MLM Bot Watch 35 how to lose friends and alienate people with Younique Forever Living Juice Plus Arbonne Crypto currency and tea and coffee MLM cults

[BSintolerant]

Thread 34 may be no more;
Thread 35 is quite alive.

Let's make sure it stays that way.

This thread is here to expose the garageful of lies pedalled by multi level marketing (network marketing) schemes, i.e outrageous health claims, unlimited wealth and residual earnings, to name but a few.

#sackthebot

Mumblog, I’m so glad you got out and that you listened to your family. He sounds very wise.

Regarding the earlier comments about the DSA and 90% refund, it is the law in the UK that this is offered. It is part of the pyramid scheme laws.

MumBlog I am the same as you, I gave Forever everything for a good 3 years but hit a wall and everything declined. I neglected housework because I needed to send more prospecting messages and I never got to the end of my ToDo list.

I went to the academy last January and I absolutely loved it! I came away with a positivity that spurred me on for about 3 weeks. I have fond memories of the ^^feelings I experienced as I felt invincible and as though anything was possible. On reflection I know that this event was cleverly designed to make me feel that way! My business STILL declined...!

I was asked a few pages back what I thought when I read these pages as a bot and wanted to share some of my thoughts I had as a bot. It may help you break down the illusion further for other bot readers.

So, my mental justification for some commonly pointed out things on here was:

Point 1 'the products are overpriced so your upline all get a cut'.

All products in any shop that are sold have profits taken into account that pay the shelf stacker, the supervisor, the manager, the area manager, the haulage company, the marketing team, the manufacturers and the taxes etc. FL products are doing the same except we are doing a lot of those roles and paid for it with the profit.

Point 2 'Why aren't the products sold in shops of they are so good?'

Imagine you had a product you wanted to sell. Would you rather pay someone who doesn't care about your product a minimum wage to not care or would you rather pay someone who loves the product to sell it and be rewarded for their passion?

Point 3 'Its a pyramid'

Yes. Most businesses are; with people at the bottom being paid a small amount (i.e. shop assistant) and the CEO at the top taking a huge amount but it's the people at the bottom that do the income generating work.

I will add more as and when they come to me!

Spent the weekend cringing over countless fb posts / live videos detailing every second of an FL ‘training’ weekend.

I found it extremely worrying that so many people have been sucked into it. Waving flags and dancing about, whilst filming it on smart phones to post on social media as a recruiting tool....

Cult like behaviour and constant back patting / clapping is very concerning and not at all how business works on the real world.

What work is actually being done here? A weekend for ‘entrepreneurs?’ Business is more than sitting in a hotel conference room with fancy planners and stationary whilst piers are talking about Instagram and goal boards.

Mlm sells a fantasy of a business. Where it’s all meetings in coffee shops with Pro planners and highlighters, setting goals and writing down a list of everyone you know to pester on social media to join a business about nothing! I work in my family business and it’s hard work. Hard work!

Only those on the top will ever make money from mlm. It’s a mathematical fact that a mlm is not sustainable and the market will be saturated. The top earners in mlm are branching out into other business interests such as diaries / public’s speaking / business coaching.

If you have come to this thread and are thinking about joining ning an mlm please don’t. Unless you want to spend your weekends peddling overpriced items at wedding fairs / markets to make a mediocre profit and hassle everyone you know to ‘join your team’ ( no one does believe me)
If you want to do something other than your J.O.B then do something for yourself, start something off your own back. Invest in yourself do not line the pockets of mlm bots who are only interested in their own success

Reformed - In the deleted thread I believe in your introduction you stated that you hadn't quite left Forever, you were done but hadn't quite given them the final FU?

Toobusytowee has said upthread that the 90% buyback is part of British law as well as being in the DSA terms. Could you take advantage of that? Maybe claw even part of your money back?

I know that in some MLM's if someone leaves and does the 90% buyback any bonus earned by an upline based on product that is returned under the buyback policy has to pay back the bonus received, so your upline may have to pay back some bonus money if this is true for Forever.

Your post is awesome and I watched the video. There was a teeny tiny bit about the products but most of it was how to build your team. It shows how it is all about prospecting and building a team and not selling the product.

Losing 50 managers would explain why bonus cheques are dropping and why they are all so desperate to recruit.

Changing the CC's and amount of months needed to reach Manager to me says that they are trying to get more people to put more effort and most importantly, money, in.

I cannot wait until April to see what the bonus cheques are, and to see what excuses they come up with if they are lower than last year.

I know some last year said that they hadn't been working their business because they were busy with other things but were going to get back on track.

I've noticed some of those who said that have focused on other things this year, lifestyle coaching and social media coaching, things like that.

I can't understand how you can teach someone to post on facebook to attract people. People need to find your page/profile to start with. If they don't do that then it's all pointless. Most local selling pages will get rid of MLM posts, or people on the page will call them out as being an MLM, i've seen that lots of times.

