The Circle Came First: Ubuntu, the Sou-Sou, and How I Want to Lead
Some of my earliest memories of business happened far from any office.
I remember the church rummage sale, folding tables lined up in the fellowship hall, everyone donating what they could and buying what they needed, with every dollar going back into the church. I remember the school bake sales. And I remember our neighbor sitting at our kitchen table with her pink box of goodies and a catalog, catching up with my mother while they flipped through the pages together. Nobody felt sold to. It felt like a visit.
I didn't have words for it back then, but I was watching community commerce. Neighbors supporting neighbors. Money moving through relationships and landing back where it started.
When I stepped into network marketing, I recognized that feeling right away. People helping each other. Women building something together from their kitchen tables and their phones. It felt older than any company I'd joined. It felt ancestral.
So I started digging. What I found was a line running back through Madam C.J. Walker, through Black mutual aid societies, through savings circles in West Africa and the Caribbean. And at the center of it all, I found a word from Southern Africa that put language to what I'd been feeling: Ubuntu.
I am because we are.
Ubuntu comes from the Nguni languages of Southern Africa, and it's best known through the Zulu and Xhosa saying Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu. In plain terms: a person becomes a person through other people.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu spent much of his life explaining it to the world. In his telling, a person with Ubuntu is generous and welcoming, feels secure enough to celebrate other people's wins, and understands that when someone else is pushed down, everyone loses something.
Nelson Mandela connected Ubuntu directly to leadership. He grew up watching the regent who raised him run tribal meetings, and what stuck with him was how that leader listened. Everyone spoke, from the most respected elder to the farmer at the back. The leader spoke last, after hearing them all, and worked toward agreement. Mandela later compared good leadership to a shepherd who walks behind the flock, letting the quickest go ahead while guiding the whole group from behind.
That picture changed how I think about my various roles in business. A leader in this tradition is measured by how well the whole group does.
The circle came first.
Long before anyone used the phrase "network marketing," communities of African descent were pooling money and building wealth together.
In Yoruba communities it's called esusu. Among the Igbo, isusu. In the Caribbean, sou-sou or pardner. In Haiti, sol. The model is simple: a group of people each put in the same amount on a regular schedule, and each round, one person takes home the whole pot. Everyone gets a turn. Nobody needs a bank's permission. The whole system runs on trust and relationships.
These circles traveled with our people through the Middle Passage and the Caribbean and into Black neighborhoods across the United States. Many families still run them today. They are Ubuntu with a ledger: my success depends on yours, and the money keeps moving until it comes back around to every single person.
We've always taken care of each other.
When Black Americans were shut out of banks, insurance, and white-owned businesses, we built our own.
In 1787, Richard Allen and Absalom Jones founded the Free African Society in Philadelphia. Members paid dues that supported widows, the sick, and families in need. Across the country, churches and benevolent societies did the same. W.E.B. Du Bois documented hundreds of these groups in his 1907 study of cooperation among Black Americans.
In Richmond, Virginia, Maggie Lena Walker took this further. Through the Independent Order of St. Luke, she opened the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank in 1903, becoming the first woman to charter a bank in the United States. Her goal was to keep Black dollars working inside the Black community, funding homes and businesses for the people who earned that money.
That church rummage sale I grew up with belongs to this same tradition. So does the bake sale. Ubuntu, carried across an ocean and adapted to survive.
These are the original network marketers.
In the early 1900s, Annie Turnbo Malone built a hair care company called Poro and sold it through a network of Black women agents who went door to door in their own communities. One of those agents was a washerwoman in St. Louis named Sarah Breedlove. She would later become Madam C.J. Walker.
Walker built her own company using the same model and grew it to thousands of agents. Her agents earned their own income, often far more than domestic work paid at the time. They served their own neighborhoods. And Walker organized them into local clubs that met together, supported each other, and gave back through charity work. In 1917, she brought her agents together in Philadelphia for one of the first national gatherings of American businesswomen, and she rewarded the agents who did the most for their communities, alongside the ones who sold the most.
Malone did something similar on a larger scale. Her Poro College in St. Louis trained thousands of women in business and beauty culture, giving them a path to financial independence when very few existed.
When I think about our neighbor at the kitchen table with her pink box and her catalog, I see these women. A trusted face, a visit over coffee, and income she earned on her own terms.
Indigenous traditions across the world share this same idea. Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, writes about the gift economy in Braiding Sweetgrass. In a gift economy, wealth grows as it moves through a community and comes back around. Holding on to everything makes a community poorer. Passing it along makes everyone richer, including the giver.
