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Multi Level Marketing and Enterprise Development

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I went to a fascinating workshop last night organised by a multi level marketer and hosted at Shine in Harehills.

The evening kicked off with a series of presentations from the Business Link Yorkshire Ideas Team, Job Centre Plus and HMRC.  Three competent, wide ranging presentations.  For me, just too many talking heads.  Still I suspect all three were able to put ticks in boxes and they certainly gave the evening a solid air of credibility and professionalism.

After a short break things got really interesting.

We were presented with an introduction to Multi Level Marketing and how it differs from pyramid selling (pyramid selling is illegal and only those in at the beginning can get to the top, MLM is much more meritocratic in that if YOU do the work YOU get the rewards was the message I picked up).  The person making the presentation was a Multi Level Marketer for one of the largest MLM oufits in the world, Herbalife.  A little web research on Herbalife leads to some very mixed messages.  Clearly for many people it works well; they make money and enjoy good health.  The internet suggests that this is not everyone’s experience.

http://www.mlmwatch.org/04C/Herbalife/herbalife00.html

http://herbal-nutrition.net/st

http://www.club40.net/sales%20site/shop.htm

http://herbal-nutrition.net/goodfoodguide

After the presentation one of the current herbal life distributors told us how it had transformed her life and it could transform ours too.  We could make money while we are on holiday, get repeat business, never have to talk with strangers, enjoy low start up costs etc.  It all sounded too good to be true.

This was not enterprise education – this was recruitment.  This was not impartial and independent advice.  It was MLMers doing their stuff, recruiting more MLMers and piggy backing on the credibility of Business Link, HMRC and the Job Centre.

Finally we had a very brief and very credible presentation from Robert Looker.  He provided a balanced and professional introduction to the concept of the franchise.  Robert was open about the fact that he worked for Exemplas.  He did not point out that Exemplas were one of the partners behind Business Link Yorkshire.

I think Business Support organisations have to engage with MLM schemes.  They are in our communities.  The vast majority of those ‘Need an extra income’ signs fixed to lamp posts lead to MLM organisations.  We have to find ways of making sure that they add value in our communities and do no harm. MLM works for some people not all.  Its reputation is mixed.  Typically it requires you to have a network of friends with disposable income (not massively common in super output areas).

I don’t beleive the public purse should be used to provide a platform for any single MLM organisation – although it should be used to educate about MLM.  If the workshop had been an impartial ‘All you need to know about MLM’ then I for one would have been much more relaxed.  I was pretty shocked that one MLM outfit had established this platform of credibility to promote themselves directly into the community.  This was neither independent nor impartial.

I have been involved in the development of the Business Link brand for over 15 years.  I understand independence and impartiality.  I also understand how easily these brand values are compromised – and I think they were last night.

Developing more enterprising cultures in ‘areas of deprivation’ is difficult  and fragile work.  There are always ‘get rich quick and easy’ schemes looking to part people from their cash and we need to be very careful to help people make good choices as we prompt them to flex their enterprise muscles.  We bear a burden of responsibility as we encourage people to be more enterprising.

I  doubt that our responsibilities are best discharged by wrapping advocates for one direct MLM organisation in the shrouds of publicly funded  business support.  I am sure it is the herbalife agents who will be following up interest. I am also sure that it was the public purse that picked up the tab for the refreshments.

I am distictly uncomfortable.

Am I the only one?

Enterprise Education Wrongly Understood?

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Shout out to Gareth Sear for putting me onto this from TeacherNet:

Enterprise education consists of enterprise capability supported by better financial capability and economic and business understanding. Young people need opportunities to be enterprising through applying their knowledge, skills and attributes — to ‘make their mark’

Learners are expected to take personal responsibility for their own actions through an enterprise process that involves four stages.

  • Stage 1 — tackling a problem or need: students generate ideas through discussion to reach a common understanding of what is required to resolve the problem or meet the need.
  • Stage 2 — planning the project or activity: breaking down tasks, organising resources, deploying team members and allocating responsibilities.
  • Stage 3 — implementing the plan: solving problems, monitoring progress.
  • Stage 4 — evaluating the processes: reviewing activities and final outcomes, reflecting on lessons learned and assessing the skills, attitudes, qualities and understanding acquired.

Enterprise education consists of enterprise capability? Very enlightening!

Young people need opportunities to be enterprising? Young people are enterprising. Really enterprising. They have to be.

Even the ones who are quiet, shy and withdrawn are being enterprising. This is their ‘best plan’ for how to get by in life. Our job is to help them find a better, more powerful one that will help them fulfil their potential. Or to at least recognise the possibility.

Once again this all pervading direct linking of enterprise education with ‘financial capability, economic and business understanding’. Why?

Why not link it to sociological understanding? Or to psychology?

Why not link it to the Romantic poets and their descriptions of the transformational power of imagination and vision?

Why not link it to History and the power of some individuals to shape the course of civilisation? Hitler, Gandhi, Mandela as case studies in enterprise.

Why link it to money?

Why take such a utilitarian approach to enterprise?

In pursuing a narrow definition we are likely to turn students off rather than on. And certainly we will turn off other teaching staff who will continue to see enterprise education as just an extension of business studies, another example of the corruption of education by capitalism.

Learners are expected to take personal responsibility it says. Enterprise is the ultimate lesson in taking responsibility. It is only when we are enterprising – really living our lives in tune with our convictions that we have to take responsibility. All the time we operate in more bureaucratic modes we can duck responsibility by blaming others. “Sorry guv’ just following orders”.

