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AMA

I am an ex Forever Living rep. AMA

80 replies

ReformedB0t · 31/08/2019 18:42

I am now anti MLM and have posted candidly for quite some time on the Bot Watch threads.

OP posts:
Twentytwentyhindsight · 31/08/2019 23:39

You say that you got drawn into all of the basic tricks of MLM- 'being your own best customer', 'faking it 'til you make it', 'dream boards'... Did you also get pulled in to the more more cultish/brainwashing aspects, such as cutting yourself off from your real friends who might express doubts about FLP (negative influences), magical thinking (e.g. Law of Attraction), mindset training involving daily gratitudes/affirmations or getting up an hour earlier every day to listen to tapes of those trainings, enforced positivity to the point of denying reality, etc.?
To what extent was this sort of stuff pushed upon you by your uplines?

ReformedB0t · 01/09/2019 00:03

@SirJamesTalbotAndHisSpeculum

How many levels of MLM are there?
Do you mean levels in FL? At least 12 that I can think of.

Are the really Top Dogs ever seen at training events?

Yes I attended 3 big training events with Leech and her husband there. A team member of mine asked Leech for a photo with her after the event and whilst husband was lovely, leech was very clearly pissed off at being bothered by us.

How high up the pecking order is Castle, for example?

She was quite high up at one point and a poster girl but more for how quickly she did it.

I am finding this thread fascinating. You're very brave to admit to being indoctrinated.

Have you had to have counselling to come to terms with what happened to you?

I think it would have been beneficial, I did feel that there wouldn't be any counsellors who would understand though looking back I guess those who understand cults would be apt. I feel the Bot Watch threads helped me massively and I felt that they helped my 'awakening'. That sounds dramatic but I feel like I was deep under water and these threads helped me swim to the surface. When I realised my instints were right and admitted to myself all the doubts I ignored, I did experience some feelings of despair. I had began to believe that I had created an idea of my dream life that I no longer new how to achieve. Refocusing myself on how I could achieve what I wanted realistically was my final step in my 'recovery'. I realised that the goals I had weren't necessarily even my priorities, they were just what I thought success should look like.

Has your DH been understanding now that you've realised you were being strung along?

Yes to a point, he continues to support me in my career moves and career breaks, as I have him. I did talk to him during my awakening and he admitted he never understood FL so was letting me just do my thing! Although he was supportive, we did argue when money was tight and I wanted to borrow £120 to attend a training day or buy stock but on the whole he trusted my belief that this would make our future.

As a caveat, I had a poor credit score before FL so couldn't get loans, credit cards etc. If I could, I do think I'd have lost more money.

In November 2016 I had to get a Log Book Loan to cover Christmas. I had two pay slips from Forever with around £600 on. I hadn't turned over enough to qualify for team bonus and the cost for me to achieve it wouldn't have been offset by the bonus itself. It was quite humiliating sitting in the branch office with these pay slips trying to convince the lady issuing the loan that I just wanted a cash boost til the next payday as my business was going well. Obviously I always had to have in my mind how I could recruit her and convince her FL was good incase she found me on Facebook later and wanted to join (wishful thinking!).

OP posts:
ReformedB0t · 01/09/2019 00:14

@Twentytwentyhindsight

You say that you got drawn into all of the basic tricks of MLM- 'being your own best customer', 'faking it 'til you make it', 'dream boards'... Did you also get pulled in to the more more cultish/brainwashing aspects, such as cutting yourself off from your real friends who might express doubts about FLP (negative influences).

I considered splitting up with my (amazing) husband because sometimes he was negative! Sad

magical thinking (e.g. Law of Attraction)

I did brainwash myself, I was listening to a chat show with a mindset guru and the man who did the 8 second mile, I 'discovered' during this interview how everything seemed impossible until it's done. This huge feeling of elation and power came over me, I messaged an upline saying I was overwhelmed, emotional and feeling powerful. They validated that feeling by telling me the story of them feeling the same.

mindset training involving daily gratitudes/affirmations or getting up an hour earlier every day to listen to tapes of those trainings, enforced positivity to the point of denying reality, etc.?

I would try affirmations but I felt silly. Denying of reality was in the team pages, no negativity was allowed which means you didn't post things that bothered you (and those who did were chastised by people sucking up to the leaders). I tried my best to still be real with my team.

To what extent was this sort of stuff pushed upon you by your uplines?

