I think you are right as far as SOME MLMs go. But with others, it is the product that is most important. People want the product, and those are your main income. You’re like a traveling salesman, only you only sell to people who want your stuff, from home. Sometimes, people do join your “organization”- not because you NEED them under you, but because they like the products and they know some people who would also like to try them, so they hope to also get some sort of financial reward. But nobody in the businesses I am talking about really hopes to get super rich. Only to bring in a modest income selling products they love and believe in and staying out of the corporate nightmare.

So- I disagree that the entire system is flawed. Some bad apples have made it seem that way. And some greedy people, in and out of the church, have made it seem like the whole point is to get rich quick- IT’S NOT!

The secret, as I understand it, to making a lot of money in MLM is to have a large stable of distributors beneath you in the distribution chain. That way you get a share of the profits from their sales as well as the profits on whatever you sell.

The second point I made in my previous post, therefore, has nothing to do with the scrupulousness of any of the MLMers themselves, but instead is a defect in the entire system. If you want a lot of little nether-distributors to build up your pyramid of profits, then you have to sell them on the notion that they too can strike it rich by getting their own stable of distributors as well. As with the chain letter, you’ll run out of potential salesmen/women long before the pyramid gets high enough to make you wealthy. So, many of them will send the buck to the guy on the top of the list, send out their ten letters, and not get anything.

I like to be sold. I will stop and watch the pitch man at the fair selling pot, pans, or car polish. Just because I listen to the pitch doesn’t mean I buy, in fact, most of the time I don’t buy (every pitch man knows he gets a percentage). But I do love a good pitch. And many of you need to be pushed to make a decision anyway. Otherwise all the sales people in the world would become lawyers and blog writers.

And love to see what I’ve sold put to good use. On occasion, what I do will seem ‘high pressure’ to a person not used to sales, but frequently it’s just to find out if that person is a potential customer, or not. My daughter is a real estate agent and just naturally talks to almost anybody she meets about real estate. One of her big disappointments is when a friend or relative says ‘Oh I didn’t know you sold real estate, I could have used your help on this deal’.

Both of us, and several of our associates, do not market to members of the church. If they fall into the correct demographic then I treat them like any other customer in that same demographic and I rarely mention my church membership in any business deal.

A friend who is a dentist had a large percentage of LDS clients and frequently they demanded discounts because they were members of the church (how do you figure a discount on an LDS cavity?)

Several years ago a story about Mormons and a business deals went something like this. If in the course of a business deal the membership in the church comes up, first red flag. If they bear their testimony, second red flag. If they say GA’s have invested in the deal, run away.

Many of the worst deals I’ve seen have been presented by members of the church, my home was robbed at Christmas by LDS baby sitters. But it is not exclusive to the church. The Lutherans had a financial scandal a couple of years ago as well as the Seventh Day Adventist. I ‘m not sure that members of the church are any more gullible or more larcenous than any other group. As one other post said ‘caveat emptor’.

Trusting too easily is definitely a factor for those who get caught in schemes, and many people simply are victims of ignorance. I feel sorry for them. But I have little patience with people who enter tenuous deals thinking their righteous desire to help their family justifies their desire to get rich. I have even less patience with those who feel entitled to wealth due to righteousness, if they in fact exist. Greed powers scams, it’s that simple.

And, the other problem, legitimate though some may think it, is that wealth through MLM is sort of like wealth through chain letters. The real secret is to sign up lots of underlings, who sign up underlings of their own, and so on ad infinitum. The problem is that the number of human beings in the world is finite, and only a small subset of them are willing to go out selling. So, just as you can’t get a buck from 10 e10 (how can you do a superscript here?) recipients of the 10th iteration of your chain letter, so too you can’t sign up enough underlings to reach the heights of wealth through MLM.

I’ll one-up your U prof, Trenden: I’d rather shovel **** in Newark than make a million from (or get another sales pitch about) MLM.

Some of the bad rap is certainly deserved, but we have to be careful not to malign entire legitimate professions- only the dishonest individuals practicing them.

I think members are more susceptible to scams and in my experience one reason is that members believe God wants to bless them because they’re good people, pay tithing and deserve to be wealthy and when a scam is pitched it sounds like just the mechanism for God to work a miracle in their lives. I was counseling a single sister with two children once and she announced she was quitting her job at a department store to join a MLM selling magnetic beds and herbal supplements. I felt really bad for her because it was obvious the business was a scam and their products were silly. Luckily she wisely reconsidered before being fleeced too badly. She did buy a bunch of magnets and herbal supplements so I guess she was fleeced a bit, but at least she didn’t loose here livelihood over it. Of course, the guy pitching the scam to her was a “good member” RM etc.

re: #9 HL- I think you are right. That and the fact that many of my family members are deeply involved in MLM for their living. Which is why I have to at least claim that a subset of MLMers are honest. I know my family members who are involved in these various businesses are scrupulously honest in their dealings with others. They don’t try to pitch business as part of the gospel, and they don’t use the ward list as their soliciting tool.

I do, however, think that people generally, not just within the church, are too vulnerable to bad advice from friends, fellow church members, and “upstanding” members of the community. I would suggest that people try harder to evaluate the business or product independently from the person pitching it. If somebody tries to sell you on a product or investment based solely on the fact that they belong to some church or club or that they are a family man/woman, then you can suspect perhaps that the business idea lacks some merit.

I don’t think that church members are “unusually susceptible” to this sort of thing, though, any more than anyone else who still trusts others. It’s just an interesting way for the Utah newspaper to pitch the article.

One person was a former church leader of mine. He invited me over to discuss business. I went in knowing that I was going to be solicited, and knowing that I was going to say no. I was relatively sure that church-y pressure would be applied, and I had a church-y answer ready — I needed to pray about it.

I was right on all counts. There was a lot of pressure. Despite already knowing what I would be solicited, it was still pretty hard to say no. And a lot of religious imagery was used.

“A stake president in Virginia signed onto this. He now has a private helicopter.”

“Heavenly Father wants us to take care of our families. He knows how hard that can be. And he has provided a way to make that easier.”

and so forth.