Utah seems to be the multi-level marketing capital of the world and I wonder why. A story the other day in the Salt Lake Tribune caught my eye. The picture with the story had a confident-looking, middle-aged, man standing by a beautiful Rolls-Royce with the name of his company on its side. That struck me as peculiar – a Rolls-Royce with a commercial logo on it. The only other thing I can compare it to are those pink Cadillacs that Mary Kay cosmetics hands out to its top performers.
The fellow in the picture says that he’s made $600,000 a month – yes, a month – working for his MLM. The product, made here in Utah, is another one of those miracle fruit juices that seems to fix whatever ails you.
You know how MLMs work, right? You have a product, like miracle fruit juice, and then, as you work to sell the product, you work to convince people to sell the product for you. You’re not simply asking other people to sell the product, you’re asking them to sell the product for YOU. This fellow in the Tribune story says he has two million people under him selling this miracle juice for HIM.
The MLM idea is a perfectly legitimate marketing system. Who is to say how a product gets sold? So why do I feel uneasy about the whole MLM thing? It sounds pretty American. As long as the business is a legal entity, why should I care? But I do care. The problem is I can’t quite put my finger on it.
So let me just say this – I guess have a problem with a marketing system that revolves around convincing people to do your work. Again, that’s not illegal as long as there exist a legitimate product and your sales force gets paid. But, for me anyway, those things aren’t enough. The incentive, which usually begins with excitement about the product, turns into excitement every time you can convince a person to do your bidding while you sit back and collect checks. That sounds like what prior generations used to call “Easy Street.” Today, we call it welfare.
