Let’s start by briefly mentioning a few, common, network marketing mental disorders. Interestingly, these disorders are most often exhibited by ‘leaders’:
Amusing aside: Tell the truth, as you read my list, did your subconscious flash to Daffy Donald (POTUS 2016—)?
Network marketing doesn’t cause these disorders, rather, it appeals to many individuals who exhibit these personality traits. Think about your company, or prospective company. Have you watched a narcissistic liar work the crowd? A guy seated next to me, in the front row, at a big convention in LA asked, “How can you tell when this guy is lying? Hint: His lips move.”
Did you know the Donald licensed his brand to a network marketing company,‘The Trump Network’?. In the late 1990s, I was getting calls, everyday, from excited marketers who would ask, “Doctor, have you heard about The Trump Network”? It’s going to be bigger than AMWAY!"
Callers displayed conviction that their discovery was a golden ticket to making huge piles of cash. I thought they were nuts. There certainly wasn’t any due-diligence-related evidence. Further, they had no personal experience to suggest that Trump’s name could somehow transform a mediocre company into a dynamo capable of producing riches. Many people forget, Daffy Donald acted the part of a successful businessman on a reality TV show. His real life track record was unremarkable; excepting he inherited millions, his six business bankruptcies and welching on many of his debts. From my vantage, these distributors exhibited quasi-magical thinking. Most ponied up at least five hundred bucks, as an investment in their future. They fell, hook, line and sinker, for the con the company was selling. I’ll bet almost everyone lost much more than their $500. Unsurprisingly, Trump’s network marketing company, like so many of his other ventures, lasted only a short time. It’s long gone.
We all get conned. I’m an easy target. Small example: A remarkably convincing, smooth talker managed to get my credit card number, over the phone, to buy hundreds and hundreds of personalized ball-point pens. I later discovered other doctors in my clinic had the same experience on the same day. I wish I had recruited that telemarketer when I was a network marketing professional. 🙂 Bigger example: I joined an oil additive company after listening to a known felon explain how he could, “expand my reality to fit my dreams”. That was a long time ago, but it’s still humiliating.
Con artists love optimistic people and they admit it helps if their target is a little desperate as well. Hope is a wonderful thing. There should be some sort of punishment for sociopaths who knowingly dole out false hope to fleece the gullible.
I quit network marketing when I started to feel like I was picking people’s pockets. I slowly came to understand there was little or no chance for anyone I, or anyone else, enrolled to achieve anything resembling financial success.
It doesn’t matter what you do for a living, you will meet people with personality disorders, but you’ll meet more of them in the network marketing profession. Politics being an obvious exception. 😉
If your spouse dreams of earning $100,000 per month with a network marketing company, but instead is having an adverse effect on your household finances, buy him/her a copy of my eBook ’Network Marketing Heads Up’.