Multi-Level Marketing

[Rain Man]

...or do I have a sign on my forehead that says: "Recruit me for MLM "opportunities"

Over the past 10 years, I have been recruited to participate in so many of these "entrepreneurial" opportunites, it isn't even funny.

Starting in college, some chick that I was a classmate with, that I didn't even know, recruited me for a company called "South Western", where they relocate college students to different parts of the country and have them sell encyclopedias door to door. Luckily my soon-to-be frat brother wrote a scathing article about their practices (his twin sister was virtually homeless having fallen victim to their schemes) in the Kent State University magazine Uhuru, and I dropped their opportunity like a bad habit.

Other business "opportunites" I have been invited to involved:

Amway
Primerica (by a frat brother and his wife)
ACN (American Communications Network)
Pre-Paid Legal (by another frat brother)
Melaleuca: I didn't want to be a distributor, I did sign up as a "preferred customer" for about a year, then dropped it b/c I had to buy $60 worth of merchandise a month or they would mail me a "manager's choice" packet of merchandise and charge me $70 for that month. I didn't use the stuff in a month's time and it got tougher trying to select items I didn't already have.

And it seems that Black folx have been buying into the MLM hype more than white folx have (or so it seems). I worked in a hotel one year and a Black colleague of mine told me (it was my weekend off) that a MLM seminar was being held in the hotel and a lot of fine Black sistas was trying to get him in on the "opportunity". The way he described all the sistas in attendance, it sounded like a "Dimes From Heaven" convention, instead of a MLM seminar.

I don't know. If I want to own my own business, I know what type of business it would be, who to contact for colleagues and customers, and the start-up capital I need to get it going. I don't need a bunch of soothsayers and cult tactics to guilt trip me into entrepreneurship.

ETA: Laidbackfella, has a fine-looking sista ever tried to use their feminine wiles to recruit you into their MLM "opportunities"?