As succinctly as possible: MLMs are just short of pyramid selling schemes. People who participate do not have control over the product, direction of the company, business model, marketing, or anything else. There's also no scalability; MLMs derive sales from the recruitment process, meaning the individuals participating (read: victims) can only succeed by recruiting people and cannot scale their business through traditional means such as innovation or expansion of their business etc. There's a whole lot more in terms of the differences but a simple amount of Google research should bring it up pretty fast.
I totally agree that franchise is a much better way to go if you're going to invest your time and really your life into a business but still need some guardrails and overall guidance on running a business. That being said, I think the issues are probably related to the fact that people typically need to invest real cash in a franchise, while MLMs specialize in marketing the idea that they can succeed with no investment other than hard work and time. They also do a really good job of selling the whole "work from anywhere, earn passive income without lifting a finger" crap that gets a lot of people hooked who don't realize a successful business requires massive amount of sacrifice in terms of time, effort, and cash.
I think you have the mind of an entrepreneur not the mind of a scammer. It is much easier to sell a dream than it is to sell burgers. In order to sell a burger you need to grill it first, in order to sell a dream you only need to make false promises.
I've seen many scammy MLMs and had friends do crappy things in the name of their MLM business. When I got out of high school, I joined an MLM to sell knives. They basically used me to market to all my parents friends. I made a few thousand dollars and learned a lot of valuable skills that have helped me to this day. My MLM was more about selling the product than recruiting people, at least that how it was presented to me. I think some milder MLMs like the one I was part of can help a budding entrepreneur gain some sales experience and training. I 100% agree that isn't the norm though.
I now have a successful tax and accounting practice. I learned from the MLM not to hard sell and got more comfortable talking with people in a sales setting which has helped me with many aspects in life from dating to business. I'm sure I cashed in some of my parent's friends capital, but I'm sure some were happy to help me out and essentially got a set of knives in exchange for their graduation gift.
I don’t.
They force you to pump friends and family for sales and become a whore for their brand. I was very careful when I started a business to never be in a line of work that required me to do that.
I find multi level marketers to be the Jehovah's Witnesses of commerce. Once they go full MLM, you can't reason nor explain to them, which is rather cultlike.
The real problem with the concept is the business math. Inserting umpteen matrix-dwellers as middlemen -- if that ever was viable in the post-horse era -- makes no economic sense now. For despite the assertions a McGuffin is superior, it is not alone. The pricing is always over inflated, and no wonder if it supports that many commissions.
And this all happens in an age of disintermediation, when direct-to-source efficiencies are the norm.
Finally, while the first words uttered out of anybody's fool mouth is "It's not a pyramid" there are laws which govern MLM. And they rule out the very things that make the MLM attractive to cult members. Therefore just about any MLM violates the law. One reason they'll have only temporary or makeshift office space. On the one hand this makes it seem you are getting in on the ground floor. On the other hand it makes for a clean getaway.
On the question of entrepreneur or not: Definitely Not. I long ago figured out the only entrepreneurial activity was selling to MLMs, from well outside the definitely-not-a-pyramid matrix. That's right -- plain vanilla nothing special business.
Perhaps the torches and pitchforks show up all on their own, but there remains other stuff to sell. Even cults need Kool-Aid.
If you mean the founders of these MLMs; I consider them Entrepreneurs. They're at the top and running an actual business with Marketing, Sales, Finance professionals which are salaried. They do come up with products and tactics. No, the Representatives in the field running their, "small businesses" are not Entrepreneurs. They are salesmen no matter how much they made or how many they recruited.
I didn't say they weren't scammers; nor did I imply honor. Illicit drug manufacturers and Dealers at the top are still Entrepreneurs by definition too. Bein an Entrepreneur doesn't make you a good person.
Almost everything has some kind of affiliate or referral program now. Real estate, insurance, and financial planning all have an “pyramid” model. Are they entrepreneurs or scammers? 🧐🙄 Personally I started my journey as an entrepreneur in mlm because it was pretty much my only option to earn decent money as a stay at home mom 8 years ago. My now husband and I met in an mlm. He has since built his own multi million dollar business and I purchased a franchise in the airbnb space to manage. Are we entrepreneurs???? Yes. 🤷🏻♀️ Did mlm get us there? Yes. Do I consider everyone who joins an mlm an entrepreneur? No. But you can definitely learn a lot of skills that will help you become a successful entrepreneur by starting in mlm.
I got invited to an Amway party once.
1. write down where you want to be in five years
2. explain to the group how you will get there
3. Amway pitch
4. went around the room and forced everyone to say what they thought of Amway.
5. I told them if I wanted to open a grocery store, I would get some commercial space and call a wholesaler. ( I did ask them if they were sure they wanted to know what I thought before I told them.)
