Lazy Man and Money

No, Your MLM Health Product Doesn’t “Work.”

by 101 Comments

Stop MLM

[Today we’re continuing to celebrate National Consumer Protection Week with more MLM scam awareness via an article from the past. The FTC has some good advice on MLMs from its recent consumer warnings, “Most people who join MLMs make little or no money. And, if promoters emphasize recruiting as the real way to make money, walk away.”]

I write today’s article in response to the thousands and thousands of comments that I’ve gotten from multi-level marketing (MLM) distributors for various products who make the claim that their products helped with such and such medical condition. Some of these include Le-Vel Thrive, DoTerra Essential Oils, It Works, Enagic Kangen Water, Youngevity, ASEA, Plexus, and Beachbody Shakeology. Those are just the companies/products that are still around.

Some of the popular MLMs that have disappeared are: MonaVie, Jusuru, Nerium, Vemma.

As you can tell, I wrote some in-depth reviews on all those companies/products. I think those are about half of the MLMs that I’ve covered in detail on this blog. Over the last 5 years I stopped covering MLMs for 4 reasons:

  1. They are all 99% the same – Health MLMs copy what makes sales from each other and below can be seen as their marketing blueprint. Once you debunked a dozen of the same scams, it gets kind of boring.
  2. I had two wonderful boys who deserve my time.
  3. I got bored with winning defamation lawsuits. Four companies spent over 2 million dollars in lawyers and court fees. It creates a lot of work and time.
  4. Great organizations like Truth in Advertsing are now around to fill the need.

As Dr. Jonny Bowden has written:

“New Rules: No More Claiming Mona Vie Cures Cancer!

Nor, for that matter, AIDS. Nor lupus, GERD, acne, age spots, arthritis, a balding scalp or sagging libido.

Nope. Sorry.

And lest you think I’m picking on poor MonaVie, the same is true of Xango, Mangosteen, Xocai, Tahitian Noni, and all the other ridiculously overpriced and oversold juices promoted by scientifically illiterate multi-level marketing ‘distributors’ who repeat these claims with the sincerity and earnestness of a Kucinich volunteer.”

Dr. Bowden isn’t alone in citing that these testimonials are bunk. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, perhaps best known for the popular Cosmos show, says such testimonials are “the worst form of evidence that you could possibly bring forth.” The key quote begins around the 1:50 mark, but you should invest the 6 minutes to watch the whole video.



Having received thousands of testimonials like Dr. Bowden mentioned and documented them on this site, I think it is safe to say that the people making these claims are typically those who are scientifically illiterate. They don’t offer up the clinical trials that measure the efficacy of the products. The companies themselves never put together large-scale clinical trials to prove their products are safe and effective. They rely on the “worst form of evidence”, testimonies because the scientific process in place would expose the products as ineffective.

Dr. Bowden wrote that article before the aforementioned Jusuru and Asea were around.

When you include the products that Bowden mentioned, we have 8 products that are all reportedly able to cure or aid with almost every condition known to mankind. I’ll add Xowii, Zrii, and Nopalea to round out to an even dozen. Though some of them have overlapping exotic ingredients like acai, there is no single ingredient common to all of them that could provide a reasonable explanation of healing benefits. Additionally, other products with the same exotic ingredients such as Sambazon (which has organic acai) that are sold through traditional retailers have no reported healing benefits. These 12 products only have three things in common (that I can see): they are digested, they are all sold via MLM, they are all extremely expensive. In addition, each company (I think) has hired a doctor (or a scientific advisory board) to endorse their product, which is something you don’t find with Ocean Spray (a juice like MonaVie, Jusuru) or your standard multi-vitamin (similar to some Youngevity products).

Clearly, the only logical conclusion is that selling a product via MLM bestows some magical properties allowing it to cure nearly anything or everything. Wait that isn’t logical, is it? Well, I can’t think of any other reasons for the claims… or can I?

What’s Behind All These MLM Health Claims

There are a number of factors at play with these claims:

  • The Placebo Effect – This provides the most obvious answer as to why people feel these products help them. The American Cancer Society says that placebos have an effect in 1 of 3 people. Here’s a great 3-minute video illustrating The Strange Powers of the Placebo Effect. This alone explains why people report a product with no known therapeutic value “works”:



    Update: Actually I like this short video better:

    Need a little more convincing? Here’s Dove’s Real Beauty Patches campaign that has 20 million views:

    Note: It looks like Dove took down the original video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGDMXvdwN5c. Maybe the campaign ended, I found another version of the video here:

    While the product seemed to be effective to the women using it, it had no therapeutic ingredients at all. There’s not really a difference between an MLM miracle cure and this Dove patch. Both have testimonials of people swearing that it works. Neither has the large-scale clinical trials to convince the FDA that the product has a therapeutic effect.

    In Time’s review of the campaign, the author says: “I just can’t believe the thinly-veiled marketing ruse that there is a patch that can make us more beautiful. It makes women seem too gullible, too desperate, and overall helpless against the all-knowing master manipulators at Unilever.”

    Imagine what happens when the product is a juice or a pill and pitched for some internal medical condition. It’s much more believable than Dove’s patch, which gives you an understanding of the master manipulators of MLM.

    Some people try to claim that the placebo effect can’t possibly be a factor because they didn’t believe it would help them. Research shows that even if you know you are taking a sugar pill with no active ingredients, it can make you feel better. So if you find yourself feeling better, you might just want to go to a local CVS and buy the cheapest you can find, maybe a low-dose of vitamin C.

