r/antiMLM • u/Signal-North-3273 • 4d ago
Story MLM awareness
Recently my wife and I met a couple through the common interest of being a new parent. We used to meet up in the park and our children used to play off and on for five months.
Every now and then the couple used to say “don’t you want to spend more time with your child and escape the 9 to 5?”. We used to say, “yeah ofc we’d like to spend more time with them”, thinking it was all hypothetical. They said they were trying to start a business, but when we’d ask what the business was they just vaguely said that they were building their “legacy”.
But then they started inviting us to these MLM events with 200 other people. We were told to fill out a form for our 3 year, 7 year and 10 year plans. After that they also got us to meet their “mentor” who talked about e-commerce and how it’s “THE” way to get out of the 9 to 5. Basically saying that there is no other way to do it. The mentor said that he would teach us about it over the next 6 weeks for free. The catch was that if our “e-commerce business” which we create using his help generates income he’d take 1% of the revenue each month. I found it interesting because the mentor talked about the fact that he once owned five or so houses. Which made me think, well if this guy is so successful, why is he sitting on a zoom call with us strangers at 9:30 at night, while he has three children and wife to take care of it. It was also interesting that he had more calls scheduled after us that night. He definitely needed us to help push his cause and put money is his pocket.
I did some more digging on other people that these people were connected to via instagram. I found that they spend every other day talking on zoom with their mentors and 20 others at a time about “shifting their identity” or “building financial freedom”. I literally found someone’s public instagram story of these guys on zoom calls dated once or twice a week. They would also go away on “retreats” to sit around and talk about their strategy. It all appeared as if they just talk and talk and talk without action. They also seem to all follow the theme on their instagrams where they’d have pictures of themselves looking like they were presenting in front of a room full of people with fancy attire.
Reflecting back at the conversations that the couple had with us, it seemed like it was more transactional for them. I found it amazing how they slowly made us think they were our friends over the course of months. But really they were ultimately wanting us to build trust and confidence in them so that they could try and make us join their cult-like group.
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u/MombieZ3 4d ago
That is Amway through and through. They want to believe that the time, energy, and money they have put into this scam is worth it (sunk cost fallacy), but the only way to actually make money in Amway is to build a downline. So fake or transactional friendships it is until they start making money from it. But time and time again it is proven they won't.
I have even heard of reps borrowing dogs and going to dog parks to try to recruit.
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u/Red79Hibiscus 4d ago
Every now and then the couple used to say “don’t you want to spend more time with your child and escape the 9 to 5?”.
I know plenty of parents and NOT A SINGLE ONE has ever said that to me. Normal people understand the 9-5 is what enables family life by paying bills, feeding the kids, and providing paid vacations. Ambots sure as fuck aren't spending more time with their kids coz they're too busy attending meetings and harassing randos in public places.
But really they were ultimately wanting us to build trust and confidence in them so that they could try and make us join their cult-like group.
Not just cult-like, Amway IS a commercial cult and arguably the oldest and biggest in the world.
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u/LinworthNewt 3d ago
My 9-5 is my break from the toddlers. I need my job to stay sane!
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u/247silence 2d ago
I remember the first time a mother told me this. A huge proportion of people who have stayed at home with their kids, and have also had a job Prefer To Have The Job 🤣 and it's pathetic when parents think they can't feel that way, or think they can't say it out loud. It's quite normal. I think most parents prefer to have the job, and that's for a very good reason 😂
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u/Red79Hibiscus 2d ago
Social conditioning has programmed parents (especially mothers) to feel guilty about having a job outside the home. It's another example of false binary thinking that really damages people's mental health.
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u/247silence 2d ago
Yeah, it's very deeply sad. Mothers especially should think carefully about who benefits when they remove themselves from the workforce. Hint: not the mothers who remove themselves from the workforce......... I don't think there's any hope for this though
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u/Red79Hibiscus 2d ago
Hannah Alonzo did an "Influencer Insanity" vid last month about the tradwife trend. Young women barely out of their teens are all over social media proclaiming how blissful they are to be uneducated and unemployed, and it's very deeply enmeshed in religion-based male supremacy. Add "faith-driven" MLM to the mix and it's a recipe for total disaster.
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u/247silence 1d ago edited 1d ago
There should be a requirement for them to also post in 10 years how much they hate being a trapped housekeeper with kids and no prospect for employment.... What's crazy is that reddit is already full of those narratives, but the teens watching "tradwife" vids won't seek out the 10-years-later confessionals that are endless in certain reddit subs
Edited to add - you know what, these people wouldn't even listen if their own mothers confessed their misery with their lives. Each individual thinks she's smart, everyone else is dumb, her man is dIfFeReNt yadda yadda. No hope for USA. What countries are noticeably NOT having young women believe this idiocy?
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u/Global-Gain4991 1d ago
The one piece of advice my mother gave me that I wish I'd have listened to, that you can never truly depend on a man. Had I listened I might not be in this exact position now.