There is nothing very enterprising about reaching a common understanding – although it is a valuable skill. It is holding a different understanding and having the courage to live by it that characterises enterprise.  Seth Godin has just written on this.

And then the soulless linear process of develop an idea, develop a plan, implement it and then learn from it. The enterprising process is all about ups and downs; it is about emotions and resilience more than it is about ‘problem solving’ and ‘deploying team members’.

It is no wonder that we are struggling to embed enterprise in the curriculum.

The Creative Entrepreneur – WOW

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Good networking event last night hosted by WYLLN, bmedia and nti.

Explored a couple of questions:

  • In a fast-moving industry dominated by freelancers and SMEs, what does ‘Leadership & Management’ really mean?
  • Why is it important?

More prosaically put – why are so many creative/digital businesses poor at establishing basic business processes, managing other creatives and getting paid?

My opinion?

It is because we (the business support industry) insist on training digitals and creatives (and every other entrepreneur) that they have to do all this stuff if they are going to be successful in business.

And this is, frankly, nonsense.

It damages people.

It distorts them from their true purpose.

The challenge is being comfortable with who you are, what you want to become and what you want to spend your time doing.  Enterprise is a long term process of becoming, of exploring and realising potential.  And then finding people you can work with to do the rest.  It is about negotiating your self interest and building the right team.  All really successful business are team starts.

Why don’t we teach this?

  1. Find out what you love.  What you really love. Something that will keep you engaged for years while you strive for mastery and excellence.
  2. Get really good at it and keep getting better.  Specialise.
  3. Understand the importance of other things that you do not love.  Learn to respect and value them.  If you are a creative/digerati this is likely to be management, sales and marketing. (Most creatives and digitals have spent many hours over many years working alone honing their craft.  They tend to be introverted and uncomfortable with conflict.  Hence the aversion to management, sales and marketing.)
  4. Find other people who love doing the bits you hate.  Form a team.  A strong team. Form it with care. Take your time.  Unpicking the wrong team can be very expensive.
  5. Collaborate on developing a vision and an action plan for the business.
  6. Act – act often.
  7. Reflect and learn.

Simple.

DO NOT TRY TO DO IT ALL.  You will build a mediocre business.  You will find yourself falling out of love with large parts of it.

Dave Pannell from the Design Mechanics recognised that he would perhaps never have been a really great graphic artist (I think I heard you say that Dave).  And my guess is that this freed him up to run a great design business.  His job is to work on the business as it grows and to spend less time working in it.

Liz Cable from Reach Further is building an agile team of freelancers and employees covering all the main bases.  Balancing the demands of MD/entrepreneur working on the business, and passionate digerati working in the business is already a challenge.  Being  1.4 of an FTE is not sustainable.

I suspect that Liz will either have to spend more time in the MD role or find someone the team trusts to take this on, freeing her up to surf the wave of technology and its application to building better businesses.  Or she may find a way of balancing the two.  However if the growth plans she outlined are to be realised I suspect a decision one way or another will be required before too long.

You see the real job of the entrepreneur is to manage the art of becoming.  It is about the emergence of identity; building a life and a living – not the development of cash flow forecasts or the ticking of boxes on a competence framework.  And when we take this seriously we will develop much more powerful and engaging process for enterprise education and build more powerful, sustainable and great businesses.

We must remember that the Latin root of educate is ‘to lead out’.   Our job is to facilitate the emergence of identity – not to pour in the trivia of business skills.

Is It Cuckoo Time Yet?

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cuckoo

Is it weird how we hate magpies but love the first cuckoo of Spring?  Perhaps it is because the cuckoo perpetrates evil out of sight, all the time making re-assuring calls, while the magpies are just so brazen in their squawking murder and destruction.

In my experience many enterprise capital investment projects are a lot like cuckoos.  Beautiful eggs are laid in the carefully constructed nests of loving parents.  Shiny new enterprise centres owned and managed by the community for the community.

But it soon becomes apparent that these fledglings have tremendous appetites for cash.  That two person reception desk costs a lot to staff.  Then we have hosts, caretakers and security to pay for.  There are rates, insurances, fuel bills and marketing costs.

There are the costs of low occupancy and repairs.

Suddenly the loving parents are run ragged just trying to get enough cash to keep the beast alive.  “Forget the social purpose – we just have to pay the bills.”

The revenue streams that were written into the business plan from leases on community cafes and gyms, from rent paying tenants and the conference trade just don’t materialise as forecast.

Equipment gets stolen or broken and there is just not the cash to replace it.  The shine starts to come off.

Money that could be spent elsewhere gets gobbled up by a project that is “too politically important, too symbolic”, to be allowed to fail.  Other projects die so that the ‘special one’ can survive for another year.

And what of the original cuckoo – the funders that helped lay the egg?  “Well you must understand – there is only so much we can do. The ‘business plan’ assured us it would be viable by now.  No we can’t offer any more funding.  Perhaps it can be sold?”

Now ALL fledglings go through periods when they cause their parents grief.

  • Will this ugly duckling ever become a beautiful swan?
  • Will it survive its maiden flight?
  • Will it ever learn how to sustain itself without becoming  a capricious scavenger like the magpie?

The sad truth is that some of them never do.

Because from the very beginning they were cuckoos.

The cuckoo she’s a pretty bird
She sings as she flies
She brings us glad tidings
And tells us no lies

She sucks all sweet flowers
To make her voice clear
She never sings cuckoo
Till summer is near

She flies the hills over
She flies the world about
She flies back to the mountain
She mourns for her love

The cuckoo she’s a pretty bird
She sings as she flies
She brings us glad tidings
And tells us no lies