Chapter 9: My Life In Business - The Big Freeze (2011)

My life as Co-Founder of Thirty-One

20 chapters from my 20 years

Including never before shared stories

The year 2011 came in with a boom. As in a boom of so much business we struggled to keep up. What most in the direct sales industry would call the death knell for a company, was exactly what we went through. In February the business began a Recruiting Freeze. Meaning that the lifeblood of our business - new consultants - was stopped in its tracks. The sales in 2010 were exceedingly more than anticipated and 2011 was anticipated to be much higher. The break in allowing new people to join the business gave us a much needed opportunity to adjust and build some new processes and systems to keep up with the demand.

Sales continued to come in from our strong Consultant base. They had to adjust to not being able to enroll anyone on their teams which had an impact on their earning potential. Going through the challenges we faced with such quick paced growth was a mix of negative and positive for all involved. We needed a strong company and our sales field needed the business opportunity we had always committed to, but we couldn’t continue to function well as a company with the pace we were growing.

On the family front I was having all sorts of feelings regarding whether or not I wanted to have another child. I was about to turn 35 and I knew the clock was ticking. I was open to the chance I could get pregnant if it was in God’s will. At the same time we broke ground on a new home build in New Albany, Ohio. February was probably the absolute worst time to pour a basement foundation but those workers tackled it like it was nothing.

Although Thirty-One had moved into the newly acquired 700,000 square foot facility during the Fall we had a good portion of the office space section of the building going through a remodel of sorts. In March the additional space opened up and we were no longer squeezed into a smaller area of the office space. Having enough space for the business to run allowed things to work a lot smoother. But the feeling of a small startup company was all but gone and it was feeling like more like a corporate headquarters. I have honestly never worked for a large company so I am just assuming, but for all the growth we had we consistently heard that our culture was so much better than other corporate offices.

Our first National Conference hosted in Columbus had over 6000 in attendance, over quadruple the previous year. It was so good to see the actual faces and the energy behind the increase in Consultant numbers we typically saw on spreadsheets. As the Fall season at Thirty-One would soon be approaching we did a gradual “thaw” of the Recruiting Freeze. Allowing a limited number of people who had sign up on a wait list to finally join the company as Consultants. We had over 3,000 people on the wait list and many more who wanted to join after that.

In August we moved into our new home after a pretty smooth sale of our first Ohio home. It was bittersweet but the new house was everything we needed. We really focused on planting ourselves in the area as we had no idea how long we would be living there. We even went to the extent of buying property in Hocking Hills to have a weekend getaway for family. The area was the closest to the feeling of being in the mountains that the area had to offer. And boy did we miss the mountains of East Tennessee.

My sister announced she was pregnant in September and I had a tinge of jealousy when I heard the news. By some twist of fate I ended up missing my cycle and took a pregnancy test to find out it was positive and I was expecting also. It was only a matter of weeks after my positive pregnancy test that I suddenly began to feel a sense that something wasn’t right. I no longer had the early symptoms of pregnancy. I knew what a miscarriage felt like because I had gone through one ten years prior. Before long it was conclusive that I had miscarried. I was sad and I blamed my age. I kept reminding myself it wasn’t meant to be and that my family was perfect as is. But something I continued to feel like something was missing.

Between the surge of signups expected during the later part of the year and the already fast paced growth we had more than doubled the size of our sales field compared to the previous year. The Fall and holiday selling season was expected to more crazy than usual. Even with the large size of our current operations we still needed more space. An addition fulfillment location was opened about an hour away in Springfield to help with the demand. What a blessing it was to be experiencing all of this but at the same time we weren’t even seeing the kind of sales numbers that would be come our way.