    However, it’s worth understanding that it is well-known and well-researched that Vitamin Supplements Don’t Provide Health Benefits. Of course we knew that studies confirm that you shouldn’t waste money on vitamins for years.

    Need still more evidence of the placebo effect? It seems that 20% of people can “hear” this silent gif:

  • Spontaneous Improvement Regardless of Intervention – Sometimes things get better over time even without intervention. Many distributors are subject to drawing a causation between taking a product and the condition getting better when no such causation exists. The Latin for this fallacy is Post hoc ergo propter hoc, which means “after this, therefore because of this.” This is sometimes referred to as the “Rooster Syndrome”; “believing that the rooster’s crowing causes the sun to rise.”
  • Observer-Expectancy Effect – Since the products are usually pitched with the health claims, one taking the product may have this expectation.
  • Conscious Deception – Let’s call a spade a spade. It’s very difficult to convince people to buy $40 bottles of juice when they are used to spending $3 for juice. One of the easiest ways to close this gap is to pitch the product as an alternative to costlier medicines. I’m not saying that every MLM distributor is dishonest, but let’s agree that some are. What percentage? It’s impossible to say.
  • Price-Placebo Effect – As the Washington Post reported, people who were able to buy identical energy drinks at different prices showed very significant differences in unscrambling words. Even though the researchers made clear that the drinks were identical, those paying more had better performance. The researchers concluded, “The price-placebo effect comes from the fact that you form this global belief that low price equals low quality.” The article also showed, “A wine connoisseur who pays extra feels different from someone who pays less for the same bottle of wine because the larger financial investment increases the motivation to be satisfied.”

    In addition, the LA Times reports ‘Expensive’ placebos work better than ‘cheap’ ones, study finds. An interesting quote:

    “Instead of testing a placebo against an actual drug, they pitted two placebos against each other. The only difference between the two sham treatments was their purported price.”

    So this study shows a direct correlation as to why even a non-salesman, product-user of MLM products could be convinced that the products “work” while even people using known “sham treatments” would report the same.

    Thus when I show that Youngevity products’ prices are 4 times Amazon’s for nearly equivalent nutrition, I get a response from distributors that they “feel” the difference. Let’s go back to the placebo video above (this one). It notes that paying more for a product makes the placebo effect stronger. That’s proof positive that there’s an additive effect to these points.

  • GroupThink – Unless you’ve taken a psychology class or two, you may never have heard this term before. Wikipedia explains it:

    “Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people, in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an incorrect or deviant decision-making outcome. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation of alternative ideas or viewpoints, and by isolating themselves from outside influences.

    Loyalty to the group requires individuals to avoid raising controversial issues or alternative solutions, and there is a loss of individual creativity, uniqueness, and independent thinking. The dysfunctional group dynamics of the ‘ingroup’ produces an ‘illusion of invulnerability (an inflated certainty that the right decision has been made). Thus the ‘ingroup’ significantly overrates their own abilities in decision-making, and significantly underrates the abilities of their opponents (the ‘outgroup’).”

    In addition Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, puts Belongingness amongst his 8 basic needs of humans.

    Both of these dynamics come into play with MLM as GroupThink inhibits the ability to analyze the opportunity. In fact, MLM proponents often suggest that people can “plug into the system” removing all individual creativity, uniqueness, and independent thinking. MonaVie has used GroupThink to send its distributors a message of “you are either with us or against us” and tell them to unfriend distributors from social networks who have moved on to other companies.

    I’m reminded of the Funny or Die demonstration of how students tricked into drinking nonalcoholic beer exhibited drunk behavior:

    Groupthink at its finest, right?

  • Social Proof From a Trusted Friend – Many of these products are introduced by a friend or family, who are often quite zealous about the product and the “business opportunity.” This enthusiasm coming from a trusted source creates an obvious motivation for wanting the product to “work.”
  • Cognitive dissonance – Cognitive dissonance can be thought of a person altering reality to fit his/her perception. Specifically, the Wikipedia article claims, “After someone has performed dissonant behavior, they may find external consonant elements. A snake oil salesman may find a justification for promoting falsehoods (e.g. large personal gain), but may otherwise need to change his views about the falsehoods themselves.”

    This is the same kind of phenomenon that is found in those predicting the world is going to end, except at least with those people there is a clear expiration on their erroneous belief… when the world doesn’t end. Unfortunately, with MLM health products, there is no clear and obvious end-result that can be pointed to.

Any of the above by themselves would explain the testimonials. However, when you combine them all together, the result of the testimonials is of little surprise. We humans in general are an optimistic bunch and we all want to believe that these products are the solution to our health and financial security for not only us but our friends (by sharing the “opportunity” with them). To use the Washington Post’s words, “our motivation to be satisfied” is significantly increased by the business opportunity and our desire to help our loved ones.

Let’s run some numbers. If the placebo effect is responsible for 1 in 3 people making a claim the MLM products work, what about all the above additional factors layered onto that? I’m going to speculate that pushes it to 60%, perhaps even higher. I admit this is speculation, but I don’t have a research lab and wouldn’t know how to really conduct an accurate experiment combining all these factors. If an MLM gets 10,000 people to try the product, that’s 6,000 people who are going to come away with a positive experience. The other 4,000 will move on with their lives and probably never mention the product again. A good percentage of the 6,000 will join the MLM to make money and spread the word that the products “work.” They explain away the 4,000 by saying something to the effect of “Everyone’s different and nothing works on everyone.” In actuality, the products haven’t been shown to work for anyone.

(And if my speculation of 60% (due to the factors above) is off, the placebo effect alone still counts for 3,333 people thinking it worked and another 6,667 that continued on with their lives never thinking about the product again.)

