MLM Bot Watch 41 - Forever Living charity giving, are MLMers using charities to increase their CC's while making it look like they are being charitable?

[Whiterangey]

Are charities being used by MLMer's to gain CC's, gain new leads, and get rid of stock?

Here is an example of a top Forever Living Business Owner in the UK taking advantage of a charity.

It may look like she is doing something good for the charity but she isn't. The charity will be getting 20% of profits. The business owner, the current UK number 2 in Forever Living, who recently picked up a $420,000 cheque at the Forever Living global rally in Dallas is just getting her Case Credits (CC's) up, and hoping to get new leads to sign up under her.

For everything that she sold Forever Living will have taking the biggest cut, then the business owners upline will have taken a cut, and then the business owner herself. Her profit will be very small and then she was only going to give away to the charity 20% of that. It could be as little as £10, probably a lot less, despite the members of the group spending hundreds of pounds with her. I hope she had the decency to at least add to it. For a 'charity night' where someone who has received multi-million dollars in cheques, and received $420k two months ago you'd expect at least 3 figures to be donated. 20% of her profits from that night will have been ridiculously small.

The charity will be getting even less as you can see she is running special offers which will come out of her profit, reducing the amount available to the charity even more.

As you can see in one of the screenshots someone in the local area of the charity attempted to warn the charity that the business owners motives may not be as charitable as it seems and the business owner wants to take the discussion away from public view, and then deleted the reply instead of giving a reply to show that the poster was wrong. She can't show the poster is wrong as the poster is right so instead chose to make it all go away.

The screenshot of a slide is one used by someone in the business owners downline, who correctly refers to the charity night as 'a launch' which is what it was, it wasn't for charity, it was for the business owner to sell her products and hopefully get some new recruits to her business.

The same business owner last year set up a justgiving page for donations to make up 'Positive Packs' to give to those suffering with breast cancer.

"The cost is 20 pounds which is non profit making and the pack value is worth far more. This will fund a Positive Pack containing Forever Toothgel, Aloe lips, Ever Shield Deodorant, fast break bar and some woolly socks and to every pack I will personally add a heat lotion, an aloe gelly and a herbal blossom tea sachet and an aloe to go."

So the donations will be used by the business owner to buy the items through her own account where she will make a profit from receiving a percentage of what is spent. She will also receive case credits from that. The case credits she received from sending out these Positive Packs will have gone towards her getting the $420k cheque in Dallas in April. So non-profit is not true as the business owner will be profiting in two ways.

The items can also be bought for a LOT less elsewhere, a tube of toothpaste can cost £1 from a supermarket, a stick of deodorant the same. I also wouldn't call toothpaste and deodorant something that anyone pampers themselves with, they are necessities.

The business owner will have used Forever Living products in the bags despite the recipients getting a lot less, and no luxury items, because she benefited herself from doing so. She also would have been able to, and did, use the Positive Packs to advertise Forever Living Products, and at least some of them were given out at a big presentation where the business owner would have been able to present her business opportunity there, some of whom are very vulnerable.

I do genuinely worry about the mental health of bots. The anxiety must be horrible.

Ok so as an accountant I love numbers and have been doing some interesting calculations. Sorry it's a bit long. I've attached the pics to back up my numbers.

Obviously FLP famously don't publish an income disclosure statement. However, I found this page which does attribute some figures to percentages. I also found a link which stated there are 9.25m FLP "business owners" .

Doing some quick calculations on what we can deduce from these numbers reflects an even more shocking reality on what is "earned" lower down the pyramid.

This is for 2016 so it will be even worse now:
86.6% earned nothing
13.4% earned averaged $563 per month BUT remember this includes everyone earning those huge cheques so is not representative of typical income at all

Of this 13.4%, half earned over $13,499 in 2016. Therefore the other half didn't. Again top half includes the mega earners.

So we're already at only 6.7% earning more than $14k per year.