@cosie.... I have thanked my partner, he's been wonderful. He took some time off work to physically build me a studio in the garden so I could work from there as I was worried about childcare. I am yet to sit down with super successful uncle but I know that when I do, I can thank him and get some tips to make my actual business more profitable. The irony is (pointed our by DH) that I work very few hours now, by comparison and most months I actually bring in a full time wage 😂 you couldn't write it! But here's the important thing, I don't feel the need to justify or explain my earnings to anyone like I did when I was a bot..... aaaahhhh such freedom!

@reformed .... yes I felt so invincible after the trainings too. But looking back on the videos, I'm not surprised why. It's all very powerful stuff. Lots of hugging, crying, clapping and waving. You would have an emotionally draining day, hearing the saddest stories.... then the next breath you were dancing and cheering.
Thank you for the post on the pigeon team. I think their leader has been rather quiet of late but it becomes more apparent that she's working in the background on more ways to try and get money out of her down line ..... sorry I mean help them

@white I can't wait for April either, I will be interested to see how it plays out with my upline. She got big cheques for the last 3 or so years so it would be interesting to see how that one pans out. And all the other ones too actually, there was some big money on those cheques 2 years ago. I didn't see last years because I was cleansing my soul of anything MLM.

Another thing for leavers of mlm companies, you will get the odd recruitment message from other companies. It will happen, you will still be bait for a little while after. A poonique rep tried to befriend me after she noticed that I wasn't pissing my Facebook friends off with forever posts as active on my social media with my business, telling me she could help and she thought I'd be a fantastic part of the company she works with peddles shit for
I won't go into the specifics of said convo but I sent her Elle Beaus blog. She had also recently "won" a trip to Utah so I commented and asked her why poonique don't pay for her travel, just accommodation 😂 I know that was naughty but I couldn't help it.

So if seasonal/promotional items etc are excluded from the 90% buyback, would that partly explain why Poonique have these constant monthly "kudos" items?

mumblog4 good for you for having the guts to get out. Let's hope your posts inspire other people who are still on the fence to get out, or not get in.

whiterangey Is the fact that Forever lost 50 managers at some point in the video posted upthread? I haven't had time to watch it yet. Over how many months was their loss sustained?

Hiya, I don’t post on here very often but I just had to come on to share this post I’ve just seen on Facebook:

Are you a skeptic?
Are you thinking what evidence have they actually got?
Are you one of those people that just says NO? For NO reason! “It take no guts to be skeptical it takes guts to believe. To put yourself on the line. To take action and risk failure and ultimately to succeed”
TONY ROBBINS •
•
•
•
@theisalifestyle
#skeptical #fearoffailure #evidence #guts #believe #takethestep #onestepahead #tonyrobbins #mondaymotivation #whatsyourwhy #controlyourthoughts #youmindispowerful

So basically, they’re admitting g they have no evidence that their products work and trying to sin that into a good thing with a load of over enthusiastic mumbo jumbo 🤬🤬🤬

Oh, but the use of so many hashtags makes it so much more credible don't you think Trialsmum

BS the 50 was just in that particular team. No timeline mentioned, but it is because they couldn't be bothered to put in the effort needed to be a manager, they thought that once they hit manager they could just sit back and not put the work in. It was talking about them leaving, not just being demoted, they actually left.

Income claims were about £1200 when you reach manager under the current rules, and I believe about half that if you do it under the new rules. That is per month. So while it is easier to become a manager under the new rules, you get less money. £600 when you hit manager and you have to keep hitting those numbers or you lose your position.

How much is a CC? How much would I need to sell or recruit for one CC?

Thanks for the thought but one thing I didn't do was overstock by much, so what I have I will use. The products are ok, some I will always buy(propolis, lip balm, toothgel to alternate with regular toothpaste) and some I will not bother with once I've used them up but I'd rather stay inside the fold like a fly on the wall, if officially leave then I will be removed from team pages

A manager's income used to be averaged at £2000. Everyone who I saw in my upline hit manager would get over £3000 bonus the first pay after hitting manager so it was lucrative at the time. We used to say in the business presentations (don't know if they still do!) that "Forever like to under promise and over deliver".

1cc was around £160 at wholesale or £220 at retail so you worked out that a 4cc month would give you 4x the difference between those two figures as profit.

So 4cc = £240 profit.

Except you couldn't place an order of less than £50 so you would usually need to top the order up.

Then postage was between £5.50 and £7.

So per £50 order your profit would be around £15.

After postage of £7 your profit would be £9.

If you had to top the order up then you could with lip balms at £2 each or the average wholesale price of a tube of cream or lotion was around £9....

This is based on 35% starters discount. It also presumes you have charged full price on products which I never could as I had to heavily discount to sell anything!

So not only are you likely to make no profit on orders and Benoit of pocket topping them up, you're also then encouraged to buy 1cc(£160) worth of products for your personal use!

Not written exactly word for word, but it's very close. Lots of lovely victim blaming.

In the last few years Forever have had a boom in the UK and people have made quite a lot of money, where are they now?

They aren't active, they were just in it for the easy ride.

We are about the longer term visions and the responsibility. You sponsor someone into the business and then you just drop off. Where is the responsibility in that?