As above, no negativity! Keep a positive mindset. Cut out negative people and laser focus on what you want. When ever I would message an upline feeling rubbish that a person didn't join or I had missed a promotion, the goto advice was always always "work on your mindset". PHD was a big endorser of having a morning and evening mindset routine and all her ramblings were about mindset and it being a numbers game.

OP posts:
SirJamesTalbotAndHisSpeculum · 01/09/2019 00:17

Thank you for your detailed answers.

I am so sorry that you went through this mire but glad that you found a way out of it.

Counselling with someone who understand cults and brainwashing seems like a good idea to me, although you clearly demonstrate a lot of self-awareness on this thread.

Can you recommend a book which will explore this topic in more detail?

littlemisscynical · 01/09/2019 00:20

Hi op. Thank you for this thread. I have a friend who has been sucked in to TS Life. Over a year now. How long were you involved with FL? How long did it take for you to see it for what it really is?

skunkatanka · 01/09/2019 09:42

Would you say OP that all MLM companies function like FL or is that a particularly bad example? I have a friend who is involved in Tropic. Is that likely to be the same level of scam?

BSintolerant · 01/09/2019 11:38

Thank you for creating this excellent thread Reformed.

I think I asked you this on the MLM Botwatch threads some time ago (and I can’t remember exactly what you said) but what was the tipping point? Was there a specific incident which made you see the light, or were there a number of factors involved before you quietly left the Cult of Forever Fibbing?

BSintolerant · 01/09/2019 11:41

@SirJamesTalbotAndHisSpeculum There’s a very good book called Merchants of Deception written by a man who escaped from Amway and had to deal with death threats and litigation on top of horrific debt he’d accrued chasing an impossible dream. There’s a free pdf online.

rookiemere · 01/09/2019 11:55

Did you lose many friends from trying to flog them the products or recruit them ?

TheFatberg · 01/09/2019 11:58

I find all the stuff about credits and how you make money so confusing. Do you think it's purposely designed that way so that people getting into it don't really understand how difficult it is to make money, and just think that if they work hard (except give the message you aren't working because we need to sell the lifestyle), they'll make money?

ChocChocButtons · 01/09/2019 12:36

I have to admit I do use the hand wash. Every winter I get really bad dry cracked bleeding hands as I do a job where I wash my hands a lot. But the hand and face soap keeps that at bay.

fromdownwest · 01/09/2019 13:37

During all of this 'training' were you ever taught about actual good business practices. Simple things such as book keeping, cash flow, data protection, pensions, staff contracts etc

Also, would you say most were sole traders or LTD companies, and were you aware of the state of lots of the top bots LTD company accounts, specifically the directors loans and or liquidated companies

SirJamesTalbotAndHisSpeculum · 01/09/2019 13:52

@BSintolerant

Thank you. Would you be able to post a link to the pdf?

SirJamesTalbotAndHisSpeculum · 01/09/2019 13:55

It's okay BSintolerant - I have found it.

Link for anyone else interested in Merchants of Deception below:

ia800500.us.archive.org/18/items/MerchantsOfDeception/MerchantsOfDeception.pdf

muminmanchester · 01/09/2019 14:26

This is really insightful. Thanks OP.

What would you say to someone currently involved to help them understand the con? I have two friends who are into FL and both have fully bought into the dream. I dread to think how much they'll have to lose to see the light.

ReformedB0t · 02/09/2019 22:25

@littlemisscynical

If I'm honest, I always knew deep down and would swing from short periods of absolute belief to longer periods of doubt. I even read the aforementioned book quite early in my fbo days but talked myself out of believing it, thinking it was just someone who was bitter.

Other times I have to admit, I realised what the cost of success would be and I didn't care - if people failed that was there problem and I wanted to do whatever it takes to give my family a dream life.

So even from the start, I had my doubts but never admitted it. In total, I was in FLP for around 3 years.

@skunkatanka

I definitely believe all mlms operate the same way. It's the nature of the model. I do believe that FLP was one of the pioneers of how MLM looks these days and that others have copied it's cult like spirit and mixed this with mindset training. Bullying wasn't rife in lower levels, it was much more 'mean girls' two faced.

