Emotional and Mental Health – Returning To Work
So, typically, I have all of my topics laid out and what I’m gonna say before I record. But, as you can hear in my voice, it’s been it’s been quite a doozy of a week, but, certainly, the last 2 weeks. If you haven’t been tuning in to the podcast, make sure you do so you know what has been going on the last 2 weeks and what rocked my world.
And even though I saw it coming, it still doesn’t make it any easier. If you know you know, Beachbody, aka body, decided to dissolve its whole coaching network, and they just did it on a drop of a dime.
But the the main topic that I wanted to talk about was going back to work off of maternity leave because that is my current situation. And I do think stress is what brought on this cold. Although my husband’s sick, my toddler’s sick, I pray the baby doesn’t get sick.
I have, like, this little nasally nose going on right now, like, just gross. But I really believe that it has been the stress of the last couple weeks just absolutely falling down on all of us because we’re worried, obviously, about an income that is now gone.
We are concerned about our baby, so I will update everyone on this next week once I have more answers. But been really struggling with trying to get her to take a bottle. Spoiler alert, she hasn’t.
I’ve had a feeding specialist come in tomorrow. I have to take her to a pediatric dentist where they will probably, in my opinion, just because I’ve been through this with my toddler, I do think that they are going to make a revision and then, like, dealing with that literally 2 days before I’m supposed to go back to work. You know, obviously, I’m worried about her and concerned about her well-being.
Balancing Work and Motherhood
So it’s just all weighed a lot on our whole family. And the biggest thing as a mom is I want to be at home with my babies. You know, I understand that a lot of people get coaxed into the idea of joining network marketing because, oh, be at home with your babies.
And for me, that was never the the goal or the dream. Like, I did network marketing for, like, seven and a half years, almost 8 years before I ever was at home with my daughter. But what I can tell you is once you’ve been at home like I was this is just a personal opinion.
I know, being at home all day with your children is not everyone’s jam, and there’s definitely two sides of it. I have one of my best friends who does currently work.
She’s a new mom, but she’s like, I wanna work from home. But, you know, what was that like? And what I can tell you is it’s hard. It’s just as much of a job. And then when you’re like me and you are running your own business and you have multiple streams of income, it can be a lot.
It’s I don’t wanna use the word easy because nothing about motherhood is easy. But it is less difficult when they are babies because they nap so much, and you can put them in their bouncer and do your work on the computer or record your podcast or whatever it is.
Once they start running around and speaking, it’s a bit of a game changer. And children don’t understand all the time.
Importance of children understanding their parents’ work responsibilities
I’m trying to do the best I can with my toddler to make her aware of what it is I do. Like, right now, I’m recording, and she is very quiet, and she but she is in the room with me, and she understands that this is mommy’s job.
She will even crawl up on my desk when I’m not recording and put my headphones on and say she’s recording her podcast. So they watch everything we do, and I think it’s very important for them to understand that what we do is work.
But it’s not easy to balance it all, and I don’t believe you can balance it all. I think something is going to fall by the by the wayside, whether it’s, you know, your attention to your child or your attention to your business.
And for me, going into the golf season, which is literally right around the corner this week, what I’ve been struggling with isn’t so much going back to work because, honestly, I think my side hustles, if you will, will actually be easier to manage while I’m back at work because when I have downtime, I don’t have anyone interrupting me.
But I do carry a lot of guilt about going back to work for a couple of reasons.
Carrying Guilt About Going Back to Work
One is I feel bad that I was at home with my toddler, and I’m not gonna be at home with my baby. You know, my toddler got, gosh, 21 months with me, almost 22 months of me being home with her every day.
In fact, I never left my toddler until my baby was born. That was the first night I had ever been away from her, when we had to stay overnight for my baby when she was born when she was born at home, but she swallowed meconium, and so we had to make sure she was okay.
And so we stayed overnight in the hospital to monitor her. That was the first time I’d ever been away from my toddler. So I feel guilt about that leaving my baby compared to the toddler. The silver lining to that is my toddler has a sibling.
Right? Like, she’s getting a different life than she once had. And I guess you could say my baby doesn’t know what she doesn’t know. Right? It’s gonna be probably challenging for my toddler to see me go back to work because I’ve actually been at home with her since June.
