When you set out to grow your team in the social selling space you knew that sometimes your people quit. It comes with the territory. But it isn’t always easy to see it that way when it actually happens to you. And the way you show up as a leader when someone quits your team can be the difference between growth and stagnation in your business.
Today Kristen is setting out to normalize when people quit in the social selling space and how leaders can move through it so that they’re showing up with integrity and setting an example.
Here’s what she’s covering:
- The top two reasons people quit their team
- Why you need to ask yourself, ‘what’s the story I’m telling when someone quits the team?’
- You can’t control if someone stays or goes, but you can control how you react to their decision
- How some of our biggest setbacks in business come to us on the way to becoming a strong leader
- What you need to do before you make a change if you’re the one who wants to leave
- Why leaders are doing a disservice to the entire industry when they sell a ‘side hustle’ that’s really meant to be a job
- How to be the example of a leader who isn’t shaken when someone quits the team
Kristen’s on a mission to uplevel the image of the direct sales industry and that starts with leaders and how they manage their team when people decide to quit.
Thanks for listening! Do you have a question about network marketing? Kristen can help! Drop your question here, and she just might answer it live on the podcast: https://kristenboss.com/question
Here’s how to connect with Kristen:
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Transcript for Episode #31: When People Quit Your Team:
Kristen Boss (00:05):
Welcome to purposeful social selling with Kristen Boss. I’m your host, Kristen Boss. I’m a mindset and business coach with more than 15 years experience in both the product and service based industry. I believe that social selling is the best business model for people wanting to make an impact while they make serious income. This is the podcast for the social seller, who is tired of feeling and authentic in their business and desires to find a more purposeful and profitable way of growing their business in today’s social media landscape. In this podcast, you will learn what it takes to grow a sustainable business through impactful and social marketing. It’s time to ditch the hustle and lead from the heart. Let me show you the new way. Hello. Hello. Welcome back to another episode. Happy Monday.
Kristen Boss (00:53):
So listen, today’s going to be short, sweet and power packed. It’s going to be a hard topic, but I think it’s a necessary topic because it happens in this industry
Kristen Boss (01:02):
And it actually happens in any industry, but it can be especially painful in the network marketing and MLM or direct sales industry, because it feels personal. And I’m talking about when people choose to quit, leave your team go elsewhere and it happens. I’m not going to even sit here and, and give you this rainbow unicorn talk and be like, it’s fine. People won’t leave you in this industry. People leave. You’re going to have people that are lifers. They love this business model. They’re in it for life. And sometimes they find the right company and they choose to be lifers with that company. And I think that’s amazing. One of my clients actually has been with her company for 19 years, 19 years, and she has built a legacy in that company. And then you’re going to have what I’m going to call the MLM shoppers and droppers.
Kristen Boss (01:58):
They are the ones that are constantly bouncing between companies, looking for the fastest growing the new product, the ground floor. I see a lot of people bouncing around either a looking for the right thing or looking for the one that feels the most promising or will be real honest. And they’re looking for the way they think they’re going to make the fastest buck. And I do understand that there is the lure of there being a ground floor company. I understand that, but there’s also significant risk. And I know that because I’ve coached people in this industry who were with ground floor companies in the early stages and the company other fold like the company folded, they sold to another. And I’m not saying now if you’re with the ground floor company, I’m not saying that’s going to happen to you. I’m just saying like, there is risk with either side, right?
Kristen Boss (02:57):
There is pros and cons, no matter what way you look at it. So there are going to be the people that are always looking for the next best shiny thing. And you have to ask yourself, do you want to recruit someone that is a chronic MLM, shopper and dropper. They shop around, they join one, they drop it until they find something better. And there is something I like to call it. It’s the common denominator. And I’m going to draw it back to when I was dating. And when I was dating, I kept dating people that I knew I shouldn’t be dating. They were not quality. They weren’t men. I respected. If I was to really look back at it and I could have walked around and I did for a little while of like the guys I date, there’s just something wrong with them.
Kristen Boss (03:47):
I just had this story of the men I attracted or about them. And I wasn’t willing to look at my own story. And I finally did after I think four or five massive heartbreaks. And I had to realize maybe the common denominator here is me. Maybe I need to do work on myself. So I want to invite you to this episode for you to make yourself the common denominator as you were listening to this episode. And that sometimes means taking a good, hard look at ourselves and our tendencies and the things we need to work on and the things we need to improve. And I think if you know yourself to be, you know, maybe you have had a history of trying a lot of different companies and I get that. Sometimes you just need to find the one that fits. I understand that there’s, there’s a difference between finding the one that truly fits you.
