by Ronald Nzimora

If you don’t control your system, your money tree, and your brand, you control nothing. You must sit on top of the pyramid and serve the masses. Stop climbing pyramids and start building them.

 

Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess player, not the chess piece. — RALPH CHARELL

A couple of days ago I was approached by a friend (we’ll call him Fred) who called me up on the phone and said, ‘Ronald, I have a fantastic business offer for you. With the audience you command and your marketing prowess, you’ll make even more millions’!

I tried to get him to share what it was but he wouldn’t tell me. Now since I love sound of the word millions, I obliged to listen. So we arranged to meet at a sports bar close to my house later that evening.

I needn’t have bothered. He was trying to sell me a network marketing opportunity. I didn’t even listen to him for 60 seconds when I told him I wasn’t interested. Fred got annoyed and left. I couldn’t care less and I’ll tell you why…

Have you ever been approached by the folks I call the ‘mirage business owners’?

Here’s what I mean by the ‘mirage business owner’:

It’s those folks that come to you telling you about the latest money-making opportunity in town.

They tell you colourful stories about how much you can make with this business opportunity (mind you, not how much they’ve made) and how easy it is.

Try to verify further and you’ll see it’s yet another multi-level marketing scheme, otherwise known as network marketing.

I won’t belabour you with the meaning of network marketing (find out here if you’re inquisitive) but let me tell you why I consider it the worst financial freedom vehicle anyone could ever attempt to ride.

When I got started on the road to financial freedom, my first business vehicle was to join the moronic multi-level marketing train. It was back in 2001. I got started with an unbelievable small sum of just =N=1,600 naira and got issued 4 ‘forms’. All I needed do was to sign up four other folks for the same amount and get started on the road to millions. I believed it. Foolish me.

I only succeeded in ‘selling’ one form after 3 months and quit. Now I’m sure the multi-level marketing die-hards, will say I didn’t know how to sell then and I agree, but it just wasn’t my lack of marketing know-how. It was just most would-be entrepreneurs are sold on what I call the big lie of business opportunities. This lie is that a network marketing opportunity will make you financially free.

Here’s why believing multi-level marketing will lead you to financial freedom is living in fools’ paradise.

FACT #1: You will never become rich with a multi-level marketing company unless you create and own the MLM company yourself.

The only guys who become rich in the MLM (multi-level marketing) business are the founders of the multi-level marketing companies themselves, and their friends and family members whom they place on the first and second levels of their programs.

If you’re in a room with 2,000 other people who do exactly what you do, you’re fighting stiff probabilities. Who is the innovator, the leader, and the one standing on a cliff with a rod in his hand parting the Red Sea? The guy on stage who founded the MLM company is the multi-millionaire. You and the rest?

Sorry, but you’re just another soldier in his army, a tool in his marketing strategy. The MLM founder doesn’t need to climb the pyramid, because he built the pyramid! You can be a pyramid builder or a pyramid climber. You can be the sheep or the sheepherder.

I see guys like Deolu Akinyemi, the CEO and Founder of Avenues To Wealth in Nigeria and I think, “smart guy”. Instead of joining one the MLM companies in Nigeria, he created one and today has over 35,000 marketers who go out promoting his business! That’s one smart dude!

If you create a network marketing company to sell your new vitamin product or whatever else, you are creating a powerful distribution network capable of earning millions. If you join a network marketing company, you are electing to be a gear in the distribution process. Would you rather own the vehicle or be a gear in the vehicle?

FACT #2: An MLM opportunity is NOT a business

The gospel salespeople peddling network marketing opportunities preach is. ‘Start your own business!’

Huh? Start my own business? How?

An MLM opportunity is NOT a business! Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying through their teeth!

Starting a business, like wealth, is a concerted series of choices that form process. Founders of network marketing companies do spectacularly well because they know that people love events, and what better event is there than “Complete this application form and you’re in business!” They leverage entry ease as an advantage. Don’t fool yourself. As entrepreneurs, we want to start companies that others can join as an event.

Paying =N= 50,000 – =N=200,000 to join an MLM opportunity is not starting a business. Period!

Why do I say so?

Let’s examine three truths the guys who run these MLM companies don’t tell you.

a. They say if you join their business, then you actually are starting your own business right? Lies. Lies. Lies.

If you own your own business, you’ll be the CEO right? If you join the MLM company, who’s the CEO? Definitely not you, because it’s their own business, not yours!

b. If you own your business, you’d be in charge making the decisions right? Right. If you join an MLM company, are you the one making the decisions? NO! The owners of the MLM companies are. They dictate what product you sell. They dictate how much you sell it for. They charge you for permission to sell it! Then worse, they dictate how much you’ll earn in commissions when you actually sell their product! Besides, they can change any of these policies anytime without consulting you!

