lol

Sorry I don't have advice for you Henry. All I know is a friend of mine who I thought was actually not dumb fell for one of these and me and his other friends could not dissuade him.

show up, drink some wine and be nice....seem intrigued by their vast knowledge, and overwhelmed at their financial prowess......when they ask you to invest say "ohh no, ohh no....i have all my money tied up in illiquid oil futures tied to emerging market derivatives."

I would just be honest and level with the guy 1 on 1. Say you are familiar with MLM and want to know if this is an MLM program. If it is, just say you're too busy working on other projects to get involved. If it's something else, check it out.

Tell him you're very content with how much money you're making and don't want to ruin a good thing with extra business opportunities.

All these schemes take time. It's running a business. Just tell them that you are too busy with your normal business or job.

Too busy to make up to $5k per week in just 2-3 hours of your spare time???

I'm telling you guys avoid avoid avoid. Be polite but send clear signals you are not interested. Do not expound on why as this will just leave an opening. Every other route will usually be interpreted as at least semi-interest, and just lead to much more awkwardness down the road.

Go, be polite, enjoy the free food/drinks, and say "sorry, no thank you" with any of the reasons supplied above, all while laughing about it in your head. If the customer enrolls and throws his money away, would it at all affect your GF's business? If not, then there's probably not a good enough reason to try to dissuade him.

I'm curious - what is it? Please tell us when you find out.

I don't understand the title of the post "Likely pyramid scheme" when it's almost certainly an MLM pitch. I'm not involved in any MLM and never have been, and while I realize that MLM is not for everyone (me for instance) and many MLM companies are somewhat sketchy, IMO multi-level marketing is not a true pyramid scheme.

Pyramid schemes are a scam. In MLM, while it's true that most of the people involved don't make serious $$, to label all MLM companies as scames or "pyramid schemes" is painting with too broad a brush. It's kind of like saying "All chiropractors are quacks" because of chiropractics sometimes shady past, or because some chiropractors are quacks.

just my $0.02

But yea, if U feel you've got to go in order to maintain good relationships with this person, than simply go, be polite, and at the end simply say that you'd like to do some research into the company and that you'll get back to them. When they call you (and they will), wish them luck but tell them that you've decided it's not for you. You'll probably have to repeat this a few times, but hey--they're in sales and they're not supposed to take "No" for an answer the first time!

The MLM scam is not the actual MLM company, but the sales pitch. One of my friends hosted a "juice party" recently and I went to be polite. It turned out to be a Mona Vie pitch and the speaker kept going on and on about how easy it was, how little you actually had to do, and how everyone loved the product. Then he showed the income chart, talked about the "black diamond" level and how you'll get called up on stage at the big annual conference and handed the keys to a new car, etc., all without mentioning the mandatory monthly purchase and the simple fact that "fewer than 1% qualified for commissions and of those, only 10% made more than $100 a week" (reference).

So my friend, who is awesome but not very bright and not in the best financial situation, signs up and buys several hundred dollars' worth of the juice (which tastes pretty awful IMO) all dreaming about the money rolling in and the free car.

That's the scam in MLM.

Stuff like that screams scam to me, even if there's some at least semi-legit business at the top.

Reminds me of a "job interview" I went to, which went something like this:
The job was billed as working as a damage assessor. Maybe I didn't read the fine print on the ad well enough, but I got sucked in by it.

The interview had about 25 people sit down and watch a presentation. Almost immediately you are inundated with "make $250K a month" and "$300/wk for 1 hour of work" sort of crap and how if you meet certain fairly unattainable goals you can become a "manager" and make the real money. The actual work had nothing to do with assessing damage and everything to do with providing leads for the small group who ran the thing, who likely then passed it along to another company to do the actual work of following up, assessing damage, and taking insurance companies to court over improper payouts.

Is that a pyramid scheme technically? Not really. Is it a semi-legitimate business model? It does provide a service at some point I assume. Is the work legitimate? Providing leads for a company is necessary work. Does that mean it's a good idea to do this personally? Unless you happen to know a lot of people with damaged houses or are extremely motivated, know a good method to generate leads, and spend tons of time and effort on it, not really. Perhaps I didn't understand the work properly, but it looked fairly win-win for the company and fairly lose-lose for 95%+ of those who joined. For those who couldn't make the very high standards, they got paid crap, if they didn't end up paying the company for the privilege of being "educated", and the company got very cheap leads with no real commitments to these "employees"; for the small bit who could make the standards and proved they were talented, they got promoted into the actual company and the company got a top producer to add to its payroll, plus their lead generation model.

In other words, it would be great to get in on the ground floor with that business, but trying to make money after that point would be very difficult at the least unless you had the skills that would likely make you more than qualified to hold a decent job at a non-scam company (so why would you accept that crap contract?). Oh, did I mention you had to pay a fee to take a "class" on how to generate leads? Don't forget that small detail, since very few there were likely to make much of a profit overall even if they did generate a good number of leads due to the pay structure, and then only after a certain number of leads had been generated.

