MLMs are cults that prey on moms, Mormons and the military

On a technical course I took some years ago, the two instructors said they were having a get-together in the evening and had an interesting business opportunity to present to us. Being a snarky sort of guy in those days (I’ve reformed since), I jokingly said, “It’s Amway, right?”.

Both of them gave me a dead-eyed stare, and the room temperature dropped by about ten degrees.

The evening session wasn’t well-attended (I like to think I had some responsibility for that), but some of the class went. Sure enough…

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There was a point where I had several friends shilling Rodan+Fields cosmetics on facebook, often mentioning that the most successful R+F sales consultants get a free Lexus. I came across an article that explained that the “free” Lexus is really just R+F covering the payments on a Lexus lease so long as you (and your minions) keep up your sales above some ridiculous level. But YOU have to sign the lease (not R+F), so if your sales fall, you’re stuck with an $800/mo car lease for a few years. Which sounds like a pretty shitty sales incentive to me.

Anyway I started posting that article as a comment on every single R+F post my friends would put up. I stopped seeing R+F posts pretty quickly, although I suspect it wasn’t because they stopped posting (more likely they followed some guide put out by R+F on how to create a list of people who are excluded from seeing your R+F posts).

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Shortly after college, a family who were friends of my parents were giving me room to live for a couple months while I tried to get any job making enough to afford a room elsewhere. They were great people, but at one point did try to get me involved in an MLM for some company I’d never heard of before or again.

I’d never heard of MLMs at the time, but was leery of any job that offered easy wealth and seemed too good to be true. Major tipoffs were:

  • All the literature seemed to be big on enthusiasm and advancement and low on job details.
  • It sounded like I’d very quickly be in some kind of managerial role, and I couldn’t figure out if so, then who would be doing the grunt work?
  • They had actual products (basically household supplies IIRC). But it took awhile before I could figure out what those were, or what advantage they were supposed to confer over standard supplies. It just struck me as weird that so much literature was dedicated to the job and the products seemed like an afterthought.
  • I’d only really heard of snail-mail pyramid schemes, but this sounded vaguely similar.

So I kindly bowed out and obtained a series of pretty low wage jobs which didn’t make me feel as icky. Fortunately the folks were understanding and didn’t press the issue.

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This is one reason why military and women forced into “stay at home mom” roles are such a big target. They want to be salespeople or entrepreneurs but lack the access to those jobs

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Yep. Agree 100%. If stay-at-home wasn’t fetishized and/ or economically necessary these women would have access to real jobs.

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It’s undeniably a generalization; “generalization”, of itself, does not imply correctness or lack thereof =).

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The usual Amway scenario is:

  1. Sign up, get a bunch of merch, sell that stuff to all your friends, neighbors and acquaintances.
  2. You now have run out of anyone you know you can sell to, and so you are in the selling to strangers phase, which you will fail at, almost certainly.
  3. Drop out having made no money, or likely lost some. Most people will never get to the stage where they have any “downline” (people they wholesale to).

The organization’s top levels flourish despite high dropout rates at the bottom.

Along the way though they will add insult to injury by pressuring you to buy motivational courses and other training materials. A major message of the organization is that if you aren’t selling, there is something wrong with you. Not the product, not the organization. This isn’t unique to Amway but is part of sales culture generally, but I find it pretty repellant myself.

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I agree that it’s “not so much that these folks aren’t pushy salespeople.” It’s that these people—women—are demonized for working outside the home for money. When they are working from home for money, it’s OK. And when they are working outside the home—in the church offices, in the Tabernacle, in the Temple museum—without pay, it’s also OK.

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Or working as a talk radio host telling other women not to work outside the home… :-/

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My anecdote, and its P.S..

And a couple others I’d forgotten about.

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Vampires as an MLM scheme? There is DEFINITELY a movie in there…
edited to add: Or perhaps a seasn of Preacher

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I would think any profession that has people desperate for some kind of livable income is in the crosshairs of the MLMs. The sweet spot is people with some extra money, but not so much that they aren’t hungry, and not so little that they can’t bite.

Back when I was young and hoping to improve my place in life I went to a couple MLM pitches with stars in my eyes, but I didn’t have the money to join. I was dirt poor, working as a day laborer. Now I’m glad I didn’t have enough meat on my bones to get sucked into their rendering systems.

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“Lose money now, ask me how.”

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When I was in high school, I nearly fell for one of these. In one of the more embarrassing moments of my teenage years, I vividly remember walking into the house and telling my dad “I’m going to sell knives” – fortunately, he was already familiar with Cutco (and moreover, my personality) and quickly explained exactly how the scam worked. I did not call them back.

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I got suckered by Cutco too. Fortunately the office I worked for folded up without a trace before they started to hound me to pay for my sample kit.

MLMs: “make so much fuckn money at the top of the pyramid that you can’t pay the rent for your stripmall office”

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Has there ever been a pyramid scheme for selling pyramids?

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But…but… isn’t that how you motivate them??

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“you can’t close the leads you’re given”

HAH like MLMs ever give leads. No you generate leads, pitch, sell, and pay for your stock all on your own. That’s how you can tell it’s not a job. Because there’s no characteristics of employment.

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