Forever Living Review – Scam Or Legitimate MLM Business?

John Cornock says:

Hi.
I’ve been reading about Forever Living with interest for 2 reasons:

1. I was an Amway UK dirstibutor for 4 years back in the late 90’s. To coin a phrase – I sold soap to my friends.

2. My boss and his wife have recently joined Forever Living in the UK.

From my personal experience I have a deep rooted dislike of any MLM schemes because when you take away the products (whether they’re good, bad or indifferent) you are left with a sales and marketing system which tells people in no uncertain terms they could become financially independent and fabulously weathly in a reletively short time period of time.

I was 100% convinced that Amway was my key to success. I gave every spare minute in to promoting the products, driving hundreds of miles all over the country to ‘show the business plan’, attended every business presentation and seminar (Amway UK distributors used to fill the NEC, Wembley conference centre and NIA 3 times a year) and followed everything my upline told me to do. After 3 years my sponsor quit without any notice. They went from calling me 3 times a day to never hearing from them again! I was very upset and confused by this so I then questioned everything. I worked out how much money I had made building my group of 33 people – guess what? I LOST over £2000! I had also put 100,000 miles on my car. I then started to do some sums. Back then there were 50,000 distributors in the UK. If each one bought 1 motivational tape per week and 1 PMA book per month that worked out to £1.2M PER MONTH for the top diamond distributors. Add to that the constant stream of recruitment business packs at £150 and ‘Adpacks’ at £5 which are bought to ‘ensure your success’, I figured that the top UK upline were making massive amounts of money every month without ever selling a product. This is why I once heard a ‘direct’ distributor say to another direct – ‘I’m glad I found out how to make the real money from this otherwise I would have quit or gone mad just trying to sell the products’. So for Amway at least, this is how the money is made:
1. Sign someone up @ £150. (Nearly all of which goes to your upline).
2. Tell them the only way they can be a millionaire is to ‘believe in the business’ and listen to their upline. Get them to ‘buy the tape of the week’ and ‘book of the month’ @ £25 per month.
3. Tell them they have to have all of the ‘success tools’. These are ‘Adpacks’ to be given to prospective ‘team members’. 10 @ £5 each.
4. Buy the products for yourself.
5. Sell some to your friends and family.
6. Go to monthly meetings @ £25 per ticket and quarterly conventions @ £100 per ticket.

Amway products were expensive. The reason? Where do you think all the money comes from to pay for the performance bonuses and free holidays?

Why do people buy Amway or Forever products? One word – guilt. My mum and dad never had a lot of money but they bought stock from me that they never used. Bottles and bottles of cleaners at £10 each. Why? because they wanted to help me with my new business and didn’t have the heart to say no. 90% of people who buy MLM products do so because they feel obliged to. Why would anyone pay £20 per a bottle of multi purpose cleaning fluid? No matter what the ingredients are you cannot justify this.

This brings me on to the last and most insideous part – the hype. The founders of MLM schemes know that they have to build a lot of margin in their products to make sure there’s enough to pay the top performers. The only way you or I would go out night after night trying to ‘sell soap to our friends’ is because of the promise of financial freedom which is drummed in to us at every opportunity. The meetings and conventions are akin to evangelical rallies. People hugging eachother and openly weeping with joy at the prospect of ‘unlimited earnings’. When you come away from these gatherings you feel like you can take on the world, but that’s exactly what’s required to sell these products.

It’s well known that Aloe has good medicinal qualities (upto a point) but to me that doesn’t mean that Forever Aloe products are worth 4 times more than a competitors equivelant.

Ok I’ve ranted on and I know there are loads of people who will try to shoot me down but I’m more than happy to debate this. I personally know far too many people (some were close friends) who have invested a lot of presious time and money in MLM schemes to have it come to nothing or worse. I’ve seen couples split up and get divorced because of it, so I’m far too sceptical to just accept another MLM business on face value. Remember – only 4.5% of signed up distributors stick with it and make some money. The rest become disillusioned and quit – but hey, at least Amway and Forever have sold them a starter business pack and a ton of products in the meantime. Keep ’em coming!