Nonetheless, that’s where you get thousands of testimonials for any number of unrelated medical conditions across any number of unrelated products that are all sold via the same MLM distribution method. Maybe it’s just me, but I find it a better explanation than, “Whenever a product is delivered via MLM the product gets bestowed with magical healing powers.”

For these reasons, it really is best to avoid the “Just Try Our ‘Product X!'” pitch when it comes to MLM products. You don’t have the time or the money to try all the health products in the world anyway.

It’s easy for distributors to ignore the fact that if any the products worked as promised, the companies would get their products approved as treatments for such medical conditions and make billions of dollars. Many MLM distributors falsely say that such claims can’t be about supplements, but when supplements work, the FDA allows claims to be made. You don’t have to look any further than calcium and vitamin D which have been shown to help with osteoporosis.

The Appeal to Good Health

Each of the companies that I mentioned makes an appeal that it will make you healthier. Since everyone has a vested interest in their own good health, it is an easy sales pitch to make. There are plenty of news reports citing promising supplement studies, which makes some of the products seem credible. The news rarely reports on the subsequent studies that show that the supplements don’t work. Something “not” working isn’t news and doesn’t bring in high ratings by giving people hope. This NY Times article covers this phenomenon well.

It turns out that there’s extensive evidence in studies involving millions of people that you shouldn’t waste your money on supplements. If you think this article is thorough, I implore you to read that one as I think it is just as thorough.

Still, people seem to ignore it and go with anecdotal evidence instead. That kind of evidence can go both ways though. Here’s a Slate article from someone who grew up doing all the healthy things, but didn’t get vaccinated. The result was that she was sick all the time. The article even makes the point that it is anecdotal and decisions shouldn’t be based on it, yet that’s what people are doing with these MLM products all the time. If you took away the anecdotes from all the reasons above, you’d have a product that no one would buy at the exorbitant price points… unless as part of some kind of misleading business opportunity such as the MLM ones that the FTC describes here.

What is “working”?

You may have noticed I put “working” in quotes throughout this article. That’s because that’s the magic word distributors use when leaving comments on my site. “MonaVie works” and “Youngevity works”, etc. The interesting thing is that there is no consistent definition of what constitutes “working” with these products. I often ask them what clinical effectiveness research is behind the product, because as PubMed says:

“Clinical effectiveness research finds answers to the question ‘What works?’ in medical and health care.”

None of the products that I’ve mentioned have clinical effectiveness research to say that it “works” for any medical condition.

But As Long As People Feel Better It’s All Good, Right?

A first glance this appears to make sense. Many supporters of MLMs have said, “Who cares as long as people feel better?”

There are at least three things wrong with this line of thinking:

  • The Economics – What about the people who are paying an expensive price who don’t experience anything special? They might be thinking that they are doing their health a great service, but aren’t. That money could be used for proven health improvements like healthier food or maybe a gym membership. What about the people who actually believe that the product represents a legitimate health breakthrough and invest a significant portion of their life savings in a “business opportunity” where it is extensively shown that 99% of people lose money.
  • Placebos are Dangerous – That article make the point pretty clear.
  • Self-Licensing Causes An Overall Decrease in Health – This Wikipedia article makes a point about study involving supplements:

    “A 2011 study published by researchers in Taiwan indicated that people who take multivitamin pills, especially those who believe that they are receiving significant health benefits from supplement use, are more prone to subsequently engage in unhealthy activities. Participants in the study were divided into two groups, both of which were given placebo pills; one group was correctly informed that the pills contained no active ingredients and the other group was told that the pills were multivitamin supplements. Survey results showed that participants who thought that they had received a multivitamin were predisposed to smoking more cigarettes and more likely to believe that they were invulnerable to harm, injury, and disease… Participants who believed they were given a multivitamin were also less likely to exercise and to choose healthier food and had a higher desire to engage in ‘hedonic activities that involve instant gratification but pose long-term health hazards, such as casual sex, sunbathing wild parties, and excessive drinking… In the ‘multivitamin’ group, the more supplements a participant used, the less likely they were to exercise, and smoking was highest among participants who expressed a conscious belief that multivitamins increased health.”

In my MonaVie article, distributors had erroneously claimed that 2 ounces of MonaVie was equal to eating 13 fruits. They then said that this justified the $40 price for the bottle. As a result, these people were making bad health decisions due to misinformation. That doesn’t even factor self-licensing in.

Are These Claims Even Legal?

It doesn’t seem as if they are. MLM distributors are typically not educated by the companies to follow the FTC guidelines on endorsements. That article states:

“Advertisers still must have adequate substantiation to support claims made through endorsements in the same way they’re required to if they had made the representation directly. In other words, advertisers may not convey through testimonials claims they could not otherwise prove with competent and reliable evidence. But one key revision of particular interest to electronic retailers is the new standard for endorsements that don’t represent the experience buyers can expect from using the advertised product themselves.

…

Despite the unequivocal requirement that the disclosures must be clear and conspicuous, some advertisers flouted this directive by cherry-picking their best-case scenario, touting those results in banner headlines, and dropping an all-but-invisible footnote with the cryptic statement, ‘Results not typical’ or ‘Individual results may vary.’

No more. As the revised guidelines make clear, testimonials reporting specific results achieved by using the product or service generally will be interpreted to mean that the endorser’s experience is what others typically can expect to achieve. That leaves advertisers with two choices: 1) Have adequate proof to back up that claim, or 2) ‘Clearly and conspicuously disclose the generally expected performance in the depicted circumstances.'”

