My cousin is about to give up her career as a teacher to join a pyramid scheme

[OurHouseInTheMiddle]

AIBU to tell her that she is insane? I cannot cope with her Facebook posts anymore either! She has honestly become brainwashed.

I don't understand why anyone does bodyshop when it's cheaper to buy direct or from a outlet...

I mute anyone who starts doing MLM on facebook, and I had to block a junior doctor who got so aggressive and persistent about joining her.

I lost a good friend to the MLM Aloe Vera thing. She was feeling very low because her DD had just chosen to go and live with her exDH. Within a few months my friend had walked away from a £34k secure career in local council, to become a Company Director of her own international business empire It was an absolute, tragic shit show. She would invite you over for wine and pizza, but spend all evening trying to recruit you. Her new DH ended up divorcing her because he no longer recognised who she had become. Endless FB posts bragging about her exotic holidays, which were actually just photos from holidays back when she actually earned decent money. She would throw a 'party' and you'd arrive to find her house full of various social misfits who were 'her amazing team'

I find they are also always looking for opportunity, so you can no longer have a normal conversation with a bot, they are only listening for opportunities.
My sister joined one, we all tried to tell her but she told us we were negative , miserable people stuck in the rat race, she was going to be different. They only surround themselves with “huns” and post a lot about empowering women etc I told her there was no empowerment in ripping off female friends/family.
My company offered a course over 10 weeks to empower the female employees to try for top jobs /careers in different field, that’s empowerment , not having to hand over £500 or £200 for a ticket at a women empowerment event run by the MLM

Every other job ad, Marketplace post and 'online Christmas Fair' is just awash with FM perfumes, Body Shop and Avon

It's not just online though; they're at all the summer fairs, craft events, etc, too

I used to run a big local "do" and was absolutely inundated with them applying - even got caught out once by one I didn't see through, and the "team manager" she brought along made a total nuisance of herself all day, attempting to recruit everyone in sight

Every time I see Arbonne, all I can think of is this video:

@Ohalrightthen

The snarky bitch in me says that if she's daft enough to fall for that bollocks then she absolutely shouldn't be responsible for educating children.

But that doesn't really help you. I'd find info online and do your best to dissuade her.

That was my thought

It’s sad seeing people sucked into it. That said I do buy from two sellers as I genuinely like the stuff, but neither are pushy to recruit or buy at all. One does post a lot on her SM though and her DCs mostly get products for presents. She does sell a lot but I can’t imagine it’s very profitable.

One of my FB friends has been in about ten different MLMs since I met her a few years ago. At one point she made a big thing about how she’d decided to quit direct marketing (or whatever it’s called) and didn’t want to be quizzed about it. Within a few months she found a different one :( it’s sad to think of how much money she would have lost on these things. She is studying for a steady career now though so hopefully it will be the end of it when she qualifies

It's crazy how far people go to convince people of this stuff!
I've seen some people who boast about how incredible their wages are and all of the perks and so on and they have won this award and that award and even have videos of awards ceremonies and so on...they are absolutely living a life of luxury according to them....then one day they stop talking about the product and it's never mentioned again

I absolutely love the King of the Hill episode about MLM. It’s so funny!

To be fair teaching is an extremely difficult and stressful job, all the more so at this current time. I could understand her wanting to get out - lots of teachers are.

How stupid can you get....i have no sympathy for people involved in mlm scams...there is more than enough info on the internet.

2 of my dh cousins do the fake perfume one.... so annoying. They seem to make most of their money from their family but obv that can't go on forever. I've hidden them from fb as I found it so annoying.
I had an ex colleague that did the aloe vera one for awhile. It was about 4 years ago, my dh had lost his job while I was on maternity leave. She found this out through another colleague, got a message saying how sorry she was etc. I thought "how nice" next message was her trying to convince me to join her team. I avoided her after that, literally hid when I saw her at a local market selling her crap. She had a good job etc but she was convinced this would make her loads more.

@nevermorelenore

Apparently, with Body Shop at Home, you make 25% commision.

Say she was on a salary of 25k - about 1.7k take home a month. Is she really going to be able to match that salary -- let alone exceed it? She'd have to sell nearly £7k a month, while also having zero job security, pension, sick pay, maternity pay etc. Does she know enough people to sell over seven grand of toiletries and makeup each month?

