Ever since starting the UnFranchise Business almost exactly two years ago, I’ve learned a lot of things about this particular journey.  I’m going to list them out for you here in bullet point form:  

The Good:

• You obtain a second source of income (they like to call it three streams of income: cashback, retail profit, and long-term commissions).
• Connections: you meet a lot more people than you would have.
• Personal growth.
• You have a piece of “online real estate”.
• Access to all of the products at cost.
• You have a business account with shop.com.
• Continual learning and improvement.
• Potential ongoing income.

The Bad:

• You need to invest a lot of time and money into it.
• You need to continue recruiting people.
• You may experience loss of social esteem.
• You go through a lot of ups and downs.
• You may lose your old friends.
• You will lose money if you quit before you start making money.

The Ugly:

• It’s not really a part-time business (8-12 hours a week); in order to make money, you need to dedicate your entire life to it.  You need to dedicate your entire mindset to it.
• You must use all of the exclusive products.  If you do not, then your senior partners will shame you and say “that’s a negative product!”
• You must shop from your portal (especially nowadays with the Shopping Annuity concept).  If you do not, they will say “did you get paid or get IBV for that?  That’s another way of shaming anything you buy.
• If you go on vacation or post anything that seems to be “unnecessary” or “wastes money”, they will shame you for it.
• You have to “fake” a personality so that others will follow.
• “Be close enough to relate but far enough to lead” — this means that you will never be close in friendship with people ever again.  Your junior partners have to be far enough from you so that you can lead them and your senior partners are too far up to relate with.
• You have to give up your free time.
• You have to force yourself to meet strangers all the time and get their contacts.
• You have to complete the UFO Program every quarter otherwise they say “you’re not doing the business” or “you’re not completing the standard of the business”.
• Work-shaming anyone who is in the 45-year-plan and believing that the 2-3 year plan is the only way.
• You have to give up your Thursday nights for corings, Convention trips twice a year, and various other meetings.
• You will always be “busy”.
• If you don’t follow what the leaders say, they’ll say you are “not coachable”.
• If you don’t buy products when you are close to reaching a commission cheque (let’s say you are 200-300 BV away), they will shame you.
• You have to buy products in order to reach pins.
• While on the cruise, you cannot have “fun”.  You have to still learn with the team.
• You are shamed for posting too many pictures of food/vacations/fun things on your social media.
• You have to brand yourself into a “professional” image.
• If you post anything that’s not “business-related” or doesn’t help your business, the senior partners won’t “like” your posts.  They only like the ones that are related to business.
• You have to learn how to talk and act like them.
• You have to push people to attend meetings and especially Conventions to the point that partners have created fake school trip forms and fake death announcements in order for families to allow their children permission to leave.
• You have to creatively find ways to lie and convince people to do things.
• You have to buy tickets in advance for your partners.  Sometimes, if you don’t find enough people who can go, you end up “eating” the ticket.
• They frown at you if you spend money on unnecessary drinks like bubble tea or avocado shakes — they think you can spend the money on BV or the business instead.  People should be able to buy whatever they want.  If they don’t have money to spend on the business, then that means the business is not a priority to them.  No matter how many times you help them to “manage” their money, they will still want to spend it whichever way they like.
• You have to control people (manage how they act, think, behave, talk, live). 
• There’s a reason why this business is so difficult.  Not everyone wants to do this.  This business is only meant for 1% of the population.  That means that every person in the business has to find that 1-2% of the people they know/encounter and see if they want to do the business.  You need to go through a lot of people in order to find that 1-2%.
• They say that you keep learning and growing as a person.  The “knowledge” that you keep learning is about the same; it’s never about different subjects.  You just keep learning how to build the business in a specific way so that all the basics are memorized –> you become better at convincing people to do things.  You grow as a person in this business, because you need to have a thick skin to continue surviving the naysayers and people who are against the business.
• I have never spent as much money as I have since starting this business.
• There is a lot of “living for the future”.  The senior partners always say, “when we finish the business, we’ll go on this trip together”, or “when we finish the business, we’ll be able to sleep in and do whatever we want”.  The truth is, even after “finishing” the business, you will not do whatever you want in the business.  These senior partners are extreme workaholics.  Live by their word and you will die from exhaustion.
• I have cried more from this business than I have ever had prior to the business when I was just living my life.
• They say there is no competition, but there is.  You still have to compete against your partners to get a prospect or retail sale.
• They say that they want to help everyone, but the moment that they think that a person won’t be ambitious enough or won’t have the means to succeed, they move on to the next person.  It’s really heartless.

(Originally published on January 9, 2016 under a password protection.  Unveiled on August 10, 2023.)