On Sunday 30 March 2008, eligabeth2 wrote:
> hey,i am new to the survivors group and to the MLM industry and my
> question is , Is the MLM industry as a whole, corrupt or is it just a
> few companies that are?
It isn't that the companies themselves are corrupt (although some are),
but that the people in them are corrupt and have learned how to twist
the system for them to get rich at the expense of people in their
downline who can't afford to lose the money that's being drained.
> i just recently enrolled in to a company and
> so far i have not experienced any of the things that alot of the
> people have experienced in this group,i'd like to think i am not
> gullible but i guess desperate times cause for desperate measures. If
> i could get some advice on how to brace myself for things to come it
> would be greatly appreciated.
Nobody here is gullible, which is how the MLMs were able to work their
magic. That you think you are not gullible is your biggest weakness.
They will give you reasons and logic for most everything they do and
say. They have twisted reasoning that sounds good on the surface but
isn't true. For example, if you go to an open meeting by AW (I don't
use full names for my own reasons), the big daddy of all MLMs, they'll
say, "People will say this is a pyramid scheme, but it isn't, and I'll
tell you why," then they will go on to tell you why a legit company is
a pyramid scheme. They'll never answer the question of why isn't AW a
pyramid scheme. Instead they'll redirect you to think about other
companies and why they are or are not one. The question of if they are
one goes unanswered. Yet it all sounds quite logical and only one
person in 500 will realize they didn't answer the true question.
Those who don't think they are gullible will follow their answer and
think it's valid. One has to be more than not gullible. That's just a
passive state. One has to be active and actually be looking for
logical fallacies and holes because these people have been running
their sideshow snake oil sales for decades and the person giving you a
pitch has learned from someone who has learned from generations of
people successful at it. They know how to con people, especially those
who think they can't be conned.
Here's a few things to ponder: One ad on one TV show reaches more people
than a best selling novel or a top grossing movie by not just a few
million but by a factor of 10 or more. (I can't remember the numbers,
I think it's close to a factor of 100, but since I'm not sure, I'll
stick with what I know is true, however conservative the estimate may
be.) It can literally reach, through one TV add, over ten million
people in one shot.
Yet an MLM will say they can sell to more people through their
structure. Do you still believe it?
They'll say it costs less. Yes, it does, but on the other hand, you
look at how many customers they have through the pyramid and how many
they'd get from one ad on TV and the TV revenues will more than make up
the difference, again by a factor of 10 or more. If they still say
it's too expensive, compare that to the figures they gave you when they
said how much money the company made, what its yearly income is, and so
on. How can they do so well and NOT afford an ad on TV? They could
direct people to a website that gets their zip code and sends them to a
rep in that area so the members could still make money.
Why do they prohibit advertising on TV? They say it's to control
distribution, but that's not it. Think about it. I promise you, your
MLM prohibits TV ads and likely retail sales even if you find a store
that would carry it. There's reasons for this and one is that they
don't care about how much money the product makes but how much they
make on training.
> How i became involved in this industry was through a book someone had
> given me 'The business school' by robert kiyosaki,i had read another
> book of his earlier in my life 'Rich dad Poor dad' and this person
> who gave me the book (obviously a network marketer) advised me to
> read it.I only read this book because it ws written by Robert
> Kiyosaki, but it certainly got my attention.
While you'll read this in order, this is the first thing I wrote in this
reply because the name Kiyosaka is so well known. In short, and
putting it politely, he's full of bovine excrement. I have not read
his actual books BUT I have read excerpts from them. (I just know some
MLMer will take the first part of that statement and omit the rest of
the context because he doesn't have the courage to deal with the entire
truth, but that's just proof how they tell you what they want to
without telling you the rest.)
Kiyosaka wrote books before "Rich Dad, Poor Dad," but they were flops.
In those books he thanks the important teachers in his life, but he
NEVER, in any of those books before RD,PD, mentions the friend's Father
he says was such a strong influence on him and who was his best
teacher. People have even gone back, looked up property records, and
tracked down who lived in his neighborhood and no such man ever
existed. So this man is starting his book with a lie: "There's this
man who taught me all this." He's playing into the archetype of having
a wise mentor, which is a powerful image or icon in our culture. The
problem is it's wrong.
Big deal, right? If the stuff he says is true, then does it matter
where it comes from? Deal with the material, not the source, right?
Okay -- you should deal with the material, but this tells us from the
start that the source has no compulsion about lying in print and
continuing the lie after millions read his books.
As I write this, I'll mention that I have my own small business that
I've been running since 2001. It pays the bills and more. It's paid
for my antique Mercedes. It paid off over $23,000 worth of credit card
debt in under a year -- while I was saving up for the Mercedes. I know
a bit about running a business and paying the bills. I'm also,
suddenly, having to manage my Father's estate since he died in Jan/2007
(along with my Mother and sister). It wasn't a tiny amount. In that
time, with the help of a group of lawyers (as in not ONE lawyer, but a
group of lawyers) and a good accountant, I've learned a lot about money
management and arrange things to minimize taxes. As I've said before
in this group, I'm not citing any of this to brag but to qualify myself
as not just an idiot geek in his Mother's basement pretending like he
knows everything while he has no experience at all.
