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.

Ironic advertising on this thread!

Yup. Federico Mahora.

FM World Poland was established in 2004 in Wrocław, Poland by Mr Artur Trawiński

Who old Feddy is/was, no idea.

Pure thievery. Evil. Evil. Evil.

www.careercontessa.com/advice/multilevel-marketing/

These schemes prey on women who are desperate for a way out of full-time work/disillusionment with career, and want a work/life balance. My cousin is trying to give me a headache about Bitcoin at the moment. It is really hard to convince that they're heading for a fall - If they really had the commitment to make it in self-employment they'd be looking up info on how to utilise skills they already have, and pursuing that.

It takes drive, you can't come from nowhere selling someone else's (especially non-unique) product and think it's a path to riches. She'll lose friends and alienate family when they get fed up of her hassling them to buy stuff.

I would have a word with her about this folly. Try to find out her primary motivation for wanting to do this. It's all you can do, lay it on the line and then it's her decision. After all she's an adult, free to make her own choices

To be fair, an awful lot of people want to get out of teaching. Pyramid schemes are not the answer though!

Just to correct a previous poster on Avon discounts, there is no minimum order value and hasn’t been since April. 15% commission from the first £, and rises to 30%.

You also don’t earn simply by recruiting, it’s all on sales (yes you get extra commission on the sales of your team) and you can join for £9 so no massive outlay, especially if you want to sell digitally (no brochure costs)

Some make a good living out of it. Most earn as a bit of extra cash.

I’m always disappointed to see Avon lumped in with the disreputable MLMs

Is Tropic one of these MLM schemes? Lots of my FB friends are reps.

Another not surprised at her wanting to get out of teaching - I’m also looking for an escape route, as are many teaching friends I know. Covid showed what utter contempt the profession is held in by so many and I’m done.

@BillMasen, Avon, Body Shop and Aesop are owned by the same company.

They base a lot of their sales tactics around MLM selling.

Natura & Co.

I have a distant family member who got divorced, met a new bloke and gave up teaching to do Arbonne. She is constantly flooding my facebook and social media with multiple "happpyyyyy" posts per day. shes #makingmemories left right and centre and definitely #livingherbestlife. i cant delete her as shes family so i have her muted.

i can cope with the spam (by muting her), however 2 weeks after my DM passed away last year she contacted me and asked if I wanted to go for coffee. so sweet of her to show concern, especially as we werent close. she then added it was because she had a fantastic business opportunity for me that we could discuss that would not only take my mind off my current situation but also make £££ into the deal.

That terrible @BlueCheckedTeatowel

@ChestnutSquash

Honestly, the brainwashing is very well researched and effective. That is why MLM schemes are so prevalent and so many people do fall for them.

Yes, unfortunately they use NLP (neurolinguistic programming) techniques which are all well and good when you use them in service of a client (I.e. to help them with a problem they want to be helped with) but have been adopted by MLMs and others to get this crazy level of buy in that you see...

Worth listening to the dream podcast, really eye opening.

I briefly signed up with usborne books, you could say I 'left' my £35k a year job to do it, but I didn't, the childcare bill was £20k a year, plus tax and travel expenses. So put like that a couple of years of side hustles can earn you loads more. Not mlm though, I quickly realised it wasn't going to work and got other online/flexible jobs for a few years. I do have a good stack of books though and very handy as the kids grow up or for last minute presents!

@Tunnocks34

God so many teachers in my school are body shop representatives. Drives me bloody mad.

If this isn't a huge red flag for the absolute state of education and what our teachers are being put through then I don't know what is...

I know a teacher who said for years she was going to quit because of her MLM “business.” I think it was one of the essential oils ones. She was honestly not a good salesperson and the market was completely saturated. Thankfully she never left her real job because her DH got made redundant.

It also completely destroys your friendships as you get more pushy to make some money.

I know someone who was in Amway and it didn't take him far at all.

Sounds like she looking for a solution to get out

I mean i do Body Shop and am a teacher 😆 I do it to save myself money though, no chance I'd be doing it full time. It doesn't cost me anything no ties etc and isn't on a pyramid but I was cautious.

The kit (or "business") cost me £25 for products with an rrp of £140 including a serum I wanted that was £26 in the shop. You don't have to buy anything else, or recruit, or party - i just buy stuff for me & family/friends and treat the commission as a 25% discount. At home 'consultants' also get a minimum of 10% off rrp on top for all products all the time and match or beat anything from ecommerce so that's the benefit to customers. As a consultant I also get a £25 free shop for every £150 worth of sales and my discount becomes 70% once I have sales of £230 so I no longer pay for any bath/beauty/skincare stuff.

