MLM.com

Thursday Oct 7, 2010

Neil Davidson

Thursday Oct 7, 2010

The British are rubbish at MLM, yet they could be about to revolutionize the industry.  The only problem is, somebody needs to tell them first...

Some British staples have just never quite caught on in America.  Take tea for example.  Britain drinks a staggering 165 million cups of tea every single day.  That's an average of almost 3 cups of tea  per person per day for every single person living in the U.K.  Tea, in every respect, is a true icon of Britishness. Yet, in America, tea is often still seen as an object of scorn.  In December 1773, the famous Boston Tea Party saw American colonists board three British tea-carrying ships and destroy the cargo by throwing it into the harbor as a protest against taxation imposed by the British Tea Act.  Drinking tea in America has been stigmatized by its association with these taxes ever since, and those who drank it were seen as traitors. Unsurprisingly then, the quintessential British drink has never caught on “over the pond” in the same way as it has elsewhere.  The same phenomenon can also be seen in reverse. Things that are huge in America have just never exported that well anywhere else. Look at Adam Sandler, for example.  

But, what about multi-level marketing?  Statistics show that of the 56 million MLM businesses in the world, 13.6 million of them are found in the US – that's nearly 25%.  MLM appeals to the American psyche as a perfect opportunity for the little man to realize the American Dream. The promises of wealth and freedom offered by MLM businesses seem, however, to yield much less appeal outside America.  So why is it that MLM seems to remain predominately the domain of the Americans?  Can MLM ever work in Great Britain?

The British Problem

Maybe it’s the weather, maybe it’s the century-after-century of incessant warfare, or maybe it’s the fact that our soccer teams are always crap–whatever the reason, there is no doubt that Brits are just naturally more pessimistic than Yanks.  In America, wealth is presented as the ultimate marker of a person's success in life.  If you are rich and prosperous, you are successful. If you are not wealthy, you are unsuccessful.  There is a shallowness to American parameters of success that is both inspiring and saddening in equal measure.  In Britain, however, we have a strange aversion to success. As soon as someone becomes rich and successful, us Brits take great delight in seeing him falling back down to earth with an almighty bang.  In America, if a poor man from the Bronx becomes successful overnight, he is hailed as the epitome of the American Dream and an example of everything that is good about America.  In Britain, we'd probably just think he was an arrogant ass.

And, it is predominantly for this reason that MLM is so popular in America and so unpopular in Great Britain.  MLM sells on promises of rapid success and wealth, and we Brits, in our perversity, just aren't attracted by that.  Britain is enslaved by a culture of reverse snobbery–the desire to seem poorer and more common than you actually are in order to be considered “one of the people.”  Rich people are detested in Britain. I met a man once who was on his way to Buckingham Palace to demand that the queen give him back the 62 pence (95 cents) of his taxes every year which went towards her upkeep.  I never heard how he got on...

Even our Prime Minister, David Cameron, spends most of his life trying to convince the British public that he is not as rich and snobby as his private Eton education and his whiny, self-indulgent voice would have you believe.  This has led to him being savagely satirized by the ruthless British media.  

You see, in Britain we love a “trier” (one who keeps attempting something despite failure)–just as long as he never threatens to do better than us in any way. The underdog is great, provided he never bites.  As soon as anyone appears to be moving up the social ladder, all of a sudden he is a big-headed, arrogant sell-out who is not only going to make our caravan holiday to Scotland in the summer look slightly inadequate, but will more than likely steal your car parking space and sleep with your wife before the year is out.   

So, who is right, anyway?  Is our dogged British cynicism preventing us from seeing the real and pertinent opportunities MLM businesses could offer us?  Or, are we simply showing our experience as a nation and avoiding the pitfalls of a scam that our younger, more naïve cousins in America are falling for– hook, line, and sinker? Are Americans being suckered into these schemes–no questions asked–on the promises of getting rich quick, and being bled dry of all their hard earned money, while we British sit at home sipping a mug of tea, saying, “I told you so?”

The things is, in Britain hard work is seen as an essential ingredient of wealth.  So, getting rich quick is not an incentive, it’s considered a bad thing, because if you get rich quick without actually doing very much, then everybody will hate you.  In Britain, we don't want to get rich quick. We want to get rich slowly and painfully so that one day Robert Carlyle might portray our agonizing struggle through life in a cheesy, low-budget, British movie.

So, can MLM ever thrive in such a cynical and pessimistic society?  Can the promises of wealth and freedom ever create a buzz in Britain similar to that in America?  Can companies like ACN or Herbalife ever crack the British market in the way that they have done in the U.S.?  

The answer, of course, is yes.  And in doing so, the world of MLM may benefit exponentially.  

Shunning MLM Propaganda

If MLM companies start pitching their businesses to a British audience, stressing the advantages of hard work, endeavor, as well as training and investment, the message might just begin to seep across the Atlantic and into the American mindset.  You see, the way that MLM is pitched to the American audience is a major contributing factor to the failure of most new MLM businesses.  MLM is not a “get rich quick” scheme.  If you go into it believing that, you are doomed to fail.  So, by shunning the MLM propaganda, us Brits might just inadvertently show the Americans the way to go.  Work hard, apply yourself correctly, invest appropriately, and do your homework, and your MLM business will have far more chance of succeeding than if you believe that money is just going to start popping out of your toaster in the morning.

America gave the world Zak Efron, Brad Pitt, and Jennifer Aniston; Britain gave the world Susan Boyle and syphilis.  But behind the glitz and glamour of the American Dream lies the gritty and unattractive truth.  If Zak Efron had a fight with syphilis, syphilis would win.

 Yes, Britain has nailed the secret to succeeding in MLM. It just doesn't know it yet!