So that’s 1, 2, 3, 4, I mean, almost 5 months. And so it’s just a lot of mixed emotions. I feel guilt, quite frankly, about having my parents watch them. Like, there’s just a lot, and and the reason why I’m bringing this up is because a lot of this I is my own feelings, obviously, but I do think a lot of it stems from what we see on social media.
And I remember a year ago, I did a podcast about going back into the workplace and the importance of your children seeing you work, you know, putting on your work clothes, understanding your responsibilities, understanding that you have to be someplace at a certain time.
There’s no, willy nilly schedule. Okay. As I was saying, you’re probably like, wait. What? This is what I was talking about. Working from home is a challenge. But in happier news, we are in the last week, despite all of these things hitting the fan, we have started to conquer potty training.
So, yay, go us. Anyway, so that’s what I was just doing for a break brief pause that you probably didn’t even know happened.
Impact of Beachbody’s coaching network dissolution on family income
But circling back to what I was saying about going back to work, I just I don’t really have any advice for you because at the end of the day, it is what it is. I mean, for most people, including myself, like, it’s it’s a necessity. It’s it’s not a choose to. It’s a have to.
And trying to explain that to your children, you know, why you have to go back to work and explaining to them, you know, you have this home. You have your toys. You have these things because mommy and daddy have to work.
And that’s what I’ve really been trying to do, and I’ve been trying to make it as seamless as possible for her in that my parents have been around a lot.
And my parents are gonna be the ones that take care of the girls, So just kinda getting them acclimated to that and not taking naps with me anymore, taking naps with grampy or, you know, whatever it may be just because I’m not gonna be here.
So I say all this to say, you’re not alone in in being upset. I stand with you. I encourage you to unfollow any accounts that make you feel less than because you are working in the workplace and you’re not, you know, at home.
It isn’t always rainbows and lollipops to be at home. Right? Like, you have to do what’s best for you and your family. And in our situation, my goal is to get back home. But right now, it’s just not that season for me, and and that’s okay.
And I know that God will always provide. That’s just who he is, and we just keep moving forward and staying positive and being grateful for the amazing opportunity of our careers.
So quite frankly, this episode is gonna be all over the place with so many different topics because that is where my brain is at, quite frankly. But I wanna make sure that I’m addressing certain topics that have been sliding into my DMs.
As you’ve probably gathered by now, I’m a cesspool of knowledge, and I swear every week, it’s something new. I’m getting my personal opinion asked on any given topic. People want information.
A Virtual Millennial, Dear Abby: Maren Crowley
I like to call myself your virtual millennial, dear Abby. And I have no problem taking the time to answer these questions, so please don’t ever hesitate to reach out to me on Instagram. My handle is atmacrowley, or you can send me an email at [email protected].
I truly do love chatting and connecting with you. I love the community aspect of all of that, and I do understand, though, sometimes that the questions that I get asked can be a bit heavy, and sometimes people want to remain anonymous.
So if that is the case, please fill out the short questionnaire on my website to ask your question while remaining anonymous. And then while you’re there, also check out some of my responses to what people have been asking me over the last few months.
This week, I had a whole bunch of questions specifically regarding everything that I had been talking about with the dissolving of Beachbody, people going into different network marketing companies, etcetera, etcetera.
And there’s a couple of different things I wanna speak about. So first of all, I’ve been very open and transparent about the fact that I signed up with a direct sales company back in August, which was recommended to me by 2 of my close girlfriends from the crunchy mom community called Make Wellness.
And a lot of Beachbody coaches are flooding over there. And, you know, what I’m recognizing about the company first of all, I was very excited just about the products. That’s why I got involved.
My 2 girlfriends that introduced me to the company, literally, on, like, day 3, we are very much in alignment with the products that we are affiliates for. So all 3 of us represent pretty much the same brands. So it was very seamless for me to flow into working with them and learning together, etcetera.
Concerns About Leader Behavior in Network Marketing
And I’d be lying if I wasn’t a bit annoyed when I saw the flood of Beachbody coaches in there, but it’s not just Beachbody coaches. What I’m seeing is people who this is gonna sound really harsh, but it’s the truth, like, people who are rejected by network marketing.