Kristen Boss (04:44):
And the difference of always looking for greener pastures, there is a big difference in that attitude and how that person looks for companies, right? But I really want you to sit with how you evaluate yourself as a business owner. And when you want to take ownership of maybe where you’re at, the grass could actually be quite green. If you took ownership of some areas, if you stopped blaming your upline, if you stop blaming your company comp plan, if you stop blaming your downline and how your team is performing, if you stopped blaming everyone and everything. I actually talked about this in the episode the ownership episode, and I understand that this episode might be really triggering. And if you’re really uncomfortable while I’m talking to you, I want you to just sit with and ask yourself, why is this uncomfortable for me? And how is what Kristen is saying in the highest and best interest of my growth?
Kristen Boss (05:40):
Because here’s the thing. If you don’t first address what you need to work on, you are going to carry that with you in every business relationship you enter. It was no different than my dating. I had to work on myself and how I contributed to the unhappiness and the dysfunction in my prior relationships. And if I did not address that first, I would have taken that into my marriage, with my husband, who I am I’m with. Now I’m with him. And I’m in this happy marriage because I was willing to do the introspective hard work on myself to understand how I even got in my prior circumstances before that. So I just want to, if you, and there are people like maybe you have one toe in with your company and one toe out, maybe you’re entertaining the idea of leaving. I get that. I understand that I really do.
Kristen Boss (06:34):
It’s part of the industry, but I want you to check in with the story you were telling yourself about leaving. I want you to check in with the story you’re telling yourself about why you think you need to leave or why you think you need to quit. Maybe it’s not even to another company. Maybe you’re just telling yourself this industry isn’t for me. So I’m actually going to break down why people leave and why people quit so that you can understand within yourself, if you’re someone who’s entertaining the idea of quitting or leaving, and if you’re an upline, or if you’re a leader, I want to help equip you with the right tools and the right mindset. Should someone leave your team quite your team or go to another company? It happens, right? So I just want to normalize that for a second and I understand it’s painful and it’s hard, but how you react to it and how you interpret it, interpret it happening to you will determine how you experience someone’s leaving or quitting.
Kristen Boss (07:31):
It can be completely detrimental and catastrophic for you, or it can be the time when things are purged. Things are made a new and you cast new vision to your team and you reinvent yourself as a leader. Sometimes the rise to leadership comes in the biggest challenges, setbacks, and heartbreaks and heartaches. And I understand that when someone quits or leaves, there’s heartbreak and heartache, because you pour into them, right? Because you see something in them. And it’s really hard when you see someone go, when I was in the salon, you know, it’s very common when you are a commission hairstylist that the salon feeds you clients and the salon takes, you know, anywhere between 50 and 60%, sometimes more of your income. So, Hey, if you didn’t know that tip your hairstylist very generously, especially during the time of COVID because they can’t double book.
Kristen Boss (08:21):
So if you are able to tip your stylist, gender generously, that’s just going to be my little segue there. But knowing that, so I was in a salon and building up my, my client base, right, and paying a lot to my salon. However, I knew that I would eventually want to go out on my own and build my own business and handle my own taxes. And I was willing to do all of the, the take on all the responsibilities of that decision. In order for me to make more money. It was a strategic business decision. And some salons are fantastic. The owners are amazing about when a stylist leaves and goes off on their own, but that is not normally the case. And this actually does tie back into network marketing. What happens is, is historically in the normal world, you want to give your boss two weeks notice, but in the salon world, they very much view your clients as their clients.
Kristen Boss (09:17):
And when you leave the salon, they see it. As you taking revenue with you, they took the time to pour into you and help you build up your client base. So when you leave the salon, it is very alarming to the salon. Unless there’s a contract that when the stylists leave, they literally see revenue walking out the door with a stylist. So depending on the salon owners and their abundance or a scarcity mindset, how they send the stylist, offices, everything about the leader and not the stylist, everything about the owner, more so than the stylist, I get it. Sometimes stylists will leave in, in a Huff and not leave well. But if the stylist is taking the high road and making a solid business decision, it’s very often that the owners will freak out and won’t let the stylist finish out their two weeks. They often will give them less than 24 hours to clear out and they lock them out from their client lists.
Kristen Boss (10:11):
And then what they do, and this is what happened to me is they personally called every single client I had and incentivize them to stay in the salon and see somebody else. And they gouged the prices so that the person that they were hoping that my clients would want to stay at the salon to save a buck and also save the revenue. And it was done really. It was done really ugly. They, they said really awful things about how I left. It was just, it was very sad. It was a bummer. But how they treated me when I left. Yeah, it was very interesting because my clients that stayed with me by the, I had like a 97% retention rate, like 3% went back to the salon. And those were people I never saw. Like I saw maybe once a year, but everyone who had relationship with me went with me.