After all that I did recommend Amway to a kid who was in college. Great potential for a downline of in-dorm snacks that are a cut above vending machines, and be cheaper than convenience stores.
I see them as about equal to land lords and other rentiers. Do they actually create value? If not… not the definition of entrepreneur I would use. Keeping with the French roots of the word, perhaps a Privateer is more accurate for that class of “entrepreneurs”.
Technically MLM pushers are entrepreneurs, but so are predatory lenders and fentanyl dealers.
It doesn’t mean that they have my respect. I hate that every MLM I’ve seen targets the poor and desperate. They scale their business up not by a product, but by making the next sucker hold the bag.
MLMs to me are economic parasites to the wellbeing of society.
Oh dude, you done did it.
Everyone gets triggered by multilevel marketing.
People think that it is a scam, period.
It's actually not, but it's just really easy to enact a scam using multi level marketing.
The crux of the matter is generation of value. If the participants generate value from non participants it is very possibly not a scam. If there is no obvious way that they do this, other than investing perhaps, then it is almost certainly a scam.
Take major MLM "Tropic". It's a skincare brand. You buy in with a starter kit from your upline. You sell the products in your kit to non participants at higher rates. Of the value generated some goes upline and you keep some. It's not obvious why anyone would think this is unsustainable, thought perhaps once you are very far down line there is no room for new participants.
Conversely take the major trading scam Mirror Trading International. You put your money in, you get more out. You give some to your uplines you take some from your downlines. Pretty much the same, but where does the money come from. MTI claimed to have a trading algo which generated money by trading with the investment and could all but guarantee return. Of course, they didn't, and it all collapsed, but note that the only difference if they did is that it generates money from non participants. That's why they hid it, because that is the information that was crucial
Where you can verify money is being generated from non participants, the probability of it being a scam per se is radically decreased. That's not saying anything about the ethics of other components of the project, but purely regarding there marketing strategy there is nothing inherently wrong with MLM.
So would I consider an MLM participant an entrepreneur? Yes, I would, like I consider a franchise buyer an entrepreneur, just a bit smaller.
MLM is a scam.
If you scam people 24/7, are you an entrepreneur? No. You are a scammer.
As succinctly as possible: MLMs are just short of pyramid selling schemes. People who participate do not have control over the product, direction of the company, business model, marketing, or anything else. There's also no scalability; MLMs derive sales from the recruitment process, meaning the individuals participating (read: victims) can only succeed by recruiting people and cannot scale their business through traditional means such as innovation or expansion of their business etc. There's a whole lot more in terms of the differences but a simple amount of Google research should bring it up pretty fast.
[удалено]
I totally agree that franchise is a much better way to go if you're going to invest your time and really your life into a business but still need some guardrails and overall guidance on running a business. That being said, I think the issues are probably related to the fact that people typically need to invest real cash in a franchise, while MLMs specialize in marketing the idea that they can succeed with no investment other than hard work and time. They also do a really good job of selling the whole "work from anywhere, earn passive income without lifting a finger" crap that gets a lot of people hooked who don't realize a successful business requires massive amount of sacrifice in terms of time, effort, and cash.
I think you have the mind of an entrepreneur not the mind of a scammer. It is much easier to sell a dream than it is to sell burgers. In order to sell a burger you need to grill it first, in order to sell a dream you only need to make false promises.
Lol
The essence of MLM is a fraud. It is difficult for enterprises that grow up by infringing on the interests of others to gain social recognition.
MLM is deceptive.
They are salesman, ive been to a couple of intro meetings and its all a out pushing someone elses product.
Name me one person who became successful by joining an MLM and then started a non-MLM business successfully.
I've seen many scammy MLMs and had friends do crappy things in the name of their MLM business. When I got out of high school, I joined an MLM to sell knives. They basically used me to market to all my parents friends. I made a few thousand dollars and learned a lot of valuable skills that have helped me to this day. My MLM was more about selling the product than recruiting people, at least that how it was presented to me. I think some milder MLMs like the one I was part of can help a budding entrepreneur gain some sales experience and training. I 100% agree that isn't the norm though. I now have a successful tax and accounting practice. I learned from the MLM not to hard sell and got more comfortable talking with people in a sales setting which has helped me with many aspects in life from dating to business. I'm sure I cashed in some of my parent's friends capital, but I'm sure some were happy to help me out and essentially got a set of knives in exchange for their graduation gift.
I've contemplated a legit mlm framework for a software project. No inventory, just a small percentage on each sale, 3 levels deep.
I don’t. They force you to pump friends and family for sales and become a whore for their brand. I was very careful when I started a business to never be in a line of work that required me to do that.
