Okay, you have probably scoured the internet for some reviews or thoughts on USANA, and by some off chance, you see the link to this post twenty pages into your search engine, AND you actually thought to yourself, I've read so many others, why don't I go into this tiny "what the hell is this site" post. Well, I was in the same situation, researching about this opportunity within USANA just a few days before this post, and I will post up my thoughts on this whole scheme from the information I've gathered (i.e. read from the internet). I will try and give an objective view, with both positives and negatives, and no, unlike the 80% of other 'independent' reviews out there, I will NOT be recommending you to this other plan on how to get easy networking leads etc etc at the end of the post. Without further rambling, let's go...
Background
Obviously, the first thing to start is check out what USANA actually does, if you haven't already, I recommend you check out the Wikipedia page first, and then the USANA site. Also, I highly recommend reading what network marketing (or multi-level marketing) is about (as USANA is one of those companies) and probably what a pyramid scheme is. The latter is interesting, and it'll give you something to think about... not that I'm saying USANA is a pyramid scheme, I mean, they've existed for 20 years, so it's not as if they're illegal or anything. I'm going to assume you already know the basic stuff coz really, you're not here for that.
My Background (Optional Read)
I think it might be good if I tell you what happened to me, so you can decide whether to believe me or take it with a grain of salt. I may very well be biased. Feel free to skip this as it's not super important (as a matter of fact, it probably has zero relevance to you). Anyway, so what happened was I met up with a friend that I hadn't seen in a while, and I saw a major change in him. For one thing, he was a very smooth talker (even smoother than before), and he was a whole lot more confident. What's more, he was spouting these concepts and ideas that even I, doing a business degree, don't really know about. Stuff like 'residual income', 'assets' and 'networking' (well, I know what the terms meant, just not in the context he was referring to). I was very interested in what had caused this change for the better (well, he was still as arrogant as ever and had a huge ego), so I asked him, and he said he has his own business and that I can come along to a presentation in three days time (it was held every week). He also lent me a book, by Robert Kiyosaki. I won't get into that here, but let me just say, after trudging through the book, I am not a big fan of his writing style. One thing I found amusing was that all the stuff my friend spouted, was from this book.
I did some quick research on network marketing (just those Wikipedia pages I linked to earlier and a few Google searches) and it sent a huge red flag. I turned up on the day and lo and behold, what I suspected came true, it was a network marketing company called USANA. To cut a long story short, I looked at what they had to give me, it was interesting, and I was slightly swayed. My friend tried to recruit me, and I thought about it, and I rejected it in the end. Now, I am going to give you some factors and reasons to think about if you are planning to join into this company.
Things You Should Consider
I'm going to launch straight in, first, you must have read or at least have a rudimentary understanding of the compensation plan, since that's what you're going to get paid on. What's the biggest crux of this plan? Like with many other similar schemes you have to pay to qualify. First, you pay a once off membership fee (no problems there), but, and here's the key point, you have to purchase a set amount of their products each month in order to get commission. Their reason? "To ensure your success in selling the product, you must use them yourself" or something like that. To me, that's like saying, sorry mate, you must be a customer to us, you have no choice. I understand where they are coming from, because this is a very big thing to your success, you MUST believe in the product in order to selling it to prospective customers. My friend? He is totally into it, hook, line and sinker. Now, most people say to themselves, I am getting something that I already need, so it's not a big problem, I'm fine with that, but if you're planning to get into this scheme, please, honestly, think, do you really think you need these vitamin supplements? If the answer is yes, then that's a really good sign, if the answer is no or you've never taken vitamins before and you're fairly healthy, then you should stop and seriously understand what you are getting yourself into.
Next, your actual commission. You have to watch out with these network marketing companies whether they emphasis recruiting more people or actually selling the products. Why? Because if the emphasis is on recruiting people, then you're in danger of being in a pyramid scheme, they promise exponential growth, sure, it grows fast, yet so fast that it could very well saturate the market in no time and collapse, especially for a company that's been here for 15+ years. Have a look online and I think it says that the customers are 75%+ distributors, and the rest 'preferred customers'. This means that an overwhelming majority of customers are in the scheme, to me, that sent a red flag. However, do note that a lot are only 'distributors' in name, as they are in it for the vitamins they take themselves.
The plan is based upon your network tree, the bigger it is (i.e. the more people under you, or you've recruited, aka 'downline'), and the more they purchase, the bigger your commission, makes sense. So, in a nutshell, you must be comfortable with selling the product. If you are like me, with not a big network of friends or potential customers, then I highly suggest you stay away from these type of schemes. If you don't like selling your friends (which isn't recommended anyway as that's not the way to success in these type of schemes), or doing it cold turkey (i.e. going up to random strangers), then you better have a good way of getting some potential leads, coz your ability to earn a profit depends on that. This is why they say that you have to believe in the product, because if not, how the hell are you going to convince someone else to join? This is partly where the absurdly high failure rate in this industry comes from (something like 99.7% of people fail in this industry), they are in it for the money. Seriously, do yourself a favour and at least believe in the product you're trying to sell or just go away.
