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Great Men?
Another morally questionable practice that is not intrinsic to MLMs, but seems axiomatic, is the pent-up idolatry of the leaders.
In FUND AMERICA, the "approved materials" showed what a great man the founder was, depicted the depth of his management experience, showed him in mood shots, etc. It is easy to swoon in admiration of such a powerful, visionary man, dedicated to bringing this wonderful opportunity to common Americans like us.
It turned out he was a criminal fugitive from Australia, where he had been run out of town for doing the same.
But you would never guess it from the company material. A great man.
There are more than a few MLM "executives" like this who will pop up tomorrow in the MLM du jour. MLM exploitation can be very profitable and the jail sentences light. Let the MLM "dream" buyer beware.
I have been taken to task for making this point too strongly--and do not wish to imply that all MLM leaders have criminal records--but it does pay to do some research here. Are the idols you are being asked to worship in MLM worthy of respect, or contempt? Have they been prosecuted or sued for exploiting people in the past? Have they done prison time?
Do not expect to hear the full truth in the MLM video.
Pride and the Secret Closet: Vanity and the Way MLMs Grow
"Mr. Prospect, now you aren''t required to buy more than three product units, but why bother joining unless you plan *****cceed? Besides, all of our products are 100% money back guaranteed."
"Hmmm... To ask for a refund, then, is to admit defeat. Others appear to be doing O.K. at this. I''m no failure! Perhaps I should go to another motivational seminar or strong-arm and alienate one more friend to join. I wasn''t fooled! I''m no failure!"
So, the "inventory" and "recruitment kits," never viable, collect dust. They become a pile in the back closet or attic, a trophy to pride being unable to admit that greed seized the moment.
Back to the Pyramids: Innovative Marketing or Organized Crime?
It is generally agreed that to mislead people in order to get their money is morally reprehensible. It is labeled "theft" or "fraud," and those who do it should be punished. No one is naive enough *****ggest that you can''t make money at it. Crime can pay, at least temporarily.
Pyramid schemes are illegal. They are illegal because they are exploitative and dishonest. They exploit the most vulnerable of people: the desperate, the out-of-work, the ignorant. Those who start and practice such fraud, should, and increasingly are, being punished for their crimes.
But add a product for cover, and call it an MLM, and people are willing to swallow its legality. Is this true? Really? Who says so?
The Feds versus the MLM Gang: The Other Side of the Story
It is a fact that a few large MLMs have survived against the best efforts of law enforcement officials to shut them down, spending millions of dollars to protect, lobby, and insulate themselves. But the same could be said for any organized crime. It is difficult to stop once it becomes so large.
And MLMs look so legitimate to the public, so decent. So many nice people are involved. Surely, it can''t be illegal! The people lower down may even defend the very organization that is robbing them, hoping that they might get their chance to make "the big money" later.
But if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck. Unless it is an MLM, and then it is NOT a pyramid.
The Feds generally see it differently... when the ML (multi-level) aspect begins to eclipse the M (marketing) of products or services.
People can make money in an MLM, undeniably. The moral issue is: Where is the money coming from? Selling product? Then why not sell the same product in the "real world"?
But everyone knows that the real incentive is the pyramid aspect, and the product just the excuse to make it legal, or at least the MLM promoter would like you to believe it is legal.
The Mob and the MLM: A Stretched Analogy?
Talk to a mobster, and he will tell you that he is "merely misunderstood in his benevolent intentions." "We are just trying to ''build our business.''" "It''s all a conspiracy to make us look bad." "The Feds are out to get us because they are jealous or afraid of our new way of life." "Why, look at all the good we do!" "We are looking more legitimate every day." "Here''s a statement from a famous DA that the Mob is really a good organization and no harm ever comes from it." "We''ve even got a minister to endorse us now!"
Propaganda and MLM Expansion
The MLMers of the new millennium are starting to sound a lot like the gangsters of yesteryear. In an era where management science and the law generally condemn MLM, they''ve "got their own experts," from academia or law, who are "on the payroll." Confidence, remember, is key.
Regardless of all the vehement denials, MLMs are all to some extent pyramid schemes, and pyramid schemes are illegal. Sure, some are "getting away with it," but so did the Mafia for decades. It is hard to stop a juggernaut, especially one that has taken such pains to look legitimate and misunderstood, that is highly organized, and that has so much money from its victims to propagandize, lobby, and defend itself. And so the exploitation goes on.
If these guys show up in your neighborhood, you are either "in" or "out," family or target, friend or foe. Suspicion rules the day; everyone has an "angle"; greed supplants innocence. The "neighborhood" is turned into a marketplace, and may never recover from the blow.
The ethical questions remain: Are MLMs a morally acceptable way to make money? Are they--and will they continue to be--legitimate?