Also, I'm self-employed and getting a mortgage is close to impossible. She'll probably have to put the buying a home idea on hold, as you need to have at least two years of accounts to show your income. Plus a much bigger deposit.

This is shocking. I hadn’t done the maths. Have you put it to your cousin like this op?

She’d have to find 280 people to spend £25 every single month. Surely even she can grasp how fucked up that is.

There are some really good podcasts about MLMs starting with the original 'Amway' story but talking about Herbalife/Body Shop/Forever Living etc. They are horrifying but fascinating to listen to/read about.

There are some very complex psychological games at play once you are recruited, but simply put: All the money is made from recruiting and not selling. Nearly all 'reps' spend far more on starter and sample packs than they ever sell - this is where MLMs make their money, so they need you to recruit new people far more than they need you to sell more products. And even when you start to figure it out, they can often rely on feelings of 'sunk costs' - both in cash and time - people know they are losing money, but it's like being in a toxic relationship, you've invested all this time/money/effort so you don't want to walk away.

Right now, your SIL feels badass. She has a 'new business' she has 'meetings to attend' and posts to write. She has been told she is 'taking charge of her life' and various other soundbites of bullshit, but the person saying all this to her will be as fucked as she is going to be.

I think bombarding her with negative links (even though I'd be tempted) will just play into her Upline managers hand ("Oh they don't understand/jealous" etc). Maybe send her one powerful thing, tell her you've read quite a lot about MLMs and hope she will reconsider, but if she won't, you don't want to hear anything about it and you will be there when it falls apart. Which it will.

I'd probably send this as my 'one thing'.

www.talentedladiesclub.com/articles/the-10-ugly-truths-mlms-dont-want-you-to-know/

I have been to several Mary Kay thingies. Had a good time, bought a few items which I really liked but wasn´t dumb enough to become a seller, oh no not seller, they aren´t allowed to use that word, they are CONSULTANTS. They say they are not a pyramid scheme and something about direct marketing ladida. One of the girls left her secretarial job to become full time consultant and I went to one of her dos. A year later she was back on a secretarial job and told me outright there was no way you could make a living out of this, the aim was to recruit and recruit and recruit again and get comission of other people´s sales and when they realised it wasn´t going anywhere you had to replace them with more and more innocent recruits. I googled it all before hand so wasn´t taken in.

I can see why she would be a good target for the MLMs. Teachers have a lot of work to do on top of school hours and it's not as easy as most jobs to take time off to go to your own child's school events etc during the day. So, especially as a single mum, the idea of flexible working from home will sound ideal so I think it's understandable that she would want to believe it when she's been told she can do that and make more money as well. I feel really sorry for her.

I know quite a few people who gave up steady jobs during maternity leave to do a MLM on the promise of more time with their babies and plenty of money. There were several people using NCT meet ups to try to recruit other mums and to sell their products (the worst was an event sold as a NCT pre-Xmas get together with demonstrations from local crafters but was actually a load of MLMs (Usborne books, Pampered Chef, Body Shop, that one with the greetings cards etc) and everyone felt under pressure to buy something and hand over e-mail addresses. The Body Shop 'consultant' actually contacted me afterwards saying that she remembered me, had thought what a great consultant I would make and would I like to perhaps host a party with her and she could tell me more about the opportunities available. Her message said she doesn't usually offer this but could see I would be a natural and and ideal fit for the team. Except clearly this must be what she says to everyone since a) I never wear make-up b) I am very clearly not the bubbly salesperson type and c) we actually got in to a bit of an argument on the evening when I asked her about the ingredients in some of the products as I have allergies and she insisted that as they are all natural ingredients I could not be allergic to any of them.

I agree with PP, just because she's not desperate for money, doesn't mean she's not desperate. She's given up 4 years for a degree and a professional qualification, and may well have found the idea that teaching is an easy and a family friendly career is not true.

She may well be looking for a way out, and this is what's been offered to her.