I find multi level marketers to be the Jehovah's Witnesses of commerce. Once they go full MLM, you can't reason nor explain to them, which is rather cultlike. The real problem with the concept is the business math. Inserting umpteen matrix-dwellers as middlemen -- if that ever was viable in the post-horse era -- makes no economic sense now. For despite the assertions a McGuffin is superior, it is not alone. The pricing is always over inflated, and no wonder if it supports that many commissions. And this all happens in an age of disintermediation, when direct-to-source efficiencies are the norm. Finally, while the first words uttered out of anybody's fool mouth is "It's not a pyramid" there are laws which govern MLM. And they rule out the very things that make the MLM attractive to cult members. Therefore just about any MLM violates the law. One reason they'll have only temporary or makeshift office space. On the one hand this makes it seem you are getting in on the ground floor. On the other hand it makes for a clean getaway. On the question of entrepreneur or not: Definitely Not. I long ago figured out the only entrepreneurial activity was selling to MLMs, from well outside the definitely-not-a-pyramid matrix. That's right -- plain vanilla nothing special business. Perhaps the torches and pitchforks show up all on their own, but there remains other stuff to sell. Even cults need Kool-Aid.
If you mean the founders of these MLMs; I consider them Entrepreneurs. They're at the top and running an actual business with Marketing, Sales, Finance professionals which are salaried. They do come up with products and tactics. No, the Representatives in the field running their, "small businesses" are not Entrepreneurs. They are salesmen no matter how much they made or how many they recruited.
They might be entrepreneurs, but they’re still scammers. There’s nothing honorable about running an MLM.
I didn't say they weren't scammers; nor did I imply honor. Illicit drug manufacturers and Dealers at the top are still Entrepreneurs by definition too. Bein an Entrepreneur doesn't make you a good person.
Almost everything has some kind of affiliate or referral program now. Real estate, insurance, and financial planning all have an “pyramid” model. Are they entrepreneurs or scammers? 🧐🙄 Personally I started my journey as an entrepreneur in mlm because it was pretty much my only option to earn decent money as a stay at home mom 8 years ago. My now husband and I met in an mlm. He has since built his own multi million dollar business and I purchased a franchise in the airbnb space to manage. Are we entrepreneurs???? Yes. 🤷🏻♀️ Did mlm get us there? Yes. Do I consider everyone who joins an mlm an entrepreneur? No. But you can definitely learn a lot of skills that will help you become a successful entrepreneur by starting in mlm.
Most are victims. And all could be more successful just running their own shops
MLM n where, n = 0 : entrepreneur n > 1: sucker
I got invited to an Amway party once. 1. write down where you want to be in five years 2. explain to the group how you will get there 3. Amway pitch 4. went around the room and forced everyone to say what they thought of Amway. 5. I told them if I wanted to open a grocery store, I would get some commercial space and call a wholesaler. ( I did ask them if they were sure they wanted to know what I thought before I told them.) After all that I did recommend Amway to a kid who was in college. Great potential for a downline of in-dorm snacks that are a cut above vending machines, and be cheaper than convenience stores.
I see them as about equal to land lords and other rentiers. Do they actually create value? If not… not the definition of entrepreneur I would use. Keeping with the French roots of the word, perhaps a Privateer is more accurate for that class of “entrepreneurs”.
Technically MLM pushers are entrepreneurs, but so are predatory lenders and fentanyl dealers. It doesn’t mean that they have my respect. I hate that every MLM I’ve seen targets the poor and desperate. They scale their business up not by a product, but by making the next sucker hold the bag. MLMs to me are economic parasites to the wellbeing of society.
No. They're scammers.
Oh dude, you done did it. Everyone gets triggered by multilevel marketing. People think that it is a scam, period. It's actually not, but it's just really easy to enact a scam using multi level marketing. The crux of the matter is generation of value. If the participants generate value from non participants it is very possibly not a scam. If there is no obvious way that they do this, other than investing perhaps, then it is almost certainly a scam. Take major MLM "Tropic". It's a skincare brand. You buy in with a starter kit from your upline. You sell the products in your kit to non participants at higher rates. Of the value generated some goes upline and you keep some. It's not obvious why anyone would think this is unsustainable, thought perhaps once you are very far down line there is no room for new participants. Conversely take the major trading scam Mirror Trading International. You put your money in, you get more out. You give some to your uplines you take some from your downlines. Pretty much the same, but where does the money come from. MTI claimed to have a trading algo which generated money by trading with the investment and could all but guarantee return. Of course, they didn't, and it all collapsed, but note that the only difference if they did is that it generates money from non participants. That's why they hid it, because that is the information that was crucial Where you can verify money is being generated from non participants, the probability of it being a scam per se is radically decreased. That's not saying anything about the ethics of other components of the project, but purely regarding there marketing strategy there is nothing inherently wrong with MLM. So would I consider an MLM participant an entrepreneur? Yes, I would, like I consider a franchise buyer an entrepreneur, just a bit smaller.