Kristen Boss (10:59):
And the reason why they went with me is because how they saw the salon handle my departure. They were so turned off with how they watched the owners handle my departure, that they were like, even if you were to give me free services, I have no desire to stay. And my clients told me that they’re like, it was just so gross to see that and how they handled. It was just so unkind and, and rude. And I didn’t like it. And, and had it been better if I was on vacation, I would have gladly sent my clients back to that salon, but it was so ugly. So what was interesting was that my clients, as the consumers made a decision about who they were going to be with based on who took the high road, how the owners responded to my departure. And so I say that in the same way, with network marketing and in direct sales, like your team, your downline, you see it as revenue and someone leaves or someone quits.
Kristen Boss (11:54):
It’s very easy to see it as a departure of revenue. And it’s very easy to move into the story of white knuckle and going into panic mode and preserving or preventing all the collateral damage that’s about to happen. And who you are in that moment is really defining for you as a leader. Are you saying unkind things? Are you, are you pitting people against each other to get people, to stay with you, to reduce revenue loss? Okay. And that actually says a lot about anybody that’s on the fence of if they’re going to follow their leader, or if they’re going to stay with you determines a lot by your response as the leader, if they see you calm and trusting and casting new vision and standing in your truth, that’s very appealing. That’s very appealing. I was at someone I was actually coaching last year had you know, that happened on her team.
Kristen Boss (12:53):
And she really dug in and cast new vision for everyone. And she took the high road. She didn’t spread rumors. It didn’t get ugly. She was just kind of did the bless and release. And the, her losses were so minimal on her team because of how she handled it and responded to as a leader, she did not. And I was, I was coaching her through that time. Literally it was like three weeks after she signed me. It was like a, an implosion that happened on the team. And, and we spent a lot of time, a good portion of her first six months with me, rebuilding team culture, building trust, catching, really casting vision and, and creating this inviting space and giving people a reason to want to stay. And it was so good. It was, I, I want to have her as a guest on the podcast at some point, because I think she was so exemplary in her response.
Kristen Boss (13:44):
So I will say this, this happens. So I want you to evaluate what happens within yourself as a leader. Like you cannot control their leaving, but you can absolutely control how you respond. The stories you tell, have the high road be of the highest moral character, send someone off and wish them well. So I want to give you a few reasons of why people quit or why they leave. And there are going to be people that leave for purely, you know, money reasons, or they’ve told themselves a story like it’s going to be so much easier for me over there. Or I wasn’t cut out for this. I I’m talking about bigger stories in that. So the first one I see when people want to quit, or they want to leave is they have unrealistic goals. They shot too far, too soon. They, they wanted to hit a really high rank and a really short period of time.
Kristen Boss (14:40):
And when that didn’t happen, they, and they hustled really, really hard for it. And when, it didn’t happen, they were led they felt this immense disappointment that they could not recover from. And so the idea of them pursuing their business again, because they burnt themselves out so bad pursuing the huge goal that they’re like, I don’t want to do this anymore because it was so exhausting for me. It’s actually happened in the academy. I was coaching someone. She said a lot of people in our team left after a match, after a massive, massive push. And a lot of people decided to quit after the push. And it was because there was the lack of training for preparing the team for this is a business, and you’re going to be disappointed at some time. You’re not going to hit every goal you set. Everyone needs to hear that you’re not going to hit every single goal you ever set.
Kristen Boss (15:28):
You’re going to have times where you miss goals in the time window, but you can still, you’re never giving up on the goal. You’re just readjusting your timeline. But most people are so disappointed and in such a state of despair, that they ended up quitting and not wanting to adjust the timeline at all. Then other one is that. So I’m going to say unrealistic goals. They just shot too big in a very short period of time. So it’s really important when you onboard somebody that you give them a realistic, realistic and attainable goal that can guarantee a quick win under promise over, deliver in this business. And I see the exact opposite. I see over promise and way under deliver this over promise. And this norm, we normalize that everyone in this business makes six figures when actually it’s a small percentage and it’s not because it can’t be done.
Kristen Boss (16:18):
It’s because only a small percentage of people are willing to do the, the amount of work that is required to build a six-figure income. You cannot tell people that they can build a six-figure income with built within the nooks and crannies of their day, because you are setting them up for an unrealistic expectation. No business is built on the no serious six-figure business is built within the nooks and crannies, at least not well, and with a lot of emotion and, and not without costs of emotional health and burnout ask any person who built in the nooks and crannies and hustled their way to six figures, ask how their marriage was asked, how things are with their kids. Ask if they do it again, I tell you, because I see all the time they wouldn’t, it came at such a massive cost. So you cannot say, do you want to work six figures?
