Cloud dispels any negative myths about direct sales and assures us that it is a very viable business model. It creates more than $170 billion in annual revenue for the worldwide economy, she points out. A company markets products and services by way of a distributor base. The distributors, who sell the products and services for the varying companies, get paid a percentage of the sale. Cloud worked with a service-based company that fostered relationships with national carriers, including Sprint and Verizon. The carrier organizations favored direct sales because they didn’t have to pay for the customer until the customer was acquired.
She explains that when distributors get the customers for the national carriers, they get paid a percentage every month when the customer pays the bill. “The company that I’m with, we’ve been on the Inc. 5000 list for the last nine years as one of the fastest-growing companies in America,” Cloud says. She emphasizes that if one is interested in direct sales, he or she needs to connect with a credible company. Research to ensure that they are a part of the industry’s regulatory body, the Direct Selling Association.
In the last 11 years with her company, Cloud has helped 16 people to become millionaires through direct sales. “I knew in that regard that I also had an assignment, because I help people legitimize the industry and understand,” she tells us. “If you treat it like a hobby, that’s the kind of money you make. But if you treat it like a business and you understand some of the fundamental concepts of building a business, you do very, very well.”
When the Married to Medicine star first started in direct sales, she was only looking for a few extra hundred dollars a month to supplement what she was already making in her corporate career as a pharmaceutical representative. Within a year, however, she was matching her full-time salary, and within a year and a half, she was exceeding it. In fact, Cloud was doing so well that when her husband completed his residency, he took a five-year sabbatical because the income had replaced what a pharmaceutical representative and ER doctor would make, combined. “I walked away from corporate America,” she says, “and never looked back.”
Cloud tells BlackEnterprise.com, “I feel like direct sales is an industry where ordinary people can earn extraordinary income.” And speaking of extraordinary, the self-made millionaire and entrepreneur is willing, and eager, to empower others so that they too can realize their purpose and channel it to reach financial freedom.