“I knew something wasn’t right. I couldn’t work harder,” DuFault said.

She agonized over the decision to move on to another direct-sales company and felt guilty for leaving people who relied on her. She researched the company she was thinking about switching to, with hopes of finding that it wasn’t as good as it was portrayed.

“Honest to God, I sat at my kitchen table and cried,” she said. “It was very much like getting a divorce. It was a very difficult, very emotional transition for me. It was horribly painful.”

For 13 months, DuFault has been direct selling for Nu Skin Enterprises, which produces personal-care, nutrition, and technology products focused on antiaging. She’s making more money, and she has a glow about her, not only from using the products, but also because she found the right fit.

Now, she said, “I’m on a journey that I’m supposed to be on.”

Time for a Change

Jolene Scanlon, 44, of Granite Bay, California, had been a direct seller for a home-decor company. She was doing well financially, earning 13 free trips around the globe and making enough that she bought her husband a BMW. She was passionate about it—until the company changed owners.

Unlike DuFault, Scanlon found the decision to leave easy. “It just felt right,” Scanlon said.

Now a direct seller for jewelry company Stella & Dot, Scanlon said this product is “an easier sell because I’m wearing it,” and she figures she can take home an additional $1,000 a month with this company’s better compensation plan.

Selling Stella & Dot, she said, allowed her to “get excited again.”

Another direct seller, Magda Nordahl, is Cookie Lee jewelry company’s No. 1 consultant in recruiting and No. 8 in sales. She had standout sales in her first year with Cookie Lee, which was five and a half years ago.

Nordahl’s experience was different than that of Scanlon and DuFault. The Yuba City, California, woman, who does a lot of selling in Sacramento, owned a Christian bookstore and was still passionate about it, even after 18 years. She had no plan to sell the thriving bookstore, which had been in her family a decade before she took it over.

She was going to buy some Cookie Lee jewelry from a woman she had met, and was blown away by her staff’s response to the jewelry they saw in the catalog.

“My little entrepreneurial side kicked in,” Nordahl said.

For six months, she sold Cookie Lee on the side while still operating her bookstore. But after six months, her take-home pay from selling Cookie Lee part-time was the same as from her longer, harder hours running the bookstore.

“Every month it was growing exponentially,” she said, adding that it “was the easiest job I’ve ever had.”

She sold the store.

“I felt very safe forging ahead,” Nordahl said. “A lot of factors made it easy,” including the money—“I’m making three times my old pay”—as well as recognition, independence, and helping other women feel beautiful. She’s amazed, she said, that this new opportunity, which she also has a passion for, has come into her life.