I guess that's MLM with a twist? Amazingly over 90% of the people in attendance stayed on after the presentation was over. I really must have misread that ad or something.

My favorite response for these type of situations is, "Sorry. I'm fully invested right now." Of course, to the perceptive person, being 'fully invested' wouldn't matter if another opportunity exists that offers better potential risk-adjusted returns.

Henry, results?

Got out of going by canceling. Legitimate reason so I didn't feel bad canceling. Hopefully won't get a second invite.

With respect to MLM not being a pyramid scheme / scam it depends. I think they are all scams to some degree in that they use deception but I would draw a distinction between offerings that just offer a token and useless product just to make the system technically legal (Canadian Diamond Traders) and MLMs that offer products that are bad value but at least of some value (Amway / Mary Kay). Either way there is no reason to ever get involved and the difference is just a matter of how much you are going to lose.

Be polite and go. If nothing else it is a way to build further rapport with an important client. When they give you the hard sell, do not turn it down, just say you will need some time to think it over.

I have a feeling you probably can make money at them if you get into the right situation and work your butt off. But the % of people that do is obviously very small. Sort of like the % of poker players that actually study and learn the game well enough to be lifetime winners. Except that instead of studying, you have to be willing to piss off all your friends and family and be a pushy ass**** to everyone you meet. And you're only making money off the people that come after you, never off the product itself, which is an inherently unsustainable situation.

you have to get in early to make money

just set up a ponzi scheme

FYI, my best friend's father growing up made about 250K every year from Amway and as I understand it, it can be a durable income stream. He quit his job as an engineer 20 years ago and hasn't hasn't really done much for Amway in the last 15.

In other words he got in very early and is now at the top of the pyramid. I bet amway doesn't work like that anymore with online shopping.

This winter I was driving back from Richmond, VA. On the back of a Repo Truck was a car advertising Mona Vie and how it could make you rich or something along the lines.

Man, this is hilarious.

I wish you had a picture.

In the end if you are going to make money you need to recruit people which I don't even understand how it would be possible given the internet and access to search engines. If you even start to type in the name of any MLM into google it suggests hundreds of pages on why it is a scam.

One of the worst get rich quick schemes I was exposed to was when a lifetime waitress who was older so this was it rather than a way to pay for school or something came to me after she had handed over $40k she had inherited to some kind of investment. It was horrible. The investment certificate had a big gold star like the kind you got in grade school but just twenty times bigger as the seal. The person who wrote it didn't know the difference between then and than they also used the wrong version to/too/two. The address was a 21XX unit in a part of Toronto where I knew there was nothing taller than 3-4 stories and it turned out to be a Mailboxes Etc. Yet she handed over $40k to these people because they were promising 6% a month returns. When she asked me for help and I started looking into it I found about a dozen other locals in the same situation. It is horrible when people get scammed but at the same time who the **** gives someone $40k without at least doing some research? People use horrible judgement when it comes to money and it is easy to use greed to manipulate people but **** at least go to google maps and type in the address.

he didn't get in that early. also, he made the majority of his money from a few 6 months overseas trips to Poland, Singapore, etc. so perhaps he got in early in other countries.

what kind of car does he drive? If it's a corvette you know yous gonna get rich, son.

http://www.ugoto.com/video_the-offic...id-scheme.html

slow pony

UPDATE

Ok so he re-invited us and we went.

The program was ACN. Basically you sell services and you get a percentage of the customers bills. Stuff like cell phone plans, home security, satellite TV, natural gas, hydro, internet service, etc. They also have a video phone that uses VOIP. People who watch Celebrity Apprentice might remember the phone from last season.

Overall it wasn't the worst MLM scheme I've been pitched. It is still horrible and you'll never make any money at it but at least they are pushing services by major suppliers at a discount so selling wouldn't be too hard. Still it is the type of thing which you'd be lucky to make $25/month. The money is in getting other people to join just like all of these things.

The one thing I was a little disappointed in was that Trump is featured heavily in the promotion. I'd say at least 30-40% of the video was Trump endorsing ACN. I know he will shill for almost anything but **** I don't have a tiny fraction of Trump's wealth and you couldn't pay me enough to put my name to a MLM scam.

The night went fine. It was a single woman and another couple. The other couple seemed really enthusiastic about joining. There was only one slightly awkward moment for me so that was good. The reasons for not being interested were pretty obvious so there was no hard sell. I was worried that I might be asked to be a customer but I realized because of my living situation I actually can't use any of the services they offer so I was able to do the whole I really want to but I can't but when we move we will excuse. Overall a waste of two and a half hours but not horrible.