Looking after people who you told this was the greatest thing and then you just go.

50 managers in our team who have gone off or gone inactive and more than that who just sit there and do the minimum enough to get paid, that is what happens . That is the reality of it and there is no point hiding it from people, people don't have a work ethic or it's not for them anymore or things happen personally and that's absolutely fine.

So that would be £24,000 at wholesale over 4 months to become a manager. For which you would get next to no profit and in return you would get about £600 a month as a manager.

Where do I sign up?

Am I right in that the alternative to gain CC's is to recruit? How many CC's do I get for each person I recruit?

I'm guessing I would get some CC's for what my downline orders and who they recruit as well?

@whiterangey it's that kind of "holier than thou" attitude I particularly disliked about the top bots. Managers dropped off because their pay dropped, and the reason for that was the drop from 2cc to 1cc for sponsoring. I remember them saying it was to bring the uk inline with every other country and that we would be paid more in the long run..... but that obviously just wasn't true. I would love to see that graph that shows flps growth year on year, so that it includes the last 2 years. I bet it's rapidly gone down hill.

All the ccs that your team generate would go into your pot yes. Except non UK team, you don't get those ccs until you reach manager.

So, £2.50 a month to register on that website

Clever amount and she’s undercutting the official FL sites such as Forever Knowledge which is £10 a month and ‘no other team has this’

How many in her downline? If it’s 1000 (someone might know the figure, this is a guess) then she’s raking in 2.5k a month

Plus charging for tickets for the training events

This is all without the profits from the actual FL business or her Planner business

Clever girl.

@sponge but they get free flappy flags 😂 #totesworthithun

Someone posted this a couple of threads ago I think it was. If you search for Forever Living Uk Limited on the companies house website you can see their accounts up until the end of 2016.

In 2016 sales decreased by 25% and new Business Owners decreased by 52%.

In 2015 sales increased by 80%.

The gross profit margin is down by 63%.

The 2016 sales would have had an effect on the bonuses received last April which were down overall. Some people had a drastic cut in bonuses, some were halved.

I really struggle with accounting and working out exactly what i'm seeing on the accounts posted on the companies house website.

Most of the big players in Forever do have their accounts on companies house. As much as I can figure out by the figures it seems that their income is overwhelmingly made up from their chairman's bonus cheque and there is extremely little from their normal 'earnings' from forever living. I'm not sure if any income can be missed off the accounts or exactly what you have to put on there or leave out. The figures I see do seem to indicate that most income is from chairman's bonus though. As I said though I really have no knowledge of how it all works so there is a huge chance i'm reading the figures wrong.

Ah yes (didn’t know they had to pay for the flags before, who on earth has to pay a company for branded advertising material??)

Also don’t forget, if you subscribe you are investing in your bizness and working on your Personal Development

Listened to a bit of that webinar as I was getting ready this morning. I particularly enjoyed the section justifying the £2.50 per month cost.

'We are not making any money from this, it is all going back into the team. It will pay for things like events, speakers and incentives, which at the moment are costing me a fortune - I have spent £27,000.'

Which is a round about way of saying that this is saving her money... or in other words... erm... making her money.

@whiterangey I would hope they would have to put all income on there but in reality who knows
I've just seen the alternative route to manager so they must be desperate to break managers through because it looks bad nobody is getting promoted.

Also, little giggle.... success day must be taking a giant nose dive. The big bots have given out a discount code on their team pages for 10% off..... using their affiliate code no doubt. They will probably get paid on that. £3 for each person that uses it.
Interestingly Area 110 (midlands) just has 6% discount. Probably because there is no active "big bot" in that area? I could be totally wrong and off the mark but that's what it looks like.

@sponge it also says that no more trainings will be given via the page so if you want training basically you have to sign up. Clever clever.. .. . I bet they have a castle
garage full of those awful bloody flags anyway 😂

Anyone got any good ideas how I can approach the subject of fl with family and friends now? I am partly wanting to make it a joke but because I was so immersed I pissed off a lot of people. I want to say sorry for being so naive but at the same time I feel so bloody embarrassed that this happened to me I wish I could just wipe it from memory really.

All that said, I did gain some valuable skills and knowledge. The most useful being how to spot a pyramid scheme and stay away from them. I thank mumsnet for the education too

@mumblog4
On the bright side, you are very well informed about MLMs and the way they hook people in (you shouldn’t be embarrassed, they do this VERY well with all sorts of techniques)
So you will easily spot it if anyone in your family or circle of friends starts to get dragged in, you can intervene early on before they become totally botted.

I found these threads after googling Forever Living MLM. I’d never even heard of MLMs until a friend seemed to undergo a weird transformation and began posting every day about her ‘why’ and how her life was so brilliant. Totally out of character and when I tried to ask her about it in a PM and gently questioned some of the claims she was making she blocked me! I found this very alarming.

Anyway these threads have been a real education and I am so grateful to all of you who have shared your experiences. My friend seems not to be doing FL any more and I’ve connected with her on Instagram but I daren’t raise with her what happened.