MLM - Who Moved My Cheese?

[MJ DeMarco]

So to what extent is Amway a cult?

For the scheme to work, it requires a cult like brainwashing. How else can you convince people to work endless hours for pennies? While also getting you to pay outrageous prices on things you can buy elsewhere? How else can you "groom" people for hours and days, only to blind-side them by "mentors" and "gatherings"?

 

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[Saint]

For the scheme to work, it requires a cult like brainwashing. How else can you convince people to work endless hours for pennies? While also getting you to pay outrageous prices on things you can buy elsewhere? How else can you "groom" people for hours and days, only to blind-side them by "mentors" and "gatherings"?

I looked up a bit about Amway and found this article about typical cult practices, which Amway is of course heavy on. A lot of the practices are things that I'd say all organizations do to some extent. The tech companies I've worked at had a borderline worshipful attitude toward the founder, promoted groupthink, borderline totalitarian worldview (we're gonna change the world!), artificial hype, etc. Even a nonprofit like Toastmasters, which benefited me tremendously in my early 20s, was a bit culty at times.

So in the context of a Fastlane business, if it ends up requiring employees, how far is too far in engaging in those kinds of practices? You obviously have to motivate and instill positive values in employees. Is the culty behavior just wrong because most will never make money on Amway, or is taking the culty practices too far always wrong, so it's a matter of degree? And how far is too far? If I hired employees and treated them well, but also had the ability to motivate them to an Amway-drone level of devotion, it'd probably make the business more successful. If there's no deception or harm (hopefully it's beneficial), I'm not sure where the line is. That's part of what kept me interested in the second guy's schtick - how did they get him to this point, and should I want my employees to be this devoted? Curious people's thoughts on where culture becomes cult

 

[RicardoGrande]

Just had this happen to me. Exchanged info at a business meetup with a dude and he off-hand mentioned he had a mentor. I congratulated him and within an attosecond he went "Yeah dude you should totally talk to him I can arrange a three-way call for us!". Didn't think much of it since people usually flap their gums at those events but did think the three-way sounded scammy.
At 11pm last night I got a text offering a "quick, 10 minute meeting" to "see if this is a good fit for an extended, in-person conversation". I declined and the guy got flustered and sent me the riot act in text that his mentor is an important man that was taking time away from his kids to talk to me (for a whole 10 minutes!)- then stated his mentor probably wouldn't have time again if I didn't sacrifice "just 10 minutes" to give them some info.

Every MLM alarm bell I had started ringing at that point. Almost wanted to feel bad but if you're going to try to belittle me to try to make me part of your little human-centipede money chain you can go to hell and you can die lmao.

 

[Saint]

Wow luckily I haven't had someone be rude like that yet! That's crazy to act that way when they're trying to get something from you.

Just had my third on Saturday. Went to a dinner with a bunch of guys Saturday night. Got the opportunity to share some of our products with the group, host was super generous in promoting them. After I shared about our business, this guy comes up to me and says our products are good and asks more about it, then I ask him what he does, he mentions his job, then mentions he "works with this couple that help people become their own business owners". Not this time, Amway! But the dude followed me around multiple times through the night trying to talk to me about it more.

What about "My wife and I have a business" makes me such a magnet for Amway???

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Just had this happen to me. Exchanged info at a business meetup with a dude and he off-hand mentioned he had a mentor. I congratulated him and within an attosecond he went "Yeah dude you should totally talk to him I can arrange a three-way call for us!". Didn't think much of it since people usually flap their gums at those events but did think the three-way sounded scammy.
At 11pm last night I got a text offering a "quick, 10 minute meeting" to "see if this is a good fit for an extended, in-person conversation". I declined and the guy got flustered and sent me the riot act in text that his mentor is an important man that was taking time away from his kids to talk to me (for a whole 10 minutes!)- then stated his mentor probably wouldn't have time again if I didn't sacrifice "just 10 minutes" to give them some info.

Every MLM alarm bell I had started ringing at that point. Almost wanted to feel bad but if you're going to try to belittle me to try to make me part of your little human-centipede money chain you can go to hell and you can die lmao.

That was absolutely a blind-sided 3-way call I spoke about above. SMH, you got away cheap!

 

[ZackerySprague]

Story Time!

Here's how a Dealership got "Potential leads" to their business by doing a Raffle. So I won't call out the brand name, but I received in the mail a flyer that the car brand was running a "Monopoly Game Week". It had a "Scratch off", win one row of the following "Houses" and you would have either won a car or straight up cash. Just to place some context here, I am not a guy who does Casinos, Lottery tickets, etc. I just don't firmly believe in them and never had. But I thought I'd play along, so I removed all of the plastic "Scratch Offs" and I apparently won a 2022 Volkswagen Taos S. So I am thinking, okay. Maybe I could sell my car, and remove over $18k worth of debt and have a car that's completely paid off since I couldn't do exactly that last year with my car crash with also trying to win a small claims court for debt that I owed. I call the number and enter in my confirmation code, the paper states that the confirmation code determines prize awarded. So I'm thinking I won something, but take this with a grain of salt, that's not how the system works. I am coming in with low expectations, but I knew this wasn't really a real thing. I found this very amusing! So I call the Auto Metroplex yesterday to get some questions answered, I didn't receive any direct answer. They just stated to come tomorrow (Today). So I go, I get in my car and go to the Dealership. EVERYONE won a car haha! Ah, this makes sense, people who arrived before me told me it was a scam. I decided to get in my car and head out, but I changed my mind because I wanted to figure out how their system works. A sales man explains it, but I said in short "Okay so it's a raffle then." *Sales man guy's face turns shocked/disappointment, try's to find the best rebuttal* The reason why it was a raffle was because they were waiting for "The Amazon Guy" for the tickets to write down the confirmation codes.

