My wife's 'business' is costing us thousands. Her 'business' is costing us way more than any of my hobbies.

So if your wife comes to you and says any of the following:

"the initial investment will be paid off in three months!"
"there is huge opportunity for growth"
"it's the fastest growing business in America!"
"it's for women, by women"
"I'll own my own business!"

It's all bullshit.

You're gonna put in 50 hours a week to pay fucking Lularoe for shit you don't want and can't sell. Then you're gonna be stuck with it trying to sell it at loss just to keep the shit from piling up in boxes. If you do sell it, you'll just have to buy more mystery shit you probably won't sell.

You don't own shit. They own you. God I wish I had put my foot down and said "no".

A couple years ago, over my objections, my wife got into selling Doterra essential oils. Like Lularoe, it's a pyramid scheme/multi-level marketing.

So far, she's been able to keep a handle on it, it hasn't taken over her life or cost us an arm and a leg, and she doesn't have the house overflowing with unused products. (Yet.) But I'm constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop.

quote:

Originally posted by fwbulldog:
God I wish I had put my foot down and said "no".

But then would your wife had been mad at you? Is it worth the lost money to let her find out for herself that it was a bad idea rather than blaming you for not letting her try it?

As far as the product, I find their leggings super comfortable but also overpriced. The local thrift store sometimes has a bunch of them in new condition, so I suspect that periodically someone who is getting out of the business is sick of trying and just donates the leftovers. Cool, I now pay $4 instead of $25.

I do recall a member here whose wife has had success with the business, FWIW. I think a lot of it probably depends on your connections.

quote:

Originally posted by brecaidra:

quote:

Originally posted by fwbulldog:
God I wish I had put my foot down and said "no".

But then would your wife had been mad at you? Is it worth the lost money to let her find out for herself that it was a bad idea rather than blaming you for not letting her try it?

As far as the product, I find their leggings super comfortable but also overpriced. The local thrift store sometimes has a bunch of them in new condition, so I suspect that periodically someone who is getting out of the business is sick of trying and just donates the leftovers. Cool, I now pay $4 instead of $25.

I do recall a member here whose wife has had success with the business, FWIW. I think a lot of it probably depends on your connections.

Oh, it was a big fight at the time. She cried, and accused me of not believing in her. "you just don't think I can do this!!"

Um, no I think it's a scam and a shit business model. And now do you think I take pleasure in thinking "told you so" every damn day? No.

She's worked super hard to prove me wrong, and just gotten deeper into debt with Lularoe (which is EXACTLY what that shit's designed to do). It's not an accident. It's not like this is rocket science.

Look at ANY multilevel marketing business. A few people have to have success early, and if you just work hard enough, buy a little more, invest just a little more...... you can do it, just stick with it...... <sarcasm>It can't be the product, right, I mean there are people doing a hundred thousand dollars a month in revenue</sarcasm>

Was it worth it for her to spend two years of her life, THOUSANDS of dollars wasted, just to prove me right? Nope. But either she's pissed at me because won't let her do it, or pissed at me because I was right.

Either way, fuck Lularoe.

Let us know when she liquidates her inventory.

Sorry for that the School of Hard Knocks in circling your neighborhood.

quote:

Originally posted by brecaidra:
I do recall a member here whose wife has had success with the business, FWIW. I think a lot of it probably depends on your connections.

Might've been me.

We did a bit over 2 years with LLR with some good success, we got out just before they stopped buying back your inventory.

When we started there were just over 1,000 'consultants' in the company. When we got out, it was something like 80k.

A lot of the culture changed in that time & it became more & more about business, and less & less about being able to be self-employed & have time for your family.

Ouch. I was in a similar situation with the wife's hobby turned side business. It was just for fun but it started to take a toll on her. It got to a point that it was going to cost thousands to protect making hundreds. Full time scaled up might have been worth it but as a side hobby it made no sense to sink the money into it. I knew the answer was to walk away but I made sure she heard the costs of continuing from a well versed friend of ours from college. There's no win in it for you.

Can money be made? Sure.