So they went to Modere. Modere essentially dissolved. AdvoCare. You’re seeing a lot of people who are high up in AdvoCare now all of a sudden involved. It’s like they were part of companies, and I mentioned this in I don’t know if it was part 1 or part 2 of my talks about Beachbody.
It’s like these people don’t know anything but network marketing, so they have to fall into another network marketing space.
UGC – YoU Get Cash Workshop
Multiple Streams of Income: The Importance of Genuine Product Interest
Whereas for me, I believe in multiple streams of income, and I believe in affiliate opportunities. And I have only ever signed up with companies that I am interested in using and then end up loving the products. It’s not because of building a team. I mean, that is just can be painful, quite frankly.
So this past week, seeing who was going there, it was a really hard thing for me because I’m like, like, there’s some great people involved that I’m like, yes. I love being associated with these women. And then there’s other people that I’m like, no. Don’t don’t come over here and ruin a good thing.
But the big hype this week was that this was the debut of what is called the founder’s box. So, essentially, if you get this founder’s box, you will be able to try all 6 of the products. Now some of the products don’t 3 of the of the 6, they don’t come out till December.
So this is, quite frankly, your only opportunity to try them.
Work with me as an affiliate for Make Wellness
Second of all, they do give you the opportunity to promote the products for 2 weeks sooner than everyone else who’s an affiliate. Now I didn’t quite realize how big this was because I kinda have had a lot going on, in case you didn’t notice.
But there’s, like, over 60,000 people who pre-enrolled, which is wild. And so yesterday, the hype was, are you gonna get this box? Are you gonna get this box? And, you know, there’s a couple of things already that I’m not a super fan of, as far as the business side.
It’s how they’re training people. It’s very old school. It’s that curiosity marketing that that’s so passe, you know, being very vague to get people to ask you what you’re doing. Like, no. I roll with transparency.
I wanna know what’s going on, and I explicitly and I’m sure if you listen to my podcast or follow me on social media, you know, like, I tell it how it is. I don’t make you guess. I just don’t believe in that.
It’s a waste of your time and mine, quite frankly. So there was that piece I wasn’t super thrilled about. I will be the first to say that I don’t believe that the compensation plan is very clear. You know?
And I’m someone who found a lot of success with Beachbody because I learned the compensation plan, and I can tell you that this is not as explicit. Like, it’s it’s definitely something you gotta watch over and over and over again to be able to get it.
And what I’m seeing is that, quite frankly, it’s going to serve the people at the top the best. It just is. But that, quite frankly, happens a lot in network marketing.
You know? And so that’s why I’ve encouraged people. I’m like, listen. If you wanna, quote, unquote, get in early, you know, and so you don’t have that excuse of, well, you know, so and so successful because they signed up from the beginning and everyone’s below them.
Like, people love using that excuse for their lack of success within network marketing. Is there some truth to it? Maybe. But it’s not the full truth. You know, a lot of people can find success despite not being the first in. But you do have an opportunity with make wellness to be the first in.
The other thing that was since resolved, I will say, that I had been speaking out about on social media was the website crashed and which is great because they had so much interest, but then they weren’t being very clear on how they were rolling out these emails.
Like, we have to roll out the emails in waves. And I would say, like, honestly I mean, I was talking about it on social media. Some people were barking about it in in the Facebook group, and they took pretty much all day to give an answer as to how they were rolling it out.
Because in my mind, I’m like, listen. I don’t care how you roll it out as long as you say what you’re doing. You know, some people would get annoyed that alright. So and so signed up months after me, but, hey.
She did bring in 600 people with her. Well, in my opinion, I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Right? Obviously, she has social influence. And for the company to give her a founder’s box, it makes sense.
But in the same breath, say that. You know, a lot of affiliate programs, you have to have a certain amount of followers to even be eligible. You have to have x amount of engagement. So I understand that.
Leaders reaching out to recruits for self-serving reasons as a “red flag”
Like, it you can’t give everyone a code because it dilutes the the whole industry. Same thing here. You can’t give everyone a founder’s box, but you should honor those who, yes, have the social influence, and then, b, those who took the chance in the beginning and were one of your first early adopters.
