Am I being over-protective?

[LucyHT]

Hi,

This is my first post so please bear with me.

As the single mum of a young adult (19 year old) son, I think I've done OK. He's not at university or college but works in retail where he has recently been promoted, which has given him much needed confidence.

He has struggled with confidence since being bullied at school and it's fantastic to see him mature and gain strength through his hard work.

However a friend he made a year or so ago has been back in contact about a 'business opportunity' and I think you know where this is going.

This friend wants to introduce him to Amway, has lent him a book and talked about leadership, values, hard work, rewards, not being a get rich quick scheme etc.

I'm afraid my spidey-senses are on full alert. I've a vague recollection of it being considered a pyramid scam and have been doing some research but it all seems to be news about the 'business' from a few years ago.

Son assures me that "it's not like that now". He admits to being a little hesitant and sceptical but mainly because of my initial response which might have been a bit OTT.

I think they are just using various sales techniques/Neuro-linguistic programming etc to mirror what he is about, ie. leadership, hard work, honesty and integrity, to get him into their 'business'.

He's been assured he doesn't have to sell, but was going to be at a meeting with a "couple who've been in it for 20 years and with the profits from it have invested in businesses which have made them £xxmillion."

The meeting fell through but we're meeting his friends tomorrow to discuss it.

Am I unreasonable to send him some links to research I've done online (via Mumsnet threads btw) to some insider stories and try to nip this in the bud. Or should I see how it goes? He's already used some insights from the book they lent him to impress his retail boss; not parroting phrases but he says it was something that when he read, he thought "of course".

I'm keen to see him gain confidence and I know I can't do it all for him. Of course there are other self-help books that I can direct him to, but perhaps he wouldn't read them because I suggested it, rather than it coming through his friends.

Thank you, sorry if this is over-long :)

Tell him to stay away. It is pyramid selling, no matter what they call it now.

Not too overprotective at all. My friends parents seemed to be brainwashed by them when we were teenagers. They had slogans stuck up all over the house. They also had a big picture of a castle stuck to their fridge that they were going to buy with their millions.

They really changed after they started it and I remember thinking it was like an x-files cult type episode. Showing my age there!

I had a couple of friends who were selling for AmWey but they soon gave it up....
It requires a huge commitment of time, energy, pushy sales techniques. And I never heard of anyone who actually did make money from it.

The cancelled meeting was probably some kind of test, to see if he really wants it bad enough. These things give me the creeps. What we need is a handbook to help young people recognise cultish practices when they crop up and see grooming for what it is.

My sister and brother in law fell for it.

They spent years at it, never made a thing.

Techncally pyramid or not, you can only make money if you enrol enough other people and the royalties mount up. But it's a lot of people who have to keep on selling.

If your son's interested in going into business he should ask himself a few questions about the business model

• what's the market for the product
• who's already in the market, big players etc

- is his product a niche or disruptive offering

• how big's the customer base
• how does he get the product in front of the customer
• is this a genuinely new idea, and if it is why hasn't anyone else done it
• what's the profit margin
• how much does he have to shift to make his target earnings
• does that seem doable?
• where does the business go once established?

Amway isn' really starting a business, there's no product development, no band building you're just self employed sales.

It doesn't matter how old he is, you are still older and wiser than your son.

My friend warned her 40 year old son against a similar scheme. he went ahead and she ended up bailing him out financially when he didn't make enough to live on.

Thank you all for your comments, they are much appreciated. I especially like the way WillkommenBienvenue referred to grooming and thank you to LeftHandedMouse for your detailed response.

I will talk to him tonight and strongly urge him not to get involved. He's just starting to gain confidence and make good friendships, I don't want him to ruin those by getting involved in what seems essentially, a confidence trick.

As lunar1 indicated, and you have found through research, Amway use cultic abuse to recruit and deceive people. It is cultic have no doubt. Keep your son and his friends away from this however possible. I am speaking as an expert in this field (cult awareness).
There are some good, informative sites to help learn about the techniques used. Try www.freedomofmind.com and look for the BITE analysis. icsahome.com is also helpful. Writers like Margaret Singer: Cults in our Midst are good too.
A popular misconception is that there is a neat recognisable entity called a cult. In reality cultic abuse occurs in a relationship where the recruiter deliberately and deceptively seeks a relationship with a victim in order to control and exploit them. Once the victim is hooked, then other brainwashing techniques are used to change their mindset. This can happen in domestic violence, grooming for sex, pyramid selling, and many other scenarios as well as the big ones we've all heard of.
The first approach may appear just to be hard sell, but there is an element of deception and the old adage if it sounds too good to be true, then it isn't true is a good initial guideline. If parents teach their kids nothing else, I'd like them to get this message over loud and clear: If you have any doubt at all, WALK AWAY. This could save years of misery.

If they have to tell you they're not a pyramid scheme, they probably are. Bit like people who "aren't racist but" iyswim

Tell him to steer clear, I've had two friends be lured into Amway and both ended up with a lot of products they couldn't sell.

They were both fairly intelligent people but young and broke - and naive in that they fell for the sales pitch and thought they'd be rolling in money.

Well I don't think I handled it very well, didn't come out at all as I planned, however he says he won't get involved.

As I'd thought they had used his own goals and aspirations to get him interested, saying he'd have more time to pursue his real passion.

We're seeing his friends tomorrow as planned. I don't expect them to give up on him easily.

Thanks again everyone.

Sorry I missed your last post. Sorry to hear the result. He needs to see his life in perspective, I wonder if it would help to show him this thread?

sorry to come late; hope all well. Amway members use very unpleasant motivational techniques to recruit, and many of the recruiters themselves are caught in the cult, and losing money; (tho they of course deny this). They will try and make the new recruits "core"; which means paying for a weekly tape/CD, monthly book, and quarterly "business meetings" in hotels. All these cost the recruit serious money, and those at the top make money off such "tools". The actual Amway products are almost never sold at retail; Amway itself makes its money by its adherents buying them for home use. But the Motivational Organisations, the Tools Scam, and the way desperate people are screwed to end to afford "The next meeting", the next tape etc. is what is truly evil. And, like all cults, once you have committed and believe, and made sacrifices, it is very hard to leave. Google "amway scam" or one of the very first exposes;
www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Amway/AUS/
Or the book "fake it till you make it". Or get you DS to ask his recruiters for auidted accounts of their business, showing profit and loss ;)