongside my job at the factory, until in time I went full time in direct selling.
Consultants at no cost
The advantage we have in direct selling, which I think few people really understand, is that we have colleagues who've done this before and who help us get going at no cost. As someone completely new to our profession, you get time with a mentor that would normally cost thousands of kronor every week, depending on how much time you want to invest in building your business.
The company has no sales managers out in the field training the organisation. Instead it lets the people already working in the field train new distributors, which is brilliant. The new ones don't have to pay anything for that guidance, because the system works like an apprenticeship, and instead the ones who help out get a matching bonus directly from the company on the turnover that's created.
Say the company you choose to work with has fast start bonuses that give you back the money for any product samples you ordered when you got started. After that you begin to earn a few hundred kronor a week, which turns into thousands, and three years later you can step over to full time because you have a customer base big enough to give you a profit every month that's larger than what you get from your job. A good mentor follows up with you and holds you accountable for what you promised yourself you'd do.
You've seen your first years as a school, you've taken advantage of the apprenticeship system and you can now, with no student debt, help more people make the same journey. A really good mentor understands that the reward never comes as money or material things, but as insights and experiences. Those who aren't allowed to be in activity and only get a result miss out on the real value. Because it's the journey that's interesting, and your mentor has a passion for being part of it.
