I am going to be as brutally honest in the review as I can muster, but having been out of "the buiz" for a few years now, I am in a somewhat unique position to offer some perspective to those who are considering working for any Cydcor, Smart Circle, etc. ICL. The climate is admittedly different in every office, but there are several universals which never change much regardless of the location or branch manager/owner.
As for me, spent almost 18 months in the field before finally getting made an assistant manager. I was evicted from an apartment in that time period, lost the girl who I was madly in love with, and moved halfway across the country twice (a third time if you count when I got my own deal). Seeing how things worked behind the scenes was very eye opening, and it honestly was not all that different than the field in many respects. I was just using my 5's and 8's on current and prospective employees instead of customers I was trying to merch to.
From the very beginning, you are going to hear the word "opportunity" repeated endlessly in impacts, by your co-workers, and most assuredly by your owner! That if only to work hard enough, maintain your attitude and weather the storm, you can achieve the dream of financial independence. Unfortunately, there is far more to it than that. Maybe a fraction of 1% of those juicy prospects which are hired will ever get the keys to their own office. It seems so attainable because it is drilled into your brain everyday as such by nearly everyone you interact with on a daily basis. Stay in the buiz long enough, and you will have no outside life to think about. If you still have time for a GF or social life then you don't have what it takes to be an owner.
I'll start with the interviewing process itself, as that is probably what most people who might read these reviews are wanting to know. The fact of the matter is that the lifeblood of any Cydcor office is recruiting. It is impossible to survive for long unless you are constantly brining new people in. A good 50-75% of an owners time when the people are out in the field is interviewing prospects and making sure the Admin is bringing in new blood at a non-stop pace. Why so much recruiting? Simple really, the field sucks, and as such people are going to be quitting in droves on you 24-7. Every time Monday rolls around, more people will be gone to be replaced by others. Most won't even bother giving an explanation, they will just stop showing up.
Your initial interview will be short because (hopefully) there are still tons more people that day waiting to interview. All you basically need to know is if this person stands a chance in hell of surviving in the field without creating huge problems that could bring down overall morale and possibly make other people quit too. You get very good at this trait after all. The fact of the matter is most owners will hire nearly anyone that shows up and looks somewhat professional. Even if you only stick around a couple of weeks or days and make a few sales, it is still profit for the owner. They invest nothing in employees. Door to door sales is absolutely humiliating after all, so there is going to be a massive rate of attrition. The owner knows this full well, which is why atmosphere is so important to keep people as long as possible. The more charisma that the owner and leaders dish out, the higher the probability that people might stick around for another week or so. This adds up to a great deal of money at the end of a year. Trust me!
To those leaders out there in Cydcor land, you have both my sympathy and pity. It is a tough gig, and getting your team to the cusp of assistant manager promotion only to have them toast on you is gut wrenching. It sometimes seems like the whole world is against you and you are trying to sprint in a pit of molasses. Making matters worse, you are also bleeding money more than the distributors since you are paying out trainees out of your own pocket and throwing other incentives into the mix so people won't quit on you (at least, if you are smart you should be doing this). Maybe you just attended a conference and got your attitude kicked back in high gear, only to have it dropped back down a month later having your entire team toast on you. This "road to management" is not working out so well for you now is it? You are not alone. Even still, you have invested so much of yourself to get to this point that you hate to quit. So what awaits you when you finally get promoted? Keep reading. It will typically take you at least a year of being in the field to be promoted out, but I have seen it done faster before.
Assistant Manager!, Now the big bucks come rolling in right? Not so fast. Granted that you do now get overrides and you get to hang back at the office some of the time, but you still need your start up capital (hopefully your owner has been putting this aside for you before now). You also need to learn the ins and outs of running the office, like interviewing, reporting, banking,working with your hub, payroll, taxes, and and a host of other tasks. Depending on your owner, you will probably be back out in the field at least some of the time. You also have to figure in the time frame that it will take Cydcor to assign you a place to call your own. As a rookie owner, I would not count on having much say in where you are sent, nor would I count on being in a very large market. If you think you are done proving yourself you are sorely mistaken. Cydcor is very much a "what have you done for me lately" type of organization.
