It's no secret that there is a lot of strife between the professional aromatherapy community and MLM Essential Oil Distributors and Wellness Advocates. There are numerous reasons for it, but the primary ones seem to come down to education and misinformation about essential oils and the aromatherapy practice. I remain in the middle of the road on this argument. I think MLM essential oil companies have their place in the aromatherapy world, but I will always and continue to advocate for education and safety first. I have many friends and colleagues on both sides of the argument.

A lot of people have serious and well-founded misgivings when it comes to Multi-Level Marketing companies (MLM's) at large. I'm sure you have heard them called scams or pyramid schemes, which is an entirely different issue that I am not going to address in this blog post. This post will also refrain from addressing any particular controversial issues about the MLM companies at hand as that is not the point of this post.

Let's start with my personal back story. I started using store bought essential oils in 2011 for mood support when I was dealing with anxiety and depression. I will admit, I didn't have a clue as to what I was doing, I had a heat diffuser and would occasionally put them in my bath water or place a few drops of lavender on a tissue under my pillow. I got away from them for a time, but came back to the essential oil world in 2016 when I attended an essential oil and yoga workshop at a local yoga studio. This was my first introduction to Young Living. From what I learned I was intrigued, until I looked at their website and found the starter kit and oils to be extremely expensive in comparison to the store bought ones I purchased in the past. I was unemployed at the time so I put that starter kit on hold.

In the meantime, I was having some skin issues on my face and around my eyes, and started tinkering around with making my own skin care products since nothing I purchased from high-end to drug store brands ever seemed to work for me. Within a few weeks my skin improved vastly and I was hooked on essential oils. Fast forward about six months and add in a new job - I finally decided to invest in a starter kit through Young Living. 

I do in fact like their oils even though they are quite expensive. I was hooked up with a knowledgeable community that shared so much information and really got me comfortable using my oils for more than just skin care. Within a couple months, I was encouraged to start selling oils, and I thought "what the heck and gave it a try." Life got in the way shortly thereafter and I put it on hold for a few months and then came back to it. In the end, it just wasn't the right fit for me.

I have always had a thirst for knowledge and wanted to learn more about aromatherapy and essential oils. Usually the recommendations were to read books by authors associated with Young Living, not that there is anything wrong with that per se, but it didn't give me the science that I was looking for and the foundational basis for understanding aromatherapy practices.

By December 2017, I decided that I wanted to seek out becoming a certified aromatherapist and was referred to the New York Institute of Aromatic Studies and enrolled in their dual certification program in the Foundations of Aromatherapy and French Aromatherapy. I received my Level One certification in February 2018 and am in the process of finishing my final paper for the French Aromatherapy certification. In addition, I have completed and passed the Essential Oils Safety Masterclass through the Tisserand Institute and the Aromatherapy Teaching Training Program through the Aromahead Institute. I am currently working on certifications in Natural Skin Care Formulation through the School of Natural Skin Care and am working on my Level Two certification program through the New York Institute of Aromatic Studies.

As I started learning more about the science behind essential oils, different modalities of practice, and essential oils safety through my certifications and connections within the professional aromatherapy community, I started to see a lot of negative things about MLM essential oil companies focusing on the lack of experience by some of the distributors and wellness advocates in addition to marketing misinformation about essential oil safety and practice. There are a lot of myths out there perpetuated by MLM companies that are untrue or at best partial truths. I don't think that this is done with malicious intent by any means, but on some base level a lot of the myths and practices seems to be for the sole purpose of selling and using more product. 

Some MLM essential oil companies espouse being based in "French Aromatherapy," which is true to some extent though cooking with essential oils and putting undiluted essential oils in water without an excipient, are in fact, not practiced within the purview of French Aromatherapy as I discovered in my certification program. I recently wrote a blog post on this subject clearing up myths from fact about the internal use of essential oils. Is any of this dangerous? Not really, but you probably aren't getting any benefits from cooking with essential oils because the heat will evaporate any therapeutic benefit the same way it burns off alcohol when it is used in cooking. It tastes good, but you aren't going to get drunk from bourbon chicken. Most importantly, oil and water don't mix, so when using oils in a hydrous liquid you always need to use some sort of excipient or dispersant so that the essential oil actually blends with the water otherwise it just floats on the surface. I also wrote about ingesting essential oils. 

Another problem that comes from the MLM model is overusing oils especially in rollers. It is pretty simple, the more oil you use, the more oil you buy. Once you learn proper blending ratios and dosages for each purpose, you will learn that sometimes "more oil is just more oil" and it does not actually increase the benefit of the product by using more. For instance, your rollers should probably have under 20 drops of essential oils MAX. Undiluted or "neat" application can be beneficial and used for targeted or acute circumstances, but doing this daily for a prolonged period of time has a high risk of adverse reactions or sensitization. Given that these high quality oils are so pure, why would you have to use more of them that the recommended safe doses to get a desired effect?

