Network Marketing, and Me

Well - I started this blog with a lot of specific details about a network marketing program I was active in some five years ago. The company in question is now immersed in legal troubles with several state attorneys general. I think the Federal courts are involved, as well.

My first draft told of my general belief in the value of well-run network marketing companies. I shared my vision that network marketing is a wave of the future. When they get the kinks worked out (and nobody has yet, really), it will be something that is very present in every household. It will become the most efficient way to spread around the wealth of the American economy. But that's another topic . . .

But as I read through it, I realized that I was telling too much. A class-action lawsuit is in process, and the World Wide Web is no place for me to start getting all candid about my experience in the matter.

Here is my position:

* Network Marketing is an excellent model, if it is built around a good product and/or service, if people are valued, and if their talents and passions are honored.
* The company I joined five years ago had what appeared to be an excellent mix of legitimate products.
* My approach was to stress product and develop market presence. We would recruit others once we had too much business for us alone to handle.
* My team grew, rapidly, around that approach.
* I was told by the higher-ups to cease and desist. They basically warned me, that if I continued to talk about product, and not focus on recruiting people, they would make it so I would fail.
* They undermined me to my team. They warned them all, likewise, not to listen to me.
* I got out.
* Now today, five years later, the company is being investigated for operating a Ponzi scheme that, you guessed it, was more focused on recruiting than it was on selling products.

Can you tell that I feel vindicated? I'm not sure where to go from here. But here, on this blog that nobody reads, is my statement that hopefully summarizes my position: where I started, why I did what I did, and why in the end I think I was right and a whole lot of wealthy people were wrong.

If I had been supported in doing it my way . . . it is my firm conviction that the plan would have succeeded. But now we'll never know.