It’s genuinely concerning to me that multilevel marketing companies aren’t treated as a mainstream, pressing issue like they should be. I’ve seen so many women (men on rare occasions) scammed by them because nobody teaches them how to identify pyramid schemes. So, I’ve decided to compile a list of common themes I’ve taken note of in my Facebook feed that originate from the girls in MLMs (the ones I’ve seen so far are Plexus, Young Living, Monat, and ItWorks) as well as themes I’ve found in my own research in case any of you come across it and are asked to buy or join:
1.) You’ll often see long Facebook posts from a person involved that make excessive use of emojis (this point might sound silly but it’s very, very relevant). The Facebook posts originating from this person are almost never sad and never delve into their mental health because they simply aren’t allowed to act that way. The posts need to be cheery because they’re often forced into making a positive representation of the MLM they work for. “How can you be sad when you’re working for a company as amazing as Plexus?”
2.) The posts they make will more often focus on the money to be made working for the company, rather than the products you’ll be selling. MLMs have a habit of preying on people who are struggling financially, most notably college students, single mothers and military wives. I myself have been approached by representatives from Plexus and ItWorks with the promise of making more money. “Do you want financial freedom? Do you want to be able quit your 9-5 job and stay home with your kids?’
3. When you join, you’ll likely have to buy some sort of “starter kit” as a fee for joining (for reference, NO LEGITIMATE BUSINESS will ask you to make any form of payment when signing up to work. If they do, it’s more than likely a scam).
4. You’ll likely have something called an “upline” who benefit from your sales and the sales of people below you. Before pyramid schemes were criminalized, their practices were the same, and the ONLY difference with MLMs is the involvement of a product/products: the only way for a new recruit to turn any sort of profit is by recruiting more people to sell, forming a “downline”. The more people you recruit and the more people your recruits recruit, the more money you make. However, the people at the bottom of the line will always face the same situation of not turning a profit. The only way to escape this, again, is to get people to join below you, and the cycle repeats itself.
5. You may get messages from people involved in MLMs that either undermine or boost your confidence as a selling point for their products, things like, “Hey girl! I’m so happy for you and congratulations on your new baby. Are you looking to lose your baby weight? ItWorks has some amazing products that I think you should try.” (Yes, this was a real message that a friend of mine got). You’ll get stuff from people you used to attend high school with that haven’t spoken to you in years.
6. When someone you know involved in an MLM makes a post about it, check the profiles of people who make positive and encouraging comments. The majority (if not all of them) are also ambassadors for the same MLM. Whereas you would expect ordinary people to find the post uninteresting and ignore it, these people will leave feedback in order to give the impression that the person involved is doing well and finding success.
7. If the MLM is health/nutrition/supplement based, the person will all of a sudden become an anatomy and health expert. They may post some gross pictures and discuss them in detail, or start talking about the science behind losing weight and getting in shape (and sometimes these posts are excruciatingly long) in order to give the products they sell an aura of scientific legitimacy. However, I have yet to see a post that scientifically explains what the products created by these MLMs do to help people. (This point wouldn’t apply to jewelry or clothing MLMs like LulaRoe).
If you guys have any points to add, please let me know what I’m missing. I’m sure there’s a lot. We need to teach young people just leaving high school and entering college what to look out for so they aren’t at risk of being scammed into losing all of their hard earned money.
Nothing to add here except a list of companies that are MLMs that everyone should avoid:
- Young Living
- doTerra
- Lula Roe
- Paparazzi
- Thrive (not the cosmetics)
- It Works
- Arbonne
- Pure Romance
- Scentsy
- Rodan and Fields
- Beach Body
- Plexus
- Monat
These are just the ones off the top of my head.
Reblogging for my followers to see. There are so many more but I see these ones most often on Facebook.
The Checkout did a good segment on MLMs a few years ago that explains how they work and also some common ones to look out for (it’s Australian but the info applies across the board). Seriously, these things are major scams, and if you know anyone who has bought into them, show them this video and/or other resources to help talk them out of it.
