What to Do if Your Doctor Promotes Multi-Level Marketing

“You should really try it,” Jen’s friend was saying.

“I’ve been going to this medical practice for a year, and my pain is completely gone!” 

Jen was curious about this local doctor whose unconventional techniques produced amazing results. 

What do I have to lose? Jen thought to herself. 

She looked up the practice online and saw the doctor’s bio, list of services, and 5-star patient reviews. A page called “Nutrition” revealed pictures of vitamin bottles surrounded by colorful vegetables. She clicked on a 5-minute promotional video and listened as an enthusiastic product representative explained the benefits of adding vitamins to your diet.

Jen was surprised. Her previous doctors had never talked about supplements, but she was intrigued about her friend’s rave review. So she decided to call the practice and set up an initial appointment for the following week. 

Once the appointment was confirmed, she received an e-mail with instructions to fill out paperwork online. Several of the questions were about her intake of vitamins and herbs. 

That’s nice of them to ask, she thought. I’m not sure why that has anything to do with getting rid of my back pain… guess I’ll find out.

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At the doctor’s office, Jen saw big posters of the supplements from the doctor’s website. She noticed a stack of product brochures at the check-in desk. A friendly staff member greeted her, and she sat down next to magazines about health and nutrition.

Minutes later, a nurse called Jen’s name, checked her vital signs, and escorted her to an exam room. The doctor soon walked in.

Jen’s visit went well. She explained her symptoms, her health history, and therapy she had already tried. The doctor performed a physical exam and recommended tests and treatment methods to help reduce her pain. 

Then the conversation turned to her diet. 

“I see that you’re not taking any supplements right now,” said the doctor. “Studies have shown that a customized nutritional approach can reduce inflammation and improve symptoms of a variety of diseases. Would you like us to do a nutritional assessment for you today?”

Jen felt obligated to say yes. She hadn’t thought about the need to take vitamins; but since the doctor was strongly advising it, she agreed.

The doctor continued. “After we do the free assessment, any deficiencies can be fixed with a special blend of nutraceuticals that we make available to our patients. In fact, all of my staff members take these products, and so does my entire family. We really believe it’s the best option out there—although of course, you can use any supplements you want. My assistant will get you set up.” 

With that, the doctor exited and was replaced by a nursing assistant, who reviewed Jen’s dietary habits and gave her a paper with a list of products she could buy to “reverse the damage” and improve her gut health.

“If you’re ready to start today, the combo pack is available at a 10% discount. Or you can sign up with our network, which lets you have the starter pack for free with your purchase, as well as a 30% discount on future products.” 

Jen considered her options, handed her credit card to the front desk staff, and walked back to her car with a bag of vitamin bottles.

Back at home, Jen made a cup of tea and sat down at her kitchen table. She pulled a variety of bottles and powders out of the bag. As she reviewed the glossy handouts, Jen tried to rationalize the expense. Today’s visit was covered by insurance, but the extra $499 she had spent on supplements was out of pocket. Jen felt cautiously optimistic about the potential for these products to improve her health, but she was also nervous about how to pay $199 for a new supply every month. 

They told me that if I get my family and friends to buy, I can earn my supplements for free, Jen recalled. 

She decided to call her sister and mother and convince them to sign up too. They could all get healthy together, Jen would be able to afford the products, and she may even be able to convince them to recruit others into her network.

I’m so glad I found this doctor, thought Jen as she swallowed the first dose of supplements.

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Jen’s experience is, unfortunately, very common in the healthcare field. She had unknowingly been persuaded to join a Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) network—a business model that requires both purchasing products and recruiting others to join in your “downline.” The MLM model (also known as direct sales) is used by hundreds of companies, and is estimated to be worth at $35.4 billion in the USA across all categories. The total health supplement market (not MLMs specifically) is expected to generate $278 billion in worldwide sales by 2024 [source: PRNewsWire]. The vast majority of MLMs are in the Health & Wellness field (read more: What’s the Difference Between Brick-and-Mortar, Franchise, Direct Sales, and MLM?)

