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I got tricked into a pyramid scheme meeting...

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I've been hit up for a pyramid type business once. I was buying a present for my daughter and this guy started chatting with me about finding a toy for his daughter as well. After we talk for a few he asks what I do for a living and I tell him I'm in IT. He then gets really excited and tells me about this company he is starting up that's looking for solid IT people. So we schedule a phone meeting with him and a coworker of his.

The phone meeting starts and he asks me to grab a pen and paper, so I'm thinking "cool, he wants me to take notes, this is going to be good". He then asks me to draw a guy going into the store with no money but then coming out of the store with money. I cut him off halfway through and told him I wasn't interested. I have no idea where he was going with that picture but it had nothing to do with an IT position.
 
oxidax said:
XS you say. I thought you were talking about Amway.
Yea its good u walked away.

I got into the Amway thing last year but already quit. The seminars and "meetings" are always super freaky and they all act like they've been brainwashed or something. Really weird.
I made about $1000 selling XS energy drinks to gyms and athletes i know, but my schedule got tight so i had to let it go. I know people that are successful because of Amway and pyramid things like these. A friend of mine bought a mansion in East Islip, Long Island NY. A Mansion and a maserati for him and one for his wife. I don't know how they do it but he did it and his wife's father got out of a US$400k debt and has even more money than my buddy.

But still even knowing that it works, i wouldn't go back into it.
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I think people forget how a pyramid scheme works, those at the top do indeed make money, it's just that the vast majority will be guaranteed to lose money and effectively give it to those at the top.
 
yup, I have been suckered twice.

same old power point bull shit...lawyer. doctor and truck driver quit their job and now millionaires. people who work 9to5 are stupid etc etc. Then at the end they ask you to pay them, but they promise you riches later on.

Primerica and World financial group hahaha
 
I was mislead by a friend like OP. The sad part was that my buddy had no idea it was a scam.

I had to break his heart and tell him it was a scheme.

On the plus side I win 20 bucks from the lottery tickets they were passing out.
 
Reminds of when I was in a college and a guy in our dorm invited all us guys to a "meeting"...with free pizza! We were stupid college kids and free pizza was too good to pass up.

Turns out he was trying to get us to sign up and sell Amway crap. IN COLLEGE. Needless to say that dude wasn't very popular with anyone for pretty much the rest of college.
 
Had a friend get suckered in twice. Once for Cutco (which did actually have good cutlery although a ripoff) and another was a scheme in which you sell prints of famous works of art. I think he has now learned not to repeat that same mistake.
 
Aesthet1c said:
I've been hit up for a pyramid type business once. I was buying a present for my daughter and this guy started chatting with me about finding a toy for his daughter as well. After we talk for a few he asks what I do for a living and I tell him I'm in IT. He then gets really excited and tells me about this company he is starting up that's looking for solid IT people. So we schedule a phone meeting with him and a coworker of his.

The phone meeting starts and he asks me to grab a pen and paper, so I'm thinking "cool, he wants me to take notes, this is going to be good". He then asks me to draw a guy going into the store with no money but then coming out of the store with money. I cut him off halfway through and told him I wasn't interested. I have no idea where he was going with that picture but it had nothing to do with an IT position.
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Armed robbery? :lol
 
My mom was trying to get into Amway a few years ago. I went to some meetings, and it just seemed like a great way for someone to do a lot of work to get other people to buy overpriced goods, while some someone else "mentored" them and a third party made boatloads of cash.

I will say though, they sell a vitamin regime that is fantastic. I took them for a while, and my fingernails were never stronger, and my hair never more silky and shiny.
 
I loved the line in the OP "We are in top positions in the company and make enough to be financially independent."

I wouldn't want to know what the low level positions pay like!
 
andycapps said:
The people that I encountered at Primerica that were driving Mercedes and such were generally at the top of the pyramid where they didn't actually do anything, and they wrote off the Mercedes as a business expense. What I encountered is that like the other pyramid schemes, if you're at the bottom of the pyramid, you have to put in a lot of work for a little bit of the pie, while people above you are getting more of the pie than you, and the people above them are getting even more, etc. So you're doing all the work, and they're getting all the money. To get more of the money, you have to get people under you doing work for you. And so on.

These things tend to encourage you to hassle your family and friends because they don't want to shell out money for proper sales leads. So people end up alienating their friends by hassling them until they feel sorry for you and meet with you or sign up for a crappy product.
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poppabk said:
I think people forget how a pyramid scheme works, those at the top do indeed make money, it's just that the vast majority will be guaranteed to lose money and effectively give it to those at the top.
Click to expand...

Yea i know and it makes sense. What i mean is that i don't know how those people stay in it for so many years before actually getting any money. I think i lost like 10 friends because of the hassle and the annoyance of me calling them up and inviting them over and texting them all the time for showcases and stuff.
You have to have a lot of patience and dedication to stay in the business knowing that you probably wont see any significant amount of money for at least 4 or 5 years. I see that at the end it pays off, but some people have problems that need to be solved today and can't afford to be going around recruiting "potential business partners".
 
oxidax said:
Yea i know and it makes sense. What i mean is that i don't know how those people stay in it for so many years before actually getting any money. I think i lost like 10 friends because of the hassle and the annoyance of me calling them up and inviting them over and texting them all the time for showcases and stuff.
You have to have a lot of patience and dedication to stay in the business knowing that you probably wont see any significant amount of money for at least 4 or 5 years. I see that at the end it pays off, but some people have problems that need to be solved today and can't afford to be going around recruiting "potential business partners".
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It undoubtedly takes a special kind of person that can burn all their friendships and make money for others for years before making anything substantial for themselves. Yeah, if you work at it for years and screw over a bunch of people to get to the top of the pyramid, no doubt, you can make a lot of money.
 
