Welcome to my podcast where if you know you know and if you don’t, well, you’re about to. In each episode, we’re seeking truth and getting real, helping you discover your strength and voice to make the best informed choices on your terms in accordance to his will.
The irony of this podcast episode is I was going to record it a few months ago. But it was towards the end of my pregnancy, and I really just started focusing more on mom content, and it just kinda went by the wayside.
And I never really did anything with it, and I actually had videos and and screen recordings and things like that on my phone.
And this past week, I was like, let me just unload these. Like, it’s not even super relevant anymore. You know, I just I don’t need this taking up space on my phone.
Well, wouldn’t you know? The story resurfaced this week. I’m, like, of course, it did after I deleted everything. So we’re gonna talk about it today. We’re gonna spill the tea a little bit, and we’re gonna get a little tough love if you are a business owner.
And we’re going to, once again, because I believe in teachable moments, we’re gonna talk about how you should be handling yourself in business, especially when you have a social media footprint and you are an influencer. But before we do that, as you can hear, my voice is a little groggy.
And right now, our family is fighting off a cold. I am trying to do my best because I am nursing, and so my nutrients are getting depleted.
So I’m, like, taking all the things, double tripling up on my usual supplements. But I want you to take a listen to this sponsored ad that I have from Rokasa Organics. I truly love this company. It is they are products that both my husband and I use daily as well as our children.
And I have to say my toddler is feeling so much better and so much faster than usual. It’s not lingering, and I swear it’s because of Rowecasa Organic. So let’s cut to that and then we’ll circle back to the t. It’s no secret that I believe in informed consent and full transparency in all the things.
So a few months ago, one of my best friends who is a very large social media influencer, she is part of a management company that many of the trainers from my network marketing company are from, as well as other very large social media influencers.
And she has paid sponsorships from you name it. Honest Company, Target, Walmart, Ciete Foods. I mean, I could go on and on. I mean, LabCorp even sponsors her. Like, you wanna get some blood work done?
She’s got a code for you. And I’m so proud of her because she is someone who’s worked her tail off to get to where she is. She started in direct sales, and it just wasn’t super fulfilling for her anymore.
And a couple years ago, because she and I are so close and we worked together and we would build content together, we would promote together, do our challenge groups together, things like that, we both saw the writing on the wall when it came to direct sales, specifically ours.
Because she and I are very aligned with how we treat our bodies, how we like to work out, all the things. And we both started to kinda go our own way in a way from away from, I should say, the direct sales model. And we both did it a little differently. Right?
So for me, it was leaning back into things that I know are very much my wheelhouse, twofold. 1, being golf and being a coach and finding the right spot to teach and work out and going back to being a golf professional seasonally.
And then on the other side of it was also leaning back into those skills of being a coach and a mentor, and helping people 1 on 1 and in group coaching and building workshops to teach them how to create other streams of income.
Because coaching and mentorship, it truly is my heart and soul.
My friend’s story of her discovery of another Instagram account copying her content
For her, she loves cooking. I always say to her, especially when I’ve been pregnant, like, can I just teleport you down here to cook for me and the family? Because she was always on me about, you need to be eating this, you need to be eating that. Eat more.
All in love. Because I’ll be real, cooking and all that, it’s just not my thing. It’s I I can do it and I’m I am a solid cook. It’s just I’d rather outsource it, if you will.
So I always would joke that I need her to live closer to me versus North Carolina. So she started really leaning into these skills. And her prior experience, obviously, with direct sales, but she is very good and went to school for although she did drop out, she loves talking about that, that she’s so successful as a college dropout.
And I think that is so freaking cool and amazing because you know how I feel about college and debt and all the things. Like, if you know, you know. I don’t think it is for everyone.
And she had this marketing skill, and she knows how to visually appeal to people. And I want to stress this.
Like, I’m stressing this about her because her content is very visually appealing. She knows how to do ASMR, which is, you know, when you hear the sound of someone opening a drawer or pouring ice in a glass.
Like, for whatever reason, our brains love those sounds. She she knew how to use those tools before anyone was even talking about it. She knew how to create consistency with her content.
So her fridge clean outs for her meal prep for the week, she knew that people loved to see it. It was the same thing every single week, and I would bust her chops. I would be like, are you just repurposing the content? Sometimes.
Yes. She would. She her audience knew what to look for on Sundays. The fridge clean out, the shopping haul, and then the meal prep for the week. Like, that was the cycle.
And in between, she would sprinkle in different products. And this was like before she became what she is. Right? This is just the build up.
And that’s what she became known for. And she has been doing this for years. For years. K? I am stressing this. Because when she called me and said, go look at this chick’s profile, I immediately knew this chick was copying her.
