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Coffee is for Closers, Only.

This video was up at False Profits, Robert FitzPatrick's blog about the illusion of profits in multi-level marketing.

Robert wrote in an email to me: MLM schemers play upon the idea that we know something you don't. It is less macho and in your face than Alex Baldwin's character. The MLM world is full of talk about "figuring it out", the secret, techniques of the masters, how to..., etc. They know something you don't and that's why they are rich and you're not.

However, also behind this facade, once you buy in, Alec Baldwin's character, Blake, emerges. It is recruit or your fired. No excuses, create your own reality, and if you fail, you're just a quitter and a loser. If you complain, we send the lawyers after you. If you try taking your downline to another MLM, we sue you until you're bankrupt. No excuses. Start with your warm list. Recruit your mother. Friends don't like your recruiting? Get some new friends. Wife objects to all the time your putting in? Get a new wife.

This is more brutal than Blake ever thought of being. All he wanted were sales. MLM wants your life.

I then read at one of Kim Klaver's blogs, who I regard as a pro but thoughtful commentator about MLM:

" Excel had 106,426 U.S. representatives eligible to earn commissions and that 64,967 actually earned commissions. Of those, 98.1 percent earned $100 or less. Only 99, or 0.2 percent, earned more than $1,000 for the month."

Eeck!

(And it turns out that those fine folk at Click Bank know their affiliate marketers also make nothing in general.)

So what is the attraction? More abuse?

Read the comments about why people fail but stay in MLM, and tell me whether you diagnose cognitive dissonance: we want to own our business, but we make no money, so there must be something else we love.

Abuse

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Full post as published by Misleading Advertising Law on September 10, 2009 (boomark / email).