MLM millionaires

[DoublePlease]

AIBU to wonder what happened to all apparent upcoming fancy holidays, expensive cars etc that the people who took part in these pyramid schemes tried to fool everyone with?

Dunno but I've got a friend who's run out of money to carry on refurbishing her house but is currently in Nashville at mlm cult meeting. Crazy!

I follow a couple of Beachbody coaches and they definitely post pics of that lifestyle.
I would do it myself but I am fat and lazy..

I think it's pretty much all nonsense isn't it? Attraction Marketing so that you believe you can do it too. They are trying to con you into becoming a customer, which is all they are too. The only actual business people in these scenarios are the ones at the top of the pyramids in Utah.

This is a good read for a behind the scenes MLM blog- ellebeaublog.com/poonique/

I've got an Ann Summers seller on my fb, who has just posted the generic, 'whoop, free holiday, blah blah, still get to be a stay at home mum...blah blah thanks ladies'. I feel embarrassed when I see these statuses that are blatant bullshit

Is Arbonne a bad one? My cousin's wife seems to have been sucked in and she's very close to getting blocked on Facebook

The only ones who manage to make a good amount of money, is those who have recruited dozens of people who have then been able to recruit people themselves and then they ALL have to sell a decent amount each time.

Most get pennies if that.

I'm really enjoying the blog that tissue posted, I nearly joined an mlm in 2016 after a particularly bad point in my life when I was still very naive to them. Thank God I posted on mumsnet first for advice or I would have been a hun

The only person I know who does MLM is my cousin and she actually does make a Lot. I've seen her house, her cars, and her newly renovated beautiful bathroom.

She's the kind of natural sales person though that could sell air to people and they'd buy it.

I'm still reading that blog that was posted! Fascinating!

@RedPandaFluff I think Arbonnes the worst!!

Grrrrr, I hate hate hate the predatory nature of MLM. A ‘friend’ on FB had a post on today about the cost of a soft play area and how she doesn’t want to miss ‘making memories 🤮’ with her girls. But Poonique allows her to do this and so much more, blah blah blah and if you want to create forever memories and provide your kids with the best, message me...blah blah blah. I hate it.

ethel I am on page 10 of the blog and have done feck all work as a result! Addictive.

I had just given birth and was feeling well enough to go for a walk into town with the pram. I looked like shit, sleep deprived, hair in a bun, leggings and Ugg boots. I bumped into an old work friend, I did notice she barely looked at or mentioned baby but instead gushed over how fab I looked, asking what I was doing now and saying that she's recruits for a company called Arbonne and that she'd been thinking of me lately and I'd be fab for it. Someone with style!! I left feeling quite about myself, and imagining a new career. Got home, googled it and just thought what a fucking manipulative bitch !

Heard through the grapevine she lost a few friends during her Arbonne time, utterly obsessed with it she was!

I know five MLM millionaires -- because I worked on the corporate side of a Big Name Company that has an MLM line.

Of the significant sales field...five. And maybe three more that had six figure incomes off of it. From there, the numbers get a bit skewed and most people were in the £50-200 monthly payout range.

If you really do sell that much in an MLM setting you are a hot commodity in the corporate offices. Other MLMs will try to woo you away with big signing bonuses and the occasional actual salary guarantee because, as an independent contractor, you can bring everyone underneath you along when you make the switch.

The millionaires became millionaires because they know how to capitalise on every inch of the comp plan, and I do mean every inch. I never had to be more careful with language than I did when working there!

There's a very definite personality archetype for the high earners, too. Interestingly enough, when some of them make the jump to corporate and the arse kissing stops they don't do well.

I've helped arrange some of those fancy holidays, cars, and big payouts so I know they exist...they just exist for a very small subset of people.

Oooo, @gwenneh, you should do an AMA post! How long does the average MLM person stick at being an agent? You mention the fancy holidays, does this include the seminars? Are these seminars paid for by the individual? Are you out of the business now? Sorry, so many questions!

The only person I know who makes a nice profit from MLM is my sister’s hairdresser who sells Scentsy stuff. She doesn’t even mention it to clients, she says she just leaves the leaflets on the coffee table in the waiting area and lets anyone interested give her an order form.

Even then, it’s not a wage, just a nice bonus to her steady monthly income. Which is just the way it should be!

I thought about doing an AMA but I don't know that I have anything to say that is interesting enough! :D

The average tenure of the sales field where I worked is around a year to 18 months. The company I worked with subsidizes their sales field pretty heavily though so that's above the industry standard by some margin. The company didn't require inventory to be carried (everything was drop shipped), didn't charge for order processing or a website, and the monthly minimums were fairly low so it made it easy for people to stay in, plus the whole thing is heavily subsidized by the parent company.

The fancy holidays don't just include the seminars, though that's a part of it. There are some reward trips that literally are just that -- fully paid all-inclusives. When I left Big Company they had upwards of 100 sellers who had earned at least one ticket and some who had earned two to the latest one, and this was a slow year.

The seminars themselves could be earned, but this was on a sliding scale (unlike the fancy trips, which once you earned it that was the whole thing including airfare). For the seminars you earned in tiers, the first one being your attendance, the second being the hotel (& food & drink) and the the third being a travel budget for airfare. I'd say most, if not all, of the few hundred attendees earned their attendance, and about 1/3 of that earned their hotel comp. The companies WANT you at the big "rah rah" fest so it was easy, with a ton of ways to earn the levels.

I am out of the business now, but it was fascinating to look at it all from the inside!

Used to have a work colleague who sold the wonder Diet product Herbalife.

She lost weight doing it, I lost weight by eating less and moving more, guess who put all the weight back on.

Look at Herbalife it's all one big con the reps or wellness coaching they prefer to call theirselves haha,post pictures of how well they are doing ect, it's all about the downsell.

Most people will wind up worse off doing these rhings,these company's are pretty disgusting.

I fell for the utility warehouse crap and signed up for the free LED lightbulbs which never materlised.
Nor do we have mobile signal in our village,
complete and utter joke.
yet the women who signed us up lives nearby in a million £ barn conversion and constantly boasts on her facebook page about yet another Utility warehouse holiday she has just won.
I had to unfriend her it made my blood boil.

I know someone who does Younique and she recently went to a conference in Barcelona. Gushing on Facebook about how grateful she is to Younique for the opportunity to go.

She had to pay for her flights and hotel! The company doesn't send you on free holidays but they try and make out that it does.

Moustache I'm way too invested in this story!

I read the whole blog, I felt like a hun myself by the end of it

She also did follow up interviews with some of her team members

Don't tell me what happens hun