Kristen Boss (17:10):
And I’ll just show you how to do this in the nooks and crannies of your day when your kids are napping. And when you’re sitting on the potty, like you just make it sound so like, oh, if you just put in a little bit of time, you can get six figures. No, no, no, no, no, no. But I see people making those really big promises. You need to make realistic promises, make a small promise and give them the win and let them see themselves as someone who hits goals, who can reach whatever they set, but start with a smaller goal that you can guarantee a win. So under promise over deliver, they can earn six figures, but you need to absolutely tell them what that’s going to take. And I know I’m an anti hustle coach, but that doesn’t mean I’m anti hard work. It’s gonna take hard work.
Kristen Boss (17:50):
It’s gonna take grit. It’s going to take resilience and say no to a lot of things. It’s probably going to involve some tears and major heartache and setbacks and disappointment and massive self-discipline. That’s what it takes. You have to tell people that early on, because then when you have people that say yes to you, there are people that said yes to disappointment, heartache, setback, the grit, the sacrifice, the hard work, but you have to sell them on that early. You don’t want to sell them six figures in the nooks and crannies, and then tell them on the backend when they’ve had massive disappointment, oh, by the way, it’s going to take a lot of work. Now they’re like, wait, what? I wasn’t expecting this. So this is unmet expectations. You sold them a side hustle, or you sold them a hobby with big promises. And then they learned it’s actually a job.
Kristen Boss (18:40):
And we have to remove the stigma of job. It’s not a bad thing, but why not call it a career? Why not call it a job and say, you can work from home and it’s going to be a job, but it’s going to be one you love. And you can set your own hours. Notice, I’m not saying five minutes here, 10 minutes there. I’m saying like, you’re going to set office hours and you’re going to set times at work for you for you. Right? So notice the language is very different. Another reason is that people leave or quit. It’s it’s just not right. It’s not the right fit for them or for you. You don’t want somebody on your team. Who’s half in half out. You don’t want that. You want somebody that is all in die hard. They’re a lifer they’re, you know, through thick and thin hell or high water, they’re in it with you, right?
Kristen Boss (19:26):
So if they’ve left, it is because they were not fully in. And that’s where you have to, as heart-wrenching as it is, you need to bless and release and take the moral high road. And I know it might be really tempting if they’ve left in a really bad way or in a non ethical way to drag their name for the mud. But that is not your friend. You’re going to take the high road. You’re going to be the example of a leader who is not shaken. You’re going to reinvent. You are going to rebuild and you’re going to be just fine. Take the high road. There’s a lot more that I want to unpack about this, but I just feel like I want to offer encouragement for a very normal thing that happens in this industry. And I want to encourage whether you are the person leaving, or you were the person staying, be the person of the highest, moral and ethical conduct with how you stay and how you leave.
Kristen Boss (20:31):
If you leave, do it the right way with integrity, with utmost integrity, right? If you stay and you were the person who was watching the leaving, let them go with the utmost integrity with highest regard. And it will feel really hard, especially if they don’t leave in that manner. But just because they get ugly, doesn’t mean you get ugly because then everybody just looks ugly. And then the industry looks ugly. Does it not guys, this isn’t high school, we have got to take the cattiness out of this industry. I might do an entirely different episode just on cattiness. And we are women. And are we not the women who, what does that saying? Like we adjust the other woman’s crown without telling her without announcing to the world that it was crooked to begin with. Like, let us be those women. Let us be the women that speak life over each other that speak nothing but encouragement.
Kristen Boss (21:30):
We hold each other in the highest esteem in the highest regard. And we always assume positive intent and others. That’s my encouragement for you this week serve well, not just your audience serve your team. Well, serve those. You have surrounded yourself with well, and we will see you next week. That wraps up today’s episode. Hey, if you love today’s show, I would love for you to take a minute and give a rating with the review. If you desire to elevate the social selling industry, that means we need more people listening to this message so that they can know it can be done at different way. And if you’re ready to join me, it’s time for you to step into the Social Selling Academy, where I give you all the tools, training, and support to help you realize your goals
Kristen Boss (22:19):
In the academy. You get weekly live coaching so that you are never lost or stuck in confusion. Whether you are a new in the business or been in the industry for a while. This is the premier coaching program for the modern network marketer go to www.thesocialsellingacademy.com to learn more.
