Yes to social networking, no to MLM

Posted on February 22nd, 2007 by Sacha Chua

Because of a matter involving some people I know, I ended up taking a
look at Success University. I have to confess that as much as I love
social networking, I find that multi-level marketing gives me the
heebie-jeebies. While there are somewhat respectable examples of it
(Tupperware?), it still makes me nervous. I think that there’s too
much of a danger of it taking money from the people who can least
afford it and who are least qualified to make the most of it, because
it appeals to people’s greed. While there are some people who no doubt
manage to get themselves rather comfortable lives that way, I think
most people don’t even break even. Sure, it depends on how much effort
you put into it, but I wouldn’t want to build a business empire on the
backs of people’s mistakes!

Anything that focuses more on recruitment than on the actual product
makes me want to run. I don’t care if the product is the best thing
since sliced bread. I am *not* going to see my friends and contacts as
just “prospects”, and I am not going to dedicate my off-time to
chasing after leads. I am *not* going to evangelize greed, and I do
*not* want to clutter the Internet.

I don’t want to get rich quick. I want to get rich slowly, learning
lessons along the way. I want to grow sustainably. I want to learn how
to manage money as I go along. I want to be able to teach other people
how to grow as well. I can’t just depend on luck or my personality. I
can’t just convince people to do something that benefits me and
doesn’t work out for them.

I’m getting really bad heebie-jeebies about that one… It might be
okay with some of my friends, but it’s really just not my thing.

Random Emacs symbol: lisp-mode-shared-map – Variable: Keymap for commands shared by all sorts of Lisp modes.

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