botwatch 81. The latest thread in a very long series about the deceptions practised by mlms. Unbelievably people are still being hooked in by these schemes where 97 of those who join lose money?

[ItWasnaMeGuv]

Thread 81! The scam that keeps on giving! MLM, network marking, social selling or whatever else you want to call it. It rinses you of your money, time and friends for the dream of wealth, which never happens. Why? The business model ensures that only those at the very top of the 'pyramid' stand a chance of wealth, all the rest of us just "pay to play". The dream is a nightmare. Tell your stores here.

If you look at Yawn's stories, she posted one this morning about being given a water bottle from Specsaver bot, who is tagged.

Yawn left the key to the colours on her latest cycle map. According to Yawn the red was hills but according to the key red means that she was moving fastest????
Either she doesn’t understand the simple technology or she is just lying yet again. Having done that route a few times on foot they cycled round the hills rather than up and down them. The green and blue are the uphill sections.

@grumpytoddler1 I hadn’t seen that ID. No need for MLMs to bother with Income Disclosures in the UK, I think Arbonne is one of the only companies that does. It would be good if MLMs did have to publish them and highlight them because they make stark reading especially as they come from the companies themselves.

However they are rather flawed and the picture is worse. They don’t included all the people who sign up and drop out fairly quickly having lost money and there are a lot of them. I seem to remember (someone else will correct me hopefully) that over 80% of people signing up to an MLM drop out quickly (within a year) so potentially this ID represents the pisspoor numbers for only the 20% staying active. The oft quoted 99.6% failure rate comes from taking into account ALL the people signing up (and their expenses) I understand.

Is this gross income turnover? Or their profits?

By their expenses, do you mean paying for stock?

if this is income then the top 40 are doing well! But I’m guessing all their money comes from people buying the product from them?

That is Garmin, red = slower green = faster.

They are all relative to your average speed, and nothing to do with hills. She could have been ambling along a flat slowly, and blasted up a hill.

This is the closest thing that FL has, and their percentages-within-percentages approach is trying to muddy the waters. If my maths is correct, what they're really saying is:

7.86% of all active FBOs earnt $1,263.00 per year
3.42% earnt $17,916
0.12% (yes you read that right) of FBOs earnt the big bucks

The other 88.6% got either a few quid commission on a bottle of aloe, or nothing whatsoever.

It's the commission payments, so yes turnover. Any stock purchases, petrol, travel expenses, team prizes, any fees for the subscription to the back office or similar, conference and event tickets etc. are all to be deducted from that.

If you look at the small print, that's not the top 40, that's actually the top 10 as there aren't enough of them to make a top 40. So the top one or two NVPs are probably still doing ok (but see above re expenses) but the bottom 10 are making an average of £12k pa. And obviously half of NVPs are turning over less than the median £35k.

My favourite Arbonne bot, an NVP, has just been forced to return from living her 'dream life' in Ibiza and it's basically all gone tits up.

@Youokhun Re who this includes, I've looked at this income statement before and they used to have some small print disclosing that it specifically excluded those who never earned a commission payment during the year. They used to then state the number of 'consultants' who never earned a payment, which was about 80% of the participants.

Are the people at FL training (using the term loosely) that stupid that they have to be told £100 a month is £1200 a year?? Doesn’t bode well for the quality of recruits 😆

It’s on the bottom of the photo red=fastest blue = slowest. It’s a Google app.

Nurse is clearly not enjoying her new job. Two days of moaning on stories and is so tired, sharing quotes "when something feels off, it is". Having to do mandatory training which she clearly doesn't like, and it rained yesterday which she didn't manifest so wasn't happy about. Forgot her new laptop and phone which she only got the day before and asked for a meeting with her manager.

Anyone want to guess how long she'll last?

@PieonaBarm god almighty. Two days of basic induction and she's lost it. I agree that we need to move on from NNN(NNagainbutforhowlong) given she's extruded herself from the worst of the MLMs but she's a daily case study that shows those who are gullible to the traps seem to want everything with no effort.
And now... a new hush hush opportunity. We've been here before. Several times.

Haven't seen today's stories from Nurse but did see the quote from last night! Also the post about her coaching prices.

Wonder if Yawn has managed to persuade her to try again or she's be enticed by some other scammy opportunity?
Was so hoping that getting back to a nursing job would get her away from all this but she just seems so entrenched in the whole manifesting/mlm/woo world.

If you “haven’t got time” to get involved with FLP then Yawn says don’t worry, all you need is 60 short minutes a week.