All essential oils regardless of their purity will oxidize due to heat, light, and oxygen exposure. It is also pertinent to know that most carrier oils are good for 1-2 years which will change the shelf life of any products that you make. While there are many unscrupulous essential oils companies out there that sell adulterated or low quality oils, there are many other companies that sell high quality, pure, unadulterated essential oils. 

But, it's not all bad, I do acknowledge that for those who sell through MLM companies that it can be a life-changing and enriching experience and I think that is truly great. However, I find that marketing the business aspect with "all you need is a starter kit to start your business" is a bit worrisome. Knowledge, experience, and training are essential in any business and it is easy to get bogged down by conflicting information passed down through Facebook groups, Pinterest recipes, and general Google searches. I don't think that everyone has the time or financial resources to enroll and complete aromatherapy certification programs, but there are many aromatherapists and industry professionals who will work with and educate clients on essential oil usage for free or an affordable fee.

As I mentioned earlier, I remain in the middle of the road on this argument and I am not trying to be a killjoy. I think MLM essential oil companies have their place in the aromatherapy world, but I will always and continue to advocate education and safety first. I don't begrudge my experience with selling for MLM's as it provided a valuable experience in laying the foundation work in my professional aromatherapy practice. My goal is always to provide the most accurate information and to disseminate factual information from trusted sources with many years of experience. Education is extremely important to me and a journey and  I am always willing to share information along the way.

I would like to personally thank Robert Tisserand, Jade Shutes, Andrea Butje, Amy Galper, Cathy Skipper, Joy Musacchio, and Cynthia Brownley who's courses, webinars, and workshops have provided an invaluable experience to me as an aromatherapist.

I have seen this come up a number of times and I have to say that I disagree with ignoring it or deleting the post/comment and/or removing the person from the group.

Wait... what?

I think the best thing that we can do is to address the issue and research a response to the situation. I will use my experience with the "OMG essential oils are killing your cats" hoopla from earlier this year.

I received numerous comments, posts to my personal Facebook profile and in groups and personal messages. I didn't know all the facts at first, so I decided to do some research, well actually a lot of research. And I thoroughly addressed the problem so that, when it comes up again, and you know it will, that I will be able to address the issue with FACTS. I responded to every post and comment and even wrote a series of blog posts about it, which continue to be the highest visited pages on my website.

I know its not always easy to respond to things like "essential oils suck" but to be honest unless they give a reason, it is hard to respond, but I would respond anyway with something to the extent of "I'm sorry that you feel that way, what happened to make you feel like that?" People like to feel like they are being heard.

I've worked professionally and personally in social media for over 10 years and one of the most common things businesses are afraid of is "What do I do if someone posts something negative?"

The worst thing you can do is ignore it or delete it. People will have negative things to say, but deleting comments you don't agree with can harm your business or brand. Also, it makes it look as if you either don't know the answer or can't be bothered to refute their claims. By all means, this should be thought about case by case and if someone is threatening harm or promoting hate speech - you may not only have to remove the comment, but sometimes report to Facebook or other social media platform.

I urge you to think about this. We all have immense resources at our fingertips and the expertise of many professionals with decades of experience to speak from on any given issue. I know when I have questions about something, I have my aromatherapy groups that I can talk to from my certification programs - and I always get responses even from the teachers as well as other colleagues. Sometimes, there is a wide array of opinions, but nonetheless, I find answers to everything that I am looking for.
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My advice is to be patient with people who challenge you and also to know that sometimes you do in fact have to agree to disagree and walk away, but don't walk away before the conversation has even begun!

