You may not know this but the law is after you. Yep. You may want to reconsider telling those lies about your income. Have you heard about the "70% Rule"? Did you know you are personally liable for what you say? Are you aware that multilevel marketing has added up numerous lies to only make things worse for the industry? Can you tell the difference between a pyramid scheme and a mlm? Do you know what is legal? Maybe it is time you learn. Before I actually get into my answers to these questions for you, I would like to tell you my version of mathematics. Suppose you had a perfect MLM group. Let call it a 5 widespread. Each person has also done his or her part. Failure comes when you run out of people. Can you see this? It has to happen. You can invent product, but when your main focus is recruiting, which is what most MLM groups are about then you have to run out of people. How would you like to be at the start of a company with 5 people under you and 5 under each of them and so on. After a while, who cares if the company fails? The man at the top doesn't. For a perfect down line of this group, it would fail no matter what. To make it interesting for math, after 13 rungs, you would have 305 million 175 thousand, 781 people in this MLM group. The sad part is the bottom people are paying but there is no one to sell to. Yep, I know what you are saying. This can't happen. Yeah, I know, it will fail long before this. It always does. People fail in MLM. Steer clear of multilevel marketing plans that pay commissions for recruiting new distributors. They're actually illegal pyramid schemes. Why is pyramiding dangerous? Because plans that pay commissions for recruiting new distributors inevitably collapse when no new distributors can be recruited. And when a plan collapses, most people-except perhaps those at the very top of the pyramid-end up empty-handed. Okay, I know that you are probably as green as the grass in the spring when it comes to MLM's but did you know that some of your most prominent veterans of MLMers do not know about the "70 Percent Rule". I did not make this up. I will try to make since of this to you. For a MLM Company to be legal, 70% of all the products must be sold out of the network, or to a non-member/non-distributor. I have read that the largest MLM group on the planet only shows approximately 18% to non-distributors. Wow. I guess all of them are illegal. This makes me want to end my story here. NO, I cannot do that. Lets talk about you personally. Are you personally involved in the lies that are told about the MLM programs out there? Are you exaggerating you income by a few thousand dollars. Are you telling people they won't have to do much of anything at all. Well, it's time to clean up. If you are even repeating what the company tells you to say and it is a lie, you are responsible. If you company makes claims and you repeat it, and you represent the company, then you are liable. Sorry. No get out of jail card for you. When you promote the qualities of a product or service, you're obligated to present those claims truthfully and to ensure there's enough solid evidence to back them up. The Federal Trade Commission advises you to verify the research behind any claims about a product's performance before repeating those claims. You recall any claims that others has told you that convinced you that MLM was the way to go. MLM was the way of the future. Let me assure you, it was never the way of the future. It has always been a sore thumb. There was a rumor most likely started from MLMers that Harvard University taught MLM. To set that record straight, Harvard, Stanford, or any other college that I know of does not teach Network Marketing. Most of them detest it. Another claim that some MLMers have rumored is that MLM has made more millionaires than any other form of marketing in the industry. I think I have read the figure to be about 20%. If this is true and if real estate produces 90% of all the millionaires out there, then we have another mathematical problem. However, I will say simply that this is so far fetched that it is not even worth writing about. 1% of goods and services sold in the US would be about 55 billion. MLM sold about 10 billion. Whoops, 1% of goods making 20% of the Millionaires. Nice trick! Well, that is some of what I found in my research of MLMs and unfortunately the business model is a hoax hidden under misleading slogans. You'd be better off playing the lottery and then calling it a business opportunity. I think I have read of a business opportunity involving the lottery somewhere. "Also, MLM is not replacing existing forms of marketing. It does not legitimately compete with other marketing approaches at all. Rather, MLM represents a new investment scheme couched in the language of marketing. Its real products are distributorships that are sold through misrepresentation and exaggerated promises of income. People are buying products in order to secure positions on the sales pyramid. The possibility is always held out that you may become rich if not from your own efforts then from some unknown person ("the big fish") who might join your "downline."" Last thing, all that leisure time you are promised. Forget that. Making money in MLM requires extraordinary time commitment as well as considerable personal skill and persistence. Beyond the sheer hard work and talent required, the business model inherently consumes more areas of one's life and greater segments of time than most occupations. In MLM, everyone is a prospect. Do you want some good news? If you are thinking about joining a MLM plan, take your time and learn everything you can before signing up. Check the company record, the background, the product, and if it is competitively priced? Stay away if it is inflated. If it takes a large investment up front, RUN! If it is a requirement to recruit, then don't join up. That is called a pyramid. You probably read my last post about being your own boss and having your own business. I just want to end this by telling you or reminding you that being involved in a MLM plan does not own you own business. At any time you can lose your downline, or your business, as you will faster than you can your own job. It is the most unstable business I know. Do yourself a favor and read some legals about Global Online Systems. Did you know that Herbalife Marketers Plead Guilty to Pyramid Selling? Visit me again! |