MLM distributors endorsing the products simply aren’t allowed to give a testimonial that they believe that the product helped with their arthritis… unless the MLM company has demonstrated significant scientific proof. As mentioned above, no MLM company has met the requirement to show the FDA that it works. I don’t know of an MLM company that has even tried.

Not only are these claims a violation of the FTC endorsement guidelines, but they are also a violation of The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA) where supplements can’t make claims to help with medical conditions with the notable exception of these well-studied claims such as vitamin D and calcium helping with osteoporosis.

As MonaVie CEO said to Newsweek in 2008 about keeping its million distributors (at the time) compliant with these laws, “It’s next to impossible, like herding cats.” Unfortunately, Newsweek didn’t pose the logical follow-up questions to him, “Why did you unleash the cats in the first place? Why don’t you just solve the problem by distributing through traditional means where there are no false claims?” The solution to the problem that MonaVie caused is obvious, it just doesn’t help sell $40 bottles of juice.

I’ve found that most often MLM companies will cover their ass in public with a blog post saying all the right things, but in private they coach distributors to use these illegal medical claims.

It’s not just a few bad eggs either. It’s commonplace. How common? Truth in Advertising extensively show as many as 97% of nutritional companies have these claims. Here are some of their findings:

“TINA.org’s investigation found that out of 62 member companies selling nutritional supplements, 60 have distributors who are making (or have made) claims that their products can diagnose, treat, cure, prevent, alleviate the symptoms of, and/or reduce the risk of developing a multitude of diseases, which means they are making illegal disease-treatment claims.

TINA.org has cataloged well over a thousand such inappropriate health claims, ranging from cancer cures to disappearing gangrene.

Or as I like to put it, “How else are you going to sell $40 bottles of juice?” Perhaps that the reason why MonaVie collapsed. It was never the juice which was outed to be nothing more than “expensive flavored water” by its inventor.

What About Weight Loss Shakes?

A number of MLMs such as Herbalife, One 24, ViSalus and MonaVie sell some kind of weight-loss shake. These products “work” as expected. That is to say that their nutritional label is likely to be accurate. Beyond the label, there’s nothing that special. You can save a lot of money by going with Slim Fast or Carnation Instant Breakfast Essentials that has essentially the equivalent nutritional content at usually less than 1/3rd the price.

Picking one weight-loss shake over another isn’t going to make or break a diet. It’s everything else, eating well and exercising, that has been shown time and time again to work. People normally don’t stay on shakes their whole lives. Without a change of underlying diet and/or exercise habits the weight comes back. For this reason, I’m not a huge fan of meal replacement shakes.

Final Thought

I’ll let you in on a little secret. When I create Lazymandium, a mix of garlic, turmeric, cacao, and chili powder, and sell it via MLM at a price of 30 pills for $50, it doesn’t “work.” I’m simply using known psychology to exploit you and make your wallet a little lighter for my own benefit.

Originally Published: February 16, 2013.

Is Every MLM a Scam?

by 131 Comments

Stop MLM

[Today we’re continuing to celebrate National Consumer Protection Week with more MLM scam awareness. The FTC has some good advice on MLMs from its recent consumer warnings, “Most people who join MLMs make little or no money. And, if promoters emphasize recruiting as the real way to make money, walk away.”]

A few years ago, I wrote an article asking if Miessense Scam. One of their distributors wrote in an email to me:

I get the impression that people think you are against all direct selling / network marketing companies. Perhaps one of these days, you can take a look at the company I am involved with … although we are direct selling / network marketing, we consider ourselves much different than most of the others … we put an emphasis on obtaining customers more than we do recruiting reps.

When you see all the components of our company, you may just be able to write something positive and shut some of these naysayers up :)

MLMers often use this as criticism of critics. Usually, it is the more simple form, “You just hate MLM.”

No, it’s not that “I just hate MLM”, it’s that I hate consumer fraud and illegal pyramid schemes. If I wrote about how wrong domestic violence was, what kind of nut would respond with, “You just hate domestic violence!”?

That comparison hinges on my opinion that MLM is fraud and an illegal pyramid scheme. Hopefully, I’ll prove that in this article. However, the complexity of the fraud is so expansive that books spanning several hundred pages are written on the topic. I hold that as a higher level of proof than I can provide in this blog post.

My argument is going to be like a horse and water. You can bring the horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. I’ll bring the information to readers, but if they are brainwashed to think MLM is legitimate, I won’t be able to change their minds… even as I cite the FTC. Even as I cite an article designed to help deprogram the brainwashed MLMers.

MLM, Fraud, and Pyramid Schemes

It sounds dangerous to say that every MLM is a scam. However, I have looked at and written about dozens now, there hasn’t been one that has been CLOSE to being legitimate. Is every person in prison guilty of a crime? I can’t be certain for sure, but at some point the pattern is unmistakable. Here’s a sampling of some I’ve looked at:

Le-Vel ThriveIt Works!Plexus
Beachbody Shakeology
DoTerra
Youngevity
Neora
Asea
Vollara

I’ve looked at a lot more than that box above, but many of them are out of business. Some of them have been found by the FTC to be scams after I’ve written about them. Those include AdvoCare, Vemma, and Herbalife.

Many of the MLMs I looked at were confidence games that relied on shady company “doctors” relying on bad science to push their nutritional supplement. That pattern has led to numerous MLMers erroneously claim that their product is a miracle or “helps the body heal itself.” No the MLM products do not do this.

