Hello Grasshoppa,
Have you been to a cafe or a kopitiam where you are surrounded by a bunch of people and there will be someone sharing a story on how they earn their wealth & made it in their life? I’ve personally had that experience on multiple occasions where a group of direct selling people are trying to persuade potential members to be a part of them. In fact, when I was younger, I was part of that group for almost a year trying to make a living.
That experience actually taught me a lot on how the direct selling communities make a living & what are the tricks to make it within that community. It started when I was a young and broke college student desperately trying to make a living. Being a broke college student was not easy, I had to live on RM70 a week & surrounded by a group of friends that had cars & could eat or buy whatever they wanted. One day, I was asked to gather in a house where a friend was sharing an opportunity to make money. All I had to do was to pay RM210 & invite a few more friends to pay between RM210-RM430 & I will earn RM1500. The math is simple, invite 3 friends & that 3 friends will then invite another 3 each (12 recruits in total). Being young & broke, my naive mind gave me an idea to withdraw some money from my savings leaving me with a mere balance of RM250 in my bank account.
Over the next few months, I would be in my college canteen going from table to table to recruit more members which went as far UUM, Kedah. We even managed to rent multiple halls inside some universities to hold talks. In each talk, the leader would be presenting a few slides on his experience & how to make money. I remembered one of the slides where he would be taking fresh graduates salaries survey that was obtained from Jobstreet to show how much each fresh graduates will earn. That itself created fear in those students as they feared after their long years of studies, they will only be paid as low as RM700.
When our recruit started to grow within those universities, we started to face the issue of transportation to fetch them to the conference hall. That is why the top leaders started to persuade junior leaders to get a van so that they could transport all the recruits around. Some of them listened to him so they bought from Toyota Avanza to even a real van which was Kia Pregio. Isn’t that crazy? During that time, my goal was simple, to earn RM3000 each month so that I could buy a Toyota Vios. LOL.
My goal to earn RM3000 finally happened after the 3rd month joining the team. I even photostat my cheque so I could show it as proof to my recruits & potential recruits. The income-earning looked real however, it came with a price. I remembered I was below my target by RM500 in order for me to hit the RM3000 income so I actually used my brother’s credit card to make some purchases. It is actually very normal for those who are familiar with direct selling where they actually stock up on products to ensure they hit their target.
If you ever attended any of these talks, you will always hear the promises & hopes that you are able to hit 5-6 digits income within a short period of time. There will be 1-2 people that will be their top stars that can achieve it at a young age. You will also be hearing your dreams of living in the biggest house, driving the best cars & going to the best holiday destination around the world. Is that even possible? Yes, I think it is. Companies like Amway & Herbalife are legally operating companies that have a real business module & they have been around for a long time. Those direct selling companies are definitely real & their business module definitely works. But you may need to watch out for some other direct selling companies that are questionable in terms of their business module that are over-promising & not legally approved by the Malaysian government.
What is their problem then? Personally, I am strongly against some of the leader over-promising speech where they are causing the recruits to pursue something that may never happen. Example: Is financial literacy more important than driving a dream car or flaunting their wealth? Shouldn’t recruits like young students learn more on financial literacy? Imagine these students going out to their universities to pursue a dream that was sold to them by their leaders & never able to make it. Shouldn’t these students get a dip in work-life experience & pursue this as a side hustle? Shouldn’t they start their adulthood learning about financial planning first before even working towards that direct selling dream? This is definitely my two-cents coming from someone that used to do this as a student up to full time for a brief moment after I dropped out of college. Please do your research before pursuing this industry.
OSS!
