I signed up to be a consultant for Jamberry in December 2015, originally for a discount on cute nail products I knew I’d be buying, and as a way to bring in an extra income as a grad student without a full time job. The first couple years were really fun: minimum 30% commission on any sales I made, no inventory requirement, and no one pushing me to try and recruit people onto my team. I held parties and did a couple vendor events, wore the nail products all the time, and brought in over $1,000 my first year. Not super impressive when you split it over 12 months, but it was enough to put gas in my car and let me make some extra payments on my student loans. I had a few friends join my team over the years, but I never felt that pressure to recruit that you hear about from some people in other direct sales companies.
2019 brought some company changes that I didn’t completely agree with, but they weren’t enough for me to walk away. I thought I could work with the changes and still be able to bring in a second income. I had started my job as a forensic scientist the year before, and wanted to get serious about paying off my student loans faster. One way to do that was by working harder and taking my business more seriously. I looked for network marketing coaches and ended up investing $4,000+ over a year and a half (mostly on a credit card), in the hopes that they would be able to help me work through my company changes and be more successful. The coaches were nice and definitely knew what they were talking about (they were financially successful within their own companies), but I never really got what I was looking for from them. Throughout that year I lost customers and recruits because of the company changes, but I thought I could come back from it.
January 2020 brought even more company changes that I didn’t like, and I started to feel like I didn’t want to be a consultant anymore. The compensation plan update made it harder to earn money without recruiting people, which was one of the points that I respected about the company when I joined. We had the opportunity to offer lots of different types of products to our customers thanks to company changes, but that meant the nail products I was there for didn’t seem to be a priority any more. I hadn’t made any substantial sales in a while, and was basically spending more on products for myself than I was earning in commissions.
April 2020 I busted my butt and made $250 in sales, the most I had made in months. When all the commissions cleared, I had earned… $24. The ROI on all the effort I put in throughout that month was just 10%. I knew I wouldn’t be a consultant much longer, but couldn’t push myself to walk away because I didn’t want to be “a quitter”.
I had also been part of the company’s Influencer program, where a few consultants were sent products early and took pictures for the marketing team to use. A friend of mine helped me get on the team, which increased the diversity of women sharing nail pictures, and I was very excited to help the company in this way. I also thought having my pictures used in marketing would help boost my personal sales and commissions, so to me it was a win-win.
June 2020 was the final straw for me when I realized they made the decision to pretend that the Black Lives Matter movement wasn’t happening: no internal message to consultants, no external message to customers, nothing at all… just business as usual as if nothing was going on.
That first week of June one of my marketing images was shared on the main Instagram page, which made me excited at first, but then I questioned their motives for using my photo at that time when they had never shared one of my pictures before. When I looked back through previous photos, I realized they had only shared pictures of people with darker skin in June 2020 (my picture), June 2019, May 2018, and Feb 2018 – basically just once a year. Even though I originally was proud to be part of the diversity within the company, that made me feel extremely used.
I know there weren’t a lot of us Black consultants/customers, but it still made me feel like all they cared about was my money and not about me– someone who had been promoting their brand, buying their products, and selling them to my friends for over 3 years.
So yeah… I had to make a change.
I made the decision to take all of the work I was putting into building their business, and put it into building my own personal brand. A few months ago I officially changed my brand name from Sharana’s Jams (Jams for both Jamberry and because I was sharing things I loved, aka ‘that’s my jam’) to my first & middle name: Sharana Darcel. I also revamped the purpose of my brand from just sharing fun things that made me happy, to helping other women in STEM prioritize their self-care in order to minimize burnout. I’m much happier now knowing the work I’m doing is truly supporting people like me, and having the freedom to work with brands that actually give a damn about me and my community 👏🏾
Mandy Hale said it best: “Change is painful. But nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don’t belong.” I still love doing my nails and I wish my relationship with Jamberry hadn’t ended this way, I truly learned so much in the 3+ years I worked with them. In the end, I had to do what was right for me, even if that meant walking away.