But are MLMs pyramid schemes? I keep going back to what the FTC said in the past:

“Not all multilevel marketing plans are legitimate. If the money you make is based on your sales to the public, it may be a legitimate multilevel marketing plan. If the money you make is based on the number of people you recruit and your sales to them, it’s not. It’s a pyramid scheme. Pyramid schemes are illegal, and the vast majority of participants lose money.”

When I look at the people making the top money in MLM, it is because they have massive organizations of recruits and the money is based on their sales to them. In fact, this is the pitch of every MLM I’ve looked at. It is very common for them to show that if you recruit/enroll 3, who recruit/enroll 3, who recruit/enroll 3, etc. you’ll have an organization of hundreds or thousands of people.

I can’t see any way of interpreting the FTC’s words other than these very high-ranking distributors at MLMs are running illegal pyramid schemes. The MLM company itself attempts to shield itself legally from its distributor’s actions, but that argument is like Napster claiming that they didn’t foster illegal activity when users shared music. MLM companies are in a far worse legal position than Napster was because Napster wasn’t directly paying people for the illegal activity and taking a cut of the profits for themselves.

No one has ever been able to explain to me how MLMs could possibly be legitimate.

Their best efforts point to companies that are still running after a number of years. They make the claim, “If it was illegal it would be shut down.” That is what Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing said… before the FTC shut them down for being a rigged game.

It was true for Vemma and AdvoCare that ran their pyramid schemes for a decade or more before being shut down.

There are thousands of MLM companies and the FTC’s budget is very limited. They have a lot of things to do outside of MLM and one single MLM could tie up millions of dollars of that budget in a court battle. There’s a great explanation on Bloomberg about this: An Insider Explains Why the FTC Can’t Put an End to Pyramid Schemes.

A lack of effective law enforcement does not make something legal. If I become really good at stealing old ladies’ purses in a town that has no policemen, it doesn’t mean it is legal because I haven’t been caught.

No one wants to bring up the fact that Bernie Madoff ran a $50 billion scheme or how Enron was a $100 billion-dollar company. These MLM companies are peons in comparison to those schemes that ran unchecked for years and years. It isn’t surprising that many MLMs would be able to fly under the radar.

As much as they try to fly under the FTC’s radar. It feels like every MLM I’ve covered has gotten sued for being an illegal pyramid scheme. You can see a number of them here or this amazing list. There seems to be a new MLM getting into trouble every month.

If a company is legitimate and has a legitimate product, it doesn’t make business sense to associate themselves with MLMs/pyramid schemes. They could simply pay a good commission that would make people want to join without the recruitment/pyramid scheme aspect. Such a simple change would save a legitimate company from taking on the legal risk that could be a death blow to their business.

Since it doesn’t make sense for a legitimate business to take on this unnecessary risk, it stands to reason that companies that purposely choose to take on this risk do it because they know it is necessary for them… and that they aren’t legitimate businesses.

Why It Is Hard or Impossible to Find a Legitimate MLM?

I’ve thought long and hard about why this would be. Why doesn’t anyone any come up with a good MLM? It isn’t really that hard to do. I’ve written How an MLM Can Show It Isn’t an Illegal Pyramid Scheme. I’m happy to consult with an MLM to make them legit.

I believe that MLMs don’t want advice on how to become legit. I think I know why… legit MLMs can’t compete with the illegitimate ones and be profitable.

To understand why that may be the case you have to know that as Harper’s Magazine says:

“[Mary Kay’s consultants] couldn’t have it all because Mary Kay’s business model (like that of any multilevel-marketing enterprise) is designed primarily to profit from, rather than enrich, its workforce.”

It is reinforced by this article showing that MonaVie’s business model is MLM not juice. The product is juice, but no one buys $40 bottles of juice. The business model is getting people interested in a business opportunity that happens to have an admission fee of buying $40 bottles of juice.

The FTC found this to be true of BurnLounge in its pyramid scheme investigation:

Simply put, products sold by a legitimate MLM should be principally sold to consumers who are not pursuing a business opportunity. For good reason, the law has always taken a skeptical view of paying compensation to someone based on the presumed ‘internal consumption’ or ‘personal consumption’ of recruits who are pursuing a business opportunity. When a product is tied to a business opportunity, experience teaches that the people buying it may well be motivated by reasons other than actual product demand.

One of the more vivid examples of this comes from the BurnLounge case. The activities of the BurnLounge defendants included selling packages of music-related merchandise. Before the FTC brought its enforcement action, anyone who wanted to participate in the business opportunity was also required to buy a package. BurnLounge had monthly revenues of over $475,000 from package sales, but those revenues did not reflect consumer demand for BurnLounge’s merchandise. After the FTC filed suit, charging that BurnLounge made deceptive income representations and paid compensation that was tied to recruitment rather than the sale of merchandise, the court entered a preliminary injunction that radically changed BurnLounge’s operations. Under the preliminary injunction, distributors could still buy BurnLounge products if they liked the merchandise, but they could no longer advance in the business opportunity.

What happened to sales? In only two months, they plummeted from over $475,000 to less than $11,000. As it turned out, at most, only a small minority of sales had been motivated by actual product demand…

MLMs compete fiercely for other MLM distributors. They poach distributors from other MLMs all the time. Almost every MLM makes distributors sign an agreement to not work for another MLM. It doesn’t matter if the product they are selling is unrelated. That’s because the people are the product to an MLM company.

This is where MLMs “race to the bottom.”

There has been very little regulation in the industry, so companies and distributors often get away with all sorts of illegal claims. I’ve written about MonaVie juice and being pushed as cancer medication. The Huffington Post has covered it as well back in 2008. Truth in Advertising categorized thousands of these illegal health claims.