Although healthcare providers have a professional obligation to look out for their patients’ best interests, they often struggle with burnout and keeping their practice profitable. The quest to find new sources of revenue puts doctors at risk of being targeted by MLMs, which promise unlimited residual income through the sale of “natural” and “safe” products.

Unfortunately, the sale of products in a physician’s office—especially nutritional supplements—violates the ethical standardsof several professional organizations, including the American Medical Association, the Canadian Medical Association, and the Australian Medical Association. This is because the sale of supplements can cause physicians to:

• exploit patients for financial gain
• use products of unproven scientific validity, and 
• have an inappropriate bias in recommending a particular product, even if it’s not necessary for that patient’s health condition.

[source: Ethical Standards on the Sale of Products in Healthcare]

In Jen’s story (which is fictional but based on real experiences), she was presented with products at several points in her visit: online, on posters & brochures, and in person. 

She said she felt obligated to agree to a nutritional evaluation and agreed to purchase the products only because the doctor strongly advised that she do so. 

Based on this patient-provider trust, Jen joined a sales network and spent hundreds of dollars on products. 

She decided to convince her family members into signing up, in order to ease her monthly burden of buying the expensive—but in her mind, necessary—supplements.

When a healthcare practitioner focuses on “profit before patients,” this puts people like Jen at risk.

What You Can Do as a Patient

If you know of a physician who sells and promotes products through a multi-level marketing or direct sales model, here are some ways you can respond:

1. Confront your doctor.

No patient should feel uncomfortable about their healthcare experience. You have every right express your concerns about the in-office sale of products by telling your physician directly. If you prefer a less direct approach, you could write a letter or e-mail, or send a message through the practice’s secure patient portal.

2. Communicate anonymously.

Maybe you feel concerned but don’t want to put yourself in an adversarial position. If so, you have the option to send a message anonymously by using the practice’s anonymous tip line or leaving feedback on a card in the office. Another option is to write an anonymous letter to the doctor, explaining your concerns about their conflict of interest.

3. Find another doctor.

Except in rare cases, you are under no obligation to continue seeing a physician with whom you feel uncomfortable. When a doctor is not serving your best interests, it might be time to find a different practice. There are many ethical physicians to choose from (check out this video by Dr. Arthur Caplan, professor of bioethics at NYU Langone Health; MedScape login required).

4. Rate on social media.

Online ratings can be a good way to get a physician’s attention if other methods don’t work. You can share your experience on social media or a health rating tool like HealthGrades or Yelp, which will alert other potential patients to the practitioner’s unethical actions.

5. File a BBB complaint.

Another option is to fill out a Better Business Bureau complaint or report a scam—or use an equivalent tool for your country. Check out this list of 14 business rating websites.

6. Report a violation.

Physicians who sell and recruit patients into an MLM are violating several code of ethics standards according to many associations around the world (you can see them here). If you believe a medical professional is behaving unethically or failing to provide a standard of care to patients, the best way to respond is to report their behavior to the local medical licensing board. 

• In the United States, look up your state on the Federation of State Medical Boards website.
• For US military personnel, a grievance form against TRICARE physicians, dentists, and pharmacists is available.
• In Australia, you can “Raise a concern” about health practitioners. 
• Canada’s government provides links to file “Complaints concerning practice of medicine.” 
• In the Czech Republic (Ministerstvo zdravotnictví České Republiky), you can file a complaint against any healthcare services received. 
• In the United Kingdom, the National Health Service explains how to file a complaint about a GP, dentist, optician, or pharmacist.
• Ireland’s Medical Council (Comhairle na nDochtúirí Leighis) has its own complaint form. 

