How Utah Became A Bizarre, Blissful Epicenter For Get-Rich-Quick Schemes

[eridani]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/theslice/mormon-utah-valley-multilevel-marketing-thrive-doterra

It’s early May and I’m at a Marriott hotel in Salt Lake City for a conference of Q Sciences, the company that sells EMPowerplus Q96. Here, everyone but me is a salesperson, which means these testimonials are also pitches. Q Sciences is a multi-level marketing company, selling not in stores but through regular people, who earn commission from selling products as well as recruiting others to do the same. This last bit makes multi-level marketing unique—and controversial. Trying to wrap your head around the concept of selling a business opportunity to sell a business opportunity to sell a business opportunity can feel like being lost in a hall of mirrors (after ingesting grainy, off-white powder). It’s profitable: The industry’s biggest players, like Amway, Mary Kay and Herbalife, each bring in upwards of $4 billion per year, according to Direct Selling News, a trade publication.

At the Q Sciences conference, facts are swept up in avalanches of feelings. One activity consists of standing up and telling the person next to you, “You’re the smartest person I’ve met all day.” A motivational video teaches that success depends not on your circumstances, but your state of mind. “You gotta want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe!” proclaims a voice out of a Rocky movie. One company doctor gives a speech wearing a white coat, yet turns out to have a degree in Psychology and Christian Counseling when I Google him. He introduces a gadget that looks like a set of VR goggles, a kind of hypnosis device to help you lose weight, quit smoking or relax. It works in part by flashing light into your ears. You aren’t able to hear the light, but your brain understands its frequencies like “computer code.” It’s for sale in the gift shop for $495.

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Mind-over-matter” is the ethos that unites dietary supplements and multi-level marketing. In America, taking a supplement necessitates optimism in the face of limited facts: that the company’s claims are researched, that the ingredients are safe and that what they make you feel is more than the placebo effect. Of course, participation in the mainstream medical system requires optimism, too, when many drugs approved by the FDA turn out to be unsafe and are recalled, or are marketed for unapproved uses. Multi-level marketing, meanwhile, requires distributors aspiring to build businesses to have faith that their opportunities will yield more than $1,833 per year.

Usually, when a multi-level marketing company makes the news, it’s because distributors made less. One couple from New Mexico accumulated more than $100,000 worth of debt over five years as distributors for Reno-based MXI Corp, they told the Washington Post last year. The losses came largely from buying up large quantities of the company’s chocolate—or rather, “Xoçaí HealthyChocolate”—in order to advance in the distributor hierarchy and receive higher commissions. They’ve since filed a lawsuit calling MXI a pyramid scheme. The chocolate is so expensive (roughly $140 for a month’s supply) that the only people willing to buy it are trying to build businesses themselves, plaintiffs say. (In the U.S., multi-level marketing companies are generally considered illegal when they generate a majority of income through recruiting, rather than selling products to consumers.) The couple’s story encapsulates almost every negative stereotype about the industry: greedy corporations, quacky, expensive products, brainwashed distributors. It’s a reputation enhanced by a track record of targeting vulnerable communities, including Hispanic immigrants (Herbalife), indebted college students (Vemma) and unemployed workers in China

[jberryhill]

1. Mormon cosmology is itself an MLM

They are all part of God's downline, and they get their own franchise in the hereafter.

[eridani]

2. Interesting take--never thought of it that way before n/t