The sou-sou works this way. Ubuntu works this way. Walker's agent clubs worked this way. And at its best, the kind of business I'm part of can work this way too.
BUT FIRST: Let's talk about the stigma.
I know what a lot of people picture when they hear "network marketing." The friend from high school who messages you out of nowhere. The party where you feel pressured to buy. The garage full of product nobody can sell. The promise of quick money that never showed up.
Some of that reputation was earned. Too many people were sold a dream that didn't match reality. Too many friendships got strained because someone was chasing a number. I understand why people roll their eyes, and honestly, I've felt that hesitation myself.
But when I look closely at almost every complaint, I see the same root problem: someone treated people as a path to a sale. Ubuntu speaks directly to that. If I truly believe I become who I am through other people, I can't treat a friend like a lead. Their wellbeing is tied to mine.
Here's how I see this philosophy answering the most common concerns:
Pushy recruiting. In the sou-sou, nobody was forced into the circle. People joined because they trusted the group. I'd rather invite someone once, warmly, and accept a no gracefully. The friendship matters more than the sign-up.
Hype and big income promises. Ubuntu values honesty because trust holds the whole community together. I'll tell people what's realistic, share what this work actually takes, and celebrate the small, real wins along the way.
Pressure to buy or spend. If someone on my team is struggling financially, that hurts all of us. I will never ask anyone to spend money they don't have to hit a goal.
Leaders profiting while their teams struggle. Madam C.J. Walker rewarded the agents who served their communities. I want my success to show up in the people around me, or it doesn't count.
Perceptions change one relationship at a time. When people experience a business that actually feels like the circle, generous, honest, and built on trust, the stigma starts to lose its grip. That's the kind of experience I want every person who meets me to have.
Here's what leading from the older blueprint looks like for me day to day:
Everyone gets a turn. Like the sou-sou, my job is to make sure every person on my team has a real chance to win. I want to see the newest member celebrate her first sale as loudly as I'd celebrate my own rank advancement.
I speak last. Like the leader Mandela watched growing up, I want to listen to my whole team before I make decisions. The best ideas often come from the person who just joined.
I lead from behind. My goal is to push others ahead of me. If my team members outgrow me, I've done my job.
I measure success by the circle. My personal numbers matter less to me than how many people around me are earning, learning, and growing.
Relationships come first. Trust built the sou-sou. Trust built Walker's network. Trust is what I want people to feel when they work with me, the same way my mother felt sitting across from our neighbor at the kitchen table.
Money stays connected to community. Whenever I can, I want the income my team creates to flow back into our families, our neighborhoods, and the causes we care about, just like the rummage sale and the bake sale did.
An invitation.
I didn't invent this way of doing business, and neither did any company. We inherited it from the women who ran savings circles in West African markets, from the church mothers who collected dues for families in need, from Maggie Lena Walker and Annie Malone and Madam C.J. Walker. I saw it myself at folding tables in the fellowship hall and at our kitchen table. Ubuntu was the thread holding all of it together.
I'll be honest with you. Not long ago, I decided to step away from network marketing for good. I loved the potential of it, but I was tired of models that didn't match my values, and I was ready to close that chapter.
Then something came along that made me stop and listen.
In January 2027, a new skincare brand called Puralta is launching, and I have the chance to help build it from the ground floor. Puralta is built on innovative, high-performance formulations featuring thoughtfully curated ingredient profiles and clinically studied actives. From ECOCERT-COSMOS organic certification to GMP-certified facilities, this is the gold standard in ingredient integrity. Their philosophy is simple: skip the trend-chasing and give skin steady, consistent support. That idea landed with me, because it's how I want to lead too. Less noise, more care, and patience for results that last.
I've partnered with a collective of industry leaders who share that vision. We want to build with purpose and give every person's strengths room to shine. No single name sits at the top. We measure our success by the good work we do together, and by how many people in our circle are thriving.
That's Ubuntu from the ground floor. A chance to build the kind of business my neighbor at the kitchen table would have been proud of, and the kind Madam C.J. Walker's agents would recognize.
I am because we are. That's the kind of leader I want to be.
If this speaks to you, whether you've been part of this industry before, swore you'd never touch it, or just love the idea of building something meaningful with other people, I'd love to talk. We're just getting started, and the circle has space.
Sources for further reading
Jessica Gordon Nembhard, Collective Courage
A'Lelia Bundles, On Her Own Ground
Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness
Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom
Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass
W.E.B. Du Bois, Economic Co-operation Among Negro Americans