Today we’d like to introduce you to Dustin Mitchell.
Hi Dustin, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstories with our readers.
My story is one riddled with obstacles and self-doubt, but also one that demonstrates the power of perseverance and hope. I did not come from a wealthy family. Like many families in America, we lived paycheck to paycheck. My father, an alcoholic who was abusive and emotionally unavailable to me as a child had a tremendous impact on my development and the result is that I developed borderline personality disorder (BPD) due to being a victim of his emotional and physical abuse, all related to being exposed to long-term fear or distress as a child. I grew up in a home where I lived in a constant state of fear, and felt unsupported, unloved, and invalidated. This is where, I believe, my drive and ambition come from.
Because I did not experience love as a child, I sought approval from external sources like school and the community. The best way to receive validation in those areas was to be the best and do things no other children were doing, like starting non-profit organizations and businesses. In short, I was acting and engaging with adults at an age when I should have been able to have been experiencing the things normal children do at that age.
I realized at an early age that in order to achieve my goals I needed people who believed in me and that led me to seek mentors, people who would take me under their wing and guide me. The first of those mentors was my high school history teacher, David Hinze, who was himself a very successful entrepreneur. Had it not been for David I doubt that I would have developed the personal fortitude to continue to get up every time life knocks me down. He taught me the value of never giving up and always fighting for what is right even if it is not popular.
The summer before my senior year of high school I decided that I could not take any more abuse from my father and I moved from Missouri to Washington State where I dual enrolled in high school and college. It was in Washington that I started my second company, a community hub, and website development company. I did not know anything about website development but I had several friends back in Missouri that did and I hired them to design the websites that I would sell to businesses in my Washington community. This was 1999 and the e-commerce boom was just revving up. I was in the right place at the right time, which has also been a big factor in the success that I have achieved. I attended a lot of business networking functions and I received a great deal of media attention because of my age and entrepreneurial spirit. It was at a morning networking meeting that I attended before my high school classes, that I met Dan Gaub, who became my second mentor.
Dan was a distributor for Market America, a network marketing company based out of Greensboro, North Carolina. By this point in my life, several people had already tried to recruit me to join their multi-level marketing (MLM) business but none of them really interested me or even made sense to me for that matter. My original intention was to sell Dan a website package, but after researching what his company provided and the opportunity available by becoming a distributor with Market America, I joined as a distributor the day I turn eighteen.
This decision turned out to be the most influential of any decision I’ve ever made in my professional life. At that time Market America was a young company and I once again found myself in the right place at the right time. My network quickly grew and within a few months, I was earning more money than I knew what to do with, eventually achieving the “rank” of Director, earning between $18,000 and $24,999 every month. Dan taught me how to invest my money and where to find business opportunities that many others overlook. Dan became the father that my biological father was incapable of being and he taught me many lessons about life and business that have helped to shape who I am today.
Armed with a residual income of well over a quarter million dollars a year, I decided to move back to Missouri because I missed my mom, but also because I was ready to make my mark and show exactly what I could accomplish. I had an insatiable desire to prove my “greatness,” and while this hunger drove me to succeed it also led me down some dark paths, paths that I regret having taken, but taught me priceless lessons nonetheless.
I moved back to Missouri the summer before my 21st birthday and despite having built a successful network marketing business as well as a traditional business I felt that there was something missing. I was terribly unhappy and the root of it was an internal battle I was waging over my sexuality. I am a gay man but at that point in my life, I would have rather been anything but gay. I hated myself and this dark secret was kept hidden at all costs. That is until new years eve of 2002 when my girlfriend, who was employed by my mother, and I decided to go to a party at her sorority on the campus of St. Louis University, but not before we went out with her brother and his boyfriend at one of St. Louis’ gay watering holes.
This article isn’t about my coming out so I will keep it as brief as possible, but it needs to be stated because it is an important part of my story. We did meet up with her brother and his boyfriend and we did make it to the sorority party. At this point in my life, I was what drinkers call a “lightweight.” I never drank so it didn’t take much to get me hammered. That is why sometime after midnight my girlfriend found me making out in a bedroom with three of her sorority sisters. As can be expected she blew up and I was kicked out into the frigid night air of January 1, 2003. My Mercedes had been parked at her brother’s apartment and I had no idea how to get back there, so I called his cell phone and explained what happened. He told me his address and told me to call a cab and just stay on his couch until they got home from the clubs. I did just that and passed out on his living room couch until he and his boyfriend came home around 5 AM, at which point they woke me up wanting to hear all the drama.
Without going into details, I will just say that her brother and his partner were more interested in me than they were in hearing about the events of the evening. One thing led to another and my girlfriend, who had decided to not stay at the sorority, walked in on her brother and me having sex, which terrified me because I was in the closet and I just knew that she was going to tell my mom, and if anyone was going to tell my mom that I am gay it was going to be me. Later that morning I called my mom and told her, which ironically, I didn’t have to do because my girlfriend never mentioned what happened to my mom and she and I never spoke again after that morning.