Let’s pretend you want to run a profitable legitimate MLM organization. How do you recruit distributors and handcuff what they say in an environment of other companies running illegal pyramid schemes? You can’t. If everyone is allowed to put a pile of aces up their sleeves in a poker tournament and you play an honest game, you aren’t going to be in the tournament very long.

Imagine if there were no drug testing in the NFL. It would be extraordinarily difficult for a clean linebacker to compete for a job against a group that are extensive steroids users. This is precisely the problem that Major League Baseball players had during the steroid era.

This is where I believe MLMs are. Every new MLM has to come up with a selling point to lure distributors. This selling point has increasingly become more and more misleading. It went from selling food containers (Tupperware) to make-up (Mary Kay), to juice/shakes/pills. The juice/shakes/pill MLMs add (bad) science and (illegal) health claims to make the scheme more compelling. Who knows how much worse the deception will go in competition for distributors?

So that’s my answer for the commenters like the one above who says “I get the impression that people think you are against all direct selling/network marketing companies.”

I am against them, but only because I see systemic fraud (as the FTC has warned about) and the lack of active regulatory body despite the FTC’s best efforts.

This article was originally published on March 20, 2015

Why MLM is NOT a Business

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Stop MLM

[Today we’re continuing to celebrate National Consumer Protection Week with more MLM scam awareness. The FTC has some good advice on MLMs from its recent consumer warnings, “Most people who join MLMs make little or no money. And, if promoters emphasize recruiting as the real way to make money, walk away.”]

Multi-level Marketing (MLM) is not a business. Many MLMers say it is a business and act like it is one, but it simply isn’t. It is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

It’s a tall order for me to prove this. I’m a firm believer that big claims require big support. I don’t believe it is that big of a claim, just the big lie told by the MLM industry. It’s not a coincidence that the average person likely can’t distinguish them from a pyramid scheme.

MLM’s Deceptive Doublespeak

To start, MLM often attempts to disguise itself under other names in hopes that its terrible reputation is not detected. That’s why you see it called “Network Marketing”, “Direct Sales”, or even “Community Commerce.” For now, let’s agree to call it MLM because that’s the only term that explicitly states the “levels” that are the defining characteristic of every MLM. Direct selling could be hosting a yard sale or putting an object on eBay. That is clearly not MLM. Network marketing could refer to an advertisement that you see on ABC/NBC/CBS etc. which is also not MLM.

The naming deception is not one of the reasons it is not a business. I simply needed to address it before we can move forward. If someone tries to recruit you into “network marketing” or “direct sales” it is best to run away from their deception.

Why MLM is Not a Business

With that out of the way, here are just some of the reasons why MLM distributors are not businesses:

  1. Businesses obey the Commandment of Control

    This is something that I first read in The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco. (I highly recommend this book.) MLM Distributors do not have control. DeMarco explains:

    I was involved in four MLM companies. Not once do I remember dictating product decisions, research & marketing, marketing restriction, rules, cost analysis or any other activity fundamental to owning a business.

    If you aren’t participating in fundamental activities related to owning a business… you can’t call it a business, right?

  2. Business 101 Excludes MLM
    One of my brilliant readers noted:

    Business 101 teaches that in order for you to be considered a business owner there are three ‘musts.’ You must have control of the product, you must have control of the distribution, and you must have control of the pricing. These people are not business owners, they are recruiters/salespeople.

    Every MLM that I’ve looked at fails these three principles. MLMs claim that distributors set their own pricing, but MLMs set the pricing to their victims excessively high because that’s where they make the money. MLM salespeople can’t charge less or they’ll lose money. They can’t charge more for three reasons:

    1. The products are already excessively high priced from the MLM company.
    2. People can get the products at distributor cost (usually by signing up to be a preferred customer themselves)
    3. The MLM distributor can’t compete on pricing with the other salespeople. They can’t charge more, because they don’t add any value to the consumer.

  3. Businesses obey the Commandment of Entry

    This also comes from DeMarco above. You have to be able to build a moat around your business and prevent others from competing with you. DeMarco again explains:

    “Network marketing, or multi-level marketing (MLM), always fails the Commandment of Entry — unless you own and create the MLM company yourself. If you’re in a room with 2,000 other people who do exactly what you do, you’re fighting stiff probabilities.”

    One thing to keep in mind is that those 2,000 people are taught to recruit more people to compete with your business. There is no moat to protect your business. It is the exact opposite, where they are encouraging more people to compete against you.

    I’ll get to it in a few more bullet points, but this competition is part of the reason why 99% of MLM distributors lose money.

  4. MLM Doesn’t Obey the Laws of Supply and Demand

    McDonald’s won’t let franchise owners open up multiple ones on the same street unless there is sufficient demand. Otherwise, they would compete for few customers and go out of business.

    MLM has no problem with creating millions of distributors even if no one is interested in buying the product. They don’t ensure that there’s enough product demand for the distributor to make money. I often find that plenty of product is available with a simple eBay search.

    If you put ten McDonald’s on the same block, you’d expect them to lose money and go out of business. You wouldn’t blame the individual owners of the McDonald’s franchise. When 99% of MLM distributors lose money, they are the ones that are blamed for the failure.

  5. More than 99% of people LOSE money
    Some MLM companies produce what is called an income disclosure statement so that their distributors can talk about the MLM as if it were a business opportunity. Analysis of these statements show that more than 99% of people lose money in MLM. Need examples? See this or this. I did the analysis for MonaVie a few years long ago. It’s easy to see once you learn to read the fine print in the income disclosure statement. I cover how to do that in my Beachbody article.

