Nothing ruins a friendship faster than direct selling companies. In general, companies in the direct selling industry share a business model that requires its ‘independent sales representatives’ to recruit more ‘independent sales representatives’. These companies encourage you to recruit your family and friends.
One day, your brother, sister, best friend, neighbor or other close acquaintance is going to knock on your door. You open the door and there they stand. Perhaps they are accompanied by some goofy schmuck who is there to ‘support’ them, or perhaps they are going solo. Either way, you can tell that they have come for a purpose. For the next hour or two, they pitch a company or product. The idea is always the same: Pay for a starter kit and then go and bother your family and friends to recruit them. They profess and testify of the great riches that you will attain by joining their company. The entire time that your friend or relative is presenting, all you can think about is how you are going to let them down without ruining your relationship – and that’s the kicker.
As soon as you drop the bomb on your friend or relative, they are hurt. Because you don’t share their enthusiasm and conversion in their wonderful scheme, you are now persona-non-grata. This arrangement causes a great swell of anger to form in my gut towards any direct selling company. Thanks for ruining my relationships, jerks.
Direct Selling companies prey off of desperate people who need money to bring in their profit. Here’s how they take advantage of you:
- They pay you a commission based on the number of recruits you sign up. This commission is a percentage of the outrageous fee they charge for their starter kit and for their product.
- They call you an ‘independent representative’ or ‘consultant’ or any other euphemism to make you feel like you have support of a large company and network of people. In reality, you are a customer who brings in more customers.
If you are good and brining in more customers, then you may make money. Remember for everyone that you bring recruit, the morons ahead of you will also get a paid.
If you are not good at recruiting others, then you just contribute to the wealth of others. - Because you are not an employee, you get no tangible benefits. You don’t receive health and welfare benefits, vacation days, disability insurance, or any other group sponsored benefit. If you happen to be a healthy person, this may not be a big deal for you because you can get individual insurance. However, if you are unlucky enough to have an illness of any kind, no insurance company will touch you.
- Their product is not unique. I was at a convention for direct selling companies in which I received free samples of face moisturizer from a few different companies. Each of these moisturizers smelled the same and when I tried them, felt the same. I also compared these free samples to a face moisturizer I purchased from my sister in law, who happens to be a ‘consultant’ for a direct selling company, and I found it to be undistinguishable from the other face moisturizers.
There are other examples, but these are the biggest infractions that these damnable direct selling companies perform.
Don’t join a direct selling company. Don’t allow friends and family to ‘present’ to you. Even if they say that they don’t mind if you say no, they really do mind. You will regret sitting through the presentation and will mourn the loss of your relationship.
