This morning there was yet another one of these posts that try to pull on your heart strings to get you to buy from MLMs. this one is somewhat different to the ones I‘ve shared before, about highlighting that buying from an MLM supports a small business, not a big multimi or multibillion dollar corporation. You can read my blog post about that here in my blog post about Small Business or Corporate?
Today we’re picking apart this post:
”…why wouldn’t you want to support a mom trying to raise her kids from home?
Or your neighbor, friend, sister or cousin?⠀
Or a college student trying to juggle school and make extra income while she studies?⠀
Or someone trying to not live paycheck to paycheck anymore?”
Of course we would support the mum trying to raise her kids from home. of course we would support our neighbour, friends, sister or cousin. If a college student is running their own business to earn money to pay for their time in college, of course we would support them. Same as we would support any small independent who is trying to better their lives.
The issue isn’t about the who we support, but it’s about the business model they chose to try and better their lives. We don’t support the Multi Level Marketing, Direct Selling, Social Selling, Network Marketing business model. We know that this business model leaves over 99% of its participants without a profit and often in debt. That‘s why we won’t support these. It’s to protect the mums, the neighbours, the friends, sisters, cousins, students and people who wish to better their lives. We know that the majority of them won’t be better off financially in the long run.
WHY NOT?⠀
Because they’ll earn a commission on your sale? ⠀
No, if they made their own bath bombs, skin care products, wax melts, candles, cakes, creative sweets ‘art’, sewn, crocheted, knitted or other hand crafted products, we would buy them, knowing how much time and effort they put into them and hoping that they’ve put their prices as such that they make a profit.
Because you think the products don’t work?
That’s also not the reason, we know some of the products work really well. Many of us in the anti-MLM community have joined MLMs in the past, because we loved the products, because we saw an opportunity, just like you, to pass on these amazing products to others.
We have just come to the realisation that buying those products is supporting a business model that is predatory and created to mainly sell products to their reps and that the corporation that created the brands behind these products, really are only out for the money from their participants and they don’t really care if you sell these products on to end consumers.
Because if you buy from them and they end up building a business, what’s so terrible about that?
What’s so terrible is that these MLMs make you believe that you are building a business, but you are not. You are not in charge of choosing the products, you have not created the products, you are not in charge of branding, packaging, logo design, ingredients used in production, you even run a risk of getting your contract terminated.
If you were really building your own business, you would be in charge of all of that and there wouldn’t be a contract to terminate that could remove your whole perceived ’business‘ from underneath you.
If you were really running your own business, you wouldn’t have an upline or a Director or HQ or Head Office or Corporate or anyone to tell you that you need to place a minimum order to ‘Stay Active’ or that you need to put in a 500 order to ‘qualify’ for your team commission or bonus cheques. You wouldn’t be ‘participating in a car programme’ because you would just buy that car if or when you could afford it.
You had a bad experience with ONE, so now you’re boycotting ALL?
Many of us have had bad experiences with several MLMs. It takes on average an experience of 5 MLMs for someone to realise that MLMs are bad news and everyone is better off out of them and to not get involved with them.
And no, they’re not all exactly the same, but in broad lines they are. They all rely on people to ‘Join their teams’ and they all have a system of people building teams below them, they all have no requirement for qualifications, anyone can join, whether you have a clue about skin care, nutrition, makeup, health care, insurance, utilities supply, crypto currency, trading, retail of clothes or household supplies or candles, etc. You do not need experience or qualifications. They also all have some sort of ‘Compensation Plan’ and they all have the same basic setup. They may differ their compensation plan, they may differ their marketing plan, they may call the roles within their structure something different, they may even call their business model something different, hence different terminology gets used like Multi Level Marketing, Direct Selling, Social Selling, Affiliate Sales, Direct Retail, Network Marketing, etc, etc.
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You think the product is over priced?
If you only knew the mark up on your favorite big box brands .. they don't give that to their hourly employees.