Hi, I’m Jennifer, a certified aromatherapist and web and social media expert. I’ve worked personally and professionally using social media for over 15 years and have always been an early adopter of new platforms. I wrote this post to give you some tips and best practices for using social media for your business. I will primarily be focusing on Facebook for your essential oils or aromatherapy business.
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1. Ditch the script. Speak from the heart whether it is a single post, a live video, photo, or 101 class. I have friends involved with essential oil MLM’s and follow numerous essential oils and aromatherapy groups and pages, and am friends with many other oily individuals. People can spot a script a mile away. Scripts are a good reference point, but ALWAYS be sure to personalize it and custom tailor it to your audience, whether that be friends, family, prospects etc. For instance, I don’t have a lot of friends with kids therefore focusing a class on general 101 scripts including stuff for babies and children would sound insincere and would not be a good fit for my audience.
2. Focus Essential Oils 101 classes on special topics. It can be overwhelming to bombard your audience with all the things that you can do with the kit oils and samples if you are part of a MLM. Try focusing on a single topic and how those oils or products can support that topic. For instance, as an aromatherapist, I noticed a trend in my consultations, all of which focused in some part around stress relief and the physical manifestations of stress.
3. It can be hard to run online classes through Facebook. I am looking into using Thinkific for classes that way you can build an interactive class once and share it with new people as they come along. https://www.thinkific.com/
4. I think it’s important not to always be promoting products or kit oils and to show what you can do with the oils in an engaging way. It can be overwhelming to be all over the place with the kit oils and  all the other products available from your favorite essential oil company. I even find it overwhelming at times. I guess what I am trying to impart is to pick a starting point and go from there.
5. I think having an oils group or page separate from your personal profile and newsfeed is important. I post general stuff to my wall, but save the exclusive content for those in my group. It also helps to gage post engagement because you can see how many people saw the post or how many people viewed the Facebook live videos.
6. People love unboxing videos, I know I do. Do a Facebook live once a month when you get your monthly essential oils order. This is more engaging than posting a picture and saying everything to the right was FREE. What did you get? What does each oil or product do?
7. Share recipes or quick how to videos showing how easy it is to make rollers or other recipes.
8. Know that no matter how much you love your MLM essential oils company, some people are extremely biased towards all MLM companies. Explain how your company is different. I wrote a series of blog posts on this topic last year.  http://www.restorativearomatics.com/jennifers-oily-blog/category/mlm
9. Know your audience - your friends, family, and colleagues that you will be attempting to sell to... can they afford X per month? or X amount for a starter kit? For example, if you are selling anti-aging beauty products - how are you going to broach that subject with friends? are they in an age bracket where they need anti-aging products? Niche markets like this can become more complicated to sell.
10. Start a blog and write thoughtful blog posts on different subjects related to essential oils and aromatherapy without focusing on sales. If people just think you are constantly trying to sell them products, you will turn folks away.
11. If you use company materials and language or ones produced by your upline, personalize them and custom tailor them to your audience and reflect your personality. I am not some flowery suburban mom (not that there's anything wrong with that), I'm a city girl, quirky artist, former goth, and a bunch of other things. My materials reflect who I am. Also, Reciting company factoids is boring. I'm not going to come to an event where you read something that I could have read myself in document form or watched a pre-recorded video. Tell your story and your experience with the products. I don't personally care what the marketing literature says - does it work for you? will it work for me?
12. Share funny posts and videos about essential oils -- there are a ton of them out there. I personally like debunking myths and misinformation about essential oils.
13. Learn as much as you can about different oils -- meaning if you recommend peppermint, frankincense, and lavender for head tension - tell us why those oils work for relieving pain.
14. I see a lot of people posting about how their essential oils company is awesome and all that, which is fine, but are you selling them on the products or the company. It is okay to do both, but in moderation.
15. Offer to make samples for people, even if they don’t buy a kit right away, when you post they will often comment like OMG that restless legs cream you made me was AMAZING!!
16. You can also make Facebook friends lists and post more targeted content to those folks. You could have a mom’s list where you post content directly engaging them or list of folks who you can define by a certain topic like stress. These function as filters for your posts and are different than groups.
17. Post polls to gage audience interest like Make & Take workshops or class topics.
18. It is great to support fellow oily friends posts and vice versa, but if the same people are commenting in every oily post, it can look a little forced.
19. Don’t worry if people respond negatively to your posts, it happens to us all. Most of the time they are going off of myths and misinformation. I usually do my research and respond to them without being defensive.
20. Everyone has different levels of knowledge about essential oils, it can be helpful to share posts and articles by other people or friends. I have access to several professional aromatherapy groups and forums where I can always ask an expert. I also share some tips and facts from my aromatherapy certification courses.
21. When other non-oily folks post something on their page or in a local Facebook group like GAH My allergies are killing me, don’t be afraid to say, something like I use Lemon, Lavender, and Peppermint and my allergies don’t bother me anymore, would you like me to make you a sample?
22. Some people, while they may be interested in essential oils, may not be willing to commit to buying a starter kit or membership -- and that is okay. They may have specific interests when it comes to essential oils so you might want to consider customizing a basic kit for them or making them products that they can buy from you.​
23. If you are comfortable taking your own photos that is great if not, I recommend StockPhotos.com or you can do an advanced Google search for images that are free to reuse.
24. ​Be authentic and have fun!
    

If you have any questions or would like to schedule a one-on-one or group consultation for website, blogging, and social media advice for aromatherapists and essential oils distributors please visit my website at http://www.restorativearomatics.com/services.html I also post content regularly to my Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/restorativearomatics/