What is the fastest way to loose your all your friends and acquaintances?
Join a Pyramid Scheme like Amway or GoldQuest
You need to be a fool to pay money to enroll into one, and then to recover from your losses, you push 10 more of your friends down the same path. What you don’t realize it that in this quest, you have bugged 100 of your acquaintance and not only pitched the idea unsuccessfully, but irritated them so much that they will never ever again talk to you.
According to wiki:
“A pyramid scheme is a non-sustainable business model that involves the exchange of money primarily for enrolling other people into the scheme, usually without any product or service being delivered.”
Common traits:
* A highly excited sales pitch, the whole time the presenter will try to sell you an idea of becoming an entrepreneur, having others earn for you etc, but he will never bother to tell you what work?
* Little to no information offered about the company unless an investor purchases the products and becomes a participant.
* Vaguely phrased promises of limitless income potential.
* No product, or a product being sold at a price ridiculously in excess of its real market value. As with the company, the product is vaguely described.
* An income stream that chiefly depends on the commissions earned by enrolling new members or the purchase by members of products for their own use rather than sales to customers who are not participants in the scheme.
Pyramid schemes work on a simple principle:
Enroll a fool and rob him by asking him to pay an exorbitantly high membership fee or buy some trinkets. Then make your customer your employee. By paying him a small fraction of the revenues, ask him to rope in his entire friend circle.
If you happen to be trapped in one such presentation, then you will realize that the whole time the presenter will talk irrelevant stuff.
Here is how my meeting went:
1) He will say how a bottle of cold-drink/greeting card which costs 10/- in retail actually costs a few paise to manufacture and rest all the markup is because of the distribution costs.
Well if you do want me to be a salesman, then please do bring your product catalog…. but you will never get a chance to see it. Also you would realize that even though he is a salesman for the same company, his intentions is not to sell you its products… his sole intention is to enroll you as a member.
2) Then he will keep on going about how life of a salaried guy sucks and he does not get due compensation for the business he brings to the company
well sir, I earn a 7 digit salary (INR), so I am not complaining and if you do have a solid business plan, then do explain it to me… but then you will realize that all he wants to do is touch your emotional chords.. he has nothing substantial to explain.
3) He will keep on saying, if you enroll in members, that you will get a commission from the business they bring….
Well sounds exciting, but what is the business? how do you guys make money… all you will get is silence.
4) Then he will draw complicated diagrams explaining how you will earn money etc.
Here you will realize that none of it revolves any logical business. I agree you were a fool to enroll in the first place, but that does not mean that the world has an endless supply of fools to rob from? After all the fool and his money soon part, so my probability of finding one in time is really bleak.
5) Then he will go on and explain how big the company is, how much is its revenue etc.
Good, so the company has already cornered the entire business space… now how will I find room for expanding.
All they are selling is the idea to get rich without putting in efforts. Well there is nothing like a free lunch.
If you know one, then please let me know.
