I just abandoned ship – the MLM ship.  I was heavily into Network Marketing for 5 years, first with an Energy company and then with this supplement one promising that they figured out a way to solve the aging problem.  I am going somewhere with this.  My friend Mark who has a Printing Ministry and designed my tracts, which some are shown on this website, got in touch with me and that started me on that path.  A builder named Ron had introduced him to network marketing.    The promise and appeal was this — in ministry there was no pension plan or retirement, so this energy company promised to offer residual income and retirement money if he just got a few people to save money on their gas and electric.  Sounds simple.  Who doesn’t want to save money?  So he told me about it and I jumped in too.  I wanted to save money. I wanted to get out of pharmacy and into ministry.  I had been a very busy street evangelist going to colleges and Sabres hockey games and flea markets and all over Buffalo and beyond buying my own tracts and buying my own gas and paying for parking.  Getting paid while I was ministering sounded awesome. I spent the next few months learning all I could — it sounded awesome because it had the same feel as evangelism.  There was an invitation — Would you be open to take a look at this great opportunity?  There was a presentation.  When can you sit down and see what I am excited about -today or tomorrow?   There was validation — I want Mark to show you how this works!  And there was follow up and answering objections.  I understand you think this is a pyramid scheme- I felt the same way but what I found was pyramid schemes are illegal and these can’t be pyramid schemes because I would never be in something illegal.

Well, I hit up everyone I could.  We hosted BBQ’s and had friends over and talked to people and I handed out business cards and I joined Facebook for the first time to build the business.   And slowly, I stopped witnessing and telling people about Jesus.  And soon I started getting derailed and confused and agitated and discouraged.    The way they scam you is this — the numbers show no one makes money in these things.  Well, almost nobody.   Less than 1% succeed.  But they go to great lengths to show why these other 99.99999% don’t make it and why you are unique.  Why you have what it takes.  Sure.

I wised up.  I quit Ambit.  Then in February Ron found me again.  “Mike, I am still doing great with my first business, but I found something so much better.  As a pharmacist, I want to get  your opinion!”  And then I was sucked into another MLM wasteland for the next 18 months.  The anti-aging, do-everything, heal the root cause of 200 diseases and more.  It works better than Windex does with the Greeks.

Now I can’t trust anything when it comes to these companies.  The studies may have some truth to them — the stories of curing cancers and near sighted-ness and psoriasis and blood diseases and asthma and aging and lyme disease may be true.  I don’t know.  I suspect there is GROSS exaggeration.  But even if they are all true, the lies that have already shown up mean I can’t trust any of it.  Like how their flagship product wasn’t invented by the Dr. spokesman they all taught about — it was developed in 2003 or so and the Doctor Joe I will call him was hired years later to give it credibility.  And he left in 2013 but they still use his video.   And how this company pays for some of it’s studies.  And how on peer reviews, I thought I remember seeing how Dr. Joe was listed as a peer reviewer.  And how the studies are not impressive but I was mesmerized by the kool aid they served and didn’t question it.

And how I am scared to even use it’s name because they have lawyers sniffing the internet and suing anyone who writes anything derogatory.  They are a bullying, brainwashing business.   I just deleted all my FB friends in the business and left their groups.    MLM is a cult and Christians are sucked into it every day.   These models will get you wrapped up into false doctrines like the Word of Faith movement, the Prosperity Gospel, Mormonism (most if not all MLM’s are Mormon owned and operated.   Many have their head quarters in Salt Lake City, Utah.) and more.  A must-read book in MLM is “Think and Grow Rich” by Napoleon Hill.  The name says it all.  A video and teaching they push is called, “The Secret”.  A big teaching they surround you with is positive manifestation and surrounding yourself with only positive people.  IF you listen to negativity about the business model (like actual evidence MLM does NOT work and your odds are better playing roulette in a Las Vegas Casio) you are crippling your chance of success they warn.  That is smart — tell them the reason they will fail is if they listen to THE TRUTH so feed them lies and make them feel they will fail if they listen to REASON.

You can’t trust anyone in MLM because we even lie to ourselves.  It doesn’t work in reality. It only works in the land of blind trust and faith –and that makes it a religion.

And like i said they are more CULTIC with mind-control, indoctrination, and by raising up a whole army of shiny, happy (militant) people.

If you are in Multi Level Marketing, your mind has been hacked.   You will lose your friends and family and you will never be able to turn off recruiting.  And what is the saddest lies they tell  you is the promise of residual income – that if you put up with this MLM junk for 5 years and really try super hard and hustle your tushy off then you magically can take the rest of your life off and earn check after check after check.   My up line leader bragged that the 15th of every month was like Christmas.    Well, sorry to burst yet another bubble, but the drop-off rate is so high in MLM that even if you have thousands of distributors, it fizzles down to ZERO very fast so the only way to have residual income is to be CONSTANTLY RECRUITING.

Don’t believe that?  Then how are these MLM gurus — Eric Worre for example or Simon Chan – who have built million dollar organizations years ago not just sitting on a beach somewhere but had to instead get into the coaching business after?   Why do all these guys that build huge organizations then all have to share their secrets and coach the rest of their lives?  Would they not just do what they were taught?  Meaning, they built the thousand distributor empire and can now bask in the sun with their million dollar checks coming in month after month, yet they don’t.  Why?

Because the residual income promise is a joke.

And sorry, I already have Jesus.  I’d rather have Jesus than MLM silver or gold and I’d rather have Jesus than MLM riches untold.

And regardless of the MLM lies and brainwashing and hoodwinking out there– it doesn’t matter because if you want pro MLM junk you can find it.

But the bible says clearly that riches accumulated by vanity are wrong.  Riches gotten quickly — just as quickly disappear.

All the hoopla MLM promises quickly is removed when you see honest bible verses.

That was good enough for me.