None of us want to be scammed. We work hard for whatever money we do actually make and we want to be able to enjoy the fruits of our labor. When we hear about a company that uses shady or illegal practices we want to stay as far away from that company as possible. But, sometimes our fear of the unknown prevents us from taking advantage of things that might otherwise actually be good for us.
The other day I was talking about a company that I believe in, one that I am working with. Before joining up I did my homework to see how they compared with other companies in the same field. I checked them out to see if they were honest and dealt fairly with their members. All of the data that I received in return showed that things were on the up and up. There was no bait and switching going on and they delivered on the promises that they made.
There were two other major factors that went into my decision. First, this company ran off of the T-mobile network. I already had T-mobile as my cell service provider. So when I switched my service to their plan, on a technology level nothing was really changing. The only real change was which company got the money for my bill. And secondly, and in my opinion more importantly, this new company provided me the same service I was getting from T-mobile for less than half of what I was paying T-mobile.
These two things alone were enough to finish selling me on the newer company. Then I found out that for each person that I share this great, cheaper cell service provider with, I can get a break on my monthly bill, reducing and eventually eliminating my cost for cell service altogether. This last part was the icing on the cake. Would I have made the decision to switch my cell service for this one thing alone? No, probably not. But they were already offering the same great service I was used to at an even lower price than I was used to. And then, on top of that, I can eliminate my bill altogether by sharing the awsomeness with others? I'd have to be stupid to turn it down.
So, I was relating all this information to some friends of mine the other day. There were about six of us. One of the guys was pretty much lukewarm on the whole topic until he heard about the incentive to share the service with others. Then he makes some crack like "oh so it's a pyramid scheme"
And that pretty much ended any useful conversation on the benefits of this relatively new company and its ability to help us keep more money in our pockets every month. I don't even think my friend knows what a pyramid scheme actually is.
Here is what many people think a pyramid scheme is. There's a guy at the top. He is the one that starts things out. He invests his time money and energy into getting people under him. Now this guy works his tail off until he has enough people under him, investing their time and energy getting even more people to work under them, until he can relax and enjoy the fruits of their labor. With each level of new people at the bottom there's more and more people investing their time and energy and each lower level gets less and less than the people above them do. The people at the top, especially the guy at the very top, do less and less and get paid more and more.
If that's what you think a pyramid scheme is prepare to be wrong. What I have just finished describing is corporate America. It is the way our country runs. The guy or guys at the top get to party and all the little people get screwed. Remember the other day when I said generalities can make our lives better and they can hurt us? Well, this is an example of them doing the latter. So called normal businesses, network marketing(also called mlm) and pyramid schemes all share similarities, but that doesn't make them the same.
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