It’s so confusing because I am sure she said it takes dedication but then again she did say she loves the time freedom. On the other hand she did say she got complacent back in 2021 so that implies she hasn’t got time freedom now, as does her constant SM presence. She also said you have to be really focused on success, presumably just for 60 minutes a week? And how much of my sixty minutes will I lose each week appearing on the Zoom call with my Doppelgänger?

I wonder if her followers are perplexed by these endless contradictions?

Place marking

Someone who has to work while waiting to pick up their DD from college does not have lots of free time. It suggests she has to use every free minute to try and scrape a living.
My idea of free time is being able to binge watch a new Netflix series on Friday with absolutely no guilt, apart from the huge pile of ironing I need to do, although I may yet cave and send it to my ironing lady. Working one day a week and I have 6 day weekends I feel I should do it myself but I hate ironing!
I suspect Yawn has a stock of dog walking photos she uses to falsify the facts. I wouldn’t put it past her to insist they take a bag of clothes to swop and change in order to produce a weeks worth of photos in one walk.

When Nurse says ‘ an opportunity presented itself to me’ it’s a big red flag with MLM embroidered on it

@Spongebobette she did say as an aside that something she had manifested was something to do with the NHS. Hopefully it’s an opportunity that takes her away from MLM and makes her new role more palatable and not something such as one of her bosses telling her she can set up an Aloe stand in reception or use EFT or self love coaching with patients.

Fred 81 blimey, must bust out my supply of Yazoo to celebrate

Ah I see.. is there a travel agent mlm now I've def seen twinges of that. Knock iff perfume is rife down here in Devon. Not seen any aloe shit for a while but tropic is around. Yoooneeek had a moment few years back here and scooped up lots of the naive but think they have given up now

@pastypirate I think the new one from the States is Farmasi. They’re going after the BSAH bots. FMW is still doing lots of damage with its knock perfume scam and I think that’s taken over the bottom of the barrel where Youneeeek used to lurk.

Tropic ticks along around were I live among those with more disposable income and it seems to have taken over from Arbonne. Inteletravel is still recruiting travel agents who have never owned a passport or traveled to the next town and getting them to pay for endless training etc.

No one is buying the Aloe shit outside the company and this evening I’ve watched their Country Manager talk about what the bots need to do, which, to save you watching I’ll summarise: the bots need to put recruitment at the top of their list and they need to “retail” product to themselves, and their recruits need to do the same. Oh, and they need to also buy tickets to training events which will give them a chance to see the top bots repeat the above recruitment message in various different ways (all of them inarticulate).

it’s all depressingly the same. The only chink of light is that the industry is dying, just not quick enough.

Inteletravel 'Banker Bot' has recently taken her husband to Paris on a private jet for his birthday. He has absolutely not funded any of this himself, it's all from her Inteletravel scam payouts.

If only her 3000 strong downline knew they were effectively crowdfunding a private jet trip for an already obscenely wealthy couple. Doesn't sound quite as inspiring if you put it like that.

Where did you watch the country manager? @YouOKHun

Does anyone have any tips on how to coherantly explain why I won't follow school mum's new Scentsy fb page without completely ruining our relationship when our DDs are friends? She is spouting on about a £13.50 bottle of Febreeze and I am struggling to ignore any longer but know saying scam or pyramid scheme is not going to go down well.

Also with Yawn's accounts - how does she get away with the bed and breakfasting? Is it just the HMRC haven't clocked it yet? How do her accountants get away with signing off those accounts?! Part of me wants to report them both.

@SnoogyWoo it was a video posted a day ago on the FLP FBO page. It features the CM and a female sidekick who is clearly being put under pressure by the CM to commit to certain deadlines on the Live. I wonder if they’re all missing Bob?!

@Minieggy good question re the massive loan rolling from year to year. It seems the Midlands Spa town based accountants have had rather a lot of their clients doing similar. Some like JL Bot and Homeschool couldn’t survive and ended up on the Insolvency Register, others have kept their heads above water thanks to other sources of income or have managed some elaborate smoke and mirrors exercise to obscure the slide, but every single one is nowhere near where they were.

I wouldn’t want to be in Yawn’s position if someone at HMRC does take an interest. I remember when my DH had a very much smaller DL, how twitchy our accountants were about it being a temporary measure.

As for the Scentsy bot. No point telling her she’s doomed so just tell her you are allergic to pyramid schemes the vomitous scents used in their products. Hopefully she’s looking at what she’s spending …