Top 5 Obstacles Every Consultant Must Conquer

In the over 9 years I've been a Scentsy Consultant I've recruited over 100 amazing people to join me on this crazy, fun thing I call my Scentsy business. I'm excited and eager for every single one to really take advantage of all the great benefits of making a living as a Scentsy Consultant - flexible schedule, work where & when I want, free travel, etc - and so I jump in and try to do everything I can to help them get their new biz off the ground.

Unfortunately, it doesn't always happen. And not for the reasons you might think.

I've never seen a Consultant close the doors of their business because they didn't know what to do or how to do it. Never. 

Below are the top 5 obstacles I've seen trip up Consultants leading them to not achieve the success they envisioned when they enrolled. If you've ever thought of being your own boss and looking for something new, check out my blog post about My Favorite Benefits of Being a Scentsy Consultant. If you're ready to join Scentsy and launch your own business simply follow the link to Join Scentsy. 

YOU ARE MORE AWESOME THAN YOU THINK 

I've noticed that many new Consultants feel inadequate or have a burdening self-doubt. I just want to say "You are enough. You are more than just enough. You are awesome!" Too often new Consultants bring in heavy negative baggage they’ve acquired from life that weighs them down under a belief they are not smart enough, tall enough, pretty enough, rich enough - whatever it might be - to do well as a Scentsy Consultant. You do not need to be anything more, or anything different than what you are.

Actually, once you allow yourself to tap into your OWN creativity, your OWN uniqueness and free yourself to be your type of Consultant - THEN you will find success. You, all by yourself, can figure out how to win at being a Scentsy Consultant. You have what it takes in spades to be successful. Don’t let yourself give in to the excuse that you - and anything about who you are or your unique situation and circumstances - disqualify you from success. Rather, recognize that your unique strengths, perspective, and personality are the very things that will help you be successful. Stop doubting yourself, or beating yourself up over past or current mistakes and engage your own strengths and you will be surprised just how awesome you are. Sounds cliche I know, but I've seen it over and over and over again.

FEAR

This happens with almost every single new Consultant. It is the number one reason, in my experience, that so many new Consultants give up. This quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson is so true -

Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.

Fear of failure is the most prevalent and debilitating. They say to themselves, "I don’t want to be the person that tried Scentsy and failed. If I get excited and go out and have parties, and tell everyone that I am a Scentsy consultant, talk about the business on Facebook, maybe even grow a team, and then it doesn’t work out I’m going to look like a schlumpf. All my friends will see me as a failure, I’ll feel like a failure, and they’ll tease me about that one time I tried to chase my goals as a Scentsy Consultant." I see this with SO many new Consultants. After doing this for over 9 years this is easy to recognize but the last thing new Consultants want to admit is preventing their success.

I've found the best way to address fear is to open about it. Every time I coach my team and we're making goals and tactics to achieve their goals, we always talk about any fears or skill gaps that would prevent them from doing the tactics we discussed. It is impossible to be successful as a Scentsy Consultant without overcoming fear. Nelson Mandela once said -

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.”

JUST DO IT

NOTHING can replace doing it. I’ve had hundreds of goal-making sessions, spent hours training, coaching and even roleplaying everything from how to enter parties in the workstation to how to book parties, recruit a new team member, and take care of customers. I’ve bent over backwards to make sure my team KNEW how to do everything and felt motivated to do everything they needed to do to win. But, all too often, regardless of how much they knew how to do what they needed to do - they still didn’t do it. Consultants with little or no training have awesome parties, and recruit amazing new Consultants. They just simply do it. They host parties, they talk to people about joining Scentsy, they message people about their orders, they just do it. Untrained, untouched, imperfect, yet getting it done. No amount of training or coaching will ever replace an attitude focused on simply doing it. Sometimes we let ourselves get so focused on preparation and practicing that we become paralyzed and fail to actually just go and do it.

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.
Dale Carnegie

If you're too worried and focused on preparing and practicing then your focus is driven by fear and you doubt yourself and your training at the first sign of training. The sooner you jump into improvement by practice you are focused on finding your way to success; getting better with each misstep, tailoring your approach to fit you and ultimately finding your own, unique, very YOU type of way of operating. That's when you'll hit your stride and find you're no longer forcing yourself to invite people to buy, host, or join.

MAKE GOALS

In soccer you need goals to win. Literally, if there were no goals no-one would ever win. It’s true with Scentsy as well, if you have no goals you won’t ever achieve them. And how could you? You have no measurement of success, you have no direction, no target. Say out loud what you want from your Scentsy business and write it down. Tell someone, anyone that will be an accountability partner for you, what your goal is - whether it's your Scentsy sponsor (who would love to have that convo with you!) your spouse, friend, parent, sibling, whoever, and then get to work.

Setting Goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible. 
Tony Robbins

If you want Scentsy to pay for a date night at least once a month, or cover a phone bill, the utilities, car, or even the mortgage - say it and write it down. Your Scentsy business can do any of these, and all of these!, but like anything, it takes work and working without a goal is like driving down the freeway just hoping you can correctly guess the exit that will take you to your destination. Pick your destination first (make goals) and then find a map (what you'll do to achieve your goal) to get you there.

BE PERSISTENT

For some reason, we want to believe that any setback is an indication that the whole thing is flawed. Too often if a new Consultant invites someone to have a party, join their team, do a fundraiser, or some other Scentsy-related activity and that person responds negatively they get deflated and give up. If you ask someone to host a party and they say no thanks. Move on. How many people did you date before you found the right one? There’s a million shows on TV yet we ignore the large majority of them and have our own few favorites. They simply don’t interest us. Scentsy isn’t for everyone, it has NOTHING to do with you and everything to do with them. It’s their choice, not yours. Allow people to be different than you and not be interested in buying, or joining WITHOUT taking it personally. A “No” is not a “You suck, I hate you”. It is what it is, someone indicating they are not interested, nothing more.

Giving up on your goals is like slashing your other three tires because you got one flat.

When you feel like you've hit a setback, don't surrender your goals so easily. Stop blaming yourself, you didn't royally screwup, give yourself the benefit of the doubt and try again...and again, and again. You can either keep trying with the aim of getting better as you go on your path to success OR consider everything that doesn't go as planned, as further evidence that becoming a Scentsy Consultant wasn't a good idea. So keep on keepin' on and giving it the ol' college try and I have no reason to believe you won't get better and find a way to make it work.