So in my opinion, I’m like, well, I have more than one affiliate signed up underneath me, and I also signed up months ago. So I was eligible. I did purchase now. So you put down your dollar deposit. The rest is charged at the end of the month, and then your box is shipped out with all your product.
But the reason why I’m bringing this all up is because I’m being very explicit with people that I am trying the products. I don’t have any issue with being an affiliate. I am gonna stack my income as best I can, and I’m gonna teach people how to do the same.
And I believe that that’s why it’s so important to align yourself with the right person whenever you’re doing any of these opportunities because you don’t wanna just sign up with your neighbor. You don’t wanna just sign up with your, you know, famous with a network marketing upline because you wanna be with someone who’s gonna take care of you.
And I’ve been getting a lot of messages from people that their upline, like and not just with this company, it’s with multiple companies that these uplines are going to, that their uplines are reaching out to them for the first time in freaking 2 years.
That’s a red flag, homie. Like, if your upline is literally only reaching out to you because they’re switching companies and they need you as a body to help them achieve x y z bonus, that’s about them.
That’s not about you.
So I had someone also slide into my DMs and say, wait a minute. I thought you were, like, trashing the fact that these BODi coaches were finding their quote unquote new home. Yeah. Because I don’t like the way they’re doing it. Like, be transparent about it. You know? And and some of them have kind of shifted their tune. I’m not saying it’s because of what I said.
I don’t even know if they listen to what I have to say on my podcast or my, you know, socials, but I will say some of them have shifted their tune and they are being more transparent.
Are they being transparent about the money? No. But that’s a whole another story. And I said to this person, I’m like, listen, you must have just missed my stories. I said, months ago, I had signed up. Like, I even showed the receipts. I screenshotted, like, I think it was August 3rd, when I had signed up. So, yes, I am trying the products.
Yes. I am learning about the opportunity because if it can be a great affiliate program for someone, I’ll be the first to share it. But I still have my guard up about certain things, and I will continue to be transparent with everyone and continue to answer whatever questions people have because that’s just who I am as a person.
Now another question people have been asking me is and this is just like a sidebar, and I will be sure to insert my code into the show notes because people I got asked this week, what bone broth do you drink? What is your favorite electrolytes? And all these products circle back to one company, and that is Paleo Valley. I love them.
They have fantastic products, family owned. In our home, we love the watermelon electrolytes, the beef sticks, the chocolate bone broth. I swear it tastes like Swiss Miss. So I can’t recommend them enough.
The Future of Marketing: User-Generated Content (UGC)
Another question I was asked this week was and it was pretty ballsy question, but, you know, like I said, I think people aren’t afraid to ask me questions because I shoot it to you straight. Someone said, can you tell me how much you’ve made with UGC?
And that’s a really, it’s a difficult question to answer because it’s not like, oh, you know, I’ve earned x y z dollars. First of all, I do UGC on multiple platforms, not just one. The value of the products I mean, last night, I just booked a job for an LED face mask, and that product alone was $400. I’ve booked an ice plunge. That was a $500 retail.
So it’s literally been 1,000 and 1,000. Obviously, you get paid for the job, but then you’re getting paid for the product. Right? You get the the value of the product.
Financial benefits from UGC, such as reselling products and passive income through Amazon programs.
Obviously, I run my own workshop. That’s my own business. But then on top of that, I’ve learned, and this is what I’m gonna teach people starting next month, is how to stack your income on Amazon. So you have all this passive residual income. So it’s a loaded question.
I can’t give you an exact figure, but I can just tell you right there, 2 products, 2 jobs, just 2 jobs that’s valued at $900. I mean, that’s pretty solid, and what I encourage people is, you know, you can either keep the products.
You can sell them on Facebook marketplace. Like, there’s so many things that you can continue to stack your income with those products that you receive through UGC. While my girlfriend was here cutting my hair yesterday I know that sounds so bougie, but when one of your best friends is a makeup artist and hairstylist, like, they can come to your house. She comes to my house because I have 2 children. I swear I’m not boujee. I mean, I am, but not that boujee.