You may be wondering what the significance of this outing is. Well, when I do something, I subscribe to the philosophy of going big or going home. I immediately fell into what I thought was the “in-crowd” of the St. Louis gay community. It consisted of lawyers, doctors, judges, club owners, and other entrepreneurs. Most were double my age but it didn’t occur to me at the time that they were using me. I felt freed from my dark secret and I began to live my life the way that my new friends did, which consisted of drinking nearly every night and generally treating people that we thought were below us like they were trash. In my heart, it felt wrong but the acceptance of my new friends was important to me so I fell in line.
It was during this coming-out period that I started Outlook Magazine, a midwestern LGBT publication. I continued to build my Market America business but those I recruited were not the caliber of entrepreneurs with the drive to build a network marketing business, perhaps because I met most of them in bars. It was also during this period that the symptoms of BPD began to surface, which exhibited themselves with a noticeable loss of emotional control and increasing impulsivity. This also had a tremendous effect on how I felt about myself, and it negatively impacted my relationships with others. Despite everything that I had accomplished as a teen and in my early twenties, my poor self-image and excessive self-criticism, feelings of emptiness, and instability directly impacted my goals, values, and opinions. I began to attach myself to people for external validation and when that didn’t work, I would self-medicate with alcohol.
Despite the darkness, there was a flame in me that was fed by doing things for others, and to this day I find that the best way to feel better about my circumstances is to help others in need. I became politically active and volunteered with numerous organizations non-profit organizations. I disassociated myself from those in the gay community who I had initially thought were my friends and I started to focus on building meaningful relationships.
In 2007, I bought a 30-year-old custom cabinet manufacturing company, because I thought I was a brilliant businessman and could do anything regardless of having a total lack of knowledge in the area of cabinet manufacturing. This is right before the housing crisis and recession of the late 2000s and I had my butt handed to me on a platter. I lost hundreds of thousands of dollars and closed the doors of the business 15 months after I acquired it. I was totally devasted and decided to turn back to building Market America, which was still my financial security blanket, and my focus paid off with me earning more in commissions from Market America than any previous year. I also met the man who eventually became my husband.
I like to think that I am a man of incredible morals. I do what I feel is right regardless of what the consequences may be, and it was this thinking that led me to leave Market America in 2009. I didn’t feel that the company was in alignment with what its original purpose had been and I couldn’t stand in front of hopeful people telling them they could accomplish what I had, by following the same system, when I knew that it was a lie. It takes a lot of strength to walk away from an income like what I was being paid from Market America, but I did so with the intent of starting my own network marketing company that would encompass the integrity and values that Market America once had. And do I did just that and in 2010 I launched Assurance Inc. with my husband Michael.
Assurance exploded, growing so fast that we had trouble supporting the field from a corporate perspective. It seemed like fate was smiling on my new venture and I was traveling all over the United States presenting the Assurance business opportunity and training our independent distributors. I loved all of them and the future looked exciting. It was also during this time that I received a call from one of my employees informing me that my husband was cheating on me. It turned out that his infidelity has to be record-breaking and this destroyed my heart and with it any motivation to even live. In any company, when you take away a leader the field relies on for their vision, it will negatively impact the company as a whole, and that is exactly what happened to Assurance. Without a leader, the field stopped doing the result-producing activities needed to build their own businesses, and eventually, the decision was made to sell the company to another who discontinued our network marketing sales model.
At this point, my behavior became very typical of symptoms exhibited by individuals with BPD, which I had yet to be diagnosed with. I became self-destructive in a very real way and the fact that I survived this period of my life is the only thing I need to remember for me to know that there is a God who was looking after me. Michael and I divorced in 2012 after trying to “fix” our relationship with therapy, and I loved back to Washington. It was during this period that my mentor, Dan Gaub, died in a motorcycle accident, which turned out to be a suicide because he was about to be indicted by the Feds for financial crimes primarily related to forex trading. Over two dozen people, myself included, had entrusted him with hundreds of thousands of dollars, which we lost at the hands of my surrogate father. These two events had a significant impact on my already diminished ability to trust the people I loved. And to this day I struggle with trusting anyone, keeping everyone at arm’s length in an effort to protect my heart.
As you can imagine, this can create obstacles in both personal and business relationships, especially when one’s primary business is network marketing, which requires that one build relationships in order to grow their business. Despite this handicap, I joined a new network marketing company in 2013 and quickly rose through its ranks becoming a top-earning distributor within months of joining. One of Robert Greene’s rules in his book, “The 48 Laws of Power,” is that one should never outshine the master. This has always been a rule that I struggle with and as the rising star in this new company, I stole the limelight from others who had inflated egos, which created animosity between myself and other top earners. I decided to leave the company rather than be drawn into quarrels that would ultimately only harm the teams we had built.