Adding Amway to the list. It’s an oldie and a serious baddie. My housemate is involved with them and I’ve gotten a front-row seat to the cult mindset, brainwashing, emotional abuse, and general money-flushing involved. Their intentionally deceptively-named product lines include:
- Artistry
- Nutrilite
- Nutriway
- Glister
- Satinique
- Hymn
- Body Series
- XL and XS energy drinks
- Dish Drops
-SA8 (home cleaning product)
- LOC (also a home cleaning product)
- Legacy of Clean
- Moiskin
- eSpring
- Atmosphere
- iCook
I can add to this list, and add some additional info. Some of these I’m listing are older, some aren’t.
One major tactic of many of these companies I will list, they operate by encouraging the rep who signed up to to sell their product to invite their friends to host house parties. The friend invites a group of people they know to come over for a fun evening. Usually guests are advised that specific types of products will be demonstrated. The person hosting the gathering is advised to show excitement and how much they love the product to encourage people to attend.
In order to convince someone to hold these events, the MLM rep often offers free or exclusive product as hosting gifts, and often includes a better discount for anything additional the person hosting decides to purchase for themselves. Some may include a commission reward of the percentage of total sales, or other referral award. The MLM rep will also advise on tips to set everything up in their home to have a successful event.
During the event, the MLM rep is introduced, gives their well scripted, rehearsed spiel on the products, demonstrate, have giveaways, and encourage people to buy. They also use the time to talk about how they love working with the company they represent, and any rewards or perks they get. They’ll encourage people attending to host their own parties, or sign up as a rep.
With technology it’s not just confined to in home gatherings. Some will also encourage people to do a broadcast on Facebook live (or some other similar app) and invite virtual friends who can’t make it to join in or watch a replay. They usually will offer a link and a period of a day of a few for people to buy product, often offering a discount. Some might skip the in home gatherings and encourage just doing virtually now too (especially now with COVID 19).
Some of these the reps of these companies I’m listing would probably argue with them being labelled MLM. However, they have that same model in the way they operate: selling goods, recruiting people to sell, and offering commissions of sales from getting a downline, and offering perks or rewards for getting to a certain level of sales within the company.
Cosmetic/skincare:
Mary Kay
Youngevity/Beauty Control
Perfectly Posh
Pomifera
Beautycounter
Supplements/health/cleaning etc:
Monavie
Herbalife
Melaluca
Jewelry:
Origami Owl
Noonday
Household specific (cookware, candles, etc)
Pampered Chef
Partylite
Adult Oriented Products (yes those types of adult products)
Pure Romance
I’ll share more info in another post.
One other recruiting tactic to be aware of is some wellness MLM companies will host things like weight loss challenges, maybe using a personal trainer or gym they found who is willing to go along with it. It might not always be evident it’s a MLM behind it. They’ll host meetings and weekly weigh ins for progress and encouragement, but during these you’ll realize information suggested to help is based from the MLM and they encourage purchasing their products to help with your weight loss efforts. A personal trainer I used to work with got involved with this ploy and it turned out it was hosted by Herbalife.
Some MLM companies may genuinely have better products, be eco conscious, work with charities or present fair trade work opportunities in poorer nations. For example, Beautycounter offers really clean beauty products and cosmetics made without toxic ingredients. Noonday sells jewelry made and designed by mostly women in poor countries which gives them a chance to work making products for fair trade wages, helping improve their living situation or communities.
Also, MLM’s often operate with a couple of things I’m not sure were mentioned. They usually have groups of upline people who are ranked with certain titles of sales levels achievements. To maintain their titled status, the upline person usually has to meet a certain criteria of sales volume and recruitment activity in their downline each year to requalify at that same level..
Second, they are offered different rewards and Perks from the parent MLM company for meeting and maintaining these goals. I had a friend who sold Mary Kay who was given a free car to use (but not one of their signature pink ones). I had another friend who had some success with partylite selling candles and went on a few free cruises with her husband.
It’s possible MLM”s lately target mostly women as mentioned, but from personal experience, early in my relationship, my husband was introduced and decided to join Amway from another male friend he respected a lot. He became convinced it would be his and our ticket to financial freedom, and I got involved by default. (My family hasn’t been involved for many years. A volatile situation between some upline groups trying to change tactics they were using in attempts to be more successful, caused a big feud and blowout with the parent company, which created a ton of fallout, including my husband when he realized how bad things were).
