MLM: A cautionary tale...

THE SPORTS DRINK

I was probably 18 years old the first time I was introduced to an MLM, or 'Multi-Level-Marketing' company. The concept was completely new to me. My friends invited me over to their house, gave me a sample of an orange flavored drink they mixed up in the kitchen, and sat me down to watch a video.

For the time, remember this is some 20 years ago, the computer graphics were fairly state of the art. It was an impressive package, I recall. A golden eagle soaring through the sky, the model of a man working for gold ingots, and every time he went to put his ingot into savings, his savings had doubled... A crude illustration of the power of residual income that made me excited and energized... Or was that the drink? Either way, I thought, 'man, this, I have to get into!'.

The drink was indeed energizing, I don't even recall the name now, but there was something about it that really pumped me up whenever I drank it. I thought this would be a great thing to get into the hands of athletes and grow a business! Then I did something foolish, for someone who actually wants to believe in his product... I asked someone who actually knows a few things about health products.

My best friend at the time was a beautiful girl named Aimee. Her father was a physical trainer of some sort, I don't recall exactly. He took a look at the ingredients in the package and pointed out the high levels of fructose and caffeine in the product. Yeah, it gives you energy. The same way an orange and a cup of coffee will. But they wanted me to sell this stuff for a premium, and get my friends and family to do the same? Thus ended my first foray into the world of MLM.

THE GRAND-DADDY

A few years later, I had moved down to San Diego, had just gotten married, and a friend of mine said he wanted to come over and show me something... something POWERFUL that could make me RICH! Who am I to say 'no' to such an offer?

Ben comes over with a pad of paper, and a white cardboard box, sits down at my kitchen table and starts to draw 'the circles'. The circles, you see, show how you tell five people about this great business, and they tell five people, and they tell five people, and pretty soon, you're making residual income from five gazillion people, and low and behold, you are RICH, my son!

I looked at the paper, these circles, they make sense, don't they? I mean, I'm a logical fellow, and I look down at the math, and well, heck... this is perfectly logical! How can it fail? So I get excited. I tell my family. I tell my wife's family. I tell my friends. I tell the people at my new job. I tell friends at church. I tell strangers on the street! Why do I tell all these people? Why am I trying to 'sell' this opportunity to everyone with a pulse? Because that's what the SUCCESSFUL people in this business do. And as we all know, if you want to be a success, you follow the successful! That's just common sense.

The problem, however, is that as logical as this system is on paper, the one thing that Ben didn't illustrate on his yellow legal pad was that all those little circles? They were people. I mean, sure, they symbolized people, but they weren't really an illustration of what people are like. For example, people don't want to bug all their friends and family with business. People don't want to spend every waking hour trying to figure out who they can sell soap to. People don't want to get out of their comfort zones. Ben didn't show all those little facts on the paper. Just those beautiful, logical circles. Well, truth is, a circle is logical. People are not. Not generally, anyway.

If you haven't figured it out by now, this company was called AMWAY. The great-grand-daddy of MLM's. The decades old behemoth that has, indeed, created many, many rich people. Rich people whose lives are completely consumed by their business. Their every waking thought is about how they can build their business. How they can help their business. How they can find more people to join their business... And why do they need to do that? Because of the thousands of people 'downline' who have already hustled every friend, family member, church goer, and co-worker they know, and not one single person was interested in giving up their own comfort zone to join them in their Amway adventure.

So what do these grand poo-bah's of the Amway business tell them to do? FORGET THESE PEOPLE and find NEW friends, family members, church goers, and co-workers... After all, you don't want these negative people holding you back from your ultimate goal... which, supposedly, is to be JUST LIKE THEM. Living a life in a gilded cage, where your only real friends are those people who are either making you money, or you're making money for. In a very real and scary sense, it is a cult-like atmosphere propagated by the 'successful' in that business.

Now, I grant that it has been a long time since I was in Amway. And I grant that on paper... man, those circles always made sense, and still do. If there were some way to utilize the power of that logical system in a way that didn't turn me into an obsessed and friendless MLM zombie... THAT would be a golden ticket.

Did I actively pursue trying to find such a business? No. Of course not.

Ben, too, eventually quite Amway, not quite as dismal a failure at coaxing his friends and family into it as I was. But not quite good enough at it to actually see any of his dreams come true. Dreams like... breaking even, I suppose. And the seed was planted in my head and in a couple friends heads that somehow... this kind of thing can actually work. But not like that. Not like that.

Next: The Juice Wars cometh!