And while she was doing my hair and makeup, I got another UGC job for makeup remover. So I take the job. Right? And it’s it’s a $125 to make a freaking 30 second TikTok. And then I give her the product because she’s a makeup artist, and she’s gonna be able to use it on herself, her clients, etcetera.
Like, I don’t really wear makeup. We just have family photos, so that’s why I needed her help making me look halfway decent, especially with this cold. But that’s the beauty of it is that you’re not the only person winning from the situation. You know? You can give these gifts to your family, your friends.
You can resell them, like I said, on Facebook Marketplace. You stack your income with Amazon. So it’s not just like a onetime job. It has so much potential to be so much more. And this week did kick off another workshop for UGC.
It will lead into my Amazon program, and I did have people asking me like, oh, shoot. Like, I didn’t get into this month’s UGC workshop. Are you gonna host it again? Yes.
The answer is yes yes yes because I 100% believe that UGC is the future. Am I going to, of course, diversify my income, get involved with some other affiliate opportunities? Am I gonna you know, like I said, I’m I’m putting my toe in the water when it comes to this make wellness.
If I like the products, I have no problem promoting them as an affiliate. But to me, UGC is the lowest barrier of entry for people to have the most gain. I will repeat this until I’m blue on my face.
The people who are involved with direct sales, the ones who are gonna see the massive success, I’m talking about the success like I talked about earlier, about being able to be at home with your children are gonna be the ones with the massive following that simply went over to new company with them.
I mean, you have these uplines who, you know, for years years years built this downline, which good for them that they have this loyal following are going over to a new opportunity bringing not just 20, 50, or even a 100 people. They’re bringing 100s, thousands of people with them.
Now what I will say what I’ve noticed is the numbers aren’t as large as they were with their previous company. And that’s for a couple of reasons. 1, a lot of people feel like the the golden handcuffs are off and they can go work wherever and with whomever they want, so they don’t wanna be tied to their upline anymore. I think that is huge.
I think there are more people who are unhappy in their direct sales position than they wanna admit. I also think that some people are and rightfully so, and I respect this and I agree it’s what you should be doing, taking your time, making the decision about where you are gonna go. And then third of all, there’s people who are like, I’m just done with this. Like, I just don’t wanna do this anymore.
And they have understood that they’ve accrued a ton of skills from their experience in direct sales, so now they wanna go and do their own thing. And for those people, I’m like, yes. Do that. That’s amazing.
But my goal is to help everyone take advantage of UGC and Amazon reviews. It is something that everyone can do. It’s gonna take time and patience. Like anything, it takes a while to to build.
I mean, I wasn’t landing, you know, $500 ice plunges, $400 face masks within my 1st week. I’ve been doing this now for over 3 months, which, in my opinion, is pretty freaking cool that you can do that in a 3 month period when in direct sales, having that kind of income coming in that for a lot of people takes years.
And I’m not special. I mean, yes. Do I know how to do things in a fast way because of my experience in network marketing? For sure. But that’s the whole point of the workshop is.
I’m teaching people how to shortcut it and learn from me on how to:
- create better content
- how to build a social media presence
- how to take nice photos
- how to take the right videos that they’re looking for for unboxings and product reviews
- etcetera, etcetera
So I encourage you, whatever you decide your next steps are going to be, make sure it’s what is in alignment for you and your family. The person that you are learning from is gonna provide the support.
You do not want to do any of this alone. I’m telling you, It can be very, very lonely. You wanna be able to have someone that you can bounce ideas off of, that you can ask these questions with that pop up randomly.
You have the community that you can all be winning together. I’m telling you.
And if you’re not aligning with the right person, you’re gonna end up being in the same position that you were at your old direct sales company. It just it is what it is. I appreciate you tuning in to this episode.
I know it was all over the place, but I promise next week we’ll be back on track. I really wanna share with you about this tongue tie experience with my older daughter as well as this new baby, and, hopefully, that my experience can help you navigate that if it should ever pop up in your life or anyone you love. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this episode.
Like I said, I’m always in the DMs. Feel free to reach out to me on Instagram to continue the conversations. You can find me at macrowley. And as always, the show notes can be found on my website underneath the podcast tab, and I’ll catch you on next week’s episode.
