2019 will provide opportunity to make long-lasting changes.
I’m writing this month’s note on the flight home to Texas from Arlington, VA, where I attended the DSA Fall Conference. The content that was covered felt both validating and inspiring to me. Validating because many of the issues we’ve tackled in this paper were addressed including our reputational woes and the FTC’s continued unwavering stance on compliance.
The conference was also inspiring. The coming year is an important one: 2019 will not only close out the “teen” years of the century, but it will also provide opportunity to position ourselves for the decade beginning in 2020.
What has felt like the far-off future for many years is upon us. It’s wonderful to see progress on some of our channel’s greatest challenges, like the possible development of portable health care for independent workers and having a fully-functional self-regulatory body.
Conferences are always a great place to further conversation—I think of them as incubators. Of course, that’s to be expected when a group of people passionate about the same things come together. Let’s always be mindful to make the most of it to move our channel forward.
In that vein, I want to invite you to a conference in January where many of these topics will continue to be discussed and dissected: the upcoming Direct Selling Legal & Compliance Summit which will be held in Austin, Texas January 24-25th.
Our publication is serving as the official media sponsor for this event, and as such I am excited to participate in many of the conversations from the stage. My good friend and mentor John Fleming will be delivering the closing keynote speech, sharing his vision for the future of our channel. You don’t want to miss that!
Registration is still open for the Summit and all direct selling company executives are invited. I would also encourage suppliers to invest in sponsorship as we did. You can find more details at dslcsummit.org.
And finally, I want to call out a new segment we’ll be running on public company financial results. We are listening in to each of the earnings calls and reading the transcripts so you don’t have to. Each quarter we’ll dissect the findings and provide insight and takeaways to help you in your own business. See the third quarter report on page 12.
Until next month!