Now, correct me if I’m wrong but I’ve not seen someone who owns their own business who someone else dictated to them how to run their business!

Imagine someone telling Alhaji Aliko Dangote how much to sell his rice and sugar for, how to sell it and how much he will earn when the products are sold. If someone told you that someone else dictates to Dangote how to run his businesses, you’d think the man had gone crazy right? Why then should someone deceive you by telling you the same thing about an MLM business opportunity?

In simple English, people who join MLM companies are simply glorified sales people who earn commissions. They go out selling others on the opportunity to join someone’s MLM company. With each new person that joins the MLM company owners are happy because their marketing system is working. Every new person who joins could well possible bring in more people into the company. Smart folks.

When you blindly invest your life and time into someone else’s brand, you become a part of their marketing plan. You become a swab of paint in their big picture. You resign yourself to the slim possibility of making very little money. Not investing in my own brand was one of my most serious mistakes as a young entrepreneur.

c. Most folks who join MLM companies make little or no money.

It was 2002 and I was stuffed in a hot auditorium in Umuahia, Abia State tucked away in a chaotic mass of people — an ant submersed in an anthill. Months earlier, I was attending a meeting for yet another network marketing company, and this was their monthly motivational meeting. The crowd was excited, anxious, and revved up.

I wasn’t. I looked around and saw a problem. I saw an army of uninformed drones clutching onto whatever was said, critical reasoning cast aside, and myself about to be indoctrinated. I didn’t go so easy. I asked questions. I was persistent, nosy, and curious about the road I was about to take.

“How much money are you making?” I asked early and often. Like politicians, the answer was sideswiped and deflected to a default person in the organization, but I wasn’t fooled. OK, you’ve already told me that Solomon James makes =N=1,000,000 a month, but how much do you make?

And you? And you? And the other 3,000 people in this room? No convincing answer was forthcoming. The fact is, few of them made any money at all. Why? They were stuck driving a congested road full of traffic

The truth is MLM company owners and their closed group of top earners simply pump people up with excitement at these meetings with stories of how much they could be earning. Stories excite. Reality deflates.

90% of the folks who market these opportunities make little or nothing. They attend weekly meetings, read motivational books and hang on in the hope that ‘one day’ their miracle will come. That’s not only silly, it’s self-delusion.

d. There’s a limit to how much money you can make in the MLM business.

Most MLM company owners won’t tell you this, but unless you’re among their elite group of friends and family members, there’s an absolute limit to the amount of money you’ll earn in an MLM business.

Why friends and family members?

Think about it. When a new MLM business is getting off the ground, the owners make sure their family members and friends get started on the top rung of the ladder.

Why? It’s a fantastic way for letting everyone they love get rich without sweating it!

Because the MLM business grows by referrals, those at the top get off easy. It’s the thousands of people who attend meetings and go out selling to more thousands that do the hardwork. People like you.

With each new person that comes in those at the top earn even more residual commission from their efforts. If you owned the company wouldn’t you want your loved ones to be at the top? Check out the popular MLM companies you know. If you could have a look at their referral structure, you’ll see that those at the very top are the owner, his wife, cousins and friends, investors and their families too.

SIDENOTE: This is not a bad thing. I’d do the same if it were me starting an MLM company. I mean it’s a no brainer!

Secondly, unless you own the company, there’s an absolute amount of money you can earn. All MLM company compensation plans are structured like that. If they were not, it wouldn’t be sustainable.

The compensations plans just have to end at some point. If you want to earn more money beyond that point, you’d either have to join another company or either convince the owners to make you an owner. Easier dreamt than attempted.

e. MLM companies ALWAYS have a shelf life!

The biggest problem I see in MLM companies are that they almost always fail. Most of the companies don’t last beyond five years. If they do, their major growth period is in the first 1-2 years. Beyond that, they’re just merely existing. To actually have a prayer of succeeding in an MLM business opportunity, you MUST aim to join it in it’s first few months of existence. Why?

Because then you’ll be one of the early adopters. All those who come after actually help promote the company and invariably you benefit as others join through your own referrals leading to a point when you actually do almost nothing!

This sounds like a plus, and it is. However, like so many others, MLM companies actually grow very quickly especially in their first 2 years, then their growth levels off in the third, then by the fourth and fifth year, it’s actually declining.

