Ever wonder who writes those books about MLMs? Or "how to become a millionaire" type books?
Probably nobody you ever heard of.
G.K. Chesterton once wrote in his essay The Fallacy of Success, "...On every bookstall, in every magazine, you may find works telling people how to succeed. They are books showing men how to succeed in everything; they are written by men who cannot even succeed in writing books. To begin with, of course, there is no such thing as Success. Or, if you like to put it so, there is nothing that is not successful. That a thing is successful merely means that it is; a millionaire is successful in being a millionaire and a donkey in being a donkey."
Don't get me started on Robert "Rich Dad" Kiyosaki... As I've written about his bargain with MLM, and how his success is due to selling to MLM, not due to his own success. He had f***ed over at least two of his partners. His advice on MLM doesn't even fit his own quadrant system. And he doesn't understand what Ponzi is but managed to write about it any way for Yahoo Finance.
Yet people seem to regard him as some sort of financial genius. Why?
Frankly, Kiyosaki, and many of these so-called business advice writers, write "business porn".
Do you know what is business porn? No? Do you know what regular porn is? It's sex, with the boring parts edited out and dressed up to look the most exciting that few if any sane people would f*** that way.
Porn is fake. It's a SIMULATION of sex. Business porn is the same... books that explain to you the bloody obvious: making money is good. Stock photos that you wish your office look like, and so on. It's NOT REAL.
People who buy these books think there's "that one thing" they will "realize / get" to suddenly turn failure into "success". Often it's something about "attitude" (or mindset), or "gadget" or tool or system, or certain behavioral gimmicks that somehow symbolizes "leadership". They put up the stock photos that their business would never look like, or sprout cliche slogans like "you have to fake it to make it".
But just as porn is not real sex, business porn is not real business advice, even though they sure sound like real advice.
a blog about Skepticism, MLM, Scams, and Critical Thinking
Thursday, September 10, 2015
Monday, September 7, 2015
MLM Basics: Six Factors to Consider When Evaluating an Income Opportunity
There are always new income opportunities launched daily. Many of them are downright... WTF? How can any one put money into something like that? While others do look pretty legitimate.
However, it seems nobody bothered to compile a list of things you should know BEFORE you even consider an income opportunity, i.e. basic financial competence... or even basic critical thinking competence.
So here a list of six factors for you think about before you even go to any seminars or such:
One or two examples are noise, not proof
Everybody puts their best face forward, but the emphasis is always on being the "authentic self". If you are poor, you won't come across as a millionaire for long. Same thing with income opportunities. The talkers will usually parade their top earners, but how many of them are there, and do they have an income disclosure statement? How many people actually made decent amount of money?
Most MLMs participants (90% or more) make minimal money. Average sales (not profit) as per DSA for 2014 is about $2000 per year per participant. If a few people made six or seven figures, then the vast majority made practically nothing. And since you're starting, you'll make practically nothing for a few years. Is it worth the time to "try it out" for a few years? Can you afford to?
There are no "secrets" nowadays
In the age of Internet there are no 'secret' ways to make money. ANYTHING can be researched. Something you have no data on, you can Google. If even Google can't find much on it, you either have a language barrier (the "opportunity" started as something in a different country, like China), or it's so new there is nothing on it (who? what? WTF?). NEITHER of which you should touch, no matter how much it had been talked up.
Most likely, the opportunity involves selling something you don't understand, but think you do... Amber, Bitcoin, other cryptocurrency, and so on. As you have no information to judge, you will tend to rely on the PR copy, and that's when you run into problems, as PR copies do not have to be the truth or the whole truth.
However, it seems nobody bothered to compile a list of things you should know BEFORE you even consider an income opportunity, i.e. basic financial competence... or even basic critical thinking competence.
So here a list of six factors for you think about before you even go to any seminars or such:
One or two examples are noise, not proof
Everybody puts their best face forward, but the emphasis is always on being the "authentic self". If you are poor, you won't come across as a millionaire for long. Same thing with income opportunities. The talkers will usually parade their top earners, but how many of them are there, and do they have an income disclosure statement? How many people actually made decent amount of money?
Most MLMs participants (90% or more) make minimal money. Average sales (not profit) as per DSA for 2014 is about $2000 per year per participant. If a few people made six or seven figures, then the vast majority made practically nothing. And since you're starting, you'll make practically nothing for a few years. Is it worth the time to "try it out" for a few years? Can you afford to?
There are no "secrets" nowadays
In the age of Internet there are no 'secret' ways to make money. ANYTHING can be researched. Something you have no data on, you can Google. If even Google can't find much on it, you either have a language barrier (the "opportunity" started as something in a different country, like China), or it's so new there is nothing on it (who? what? WTF?). NEITHER of which you should touch, no matter how much it had been talked up.
Most likely, the opportunity involves selling something you don't understand, but think you do... Amber, Bitcoin, other cryptocurrency, and so on. As you have no information to judge, you will tend to rely on the PR copy, and that's when you run into problems, as PR copies do not have to be the truth or the whole truth.
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