There is good money to be made if you really push it, recruit etc but you would have to be constantly 'on' - I prefer switching off in an eve although around Christmas I'll put a bit more effort in to earn a bit more and that will push commission up to 28%. A lot of friends have dropped hours at work as they were earning more from body shop but very few have quit work all together and those that have are still working at least full time hours just from home now.

There's plenty on dodgy mlms out there but I wouldn't say body shop is one of them - they are super flexible. The issue is unscrupulous reps who aren't honest and target the weak and there should be more comeuppance for them

A family friend has got into a new one selling whitening toothpaste and Nu Skin tanning products ,eye cream and these really expensive electric facial spa sets that cost £300. I dread to think how much she has invested of her own money.
She hasn’t given up her day job yet so I hope she catches on quick. She has a limited market on her Facebook so there’s only so many times you can sell the same people the products
I cringe every time she posts about her products as she immediately gets 10 comments about “how wonderful this product was for me” “ can’t wait to try it I’ve heard good things” “oh I need another bottle of this”
And then she replies with cheesy “oh yeah girl you look awesome” and shit like that
When you click on the commenters profiles they are from all over the effing world and not going to be buying face cream from my friend. They are all also self employed and selling the shit themselves ...obviously just going round each other’s pages pretending to be happy customers
Awful
I was tempted to buy something just to help her out but I don’t want any of that stuff. The eye cream before and after is obviously photographed in 2 different light settings to make it look like the dark circles have vanished

Oh yea and now she’s started to recruit team members

A “friend” on one of my watsapp group has started doing this. I’m just ignoring her invited to a Zoom product party while all the other members are really enthused by it 🤦‍♀️

I know someone who has just started doing BS. I don’t buy from them anymore (because of their anti women behaviour, I include MLM in that). The thing is within 30 minutes of us there is a BS outlet shop which is super cheap. There’s still a shop in town too. It a waste of time and money. I think she’s annoyed I keep turning down her group requests.

I’m actually allergic to perfume and I had a Scentsy person that their shit was ‘different’...

I know someone who has done Avon for over 20 years and has started doing these other MLMs, I wonder if her market has shrunk with competition.

@Szeli you contradict yourself in your post a bit. You say you looked into it and it isn't in a pyramid. Then a few paragraphs down you say there is an option to recruit.
That is exactly an example of a pyramid structure. Can you see that? Each recruiter makes money from the down lines they recruit and so on.
MLM folk argue that every business has this structure. They will also argue that it isn't a pyramid because they have a product to sell. I've heard all the counter arguments many times.
The simple truth is that BS and all those other MLM companies have a really dodgy, unethical business model. And one company that follows that structure is no better than another. Arbonne is as dodgy as Body Shop. Body shop is as dodgy as Avon. Avon is as dodgy as Forever Living. However the most concerning of all are the ones that spout false health claims. That's a whole other thread

One of my friends has just joint FM perfume one. Never heard of it before. She started her page on the weekend on Facebook. I have been sent a ridiculous amount of messages in the last 3 days! It’s actually starting to piss me off now. She has sent non stop messages from the FM page as well as her personal profile. Then added me to a bloody WhatsApp group!

I have not replied to any messages and not opened the messages fully so she can see I have not read them.

The last message really annoyed me as it said ‘from one woman to another please help me build a small business. I’m not asking you to buy products I’m just asking you to like ALL my posts and share them! It’s really not a lot to ask in such difficult times to help each other out, we should all be working together and helping build each other up. Us mums need to stick together. Look forward to catching up and sharing my new adventure with you soon.’

Honestly felt like reporting this message to the police and saying my friend has been kidnapped as she would never send me such crap!!

The top selling new Younique rep IN THE WORLD earns less than a waitress in retail commission
Wow!

These people drove me nuts. I am a professional hair and makeup artist. No, do NOT contact me asking if I want to sell your overpriced crap to my clients!! 😂😂

I have had 2 private messages on fb from
my bot...1st one she asked if i'd like to buy any Yoooooooooooooooonique....she then jumped ship to Acti Labs and messaged me asking if i'd like to buy some toothpaste....who in their right mind does that? Surely they must realise they are pissing people off...its like they lose all sense of ethical decency when they sign up to these scams.
The vague job ads on fb piss me off....you can spot the mlm's a mile off and yet there is still loads of people commenting with 'more info pls hun'.. i report them to the admins but more and more appear every day