So in short, here's how the car dealership got "Leads", but made a lot of people leave at the sametime!

1. Send off a marketing flying in the mail (Snailmail).
2. Pretend that each person "Won" a car.
3. Have each person call this number and enter in a confirmation code. (The confirmation code was their raffle ticket.)
4. State on the flyer to come-in to the Metroplex to get your prize (Lead Generation, getting people in the door).
5. Let people ask about the car, most if not everybody, literally walked out the door because they didn't win the car. Feelings get hurt in the process.
6. The car dealerships doesn't get any deals.
7. Throw out piece of paper and claim it's a scam.

The End. What a way to get leads, but yet fail at the sametime. So sad.

 

[RicardoGrande]

So in short, here's how the car dealership got "Leads", but made a lot of people leave at the sametime!

1. Send off a marketing flying in the mail (Snailmail).
2. Pretend that each person "Won" a car.
3. Have each person call this number and enter in a confirmation code. (The confirmation code was their raffle ticket.)
4. State on the flyer to come-in to the Metroplex to get your prize (Lead Generation, getting people in the door).
5. Let people ask about the car, most if not everybody, literally walked out the door because they didn't win the car. Feelings get hurt in the process.
6. The car dealerships doesn't get any deals.
7. Throw out piece of paper and claim it's a scam.

Not sure if that was "getting leads" as much as a "spectacular instant earning of negative karma, bad will, and poor reputation".

 

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[Chet Shen]

So today my mum got an invite from a guy, let's called him Clarence. My mom met him on Facebook where she post about her being a single mother(yea we are in a bad family situation). So then they chatting about my mom being in a new country and how she is finding it. In the end, the man invited my mom into the call, and my mom invited me cuz she call me an entrepreneur boi. So I joined.

They talked about how hard going to a new country is and then he talked about his model. It was about selling a business model where it's similar to mlm. He talks about this business model is on the B and I side of the cash flow quadrant of Robert kiyosaki books. There's a lot of talk and we asked him what is he selling like 3 times and he kept saying that they sell the model not the product. Then he mentions about Amway and how to apply for it. He mentions things like passive income. He also used mcdonald as an example, saying that they don't sell burgers but franchises.Honestly I saw some posts about Amway from the what would you do if you're 18 to 25 again thread and now I'm aware of it. Honestly, now I view Amway in a negative light and won't want to do anything with it

 

[HoneyBadger302]

I'll admit to being dumb enough to fall for a MLM briefly once. It sounded good. The product(s) are real, and the training was laid out, and obviously flexible, so I went in thinking I could run my "business" my way (focusing on the products and basically operating like a private broker, rather than pushing for more "sales" people to sign up).

About the time I was halfway through the training I realized very quickly that there was never going to be an opportunity to run a business - all you could really keep doing was keeping the mlm scam going, while getting pushed to attend this or that event, or spend crazy amounts of money on their swag, all the while alienating your friends and family.

I bounced once I realized there was no "running your business the way you want" and instead you just had to keep pushing the MLM to actually make money. Then I flat out asked my upline/mentor (who was doing it "full time") what she actually earned per year - ya, it was less than my day job....#peaceout

The feelings of how dumb I was to fall for it haunt me to this day....

 

[mikecarlooch]

About 5 of my high school friends have tried to recruit me for the cutco knives pyramid scheme in the past week

 

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[NewManRising]

Just moved to Arizona and met a couple at the dog park. Great time there and the husband mentioned that he had an Amazon business that would provide them financial freedom. They invited us to church and we went with them and all was normal.

Then we got an invite to Panera at 7pm during a weekeday. Slightly odd, but we talked to them for about a 30 min, and then blindsided by their MLM pitch, mentioning a network, vague about the operations of the business, and what they sold.

Got home and searched up the book that they gave us to read and it was linked to one big MLM!

Couldn't believe they played such a long "con" on us. Let my guard down.

Anyone else have any of these stories?

The same happened to me a few weeks ago. A couple mentioned they needed to hire someone to be a salesman for their business. I did a few Zoom calls with them. It was after 2 calls they finally started their pitch. They wanted me to get licensed and pay a membership fee. They talked about making big money and having this community or team of people helping me out with my success. Did a few Google searches on the company. I ended up ghosting them.

 

[BlokeInProgress]

I'll admit to being dumb enough to fall for a MLM briefly once. It sounded good. The product(s) are real, and the training was laid out, and obviously flexible, so I went in thinking I could run my "business" my way (focusing on the products and basically operating like a private broker, rather than pushing for more "sales" people to sign up).

About the time I was halfway through the training I realized very quickly that there was never going to be an opportunity to run a business - all you could really keep doing was keeping the mlm scam going, while getting pushed to attend this or that event, or spend crazy amounts of money on their swag, all the while alienating your friends and family.

I bounced once I realized there was no "running your business the way you want" and instead you just had to keep pushing the MLM to actually make money. Then I flat out asked my upline/mentor (who was doing it "full time") what she actually earned per year - ya, it was less than my day job....#peaceout

The feelings of how dumb I was to fall for it haunt me to this day....

They've figured out how to brainwash people on how to think that the business takes time. Now they have a presentation where they layout a 2-5year plan and saying they're not pushing recruitment anymore, yet they contradict themselves slowly telling you that if you wanna be a Platinum or Diamond you have to keep pushing, keep talking to your mentor, keep networking because its the proven system.

Augh, the audio recording of their trainings are just cringy to listen to. They always have a caveat, those who fall out of the band wagon and post negative reviews about their experiences are those who cant follow the system and.........just isnt fit to be part of the mentorship group.