Today more than 15 million people in the United States are engaged in a direct sales organization. While statistics from the Direct Selling Association show an annual increase in the overall salesforce growth rate over the past decade, the reality is that many of these first-time entrepreneurs will fall short of their dreams and disappear.

Yes, we are ambitious. Direct Selling News and all of the companies in this industry, that is. No challenge is too great. To illustrate this point, DSN created the Global 100, the top direct selling companies in the world, based on 2009 year-end wholesale revenue (in U.S. dollars).

The success of your business—of any business—relies on sustained growth over time. And sustained growth requires access to fresh opportunities in new markets with high growth potential. Fortunately, America has a long history of regenerating itself.

Direct selling companies are realizing that cause marketing can make a big difference in the bottom line.

Direct selling is still strong around the world. Seventeen countries now have more than US$1 billion in sales annually through this channel of distribution.

It started as a catchy phrase, a marketing mantra. “Working smarter, not harder” is a term that began to be tossed around in the late 1980s to encourage people to be more efficient at the office so that they could then spend more time doing what they truly enjoyed. Now it has come to mean so much more.