7. Contact your local news.

When all else fails, a final way to raise the alarm about a physician’s unethical behavior is to contact the media. It might interest them to know that:

• the US FTC [Federal Trade Commission] has issued a serious warning to companies which make false claims about products such as CBD
• individual MLM sellers are at legal risk and may be required to pay large a fine if they deceive people by promising significant income (as recently happened to AdvoCare’s top four promoters), and 
• doctors can be publicly reprimanded for failing to disclose their income and other unprofessional conduct (such as this Australian physician).

The bottom line is that practitioners who provide ethical treatment to their patients don’t need to resort to selling products, especially through multi-level marketing. And as a patient, your opinion can make a big difference when you encourage your doctor to make ethical, patient-focused business choices.

Grace LaConte, MS, RHIA 

Founder of LaConte Consulting

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I Love Beachbody, But Hate the MLM – My MLM Experience

[Elle:] In the #antiMLMmovement, we think its important to hear both sides of the coin. In this case, our guest writer Jocelyn [not her real name] came forward, to tell us what she loved and hated about her time with multi-level marketing (MLM) scheme Team Beachbody.

BossBabe BedBabe

A follower sent us this email from a Lilla Rose rep, manipulating people who have chronic illness or disability with religion and bad advice.

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Subject: Lilla Rose for those with chronic illness

Hello Lovely Ladies,

One of the subjects that I am frequently asked about is from those dealing with chronic illness, or those who know someone struggling with chronic illness.

Here are just three examples I’ve received in the last two weeks:

“Haven’t been active due to 3 years of back issues and surgeries but want to again ”
“I have had a challenging year. I am scheduled to have surgery tomorrow…. ”

“I’d be curious what your advice to someone dealing with chronic medical conditions. I’ve had Type 1 diabetes since I was 11 (I’m almost 35 and the complications are showing up), I’m a thyroid cancer survivor (with no thyroid), and my husband was diagnosed with MS shortly after our marriage 10 years ago… I really want this business to work …. I’m just physically struggling to keep up with the basics.”

But first:

If you are no longer interested in Lilla Rose and would like to be excluded from any future Lilla Rose communications from me just click this link to unsubscribe.

If however, you suffer with a chronic illness, know someone who suffers from chronic illness, or know someone who knows someone… this message is for you.

How To Run A Business From Bed

For those who suffer with a chronic illness or are disabled and can’t work, your situation may feel dire. If you are too sick or injured to move from your bed, how can you make a living? Throughout the entire history of humanity on Earth, you couldn’t…until now.

Increasingly, I’ve encountered individuals on social media who are in this situation. They are confined to their house or bed, and so they spend most of their time on social media. Some have had to resort to the creation of “Go-Fund-Me” accounts to live on donations. I am here to tell you the good news that for the first time in history, you can make a living even while you are chronically ill or disabled. You can run a business from your bed!

No energy? No problem.

I still vividly remember the day a lady who was interested in signing up under me asked if she would be able to successfully run her business from bed. She had Lyme disease, which saps your energy to point that just moving can be difficult, if not impossible. Yet she was still looking for a way to be productive. I was happy to tell her that, “Yes, you can run a business from bed!” She signed up, and sure enough, she went on to become one of my best consultants, achieving a couple promotions and growing a good-sized team, even though she suffered with a chronic illness. The times that she had more energy, she was able to do more outside of the house. And despite additional trials, she has been persistent and an inspiration to many through her strength of character.

Now, for those of you who are chronically ill, the thought of adding one more thing may seem completely overwhelming to you and you may feel like throwing this post in the trash. “You have absolutely no idea how I feel!” you are most likely protesting indignantly.

Well, the truth is, I do know how you feel.

I rarely talk about it, so very few know that I was born with a blood disorder called hereditary spherocytosis; a condition which causes severe anemia and other health issues. In my case, major surgery was required when I was in high school to remove my spleen and a couple other organs. As a result, I have experienced chronic health issues most of my life. When I was pregnant with my third child, I was diagnosed with full-blown Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) which lasted for three years. It was a very hard, dark time, managing a household with three young children and a chronic illness that left me with barely enough energy to change a diaper or walk to the mailbox. Depression and loneliness left me in a deep hopeless hole which seemed to have no way out.

