Multilevel marketing is a nightmare

Herbalife is one of the many "nutrition" MLMs out there (also including Beach Body, Thrive, Plexus, Advocare etc.)

I finally have remembered the excellent podcast I listened to. It's called "The Dream" and a woman did extensive research into MLMs and even got into one of her own to see what the actual costs were (it was Limelife, I believe). It had an entire episode devoted to the decision back in the late 1970s that Amway was not a pyramid scheme, thereby paving others to start the same kind of businesses that revolve around recruitment, rather than products.

I remember at my last job having an Essential Oils party. The smell gave me such a violent headache that I had to leave work early.

 

Got caught up in the Equinox web in college. Bad, bad stuff from some acquaintances from class and the bar scene.

Out about $1500 before I came to. I considered that, later, a proper cost of education about watching out for that. I was a college student who cleared about $500 a week in cash delivering food so it wasn’t devastating — they could have taken a lot more off me back then.

A decade later, got most of it back in the class action.

 

Early 20s, I was desperate for a gig so I went to training sessions for Cutco. I never made a sale, not even a demonstration.

 

I did that. Colossal waste of time. Very awkward. Hate sales.

 

Holy shit, I just remembered I did, too.

One meeting. That was all I needed to see.

 

I should have said the same thing. But it was the summer, I was home from college and I was desperate.

 

I went to one of those and I got into a fight with the demonstrator when I called her out for her bullshit. "No other company has a 'no questions' asked guarantee for returning broken products. We know our knives are well made so if they do break, we replace it right away."

I raised my hand "craftsman tools has that same guarantee. It's a huge part of their brand."

"No they don't. You try taking a tool back to Craftsman and see if they give you a brand new one, no questions asked."

"I have and I did. I found an old craftsmans hammer in my grandfather's basement. It must have been 50 years old and the handle had rotted some. I took it to Sears and got a brand new one that day."

It carried on like that for 15 minutes. Back and forth back and forth. It was a complete waste of everyone's time -- but, just like you, I was home from college and looking for work and didn't have anything else to do on a Tuesday at 2 pm other than fuck with an idiot for a little while.

 

*raises hand*

Might be easier to figure out who on SJ.com didn't go to a Cutco presentation.

And my grandmother was one of the top salespeople for Stanley Home Products from the 1960s to 80s and paid three of her kid's tuition that way.

 

We bought some Cutco kitchen shears from an acquaintance. Can you please come over and sharpen them for us??

 

Shit, I went to two sessions of Cutco training. They said we should sell to family and friends and build a referral network. My parents couldn’t afford even one knife — and I didn’t know anyone who could.

The scissors cutting a penny was pretty cool, though.

 

I think we have a set of Cutco knives we bought many years ago to help out a friend's daughter. We we never used them. They are probably in a box in our garage.

 

I, too, went to a CutCo meeting after my freshman year of college. Funny thing is my sophomore roommate also went to one that summer. We got some good laughs on how bad the job market is for college students who went far away for school.

I also sold books door to door. I actually did that for about week before I realized the real scheme.