Why are people involved in Multi-Level Marketing so cult-like?

In My Humble Opinion
61

An interesting question, which I’ve wondered for a long time, since my ex-wife joined both a cult-like religion and a MLM during the time we were married.

The religion first. Kōfuku no Kagaku was founded by a Japanese guy says he’s the light of the universe, the incarnate of Apollo and others and claims the power of prophecy.

Thanks to wiki for a quote on some of the garbage he spews:

Anyway, since this part is a hijack, I’ll leave it, but the point is that this is some really weird stuff, and I met numerous friends of hers who actually believed it, Never mind that holes could be poked in it all day long, they just wanted to believe. You can see where this is going.

The MLM she got involved with is Nu Skin, out of Utah. I was approached by the guy who ran the Japanese school I was attending, for a “business opportunity.” This was when NuSkin first came to Japan, and the early people could make lot of money. Even so, I don’t like this type of business so I declined, but my (now ex-) wife got excited. She talked a number of her friends into joining, and most of them crashed and burned. She then got lucky, and recruited a couple of people who worked hard and got a fairly large downstream, and she did OK for a quite a few years. OK as in netting about what she would if she were working a normal job, not OK as in making tons of money, like the few on top.

The guy who recruited my wife was one of the top leaders in Japan. It’s apparent that the top are snakes. They’re nice-talking snakes, but I’d never trust them with anything. The claim is that anyone who works hard can make endless money, but the truth (which I’m just going my memory of a study I read somewhere) that about 1% makes shitloads of money, a few percent do OK, and the vast majority get killed.

The top know that the vast majority will lose money. They have to, in order for the top to make that much money. Profits have to come from somewhere, and it’s from the suckers who pressure their parents, friends and neighbors to buy overpriced vitamins and shampoo the first month to hit a sales target, then reach into their savings the second month, who will never recoop their investment. They know this, but everyone still pretends that it’s not the case.

The guy who signed up my ex-wife was typical. Since he was coaching my wife, he was trying to get her to be more sophisticated. To be more like him, telling recruits one thing, while understanding that you are lying. Unfortunately, my ex-wife was a true believer, so she never was able to really make it big.

62

Pretty much, although I didn’t actually do any of the actual selling. I also felt bad about pawning off garbage on people, especially those who looked like they couldn’t afford it. It was weird, a lot of times the boss wouldn’t want to buy, but they’d turn around and get their employees to buy instead.

That’s interesting, TokyoPlayer; I used to know a guy who married one of the NuSkin founder’s daughters. I can only imagine what their downstream generated, but they had an obscenely huge house on the hillside and a ranch with horses. Of course, it could have all been mortgaged to the hilt.

63

I’m sure I’ve told this story on the board before, but I’ll tell it again.

I called a lawyer I knew for some legal advice about a divorce. We arranged to meet to go over my questions. He answered my questions, then segued right into a sales pitch for Quixtar, which is Amway’s online alias. He explained that all I had to do was encourage my family and friends to shop through this web portal, and I’d make money.

I told him gently that as an employee for the State of Texas, and for a hospital, I could not ethically (or legally) engage in such a business because I was not permitted to have financial dealings with patients. And since I didn’t know who was and who wasn’t a patient, I couldn’t have a side business at all. This was, of course, a half-truth, but it got me off the hook.

Robin

64

If it was Fairfield County, there’s a pretty good chance I went on the same interview years and years ago. Basically I roll up on this shithole office in Milford, CT or whereever the heck it was. Fill out the application. Ok so far. Except no one will tell me what the actual job is. So this asshole takes me and this other fat fuck in his car and we spend the day driving around Norwalk or someplace watching him sell watches and crayons and crap to small businesses. I’m like “are you fucking kidding me? This is like the fundraiser crap I used to do in Boy Scouts where we canvassed our neighborhoods selling junk out of a giant cardboard suitcase!” The whole time this guy is going on about his collection of Jaguars and how much money he makes. I’m like “bullshit. You expect me to believe you bring in all this money selling a couple hundred dollars worth of junk a day?”

I was so fucking pissed I wasted an entire day with this asshole. The fat guy sold a pencil or something so he got to ring the bell and scream “Booya!” That seemed to make him happy.

65

Wow, it sounds like it was definitely the same place, msmith537 or at least a branch of the same scam. On other days they sold pens and cheap toys. I imagine someone had to be making money, but it sure as hell wasn’t these poor schlubs.

66

When I graduated from high school, I got a letter in the mail from Vector Marketing (and so did everyone else in my class) advertising this MLM BS. They sell Cutco brand knives, or rather they recruit college students to sell them. You know that even when people from their testimonials say “I was skeptical at first…” it’s a shady company.