Another factor to consider at this juncture is who is going with you on your deal. If you already live in a merch house with those on your team (and chances are, if you have been in the buiz a year, you probably are) those people would be the most ideal situation. However, chances are incredibly high that wont be possible for any number of reasons. Cydcor has a great deal of inter-office drama not that much different from high school, so who decides to come with you is high drama in and of itself. You need at least five people, in my opinion, and hopefully more. If possible, try to see if there is another office owner you can shack up with in the city you are assigned to so you can share to cut costs (at least Initally). You are going to be bleeding out money like a funnel at first, so anything you can do to cut costs you are going to desperately need. Despite what many owners may tell you, your chances at success, even at this stage is highly doubtful.
Ownership! You made it, you are now the proud owner of a Cydcor ICL, with incorporation paperwork and a bank account to prove it. You can pat yourself on the back for a very brief time period, and also count yourself among the VERY few in a rare fraternity of the most despised business owners in the history of employment. Wait til you see people trashing you on sites like this one for the first time. It is a very strange feeling indeed.
So what to expect? Not much will change from the way things are before initially (if your promoting owner trained you well), except there will be far fewer people, and your entire mission to preserve your very existence will be on recruiting. The amount of money you are going to spend on advertising initially will boggle your mind, and if you did not bring an Admin with you that knows the buiz, that is going to be a ramp up period as well. You will quickly learn that being an "owner" is not what you were promised it was going to be in the beginning (however long go that was for you). If you make 50K your first year you will be among the very rare elite. Hell, even avoiding closing down and having to retrain I would consider a victory. They will end up sending you to a very saturated market in all probability, so you will have the deck stacked firmly against you. Hopefully you are at least still running the same campaign as you were at your previous office, but that is not always the case either.
Another thing to keep in mind is that while you might be an owner, you still have to play by Cydcor's rules. If you have any fascination about having a say in most processes, you might as well get those out of your head. You work for them and at their behest 100%. Another thing you will have to deal with at some point is either lawsuits or fines being levied against you for solicitation (or both). It is never a pleasant experience to have the cops show up to talk to you in the middle of a distributors highroller speech. Half your staff will probably quit that night.
So HEY GUYS.....
You wanna know if it's all worth it?
In my opinion, no. I did not leave because I failed, (In fact, a new oner took over my successful office) I left because I could not stand who or what I was becoming. It is nearly impossible to run a Cydcor ICL without being deceptive, especially if you are looking to get ahead and you will also be making your money off of the backs of others. Some people will end up ruined from their time at Cydcor, either personally, financially, or both, and that goes for owners too. How would you like having a ruined life on your concience?
For the few folks who make it to the very top of the food chain, like Adam Dorfman, for example, who is now an SNC, it can be very lucrative. I did not stick around long enough post ownership to start kicking out outside deals, but he obviously has. Hats off to the guy for that. I have met him at conferences before, and he is a stand up guy. I like Jamie Hepp out in LA a great deal also, and Ashley Allen down in Flordia. After you have been around for awhile, you begin to start running into all the same people. The fact of the matter is not that these people are necessarily flawed or evil, but their system is! It is not flawed from a business perspective, as Quill, or AT&T or T-mobile, or whoever all get their money, it is flawed from a humanistic perspective. It is a system that, by it's very design, will use people and discard them. Most of these owners have been in the game so long that they are oblivious to 3rd party perspective. I never got to that point.
So are you willing to roll the dice that you might be that fraction of a fraction of 1% that might be a successful Cydcor, Smart Circle, etc. owner?
If so, good luck. You are going to need it. For the rest of you, if you really enjoy sales, there are a multitude of places that will hire you on to do just that. And would you like to know the real kicker? They also offer salary, residuals, 401K, and medical benefits too!
I occasionally run across a Cydcor rep when I am out and about. I am see them pounding pavement, sweating like a pig in summer and freezing to death in winter. It makes me nostalgic, but it also makes me sad. They might very well be involved in a situation that will have a detrimental impact on them for the rest of their life. If I was more of a crusader, I might even pull them aside and try to talk to them, but people need to live their own life. God knows I have already made enough mistakes.
