Direct Sales: Just Direct Shoot Me!

Photo by Jenny Main

Okay ladies, it's time to have a heart to heart about all of your side hustles. I love you all, you know I do, and I want to be supportive of you, but this has to stop.

I get it. Direct sales sounds easy and fun and you can do it on your schedule. You have kids and either you gave up your second income to care for them or you are paying through the nose for childcare so your budget is strained to its limits. But the thing is, so is mine. I keep leaving your Facebook groups for your parties that you have added me to without my permission, and somehow I keep getting added back to the group. I try to be nice and buy something every once in a while, but I can't afford to purchase something from all of you every time you throw a "party." And now they aren't even parties in real life where you can socialize, they are online parties where everyone is just chatting through Facebook. I know these online parties are easier and more convenient, but it also means that more of you are doing them and are doing them more often so the rate at which I receive these party "invitations" is just increasing exponentially. And it's alienating.

I feel like I'm insulting my friends whenever I decline an invitation or leave a group and it's not fair. It sends us all the message that I'm only a good friend if I pay for your friendship by buying the useless crap you are selling. Seriously, how many over priced leggings and citrus peelers does one need to purchase before it's enough? It's high school peer pressure all over again.

I know you love your nail wraps and essential oils that make my husband sneeze.  You think you can get your beloved products cheaper if you can just get a few of your friends as excited about them as you are. And then maybe your friends' friends will join in and so on. But for the vast majority of you, the math is not in your favor. Most of you will either lose money or work so hard for so little money that you will be making far less than minimum wage. Few of you have the sales skills to build a direct sales business large enough to earn a decent living, even fewer will get rich doing it.

Direct sales are nothing new. Our mothers grew up with Tupperware and Avon. We grew up with Pampered Chef and Longaberger Baskets. What's different today is the internet. It is so easy to start doing direct sales that new companies are popping up all over the place and seemingly every 20 or 30-something mommy out there has found a product she loves and jumped on the band wagon to try to make ends meet. The market is quickly becoming oversaturated. It's like all of Hollywood's big blockbusters and sequels. They don't even realize when they have gone too far and their profits keep dwindling as they try to squeeze more and more money out of the same pool of people. There has to be a tipping point (and I hope it's soon) when people come to their senses and realize what a scam it all is.

Looking beyond my own social anxiety over how to communicate with my friends that I've had enough, I worry about our kids watching how our friendships are beginning to revolve around the buying and selling of goods. Americans are becoming increasingling wasteful by consuming more and more unnecessary goods. We see this in the amount of food that goes to waste,  our swelling closets, and our bloated landfills as we have shifted to a disposable society. It isn't sustainable and our kids are watching. Direct sales bring the pressure to consume out of the media and into our social interactions. It's one thing telling a salesman in a store who is a complete stranger no, it's an entirely different thing to tell your friend no, especially if all of your other friends are watching.

What do you think? Let me know if you are in direct sales and whether it is working for your lifestyle or if you are more like me and are sick of being hounded by your friends!