I'm an Arbonne Consultant AMA

[Gottobefree]

Hi I'm an Arbonne consultant.

I work full time and do Arbonne in my spare time. There's a lot of opinions on 'MLM' and Social networking companies. Thought it would be fun to answer any questions people have about it ! Complete honesty !

@LadyGAgain

Hi thank you. I do think the ethos could do with some work. It's an international company; America, canada, uk, poland, new zealand and australia but I think it's heavily american dominated due to america being more open to MLM. UK is still very traditional. Also it's worth pointing out anyone in these countries can buy from you directly at any time of the day.

So Vegas is an annual conference Arbonne hold every year. Any consultant can apply to the waiting list and if you get selected by availability you can attend. They do a UK conference in Birmingham but it's not as lavish as Vegas !
There are 4 levels of promotion. Everyone starts as an Arbonne Independent Consultant.
The next levels are; District manager, area manager, regional president and national president. National being the highest! If you promote to Regional and National Arbonne give you £500 a month to lease a new white mercedes (has to be a white mercedes, body shop do the same thing)
I will say 10 years is a long time doing Arbonne so it's a decent time to gain that promotion as most people are delusional that you can make it there in a year.

I will try break it down as simply as possible .
You earn 35% commission from client sales
You earn 15% commission from preferred client sales
You do NOT earn commission on your teams sales
You do NOT earn money from recruiting people
So you can't actually earn money from your team selling and you not selling. You have to sell to your own clients as well. I obviously don't know how much she earns a month but if she's at that level I would say a few thousand a month.

How you promote is through a points system. example; if I sell £50 of products it might equal 60points. Your recruited team could earn 30points = 90points ... so if you need 100points to promote as a team you need to hit that.
Again I am just a consultant and don't actually use my time to recruit. It is hard work especially in the UK.

Obviously social media is a small hole into someones life, please don't take it as if their life is perfect. They're normal people and her partner might be working and covering the mortgage payments you never know ! At the moment my income from Arbonne covers my train fare and some food and drinks with friend which I'm grateful for as I save most of my full time paycheque for a deposit.

Hope this answers some of your questions x

It does thank you!

Thank you for answering my questions OP. I have some more...

How do you square the 'promotions' that are available to consultants (reps, whatever) with calling yourself an independent business owner? Surely if you own it, you are CEO? And the fact that you have no freedom to choose price points, logos, marketing strategies, packaging etc? How is it your own business when you are told how to run it?

What happens if a customer doesn't like a productdo you offer a money back guarantee? Who pays the refundyou or Arbonne? What if someone had a horrible allergic reaction or found a piece of glass in their face cream (unlikely I know) - who is responsible?

Are the products ethically made and not tested on animals?

@gotmychocolateimgood

Hiya. No I wouldn’t say I own the business but I do use it to run my own business. We each have our own website which is linked to our account. I don’t have a manager or boss to tell me what to do or how to run it but we do have to follow guidelines of course.
Arbonne chooses the promotions and rates of course but if they sign up as a preferred client it can get them 30-40% off products for a year. Sometimes if I live close to a client and they want to try products I will just order it on my discount and they cover the price which is roughly 50% cheaper, or I get them samples to try before hand to avoid any allergic reactions.

Yes we do have a 45day money back guarantee. But if a client wants a specific product sometimes I order samples first (usually get a box of 20 for about £20) and I give these out to clients, this is pretty much my own personal expense but I offer out free bags for people to try the products first.
The refund is paid for by Arbonne.

The best thing I like about Arbonne is it’s botanical ingredients so it’s vegan and animal cruelty free tested for 40 years, it was one of the first Swiss heritage companies to be vegan. Brands like Mac still use animal products in their cosmetics and sell in China where by law they need to test on animals.
It is PETA certified (Bunny certified), certified B corporation. They are also working towards the Zero Waste certification which means they eliminate waste materials.
As they don’t sell in shops the carbon footprint is reduced in terms of transportation. All the products are manufactured in california and shipped directly to the clients meaning nothing is over produced and wasted.

Hope that answers some of your questions.

On the shopping website they also have products information sheets showing how to use the product and ALL the ingredients listed in them so if people do have allergies they can avoid them (hopefully this will never happen !)
Arbonne also have 2000 ingredients on their banned list they won’t use in any products. The EU guidelines ban about 1500 and America bans about 20 so for health conscious people these are great products

Sorry, you seem like a nice person, but I think you've drank the kool-aid.

For a start; low carbon footprint, on something that is shipped from America. And a company that wants 'business owners" to fly to Los Vegas for a conference, or offers a white Mercedes as an incentive, don't give a flying fuck about the environment.

Puff pricing; you must be familiar with the old trick of offering something at a inflated price the massively reducing it to make it seem like a bargain. I mean, £14 for a small tube of hand cream in cheap packaging?

Banned ingredients, have you read and analysed the list, or are you just believing what you have been told? It's got things on it like antipsychotics. Fairly sure there are zero companies that put that in their face creams or nutritional aids.

Also. you haven't said how much you 'earn', train fares and a meal out could be anything between £50 to _500+ a month.

@ownerofanangrycat

Thanks for the points. At this moment they are working towards the low carbon/zero waste so these things might change. Also would help if they set up a manufacturing somewhere in europe so it's not all coming from america. If you think about the current companies using trucks and ships and planes to post and stock up shops I'm sure it's not as harmful.