It was a long process with an equally long story, but I did eventually get out of that hole. There were many factors that contributed to my slow return to physical health but one that stands out is the book, From Fatigued to Fantastic. That book helped immensely and is one resource I highly recommend to others going through the same thing. The final and crucial step for me came several years later, when I found Lilla Rose and jumped headlong into a home business that leveraged the burgeoning internet market and social networking resources that did not even exist when I was battling CFS.

For the first time in many years, I had something outside myself and family to get excited about. It gave me an incredible boost of energy that had been missing, even after regaining most of my physical health. I no longer felt that overwhelming urge to crawl back into bed in the afternoon, full of exhaustion. The biggest energizer came when I realized how many people I could help with my business; from helping fund adoptions, to helping others start their own family businesses, to just being a listening ear! We were created with the need to look outside ourselves and help others in this world. And when you’re sick all the time, you start to think that you can’t help anyone. You think you can’t “minister” to anyone. If you’re not able to volunteer to teach Sunday School, or help in the women’s ministry, or go on a mission trip, etc., you start to feel horrible, useless, and worthless. Yet, the reality is that I could not have been more wrong because there are many ways to help, bless, and minister to others that were not part of the prevailing mindset with which I was familiar. Amazingly, (and I mean it was a truly amazing revelation to me) I found that running my own business provided unlimited ways to be a blessing to others! I had no idea that you could do such a thing through a “business” run entirely from the comforts of home – and yes – even from your bed!

Of course, I must pause and say that there truly may be seasons of life where you are unable to do this…having a chronic illness with a baby and young children at home may be one of those times. In those cases, don’t beat yourself up or feel like a failure by any means! Take care of your family; they are more precious than gold and are only young for a little while. When that season passes, which it will, then come back and read this article! But if you find yourself on social media frequently and for long periods of the day, then you might as well take that time and use it to start a home business! Thanks to technology, you can run a successful business from virtually anywhere. You can be productive, earn an income, and give to others at the same time!

3 things you need to run a successful business from bed:

1. A computer

Forgive me if I am presuming, but I’m going to guess that if you are reading this article, you probably have a computer. If so, then great! You already have the first thing you need to run a business from bed. The computer is the tool you need to store all of the information and files you need to run your business. It is also the virtual teleportation machine you need to take you, bed and all, out into the world. It is how you will be able to interact with customers, advertisers, and promote your business.

2. An internet connection

Of course, a computer can’t do much for your bed-run business unless you have an internet connection. However, this is not too difficult to acquire, and I’m going to assume you already have an internet connection if you’re reading this post. The internet is the where you will find all of your customers and advertising opportunities. It is the internet, ultimately, that has made running a successful business, even when sick or injured, actually possible.

3. A product or service

This one is a bit trickier. In order to run a business from bed, you actually need a business with a killer product. Your best option would be selling a product that has a direct sales structure in place. Become an independent consultant, and you’re good to go! You don’t have to worry about handling the product, or shipping it to customers; you just sell it online through parties, blog giveaways, and other advertising.

Or, perhaps you have a service you could provide, such as web-design or consulting which you can do without leaving your bed. Find a product that you love, and you will be able to find others, online, who love it as well and are only a computer and an internet connection away.

These are beautiful times

We live in an incredible age, an age where you can make a living and benefit many people who live hundreds and thousands of miles away…all without leaving your home. It is remarkable that today, even those who are disabled or chronically ill have the power to earn an income and bring value to others, when in the past this would have been impossible.

As the saying goes, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Sickness or injury is not a barrier to running your own business, and can , in fact, be an amazing means to help bring about healing! The absolute worst thing you can do is languish in your bed and feel sorry for yourself! (The second worst is to languish in bed and play Candy Crush!) And if you are healthy, don’t let other excuses stop you from being successful, either.

