My Friend is Brainwashed by Get Rich Quick Schemes, Help! |
17 Comments |
I got a very interesting e-mail this morning… almost 1800 words. I wrote a 1700 word article earlier this week (probably my longest ever) and I can say that writing that much takes a long time.
The emailer, who I will call Buffy, has a friend, who I will call Faith, who had gotten involved in a multi-level marketing program - one that I had written about before MonaVie.
The story is something that I’ve heard a number of times… I even experienced it in college with Amway. Faith sets up a “business meeting” (or the less intimidating “tasting” in MonaVie vernacular) for her friend Buffy. This one consisted of 90% MonaVie distributors and 10% prospective members like Buffy. It’s in a small setting where the pressure of the numbers can really be felt. Buffy did some research, realized that the value in the MonaVie wasn’t there and decided not to join. I can’t blame her as I found $1200-$2400 a year for one person to drink juice too much for my wallet.
I’m only getting Buffy’s side of the story, but she says that that Faith is obsessed with MonaVie and has been completely transformed by the MonaVie culture. It seems that Faith has bought into the “get rich quick” dream. She’s not a distributor of the juice, but she’s a distributor of the business model and the dream of getting rich. The idea of getting rich quick is seductive. I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t jump at that opportunity. The problem is that it’s not that simple. People don’t actually get rich (in the case of MonaVie some 95% of distributors struggle to make minimum wage as referenced in the comments of my link above). People instead spend their money for product and training materials to make others rich. While this is pyramid in nature, the “get rich quick” dream isn’t always sold that way. When I reviewed, Why Didn’t Anyone Teach Me This, I found that there were crazy claims of being able to make 30% on your investment if you paid $1000 for his system and seminars.
Faith has now paid for a couple of seminars, some training materials, and a lot of product. It’s making a signficant dent in her wallet. The last seminar she wasn’t sure how she could afford it, but somehow found a way to make it work. A few weeks later Faith scrapped up enough money to go to another seminar (the “Believe” seminar - a great name if you can’t sell your product on it’s own merits).
Buffy and Faith’s friendship is now strained. Faith thinks of Buffy as being unsupportive. I can see how she’d feel that way. When I wrote about MonaVie, many distributors came out and called me a negative thinker. I tried to explain that I’m thinking positively about their wallets and bank accounts. It didn’t seem to matter. You were either with MonaVie or not. Some describe it as cult-like.
This leaves Buffy in a no-win situation. If she tries to show her friend how MonaVie is making her poor, she’s unsupportive and her opinion will be discarded. She obviously can’t be supportive of MonaVie having seen what she has seen and read what she has read. It reminds me a lot of people that say, “You are in denial.” There’s no way to argue that one. If you try, you prove them right by denying their accusation.
I’ve spend the last few hours trying to think of how I can help Buffy get through to Faith. The best I can come up with is an intervention. I have no experience with them, and not a clue if they would work in this case or not. I’m hoping someone here will be an Angel and come up with a plan to put Faith on the right financial track.
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This post deals with:amway, Buffy, get rich quick, MonaVie, Multi-level Marketing
... and focuses on:Psychology
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October 24th, 2008 at 8:53 am
Maybe round up some folks who have had their finances drained by MonaVie and have them tell their tales of woe?
Is this a publicly traded company? The SEC filings (10-K) would probably break down revenue by membership sales, seminars, and product sales. An high percent of revenue attributed to membership sales and seminars, this would be a good indication of a pyramid.
Or maybe just a good old fashioned smack upside the head?
October 24th, 2008 at 9:12 am
MonaVie is privately traded, so I don’t think they have 10-K filings. The do publicly post on their website distributors earnings.
I don’t think the company itself, MonaVie, has seminars, but the top people in the pyramid do. Since they are at the top, it’s probably not unusual to get a group of 5,000 people together. I have to say that I’ve been tempted to go to Blogging conferences, so I’m not sure how that’s different. Maybe it’s just that I don’t ask anyone to buy any product.
October 24th, 2008 at 9:14 am
This guy will just have to learn the hard way. Right now there are no easy ways to make quick money and if there are, they aren’t going to last very long.
October 24th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
It’s really sad but Faith will have to learn, on her own, that it’s a scheme designed to make the founders rich, now the folks at the bottom of the pyramid. It’s the same way with some real estate seminars and the reality is that most of these people will learn the hard way that there is no get rich quick scheme out there.
Part of the reason is also sunk cost, she’s plowed so much of her money into the program that admitting failure would hurt tremendously. She’s still hoping she’ll turn a profit and it all won’t be down the drain. It’s hard to fight that mentality.
October 24th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Its sad and unfortunate that Faith is caught up in such a scheme and has her hopes up about it. Its virtually inevitable that she’ll end up losing money or at best making marginal income on her time.
Personally if it were me in Buffy’s situation I’d just step back and let Faith do what she’s doing. It will undoubtedly fail and Faith will then realize her mistake. You aren’t going to change her mind at this point since she’s completely convinced of it. Honestly I think the only way she’ll realize its a scam is when she eventually fails at it. Its a bit harsh but if she can’t see it for what it is now, simply telling her otherwise really won’t change her mind and will run the risk of destroying the friendship.
Jim
October 24th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
I am totally with you about your dilemma Lazy Man. However I do think you have a more important issue knocking at your very own door.
I find it slightly disingenuous to rail against various “get-rich-quick” schemes and then turn about and promote garbage like this:
http://www.optionssuccess.com/default4text.asp
in your RSS advertisements.
I submit that telling an honest, consistent story here is critical to the site’s longevity and success.
