A friend of mine decided that Amway was the key to his future. I went to one of his recruiting meetings. It has been years, so I honestly do not remember the amounts, but I was asked to come up with some money to start. In exchange for that cash, I received a sales kit with a selection of products that retailed for about twice the amount I had to front.
My first move was to sell those products at retail. After that I never ordered a product from my distributor that I did not already have sold. I talked to my friend a few times a week and he was always trying to get me to buy the motivational books and tapes, and to buy stuff in case lots so I could deliver the products right away.
For about six months, I made a little bit of money, about enough for my wife and I to go out to a nice dinner and a movie a couple of times a month. There was some pressure to buy into the motivational stuff, but mostly I just picked up the stuff I had already sold. Eventually I just lost interest
My friend decided that he really needed to invest in his future. He took out a second mortgage and filled his garage with product. He and his wife went to sales meetings and conventions, and bought every scrap of literature.
They almost lost their house. We remained friends with them, and had dinner with them a few weeks ago. They never want to talk about Amway, but I bet there is a better than even chance that they still have some of that stuff in their garage.
No, I couldn’t be friends with someone who currently drinks the Amway/Monavie juice. You aren’t their friend, you’re a potential business prospect. I lost two friends who took advantage of someone else’s social event (e.g an engagement party and a tennis party) to corner people and try to rope them into their pyramid schemes. Neither time did the host realize it before it was too late. The one woman, an Amway nut, had been my friend for about 7 years before she joined Amway. It took her about 6 months to scare off our entire group of friends. Now none of us speak to her anymore.
I used to be friends with a guy who was middle management level for “the numbers” (like the state’s lottery, but a better pay out). It kinda bothered me, but it wasn’t really a big deal. But Amway? No way.
Yeesh. This is the reason I hate Amway. The products that I’ve tried actually tend to be decent - but the company focuses FAR more on roping people in, and getting subordinates roped in, than on selling a product.
I’m the same way - I grew up with Amway because a relative started selling it in the 50s or 60s. It was never a hard-sell thing with them, they bought it because they liked it and so did we. I still like their products, but the relative has moved away, and I really absolutely don’t want anything to do with a real distributor. Which is a bummer, because I can’t find an alternative to Scrub Buds that I really like.
As some others have said, I don’t think that I could be friends with someone who is currently involved with a MLM company. Either this person is incredibly naive, dishonest, or stupid. If it’s the first, maybe they can learn some healthy cynicism, but I am not prepared to fix every broken person I come across. If it’s the second or third, well, dishonest people rarely are capable of becoming honest, and you just can’t fix stupid. I don’t want to hang around someone who views me as a potential sucker.
As people have stated some have religious overtones, some wait to build up friendships and then they have “the talk” with you, putting you on the defense instead of you having “the talk” with them.
To echo what other people are saying, the problem with these people is not so much that they are into MLMs. It’s that they are often disinginuous, manipulative, narcissistic and cult-like. As it happens, MLMs tend to attract these sort of people.
Given the returns on these sort of schemes, I suspect that the more extravagent ones are heavily leveraged as well.
Whether it’s an MLM, a more conventional company, religeon, cult, fraternity/sorority or any other organization, these type of people define their identity so strongly with that group that they are incapable of any sort of objective reasoning with respect to it. You are only their “friend” in as such that you can support their involvement with that group, whether it is financially, professionally, emotionally or whatever. If you do not provide that support, you will be rejected like a virus.
Because of that, it is difficult to impossible to be “friends” in any real way:
You can’t talk to them objectively about their shitty business because a “friend” would support them in their goals and objectives. They can’t have "negative people in their lives.
You can’t be a “friend” and not buy from them. Why wouldn’t you accept help from someone who only wants to help you maximize your potential by buying their knives, makeup or whatever other crap?
Why even patch things up, you know there is underlying resentment just oozing to come out at the first real fight you have.
Let that friendship go and make new ones, in the car business 2 weeks is an eternity, something could have been done if everything was above board on the Amway end.
I had a friend who got roped into a vacuum-cleaner sales scam. (He’s not to bright, really) He said he wanted to “practice” his sales pitch on me. I said no way. He assured me it was only “pracitce”. Sure, go for it then. I got an hour to kill drinking beer.
He tries to sell me a $1200 vacuum! Then he tries to get me to speak to some sponsor asshole on the phone!
I hung up on the sponsor asshole after telling him to NEVER call me again, and then told my friend that if I hadn’t known him for so long, I would physically throw him out the door.
I picked his pathetic sales presentation apart (bags don’t cost $5 each and you don’t change them twice a day! If it breaks, I woudn’t spend $300 to have it repaired!), then told him the last thing I spent $1200 on had 300hp and 4 wheel drive.
I wonder how much money he lost on that whole episode.
When I sold insurance, I worked for a guy who had cynically managed to get his kids invited to every birthday party their classmates, soccer teammates, Sunday school classmates, and who-knows-who-else’s threw. He always went to every party and rather skillfully turned the conversation to personal finance and such, then made his pitch. He claimed to be successful with this strategy, and encouraged those of us who are parents to do the same. One day, though, one of these parents called him at work and accused him of using her and the other parents; it turned out that his kids didn’t get along with the birthday child very well which caused some problems at the party. (The only reason I heard this conversation was because this guy was a douchebag who took every call on speakerphone to show what a big macher he was. He stopped doing it after that.)
This thread reminds me of the movie “The Joneses”, where we get to see Demi Moore and David Duchovny creepily manipulate their friends and neighbors into out-buying each other.
I am fb friends with a high school class mate who recently started selling Reliv products. All she posts about is going to these fabulous meetings and how successful the people she meets are. Now she wants to call me about something and I know it’s just going to be a whole sales pitch about something I don’t want to buy. At least she’s going to pitch me for a problem my relative has so I can just say I’ll pass along the information. I asked her to send a link but she hasn’t.
I’m totally avoiding the phone call, I haven’t talked to her since 1997. Worst thing is that I can’t complain about it on fb. I can’t even sign on to fb or post because then she might think I’m available for a phone call.
This is all very recent. She just asked to call me last week and I haven’t had a chance to block her. I hope I can have the one phone call then not talk to her about it anymore. Before this we were just starting to be reacquainted which I was enjoying.
I work for a company whose name sounds a lot like AMWAY it has zero connection with them, and is an industrial and technical parts supplier. When I phoned my brother to tell him about being hired by them he shut me down and quickly changed the subject. In a later conversation I was shut down almost immeadiately when I started talking about work. I asked him what the problem was, and he said that he is not interested in AMWAY, and does not want to hear anything about it.
You know, reading this reminded me that I have a fb friend who is not only involved in ONE MLM scheme, she’s involved in ALL of them. Literally, every post is about some new stupid MLM that she’s trying to get rich on.
‘Ask me about the great opportunity you can get into to make lots of $$!’
Every. Frikin’. Post.
and I dont’ even like her. I think I’ll be blocking her promptly. I have no idea why I haven’t before now. Dumb, I guess.
To the OP, it depends on the MLM and how the friend approached things. I actually like tupper wear, victorian epicure, papered chef, etc and am friends with women who sell these things. I buy things from them when I need and none of them have ever pestered me to sign up and sell myself or whatever. In that case, it’s no problem. I think if it was an unethical product, or it was all I ever heard about, I would not be friends.
Personally I think you should try to reconnect with this gal in a low key way and see how it goes - if she’s not pressuring you to buy or sell or whatever, it might work out OK. If she does do those things, just stop calling her back.