67

No, I’m always very disappointed in friends who get involved in those kinds of things. They seem to develop a sort of addict-like desperation, too. People keep trying to get me into stupid schemes for selling sports drinks or energy drinks or other such bullshit. It always goes the same way:

Soon-to-be-ex-friend: “Hey, I’m getting involved in this really great business opportunity and you should get in on it too.” <explains pyramid scheme>
Me: “That sounds like a pyramid scheme.”
STBEF: “That’s what I thought at first, too. But this isn’t a pyramid scheme because of X and Y.”
Me: “Those sound like really trivial differences from some archetypical pyramid scheme. Why should I believe you?”
STBEF: “Well, if it were a pyramid scheme, could I say A and B?”
Me: “Well, yeah, they always say that.”
STBEF: “But it’s going to make so much money! This guy is so great at this kind of stuff!”
Me: “OK, let me know when it starts making money for you and I’ll be happy to get involved.”

Funny thing, I never seem to hear back from them about what a success their “business” was.

To this day, my rule of thumb is that if someone ever feels like they have to say “X is not a pyramid scheme”, X is undoubtedly a pyramid scheme.

The jury seems to be out on Vector/Cutco. My old boss at the DNC claimed to have sold Cutco knives for a little while in college and says he did well enough (about as well as a college student could expect to, selling kniveS) and got out when it was time to move up to a better job. He maintained that it was a legitimate business model. This guy could sell fire in hell, though, so he could have been snowing me. I know I smelled something funny when one of my friends tried to get me into Vector/Cutco.

Hostile Dialect,
Hostlie Dialect, Narcissist

68

I think that you’re confused as to what an MLM is. Cutco may be shady but it certainly is not an MLM, or at least it wasn’t when someone I knew sold them several years ago. Some quick Googling confirms that they’re still not an MLM.

Cutco recruits people to sell their second rate knives. The people that they recruit sell them door to door or whatever but are not expected to recruit others below them to sell products. There is just one level.

69

By brother’s best friend sold Cutco knives for awhile. It’s fine for making some pocket money when you are 19, but I don’t see how you can make any money selling small volume, low repeat products door to door (no internet back then).

70

OP:

  1. Because both are selling fundamentally-untenable premises (in the cult, messianic belief in whatever guru or theory du jour, in MLM, the indefinite viability of an economic model that, apart from any other flaws, works only when a geometric progression that would quickly lead to everyone on Earth needing to be a member in order for the second-to-last-joining member to see any payout is not made impossible by the iron laws of mathematics).

  2. Because disappointment and delusionment will occur at inordinately high rates when members inevitably begin discovering that all their problems have not been solved and that some fishy stuff seems to go on in the higher levels of the organization, it’s important for both to have very robust procedural and emotional tools for retention – the scam, even as a scam, falls apart much faster if people are allowed to defect at will in the numbers that they would absent some form of mind-control/coercion approach.

  3. Because membership in the group is sold in large part as “the answer to all your problems,” once you are in the “circle,” it’s easy to be led to think of your life before membership as “the world of problems and unenglightenment.” And of course leadership manipulates this in both cases.

  4. Con men who establish a releatively successful con are very persuasive and in particular know how to make their victims con themselves and others.

  5. Both have a sort of “higher cause” (enlightenment? Success?) that can be used to justify any sausage-making compromises that might otherwise mar the ideal. “We need to do this to achieve our greater goal – but people outside the Org (oops, I was channeling anonymous) can’t be expected to understand why this is necessary, so this needs to be our little secret.” Oh hey, turns out that is also one of the conman’s/manipulator’s favorite trick – to make you complicit in his own questionable/criminal conduct. “There’s no going back now – we’re in this together.”

  6. As noted, both type of groups reserve the right to explain away failure of the group’s mission by blaming individual adherents for insufficient zeal, faith, effort. Thus, to be a good member (and what kid does not want a gold star from the teacher?), you need to plaster that smile on your face and not show any sign of dissent. In MLM, they even sometimes have the candor to refer to the “fake it to make it strategy,” privately telling newbies that they should buy a couple of expensive baubles (a Rolex or whatever) and allow their new would-be “downstream” recruits to believe that Mr. Newbie has already started seeing the royalties pour in (and hasn’t in fact bought the watch on his last dollar of credit).

71

Check out thisguy. One of my acquaintances apparently is into him.

These people all use the same language, regardless if it selling ad space, flipping homes, or whatever. Basically they play up like owning your own business and making money is so easy, an idiot can do it. It’s so easy you would have to be an idiot not to do it. Why toil away in your job instead of just collect all this passive income?

The thing is, for all these “get rich quick” guys, their product is books and seminars on how to get rich quick. That’s the hard part with starting a business - thinking of that idea that you can make a million dollars with. They sort of gloss over that in the seminars.

Also, I am so sick of hearing “fake it until you make it”. I am a civil engineer by education. Engineers do not “fake it until they make it”. They go to an acredited engineering school. They have to pass the EIT exam and then after 5 years they can become a licensed PE. You cannot “fake” anything. If you don’t have the background and qualifications, you can’t fucking design a building. The same holds true if you want to be a lawyer, architect, surgeon, accountant or licensed securities trader. Truly successful people do not fake it until they make it. They prepare and train and research and work their ass off and success comes. IOW, you have to do a bit more than wear a low-end Rolex or buy the cheapest used 3 series BMW you can find.

