Danielle Khalil Paid Her Way Through School and Gained Lifelong Skills

Some of the common misconceptions that we'll hear is that Vector's a scam because you have to pay for the products. That's not true. There's no startup costs. People will say that you earn income from, like, recruiting other people. That's not true. There's no uplines, no downlines. It's direct sales, and you get paid based off of the sales that you actually earn. My name is Danielle Khalil. I am the district manager for the East Valley office for Vector Marketing and the assistant division manager for the Rising Sun division. So we're based out of Arizona and specifically East Valley, Arizona. Some of the biggest misconceptions that we'll typically hear will be that it's an MLM or there's a pyramid scheme where you're making money off of, like, family and friends. That's definitely not true. All of our representatives get paid off of the products that they sell. There's a base pay and a commissions pay as well. Now, one of the reasons that might start is because we get started showing friends and family because those are the people you're typically most comfortable with. Most of our students, when they get started, they don't have any sales experience, so it's just an easy way to get started building up that sales confidence. Another misconception that we might hear is that you have to pay for products. You absolutely don't have to pay for anything. When you work with us, you actually get an opportunity to get a loaner sample kit with four hundred dollars worth of Cutco that you get to use and you get to show off in your appointments. So my initial response when somebody claims that Vector's a scam or a pyramid scheme is actually more curious by what somebody's heard or what they think a pyramid scheme is. Most of the time when I hear those claims kind of spewed around, it's not in a knowledgeable or factual way really. It typically is just something that somebody heard online or they read on a Reddit, and there's not really too much of an understanding of what they're even asking. As many times as I've heard it's a scam from somebody who hasn't ever really worked with us at a high level, we have a million other students who have worked with us for years and years who have the most positive things to say after reaching promotions and earning scholarships and having a positive experience here. One of the last misconceptions that I'll kind of touch on people have is, like, if they don't know a bunch of people who have endless amounts of money and if they don't have a connection that's a huge base, then they wouldn't be successful with us. I am living proof that's not true. I was actually born in Johannesburg, South Africa, so all of my aunts and uncles and family friends, everyone lived out there. So when I got started with the position, I really was just getting started getting the word out to friends' parents or parents' friends and stuff like that, and ended up getting recommended, and they loved the product because the product was great. So typically, when you receive a call from Vector or if you see an ad online, you might see twenty-five dollar base per appointment or twenty dollar base per appointment. That's regarding to the base pay. But a lot of our students will end up earning a lot more off of the incentive. So there's two parts to it. There's base pay and incentive pay. Base pay is, for our office, it's twenty dollars or twenty-five dollars base per appointment, which means that you receive that... For example, it might be different in different offices, but let's say it's twenty dollar base pay. You receive that twenty dollar base pay per appointment that you complete. Appointments can either be done in person or virtually online. They're typically about forty-five minutes to an hour. It's going through, showing off the products, answering questions, and that sort of thing. That base pay is there so you always have a ground to stand on. You don't have to pressure your customers. You always know that you're making money for the appointments that you do. Then there's the other part of the pay, which is the incentive pay, and that's where it gets a lot more exciting and a lot of our students will end up earning a lot more. The incentive pay, our students start at ten percent commissions, so they earn ten percent off of whatever they sell. Once they reach a thousand dollars in overall sales, they get bumped up to fifteen percent commissions. At three thousand dollars in overall sales, they get bumped up to twenty percent commissions. At six thousand dollars in sales, they get bumped up to twenty-five percent commissions. Ten thousand dollars in sales, they get bumped up to thirty percent commissions, even fifty percent commissions. But what's really cool about that is you can only move forwards, never back down. So once you're at twenty-five percent, you'll never again be at fifteen percent. You can only move forwards in incentive levels. That's where our students can end up earning anywhere from fifty to a hundred to two hundred dollars plusOn a single appointment. When I first started, I had no sales experience whatsoever. So if the company was throwing me in front of random strangers telling me to do knife demos, I would've ran out the door with like my face being like, "Absolutely not for me." Our representatives get to get started with people they're comfortable with. That could be parents, aunts, uncles. That could be friends' parents, parents' friends. They really get to pick whoever it is. But the goal of those appointments are two things. Number one, they get comfortable with the products and with the presentations. It's kind of like if you were to be having a grand opening for a new business that you were starting up, the first thing that you would do is probably invite your friends and invite your family members and post on Facebook and say, "I'm having a grand opening." So it kind of felt the same type of way, and it definitely helped me get more comfortable with the products and with the presentations from the get-go. So once I understood that that was why I got to get started that way, it definitely helped. If the company was just giving us a list of cold calling leads or like sending us down the streets to do door to door, it would be really hard to actually create a great network. I have a ton of representatives on our team who will end up getting connected with, through the referral process, future mentors, future employers, scholarship grants. Cool is at the end of an appointment, typically customers will recommend five or 10 people who the representative can go see next. They'll actually send a heads-up text to their friends letting them know that the Cutco representative is gonna be reaching out, so it kind of sets up the appointment for the representative, which makes it really nice. They can