On to a quick point of one thing in his books. Just one point for an
example: He talks about wanting a Rolex watch. He says he could buy it
on his own, but then the money has to come in from his company to him
and it's taxed as income. Yet he's a smart cookie, or so he says, so
he has his COMPANY buy the watch and give it to him as a gift -- or
lets him use it, I forget which.
Smart, right?
Dumb.
Actually, dumb to think it's smart. If the money goes to his
corporation, then to him, it's his income and taxed accordingly. If it
stays with the company, even if the company buys a watch with it, it is
still corporate income, so the company still pays tax on it. If it's a
gift from the company, he has to declare it as income, so he still
can't get out of paying taxes on what the watch cost. If it's not a
gift but he gets the use of it, then there's still issues with it.
In short, in one simple example he tries to prove how smart he is, but
he essentially shows how little he actually knows about what he's
doing. This is the man that is writing the books everyone reads about
how to get rich. This is one example, one I can easily remember. If
you're still not sure, then Google his name with the word scam or fraud
and read a lot of the web sites that debunk him.
If you're really interested in how things work monetarily, read "The
Millionaire Next Door." There are many millionaires around that people
don't even know are millionaires. I was at a small birthday party
recently in surburbia and knew everyone there and had discussed money
with most of them because I was on good terms with them and because
most of us either had our own businesses or had other reasons to share
what we had been learning or knew about money management. I realized
that almost everyone in that group was a millionaire, some were
multimillionaires, and only one or two people in the room were likely
not. Yet you'd never know it. Most people were driving "regular"
cars. Only one or two were driving a Mercedes. The rest were driving
cars like a Jetta, a Passat, Accords, and so on -- cars that were
definitely in the under $30,000 (and most under $25,000) market. They
weren't wearing big baubles or talking about taking off on a private
jet to Cancun, or even hopping a flight for the weekend to Barbados.
Yet every one of them, in their forties and up, was either quite
comfortably retired or could retire from anything they were doing at
any point and still live comfortably for the rest of their lives.
> I dont want to be a statistic in this industry so if there are any
> tips to prevent me from any future headaches ,id rather find out now
> and stick to my Job.
One big thing is to not pay for training. You'll hear all this stuff
about how it's so much better than real or mainstream businesses, but
in a mainstream business if they hire you and you need training, they
pay for it. This isn't true in MLMs and many of the people in them who
do well make most of their money from training materials. One clue to
this is if you say you don't need them or don't need the conventions,
and they start to freeze you out, then you know their goal isn't to get
you to sell product, but to get you to spend money on training because
that's where THEY make money.
One other point: After you've been in and trying to recruit for a while,
look at how many people decide they don't want to join. Then compare
that to what they say to expect. Nobody wants to be in, but the
company keeps telling you it's a great opportunity. If it's that
great, then why aren't you at the top so quickly? Hint: It's not
because you're not working hard enough. If so many prospects turn you
down, it's because people don't like the product. If that's so and
most people turn you down, why should you expect it to be different for
others?
If it is as great an opportunity as they say, then watch how many people
come in and leave after a while. Find out how long people have been in
and how well they're doing. Get an idea of how many people are
rocketing up to the top of the sales chart in the time they say. Don't
take their word, watch. Watch your group. How many people have been
in for 5 years and aren't up at the top yet? How many have been in as
long as it's supposed to take to "make it" and haven't?
These people will tell you it's because they don't work hard enough, but
don't track what they say, track the figures. How long have they been
in? How far up are they? How many people in your group have "made it"
in the last year or five years?
And notice that if you start pointedly asking questions like that, your
upline will try to change your point of view or give you a cheerleading
speech that will make you think the numbers don't matter -- either that
or they'll scold you and make you feel like you don't want or deserve
success because you doubt.
And one last point: I've taught logic. I taught teenagers in treatment
and one thing I did was teach them logic and logical fallacies so they
could start learning how to reason logically and learn how to detect BS
quickly. My ex-gf took me to a QS meeting and I was watching carefully
what they said and found a number of logical fallacies in their
presentation. (Every time I type that I want to type logical
phallacies, which would not be inappropriate considering they're used
to screw people over.) Even with all that background AND with having
researched the company ahead of time and knowing the issues, at the end
they have a string of people come up and say things like, "I'm not
working now because we don't need the income from my job so I stay at
home with the kids." They cited point value and such, but not ONE ever
mentioned actual income. In all cases, the wife was at home, but I
never noticed one where both husband and wife were no longer working at
their regular job.
Yet at the end of this it sounded so wonderful I was tempted to chuck my
own business, which was paying the bills and, at that point, paying off
the credit card debt, and join up. They put on that good a show.
You want to avoid being a statistic? Over 99.5% of people in an MLM
lose money or don't make any. It's higher than that, but, again, when
I am not sure of the exact figure, I round down to one I know is
accurate. You have a better chance of winning if you go to Vegas and
put it all into blackjack.
You don't think you're gullible, but that's their strength and your
weakness. They've been doing this for years and learned from decades
of experience. They know what to tell you to keep you hooked. They
know how to convince you they're great and you need to stay with them.
They know how to convince you that you should spend all you have and
max out your credit cards to keep going in their group. If you want to
keep your money and not go in debt, get out now.
As Geena Davis said in "The Fly," "Be afraid. Be very afraid."
Hal
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