Are you letting set-backs or self-pity stop you from achieving your goals or helping others? Remember that we live in unprecedented times, and you can run your own business and be a blessing to others, even if you are restricted to your house or bed rest. Are you going to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity?

For practical tips on how to run a business from bed, be sure to read my post, 14 Tips For Managing A Business With a Chronic Illness.

If you are looking for training resources, then start by enrolling in Stylist University.

Free, self-paced, online training course for all Lilla Rose Stylists: Stylist University

Name redacted
Jr. Executive
Lilla Rose Independent Stylist
Email redacted

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Coalition comment: The truth is this cannot and will not work. Don’t do it. 

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Cover photo by Vladislav Muslakov on Unsplash

The real face of Mary Kay

Guest post by Hannah

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I had been in an abusive relationship. I got out in April. I didn’t have a job, I didn’t have any money, and my ex had convinced me that my mom was the real abusive factor in my life. So, when I had no option but to move back in with my mom, I was desperate to move out as soon as possible. I started looking for jobs, but I was having trouble. I’m a 21-year-old college dropout, which mostly limits my job options to retail, but I also have health issues which make working retail difficult.

Fast forward about a month. My best friend asks if I’d be willing to go to a Mary Kay (MK) party with her. She had been invited to one, and was being pressured to bring more people. I agreed to go because when I heard the word “party,” I assumed there would be free food and free stuff.

So, I got to this party, and it’s not at all what I expected. Turns out, it’s just everyone my friend invited sitting around a table, listening to some lady talk about how great Mary Kay is. I’m sitting there thinking “Oh great, she’s trying to sell this shit.” But somehow, despite the fact that I’ve known for a long time that MK is a pyramid scheme, this lady’s pitch was so good that I started thinking that maybe everyone is wrong about this company.

She emphasized that you work on your own terms and that ANYONE can do it, and anyone can be great at it. She also touched on the Mary Kay Foundation, which supposedly supports women in abusive relationships. (I’ve since found out that the foundation is pretty shady as well, but that’s a whole another subject.)

I agreed to meet the lady for coffee the next day. I told her about my life, the position I’m in, and so on. She quickly picked up on the fact that I wanted to move out of home. She did some math to show me that by working just five hours a week, I would earn enough to move into a $1,000/month apartment! I had no idea where she got any of her numbers from.

I ended up buying the starter kit a week later. I had to borrow most of the money from my mom, who was just glad I’d found something that would have me out and socializing.

As soon as I placed my order for the starter kit, the lady started pressuring me to buy product. I told her I was not comfortable getting a credit card because my credit was already deep in the hole, and I wouldn’t be approved for one anyway. But she pressured me into applying for several cards, saying that multiple inquiries in one day just counted as one. Well, the next week, my credit report showed about 15 new hard inquiries, and my score had dropped. However, I did get approved for a card with a $300 limit. The lady didn’t want me to place an order until I had at least $600 to spend, since that’s where all the incentives were, but we’d place one at the end of the month either way.

The only person I managed to sell to was my mom. The lady was definitely frustrated that I couldn’t get to $600 in less than a month, and was even more upset when I told her that my cat had an emergency and I had to put about $80 on my credit card. We placed the order anyways. It was almost entirely products I’d tried exactly once.

I played around with the products that were ordered as testers and the set I ordered for my personal use. All of the eye makeup made my eyes water, so I decided to just not use it. No point in using it when I could use other makeup and just say it’s Mary Kay.

I had gotten the acne line for myself. After a week of using it just at night (it’s recommended to use it morning and night), and using a different MK set in the morning, my skin was the worst it had ever been. I had pimples deeper than I had when I was in the bad stages of puberty, and my face was red and peeling.