SilverFern Reviews
I am going to be as brutally honest in the review as I can muster, but having been out of "the buiz" for a few years now, I am in a somewhat unique position to offer some perspective to those who are considering working for any Cydcor, Smart Circle, etc. ICL. The climate is admittedly different in every office, but there are several universals which never change much regardless of the location or branch manager/owner.
As for me, spent almost 18 months in the field before finally getting made an assistant manager. I was evicted from an apartment in that time period, lost the girl who I was madly in love with, and moved halfway across the country twice (a third time if you count when I got my own deal). Seeing how things worked behind the scenes was very eye opening, and it honestly was not all that different than the field in many respects. I was just using my 5's and 8's on current and prospective employees instead of customers I was trying to merch to.
From the very beginning, you are going to hear the word "opportunity" repeated endlessly in impacts, by your co-workers, and most assuredly by your owner! That if only to work hard enough, maintain your attitude and weather the storm, you can achieve the dream of financial independence. Unfortunately, there is far more to it than that. Maybe a fraction of 1% of those juicy prospects which are hired will ever get the keys to their own office. It seems so attainable because it is drilled into your brain everyday as such by nearly everyone you interact with on a daily basis. Stay in the buiz long enough, and you will have no outside life to think about. If you still have time for a GF or social life then you don't have what it takes to be an owner.
I'll start with the interviewing process itself, as that is probably what most people who might read these reviews are wanting to know. The fact of the matter is that the lifeblood of any Cydcor office is recruiting. It is impossible to survive for long unless you are constantly brining new people in. A good 50-75% of an owners time when the people are out in the field is interviewing prospects and making sure the Admin is bringing in new blood at a non-stop pace. Why so much recruiting? Simple really, the field sucks, and as such people are going to be quitting in droves on you 24-7. Every time Monday rolls around, more people will be gone to be replaced by others. Most won't even bother giving an explanation, they will just stop showing up.
Your initial interview will be short because (hopefully) there are still tons more people that day waiting to interview. All you basically need to know is if this person stands a chance in hell of surviving in the field without creating huge problems that could bring down overall morale and possibly make other people quit too. You get very good at this trait after all. The fact of the matter is most owners will hire nearly anyone that shows up and looks somewhat professional. Even if you only stick around a couple of weeks or days and make a few sales, it is still profit for the owner. They invest nothing in employees. Door to door sales is absolutely humiliating after all, so there is going to be a massive rate of attrition. The owner knows this full well, which is why atmosphere is so important to keep people as long as possible. The more charisma that the owner and leaders dish out, the higher the probability that people might stick around for another week or so. This adds up to a great deal of money at the end of a year. Trust me!
To those leaders out there in Cydcor land, you have both my sympathy and pity. It is a tough gig, and getting your team to the cusp of assistant manager promotion only to have them toast on you is gut wrenching. It sometimes seems like the whole world is against you and you are trying to sprint in a pit of molasses. Making matters worse, you are also bleeding money more than the distributors since you are paying out trainees out of your own pocket and throwing other incentives into the mix so people won't quit on you (at least, if you are smart you should be doing this). Maybe you just attended a conference and got your attitude kicked back in high gear, only to have it dropped back down a month later having your entire team toast on you. This "road to management" is not working out so well for you now is it? You are not alone. Even still, you have invested so much of yourself to get to this point that you hate to quit. So what awaits you when you finally get promoted? Keep reading. It will typically take you at least a year of being in the field to be promoted out, but I have seen it done faster before.
Assistant Manager!, Now the big bucks come rolling in right? Not so fast. Granted that you do now get overrides and you get to hang back at the office some of the time, but you still need your start up capital (hopefully your owner has been putting this aside for you before now). You also need to learn the ins and outs of running the office, like interviewing, reporting, banking,working with your hub, payroll, taxes, and and a host of other tasks. Depending on your owner, you will probably be back out in the field at least some of the time. You also have to figure in the time frame that it will take Cydcor to assign you a place to call your own. As a rookie owner, I would not count on having much say in where you are sent, nor would I count on being in a very large market. If you think you are done proving yourself you are sorely mistaken. Cydcor is very much a "what have you done for me lately" type of organization.
