Fantastic thread here mumsnet! Like others, have been a silent lurker since I discovered part 1 of this thread. My own personal experience of having a (usually sane) aunt get pulled into this weird cult, called 'Forever Living' (even the name is creepy
), is what catalysed me to find out as much as I could about the reason for her apparent total personality transplant.
It started with a seemingly innocent fb message, asking how me & the kids were?...which was a nice surprise really, considering I hadn't heard from her in close to a year lol. I phoned her & thought I was having a casual, catch up convo, when I was subjected to the strangest 'sales pitch' over the phone. She sounded scripted & slightly vacant. It was my aunt & yet it didn't quite sound like her? She went into full throttle about how this 'lovely, supportive company could transform my life & provide amazing opportunity to be work for myself & make good money...all you're asked to do is use products & recommend...that's all!
Now I'm no financial expert, but even I know that successful businesses either sell product or service. I heard a whole lot of rambling about using product, recommending, team building etc but no real mention of selling it. My limited bird brain couldn't get over this significant omission & I kept asking where, how & to whom is product sold! I could tell from her evasive answers that the selling part wasn't important, which in turn poked my curiosity/suspicion further. Then she spoke about her sponsor as if he was some kind of knowing all guru/revered deity, who 'I had to speak to', as he could explain 'the business'....
Around May of this year, I began receiving incessant invitations (in a pushy, arm twisting, won't relent until u say 'yes' kind of way) to talk to this sponser of hers & attend their team meeting. I kept politely declining her offer until 1 day I get an unexpected call from this sponsor, full of glib charm, meaningless soundbites & an even more scripted, well rehearsed, but hurried sales pitch. No substance, just drivel about how much money he was earning, now able to put kids through private sch, buy properties, afford enviable lifestyle in such a relatively short period, after a redundancy from a well paid job, caused him to 'lose it all'. Anyway it was all very bizarre & his pitch was briefly cut short when he began panting down the phone, to which I asked if he was alright? He then replied with "sorry, I just had to run for the bus". Now I don't mean to sound judgemental, but I silently perused, if u just spent the past few minutes trying to convince me of your ever ascending social/financial status, running for a bus mid sentence, is probably not the best way to sell it to me! Well that conversation got cut short but not before yet another pushy invite to a team meeting, insisting I bring a friend along lol...hmm nah not for me thx.
Then amidst endless missed calls, unreplied fb messages & txts, I was now being bombarded with FL youtube shite, with wax faced couples looking like illustrations out of a watchtower brochure, boarding private jets, walking hand in hand on exotic beaches & selling any viewer, capable of enduring beyond 2 minutes of that cheesy melodramatic propaganda, "the dream opportunity". Maybe the fact that I couldn't withstand more than a minute of such crap saved me, but coupled with the odd behaviour I & other family members were bearing witness to, in my aunt, I just had to find out about this seemingly innocent co. called FL. The rest as they say, is all history. I'm sure we've all pretty much trodden a similar path to enlightenment on this quest to discover just wth could insidiously draw so many good natured (albeit slightly naive) folk into a pyramid with ruse products, into its predatory tentacles to be used up & then eventually spat out.
What scared me the most, was how much my aunt refused to see any possibility that 'things were not all that they appeared to be', despite all the rationality & evidence, she was presented with. It's like this is more than a company or colleagues, she seems to see FL & her team as a 'family' & that's the only way I can describe it. They got her at a vulnerable time in her life too, recent serious illness, redundancy etc.
Thanks to threads like this & a few on netmums, eyespyings articles & a few blogs I found on forever living, I now have much better understanding of what my aunt has got herself involved with & why she's been on this desperate cause to recruit. We've given up trying to 'show her the light', as she just thought we were being negative & 'against her', when actually we just care. We've resolved to be there for her when she finally finds the light for herself.
God this was long,,sorry...kind of cathartic to get this off my chest & reassuring to know that there are others going through similar thing with friends/loved ones & refusing to drink the fl/MLM koolaid.