Have you ever heard of MLM businesses?
If you haven’t, MLM refers to multi-level marketing. Also known as network marketing or pyramid selling, it is a business model where a person earns money by selling products to others and recruiting others to sell too.
When I was a university student, I got a glimpse into the world of MLM through an acquaintance who was involved in it. It was a very revealing encounter that exposed me to the dark side of the freedom dream and forced me to consider what my moral stand is.
Though it is one of the most distressing chapters of my life to recall, I decided to write about it to educate young adults on the presence of this and to examine a few important things.
The Lure of MLM
So, how did I get lured into an MLM business?!
Disillusionment
At that time, I was a young 19 year old studying in university. Although I was studying what I liked, I was slowly becoming disillusioned with things as I learned more about the realities of the adult world. I also did not like it that everyone seemed to be living in the same way, filled with constant stress and anxiety. Doubts surfaced as I started pondering about my future. The pathway that I was expected to go on felt uninspiring to me. Quickly graduate, join the workforce in a white-collared profession and trade my life off for money. There was a general sense of resignation around me expressed in the words “We have no choice”. I wanted to hear something different.
Then, I met a classmate in a seminar who made a big impression on me. He was very confident and well-spoken. The way he carried himself was entirely different from all the other students. As we got to know each other and talk more, we started sharing about our dreams.
I mentioned a dream of mine then to be a toy designer, knowing that it is something quite “impractical” in the context of Singapore society. To my surprise, he told me that he believed in my dream. It was the first time that someone ever told me that my dream was possible. It was very refreshing and gave me hope.
He told me that he runs a business (he was a business major), which I was very impressed with given his age. He offered to show me how to achieve my dreams if I trusted him. I agreed quite quickly because I wanted to learn more from this guy.
Joining a MLM
He brought me to “his” company and got me to sit for a pitch from one of his colleagues. That was when I first learned that he is engaged in something called MLM.
I had my doubts about what they told me, but I was not given time to go back home and consider. (They use time and peer pressure on you) My acquaintance was nudging me by the side with “Join me?”. In the end, I said yes. That day, I withdrew a significant sum of money from my bank account (which contained savings from my educational bursaries) to buy a product package which was a prerequisite to join them.
On hindsight, I was an ideal target for them. A young adult who is inexperienced, dissatisfied with her life, seeking an alternate option, wanting mentorship and a group of people with different ideals to belong to. It was understandable why I agreed to it then, even if it clearly seems like an unwise decision now. And of course, these people clearly mastered the art of persuasion.
After joining them, I was told not to tell my friends or family about it as they would not have encouraging things to say about it. It felt a bit weird to me but I was still willing to give the benefit of doubt. I decided to observe their workings and not do anything that required me to sell until I was convinced.
I attended trainings where the big respected figures in the company would give presentations on why the business model is great, why the products are good and how to sell to people. I remember one of the first things they asked me to do was to make a timeline for my dreams and how much money I needed for each of them. I made a very detailed one that impressed them.
My acquaintance who was directly responsible for me would always encourage me to join their company outings. The people in the company came from all walks of life, and were mainly young adults. There were those serving national service and those studying in polytechnic/university. A group of them was from my university. Indeed, they think differently from most other people I knew. It seemed like they knew what they wanted in life and were willing to take responsibility for it. When I hung out with them, I felt empowered.
It was not without red flags though. One major red flag was how they discouraged people from thinking deeply into things. Their motto was “Just do it!”. I chose not to take that advice as it is impossible for me to live my life without critical thinking. If I lose my critical thinking, I would be in deep trouble.
Ultimately, the reason why I bothered to even go through those was my acquaintance. I wanted to trust him that he was selling me the right thing. I probably looked up to him for being a combination of book-smart and street-smart. He had this fired-up level of intensity in him that I wished to have in myself. Also, there was the money that I already invested into it.
The MLM Pitch
After a few months of observation (I had not contacted anyone at that point despite them asking me to compile a list of all the contacts that I have ever known in my life), I found out how they fundamentally operate.
In a nutshell, their pitch is about freedom. They are selling freedom more than anything. We were presented with the choice of being either enslaved or free.
People who join the group share 2 things in common: 1) The consensus that we are stuck in a rat race in society by default and 2) They want to get out of it.
Therefore, we were constantly reminded of the realities of the rat race.
Work from 9-5 and retire at 65? No, we don’t want that.
Work hard but never earn enough to enjoy? No, we don’t want that.
Follow the crowd in saying “We don’t have a choice”? No, we don’t want that.
We were even given a presentation on how our country is an expensive place to live in. They told us we need an estimated million dollars to live in Singapore. To pay off our student loan, give allowance to our parents, buy a car, buy housing, throw a wedding banquet, raise a children (from buying their milk powder to paying their tuition/enrichment fees!) and more…
And the answer to all these? Financial freedom, they said.
You can retire at age 30.
You can do what you truly love.
You can achieve anything you dream of.
Their logic behind freedom is this: The more money you have, the better. More money gives you more options such as travelling, buying a dream house or even quitting a job you hate. And if you are able to quit working, that gives you more time to spend on things that matter to you such as engaging in your hobbies or spending time with your family.
They will always manage to find a way to appeal to you even if the object of your desire is not money. If you value personal development, they would tell you that this is a great platform to find the company of like-minded individuals who are equally driven towards growth. If you want to go into entrepreneurship, this is a great platform to network and learn foundational business skills that you can eventually apply to your future business.
