Multi-Level Marketing Scheme, I Mean Business Opportunity

For months a friend had been trying to recruit me to become a member of his "down-line." He had joined one of those pyramid type business opportunities (which will remain nameless to protect the not so innocent, besides you can insert the name of almost any MLM business opportunity and it will fit) For months he pursued me and pestered me constantly wearing me down, with the gospel of this industry. It sounded simple enough, for x amount of dollars I could become a member with the chance of making a six figure income and seeing all of my dreams come true. His timing was uncanny because I had been searching for a way to start my own business and after his constant sales pitches I agreed and signed my life away.

The idea was to tell everyone I know and convince them to sign up for said nameless business opportunity. In addition to signing up other suckers, I mean prospects, I was also required to purchase over priced products from this company to try and resell or for my own consumption. After doing those simple things I would be rolling in money in time at all.

Unfortunately, it wasn't as easy as he said it would be. I couldn't lie to people and tell them how great a program was as I wasn't seeing it for myself, and as far as I could tell the only people making any money were the people at the top. As I began to take a closer look at it, all of the people who were listed on the big money makers list, all had money to begin with, they were doctors and lawyers who had twenty or thirty thousand dollars to invest into a business and were basically buying their way to the top of the food chain.

Just as I was about to call it quits, my friend invited me to attend one of their conventions, and I reluctantly agreed to go. It turned out that the convention was very entertaining and I learned some valuable lessons from it.

First of all the energy in the place was crazy, there was music and singing, people were sharing their testimonies and taking laps around the arena...(I thought I was at church for a moment) There was a lot of repeating the formula for success in the business, and after what seemed like hours we went on a break.

While we were on break sitting outside we discovered that a rival scam, I mean business was having a convention right across the street from us, and while we were sitting there a few of them came across the street to see if they could make a few conversions.

What happened next was very interesting to me. One of the rivals stepped forward, I assumed he was the leader of their little group. He began asking a few questions about our business and the payout and such. I looked toward my friends wife who supposedly had been at this for a while and I was shocked as this rival person all but convinced her to jump ship and join the dark side,had her husband not come walking up and quickly whisked all of us back inside with strict instructions to stay away from those other guys.

That experience taught me several valuable lessons, first of all don't sign up for any more crazy pyramid type business schemes, no matter how great the pay out is supposed to be. I learned that I am not good at conning people so I need to avoid any business that depends on signing up others, because if it isn't working for me then I just don't have it in me to fleece people out of their hard earned money and their time. But the most important lesson I learned from that experience was that the old cliche is true, "If it sounds to good to be true...it is!"

How about you, have you had a MLM nightmare or a dream come true? I'd like to hear about it.