MLM Proselytizing: Beneath Begging?
If money is needed that badly, why not simply ask friends and family for help rather than taking money from them under false pretenses--and also selling them a bill of goods? By "sponsoring" them, you have not only conned them and profited at their expense, you have made them feel like losers, since they are not able to make a success of the hopeless MLM concept.
Once seen, only the morally blind, or consciously criminal, could continue in such a "business."
But wait, perhaps you could recruit... your mother!
Moral Inventory
By way of review, the prospective MLM initiate has to face and resolve these ethical issues:
Do I want to be involved in encouraging people to be more materialistic?
Do I want to sell a product that perhaps couldn''t be sold any other way?
Do I want to be a part of an enterprise famous for slander, libel, and rumor?
Do I want to be a part of a company that may employ criminals as marketing experts?
Do I want to make money off my ability to convince people that an unworkable marketing system is viable?
Do I want to be known among my friends and family as a person who tried to con people with a thinly veiled pyramid scheme?
If you can answer these questions "yes," training is available... But remember that God is watching, even if you never get "successful" enough for the Feds to notice you.
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IV. Relationship Issues: An Experiential Problem
Learning the Hard Way
MLMs grow by exploiting people''s relationships. If you are going to be in an MLM, you swallow hard and accept this as part of "building your business." This is "networking." But to those not "in" the MLM, it seems as if friendship is merely a pretext for phoniness, friendliness is suspected as prospecting, and so on. There is no middle ground here, try as you might.
While this is the most difficult point to make, it is perhaps the most important. Anyone who has any experience with an MLM has strong feelings, either for or against, and this is the problem. Polarization runs deep.
High-pressure Selling -- Reserved for Pyramids Only
When it comes to selling product, MLM sales reps are probably no more aggressive or obnoxious than ordinary salespeople. Since most are not salespeople by nature, and it is characteristic that MLMs attract few people with any experience selling this particular product or service, they usually sell through pre-fab "parties" or home "demos." Thus, sales pressure is exerted by situation, if at all.
It should be noted that when selling product, the only distinction from a real-world business is the possibility for deception due to the "looseness" of the MLM and the incentive to exaggerate claims without any accountability. Other than this, selling product in an MLM is fairly similar to selling any product in the real world.
But when it comes to getting you "signed up" as a "distributor," the MLMers get pushy and deceptive beyond the boundaries of polite social norms.
Remember, an MLM is defined by its rewarding people to recruit others in multiple levels.
"Mother, Let Me Tell You About a Fantastic Opportunity..."
Even ex-accountants are willing to practice the crudest of high-pressure selling tactics, at least when it comes to "signing people up." The end justifies the means, when it comes to getting people to come to the "meetings," where the objective is to get a materialism frenzy going at high pitch through a slick speaker or video. The reasons for this "confidence building" should be obvious by now, but here we are considering the relationship cost associated with the "success" of the MLM.
The above title is meant to be absurd. Most people, no matter how jaded, would not foist such a con on their own mothers. Even if people don''t know the specifics of what is wrong with MLMs, intuition often warns us: "Don''t tamper with that relationship." The first marks for recruitment are the gullible, or the "expendable" friends. But successive moral compromise, experience, and desperation... may yet lead to "good old Mom."
Never Admit You Are Wrong
Many have left high-paying jobs to "pursue their dreams" in an MLM. Having been conned so dramatically, they do not easily admit defeat. It seems easier to cling to the bad dream in an increasing cycle of desperation to make the MLM work against all odds. "Losers" at the bottom congregate in*****pport groups, perhaps spinning-off another MLM where they can be "boss."
There is an undeniable camaraderie among MLMers. But for everyone else, "there goes the neighborhood." It is saddening to see people being encouraged against all instinct and common sense to chase after an illusory "pot of gold," but what can be done?
Counting the Cost: The First Church of MLM
Many readers will share the experience of observing MLMs divide families, friends, churches, and civic groups. Lifelong friends are now "prospects." The neighborhood is now "a market." Motives change, suspicions rise, divisions form. The question is begged: "Is it worth it?"
Especially nasty is the church situation. Will the pastor join? If not, he will take a dim view of MLM proselytizing at church functions; animosity will rise, factions will form. You are either "in" or out. If the pastor joins, then those who are not "in" will feel a little uncomfortable in this church.
A church (or any community group) can be easily torpedoed by an MLM.
Trust Your Instincts?
For most people, thankfully, the MLM experience usually ends in very quick financial failure and is then sidelined. Two possible responses are: 1) being embarrassed about participation, or 2) becoming even more intractable when the MLM has failed. You will find the latter chasing after the latest "get rich quick" scheme with similar results. "If we could have just sponsored so and so--they have so many friends--we would have made it."
Thus, there is reason for the "bad taste" most people have for MLMs. By instinct if not experience or insight, we wince at the thought of what we know will follow in the wake of an MLM. Relationships strained, factions formed, deception, manipulation, greed, loss, a closet full of videotapes, brochures, and useless inventory that "everybody wants."
Disease Alert: Beware of MLM Blindness
Apparently, it is difficult for gung-ho MLMers to see how they look from the outside. They can watch lifelong friendships unravel, churches and civic groups poisoned, the avoidance of friends and family, etc., and never see that MLM was the cause.
If you try to point this pathology out, you are treated as if you have attacked the very gospel! Perhaps for some, the MLM approach is a new gospel?
They will claim to have made "new friends," most of which are MLMers or new acquaintances who could be considered "future prospects." The shallowness of these "new friends," the stilted conversations among the "old friends," and the embarrassment, in general, for what seems clear to everyone but the MLMer go unnoticed. Callousness sets in; standards are lowered.
Of course, it could be pointed out that this might have happened anyway. Perhaps the die-hard MLMers would have ruined their friendships anyway in some other non-MLM business failure. Is the MLM really the cause, or just the vehicle?
Business failure of any type is traumatic on the relationships involved, but in most small businesses there is at least the chance of success. And this is never the case in an MLM, unless "success" can be defined as profiting off of the failures of others.
Non-MLM real-world businesses that offer products of interest to friends, family, etc., such as insurance agents and small retail shop owners, seem to be more circumspect in dealing with personal relationships in all but a few rare (and grievous) cases. But the MLMer is recognizable by duplicity of friendship overtures, overbearing glad-handing, full-time prospecting, outrageous initial deception, and social callousness. This is no accident, but rather sheer desperation. How could it be otherwise? For the active MLMer is in a hopeless bear trap: with hubris as one steel jaw and oversaturation the other.
And so the MLM relationship "bull" tramples through the relationship "china closet," blindly ruining fragile and valuable things. Some never pull out of this, figuring the coldness they experience in their emotional lives is due to some other cause than their MLM participation.
The Aftermath
One can''t help but wish that the "neighborhood" could be like it once was. But an MLM storm has blown through, ruining valuable relationships with no regret or conscience. And brace yourself, another one is coming. Perhaps it is in that smiling face approaching you, or in that nice letter you just received from a "friend"?
What goes unnoticed to the MLMer is that when the neighborhood is turned into a marketplace, something precious is lost... which is not easily regained.
This aspect of the MLM experience should not be underestimated, and the reflective reader would do well to think twice about the value of friends, family, community, and church fellowship before joining or continuing in an MLM.
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Summary of What''s Wrong With Multi-Level Marketing
MLMs are "doomed by design" to recruit too many salespeople, who in turn will then attempt to recruit even more salespeople, ad infinitum.
For many, the real attraction of involvement in multi-level marketing is the thinly veiled pyramid con-scheme made quasi-legal by the presence of a product or service.
The ethical concessions necessary to be "successful" in many MLM companies are stark and difficult to deal with for most people.
Friends and family should be treated as such, and not as "marks" for exploitation.
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It is hoped that by clearly pointing out "What is Wrong With Multi-Level Marketing" that many might be spared the inherent and associative pitfalls by avoiding the practice.
As well, for those who insist on practicing MLM, it is hoped that this analysis will serve as a handy framework of problem areas to be avoided if and where this is possible.