Toe the line.
October 24th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
That advertisement is not placed by me, it’s placed by Google. Yes, I let Google choose what advertisements are worthy, but it’s no different than many other sites on the Internet.
Yes, I can block some the garbage, but Google doesn’t give you infinite filters, and if you block one, you’ll have another coming right back. It’s a losing game.
So in the end, it’s like an infomercial, albeit one I didn’t even get choose, “the opinions expressed are solely of the advertising party and are not promoted or endorsed by me.”
That phrase goes with all forms of advertisement on this site. It would be hypocritical for me tell people to make the most of their opportunities and not take my own advice.
October 24th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Lazy Man,
I would highly recommend that you correct your language about the business MonoVia provides. While their product may suck and the over all company might not be very good, personally I know little about the company, network marketing is a legitimate form of business.
The problem with it is that while some people are making great money, others make little to none.
The main reason?? Those that make little don’t work like they are self employed people building a sales team, which is effectively what you are doing.
There really isn’t much difference between affiliate programs and MLM companies. They both promote products for a third party company. Yet for some reason being an affiliate marketer doesn’t have the same stigma that MLM has, yet I would venture to guess there are as many making very little as an affiliate.
Please do all your readers a favor and post an unbiased review of the marketing.
Here is a suggestion for your friend “Buffy”… have her talk to Faith and just tell her that she can’t dedicate the time, energy, or money to build a business right now like Faith wants to do, as the timing for Buffy isn’t right. Buffy can still be supportive of her friend, asking how she plans to grow her business, gain more customers as well as business partners. Maybe if she asks real world business questions Faith will start to see a couple things, one this company isn’t cut out to make her dreams a reality, or she will step up and do what is needed to really be successful and that is gather real customers, and find a few people that want to also want gather customers.
Cheers!
October 24th, 2008 at 4:53 pm
If you read carefully, I never said any thing negative about network marketing or that it wasn’t a legit business. What I did say was negative is MonaVie. There’s a difference and I explained it in the other MonaVie post that I linked to. MonaVie provides no tangible, measurable benefit to the consumer and prices itself 10 times more than other competing products.
There is a very big difference between multi-level marketing and affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is earning a commission on the sales that you actually generate. Multi-level marketing urges people to “sell the dream of being rich” to others, so that you can get rich.
In every MLM system I’ve seen, the only way for someone to make any real money is by bringing in people underneath you. Of course, when you are starting out in an MLM program, you have no one beneath you, so you can’t show any prospective people your success. This often leads to people lying or giving some other testimonial that may or may not be true.
October 24th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
Now who is being lazy?? Obviously it is I in not reading your post carefully enough. I guess it was words like get-rich-scheme, etc that threw me.
Personally I believe you are splitting hairs in your definition of MLM vs affiliate marketing. In MLM no one gets paid until product moves, same as affiliate marketing.
I’m sorry your experience with MLM companies was not a good one. Again I want to stress that few people view such endeavors as the real business they can be and rather approach them as a hobby and thus get hobby results from them.
Cheers.
October 24th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
I think there’s a huge difference between MLM and affiliate marketing. Again with MLM you are trying to sell someone on something that likely isn’t working for you.
Also with affiliate marketing the focus is on the product. In many cases the product is secondary to the MLMer. It’s used to try to sell the next prospective person in your downline.
Most MLMers don’t sell “the business” as a full-time business. I’ve never heard anyone pitch it as, “quit your job tomorrow and work on this new business full time.” They don’t pitch it that way, because then no one would sign up.
October 24th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
Ugh, my ex husband fell for some many of these. I tried to teach him that you can’t get rich being lazy (no pun intended lol) but that he had to get off the playstation and do something.
October 24th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
I don’t see why people just don’t realize there’s no “free” ride and anything that sounds too good to be true usually is.
October 26th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Money,money, money, always enticing the sound of it, the combination of our greed and laziness does not go hand in hand.
About time people learnt not to trust any scheme that you have to pay money upfront though.
October 27th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
I spent many a single nights on my couch watching infomercials for money-making schemes on TV. And let me tell you, when you’re alone in a crappy apartment on a Friday night with ice cream all over your face…well, it’s a lot easier to convince yourself that maybe it might work. And maybe is pretty powerful.
October 28th, 2008 at 4:03 am
Wow, a fellow anti-MLM warrior. I wrote articles critical of both UFirst Money Merge (which actually sells something, albeit overpriced) and then Shop to Earn. I ended up with cease and desist letters from the lead cousel and a comment chain 50 people long at EverydayFinance. Quite an ordeal.
Work hard, spend/save/invest prudently and you’ll do OK in life. No need to scam your friends and families into MLMs and end up ruining the relationships that are actually important in life.
November 7th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
LazyMan, and anyone else reading,
I agree with replies #3, 4, & 5. The only other thing I can say from experience, is this: time away. Time away from the people in the upline, time away from all books/tapes/CDs/DVDs/meetings. Cold turkey. If the friend has the funds and the time, a nice long week or two getaway where the one friend can have NO contact whatsoever with her MonaBot friends, her thought process may clear a bit. Sadly, tho, this usually occurs over something more like a 6 month to a year span of absence or cutting off all contact/association.
The constant propaganda intake is crucial to these types of scams. Tell them you don’t have the money for book of the week, tape of the week, etc, and watch them really freak out on you. “You can’t build the business without the proper tools”, etc. They know very well that without constant indoctrination, they will lose you.
If there is anyway to remove those influences it would help greatly. I wish them both the best, recovering from something like this can be very very difficult.