The Plague Of Fake Leaders in Network Marketing

Guest post by Stefano Orrù from Italy:

I’m here to say something that many people will resonate with, while some individuals (obviously the fake leaders) will get quite angry. However, nobody will say anything, because they prefer to hide behind the scenes.

Network Marketing has changed in many ways in the last few years. Many companies decided to embrace the Social Media WAVE, following the lead of industry leaders who have developed new strategies and systems to build their businesses.

The Direct Sales Industry was hard to convince that digital transition is crucial, but over the past 4-5 years, many companies decided to push their digital development, integrating technology, new systems, apps, emails, blogs, and more tools.

Some 100% digital companies were born in the last decade. Many of them with a great offer, while others present counterfeit propositions, and many are outright scams.

The fake ones and the scams have either closed down or constantly reopened under new names, new entities, and new faces, yet they remain the same “get-rich-quick” schemes designed to steal some money from the masses.

Direct Sales is an industry characterized by high turnover among independent contractors. Sometimes, a new distributor lasts only a week and quits so fast that that their presence goes unnoticed. Many individuals quit within their first year, while others switch companies within their first month of business.

This phenomenon is common when there is a lack of professionalism, skills, training, and culture within both the company and the community.Over the last decade, with the emergence of new types of companies and the proliferation of scams, turnover has become a significant aspect of this industry.

I don’t want to call it a “problem” because it is not a real problem, but it has certainly grown in significance.

This migration of teams and leaders has become a commodity for many companies, which actively seek out dissatisfied individuals and recruit them, treating them and their teams as valuable and tradable assets.

These processes, hidden in some sort of contract called BDA or similar, became a part of the expansion strategies for some companies, some of which are now defunct or experiencing financial difficulties. (You cannot buy people; you must provide them with vision, culture, and reasons to stay. If the reason to stay is a monthly contract, people will inevitably seek better options).

This “strategy” became part of the industry, and many leaders (or fake leaders, as I call them) started to move from one company to another, from one community to another, looking for better deals, upfront money, and the best VIP treatment. This, let me tell you really straight, is a very bad disease.

As professionals within this industry, we need to DESTROY this disease, killing the symptoms and cleaning the entire industry.Here are some identifying characteristics to find fake leaders:

• Their primary focus is on monetary gain
• They look for Business Development deals (BDA)
• They ask for spillover (in a binary comp plan, it is an entire Fake line with virtual PV or a pre-established team producing some volume that is dropped into the downline of the fake leader)
• They ask for incentives upfront
• They ask for special treatment
• They ask upfront for “leadership positions

“Basically, following the 5 Level Leadership of John Maxwell, they are looking for a really bad and poor LEVEL 1 of Leadership (the TITLE one) because they have never had the possibility to CREATE a REAL LEVEL 5 (the pinnacle) Leadership, and they are forced to bring people from one deal to another only with FAKE promises, big announcements, guarantees of success, and big percentages or claiming systems of easy or no work and high return.”

This is a plaque, one that weakens our industry far more than it should.

Having recognized this epidemic of fake leadership and having wasted valuable time in negotiations with such individuals, only to realize after the sales process that they were only looking for money upfront payment, spillover, or VIP treatment, I decided to write down some steps to eradicate this plague.

1. Show UP and boldly share your strengths – you can BUILD a business from scratch
2. Be strong enough to say “f**k” as I did more than 7 times to “BIG TEAM MIGRATION in exchange for money or contract”.
3. Teach people how to work FOR REAL and BUILD A BUSINESS for real.
4. Build SYSTEMS and TRAININGS that elevate people.
5. Focus on SKILLS (hard skills are necessary as soft skills).
6. Start creating a CULTURE of hard work.
7. Stop selling the illusion of passive income as an EASY INCOME (passive income can be built through leadership, systems, hard work, and training).

“I’m against those people who pretend to be leaders when they are not even able to take a risky decision and commit themselves to something.”

If they need special treatment, it means they have no skills to build by themselves. They are not LEADERS, they seems like a normal employee looking for a better job.

“Throughout my ten years in business, I changed company only once. While such transitions can occur, I made the move after extensive research and painstakingly rebuilding everything from scratch. I was prepared to lose everyone, but I wasn’t afraid to do so.”

Fake leaders are scared to lose their team, and when you are scared to lose your people, you’ll lose them for sure. The only way left for fake leaders is using FAKE CLAIMS to bring people into their new super business. Those FAKE claims bring bad reputation to the entire industry.

“I saw “super EXPERTS” and “LEGENDS” of this industry quitting a company, saying that they were hyper millionaires without any necessity to work in their life, and eventually jumping into the next super big deal of the history because they found the only company that respects some specific and strategic requirements for the long term. Yet, after 12-16 months, you see the same leaders going into another company, talking sh*t about the past one.”

Those are the fake leaders. There are no SELF-PROCLAIMED LEGENDS in this industry. Like all businesses, this model is grounded in tangible numbers, statistics, and documentation Show the numbers, show the stats, show the documentation.

Stop talking, start working. This is my message for the Fake Leaders out there. If someone gets angry after this, they are a fake leader.

Stefano Orrù Italy.