SOFT-SKILLS ENGLISH CLUB
Sponsor: Tam Viet Group


Dear All Members!

Firstly, I would like to inform you that, you can join our Club free of charge.
The fixed time is from 2:30pm ?" 4:30pm Every Saturday.

Location: 347 Doi Can ?" At Tam Viet Group

Topic for this week 07 March 2009: Multi Level Marketing

1/ How much do you know about Multi Level Marketing?

2/ What are the criticisms for this kind of business?

Welcome to the meeting and enjoying a goodtime!

Best regards,
The Club President
Lê Nội An 0904-046-264

Living and Sharing!

hihihi topic của mình hay quá, sao ko ai vô đây spam vậy???

Ai thấy hay tự đi mà spam... hi hi...
Nói thía hy vọng hiểu... hì hì...

SOFT-SKILLS ENGLISH CLUB
Sponsor: Tam Viet Group
Dear All Members!
Topic for this week 14 March 2009: Smiles
1/ What are the benefits when we are smiling?
2/ Why we need to smile when we are in trouble?
Welcome to the meeting and enjoying a goodtime!
The fixed time is from 2:30pm ?" 4:30pm Every Saturday.
Location: 347 Doi Can ?" At Tam Viet Group

Best regards,
The Club President
Lê Nội An 0904-046-264

S-M-I-L-E
It isn''t any trouble
Just to S-M-I-L-E
It isn''t any trouble
Just to S-M-I-L-E
So smile when you''re in trouble,
It will vanish like a bubble
If you''ll only take the trouble
Just to S-M-I-L-E
It isn''t any trouble
Just to L-A-U-G-H
(or ha-ha-ha-ha laugh)
It isn''t any trouble
Just to L-A-U-G-H
(or ha-ha-ha-ha laugh)
So laugh when you''re in trouble,
It will vanish like a bubble
If you''ll only take the trouble
Just to L-A-U-G-H
(or ha-ha-ha-ha laugh)
It isn''t any trouble
Just to G-R-I-N, grin
It isn''t any trouble
Just to G-R-I-N, grin
So grin when you''re in trouble
It will vanish like a bubble
If you''ll only take the trouble
Just to G-R-I-N, grin!
Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

he he , chắc hôm truớc dân tình ca thán về cái MLM nên tuần này xoay chủ đề hả chị An? nhất định tuần này sẽ đến tí để được smile

hihi welcome em! tuần trước tranh luận rất sôi nổi