Mr. Kimchi didn’t fire Lou right away. But it was only a matter of time.
The MLM industry is super chatty and gossipy, so people were calling Lou on a regular basis to tell him every rumor that was circulating about what was going on with the company. Most of the rumors were just uninformed conjecture — but there were some that felt malicious and almost slanderous toward Lou.
Whenever Lou would tell me a rumor that was clearly a lie, I took it so personally. I felt insulted and deeply hurt. Lou, on the other hand, took it all in stride. He wasn’t happy about it of course — and he is human, so it hurt — but he’d owned network-marketing companies before, and he fully understood how things happen.
In that industry, half the people love you, while the other half hate you. It’s just how it is, and it’s one of the many reasons that MLM has such a bad rap. Contrary to Mr. Kimchi’s point of view, MLM is a total people business, and to be blunt, people in MLM talk too much.
But when Mr. Kimchi ordered another change to the compensation plan — and claimed that the distributors were endorsing the changes — Lou finally reached an impasse. He could handle false rumors, and he could deal with people who were worried and talking too much, but he simply couldn’t tolerate the fraudulent manner in which Mr. Kimchi was conducting business.
When you watch boys and girls playing in the sandbox, or chasing each other around the playground, and you compare them to adults in the MLM world, there is hardly any difference. Everyone is busy trying to keep up with the games. There’s infighting, backbiting, and lots of silly horseplay. But the business sandbox is pretty messy, and when Lou stepped out of it, a lot of mud was slung his way.
I hated that so much.
As mentally strong as Lou can be, I know that this unraveling took a huge toll on him, too. Soon after he resigned, I noticed that Lou’s hands would shake really bad when he was holding a cup of coffee, and his naturally blonde hair had turned platinum white.
He had definitely lost a step or two in his vigor from all of his health issues and all of the drama in Miami, but this was different. This seemed like nerves. I never felt like Lou harbored the kind of anger I carried in my heart during the first few months after my departure from the company, but it definitely impacted him. His sunny optimism had dimmed, and his natural buoyancy seemed deflated.