Another factor to consider at this juncture is who is going with you on your deal. If you already live in a merch house with those on your team (and chances are, if you have been in the buiz a year, you probably are) those people would be the most ideal situation. However, chances are incredibly high that wont be possible for any number of reasons. Cydcor has a great deal of inter-office drama not that much different from high school, so who decides to come with you is high drama in and of itself. You need at least five people, in my opinion, and hopefully more. If possible, try to see if there is another office owner you can shack up with in the city you are assigned to so you can share to cut costs (at least Initally). You are going to be bleeding out money like a funnel at first, so anything you can do to cut costs you are going to desperately need. Despite what many owners may tell you, your chances at success, even at this stage is highly doubtful.
Ownership! You made it, you are now the proud owner of a Cydcor ICL, with incorporation paperwork and a bank account to prove it. You can pat yourself on the back for a very brief time period, and also count yourself among the VERY few in a rare fraternity of the most despised business owners in the history of employment. Wait til you see people trashing you on sites like this one for the first time. It is a very strange feeling indeed.
So what to expect? Not much will change from the way things are before initially (if your promoting owner trained you well), except there will be far fewer people, and your entire mission to preserve your very existence will be on recruiting. The amount of money you are going to spend on advertising initially will boggle your mind, and if you did not bring an Admin with you that knows the buiz, that is going to be a ramp up period as well. You will quickly learn that being an "owner" is not what you were promised it was going to be in the beginning (however long go that was for you). If you make 50K your first year you will be among the very rare elite. Hell, even avoiding closing down and having to retrain I would consider a victory. They will end up sending you to a very saturated market in all probability, so you will have the deck stacked firmly against you. Hopefully you are at least still running the same campaign as you were at your previous office, but that is not always the case either.
Another thing to keep in mind is that while you might be an owner, you still have to play by Cydcor's rules. If you have any fascination about having a say in most processes, you might as well get those out of your head. You work for them and at their behest 100%. Another thing you will have to deal with at some point is either lawsuits or fines being levied against you for solicitation (or both). It is never a pleasant experience to have the cops show up to talk to you in the middle of a distributors highroller speech. Half your staff will probably quit that night.
So HEY GUYS.....
You wanna know if it's all worth it?
In my opinion, no. I did not leave because I failed, (In fact, a new oner took over my successful office) I left because I could not stand who or what I was becoming. It is nearly impossible to run a Cydcor ICL without being deceptive, especially if you are looking to get ahead and you will also be making your money off of the backs of others. Some people will end up ruined from their time at Cydcor, either personally, financially, or both, and that goes for owners too. How would you like having a ruined life on your concience?
For the few folks who make it to the very top of the food chain, like Adam Dorfman, for example, who is now an SNC, it can be very lucrative. I did not stick around long enough post ownership to start kicking out outside deals, but he obviously has. Hats off to the guy for that. I have met him at conferences before, and he is a stand up guy. I like Jamie Hepp out in LA a great deal also, and Ashley Allen down in Flordia. After you have been around for awhile, you begin to start running into all the same people. The fact of the matter is not that these people are necessarily flawed or evil, but their system is! It is not flawed from a business perspective, as Quill, or AT&T or T-mobile, or whoever all get their money, it is flawed from a humanistic perspective. It is a system that, by it's very design, will use people and discard them. Most of these owners have been in the game so long that they are oblivious to 3rd party perspective. I never got to that point.
So are you willing to roll the dice that you might be that fraction of a fraction of 1% that might be a successful Cydcor, Smart Circle, etc. owner?
If so, good luck. You are going to need it. For the rest of you, if you really enjoy sales, there are a multitude of places that will hire you on to do just that. And would you like to know the real kicker? They also offer salary, residuals, 401K, and medical benefits too!
I occasionally run across a Cydcor rep when I am out and about. I am see them pounding pavement, sweating like a pig in summer and freezing to death in winter. It makes me nostalgic, but it also makes me sad. They might very well be involved in a situation that will have a detrimental impact on them for the rest of their life. If I was more of a crusader, I might even pull them aside and try to talk to them, but people need to live their own life. God knows I have already made enough mistakes.