The Sad Truth About Network Marketing

So I realize I have not posted on here in quite a while or filmed a trademark video. The truth is, a lot has happened since I last posted a thing. You can say my entire business has undergone a sort of transformation. MLM and network marketing may seem like a great idea, but the sad truth is, the only people who seem to make it are liars and cheaters – the ravenous beasts that have no difficulty misleading hundreds to thousands of people for a few bucks a month each.

The truth is, I was recently betrayed by someone I called a mentor and friend. They say the only way you can really break away in business is to follow the lead of a mentor…the question I now pose in turn to that statement, is how do you know what their motives really are? How do you really know anything about anyone online? It’s all an illusion. Most of internet marketing is an illusion. The gurus are the predators and all the newbies are like young gazelles out on the Serengeti.

I was working a well known program and starting to really get the whole thing down, when I was notified by my sponsor that one of my referrals had asked him if he could join him, since he did not believe I was doing my job. This made no sense to me, since I knew all of my referrals and talked to them on a regular basis. I dug a little deeper and confronted my sponsor and it turns out one of my referrals was unexpectedly in his downline and without his knowledge or consent. This was a couple days after he told me he one of my referrals had come to him to join him. He then proceeded to tell me he would talk to him about going back beneath me and that he had no idea he had joined him.

He never brought it up again. At the same time, my referral that joined him told me he felt it was the right thing to do and asked me if I would still be his friend.

It would be one thing if I didn’t know him for years before that, and if I didn’t care about how he did in the program. What made it worse, is that I had asked him if I could help him out just a couple weeks before that, since he couldn’t afford to pay for a membership. He claimed I wasn’t available when he wanted to come back and thought it was easier to join under my sponsor. This logic is just dumb and inflamed my anger further.

My sponsor/mentor and I still kept in touch even after that. But all the images of everything over the past year started to vex me more and more. All of my marketing friends had dealings with him through me. I really believed in that guy and wanted everyone to know him. But the things he told me and the things they told me started to fall in conflict. There were discrepancies, differences that didn’t make sense. I started to realize my mentor would tell people things – all different things depending on who they were. He would make promises, then change his mind without telling anyone. He would commit to helping people with a project, then wouldn’t follow through and claim he had forgotten when they challenged him.

There were so many things that didn’t line up. Then the last straw happened. I spent two weeks producing a guide to bring people into my primary program. It was all based on leveraging his class and expertise, along with training on the program’s tools and internet marketing in general. I wrote content, filmed videos, and even had a friend design a squeezepage I could use to promote everything. It was all professional and flexible for use by anyone on my team. The key thing I was trying to establish was a system that was duplicable. I ran it past my mentor, and he hated the idea. He had no words of encouragement, nothing positive to say about it at all. Two long weeks of my life had produced 30 pages of hard work, over thirty minutes of instructional film, and words of praise from several other marketers, and all my mentor had to say was the entire book was a huge sales pitch and was a waste of time.

I never asked for his advice again. That was it. He had nothing good to say about anything I did since last year. He lied to my friends and stole a referral. The commission structure of the program was changed and the program owner even claimed he paid 100% commissions, only he failed to emphasize the point that all membership fees were raised by a significant admin fee. The minimum fee for the so-called “$10 program” had risen to $15, while commissions for referrals were only $10. How is that 100%? It would have been 100% if the admin fee had not been added. It is part of the monthly fee, you can’t simply overlook that fee!! The owner insisted he changed the structure to look out for the little guys. Actually, he changed it because he got greedy and now he is lying to our faces.

So that is the story. There is more to it than that, but I promise I am not the sort of person that cries wolf and tries to find faults in everyone and everything. It makes me sad to say these things, because I REALLY DID believe in the guy. I thought he was special and had my best interests at heart. I thought he cared about me, about all of us. I hope one day he will see that making people believe in you, then lying to them and betraying them is like taking a dump on everything their dreams and aspirations.

I don’t believe all network marketers are the same, but I do believe it takes a special sort of marketer to build a huge business in MLM. I also believe that it is generally inevitable for most program owners to become greedy when they see all the money they can make or take from their members. I have become much less trusting as a result of my experiences and need to take a step back from the scene. Does this mean I am giving up on online endeavors? Hell no! Far from it. It just means I am approaching it from a different angle. I am not dealing with network marketing for the sole purpose of building a team to make money.

When you choose a mentor, make sure you look for someone that is flexible and is willing to help you hone your skills around your strengths as a human. There really is no way to be sure you can trust anyone, but there are decent people out there that just want to help other people.

I still have a couple programs I am in and still promote. But I am no longer in the aforementioned program. I wish all of you the best of luck. If you still follow my mentor and believe he will magic millions into your account, I hope you are right and I am wrong. The past year has produced very little for me. I have met some awesome people and developed a few skills, but I don’t care to worship anyone like people in the Skype rooms seem to do.

Thank you for your loyalty and for reading this blog. I wish you the best of success in 2013.