    There are a lot of people in MLM bragging about making money. Many of them are “faking it until they make it”. As the FTC says, “blockquotMost people who join MLMs make little or no money.” Some of the people at the top might actually be making money. However, we know that a lottery winner is not the typical representative of what happens when you play the lottery, right? And if those people at the top are making that money from a recruited “downline” it is a pyramid scheme.

  6. MLM is Not like Any Other Small Business
    Some MLMers claim that small businesses generally have a high failure rate. “High” is a relative term… and it doesn’t come close to comparing with MLM.

    The U.S. Small Business Administration has this handy PDF of information. It seems that “7 of 10 survive the first two years” (30% failure rate over two years), “half at least 5 years”, “a third at least 10 years”, and “a quarter stay in business 15 years or more.”

    Let’s compare this to an MLM where 90% are failing every year. I’m being very generous given the proof above that 99% of them lose money. If we start with 100,000 people and 90% fail each year, there are 10,000 people after the first year. In the second year, another 90% fail, and we are left with 1,000 people. That’s a 99% failure in MLM vs. 30% in traditional small businesses in just two years. After 5 years, there is just a single person in MLM. In traditional small businesses, you still have 50,000 of the initial 100,000.

    Do you want a 1 in 100,000 chance of being successful or a 50% chance? If you have to think about this question, please have the self-awareness to realize you are not intelligent enough to be that 1 in 100,000.

  7. It Doesn’t Matter How Hard You Work

    As this article reads:

    MLM supporters will claim that those who lose money just didn’t work hard enough. That’s not true. It’s simple mathematics that guarantees almost everyone will lose money. You can only make money if large numbers of people are recruited below you. That necessarily precludes almost everyone from making money, because they can’t recruit into infinity. As the pyramid below you gets wider, the new participants added have an even smaller chance of making money because there aren’t enough people in the world for everyone to make money.

    It’s like telling someone that they can hit ten holes-in-one consecutively in golf. Anyone can work hard on your golf game day and night, but the circumstances of hitting ten holes-in-one are so extremely difficult, that’s hard to say whether it has ever been done. If someone fails to hit ten holes-in-one, we don’t tell them that they didn’t work hard enough… we simply say that the goal was unattainable to start with.

    MLMers might counter that another person in the MLM attained it. It’s always because they didn’t have to work their way up there competing against everyone else. They were people who started at the top or brought their pyramid scheme from another MLM with them.

I hope you made it through all the above (or at least enough of them to realize that MLM is not a business).

Typically, when people understand that MLM isn’t a business they ask me, “What’s better?” I counter with “What’s worse?” A minimum wage job at McDonald’s is much, much better than spending your time to lose money. You might not like to take a job picking up dog poop, but it is profitable in the first hour.

While those are true, they aren’t very inspiring. A McDonald’s employee has a job… he isn’t running a business either. A dog poop service is a business, but you might not be interested in that business.

So why not start a business on your own? Follow your passion… and see if you can find profitable ideas in that area of interest. Here’s an extremely well-reviewed book to get you started: The Lean Startup

This article was originally published on January 15th, 2016. Some of the links in this article may go to books or products where I would earn a commission if you buy it.

5 Tips for Not Getting Scammed Online

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It’s tax season and that means that you should expect me to write about tax scams. That would be too easy. Everyone else is writing about it anyway.

Instead I’d like to look at just a few online scams. It would be impossible to cover everything online in one article. One of the problems with some online scams is that they are advertised on the traditional and social media. I’ve been hearing a lot of Noxitril male enhancement ads, which reminds me of the old Enzyte marketing. I certainly won’t be giving them my money, but it seems like some people are or else they won’t be able to run the ads.

One of the reasons that there are so many scams online is that it’s easy to put something out there. I used to be able to put a website up in under 10 minutes on Amazon Web Services. It’s nearly impossible for law enforcement to crack down on all the scams out there. More computer tricks are being invented to scam online users their hard earned money. Potential fraudsters have a lot of tricks to try to get your personal information.

Here are my best tips to fight back against the fraudsters:

1. Be skeptical

As my long-time blogging friends at Money Crashers says

Conmen have dubious ways that make their scams appear sound and legitimate. I’m not sure how to help someone develop critical thinking skills, but you have use them whenever you come across anything online. There are many email offers that are phishing scams. People on social media can push MLM scams as well. There are fake testimonials and product reviews on many sites.

It’s hard to know what to trust, so your best defense is to be skeptical.

2. Protect Your Personal Information

As I wrote above, there’s a lot of different kind of online attacks out there. Fraudsters employ a variety of tricks to access your details and password. From that article, I learned there is a thing called “SMiShing” that’s like phishing with SMS messages.

While this isn’t an online attack, I often get calls from banks about certain things and they look for me to confirm my information by giving it to them. I always ask to call them back, so that I know it’s not a stranger on the other end pretending to be the bank. Sometimes I find it hard to remember to do this though.

And it should go without saying, but it should be very rarely necessary to give out your Social Security Number over the phone. In fact, I don’t think I’ve had a reason to do that. I’ve done it online a few times with some banks and medical institutions that I am confident aren’t scammers.

3. Beware of counterfeit checks

Most people don’t have this problem. However, we sell products online. Sometimes we find something really discounted at a T.J. Maxx or thrift shop and can get more by posting it on Craigslist or OfferUp. I’ve read that scammers send you a fake check with more money than the agreed amount. They will do it intentionally and request that you refund the extra amount. When you make such refunds, they ghost you.

