The MLM.com Podcast

Is Your China Strategy Too Reckless? Too Timid? Nonexistent?

There’s good money in selling to Chinese consumers but the People’s Republic of China restricted direct sales to single-level sales commissions.

The Chinese economy is growing. Consumerism is on the rise. Word of mouth marketing is king in China. Are you going after this market?

Maybe you’re staying out of China entirely. Maybe you’re operating in China with a single-level compensation plan. Maybe you’ve been quietly selling your products into China with cross-border e-commerce—without making any changes to your compensation plan—and you’re looking the other way while distributors do whatever they do onshore. Is there a better way?

We reached out to MLM.com contributor Mark Schaub to find out. Mark is a lawyer who lives and works in Shanghai. On this episode of the MLM.com Podcast, Mark discusses the strategies he’s used to successfully navigate PRC law for MLM clients.

Listen in to learn:

• Does the single-level route—used by Herbalife China and Amway China—make sense for smaller brands?

• How safe is the popular offshore e-commerce strategy?

• What were the real objectives behind Chinese MLM law?

• Is there a way to navigate MLM Law and pay Chinese sales leaders for their work while operating onshore?

Wouldn’t it be amazing to put an end to world hunger? Of course, it would. No one wants children to go hungry. Why do so few people try to make a change? We don’t do anything because deep down we know one person can’t do enough. Global problems can’t be solved at the level of the individual. Big change comes from the actions and policies of big organizations.

Brian Paul, President of the Usana True Health Foundation, joins us on this episode of the MLM.com podcast to talk corporate social responsibility (CSR).

The Usana True Health Foundation works to feed children around the world. They’ve distributed more than 25 million meals. And they work to create sustainable programs—programs with the objective of getting people out of dependency.

Listen in to learn more about Usana’s philanthropic efforts and philosophy.

Nancy and Kenny just wrapped up their series of podcasts about employee and distributor engagement. Those episodes detail evidence-based approaches you can use to make your company a great place to work. But we wanted to give you more than just the theories and strategies. We wanted to answer the question:

What does it look like in practice?

In this episode, Nancy sat down with Matt Layton—LegalShield’s Vice President of Network Strategy—to find out how they’ve made DSN’s list of great employers (not once, but twice). Matt talks us through the attitudes, values, history, and traditions that make LegalShield a wonderful place to work.

Episode 35 - How Work Friends Help You Grow Adapt And Get Things Done by Hosted by Kenny Rawlins

Can you name the two types of leaders? Sorry for pulling a “there are only two types of people” on you. But, when it comes to leadership, there are two big umbrella categories that almost all good leaders fall under.

Each type serves a different purpose. No doubt, you’ve met them both:

There’s the flashy one up on the stage and the no-nonsense one behind the curtain. But who are they, and what real value do they bring to the table?

Nancy Tobler PhD joins Kenny once again to discuss the historical theories that have shaped leadership strategies over time and the current theories that help our organizations stay organized.

Listen in to learn:

• How can you, as a leader, do better and get more out of your followers?

• What kind of nice guys actually finish first?

• How do some jerks get love and loyalty out of their followers?

• What strategies are effective (and ineffective) when one of your followers is a jerk?

• Which type of leader is more critical to organization survival?

The answers might surprise you.

Imagine living without electricity, all the way down at the end of the last road out into the country.

In this imagined life, you occupy a part of the world that got cell phones before landlines, lightbulbs, and stoves. At night, you send text messages by candle light while your dinner cooks over an open flame. And it’s perfectly normal for you to walk for hours to reach the nearest person who can charge your cell phone—for a fee.

You were raised by farmers. You are, yourself, a farmer. You expect your children will be farmers too. They’re going to school but, after sundown, they can’t study because it’s too dark to make out the words in their books.

And then one day, your cousin shows up with a basket full of rugged little solar-powered gadgets—lamps, cellphone chargers, fans, radios. Little gadgets you can afford to buy. Little gadgets that can save your time and your money and the futures of your children.

On this episode of The MLM.com Podcast, Solar Sister Founder, Katherine Lucey tells us about her experience using direct sales to spread clean energy to rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa. In her words, “no country comes into the modern era if they don’t have access to electricity,” and “every family needs to have electricity in order to develop and to be able to live lives of prosperity and productivity.”

Listen in for the full story.

Do you suck at giving feedback? Are you hurting people’s feelings? Or, are you so afraid to hurt feelings that you never tell people what they’re doing wrong?

Many of us make mistakes when we give feedback. The right way to do it is not obvious, yet even managers rarely get evidence-based training on how to give effective feedback. In other words, most of us are on our own to figure this out.

That’s a huge problem—you can’t grow without feedback!

If the people below you can’t grow they’ll stagnate, their job satisfaction will dwindle, and they’ll start looking for other opportunities.

On this episode of The MLM.com Podcast (part two of our miniseries on employee and distributor engagement) Kenny Rawlins and Nancy Tobler, our resident PhD, tease apart the science-backed strategies that allow savvy managers, employers, uplines (and even software designers) to help their people grow. Listen in to learn how you can start driving greatness in your team.

Why do company values matter? Why do so many companies write mission statements? What is company culture and why is it important? On this episode, Kenny Rawlins sits down with Nancy Tobler, PhD and MLM.com Editor-in-chief, to answer these questions and continue our conversation about what makes a company a great place to work.

Corporate culture is more important than you think! Direct sales companies spend a lot of time thinking about how their culture impacts the distributors in their sales force. But the values you espouse and promote are just as important for the corporate employees who keep the lights on back at headquarters.

Listen in to hear Nancy’s insights into how a company’s expressed values shape the behavior of the individuals it employs and vice versa—the ways that employee behaviors shape company values!

What makes a company a great place to work? Every year, Direct Selling News runs a feature that asks this exact question to identify which direct sales companies score high among their employees. On this episode of the MLM.com Podcast, we invited Todd Eliason—DSN’s Editor-in-chief—to give us the inside scoop on their selection process. Along the way he let us know why having loyal employees matters to a company’s bottom line. Listen in to hear Todd’s insights into some of the ways that direct sales companies excel at keeping their employees happy and some of the areas we need to improve.

Most companies today have philanthropic initiatives but they’re often superficial or even counterproductive. How can a company design a charity program that does real good in the world? We sat down with Russ Fletcher, CEO of Xyngular, to hear about how he and Xyngular have risen to the challenge.

Russ tells us about how Xyngular has fostered a culture of giving, about the ways their distributors give to each other, and about the ways their distributors encourage each other to do good. He also gives us an inside perspective on their relief work in Puerto Rico during 2017’s hurricane season—how they matched distributor donations and then made sure, in-person, that those donations went to where they were most needed.

We’re so grateful for Russ’s contribution to our show and we hope you’ll listen in!