After my departure, I was employed on the corporate team of two direct sales companies and invested in a hospitality group. Also, during this period, another mentor of mine, Frank Keefer, who was the third highest earner in Market America, and one of the partners in an industry magazine published in the early 2000s called, “Network Marketing Lifestyles,” decided to relaunch the magazine, which had gone out of business in 2005 after the editor stole money resulting in the magazine missing publication deadlines. That is how I came to learn of Nerium International, which has since rebranded as Neora, an anti-aging skincare, wellness, hair care, and weight management company, headquartered in Dallas.
The woman who eventually became my sponsor in Neora and whom I consider to be one of my best friends in the whole world began to hound me about how great the company’s products were. (At the time they only had three of them.) Her objective was to have me try them and publish an article in Network Marketing Lifestyles reviewing the products. I eventually relented and agreed to try the products, which I actually loved prompting me to inquire about the company’s compensation plan, which she emailed to me. On the first page of the compensation plan, I read that a man by the name of Jeff Olson was the President and CEO, and that is all I needed to know that I wanted to align myself with Neora. I contacted Lisa and told her to get in touch with her corporate office and tell them that I wanted them to fly me in to review the company and meet with Jeff, which she did and the company immediately arranged it. In February 2015 I became a Neora brand partner and I moved from St. Louis to Dallas to be close to the corporate team.
Like my previous network marketing business endeavors, I quickly grew my Neora business and within a year I was listed among the top 5% of income earners with the company. My Neora business only required 10 to 15 hours a week of my time, most of which is spent supporting my team. In 2021, I was the top recruiter in the company and I remain closely connected with the corporate team and those in my sales organization.
Network marketing is not my only endeavor and I don’t expect that it will ever be the only vehicle that I use to provide for myself financially. I am still actively engaged in acquiring and opening hospitality concepts, and I also actively invest in a variety of private and publicly traded companies. My book, “A Practical Guide to Success in Network Marketing,” is due to go to press this month.
As a life coach, certified in neuro-linguistic programming, I found Ethos Life Coaching, LLC in December 2021, which focuses on working with our clients to cultivate and develop their full human potential. The practice currently has a 6-month waiting list for new clients.
At the beginning of this article, I stated that I had some incredibly painful things happen to me as a child and unfortunately the consequences have carried into my life as an adult. However, every time I experience a failure, I refuse to allow it to define me or keep me down. I will always stand up, dust myself off, and continue to press forward. That is probably what is most aggravating to those who wish to see me fail; my refusal to stay down when life brings me to my knees. And what I want your readers to take from this article more than anything is that the only way you will ever be a failure is if you give up. The difference between success and failure is simple. Those who succeed simply did what those who fail did not or would not do.
I have stated in prior interviews that everyone makes mistakes in their lives and they’ve done things they are not proud of. One can do hundreds of great things but be remembered for one mistake or error of judgment. I have often thought about how I want to be remembered after I leave this world. When we pass away, there will be four definite things on our headstones. They will certainly inscribe our name, date of birth, and the day we died in the stone, and between those two dates, there is a dash. The “dash” is my legacy. That is how I will be remembered. What did I do to help others? How did my business contribute to society? Was I loving, caring, and sharing?
I don’t want to be remembered for my wealth or entrepreneurial brilliance. I want people to remember that I cared deeply about everyone and that I helped people, even if I barely knew them. I want to be remembered as someone who dedicated his time and life to helping others succeed, and I helped others change their thinking to realize that they can accomplish anything that they set their mind to.
I want to have such a positive impact on those that I’ve worked with, that my legacy is visible in their lives for years to come. I hope my legacy doesn’t just impact those that knew me personally, but that it has a positive effect on the families and generations of entrepreneurs who come long after me. I want my story to be one of perseverance, acceptance, hope, and love.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Everyone has obstacles and challenges. They’re part of life and as a life coach, I teach my clients that the key to overcoming them is to not focus on them. At a basic level, the law of attraction is known as the law of vibration. We know that thoughts have a frequency, they can be measured, and it is scientifically proven that your thoughts emit frequencies based on the emotional strength behind them. In layman’s terms, this means you attract more of what you think about and focus on.
My greatest challenge is to stop myself from thinking about obstacles and challenges that come about in my life. I know that if I focus on the good in my life that the answers to my obstacles will surface, but when I focus on the negative, I am only attracting more challenging circumstances.
My recommendation is that when life brings you to your knees, instead of giving your mental energy to the problem you’re facing, you focus on being grateful for what is good in your life, and the universe will bring the solution to your obstacles to light. Man becomes what he thinks (feels) about the most, so focus on the positive and you will overcome any obstacle you’ll ever face.
So maybe we end on discussing what matters most to you and why?
People are what matter the most. If you take care of people and treat them in a loving, caring, and sharing manner you will be wildly successful. Do more for others than you do for yourself. If you help enough other people achieve what they want in life you will find that you’ll be a hopeless success.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.ethoslifecoaching.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/neoraonline
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/ethoslifecoaching
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/icreateleaders
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEVg4ktcX-bcW357PK4xWlw
- Other: https://www.businessforhome.org/recommended-distributor/dustin-mitchell/
