How I Almost Joined an MLM

I have a mentor that I work with on my career goals, let's call him Sam. Sam is a trusted individual in my life, who I can also call a friend and have a professional relationship with. He’s a sharp guy, big into self-help books and personal and professional development. He often spoke about his ‘business’ that he worked on evenings and weekends, but remained vague when I asked about what it is. I knew he was part of a mentorship group, that he spent a lot of his free time on travelling to London for ‘leadership conferences’ and attended online seminars on personal development. In one of our mentor sessions, I may have expressed an interest in creating some passive income, but still needed to look for ideas.

Not long after our last meet, I received a text that his mentor, let’s called her Anna, was up for a meeting with me. This came out of no where, so I was quite confused. Since it was only a 10-15 mins zoom audio call, I decided to go for it. In hindsight, it was clear this meeting was for Anna to build trust with me and to get enough information about my goals and values in life to persuade this ‘business’ opportunity to me. Again, never saying what this business actually is. They asked about my financial well-being and aspirations in life. Anna shared her story about being in a position to quit her full-time job soon with her partner and asked whether I was in a relationship and if so, whether my partner would also be interested in this life-changing opportunity. They never spoke about the money that they made, but also that the next steps would be a kind of ‘interview’, since this ‘mentorship group’ is exclusive to get into.

I swiftly had a follow-on meeting with Sam a few days later, with no consideration for my time when I said I would struggle to make an hour call within the next week (hey, he isn’t the only one that hustles hard). I managed to find some time and the ‘interview’ included questions such as ‘are you outcome focused or process oriented?’ and ‘how much do you value mentorship?’. He talked about how he tried various ways to gain passive income but emphasised how they just weren’t able to create that much money, such as a property, or were to complex and risky, such as stocks. He said this opportunity was only for those that would work hard for up to 5 years but were guaranteed financial freedom by the end of it. Looking back, these questions were kind of insulting, of course I would! Who wouldn’t? They didn’t really measure my ‘mindset’ like they said it was intended to. In the moment, I was quite excited by the end of it, with any doubts in my mind erased. I was convinced that I was doing something different.

He sent a pdf of the book ‘The Business of the 21st Century’ by Robert Kiyosaki (author of Rich Dad Poor Dad) to read and then again discuss on a call within a few days. This was again, a complete disregard for my busy schedule. We managed to find an inconvenient time for me for the follow-up, but a time nonetheless to discuss this. He was very adamant that I also made a social group call with the rest of the ‘mentorship’ group the following week. I was meant to be away with my partner at that time but he was insistent I made this call. This was very weird. I wasn’t available and this was pretty short notice. In the end, I said I will try my best but couldn’t guarantee, as he made me feel bad for not spending my time on this, as if I was already not being a team player and there wouldn’t succeed.

This whole time, I had a gut feeling that something wasn’t quite right. At no point was the name of the business mentioned, or how the money was made. I was never speaking to the people that apparently have retired and made their millions. I was told the business involved ‘network marketing’ and the book would clear this up. I was told to have financial freedom, that I needed to own my own business and with this ‘exclusive mentorship opportunity’, that I get to be my own boss, get rich, retire early, and that they would help build the ‘right mindset’ for business to achieve all this.

Safe to say, the book was absolutely terrible. It was an easy enough read, and made you feel good about yourself and motivated like most self-helpy finance books. There was a lot of words about why you should find financial freedom and why this can only be done by having your own business until half way through, it mentioned network marketing. Kiyosaki himself never been part of this, but here was a book he is making good money from, that just bigs it up and pushes it on readers. By the end of the book I had just one question - what IS network marketing? In fact, I don’t know why he even wrote this book.

So far…so much fluff with no substance, where is the action? What does is this actually about? I had a gut feeling none of this was quite…right. I wanted to stay optimistic, I could trust him, right?

