Why I Buy My Essential Oils From An MLM

I was 18 and a freshman in college looking for a job so that I could earn some extra “fun money”.

The first place I looked was the classified ads and saw what seemed like an incredible opportunity…

“Make your own hours. Unlimited income potential. Must be a self-starter. Call for an interview.”

Well hey, I’d love to make my own hours. Unlimited income? Sign me up! Sure, I can be a self-starter, why not?

So I called.

I went in for my “interview” and guess what? They “hired” me!!

All I had to do was make a small investment in a kit (I actually don’t remember how much it was) and then I would be ready to tell others how to get the best knives ever.

I would start with my friends and family and then ask them for referrals.

I could also go through the records of people who had bought knives previously and give them a call to see if they wanted me to come out to their house to clean their knives. (Y’all… I’m laughing as I write this… I really called random people to see if I could come out to their house and CLEAN THEIR KNIVES!!)

Then while I was there, I would show them our new catalog to see if there was anything else they might like to order, and, of course, ask them for referrals.

I lasted less than 2 weeks.

After that experience I wrote off any type of sales at all for the next several years and got a job as a hostess at Chili’s instead.

Now don’t get me wrong, the knives were pretty amazing! Those scissors that the company sells… they *really* can cut through a penny! Have you tried cutting through a penny with the regular scissors in your kitchen? Probably not going to happen.

I still have my set of knives that I bought when I first signed up to sell them 16 years ago and I use them all of the time.

The products are quality products, but the method of selling just wasn’t for me.

I didn’t want my friends and family to feel pressure from me to buy things. I didn’t want to call random people and try to get them to buy more knives.

I never wanted to be part of another direct sales, network marketing, or Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) company again.

~~~~Fast forward 8 years.~~~~

I was now married with a 3 year old and an almost 1 year old.

Ryan and I decided that we wanted to eat “healthier”, which at the time meant switching from white bread and white flour over to whole wheat bread, whole wheat pasta, and whole wheat flour.

We wanted to be ALL IN on the healthy train, so we decided to not just buy wheat flour, but to make it ourselves by grinding up our own wheat berries.

Some friends of ours were placing their order through a grain co-op and told us that we could buy wheat berries there.

How much did we buy? Oh, you know, a reasonable amount for people to buy when they are just getting started grinding their own flour.

Just seven 50 lb. vacuum-sealed buckets.

Hey, I was planning on making homemade bread every day! I could go through that pretty quickly, right?

Plus, it was a *really* good price and we figured that it would be good to have extra food on hand just in case there was ever a long-term emergency situation.

We had driven 2 hours with our two little kids to get these wheat berries, and by the time we had loaded up the car, our almost one year old had just had enough. Nothing I did could get him to stop crying and just relax.

The lady who owned the house that we picked up our wheat berries at asked me if she could get something that might help my little guy relax.

Um, YES!!

So she came outside with a cotton ball with a drop of Young Living lavender essential oil on it.

Y’all. We just put it next to him in his car seat, he stopped crying almost immediately, and went to sleep within a minute.

Wonderful!! Where do I get this??

The lady said that I could get it through a company called Young Living and she gave me a brochure.

Oh…

It was one of those companies where I’d have to talk to everyone I knew about the product, get referrals, and do the whole thing that I told myself I’d never step foot into again.

So I said thank you, got in our car, and drove home.

I bought a few essential oils at our local health food store over the next several years to use as cleaners, and I bought a bottle of the cheapest lavender oil I could find hoping that it would have the same effect. (It didn’t.)

~~~Fast forward another 7 years.~~~

I had grown a lot in my “crunchy” ways over that time period. I was really into natural remedies, Ryan and I were GRAIN-FREE (no more use for those 350 pounds of wheat berries… we, um, still had about 325 pounds left!), and I was hearing from friends about how they were using essential oils to support every system of the body!

Hmm… that sounded like my kind of thing!

So I researched. And I decided that if I was going to support my body systems with essential oils too, then I wanted to make sure I was getting exactly what I was paying for.

Here was the criteria that I used to evaluate the companies that I looked at:

1. Can this company guarantee that the land used to grow their plants & herbs is free of residual herbicides, pesticides, & chemicals?
2. Does this company own their own lab to test an oil’s composition?
3. Does this company ever purchase oils from outside suppliers? If so, does the company visit the farms and oil distilleries to observe the process and make sure that there are no added chemicals to the distillation of the oils and that the herbs and plants are grown completely free from contamination with ANY herbicides, pesticides, and chemical fertilizers?
4. Does this company only use crops that were harvested at their peak time? And if so, does the grower test to make sure that the crop is at its peak time for harvesting?
5. Does this company continuously monitor the process of distillation to make sure that the oils produced from the distillation contain all of the correct therapeutic components?
6. Can this company guarantee that oils are discarded and not sold if mistakes were made during the distillation process that affect the quality of the oils?
7. Does this company’s oil suppliers use extra solvents during the distillation process to extract extra oil from the plants?
8. Can this company guarantee that nothing is added to the oils during bottling?

The only essential oils company that could answer those questions in a way that I felt comfortable with was Young Living.

It wasn’t because they had an MLM commission structure… that was one of the reasons that I didn’t want to buy from them back in 2006.

And I wish I would’ve known back in 2006 that 90% of the people who buy essential oils from Young Living don’t get into the business-side of it at all! They just use their discount to get high-quality essential oils. I would’ve been completely okay with that. 🙂

So I finally bought a starter kit back in February of 2013 and my plan was to just use the oils for our family (remember how I didn’t want to do the MLM thing? I really meant that!)

But then when you see how amazing something is for you or a family member you want to share that, right? So I would put up a post on Facebook about how I was supporting my digestive system, or how I was supporting my immune system with essential oils, and people started asking questions about oils and about how they could get some.

Not long after that, some of my friends who had seen me posting on Facebook wanted me to come teach an essential oils class for them and their friends. This wasn’t the typical – “Hey, would you be willing to host a party for my business? If enough people come and buy things then I will give you a free gift” – type thing. This was others inviting me to come teach classes at their home so that they (and their friends) could learn more about supporting their body systems too!

And, of course, they fell in love with the oils too!

I got into the business without really meaning to. Just by using the products that I had decided on for our family and sharing with others.

There are a lot of essential oils companies out there.

There are a lot of essential oils companies I could’ve made money off of as a blogger! Bloggers make money through products they recommend through affiliate programs (for example, bloggers can make a sizable income by linking to places like Amazon and other online companies), and just about everyone online who is recommending anything is making money off of that recommendation somehow.

But I wanted guaranteed quality.

I wanted to be able to see first-hand the farms, the distilleries, the labs, the bottling… and from what I have found, Young Living is the only company that allows all of that.

And what I didn’t know at the time that I needed, but now am so thankful for, is the support network of others who are studying about essential oils too.

I’m always asking questions and finding new uses for different essential oils in our team’s Facebook groups.

Even if the quality of Young Living hadn’t sold me 100%, our support group would have. There’s no way that I would be getting that kind of support and information anywhere else.

If you would like to join our “oily” team, either as a business or just to purchase the Young Living quality then you can find all of the instructions on how to do that (as well as more info on why I chose Young Living) at the bottom of this post here.