Aesthet1c said:
I've been hit up for a pyramid type business once. I was buying a present for my daughter and this guy started chatting with me about finding a toy for his daughter as well. After we talk for a few he asks what I do for a living and I tell him I'm in IT. He then gets really excited and tells me about this company he is starting up that's looking for solid IT people. So we schedule a phone meeting with him and a coworker of his.

The phone meeting starts and he asks me to grab a pen and paper, so I'm thinking "cool, he wants me to take notes, this is going to be good". He then asks me to draw a guy going into the store with no money but then coming out of the store with money. I cut him off halfway through and told him I wasn't interested. I have no idea where he was going with that picture but it had nothing to do with an IT position.
Click to expand...

I probably would have ridden that crazy train a little longer to see where it was headed.
 
oxidax said:
Yea i know and it makes sense. What i mean is that i don't know how those people stay in it for so many years before actually getting any money.
Click to expand...

Once people put money into something, they feel they've made a commitment and can't back out until they at least make a return on it. Combine that with seminars where other people look like they are having success with it, implanting an idea that "other people have made it, so should I", it's not too different from the tactics used by casinos.
 
I grew up with parents in Amway through highschool and college. My dad worked pretty hard at it for a few years and passed the person above him who signed him up, so I guess it's not a traditional pyramid in that sense. He has dropped off from it a bit, but he still makes a decent amount from it every month. Certainly not the amount like some of the millionaires he hangs around with make.

I was never pressured into it, and his larger group never used shady tactics to get people to go to meetings. They were all pretty transparent and up front about it.

Some of their exclusive products are pretty great though.
 
that's funny, i just rewatched the bullshit episode of pyramid schemes the other day. they had mary kay, amway, and some sex toy company in it.
 
Ummm that's not a pyramid scheme. That's a legitimate way to make lots of money (and not to mention, all your dreams come true). I mean, I guess it's fine if you don't want a Bentley, but whatevs, more for me.

Hey, have you ever seen a knife cut through a shoe?
 
These guys are entrepreneurs who exemplify the concept of "servant leadership," and you all should be ashamed of making fun of them.
 
RyanardoDaVinci said:
Heh, my friend took me to an ACN seminar when we were in highschool. We went with his cousin and friends that already worked for them. Met the top earner on the west coast or something, he was a 30-ish, flip-flop wearing surfer dude.

They had a thing going where two sides of the company were competing against each other; one the Empire, and one the Rebellion -- complete with ripped off Star Wars logos/labels. I got some free Empire pins, cufflinks, and banners; we ate at Tony Roma's; I saw a hot naked chick get out of the shower; my friend bought fat-chick porn for some reason, and that was that.
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I need to go to one of these ACN seminars just for the experience. The whole thing reeks of desperation but it seems good for a laugh.
 
I fucking hate these, never got involved in them, but my father has a TON of times.

Still is I believe, he does some shit called TelexFREE (he's been trying to get me to do this forever). I wish these things were shut down on site, blatant feeding on the desperate.
 
FeenieVonKarma said:
Dunno if anyone mentioned it, but there was a Penn & Teller Bullshit episode about pyramid schemes. One of them was "Mancave" or some shit.

Whilst you are for most of the episode laughing at how stupid the schemes sound, at the end you end up feeling really bad. Because a couple of the guys are genuinely really earnest about what they're doing. It's because these fuckers always tell you "you can earn as much as you want depending how hard you work", and being out of work young guys, they believed it and tried their best, and ended up in a hole. I felt really bad for them. It is still an interesting insight to it though.
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Yeah I saw that episode as well and it's so true. I was laughing so hard at it and yet I felt so bad for these people getting suckered and trying to exploit their friends and family.

Amazing how in this day and age so many people don't know what a pyramid scheme is and how it works.
 
Sucks. Tell your friend he's falling for some bullshit.

In college my buddy got roped into Quixtar (aka Amway) and these three boners came over to our apartment once to give him the spiel. They convinced me to leave a balling session of Battlefield 2 to listen and right from the get-go it was complete non-sense. They started off by asking who "the richest company in the world" was, which at the time was Walmart, so I answered, and then one of the guys proceeded to say "And do you know how the Walmarts made their money?"

Then it was a story about how a military couple they knew who were like 27 and 28 just retired and moved to the same neighborhood as some famous NASCAR driver because of their success with this crap.

They kept blabbering about luxury items and throwing out brand names and, to me, it was so transparent and laughable that they thought it would work. Then again, it did work on my friend.
He ended up doing it for a while and, of course, made pretty much nothing for a bunch of work.

The guys came around a second time to give him some material or something and I was taking a nap and overheard the guy say, "So, your friend doesn't like to make money I guess?" in a douchy voice. I just kind of laughed to myself and went back to sleep. I have a feeling none of those guys ended up living in a NASCAR driver's neighborhood.
 
Reminds me of something my mom got wrapped up in a couple of years back. She bought the products but never did anything with them. Still have a bag filled with glittery make-up lying around.

Then a few months ago, one of my high-school classmates tried to talk me into getting involved with something called Organo Gold. Told him I thought it sounded like a pyramid scheme but he insisted that it was not. "You just need to know a lot of people" and "My family is already in on it." I finally said that I'd hear him out and watched a video on their website. Then I ignored him and he eventually gave up.
 
Almost got suckered into Cutco myself. At the time I was going to school and wasn't working, so I was pretty desperate for something. Went to the presentation and although I did think it sounded too good to be true, I was just thinking that I needed some work, so I was ok with it. Thank goodness I realized how stupid it was as soon as I got home, before I committed to anything.
 
Well, too bad you're not a billionaire hedge fund manager- then you could take a huge short position and try and sink the company...
 
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