Haines speaks to business students

Debbie Haines of Greencastle was recently a guest speaker at an entrepreneur class at Chambersburg Area High School. The topic was Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) or Network Marketing (NM). Haines explained the difference to the class as well as benefits and methods of choosing a good Network Marketing company.

"A pyramid or pyramid scheme," she said, "is an illegal network operation where participants are rewarded substantially for the recruitment or enrollment of other participants rather than for selling products or services. It is not traded on the stock market and people at the top get rich on the efforts of those beneath."

Network Marketing is a direct selling organization where people in the network earn their compensation or commission from selling products or services, which is contrary to a pyramid where no products or services are being sold. NM is now being taught at universities across the United States as a viable marketing plan.

NM has increased 91percent in the last 10 years, she told the students. Such well-known companies as Xerox, Texas Instruments, Microsoft, General Motors, General Electric, Westinghouse and Coca Cola use NM, at least in part, to market their products.

Haines explained, "You should select a company carefully as the number of NM companies is growing. You should consider the products' quality, reaching a huge expanding market, and they should be consumable. The important thing is to be ahead of a trend, namely the Baby Boomers, people born between 1946 and 1964. We are at the age where we want to be healthier and look younger."

Haines has been with the NM company, USANA Health Sciences, for four years. The company stresses proactive, rather than reactive, approaches to health. She earned a bachelor's degree in Biology from Shippensburg University and has been a Body and Soul fitness instructor for eight years, currently at Otterbein Ministry Center in Waynesboro.