From personal experience during those years, I can share these additional things to be aware of:
1. You were advised by upline how to dress for better success. There were specific recommendations for males and females.
2. Besides only using their vast array of branded products, to be successful, you were encourage to purchase “business training materials” on a monthly/weekly basis. These were often not from the parent company, but generated from very high upline people. They chose specific books and recorded meetings or conferences that they produced as CDs (back then). The upline made an additional pyramid income stream from the sales of these materials, aside from what Amway volume of product was sold. This added additional expense output for the hopeful recruit trying to be successful with it.
3. Amway’s recruiting techniques were often very subtle and manipulative. Amway had gained a terrible reputation (rightfully so), and even tried rebranding their company as Quixtar for a time. Usually they encouraged you to write a list of every contact you knew, pick some names, and gave subtle ways to spark interest in meeting to discuss a new business opportunity. They had this system of explaining the business concept, often referred to as “the plan” or “showing the plan”. Often until enough positive sounding hooks were offered, and you hopefully got someone interested, is when they would eventually divulge that it was in fact Amway.
4. They had the tiered levels of upline success, with titles like diamond (double, triple), sapphire, emerald and such. There were rewards at each level and perks such as highest levels got exclusive vacations and conference opportunities.
5. You were encouraged to attend a monthly meeting with more successful people giving a talk and tips (this was mostly married couples who were speakers). You were encouraged to bring people who had showed interest from “the plan” to such meetings, and invite them to talk to the speakers to further encourage them to sign up. These meetings were often a few hours or more drive for various people attending. These meetings were no cost to the people you brought as guests, but may have cost a fee to attend, but you were highly encouraged to do so for success. Then there were a few major conferences throughout the year that the really higher upline put on. You were especially encouraged to attend these. These were held in specific parts of the country, and often included further travel by flight. You also may have additional expense for hotel stays (some hotels offered discounted group rates) or rental cars. Some groups encouraged travel together with their downline to save money. These meetings were very charged to hype people up to go out and do the work to be successful.
6.“Dream building” was encouraged to motivate you further. They encouraged you to look at luxury houses, cars, etc, or whatever might motivate you to put more effort in. Many successful people had stories of scheduling many evening meetings, driving their cars (and bodies) into the ground, even with a full work schedule during the day. Exhausting themselves and often sacrificing time with their family and kids, just so later they would earn the time and financial freedom to have that later.
7. There was definitely collective ideologies within the tiers of the top leadership. Many were religious (typcially christian or mormon). Many, even speaking in the big conferences, extolled very right wing political beliefs and idealogy. Amongst groups of different ranks and people, I heard so much of this in conversations at events. The big conferences also included an optional Sunday non-denominational “church” like service for those of faith (usually christian).Other ideologies and viewpoints could often be judged or looked at negatively in private conversations. Not speaking for all here, but this was my general experience with a lot of what I saw.
One last thing, watch out for subtle ads or opportunities advertised as work from home jobs, especially during this time of Covid 19. Many have sadly lost their jobs or reduced hours and looking for opportunities. People trying to recruit for MLM’s will often post they work for a company “that has a few spots”, or are “hiring”. You may be referred to a website to watch a video presentation, and then check back with the person who referred you to the site. Others may leave ads or descriptions of a job opportunity that sounds good, almost legit, but vague on more details. I’m seeing an increase in this right now. These ads could be for MLM’s, or other types of jobs that just recruit for sales jobs that pay no salary but offer sales commissions only, which is another different category from MLM.
The biggest takeaway I can give is the fact that more people lose money, some quite a bit, from being involved with MLM business models. There are people who have been able to be successful and earned those wonderful perks, but at the expense of MANY below them who lost way more money than they ever made putting in all the time and effort just trying to succeed. If you like a product offered and want to buy it from an MLM, that’s up to you. Some people will only join an MLM just to get products at discount, but don’t want to sell and recruit. Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of MLM fallout, not just from Amway, but other friends and people trying all kinds of these different systems. I think MLM’s are a real issue, and a strong way to lose money rather than gain it.