also join our fair and show and events team, where they can work at a Cutco booth at different marketplaces, farmers' markets, swap meets, uh, horse shows, wine festivals, those types of things, and people are coming up to the booth all day to them and receiving, uh, Cutco demos or service that way. So we do work with a lot of college students. It's not the only audience that we work with. I have a ton of non-students who have worked on our team, post-grads and also full-time business owners or full-time moms who work with us part-time and crush the position. But typically, most of the representatives who we do work with are high school grads and college students for a couple of reasons. Number one, it's just because of our development program that we actually have. Our Skills for Life program is geared towards providing valuable skills that will allow college students to really become five-star graduates who are more competitive for future opportunities later on. Time management skills, knowing how to create my own schedule and use Google Calendar, communication skills, learning how to build rapport and sell myself, learning how to go set goals and how to make a plan and really go after it. And I actually saw that I was improving and really developing at a higher level in all these other areas of my life because of the skills that I was attaining with Vector. That's typically the number one reason that student representatives will continue to do Cutco Through College and stick with us for two to three to five plus years. One of the biggest reasons is because we have an entry-level sales position that requires no experience, where you can gain valuable skills that will help you in whatever career path you wanna do later on, I would say. Why we attract that audience and why we work really well with that audience is because of the flexibility of the schedule. It is a really attractive thing for college students to be able to say, "I can work weekdays. I can work weekends. I can work mornings. I can work evenings. I can stack my schedule this week that I have nothing going on and do a lot less this other week that I have finals week or whatever." We have so many students on our team who get internships with Vector and internship credits with Vector and scholarships with Vector and have all these incredible things to say after working with us. And somehow, all of that positive news still can't drain out the negative videos and negative reviews that come out. Honestly, I would say that the number one reason that reputation spreads, especially in this modern day and age, is because negative talk spreads a lot more quickly than positive does. So I would say check your sources definitely, 'cause if you see anything online from our students who have worked with us for multiple years, you can see a lot of what it really means to do Cutco Through College and to work with our programs. And just as many bad reviews and things online that are negative on there, I also know there's just as many positive. So it's also what you loo- tend to look for and what you really care about. We do work with a ton of students. We're the number one student recruiter in the US. We've been providing opportunities with them for so many years, and typically, when you are working with this age range just in general, and it's a little bit of a different structure, it's easy for people to be confused and misconceptions to go up online. So I would say the biggest thing is go figure it out for yourself what it's actually about. I would say to anyone who's hesitant is you have no idea what you're capable of or what this opportunity could do for you if you don't at least step up to the plate and give yourself a shot. I paid my way through school with the company. I've been working with Vector for now almost 10 years, and when I started, I was not looking for a career path, and the reason that I ended up doing well wasn't because I was a great salesperson or wasn't because I was completely confident walking into training. It was just because I was willing to give myself a shot. And at the end of the day, this isn't like a get rich quick scheme. Like, it's not like you're gonna come in and just start getting paychecks for sitting back and sitting low. It's what you put in is what you get out. But if you are somebody who's willing to put in the work and if you're somebody who's looking to do something that is gonna help you stand out on a resume and is gonna help you grow towards your future goals in the future, come in and give yourself a shot. Because best case scenario, you end up loving it, you're making great money, you have the flexible schedule, and you get to join the type of opportunity that so many students will look back at and say was the number one stepping stone in allowing them to really excel in their future. And worst case scenario, if you really do give it a shot, you might try it out for a week or two and decide it's not for you, and that's totally fine too. But I'd rather have somebody do that than look back for the rest of their lives saying, "Man, I wonder what would've happened if I gave it a shot." What separates a successful representative from somebody who struggles is being coachable and willing to work. I had no sales experience when I started. All you need to do well in this position is to be coachable. If there's one thing that I've learned with this position is 10 years later, I've gained a lot. I've had so much fun getting the big paychecks on stage and winning the fancy watch and driving the nice car and doing all those cool things that Vector provides, but I've gained so much more from this position from having a tough day and learning how to get up and how to respond the right way. That's the number one skill that will make people way more successful in any field in the future. So we have endless amounts of stories of representatives who come in with zero sales experience or no work experience at all and end up earning between $2,000 to $5,000 to $10,000 plus throughout the course of their first summer working with us. Just the financial knowledge and the way that you start thinking about finances in a different way, that will automatically help you make more money in your future because you think about finances in a more mature way. There's nothing in the future where communication skills, time management skills, goal-setting skills, learning how to carry yourself in a mature way and take ownership of what you're good at and what you're not so good at and moving forward, there's just no field that doesn't require those types of skills. At the end of the day, Vector is about more than just the money. It's about more than just the resume. It's about more than just the growth and the travel and the trophies. It's about becoming the person who you need to become in order to do what you wanna do later on.