Individual / Social Impact
Naked Truth: Penn & Teller Nail MLM
07/14/2010 10:16 AM
Since I published the book, False Profits, in 1998, I have been interviewed by scores of journalists, including CBS 60 Minutes, Wall Street Journal, London Times, BBC and many daily newspapers, each inquiring into my research and perspective on muilti-level marketing. Each media inquiry produced the journalists’/editors’ own take on the subject in subsequent news stories, feature articles or radio and television reports.
Yet, it was not a news reporter but a comedy/satire show on Cable TV that got it dead-on right. Aired July 8, 2010, on the Show-Time Network, the show was presented by world famous magicians, satirists and comedians, Penn and Teller, and is provocatively and aptly entitled, Bull_it! The segment on multi-level marketing is also aptly entitled, Easy Money.
The show’s producers taped an interview with me for much of an entire day. Their questions and approach indicated that they fully grasped the sad and disturbing realities of America’s greatest con and that Penn and Teller intended to puncture MLM’ false, manipulated and distorted image. MLM survives only due to the calculated dis-information about income opportunity. If truth were widely known, the MLM “industry” would disappear like the now extinct practice of “alchemy.” Read More...
Yet, it was not a news reporter but a comedy/satire show on Cable TV that got it dead-on right. Aired July 8, 2010, on the Show-Time Network, the show was presented by world famous magicians, satirists and comedians, Penn and Teller, and is provocatively and aptly entitled, Bull_it! The segment on multi-level marketing is also aptly entitled, Easy Money.
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MLM's Version of Glengarry Glen Ross
09/04/2009 12:49 PM
In David Mamet’s classic film, Glengarry Glen Ross, an arrogant and abusive sales manager informs a struggling real estate sales team that there will be a one-week sales contest. The winner gets a Cadillac. The runner up gets a set of steak knives and the rest are fired. The desperate and brow-beaten salesmen are further told that the company has a set of new “golden” leads of sales prospects. However, they won’t get access to any of them during the contest. Those lucrative leads will be enjoyed only by the winners.
This scene in the movie is a close analogy to the situation MLM recruits are placed in. They are given a hopeless challenge, with each one pitted againt the others in a futule quest to build a pyramid “downline.” All are promised leads, tools and big incomes – after they build up their downline. Read More...
This scene in the movie is a close analogy to the situation MLM recruits are placed in. They are given a hopeless challenge, with each one pitted againt the others in a futule quest to build a pyramid “downline.” All are promised leads, tools and big incomes – after they build up their downline. Read More...