Innovation doesn’t fail because companies move too quickly. It fails because leaders haven’t built enough trust to bring people with them.
Every direct selling company wants to be more innovative. We want better technology, smarter systems, stronger customer experiences and faster growth. We know our industry is changing at a pace none of us could have imagined just a few years ago, and we understand that standing still is no longer an option.
What we don’t always recognize is that innovation comes with a price. And that price is change.
In direct selling, change isn’t simply a strategic decision made in a boardroom. It’s something experienced by thousands of independent entrepreneurs whose businesses, confidence and income are tied to the decisions we make as corporate leaders.
That’s why I’ve come to believe that the greatest challenge facing our industry isn’t learning how to innovate. It’s learning how to build organizations that can absorb change without losing trust.
That lesson became very real for me only weeks after launching MAKE Wellness. Like every new company, we began with tremendous excitement. The field was energized, enrollment was strong and our team felt like everything was unfolding according to plan. We had worked for years preparing for launch and imagined ourselves spending the coming months building on that momentum.
Instead, we found ourselves facing a crisis.
As we closed our first month, we realized our commission engine wasn’t functioning properly. Some people had been overpaid. Others had been underpaid. Even worse, there wasn’t an obvious pattern that explained why.
After digging deeper, we recognized the problem wasn’t simply the calculations. The technology platform we’d launched on couldn’t support the business we intended to build.
Within our first month, we made the difficult decision to replace our entire technology stack.
From a strategic perspective, it was absolutely the right decision. From an operational perspective, it created enormous disruption. But what stayed with me wasn’t the technology itself. It was watching how differently people responded to the same decision.
Some immediately understood why we had to act. Others had understandable questions about whether we could get it right. That’s when I realized the decision wasn’t really driving the reaction—trust was.
Every Organization Has a Trust Account
I’ve started thinking about leadership in terms of a trust account. Every conversation, every fulfilled commitment and every difficult decision handled with honesty becomes another deposit. Over time, those deposits create confidence that leadership is acting with integrity and in the best interests of the organization.
The opposite holds true as well. Every surprise announcement, every unanswered question and every moment when people feel excluded from the process becomes a withdrawal. Eventually, leaders ask the organization to embrace significant change only to discover there isn’t enough trust available to support it.
That’s when the blame begins. Corporate concludes the field doesn’t like change. The field concludes corporate doesn’t understand what’s happening outside headquarters. Most of the time, neither explanation is completely accurate. The organization simply hasn’t invested enough in trust before asking people to navigate uncertainty together.
Change is expensive—trust is the only currency that pays for it. When trust exists, people don’t have to love every decision. They simply need confidence that leadership is acting honestly, competently and with good intentions. Once that belief exists, organizations become remarkably resilient. They stop viewing every change as a threat and begin recognizing it as evidence that the company is continuing to improve.
Transparency Prevents the Wrong Story
One of the biggest mistakes leaders make during periods of change is believing silence protects the organization. In reality, silence creates a vacuum, and people naturally fill vacuums with stories.
Field leaders aren’t isolated from what’s happening. They’re talking with customers every day. They’re hearing competitive conversations. They’re seeing shifts in the marketplace long before many of those trends appear in executive dashboards. When leadership doesn’t communicate openly, people begin creating their own explanations, and those explanations are almost always worse than reality.
Transparency prevents that. It doesn’t require leaders to have every answer. It requires them to be honest about what they know, what they’re still learning and why certain decisions are being made.
I’ve also become convinced that many of us think about leadership using the wrong metaphor. We often imagine ourselves as airline pilots while the field sits quietly in the passenger cabin. Corporate determines the destination, everyone fastens their seatbelts and hopefully enjoys the flight.
Direct selling doesn’t work that way.
A better model is a leader who relies on scouts because scouts see what headquarters cannot. They’re closest to changing conditions, and the intelligence they bring back should shape better decisions. Our field leaders play exactly that role. They know when customer sentiment is shifting. They recognize competitive threats before most executives do. They understand where excitement is growing and where confidence is beginning to fade. Organizations become dramatically stronger when leadership treats that perspective as intelligence rather than criticism.
The better the information flowing back from the field, the better the decisions corporate can make.
Innovation Requires a Culture That Expects Change
Every executive says they want an innovative organization. What they’re really asking for is an organization that’s comfortable evolving. Those two ideas cannot be separated.
Innovation inevitably changes products, systems, technology and processes. Companies that consistently improve don’t treat those changes as interruptions. They establish an expectation that improvement is part of the culture.
That expectation matters because it changes how people interpret leadership decisions. Instead of asking, “Why are we changing again?” people begin asking, “How does this improvement make us stronger?”
It also requires leaders to communicate consistently that innovation is never finished. We don’t reach a point where systems become perfect or products stop evolving. Improvement is continuous, and organizations that embrace that reality become far more adaptable than those waiting for stability to return.
Bring the Field Along
One of the simplest ways to strengthen trust is eliminating what I call the “ta-da” moment. Corporate leaders love unveiling finished ideas. We announce a new initiative, reveal the final plan and expect everyone to celebrate with us.
The field often has a very different reaction. Their first question isn’t whether the decision is good. It’s why they weren’t part of the conversation.
That doesn’t mean every decision becomes a committee vote. Leadership has responsibilities involving finance, regulation and operations that aren’t always visible throughout the organization. But trusted field leaders should have opportunities to contribute perspective before major initiatives are finalized.
They don’t need to approve the decision, but they do deserve the opportunity to improve it.
Once decisions are made, communication should happen deliberately. Share the vision with key leaders first, answer their questions, give them context and then broaden the conversation throughout the organization. It may feel slower in the beginning, but it creates alignment instead of confusion.
Companies rarely lose momentum because they communicated too much. They lose momentum because they communicated too late.
Trust Is Built Before It’s Needed
One lesson continues to shape how I think about leadership. Trust isn’t created during difficult moments—it’s revealed during difficult moments.
The work happens long before the crisis arrives.
It grows every time leaders acknowledge reality instead of pretending everything is perfect. It grows when feedback from the field results in better decisions. It grows when executives demonstrate enough humility to admit they don’t have every answer.
Those moments may seem small individually, but together they create a culture capable of handling extraordinary change.
I’ve also learned that leadership sometimes requires choosing respect over popularity. People won’t always agree with difficult decisions. They will, however, follow leaders they trust.
The pace of change in our industry will only continue accelerating. Technology will evolve. Markets will shift. Consumer expectations will keep changing.
The brands that thrive won’t be the ones fortunate enough to avoid those realities. They’ll be the ones that invested in trust before they ever needed to spend it. Because change won’t break your company, but a low-trust culture could.
JUSTIN SERRA is co-founder and CEO of MAKE Wellness, where he leads company strategy, innovation and organizational culture. Under his leadership, MAKE Wellness surpassed $100 million in sales during its first year of operations. His leadership philosophy is grounded in transparency, trust and the belief that strong cultures are built before they are tested.
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