I had also been going to the weekly “success meetings”. Turns out, everyone there was extremely competitive, which was something I most definitely did not need in my life. They also were all Christians who talked about how much they loved God and how #blessed they were, every chance they got. Well, I’m an ex-Catholic. I’m not going to go into my personal beliefs, but I know they would not have been welcome in that environment. I felt very uncomfortable there, and had I explained why, I would’ve been preached to and a lot of the girls there would’ve thought I was a horrible person when I refused to convert.

In July/August, I explained to my upline that I was having bad reactions to MK products and could not sell them in good conscience. She tried to convince me to keep selling, saying that most people wouldn’t have those reactions and maybe I just needed to use different products. Ultimately, though, she did stop the pressure when I refused to give in.

I thought that was the end of it. But of course, you can never truly run from Mary Kay. My upline stepped down about a month after I left and gave her unit to another MK lady. This new lady immediately started harassing me and trying to get me to start selling again. She wouldn’t ease up on the pressure at all. I just started ignoring her and she finally stopped sending me multiple messages a day. Now I still get a “Just checking in!” text every few weeks.

TL;DR — I only lost a couple hundred dollars, but the behavior of Mary Kay uplines is absolutely appalling. I was in a very bad place and they preyed on it, then tried to pressure me into staying when the products made my face fall off.

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Cover photo by Verne Ho on Unsplash

My experience with Financial Education Services — Part 3

Here is the final article by Ariel, who was embroiled in the MLM Financial Education Services (FES).  Read Part 1 and Part 2 to get a background about this group, and hear about Ariel’s experience with them.

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Looking at the Big Picture

Sometimes in life it can feel like you’re tangled in a web of lies and deception, because in business and in selling (even selling yourself at a job interview), you have to embellish some things, and those embellishments can snowball into outright deceit. It becomes very hard to untangle yourself from these webs, yet some people who have the will can do it, and sometimes it means being vulnerable and opening yourself up.  The unfortunate thing is that FES is right — this information about finances and dealing with money isn’t taught in school, but coaxing people into an MLM is not the appropriate response for it. I’m sure that my upline had some good intentions when he recruited me — he really wanted to help me out with my life. Yet he didn’t see the fatal flaws of an MLM where the chain can’t last forever, and the market will eventually be saturated no matter what, and you’ll just end up with people who owe money.

I like being authentic and expressing myself, and it just seemed like with this MLM, I was doing the opposite of that and it was making me sick. When I was in my upline Stanley’s car, I had a conversation with him about how university doesn’t really give you any guidance in life, and he also talked about how he ended up broke because he didn’t really have that much help in his life either. We spoke about how the education system is messed up and needs reform. I don’t think that anyone wakes up in the morning as a psychopath thinking how they can make a person’s life miserable — they just don’t see flaws in predatory viral systems like MLMs.

Whose fault is this? Well, there is plenty of blame to go around. I wanted to join because I really thought that this was going to help people. I honestly thought that after I joined, I would be changing people’s lives for the better. The people who were customers and agents would have no problem having a better credit score, and making some money.

Another thing that you can’t do is blame some of the people in these MLMs, thinking that they are just terrible people, because things aren’t black and white. I have an Associate of Arts (AA) degree, I have a Bachelor of Arts (BA), and I have six months’ vocational experience in 3D printing. I was giving it my all to find a job that I was going to be passionate about. In these hard economic times, it felt impossible, even with all my experience and education, to find people who were going to give me a chance to do something. I was very frustrated that someone can go through so much and gain skills and try so hard, and just be left out of a career because they are looking for experience, and no-one is willing to provide any. The solution can come by actually being a community and caring about what people are going through. Not shutting people off and leaving them on the sidelines — because that’s when a predatory MLM can come and pick them up, making them think they found salvation, but all that is happening is they are slowly losing their money and sanity.