And it was to the point where and because I’m Nancy Drew, anyone who knows me knows that I will deep dive on you. Like, all I need is a name, and I will be full court press on getting you all the information that you need. So I go on to this chick’s profile, and I see she had a dead account.
I mean, dead, d e d. We always joke about that, dead, in my house. All of a sudden, she’s creating viral real content where she’s getting 100 of thousands of views. I think a couple of them, she had, like, a1000000.
This was 3 months ago. Okay? And her account started blowing up. Well, it only took me watching one video. One video.
That’s it. For me to know there’s nothing original about this, and she is literally not just copying my friend’s recipe because, like, I said to her I was like, listen. At the end of the day, how many freaking ways can you make chicken salad? I mean, someone’s gonna copy it at some point.
Like, it’s it’s not like you came up with x y z recipe. Right? You’re just sharing with people. Beyond that, it was about the personality. That’s and that kind of freaked me out. I was watching the video, and I’m saying to myself, she’s literally a pod person, like, trying to body snatch my girlfriend.
Like, she everything. So, for example, when my friend opens up her reels, it could be let’s just pretend she’s making some sort of, I don’t know, cookie dough bite or something like that for her kids.
She’ll toss it up in the air and she’ll catch it in her mouth. Right? Or it could be fruit or it doesn’t matter what it is. Like, she’ll do something like that. Or if she has all of her glass containers out, she’ll play them like bongos.
She does a dance. And everything is authentic to her because that’s who she is as a person.
Okay? That’s her personality. Well, when I open up this chick’s reel and I see her doing the same dang thing, it kinda freaked me out. Because watching her old content and seeing how awkward it was, and even in this new content, you could just feel that it wasn’t her.
You could feel that she was pretending to be someone else. So the long of the short is, I talked about this on my Instagram. My followers started unfollowing her, calling her out, and my girlfriend because she’s an adult.
She messaged the girl, and she said, listen. I know what you’re doing.
Like, you’re literally duplicating my content as if it’s your own to build a following, because I will note this. So, like I said, my girlfriend, she has paid sponsorships. She’s part of a management company, all the things.
She still has an account with our direct sales, but she’s not promoting any direct sales company, really. She she’s just not. K? Because she sees the writing on the wall, and she understands that money talks, and that’s just not the business anymore.
It’s that’s just not where you wanna be making money right now, maybe forever. Like, that ship’s kinda sailed.
Frustration and Disbelief At The lAck of Originality
I’ve talked about that. Well, this chick, in my deep deep dive on an investigation, was part of a network marketing company when she had that dead account, started copying my girlfriend, and now she’s part of this new network marketing company that’s kind of taking off like a rocket ship.
And I have my own thoughts and feelings on this network marketing company, but I digress.
It’s a story for another time. So what she’s doing is she’s copying her content to gain traction, and then in her stories, she’s talking about her network marketing company because she wants people to buy into that.
Whereas my girlfriend is creating this content, and she is now and and has been for years working with food brands, whether it’s Primal Kitchen, Ciete. Like, she’s working with these actual brands and creating recipes using their foods to promote them, and that’s how she gets a paid sponsorship.
This chick is manipulating people, grabbing them in with content that she didn’t create on her own, or personality that she didn’t create on her own, to get them in the door so she can sell them her direct sales company’s product.
Gross. So I outed her 3 months ago, and my girlfriend personally messaged her. So she took said content down and apologized. Well, this week, my girlfriend calls me saying you won’t believe it. Her husband was tinkering around on Instagram.
And because the Instagram algorithm is so strong. Right? You have search engine optimization. It knows what types of content you’re looking at.
Because her husband obviously looks at her content and her reels, Instagram is pushing out that type of content to him saying like, hey. You’ve been looking at this, not knowing that it’s his wife.
You would probably like this account, and pushes this girl’s account back into his algorithm. And he said to her, babe, this girl’s copying you.
Now, he didn’t know about the previous scenario. Right? Like, that was just something that she was venting to me about. And he caught this. And he’s looking at a reel saying, like, why is this chick acting like my wife? This is weird.
We both go back to her profile, and it’s almost like she thought people had short term memory. And I will admit, some people do. And my girlfriend kind of forgot about her to check-in on her.
And sure enough, she has multiple viral reels that have millions of people following it, liking it, and commenting, etcetera. And she’s copying her again.
Again. And I just can’t handle it. Because, first of all, I pride myself on authenticity.
Implications of copying content
And so I can’t really wrap my head around people who behave this way. 2nd of all, as a business mentor, I will tell you that it’s not gonna be good long term, because people are gonna call you out for who you are.