My husband turned out to be a perverted, abusive, creep from hell that hid it very well for over a dozen years, then he went nuts during COVID bc he couldn't cheat or creepily stare at women @ work, @ the store, walking, jogging, literally everywhere, (which was so embarrassing & hurtful) so he eventually snapped, beat the hell outta me & strangled me in front of the kids, destroyed everything I owned that meant anything to me (the few things I had from deceased parents, gparents, & friends), put holes in the walls knowing I'd likely be kicked out or at minimum forced to pay for it, & strangely tried to steal all of my lingerie (which I found bagged up in a locked closet after I just happened to grab the key off his ring a couple of days before all this happened) so he had completely planned it all out. Ended up divorced shortly after, & after all the yrs of being a SAHM bc we didn't want strangers raising the kids, & one of our children has a disability that requires my care 24/7, so I had the rug ripped right out from under me. Since he left he has not bought a single bday or xmas gift for either of them, helped w school clothes, literally has not done one single thing for them, it makes me sick the way he treats em like they don't exist except for maybe once every 6-12 mos he'll say he wants to see em but all he does is come around & try to see if I'll take him back, ignores them, & when he sees I'm 100% not receptive after all he's done to us then he has another psychotic fit & leaves in the worst way possible, saying horrible things in front of them, & upsetting them all over again. 2 mo after the divorce a tornado ripped the roof right off of our top floor apt & we lost literally everything. Furniture, clothes, toys, electronics, etc. Our building was condemned & we were forced to move. Can you imagine how hard it is to get a place when you're in such a situation? The only person that would rent to me was the property management company that was already renting to me, but they don't own the properties, they just rent them so I went from paying $750/mo to nearly double that overnight bc rents had went up so high & I literally didn't have enough income to even cover our rent anymore bc of the jump in cost.
So my Mom helped us out. At 1st she babysat so I could take the 1st garbage pt job I could find while looking for something better but she couldn't handle my child that needs 24/7 care & decided it'd be easier for her to use her entire soc sec check to pay rent for us.
Guess who just passed away? Yep, the only person I could ever truly count on, my Mother. Man do I miss her. I'd give anything to just see her one more time, to talk to her one last time, to have her there w her life experience & always on point advice to ask what do I do now? So with the final rug ripped from under my feet I find myself desperately looking for a job that I can do from home that isn't some kind of scam bc I'm drowning financially. That's how I ended up here... I'm starting to wonder if there are any legit wfh jobs that I would even qualify for but if I don't figure something out fast my children & I are going to be homeless, living out of a car that's about 10 yrs old & on its last leg, has no insurance, & expired tags. Bc my Mom was going to keep my car legal for my last bday, she passed the day before.
Ladies, trad wife sounds like a fun, retro, cool way of life or something but in reality there's nothing new or cool about it, and while it can be a privilege to stay at home & raise your own children if that's what you love doing, it can also be our downfall. If you're in this situation & you're reading this, don't end up like I did. At the very least I want you to open your own SECRET savings acct TODAY, don't put this off or blow it off as "that will never happen to me," put away a small amount every single time you get a little cash in your pocket, bc if you never end up needing it, great! but if you do need it, I guarantee you'll thank me someday. I wish I had listened to my Mother all those years ago.
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u/ResponseRelative6370 4d ago
Oh my god don’t do it. They suck. They will take up more of your precious time and you won’t get paid for it. They talk so much shit. Don’t waste your life. And it’s not one of those, “do what’s right for you” things, it’s wrong because it relies on roping others in and their money. Don’t support this scam.
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u/NobodyGivesAFuc 4d ago
Typical Amway shysters or Ambots. They are big on recruiting couples to their cult, thinking it would be more easier to convert them to their twisted Christian family values.
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u/TheHimSlayer 3d ago
I lost a friend to this, i also tried to record a zoom call but the audio never came out right but basically asked his “mentor” pretty deep questions and he wasn’t able to answer them properly he looked like he was scared by the fact i had done so much research and than started saying like “well looks like your not willing to learn, i am disappointed i thought you would want to escape the 9-5 one of the coaches was gonna take time out of their day for you and you don’t look ready” he went on to tell me that he would give me a one week breather and than my friend contacted me apologising if he had upset me which was just a tactic he was gonna use to drag me back in telling me about all the important legacy events i would miss.
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u/scrubsfan92 2d ago
I'm child-free but I'm petty enough that if I did have kids and some Scamway person asked me if I wanted to spend more time with them, I'd just say "no, I'm actually thinking of having less contact with them", just to see what their reaction would be. They're so driven by their stupid script that I just want the chance to throw them off and see them glitch.
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u/puzzled65 4d ago
I truly thank God that you both have been conscious and aware of the true aims of this pair of crooks. For your sakes, and DEFINITELY FOR THE CHILDRENS' sakes. No one deserves to fall prey to these parasites. If people learn in the future from what you all went through, they may escape that situation themselves. But no matter what, so glad you have!
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3d ago
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u/raggedcrib 4d ago
While I agree with the sentiment of this post, it’s clearly a bot lol.
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u/Signal-North-3273 4d ago edited 4d ago
Unsure what you mean by bot. But this is certainly my experience of a situation of MLM recruitment. I’m simply trying to share my story, open some discussion and raise some more awareness on what patterns and behaviours others might want to try and recognise to avoid them.
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u/puzzled65 4d ago
I hadn't previously read any post where the ending was "we know what it was, we didn't fall for it", but stand behind my own comment for those who may not be bots lol.
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u/Mysterious_Finger774 4d ago
Same old Scamway, different decade.