Then comes to the profit side of things, figures can be very misleading, you go to the presentations and all you hear are the profit potentials. You hear, do this and then this and then this next step and bam, you can earn up to $2000 per week, WITHOUT work. Please, that is a major lie, nothing is without work, trust me, if you get up to that point, you have worked pretty hard, and you probably deserve what you're getting. They make is sound easy by saying that all you need to do is to gain this number of points, the usage of points can be misleading at times, making it look easier than it actually it (I'm not saying it's impossible, just hard to the average person). Also, do note that the average rate of income is $600 per year, which means that... you'll be making a loss since you have to purchase something like $200 of products every month. Now, the other stats say if you're full time the average is around $90000 and the average of those who get at least one paycheck per month is around $21000. You should note that averages can be skewed... if someone earns a huge amount, the average will be pulled up. A better measure is the median but we are not given them, so, think about this, 2.31% of associates (aka the people in the scheme) earn 72.2% of the company commissions. That leaves a measly 27% for something like 97% of the other people, so be prepared to be making a loss in your first few years or so. Some other interesting stats are that 87% of associates don't make a profit, BUT, 67% don't earn any commission (probably the ones who are in it for the products). I'm not trying to discourage you, but don't think it's easy money, you have to work hard for it. For your information, my friend is actually doing quite well and I have no doubt that he is very likely to be rising up through the ranks and earning more than me very soon.
Walk into presentations knowing that they will only give you the positives about this plan: the profit potentials, benefits from taking vitamins, how well they are known etc; same with talking to the people at the presentation, they will only say good positive things. Do you research afterwards and think it through. Some of those people can be very persuasive. If there's one thing you should know, there are always negatives to anything, it's your job to find out what they are. However, one thing I have noticed is that there are two main groups of people, the first one are that they endorse the products and plan wholeheartedly, and defend it to the end of the earth (sometimes to the point of ridiculousness, that's why some people think of these things similar to cults), they are usually the one who are associates. The other group disagrees and pushes down on the whole thing, even resorting to defaming (which breaks their credibility), they are usually the ones who haven't joined. So watch out for that as well.
Lastly, and I only mention this because my friend, reading the supposedly awesome and useful books from Kiyosaki (they're the promotional and motivation items from the company I think), thinks that for some reason, having your own business, that is, a big one, the only way to get wealth, and he looks down and despise working as an employee. To him, this is supposedly him owning a business, okay, I can see that, kinda. Maybe in tax or legal terms he is having his own business, but to my eyes, I'm thinking, you are basically 'employed' by the company, and this is the crux, you're selling exclusively their products, there's no variety. To me, that screams you are a salesperson of that company, you're still effectively only 'working' for that company, promoting their products, consuming their products, selling their products.
Conclusion
I felt like I have been rambling on, and I have unintentionally become more one sided and biased, I apologise, I understand, and acknowledge, a lot of people have succeeded in these programs, but it's something that's not for me. I'll give you some bullet points on what I think you need to be able to be successful in something like this:
- you must be able to find potential leads everyday (or often enough) in order to have a high number of recruits under you (because honestly, I think you earn more commission if they're an associate as well). It's called network marketing for a reason, you need a big network to earn
- even if you have a lot of potential leads, you must have the skill to convince and persuade them to join you in your 'business'. For that, you need to actually believe in the product, which will make it much easier for you to sell. Also, you must be able to take rejection... no shyness here!
- be prepared to work for it, coz it won't be easy starting off
Some characteristics that indicate you might not be as successful in something like this are:
- you're shy, hate to talk and hate it even more to sell products
- you're only in it for the money, and don't really care or understand the product
- you have a small network of people you know, or you can't find enough potential leads such that you have to resort to 'selling out your friends', which is definitely not the way to go
- you're perfectly happy with what you're doing right now
I guess that's it, many disadvantages BUT, if this is your thing and it sounds great to you, it is a great opportunity that you shouldn't miss. I mean, if I see my friend a few years from now, earning $3000+ per week while I'm still on a tiny <$1000 pay check, I will probably be jealous. Would I regret not joining him now? Probably not, as I know I would have failed miserably, I do not have the talking skills or persuasiveness or belief in the product in order to make me successful. That's my two cents and I hope you've gained something from reading this post.
On a side note, my friend trying to recruit me really opened my eyes to a whole new area, and I found that all this stuff was really interesting. Seeing what network marketing is, how it works, and how pyramid schemes are unsustainable. If only I had this level of interest back in school...