And they’re gonna know that you’re not real, especially when you are doing direct sales. And direct sales, how you make money in direct sales is you have a downline. When you have a downline, you’re on calls with them, you’re working with them, you’re mentoring them.
If you don’t even know how to lead and be yourself and and truly go viral on your own or have success on your own without copying someone, how are you gonna teach people how to do what you did?
Are you just gonna say copy me? Like, I right? So you’re only serving yourself because you’re not gonna be able to serve those people in your downline because you can’t teach them how to find success.
You can’t teach them what to do because you don’t know how to reach success. You had to copy someone else.
You said, oh, she’s she’s killing it over here. Let me just do what she does. Yeah. Maybe you have some short term reels that are doing great, but in the end, it’s not gonna pan out for you. And the worst part is, it’s not gonna pan out for the people that you manipulate into following you and even taking a step further and signing up to be a part of your direct sales downline.
It’s wrong. And unfortunately, this type of thing happens a lot in direct sales. People want to shortcut success.
Broader Ethical Considerations in Network Marketing
And as someone who has found significant success within my direct sales company, Literally achieving the 0.01 percent of financial success within my specific direct sales company. I can tell you that you have to work your ass off to do it.
You can’t cut the line. Now, sure, are there the people who got in early? But at the end of the day, they took a risk.
They took a risk and and signed up. And, yeah, they see success. But the the rest of us who have achieved that certain milestone worked our butts off, made sacrifice. We’re on the team call as opposed to watching a Netflix.
We’re spending the money to go further and better ourselves through personal development conferences and going to our direct sales company summits and things like that instead of a vacation with our family.
Like, I’m just telling you how it is. There’s a lot of sacrifice that comes with direct sales. And I was able to teach people how to actually achieve what I achieved by showing them to be themselves, and teaching them how to be authentic, and teaching them just how to mentor people. Like, I actually found success, and I was able to duplicate it.
And it was because I was myself, and I wasn’t trying to copy anyone else. And I see this happening all the time. I’m not an anti MLM er, but it happens in multilevel marketing a lot, where people, they just copy one another.
Realities of hard work and authenticity in achieving success
And it’s a very lonely spot, and I think it leads to burnout because people get tired of not really being them. And they deep down know that they’re a fraud. They know they are. So even when they achieve success, even when they have the viral reel, or even when they hit the certain recognition benchmarks, it doesn’t feel good because they know they didn’t truly earn it. And that’s a really crummy feeling. So I implore you. Be you.
And this is probably one of the best things about UGC and why I’m promoting it so heavily, and why I have my workshops on it, and why people who have zero social media footprint are joining my workshop and within 5 days earning their investment back.
Because they’re getting paid to be them and nobody else. And this toxic behavior that just keeps popping up its head in network marketing and, you know, MLM, whatever the hell you wanna call it, direct sales, it’s bad. It is so bad.
It’s why people aren’t interested in what you’re selling, and they’re not buying your products because they don’t even wanna support the industry. And it’s why they don’t want to join your team.
Because this behavior goes on. And people see it and they don’t like it and they don’t want to be a part of it. And I don’t really know how to stop this machine from doing it.
Because I understand that people are feeling very upset about the world that they’re living in. They’re trying to make money, and they’re trying to hustle, and and they’re doing, quote, unquote, whatever it takes.
I encourage you to make better choices and strive for authenticity
But at the end of the day, just understand that your choices are gonna have consequences. And those consequences are gonna be not having long term success, not being a solid and true mentor, not being able to show people how to duplicate success.
So you’re gonna hit a wall in your own personal growth. I’m not going to out this girl on what her specific account handle is, but trust me when I say, if you were to see it, you’d know. You’d recognize it. Because you would look at it and be like, wow.
This chick’s literally just like one of Maren’s best friends. And this girl is just one of 100, if not 1,000, of people who are online and just living a false life. And that makes me really sad. But more so, it makes me upset for the people who are missing out on an opportunity to get involved with social selling because they don’t wanna be aligned with people like that.
They don’t wanna be under that umbrella. And I’m here to tell you, it can be done differently. I’ve done it differently. I mentor people how to do it differently, and you don’t have to be like these other people.
I promise. I promise. And we can be the people that change the trajectory of this industry. You just have to be bold enough to do it and align yourself with the right person who’s gonna teach you how to do it. And I know I can be that person.
Because if you know, you know, I have no problem calling people out on their BS. Anyway, that’s the t, that’s the tough love, and that’s the learning lesson involved with this message today. Thanks for tuning in.