Speaking of losing money and sanity, I’d like to say that the MLM is like a leech — while sucking your life blood, it also numbs you. First they do love bombing (numbness), then they co-opt your time and your money (leeching). It’s like a black hole. It sucks you in and then you want to suck other people in. The thing is that money makes people emotional — think about how hard people work for money, and when they lose it in gambling, they want to gamble more and more until they get it back. That’s the way I kept feeling. When you’re in a black hole there is something called an event horizon and usually something that goes past the event horizon can’t come out. It takes tons of energy to get past that event horizon. So now I hope you understand when you look at the big picture, there are reasons why people join these things and they may be righteous reasons but, in the end, there is too much lying, bullying, and manipulation.

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The Good the Bad and The Ugly

The good news is there are communities like this to fight back against this MLM cancer that has been growing in our society. Even better than that is that you can personally fight back. I felt like I was duped, so I put a complaint on the BBB website. At first it didn’t go through, since it was seen as an employee and employer dispute. Then I went another route, and complained about how I thought I was duped, because I was told that my credit karma score wasn’t my real score, and I really didn’t need the FES services.

That complaint went through, and I was refunded all my money, so that really brightened up my day to know that something can be done.

It’s also great that we can fight back against the MLM narrative that “people just didn’t work hard enough”, because that hard work is really just duping people into gambling their hard-earned money away for a chance at getting rich. Also, it’s a blessing in disguise that everyone I pitched to ended up rejecting me, because I would only further entangle them into a web of these dark emotions.

The bad news is that the experience takes more than just your money. It takes away your peace of mind, and tries to mould you into a new identity. Even my upline Stanley was talking to me about how he curses at his upline (the pushy sales director Brian who eventually got me to quit) and has these arguments with him. Stanley even told me that the events were too expensive to go to, and I should focus my energies elsewhere — so you get mixed signals and messages, and then you start getting frustrated and think you are a bad businessman. I also think that Stanley is a decent person who truly had my best interests at heart, but he didn’t know that eventually a lot of people are going to get hurt in this faulty business model, no matter how good your intentions are. So your peace of mind is messed with when you have these good intentions, and see things are constantly getting worse around you, and you have to hide it under a façade. The identity part is a bit ironic, because FES have a service where they protect your financial identity, but they want to give you another identity, that of a pushy salesman who uses deceptive and shady tactics to lure people into something.

Now the ugly part comes in because bullying and manipulation can sometimes be a part of everyday life, and you can cope with that — but what is very hard to cope is our relationships based solely on money. These people try to pull you so deep into a rabbit hole that you can’t get out. In fact, once you’ve invested, and if they’ve managed to convince you to quit a job and take days off from work, that’s when an “us vs. them”mentality will form.

When they’ve made their personal brand of MLM into a religion for you then that’s whenever somebody insults it or questions, it they’ve basically insulted and questioned your entire existence and purpose in life, so you start full on attacking that other person. What is also ugly is the veil of legality that they like to hide behind. It’s perfectly legal to go online or offline, use your freedom of speech, and tell someone that they are the dumbest, ugliest, and most ignorant idiot on the face of the planet, and that would put someone who is struggling over some edge, but that legality doesn’t make it ethical.

Even things that are legal like using your freedom of speech to say whatever you want whenever you want to has consequences social and ethical consequences,as we see when media personalities get fired for what they say — they are not arrested,though.

What is also dangerous is when people who are truly desperate, like the struggling unemployed, really want an opportunity and want to do something satisfying and get paid and an “opportunity” like this comes along where they are putting their money into a “legal” gambling machine. Our society turns a blind eye to so many injustices in my opinion because, if people in the legal, financial, and educational sectors are involved in stuff like this, then that basically gives these MLMs some kind of seal of approval. Even though you’re not aware of the tangled web of frustration, lies, and manipulation that you’re weaving for your friends, family, and acquaintances once you get involved with one of these things, because your intentions are the opposite.

Anyway it’s been a pleasure to share my ideas and experiences on MLMs. I hope it helps you. You can find me online at my blog, and on YouTube.

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Cover photo by Ibrahim Boran on Unsplash