People who fake it until they make it are idiots and incompetants who are of no use other than scamming other idiots and incompetants out of their money. It’s like sending a 10 guys into a casino and saying the guy who happened to win big at roullette is a roullette genius. He is until the odds catch up with him. I don’t like to gamble. Certainly not on grinning cult-like buffoons.

72

Everything you say is true of non-sales jobs and not-true of sales.

73

My brother got a phone call the other day from someone saying they’d seen his resume on monster.com and wanted to interview him. Since he never PUT his resume on there, he declined to return the call right away, thinking they must have the wrong number. The call was from Primerica. I warned him about them, so he won’t waste his time returning their call on Monday.

Turns out when he filed for unemployment a few years back, the Ohio Unemployment office puts your resume on monster.com.

74

It could be mortgaged, but also not. The founders of the MLM schemes make insane amounts of money.

75

One should never belong to someone else’s religion, one should always start one’s own.

76

Similarly, anyone who says “it’s all perfectly legal” about what their doing means that it is not legal at all. Legal businesses don’t have to tell anyone what they’re doing is legal.

My answer to that statement is, “and if it were illegal, you’d tell me that?”

77

Those companies are everywhere. I got suckered into the exact same scenario several years back, only it was office supplies out of a Viking catalog. I knew I was in trouble the very second the car started rolling, but it was too late to back out. Driving to meet my girlfriend (now wife) after the “interview” was one of the saddest moments of my life. It doesn’t bother me now, b/c I know so many people who have been duped into the same situation.

They had dozens of similar offices in the Atlanta area, and still do.

78

I totally forgot* about when my former roommate got involved in the Advocare MLM! She asked me to go with her to a meeting at one of the guy’s houses because she didn’t feel safe going alone (which should have told her something right there) so I went just so she would feel more comfortable. The guy doing the pitch told a story about how the Advocare vitamins healed his wife because after giving birth to their 3 kids in 4.5 years she was so ill that her hair was falling out and she had almost no energy at the end of the day. When she started taking the vitamins she felt loads better! I raised my hand and asked if he didn’t think that the wear and tear placed on her body from being constantly pregant for damn near 5 years might have had a bit to do with her problems and that maybe not being pregnant anymore might have played a bigger part in her recovery than the vitamins they were selling. He didn’t appreciate that at all. My old roommate still signed up to sell the vitamins and paid like $250 for a “starter pack” that she could either break down and sell to other people or take for herself to be able to tell people about how much her life improved by using Advocare. When she moved out a year later she threw out the dusty box full of vitamins and suppliment shakes almost completely full because no one wanted to pay 10 or 12 times the cost of vitamins from the drug store and truthfully they made her feel a little ill.
*By forgot I mean blocked from my memory.

79

Yeah, I was actually sort of thinking about a lot of people I have encountered professionally in the consulting field. It’s not really “sales” but there is a large business development aspect to working in professional services. There are so many people I have worked with who are just so full of shit. They get away with it because they jump companies every year or so but quite often I have to come in after the fact and clean up all their crap.

80

I’d disagree strongly with this. Sales certainly does attract a lot of lazy and guileful people who think they can slither through life by being flashy and loud, but good salesmen who are promoting a legitimate product know their product line, research the market, spend time to find out what the customer’s needs really are, respond to requests for information with qualified data, and offer an honest and educated evaluation of the customer’s actual needs. Being able to do this requires training and experience; it is not for the indigent or stupid. As an engineer, I’ve dealt with a number of manufacturers’ reps who fit this category.

Unfortunately, most salespeople I know fit more into the category of those portrayed in Glengarry Glen Ross; desperate, greedy, and insincere.

As for while multi-level marketing is so cult-like, it is precisely because of the method; the hyping to friends, family, and anyone the marketeer comes across in daily life. When you are on-job every hour of the day you tend to use a jargon and have an attitude that is a bit cult-like. This is hardly limited to MLM; I see it in friends who are in other all-consuming professions (law enforcement, legal practice, medical) who have an insular vernacular and sometimes alienate others with attitudes and gallows humor that is distant from the norm. I daresay that anyone on the outside that hangs around my social group at work finds us not just slightly cult-like with obscure nerd-jokes about attitude control systems and environment qualification levels. (I tried to explain to one not-work friend the context of a “tail-wags-dog” joke and had to give up.) It’s just that people participating in MLMs never have an off switch; they’re always trying to sell.

Amusing anecdote: a friend of mine who was intensively on-line dating had three dates in one weekend once; the first guy turned out to be some kind of Amway knockoff and the second was selling lotions and moisturizers. She just cancelled the third and pulled her profile off of that particular service, which turned out to be a good idea because another friend subsequently had the same experience. Who the hell thinks they’re going to successfully cold-sell their products on a first date?

Stranger