MLM attorney Kevin Thompson argues that culture and leadership determine whether companies succeed or face regulatory trouble. He points to Visalis, which faced criminal hacking allegations, as an example of how toxic culture breeds misconduct. Thompson prescribes humility, long-term commitment, and prioritizing customers over recruiter growth.
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Hi, everyone out there. Kevin Thompson here, MLM attorney and co founder of Thomson Burton. And it's late at night here, but I really feel the need to get this message out there. And I want to talk about the importance of culture recently. And this post is not about Visalis, but recently some of Visalas investigators were criminally indicted for hacking into a competitor's email accounts and Skype accounts and whatnot. Now, that event raises a lot of questions, questions that we're not going to explore here. But the issue is why did they even think that it was okay to do that? And why did they think it would be beneficial for Visalis? Of course, Visalis, perhaps they're going to deny knowledge or whatever. That's a separate issue. But there seems to be a lot of garbage that comes out of that organization. And I hear of some really bad rumors, just wretched things that I don't even want to repeat here. But I've heard of things that have happened over the past few years in that organization. And I'm thinking, how does that happen? How do things keep popping up? Why do these controversies keep coming out of this organization? And it might explain why they're currently paying John Maxwell to act as a mentor so these guys can grow up. But when I see this, and I see this story about these people that will potentially go to prison while doing a service on behalf of Visalis. Now, Visalis hasn't been criminally indicted. I'm not sure how that works if an entity can be indicted. None of the owners have been indicted personally. But it's just, it's the straw that has broken the camel's back. And it all boils down to culture. When you have a healthy enterprise with a really good culture, these sorts of things don't happen. And I've represented a lot of companies and I've represented a lot of bad ones. I've seen a lot of bad ones, and I represented a lot of good ones. And what separates the good from great, from the ones that make it, from the ones that don't, is really strong leadership. And not just leadership in an Adolf Hitler kind of way, because Adolf Hitler was an effective leader. I'm talking about leadership in a more healthy, holistic way that develops a good culture that can withstand the test of time that is not just a flash in the pan. And so I've got down just three points, three really small points that I want to share with you based on what I've seen and keep in mind. I struggle with leadership as well, because we're Building a law firm with 16 lawyers and we've got staff and it's a growing company. And I'm constantly thinking of ways to improve my leadership so we can scale this enterprise. And these are things that I think about. Culture is so important. If you have a responsible culture, you're not going to have people make silly mistakes and compromise on their integrity and compromise on their principles in an effort to please their boss. It just won't happen at Visalis. It's happened and it seems to happen a lot. And I think there's, it really boils down to leadership and what's happening at the enterprise level. So, number one, most importantly, humility. So in order to build a great culture, leadership has to have humility. Humility is recognizing that you're just one bad decision away from losing everything. Literally. You can have a significant business, you can be surrounded by all kinds of handlers, you can be surrounded by great people. But humility is understanding that you are one decision away from losing everything. One bad phone call, you mess with the wrong person, you do the wrong thing, you get caught at the wrong place at the wrong time, you get a picture out there on social media, you're one decision away from losing everything. And I think people with that kind of mindset, they tend to be more careful, they tend to be more responsible, they tend to be more grateful for the success that they have because they know that it can be gone in a moment. So nobody's bulletproof. So acknowledging that no matter how successful you are, no matter where you've come from, whether you've come from the bottom, you've come from the top, that pinnacle of success where you're at, it could be taken away. And sometimes leaders I've seen, they get so arrogant and to think that they're above the law, that they can just get away with things, that your average person, they just can't get away with that they're good communicators, that they're believable, that they've got resources, that they can just do what they want to do, when they want to do, leads to trouble every single time. So number one, humility. Number two, endurance. Being able to understanding there are no shortcuts, that success is a long term build that needs to be allowed to compound over time that it's okay to grow slowly. In this business, when people, when they get impatient, they start compromising on principles, they stop. I'm sorry, they start compromising on their integrity and they start cutting deals, they start cutting corners, they start poaching from other people. This whole thing with Visalis, it goes to Ocean Avenue, poaching leaders from Visalis organization. And so Visalas was trying to respond. Long term build is that you know what? People come and go. There are more people. You take a loss today, but you build it back up over time and eventually those people return to you. If you lead by a good example, it's having confidence in your product, it's knowing that your product is superior, if it is superior, if it's not superior, you're in a lot of trouble. And that's a separate issue because if your product is marginally better than what's in the marketplace, well, people are going to come and go, which means you have to resort to cheap tricks to recruit people. But if you have a good product, understand that it takes endurance and that communicating that sense to your enterprise, to your staff, to your teams, to the field, that this is a long term build. We're going to build something significant on, on bricks, not on sand. It leads to a better culture. And the final point is having a customer centric culture. And I know that this is not a very popular topic, that a lot of distributors, they want a distributor oriented company and they're looking for people to cut deals, which by the way, those deals, if they're undisclosed, they're illegal and they lead to really crazy shenanigans in the field. But a lot of networkers are looking for easier opportunities where maybe they're given volume in a binary or they're given cash or they're given more money. A customer centric company focuses on the end user, focuses on the customer because the company is in business not to recruit, although that's a function to help the company get from where it's at to where it needs to be. Recruiting is a function, but the primary goal is delivering product to the marketplace, period. And when that's your focus, when your focus is on the consumer, it leads to, in my opinion, a better culture where you're not tempted to bend over backwards and compromise on various principles to recruit the professional networkers. So humility, understanding that you can be knocked off that mountain in an instant. And Visalis, it might be close to hitting that point. Number two, endurance, the idea of committing to a long term build without compromising on principles or values. No deals. And three is a customer centric approach where you focus on delivering value to the marketplace. The SEC is talking about the importance of culture as they're regulating banks. And if banks have a culture of risk and irresponsibility, they can get into trouble. And culture shapes the constitution of a company. It's the DNA of a company. It drives every single decision. And if the culture is toxic, you will have bad things happen throughout the entire organization. And I've seen it in network marketing companies. Culture is an important topic. Companies need to get it right. So hope you found that helpful. It's important. Take care.