Also the Vegas conference is optional and they hold conferences in the other countries as well, they understand not everyone can travel but ideally they have to hold it somewhere .

Yes I have actually read through the list which is following the EU banned list. It's important to them to list all the ingrediants in the products and list all the ingrediants they do Not use. So yes I would hope most companies wouldn't use antipsychotics. But if the American government only have 20 banned items... what is there to stop some companies adding these ingrediants ? FYI im not american.

Yes I have also addressed my earning in other answers. I would say on AVERAGE to cover train & meals out nothing fancy or 5star It's between £100-200. Again this varies a lot for me.

Thanks for the questions x

How do you manage taxes? Do you run a limited company or is it PAYE?

Have you actually seen Arbonne's own income disclosure statement and are you comfortable bringing people into this knowing what the realistic chances are of them making any money?

@leasedaudi

That is a very good question ! Bare in mind I've only done this a year so am not a pro.
At this moment until you earn over a certain amount you do not have to declare it (checked with HMRC). However when it does come time to manage the taxes it is done as self employed I believe. You add up your total income for the year and subtract your expenses; business aids like samples, stationary and technology, shipping of products you purchase, and sales taxes. Then you are taxed on the final remaining income for that year.

Again I am no where near having to do this or a pro and I did call HMRC to ask them and check.

Sorry? I can’t believe HMRC said that? I presume you earn over the tax threshold in your day job and get taxed using PAYE. So anything else you earn over the tax threshold is therefore..... taxable!

@MLMhun that's incorrect. The rules state that you can earn up to 1,000 per year from self employment without having to register with them or pay tax on it. This came into effect April 2017 and is called the Trading Allowance. I would caution the OP that its 1,000 sales value though.. not profit. If you're averaging 100-200 a month you may have already reached that.

@mlmhun

Is your name related to the topic by any chance ? Yes I’m PAYE at my full time job and get my tax and NI deducted every month. But under Arbonne I’m self employed. Feel free to call them and ask it might help me out ! All of that still confuses me haha. But my best friend does body shop and is an accountant !
There’s always room for error though !

How does it feel to be involved in a massive con preying on the vulnerable?

How does it feel knowing that 88% of people involved in your "business" earn nothing? www.talentedladiesclub.com/articles/how-much-money-can-you-really-make-working-for-mlm-arbonne/ and actually lose money as tehy invest into stock?

Also, how dare you try to con even more suckers into this thinly disguised pyramid scheme?

When I am queen of the world MLM will be banned as it is a toxic, immoral business model.

Do you never feel like a fraud calling yourself a consultant? A consultant to me is a respected professional.

Why so vile towards her? I really don’t understand the hatred towards these things! I’m not interested so don’t get involved! I have purchased things occasionally because I wanted to but have no annoyance towards people selling at all. I agree lots if the sales schemes and social media posts can be grating so I ignore. Like I do with loads of things I’m not interested in. If people are ‘sucked’ into anything then it’s their error in not being clever enough to understand or research properly surely?!

Do you mean me?

I wasn't being vile. It's AMA so I asked. I have a bit of an issue with the job title these scenes use.

And also, the "Oh I don't earn money from my team" is total bollocks.

www.arbonne.com/discoveruk/opportunity/compensation.shtml

Because that, from the company's own website, is perfectly clear that you do. Sooner or later, most mugs people who are sucked into this scheme realise that the only way to ever try to get cash is by recruiting other people. And there most definitely is a "qualifying volume" to reach each month.

Again. Toxic. Should be illegal. OP, you will look back in 2 years' time and wonder what the fuck you were thinking. Let's hope you haven't lost too much money by then.

And sod off too with "growing your business" as that's quite frankly an insult to those of us who actually are doing just that.

Not specifically you @foodloves just all the people on this thread who seem to be so incredibly angry with the topic!

I don't hate the OP but I do hate the business model. They target women (and it's always women) at a vulnerable time in their lives, usually when they're skint, just had a baby, saving for a wedding or whatever. They lie about how much money you might make. They use language like "business owner" or "independent consultant" which doesn't reflect what they do. They lie about how successful they are as they are trained to "fake it till you make it". When your average Jane can't make money, she's told it's all her fault and she's not trying hard enough. Every MLM says they are different. better and not like the rest because yadda yadda.

Read either the Elle Beau blog or listen to the podcast called The Dream.

Hmmm, I think you may have misunderstood the info from Hmrc? The additional income is paid in a different way through self assessment, but if you have already gone over your personal allowance limit , you of course have to pay tax on your self employed earnings

@wildgirls it's because it's a scam that preys on vulnerable people. Plenty of us have seen friends and family members being roped in to this shit and lose money (and friendships).

Anyone who attempts to make it sound like a sustainable business model or an opportunity is deluded and part of the problem.

It's on par with brainwashing cults like Scientology.

@OtraCosaMariposa

Hi as per my previous comments I've pretty much answered your questioned.

Glad to know the number is not 88.8% instead of the 99.7% someone else said. Congrats on being the Queen of the world. Maybe sort out war, poverty and Brexit before you do the MLM thing.

@foodloves

Tbh I feel more like a fraud doing my current 8-5 job rather than being an Arbonne consultant. Again I didn't get to pic the title. I would be happy with a rep title