The Death of an Income

Eileen Silva © 2006
email: ensilva@aol.com
web: http://www.easilymakingmoney.com/

I heard from an old friend in the business that he had received a termination notice from one of the companies he had built (from which he received a monthly check of over $10,000).

How legitimate is it to terminate a distributor who is no longer exclusively promoting a company? Before I give you my opinion, I’d like you to look at where your money comes from or where it could come from . . . to illustrate a point.

If you had been clever enough to “take a ride on the Reading” with stocks of Microsoft, America On-Line, Amazon.com, then you could be in the chips right now. You might have invested a little money at those stocks’ opening prices and let your modest investment ride to enormous wealth by now. Should that modest investment of a few hundred or a few thousand dollars entitle you to millions if all goes well?

I don’t know anyone who says, “Well, if you don’t go on to get others to invest money, if you don’t participate some way in the growth of the company, then the company should be able to cancel your stock issue and absorb the stock back. You just wouldn’t deserve the money.”

Why, then, do some corporate owners of multimillion dollar companies cancel distributorships of the very people to whom they owe their existence, success, and their subsequent bounty?

Here are the top eight justifications that our industry uses to explain the termination of a distributor:
1) He/she isn’t working the deal.
2) He/she sponsored “lucky.”
3) Others don’t like him/her.
4) He/she aren’t good role models.
5) He/she is in to some other company(s).
6) He/she cross-sponsored.
7) He/she put their people into other deals.
8) He/she violated company rules.

Don’t misunderstand my position. I have steadfastly worked one company for 17 years. While I normally don’t condone popping up in multiple companies as a way to be successful in this industry, we are in America --- land of the free --- and if people have invested time, energy, or other resources in a company, so long as their participation in the compensation plan generates a check, THEY DESERVE TO GET IT.

That’s what residual income is all about --- we work now, so later we don’t have to. In fact, we say in training, “In the beginning ten units of effort yields one unit of results. Later, when we reach momentum, one unit of effort yields ten units of result.”

While sponsorship struggles are a real issue that we frequently find ourselves dealing with, this is one case where, if you look closely, you’ll usually see some greed and envy/positioning factors hidden not too far below the surface.

The only legitimate reasons for terminating a distributor are in the realm of cross sponsoring, if it is deliberate, and/or breaking company rules, if the alleged infraction is serious and those rules are the rules that the distributor read when he joined the company. Unbelievably, I have heard of a few late night board meetings where corporate revised company policy expressly to condemn a person who was already the victim of a witchhunt.

In many cases, corporate enlists other distributors to help oust the distributor in question, and often corporate first identifies the distributor as a problem, and THEN has people search for a legitimate excuse for termination. I have even seen cases where companies systematically seek to eliminate top distributors, biting the very hand that has fed them.

I want to go on record loudly and clearly about this: I believe in both virtuous conduct and in freedom. I believe in honoring anyone’s right to engage in various marketing activities and be treated fairly.

It’s time we raise the bar on networking ethics, promote the legitimacy of residual income, defend the independent distributor in his/her hour of need, and stop vigilante tactics. You can help your fellow distributors by refusing to take sides, if you’re not actively involved in the situation.

If you have sponsored and built a company that has resulted in residual income, so long as you meet the criteria for a check --- and the company is in business to cut one --- you deserve to be paid, not axed. Remember, we, the distributors, truly write the paychecks for the corporate owners --- for without us there would be no companies.

I believe all things happen for a reason. Maybe your company president is reading this at the same time you are and thinking twice about killing your income!