Before my follow-up meeting about the book, I decided enough was enough and did my own research. I was quite to find my answer. Network marketing is also known as…Multi-level marketing (MLM). I knew what those are about, they are basically legal pyramid schemes. You recruit someone to sell products for you, where you earn comission from them as well as from recruiting them and your own products. Now, I looked at both side of the coins but the over-whelming majority vote was that this was a full-on scam and that 99% of people lost money from these. It’s not technically a pyramid scheme, but it may as well be. I found Youtube videos of individuals who went through the exact same process. Someone they know got them into a meeting after randomly asking to go for a coffee etc. They were handed this book, never told what the business was about but were sold a lifestyle. One woman was very successful in the MLM business but the culture was so toxic she had to leave. She was asked to buy books and podcasts and attend self-development seminars about gratitude and hustling and that was their ‘training’ to help them succeed. When she left, she received a lot of abuse from her fellow ‘business partners’. The main targets of MLMs are stay-at-home mums and people in dire need of financial help and unhappy with their jobs.

This all sounds a bit like… a cult?

So that’s how they hook you in and what I found most fascinating by this whole experience. You were sold a lifestyle, a dream. An opportunity where you can quit your full-time job, work your own hours and call yourself an ‘entrepreneur’. You just needed enough hard work to build your business (network) in the first place so you can achieve that, and that requires being around positive people (mentors) that will help you get there, because they receive commission too. Join us! We can be ‘business partners’. This was how it was sold to everyone that I had read about, and it is very clever. It is built on toxic productivity and hustle culture. If you have a positive mindset, work hard, develop good habits, wake up at 5 am and meditate and go to the gym and just be a ‘go-getter’ then you WILL be successful at this business opportunity and this will all pay off so you can retire by 30.

What. A. Load. Of. Bollocks

In these kind of schemes, maybe you will meet many amazing people that you could call friends. However, their friendship is conditional. They are your friend as long as you are making them money (i.e. recruiting other family and friends). You will lose your close family and friends due to trying to recruit them into this and the minute you slip, you will be hounded by your ‘mentorship group’ saying that you’re not a tram player, that you’re not working hard enough and be given more podcasts, books and motivational speaker resources to get you back on track.

This all really fascinated me because I came to see how genius this all was in this day and age. When we live in an era of being ‘Instagram perfect’ with rich people showing off their fancy cars and holidays, we all just want to be like them. Who wouldn’t? Who wouldn’t want to make money doing nothing? This was exactly how, apparently. The truth is, none of it is real. It is all a plot of social media, as usual, making you feel that you’re not where you want to be because you just haven’t dreamed big enough or hustled hard enough. They want to make you feel stupid for having a 9-5 job working for someone else, that you should be hustling and dreaming big and this was the way to do that. It’s not. It is a scam.

From my research, it was clear that more MLM ‘survivors’ are speaking out about this industry, although it is very hard to leave a cult because of the shame and abuse that it thrown at them afterwards. Safe to say, I politely told Sam that I wanted none of this in our follow-up meeting. He was thankfully very nice about it and I got my time back.

I don’t believe Sam is a bad person. I believe that he is a victim. Unfortunately, being a very driven individual that is big on self-help books, this also means he was an easy target. If you feel like your being recruited into an MLM, think of the following questions:

Is your friend or family member asking questions about your financial aspirations in life?

• Are they selling you an opportunity?
• Are they being vague about their business name and what it is?
• Are they giving vague answers when you pry about the business and how the money is actually made?
• Have they given you a book that bigs up network marketing?

I don’t feel ashamed about what happened. I dfeel mildly annoyed that I was poached for this as a target, and that I almost bought into it, dreaming up this insane lifestyle that I was going to have. Go me! I’m grateful for the research I did that definitely helped me make up my mind the complete other way. I will now be more vigilant for this. I would advise you to look out for your friends if any of the above becomes a reality, as people in MLMs are very skilled at selling you everything but the reality. Even if this helps one person, I know that I’ve done my job.