Talk to her, does she really want to move into sales full time, or does she want to leave teaching? If its sales, is this the best business option? Do the number crunch about how many people spending £25 a month she needs to meet and sell to, how likely is that, given the individual product prices. As she'd have to process all those orders and be constantly looking to meet new people to sell to, would she end up with more family time?

Could she look at other sales jobs, perhaps not running her own business, but working for someone else.

Or is it she just doesn't want to teach? There's nothing wrong with admitting a mistake in her career choice. There are options with a teaching background. She could go part time while she looks for another role, she could become a childminder (round here people pay a premium for teacher childminders and nannies). She could set up her own business as a tutor. She could look at jobs at the local council, or exam boards, or just apply for graduate trainee jobs in different sectors.

If she was just a friend, or if she had a partner who could cover the day to day costs, I'd say sit back and let it happen. But she's family and a single mum. Step in if you can and at least sow the seeds of this not being the only route, and definitely not the easiest route.

I've thoroughly enjoyed reading Elle Beau's blog - some friends of mine (a married couple) ditched their secure NHS jobs for a fantastic business opportunity, I can't remember what they were selling now, but all their facebook statuses were about their fabulous income and lifestyle with lots of hashtags and motivational sayings. I don't think they made any money out of it, and both are now back working for the NHS, where their income may not be huge but it's reliable and not dependant on selling some overpriced junk to people you call friends.

This miserable pyramid schemes are only just legal, because of the products or 'services'.

The new 'consultant'/Hun has paid over the odds for products which are no better or of a lesser quality than you'd buy in shops.

As well as trying to flog those, she quickly realises that the only way to make money is to create a 'downstream' - recruit other suckers in order to get a portion of their commission.

Why are they legal??

I've known someone who has done probably every MLM scheme available, it's annoying but in her case tends to be short lived. Hopefully this is the case for your friend. I only know of one person who has been doing MLM for years but she mostly concentrates on recruiting rather than selling.

2 of my dh cousins do the fake perfume one.... so annoying

I don't think I've heard of this one - what is it, and are they openly selling "nearly" copies or do they pretend they're real?

I'm sorry I can't get past the idea that you would give up work as a teacher to do this shite. I would expect bored housewives or people stuck in absolute dead-end jobs to do this, not someone with a proper career -- however stressful. This is a real eye-opener.

They know they can't possibly make the sales required to earn sufficient commission. They are told that from the outset, conversationally. Whether that be 'You need to recruit team members' or 'managing a team is a gamechanger....'

What isn't obvious, close up, is that there have to be losers for this to work. No matter how far down the chain you are, there needs to be someone more desperate than you who is willing to take the risk of losing money, to be your 'team'.

Take Avon as an example. They get 20% 'commission' or 'discount' if they've put in an order over £80. But, that £80 is the ex.VAT value - so the customer order value is £96. If they place an order for £150 ex.VAT, they get 25%.

However, they also need to factor in brochures, bags or samples. So even then, they will lose out of that commission.

The 'key to success' is to get to a point where their sales don't matter. If they recruit enough downstream team members, they get their own 25%, plus 2-6% of their downstream team's order value. Then there is another layer, for people who manage to recruit team members who then create their own teams, and so on.

The notion is, that eventually, you can place an order for anything - give the stuff away - to meet your minimum order value, then your real earnings come from the commission earned on the orders of your team members.

The dream they are selling, is that you are essentially just going to chat to a few team members to keep them motivated, and they will do the hard graft of selling.

It doesn't work, because of market saturation, etc., but there will be those, like Gail Reynolds who started 18 years ago and has built her money on the back of people who tried to follow.

This is all you really need to know:

Here are some MLM stats of our own
Before we get into our calculations, let’s look at some of the facts and calculations we’ve uncovered in our investigations into MLMs:

"85% of US Nu Skin reps earned zero commission in 2017
89% of UK Herbalife reps earned nothing from the company in 2017
In 2005, 90% of distributors who were not supervisors, and 60% of supervisors left Herbalife
The top selling new Younique rep IN THE WORLD earns less than a waitress in retail commission
“On average no one makes any money” in Arbonne" Talented Ladies Club

My local FB page have banned MLMs. It's amazing/disgusting how they try to beans back in under the guise of setting up social groups for struggling/lonely new mums, or coffee mornings.