From this we can also deduce that 6.7% who earned less than $14k must have averaged $13 per year (working back from the $563 per month mentioned above) - which is basically nothing and will be a loss once expenses are accounted for.

So add this 6.7% to the 86.6% we know earned nothing and you have 93.3% earning nothing in 2016. That is over 8.6m of the 9.25m total.

3.25% of all bots averaged $89k BUT as the top 0.67% averaged $213,542 this reduces the average of the 2.58% in this group to just $55.8k per year or £40k.

So in summary we have for 2016:
93.3% (8.6m) earning zilch
2.58% (240k) earning $55.8k per year
0.67% (62k) earning $213,542 per year - on average so again there will be a wide range skewed by the top in this group too

There's a small group who earn between 0 and $55.8k that I can't work out a number from based on the info given but I think this is a good starting point and is all taken from official FLP information.

Oh and this includes Chairman's bonus and everything else but doesn't take expenses into account so the reality is debt for the vast vast majority.

Thanks for this @tizzlebizzle

Your last point is very important.
My friend who was seduced into Forever Living and became fully botted became a Supervisor and got to walk across a stage with a sash on (having paid for the privilege of attending the Success Day of course). I gently asked about her record keeping and whether she was keeping track of expenses (such as Success Day, travelling there, overnight stay) and she snapped at me that she was ‘investing in herself and her business’
Meanwhile she was buying bottles of Prosecco for her ‘teamies’ and posting that, unlike people in a J.O.B, they were getting treated and ‘recognised’.
She also took prospects out for coffee or afternoon tea (pretty sure she always paid) and posted it all over FB ‘and they call this working?’

She no longer does FL. I bet that she lost money and that even in ‘good’ months, had she done a simple list of expenses against income she’d have realised she was making no money.

I know that her mum and granny bought from her every month ‘to support her business’. How much money does this bloodsucking company make out of sympathy purchases?????

That is so familiar Sponge.

I was always puzzled by how much business 'training' was involved right from the start. Naively, I assumed that the company would be providing guidance on book-keeping and expenditure control, in order for their reps to do as well as possible.

Little did I know that this (paid for) training was actually about getting the bots to do absolutely the opposite, i.e. spend money like there was no tomorrow, and see it as an 'investment' in themselves - 'substituting' expensive FLP products for ones previously used (or never required) to become a 'product of the product', purchasing endless supplies to give away as free samples, buying tons of 'promotional' material (flyers, leaflets, brochures, business cards, etc.), treats for team members & prospects, endless travel (& accommodation) to business presentations & success days, materials for stalls (tables, handcart, banner...), fancy dress for big company events, unnecessarily expensive clothes and beauty treatments to 'look professional'...

They are told not to take the above expenses (or the mindset training DVDs, books, one-to-ones) into account, but to look solely at any money coming in and see it as pure income.

They could be losing hundreds a month, but the lovebombing from the upline ("absolutely smashing it Hun!") and the hysteria whipped up over walking across a stage with a tacky nylon sash on makes them believe they are truly in the way to riches, and that any note of caution is the jealous grumbling of haters who don't want them to succeed.

It's a massive con and abuse of trust that only works because the victim cannot conceive that anyone would be so viciously manipulative, especially not someone who 'saw something in them' that made them want to share te amaaayzing opportunity.

It’s this kind of motivational message that boils my piss. Keep going, keep MY money coming in even though you might feel as though it’s not working,

So if your in NWM and doubting yourself....
Don’t give up! Don’t listen to the naysayers that claim it doesn’t work!
They mean it didn’t work For them because either they didn’t work It hard enough or they aren’t brave enough to Try!!
Remember: It’s always impossible till it’s done!

@DoraExplorer99 - Am I right that the roughly £1k from bonus + profit on sales is gross, and doesn't take into account the various 'business' expenses I listed above?

