Why reinvention—not recovery—will define the next era of direct selling.
You can also listen to the Direct Selling University presentation that inspired this article! Listen now or read below!
In January of last year, my life changed in a way I never could have planned or prepared for.
Despite doing everything possible, my family became one of more than 7,000 who lost their homes in the Palisades wildfires in Los Angeles. In a matter of hours, the home that represented everything I had worked for—financially, emotionally, professionally—was gone. To make it worse, we had been dropped by our insurance company just months earlier. There was no recovery plan. No safety net.
I watched my home burn.
Six months later, I found myself standing on a very different stage—inside AT&T Stadium in Dallas—sharing a new vision with 15,000 people. The contrast between those two moments was surreal. And it forced a realization that has shaped everything I believe about leadership today.
We do not live in a perpetual “after.”
The Myth of the Forever Breakthrough
Our culture—especially in direct selling—loves before-and-after stories. We celebrate transformation, momentum and peak performance. Social media has conditioned us to believe that success means permanently arriving on the other side.
But that isn’t real. What I’ve learned—personally and professionally—is that there is no such thing as being “done.” There is no forever breakthrough. Life and business don’t work in straight lines. They move in cycles. Seasons overlap. Joy and grief coexist. You can be healing and building at the same time. You can be leading while losing. Most of us don’t live at the peak. We live in the messy middle. And that’s not a detour. It’s the way forward.
Understanding the Seasons of Business
After 26 years in this industry—as a distributor, founder, owner and now executive—I’ve learned that business follows predictable seasons:
- The Beginning: Vision, hope, excitement
- The Climb: Hustle, focus, grind
- Momentum: Expansion, flow, magic
- Plateau: Same actions, diminishing returns
- The Dip: Doubt sets in
- The Valley: Fear replaces confidence
- Reinvention: Transformation, evolution, renewal
If you’ve been around long enough, you know this cycle doesn’t happen once. It repeats. Momentum never lasts forever. Plateaus are inevitable. Valleys are dangerous—not because they exist, but because staying in them can be fatal. Businesses don’t usually die in dramatic moments. They fade through slow irrelevance.
The leaders who survive are not the ones who avoid valleys. They’re the ones who know how to leave them.
Perspective Changes Everything
Seasons are normal. Wisdom in the season is optional. That distinction matters. Because without perspective, valleys feel like failure. With perspective, they become preparation.
Early in my career, I didn’t understand this. I had to live it. From starting as a distributor in 1999, to being “retired” in my early 20s, to getting a phone call that the company was shutting down—forcing my first reinvention. The only job I’d ever had before that was as a high school lifeguard.
I’ve lived multiple cycles since then. The 2008 recession nearly wiped us out. We lost 90 percent of the business we’d built. We reinvented, climbed again and hit new highs—only to face new valleys later. Each time, the lesson was the same: nothing lasts forever—not even success.
Where Leaders Lose Their Power
In one particularly dark season, a mentor pulled me aside and changed my perspective entirely. He said, “You’re focused on the wrong gap.” Like many leaders, I was fixated on the distance between where we once were and where we had fallen. That comparison creates shame. Guilt. A sense of personal failure.
Instead, he challenged me to look at a different gap: where we started versus where we are now.
That reframing shifts everything. Our power is not in what we achieve. Our power is in what we overcome—and who we become in the process. When leaders tie their identity to scorecards, rankings, revenue or momentum, burnout is inevitable. Because nothing goes up forever.
Resilience Is Not About Going Back
After losing my home, my first instinct was the same one many companies have in a downturn: I need to get back.
Get back to what we had. Get back to where we were. Get back to the peak.
But here’s the truth I had to accept: there was no going back. That life was gone. And the same is true for our industry. Resilience is not bouncing back. Resilience is bouncing forward. It’s the ability to accept where you are; let go of what was; and intentionally design what comes next.
That process begins with three steps:
- Letting Go
You cannot carry an old story into a new season. - Ownership and Acceptance
Acceptance doesn’t mean approval. It means honesty. You cannot extract wisdom from a season you refuse to acknowledge. - Reframing
When you ask, “What is this season preparing us for?,” pain becomes power.
The Shift the Future Requires
One of the fastest ways to diagnose whether a leadership team is stuck is to listen to its language.
- “Remember when we…”
- “If we could just get back to…”
- “This is how we did it before.”
That is past-based thinking. The market has shifted. Consumer behavior has shifted. Technology has shifted. Culture has shifted. And the companies that win next will be the ones willing to design forward—not replicate backward.
As Wayne Gretzky said: Skate to where the puck is going, not where it’s been.
Reinvention Begins with Alignment
Transformation doesn’t start with tools. It starts with alignment. The “who” and “what” must be aligned:
- Who: Board, investors, leadership, field, community
- What: Mission, vision, values, strategy, execution
When the “who” is misaligned, you get friction. When the “what” is unclear, you get confusion. Most of the challenges facing our channel today trace back to this gap. Alignment is the starting line of reinvention.
Every company will make its own bets. But from my perspective, the future is clear in a few areas:
- Data-driven and evidence-based decision making
- High personalization at scale
- High tech paired with high touch
- Speed as a core capability—not an advantage
- Reinvention as a function, not a phase
Technology should amplify relationships, not replace them. Trust and community remain the differentiators—but they must be supported by systems that can evolve as fast as the market does.
The Messy Middle Is Where Creation Happens
There is no going back. We are in a perpetual season of shift—as companies, as leaders, as an industry.
The messy middle is not where we get stuck.
It’s where we build.
It’s where we grow.
It’s where we become.
The next generation of direct selling companies, leaders and models will be created here—not in the comfort of momentum but in the courage of reinvention.
Check out this week’s bonus episode of the Direct Approach podcast to hear more from Blake Mallen on Leading Through Seasons of Reinvention
Available on your favorite platform! Apple, Spotify, Audible, YouTube
Blake Mallen, a billion-dollar brand builder and community marketing expert, has 25+ years of field, ownership and executive experience generating $3B+ in revenue, Blake brings a fresh and unique perspective from across direct selling industry, He is passionate about the power of potential and works with companies and communities to make the shifts needed to discover and develop theirs.
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