Is Multi-Level Marketing Turning You Into an Ass?

Jewelry, makeup, shakes, life insurance, energy drinks, health supplements, air purifiers, even legal counsel.

You can sell all of these products, services, and more to your friends and family.

But should you?

For those of you that don't know, multi-level marketing works like this:

A company has a product or service. They recruit individuals to sell these for them on a commission basis. You are not really an employee. You "work for yourself".

Generally you are sold on the benefits of the product or service by someone else. You buy some or sign up for the service. Then you are encouraged to start selling and offering the service yourself using such phrases as:

Become financially independent!

Work from home!

Leave your day job!

Etc. Every person you convince to buy the product or service increases your commission, you reach new levels and gain a greater percentage of each sale. If you sign up people under yourself to sell the same products then you get a cut of their sales as well.. and anyone they sign up, and anyone those people sign up.. and on it goes.

So, is there anything wrong with this? What's so bad about selling stuff to people?

The answer is nothing. There is nothing wrong with offering products you believe in to your friends and family and even strangers.

So what's the problem?

Well the problem is that the companies that encourage this strategy can be cult-like, high pressure, and require ever increasing sales and member sign ups to keep someone profitable and making money.

If you've ever run into someone selling things like Advocare, Primerica, Amway, Prepaid Legal or countless others then you make know exactly what I'm talking about.

A person you used to enjoy talking to is suddenly excited and energetic about this new "business opportunity" they want to talk to you about. You trust them so you agree to listen. Now they are talking about a protein shake, or makeup, or candles, whatever it is they are selling. Maybe you're interested. Maybe they offer you some free samples. Maybe you buy some of whatever it is.

If you sign up to sell it yourself now you're being invited to group meetings where people talk about how great the product is. You're now on conference calls with the biggest seller in the area so he can tell you about how much money you can make and how many people are helped by this product. You're pressured to make a list of all your friends and family and sit down with each and every one of them, often with the person that signed you up there to "help" and offer the same opportunity. That's now all you and your friend or family member that got you involved talk about. You might be hanging out more and more exclusively with other people that are doing what you're doing. You're attending more and more meetings, seminars, retreats, conference calls and your life is increasingly becoming focused on this "business opportunity".

If you don't sign up or buy then often times your friend or family member may admonish you for the opportunity you're missing. They may keep finding ways to bring it up in the future, hoping you'll reconsider. They may even sneakily invite you to "free dinners" or events that are actually group sales pitches by the "RVP" and his team designed to pile on even more pressure into getting you to sign up. Now, still not convinced, you begin to avoid this person because you know all they are going to talk about is this product or service. It's now their life. They speak of almost nothing else.

Sound familiar? It's happened to yours truly far too often.

When I was younger I even got suckered into going to a Primerica class and almost went all the way through with it. All of the above applied. I finally opened my eyes when we sat down with a young man that was in debt and needed help. That's what we were supposed to be about right? Helping people! It was myself and my "mentor". After hearing the man's story (and having put my integrity on the line by getting the guy to agree to a meeting) my mentors answer to the guy was "You need to make more money! By that I mean, you need to do what we are doing!".

I was stunned. More than that I was angry. That obviously wasn't the answer. I felt embarrassed. After that I stopped responding to my "mentor's" phone calls and texts. A month or so later I saw him and a group of acolytes coming out of the movie theater as I was walking in.

"Hey! What are you doing man? Where you been?" he asked as he walked over to me.

"Just about to see a movie with some friends" I replied.

"Oh, you should have told me man. We just got done watching movies. The RVP took us out and paid for us all!"

"I can afford my own movie ticket. See you later man. Have a nice night". I walked away.

In the words of President Obama, let me be clear. I'm not saying that someone cannot be successful at any of these endeavors. What I AM saying to those people (that may be YOU) is that you must be careful in how you let any sort of business infiltrate your life and affect your relationships. Taking advantage of the trust of your friends and family is the number 1 strategy of any MLM company. While there's nothing wrong with offering a product or service you believe in to a friend or family member, there IS something wrong if that's all you talk about going forward, if you try to guilt them into buying or signing up, and if a business or product changes your personality to the point that people no longer recognize you and avoid talking to you because they know eventually you're going to steer the conversation back to their company, product or service.

Is this you? Does every conversation or most of them you have with your friends and family center around you bringing up your MLM opportunity?

Are the majority of your Facebook or Twitter posts tied to mentioning it somehow?

Look up, take notice. You're alienating your friends and family. You may be that annoying person people are talking about not inviting out or messaging because they know you'll just try to bring up your pitch again.

Even more dangerous: Are you prepared to have a loved friend or family member sign up and fail? Often people sign up, high on the hype, only to realize they aren't the kind of person that thrives at person to person sales and marketing. Maybe they only buy a little product themselves, make a few sales to others and quit. Fine. But maybe they do like many  and buy enough product to bump themselves up to the next commission "tier" or discount level and then find they can't maintain sales to recoup their expenditures. Now they have debt they have to eat.

They have personal responsibility for their decisions of course, but so do you.

Again, there are plenty of people who sell or offer these things in an appropriate way, make money, and knno when no means no and also know who to offer to and who not to.

But then there are plenty that don't. Is that you?

And this is one of the major questions of our lives: how we keep boundaries, what permission we have to cross boundaries, and how we do so.

A. B. Yehoshua