@BSintolerant

I don't think there was one topping point, more like many smaller incidents that created alarm bells for me, I'm quite analytical and could see people suddenly struggling to increase ccs and gain promotion. My own stats of recruitment were getting worse and I looked back at old magazines and compared how many promotions had happened previously, which we now know was the boom. That was my final straw as I felt I now had proof that it wasn't my fault and that it was happening to everyone.

@rookiemere

I've discussed this earlier, I didn't as I didn't push my friends, I compartmentalised my time with them, we grew apart anyway due to different life stages (babies, jobs etc.) as I grew closer to a new non-FLP friend.

@TheFatberg
Yes the case credits is designed to bamboozle. When I first joined the video said its their internal currency designed to make having teams worldwide easier to track. In fairness, there is a logic to that and I can't think of a better system for it that would allow someone to compare their overall country by country turnover without having to do conversions. I still feel overall that they use that system to keep people confused as they have lots of sophisticated analytical tool you can subscribe to but not one to my knowledge that is close to real accounting.

@fromdownwest

Accounting was never properly touched on, people barely mentioned it! The only time I ever heard advice at training as when castle invited a speaker from FLs preferred accountancy company and they were more about promoting how they could take our receipts and do our taxes rather than cash flow.

I think most lower level bots were sole traders, some became limited companies when their bonuses were exceeding 5k. I was never too aware of higher bot accounts until I left but I had peaked at some yet didn't quite understand and knew that perhaps their income was showing after expenses of which I believed would have been well abused.

@muminmanchester

I answered a similar question earlier. It's really tough, no one thing will convince a person. They need to look at the magazine archives from 2015 and look at all the people who made manager then see what those people are doing today!! They could also ask head office for information about promotion figures for each rank in the UK by year for the past 10 years. The response from flp (a refusal) should tell them that they really are not a stakeholder in this business. Why would head office withhold information from its investors? No other business would - it's a fair piece of information to ask for as someone who is "part of the business" and needing to compare overall UK data to their personal/teams data.

OP posts:
ReformedB0t · 02/09/2019 22:36

@BSintolerant

I have just read my reply to you about 'mean girls' and realised it's a step further than that and it's actually gaslighting but that term wasn't one I knew back then. Basically, we all wanted to be the uplines favourites, we loved receiving the praise and being tagged in their posts or thought of as a 'go to' person or the next big thing. When that love bombing dropped off, you sensed this feeling that you would have been talked about behind your back, and sometimes you'd hear something to confirm this but at the same time these up lines would be singing the praises of how well other people were doing so you feel that, if you just tried harder and did a bit better, you would be one of the 'cool kids' again. I'm not saying that this was always intentional by up lines, they were just copying what they had learned but somewhere this was built into training by someone who knew exactly it's effect. Towards the end if I saw a post praising Sally for selling 20 toothgels I'd just think 'I know exactly what you are trying to do here' and that was to make others feel inferior as a tool to try an motivate them.

OP posts:
BSintolerant · 02/09/2019 23:01

It’s a murky business isn’t it? Murky see, murky do. 🙊Grin

SirJamesTalbotAndHisSpeculum · 03/09/2019 12:45

I've been reading Merchants of Deception for many hours now.

It is horrifying.

It isn't quite the same kind of MLM as FL, though. How many different kinds of this fraud do you think are being perpetrated at any one time?

OhMyGodTheyKilledKenny · 03/09/2019 13:21

Great thread ReformedBot! Thank you

Can I ask, did you ever open up or confide in a fellow bot about your reservations? eg. ask them whether they were actually making any money? Or whether they'd had to fork out on products to meet their CCs?

Or did you feel that everyone else was succeeding whilst you struggled?

Shhhhh223 · 11/09/2019 11:39

Great thread

leasedaudi · 11/09/2019 12:36

Why don't the bots ever mention that they're insolvent? There's more than a few who are.

GoldenKelpie · 11/09/2019 13:03

It would be seen as 'negative' and that's a no-no. Attraction marketing is all about spinning a glorious opportunity to desperate people (women with babies/kids) and persuading them that they could be successful six figure earners working part time....

Twentytwentyhindsight · 11/09/2019 13:33

Yes, being a tax-dodging, about-about-to-be disqualified director of an insolvent company cheating HMRC out of £118K is not something bots brag about. They would rather tell you about finishing the Great North Run.

Can't imagine why.

BishBashBot · 15/09/2019 15:06

New thread - www.mumsnet.com/Talk/AMA/3692880-I-am-an-ex-Forever-Living-rep-AMA

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