The worst possible time to join an MLM opportunity is in the second year and beyond. By this time, reality is beginning to set in for their army of commissioned marketers and most of them are simply dropping off the race. I mean how long can you promote something that’s not making you any money?

At this time, these companies slowly decline, then stagnate, then mostly die off. Yeah, they may completely die off. You may hear about them here and there, but make no mistake. They’re gasping for air. If you join them, you won’t even get off the starting line.

Think about it. How many MLM companies did you know about some 3-4 years ago, that you hardly hear of again?

* Forever Living Products

 

* Tianshi

* GNLD

* I F A

* Agel

* Club Freedom

*

and many more!

I have a friend who joined a network marketing company and earned good money.

Ultimately, the company changed its compensation structure. My friend’s income stream was disrupted. When the company closed shop and the owners returned to China, his income disappeared. The asset he created (his downline and cash-flow stream) vaporized in a matter of months. My friend had no control despite claiming that he “owned his own business.” His mistake was because he wasn’t an owner, he never had the keys to his business, and his empire was nothing but a mirage founded on false foundations governed by a political party in which he had no voice.

In an MLM company or whatever company it is, when drivers of the business, the owners, make radical turns and change terms, you have no choice but to go with them. If it’s the cliff of bankruptcy or criminal neglect, their sinking ship becomes yours and you drown with them. Do you really want to engage in a business relationship like this?

Now I know this is like a tirade against MLM business opportunities, and it may partly be. The MLM company owners may well tell their army of drones not to visit my website because I’m a ‘dream stealer’. That’s okay. My goal on this website is to tell you the truth and nothing but the truth about earning money, building a successful life and becoming financially free. If I have to annoy some folks to do it, then so be it. There are no sacred cows. If your upline sponsor says I’m a dream stealer and that my viewpoint on network marketing is flawed, great. Keep taking advice from him. Let me know how that goes in five years.

Are MLM companies and opportunities really evil? NO!

My dislike for the model lies in the misdirection conveyed to would-be participants; they think they’re entrepreneurs when they’re just salespeople and sales managers in an owner’s plan. Can these folks a huge chunk of change? Of course, I don’t argue that fact!

Top salespeople in Insurance companies also make a lot of money. Lottery winners also make lots of money. We’re talking odds here, not absolutes. MLM distributors are commissioned employees disguised as entrepreneurs and working for a business owner in a regime they don’t control. Network marketers are soldiers in the business owner’s army.

So let me be clear to all those MLM folks out there ready to hang me: I love network marketing as an entrepreneur. If I ever create a product or service that I could sell faster and easier via network marketing, I’d start my own network marketing company in a heartbeat! Network marketing companies are a powerful distribution system.

Furthermore, MLM has excellent educational value: sales, motivation, team-building, and networking. Network marketing can accelerate your future.

Network marketing is a great Financial Vehicle but only if you own the network marketing company. As a Forward Thinker, you want to create these companies, not join them.

I have a lot of Facebook friends who are spiritedly engaged in network marketing (MLM). I don’t espouse my world vision on them, because they have to see it for themselves. If they truly believe that =N=1,000,000 a year is a great income, let them believe it. If they truly believe that their income stream will be passive forever, let them believe it. If they truly believe that they are in control, let them believe it. These people have to see the truth on their own.

It took me three network marketing companies to expose the truth. And that truth is … The only people in the company who were living in houses on the beach with garages full of exotic cars were the founders and inner circle (family and friends) — not the distributors who signed up years later.

I don’t hide my discontent for network marketing, although the reason for my discontent is misconstrued. Network marketing is a ride-along strategy that disguises itself as an entrepreneurial activity. My discontent lies in the misconception and deceit; millions fall for the pitches such as “Be your own boss!” “Own your own company!” or “Passive residual income!”

While there is a small iota of validity to these claims, they cloud the real essence of MLM, which is sales, distribution, and training — not entrepreneurship. I was involved in three MLM companies. Not once do I remember dictating product decisions, research and development, marketing restrictions, rules, cost analysis, or any other activity fundamental to owning a business. As a network marketer, you don’t own a business — you own a job managing and creating a sales organization. Believing otherwise is like stuffing money under your mattress and calling it an investment.

If you don’t control your system, your money tree, and your brand, you control nothing. You must sit on top of the pyramid and serve the masses. Stop climbing pyramids and start building them.

So thank you for the offer Fred, but I’d rather not join a network marketing company. I’d rather be an owner of a network marketing company than a messenger of one. I want you to be an owner too.

Now hit me. Tell me I’m talking balderdash. If you think I’m wrong criticize me by posting a comment here. I’m man enough and will defend my stance

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