On the products being overpriced, well they are. They have to be, to pay out multiple levels of sales reps. And actually, the ‘big box brands’ do give some of that markup to their hourly employees, it’s called a salary, it’s their wages. Part of that big mark-up goes to them. When you’re in an MLM you get LESS than what that hourly employees get from the big box brands! However make no mistake, that big brand MLM you’re representing is making billions of dollars on the back of your work for which you don’t even get paid minimum wages.
Yes, I said that, yes, as a MLM rep you’re representing and selling a big corporate brand, don’t live under the illusion that you’re a small business, you’re an independent contractor on zero hours and no salary, you’re being exploited by big multibillion dollar corporations who don’t pay you a salary, but measly morsels of commissions. Their markup is way higher than the big box brands and yet they do not pay their sales reps fair hourly wages!
I see it so often and I think WOW, imagine having that mindset towards people that are trying to better themselves 💔
Would you really rather support a big multi-million $ company with someone at the top you don't know and doesn't care about you, than to support your own friend or family member or someone you enjoy following on social media?
Please read my article on Small Business vs Corporate it will surprise you how much the company you work for is actually making. You’re really just a small insignificant cog on the wheel of a multibillion dollar corporation and they lie to you, make you believe that you’re an independent consultant, an independent, self employed ‘entrepreneur’, running your own business, but you’re not. This is the first major lie they tell you and there are so many more.
The people at the top of MLMs make more money?
Do you not think the CEO of that makeup line you buy from makes more money than the sales employee?
Yes, of course they do, but each of them earn a salary based on minimum wages. You don’t earn minimum hourly wages, you have to work hours and hours to make a small commission. What do they tell you? The average sales to a group of say 5 people is about 200 and you get to keep what 25% of what you sell, so 50 in your pocket? What expenses do you have when you’ve worked 2 hours at least to earn that 50?
Did you drive to the party?
Did you pay for fuel?
Did you hire a babysitter?
Did you buy thank you gifts for the hostess or prizes for a raffle?
Did you buy bags or boxes to carry your demo products?
In fact, did you have to buy your demo products?
Your catalogues?
Your goodie bags?
Any snacks or drinks?
These are all ‘business‘ related expenses that you need to deduct from that 50 you put in your pocket, not to mention the income tax, liability insurance, National Health insurance, etc.
You end up with maybe 25 in your pocket, which for 2 hours work would be respectable, but did you really only work two hours?
How much time did you spend texting or messaging or calling the hostess?
Did you have to speak to any of the guests? What about the time you spent on advertising the products, the party, etc.
A lot more time goes into preparing to even get an initial booking, so you can easily double the time you’ve spent on that appointment. Now you’ve got 25 for 4 hours, that’s below minimum wages.
SUPPORT people.
ENCOURAGE people.
Be KIND.⠀
We are! we wish to educate you on the pitfalls of MLMs, we want to protect people from the predatory nature of these organisations. We wish you all the success in the world, we would just rather see you succeed with your REAL own business and not be taken advantage of by an MLM.
Regardless of how you feel about MLM’s almost EVERY single business is built on the same strategies.
Unfortunately they are not.
If you compare an MLM to a regular high street brand, then you’ll see that no sales representative of another brand has to buy the products of the other brand. Demonstration kits are provided free of charge as they are business tools, equipment required to do the job. A sales rep of a beauty brand gets a job interview and is asked about experience and qualifications, anyone can join an MLM.
These strategies do work… if you work. Put in the effort and you’ll see the results ♥️
Put in the effort and you’ll see the results, this is another one of those lines they feed you, it makes you look like a failure if you do not see the results you desire. When you’re made to feel like you failed, because “you didn’t work your business full circle” or you didn’t put in the effort, you’re going to start to doubt yourself. You’re going to guilt trip yourself for spending time with your family or friends instead of ‘working your business‘. This is a line that is thrown around in MLMs to make you feel bad about yourself, to doubt yourself, to make you believe that you’re not good enough.
It’s abusive language.
It is exactly because the MLMs are abusive and predatory that we say “No MLMs”.