I’ve made a conscious and personal decision not to support any MLM
(multi-level-marketing) style businesses any longer. These used to be known as
pyramid schemes, but the bad connotations associated with that name have caused
the companies set up that way to spawn a new one.
You know the gist; person at the top of the pyramid creates a product
(which may be good or bad) and instead of retailing it the traditional way they
encourage people beneath them to become their consultants; marketing their
product usually via social media to friends and family. Each person in the
downward tiers of the pyramid filters money up to the top. The people standing
at the very top of the pyramid can indeed make a great deal of money; but those
outliers do so at the cost of every consultant that they convince to stand
beneath them.
There is a constant string of consultants on the bottom tier signing
up, spending a pant load of money (they usually cannot afford to waste) on
startup costs and convention fees, then dropping out as their personal business
founders and the vast wealth promised to everyone by the few folks standing at
the top of the pyramid fails to materialize. Those consultants are the ones whom
the company founders make most of their money from; and I am sick and tired of
seeing good people who I like, love, and admire being victimized this way.
Some of these MLM companies sell decent products; even products I have
purchased and appreciated over the years. Some of them are just snake oil –
pure and simple; usually promising effortless weight loss and even going so far
as to claim that essential oils draw the attention of protective angels and
other such nonsense. Honestly, the product and its merit (or lack thereof) is
not the point.
From a simple business standpoint MLM’s are not a good idea. In doing
research about business and marketing I know that businesses pay market analysts
a lot of money to accurately predict how to find the sweet spot where there is
enough of their product out there for people to buy, but not too much that
excesses of it are sitting unsold on shelves. MLM’s don’t take this into
account at all, they skip this step entirely. All consultants are encouraged to
sell as much as possible and acquire as many new consultants working beneath
them in the pyramid as possible with no analysis whatsoever of when each
consultant’s personal marketplace of friends and family has become over-saturated and exhausted. So unless consultants keep going out and making
new groups of friends and family, their current supply, however interested they
may be in the product, is going to run dry. This is why people may initially make
some money as an MLM consultant only to see sales dry up over time.
I find the tactic of encouraging people to hard sell to friends and
family to be dangerously damaging to relationships. Since most MLM consultants
are busy, hardworking women who need to earn extra money for their families
they primarily damage female friendships and the support systems that these
women desperately need. I find this unconscionable and I will not support it.
Most infuriatingly, I dislike how some of these MLM’s try to appeal to
people’s religious convictions; convincing them that their business practice is
God’s will for their life and enhances God in some way. As I recall, Jesus had some fairly strong words about utilizing faith to forward commerce.
Allow me to be clear; it is not the consultants in these schemes that I
am criticizing. It is them I am imploring to get out of these hurtful, futile
business practices before they can further be taken advantage of. Cut your
losses and get out now. I have stood by and watched so many good, hardworking,
intelligent people be taken for a ride by these companies over the years that I
cannot in good conscience stand by any longer without saying something.
MLM’s are bad. I would go so far as to say that the business model they
follow is exploitative and evil. The only way to force the practice from the
marketplace is to stop supporting it; both as a consultant and a consumer. So
even if an MLM company is selling literally the best product ever invented; I
will not purchase it any longer. I implore anyone reading this to do likewise.