Some drama or other down Broke's way. "Blaaah blaaah poaching, blaaah blaaah lies, blaaah blaaah my integrity" (without the punctuation, obviously) 🙄

Thank you @Spongebobette, that is really helpful and answers my next question which was going to be why don't eagle managers go to the eagle retreat thing every year, makes sense if it's an incentive and not an actual rank.

Wasn’t me, it was Dora!

Just when u think you’ve seen all the different recruitment techniques, total shit life

Thanks Dora. That is very much the ballpark my OH was in.

It never improved once she made manager.

In fact, the lack of 'success' prompted her to spend increasing amounts on 'mindset coaching', whether attending cultish rallies, buying every DVD & book going, and booking series of online sessions with various gurus.

Her declared income on her tax returns has never been more than around 7.5k, and there is probably 2/3k of expenses she is not taking into account (at least 1.2k I am certain of, as that is her share of the car use for business purposes that go through my accounts).

This optimistic accounting has also cost us in tax credits we would have been entitled to.

At some points we qualified for free school meals and housing benefit, but it would have been 'bad Attraction marketing', or some similar crap, to claim it so we were actually worse off than being on benefits, but she still had to spend big to show how successful she was.

I dread to think how much debt she accumulated...

I'm struggling to identify Sacked. Please could I have some hints...

Thank you

@twentytwentyhindsight

I'm sorry for how mlm cost you your relationship, I think your clarity now is refreshing and an important skill to teach your children.

The part that angers me most in your post is when you mention the tax credits, school meals and housing benefit... surely this mlm sham should not extend so far as to rob from your children? At some point these Huns must see that the needs of the children are more important than this luxury lifestyle illusion? I am sad and angry on your behalf.

Are there genuine scenarios with other Huns where their DC are going without at the expense of mlm?

Wow! What a great way to spend a beautiful sunny, scorching hot Sunday ..... at a training day, crammed into your uplines house and garden with a dozen or so other bots.

Let's not forget that it's UNPAID too.

Oh, and NO MILEAGE ALLOWANCE.

NO EXPENSES either. In fact you probably have to take along a food contribution.

Spent my afternoon enjoying the glorious sunshine at number 2 son's football club awards, gutted that I wasn't invited to spend it crowded into someone's front room with other hunbots.

Maybe next year the dream will come true...

I know what you mean. I've had to suffer going to friends for a barbecue lunch and then spent the afternoon in my hammock in my garden.

Still there now, sobbing into my glass of wine because I didn't get to spend it with the hunbots.

I feel your pain Kenny.

Following with interest, I must admit that a lot of the local fb groups I belong to have clamped down on MLM promotions so is interesting to see the other tactics they're using....

I recently noticed that I have a juice/slimming bot in my fb friends as she's another Mum from pre-school. Based on this thread, the recent long Ibiza weekend she went on because she's had so many good sales was probably paid for by her (in attendance with other top sales people)?

Uh-Oh. Look’s like Broke has fallen out with Hempworx.... Something about their snake oil not being for wholesale in the UK.

Spent my afternoon in a local town, it’s like seaside but in the Midlands. Ice cream, arcades, parks, etc. Then I nipped into the mini indoor market.

And saw an FLP bot, sat there, living the dream. Sat there all day at her stall, looking utterly miserable. Had it not been for the DH and kids waiting for me I would have loved to have had a chat with her. Asked her where she would love to be on a sunny Sunday. Asked her how much she was being paid, or paying herself to be here. Wonder if she even realises this is her time, she needs to factor this in to all the money she is making from her business.

Honestly I just felt really sad for her.

I spent a wonderful, if maybe a bit warm, evening at the theatre watching one of my children perform.

I did not have an 11 hour round trip to be brainwashed and hand over my money to someone. It does not mean your training is awesome, there are only so many ways to keep drumming into people that riches are coming as long as they keep making you rich. You also used a slide that praised someone for taking the piss out of a charity. All it means is that you are a horrible horrible person who takes advantage of people.