4. Take time before making decisions

Never allow someone to rush you to make a buying decision. I always like to compare several products before deciding to buy. This is especially true if the product is is going to cost more than a few hundred dollars. You also need to be aware of “exploding offers”, which is a limited time deal that’s only good if you decide that day. If it’s good company, they’ll be confident enough in their product or service to know you’ll get back to them after you do the research.

Here are some more training materials on tips to avoid being scammed. It’s a great collection of videos, articles, and infographics. Also, it’s all free.

5. Always use written contracts

I’m toying with the idea of getting rid of my phone number. Seriously. I’ve been thinking of going full out Kramer in Seinfeld when he wants to opt out of receiving mail. I only like to talk on the phone with about three people and the number of robocalls makes about 90% of calls to me useless.

Sorry, I went off on a tangent there. What I meant to write is that you should be sure to get everything in writing. When someone offers me a deal on the phone, I ask them to mail it to my house. If it’s a scam, that sometimes is enough to end the call. Once you have everything in writing, it’s important to read all the fine print. I know that few people do (and I’m one of them). This is one of those times you have to balance being skeptical with the offer itself.

Final Thoughts

I know I gave a lot of “homework” in reading other resources in this article. It might seem like protecting yourself is difficult. However, most of this stuff is something that you learn once and you have it forever. The scammers are usually going to try to target the people who aren’t going to take the time to learn the basics in the first place. It’s not worth their time to try to get someone who is knowledgeable, so they’ll likely move onto their next “mark.”

* The thoughts expressed in this article are my opinions only. I make no suggestion that any particular company or product is a scam or fraudulent. However, it is important to note that such expressions are legally protected opinions as court judges have previously cited my article about what a scam is.

My Toddler Learned About MLM from this 2500 Year Old Fable

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My oldest son (age 4) is on vacation this week which, of course, means that the world is exploding with catastrophes. Well, not the real world, and not real catastrophes, but just one annoying problem after another.

After putting out most of the fires, it was time for a little story time before nap. I found a book of fairy tales that my mother had bought him. I opened it up to a random page and came across The Fox and the Goat. It’s short enough to quote a couple of versions that I saw online here:

“By an unlucky chance a Fox fell into a deep well from which he could not get out. A Goat passed by shortly afterwards, and asked the Fox what he was doing down there.

‘Oh, have you not heard?’ said the Fox; ‘there is going to be a great drought, so I jumped down here in order to be sure to have water by me. Why don’t you come down too?’

The Goat thought well of this advice, and jumped down into the well. But the Fox immediately jumped on her back, and by putting his foot on her long horns managed to jump up to the edge of the well.

‘Good-bye, friend,’ said the Fox, ‘remember next time: Never trust the advice of a man in difficulties'”

Here’s another version I saw:

“A FOX one day fell into a deep well and could find no means of escape.

A Goat, overcome with thirst, came to the same well, and seeing the Fox, inquired if the water was good. Concealing his sad plight under a merry guise, the Fox indulged in a lavish praise of the water, saying it was excellent beyond measure, and encouraging him to descend.

The Goat, mindful only of his thirst, thoughtlessly jumped down, but just as he drank, the Fox informed him of the difficulty they were both in and suggested a scheme for their common escape.

‘If,’ said he, ‘you will place your forefeet upon the wall and bend your head, I will run up your back and escape, and will help you out afterwards.’

The Goat readily assented and the Fox leaped upon his back. Steadying himself with the Goat’s horns, he safely reached the mouth of the well and made off as fast as he could.

When the Goat upbraided him for breaking his promise, the fox turned around and cried out, ‘You foolish old fellow! If you had as many brains in your head as you have hairs in your beard, you would never have gone down before you had inspected the way up, nor have exposed yourself to dangers from which you had no means of escape.’

Look before you leap.”

And just to belabor the point, here’s a YouTube video:

Deconstructing MLM via The Fox and The Goat

Most people familiar with MLM should instantly recognize the relevancy of this fable. Nonetheless, I will explain it as clearly as I can for all potential goats.

It has been repeatedly shown that at least 99% of people in MLM lose money.

It has also been repeatedly shown that few people make any real money selling product. Usually the products are very, very expensive and don’t compete well with reasonably priced non-MLM products. Also, many of the products are generally available on Ebay for very cheap prices from former goats distributors.

Nearly everyone in MLM is “a man [person] in difficulties.” It’s mathematically shown to be true.

The way out of losing money in MLM is to be the fox. The fox needs to convince many goats that the MLM’s water (sometimes literally) is great and to come into the well. It is as if the fox needs to put together 20 goats to build a goat-ladder to get out. And since this is a fairy tale, we’ll pretend a magician turns each of those goats into foxes and puts them in their own wells. We repeat the process over and over until there are millions of foxes stuck in their wells.

In the world of MLM, there are many ways that foxes convince the goats to come into the well. They may show pictures of luxury cars, houses, or vacations. Even the FTC says this is misleading. Other times MLMs use illegal health claims like these to target goats. That’s why I’m against companies like Youngevity, DoTerra, and Le-Vel Thrive, just to name a few popular MLMs that I have written about in the past.

Moral of the Story

I am completely floored that Aesop so accurately described MLM more than 2500 years ago. As best I can tell recruiting/pyramid schemes didn’t even exist back then. I don’t know what’s beyond “floored”, but I love that he found a way to explain it so that even a 4 year old can understand it.

Moral: If you come across a fox in a well, don’t be the goat. Show the world that you are smarter than a goat or a 4-year old.

Instead of falling into the trap, give that fox a ladder by sending him/her an article like this one. To (not-so-accurately) paraphrase Smokey the Bear, “Only you can prevent foxes in wells.”