One can see how tempting these are especially for someone who values freedom and growth. However, beneath these lies something more sinister. The nature of MLM business is deceptive.
The Lies of MLM
What are the lies of MLM?
Most people would be skeptical about whether you can make money from MLM. “Really can make money meh? It must be a scam!” While that is a valid question to ask, my concern is less about the results but the motivations and intentions behind it. In fact, I believe that it is possible to earn money (if one sells their soul to it). My problem with them is the lies they spin while doing it.
1) On Helping Others
Firstly, they lie about having good intentions.
They often emphasise that they are helping others by promoting something beneficial to them (selling them the health product) or allowing them to achieve their dreams (recruiting them to be sellers).
However, the genuineness of their intentions can be questioned when one looks at their recruitment methods which lack integrity. It basically involves manipulation of an unknowing person. From the start, they make use of your trust in your friend (who would be sitting beside you throughout the pitch), poke at your insecurities, place time pressure on you and withhold valuable information on the written contract (which I made the mistake of not asking due to the trust in my friend). I even learned afterwards that the physical setting of the recruitment pitch is deliberately set up in in a way to make you more likely to say “Yes”.
After joining them, they try to isolate you from the people around you. Firstly, by advising you against telling the people around you that you have joined the business. Subsequently, by reinforcing the “us versus them” mindset. They would talk about how we are driven individuals who will take responsibility for our lives whereas the rest of society are perpetual complainers who never take action. They invited me to an unreasonable number of social events, minimising the time that I could have spent with my existing circle of contacts. Overtime, one would physically and mentally drift apart from the people they know. This is how people frequently report losing their friends or family to MLM. Is this truly “helping them”?
I guess that the lie of having good intentions is not only told to others but to themselves as well, in order to keep themselves motivated to reach out to people (which is uncomfortable for most people to do).
2) On Mutual Benefit
Furthermore, it is claimed that the business is mutually beneficial since one’s success is tied to another’s success (taking a quote from Chinese businessman Jack Ma). The truth cannot be further away from that. It is not the win-win scenario that it makes itself to be.
In a MLM business model, people are inherently a means to an end but never the end itself. One earns money from recruiting other people and forming what is called a “downline”. I did not know of anyone who was just selling the products without recruiting people. If one needs to use others to achieve their own aims, it is hard to regard others in their humanity. People tend to become reduced to numbers or dollar signs.
This is particularly so given that members in the business are primarily ego-driven. One thing I observed in the company culture is how it is customary to flaunt one’s wealth/success with status goods like luxury watches and cars. I was even encouraged to do that to make an impression on others so that they would be more willing to listen to me. (Another manipulation tactic!) In an egoistic orientation, there is only me, me and me. How to think of someone else’s interests?
On the surface, they may appear to care much about you and your life goals. Yet, this is only as long as you are a valuable tool for them to achieve their own goals. Once you are of no use to them, they will not hesitate to leave you out of their lives.
Businesses that thrive in the long term are definitely based on a win-win principle. A win-win exchange between founders, employees, investors and customers truly promotes the interests of all parties involved. Any business based on a win-lose principle will eventually collapse, no matter how successful they appear at a given moment.
2) On Gaining Freedom
Lastly, the freedom that a MLM promises is not true freedom. At best, it is only financial freedom. What is true freedom?
In my opinon, true freedom is something 1) coming from an internal rather than external source and 2) of an ever-lasting nature.
If your freedom depends on the attainment of a distant goal in the future, you are not free. Ironically, you will be enslaved by the goal that you are trying to achieve. Things will never feel okay until the point you achieve your goal.
That is essentially the case in a MLM business where the success of the business entirely depends on the attainment of sales goals. Its members’ unwavering commitment to achieve sales goals and recruit more members is what keeps the business going. That is why so much effort goes into pumping people up to invest themselves in the business. For example, testimonials are shared by members of how they earned enough to quit school to do the business full-time or buy their dream car/house by a certain age. These keep people’s hopes high that they can achieve their goals too if they work hard enough.
Even after reaching the goal, there is no guarantee that you will be free. You may lose the million dollars that you have earned due to an unexpected event one day. Does that mean that your freedom is gone? That is the problem with the concept of financial freedom where freedom is wholly dependent on an external object like money.
The other possibility is that you may not even feel satisfied after earning that million dollars. Perhaps you decided that you need more than that amount to be free. After all, there is no clear line for how much is enough to be free for good. Greed is an insatiable drive. Unfortunately, the greed at the core of a MLM business is disguised as ambition.
Conclusion
In the end, I was so distraught by what I saw that I dropped out of the business and cut ties with them. I might have lost my money but at least I preserved my integrity. This experience gave me a glimpse of a dark side of society. There are people who are willing to go to such lengths to achieve what they want.
MLM seems to offer a way out for those who are dissatisfied with the mainstream system. Particularly, it appeals to young adults who feel lost and insecure as they start to think about their future. As empowering as it may seem, it is built upon many lies. It saddens me that we are presented with only 2 options – one to conform to the status quo and another to use others as a means to break out of that status quo.
Is there a pathway to freedom where you can do what you want and create true win-win outcomes at the same time?
I believe that there is and I am making headway with developing this alternative. Meanwhile, I hope that young adults will stay cautious about MLM and always question what they are told.
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rmend4