Like most 20-year-olds, Nancy On was searching for exactly what she wanted to do with her life and becoming increasingly frustrated when she couldn’t figure it out. And now, just six years later, Nancy has achieved staggering success in an unlikely form – network marketing.
At 20, Nancy began her own distribution business though the global nutritional supplements business USANA Health Sciences.
Two years into joining USANA (which also operates in Australia), Nancy became the youngest distributor to reach diamond director status in the company’s international history and became one of the top 25 fastest-growing associates in North America. Nancy is currently in Australia giving a series of motivational talks to her Australian colleagues.
“Before USANA I was a very lost kid, I was very depressed, I had no direction. I had never been academically driven.” she told Dynamic Business.
Nancy admits the frustration her lack of direction caused was felt not just by her, but her family as well: “there was also lot of conflict between us, they had a certain standard that I wasn’t fulfilling.”
Suffering from low self-esteem and believing she was someone you wouldn’t notice in a crowd, Nancy went to a USANA presentation as a favour to a friend. After the presentation, Nancy believed she had found the drive she was searching for.
“I was always looking for a way to change my life, but I didn’t think it would be in the form of a business.”
Nancy’s success has had it’s share of obstacles though, revealing she has constantly faced criticism by her peers for her age with her friends believing she was throwing away her youth for her work.
“A lot of my friends thought that I was sacrificing my youth. ‘You’re going to throw away your youth to start a business’ they would say, and I hear ‘you’re only young once’ all the time. But what they don’t know is starting my business has been the best fun I have ever had.”
Nancy admits she has never seen her career as a sacrifice, but rather an investment for her future happiness: “I have invested a few years of my youth to be able to have fun forever,” she said.
And for those who are sceptical about network marketing, she has this message: You need to be smart when it comes to an unconventional business method.
“Some are really good [products], and some are really bad, you have to educate yourself. All the average people go mainstream if you want to excel [in business] you have to take risks,” she added.
Currently in Melbourne, Nancy will soon head back to the US and Canada to give more presentations. She also has plans to try and build a solid international business, which will allow her to continue to share her story and inspire other young aspiring business-minded people.
“The biggest thing stopping you to succeed is yourself, if you give yourself a chance the outside world will too.”