Do you have to turn your entire life into a sales pitch, where your family / friends / coworkers start to loath you and every interaction? Yes.

My brother and his wife got into something similar - ever call / text / email / post turned into selling their shit. I finally said "Never mention it again, ever". They asked why aren't you interested in making money??? We gave them the complete silent treatment for about 6 months and they got the picture. They never made any significant money but burned a lot of bridges.

The wife watches a friend of hers on facebook sell her soul, pitch her families life with "IT WORKS", another MLM scam which is well crafted pitches day in, and day out. It's amusing to see her talking about making connections at Chic-Fil-a and other random places, saying that she has made loads of money and paid off their house but they are still doing it to GET THE WORD OUT and HELP EVERYONE ELSE... Yeah, right...

My wife just became an Arbonne consultant. Nice part is no need to buy any inventory.
Her consultant fee saves us money as she was already buying stuff anyway. They actually have some really good stuff.
I am a big fan of their charcoal soap. Beats Dr. Squatch that I had been using.

It’s basically another MLM scheme.

I can’t tell you how many poor women I see on FB trying to unload all that crap they are stuck with.

quote:

Originally posted by Black92LX:
My wife just became an Arbonne consultant. Nice part is no need to buy any inventory.
Her consultant fee saves us money as she was already buying stuff anyway. They actually have some really good stuff.

That's basically how my wife handles her Doterra stuff. She places orders for a few friends and family, and has a few other folks working "under" her. That small amount of work is enough to cover the cost of the products that she would be buying anyway, plus a few bucks profit each month.

So it can work, kind of, in a minority of cases. Doesn't mean they're not still a scam, since most folks will end up getting screwed.

I saw something from one of those MLM scams where the top 1% of earners were only taking home something like $38k a year. And that's the people that are selling this shit more than full time.

I have a friend who did REALLY well with Amway.

She's an outlier. The people who do well in MLMs are few and far between.

It's a scam.

fwbulldog, sorry; that must be super frustrating. I'm sure you wife had high hopes and is disappointed that it isn't working out.

Right now in our office is a stack of around 8 Lowe's moving boxes full of $4k or so worth of LLR stuff. I resisted for months getting in but she finally wore me down. I figured if other people were buying it at half the rate she was it would be easy to sell. Since she works full time I knew we'd never get rich off it but if it could make a few hundred or even 1k a month in profit that would be nice.

Needless to say it didn't quite work out that way. She did the online store, went to a few "pop ups" and what not, plus selling to family and friends who saw stuff she wore. But the only way to truly make any money is to have a seriously large network of customers, and recruiting other consultants was naturally a big part of the pie.

There's at least one class action suit over the company not buying back unsold inventory anymore with no explanation. Who knows how that will pan out. She contacted a liquidation agency that buys everything and sells it to thrift stores and what not. They got so overwhelmed they stopped taking new stuff so here we sit. I'll be happy to get 2k out of what we have left, we both just want it gone yesterday. I did use it to claim a loss on our 2017 taxes, so with that, the meager profit she was able to make, and hopefully getting rid of what's left we might break even at best but at least it won't be a total loss. Lesson learned, the hard way as usual.

I had a "friend" try to suck me into Herbalife quite a few years back. The way they tried to get you hooked was give you a bunch of free product and sell you other product heavily discounted.

As soon as the "free ride" was over it took me all of about two New York heartbeats to see where things were headed and bail.

Multi-level marketing (MLM) are just glorified Ponzi schemes, pure and simple.

When I was in HS, my best friends Mom was neck deep in Shaklee.

Went through this with Tabitha and MaryKay.

Back when I would get on Facebook, all it had turned into was people trying to sell stuff to their “friends”. Some of them were trying to sell multiple products at once. A few I truly am friends with it and hurt a bit to see them trying with virtually zero success.

It can be done, and as mentioned, it comes down to who you know. The wife to an old boss of mine made out very well for a few years in a product before it teetered out. Couple $100k a year, constantly winning lavish vacations and a Mercedes or two along the way. She was a stay at home mom with almost a full time nanny to help along with a maid that came every other day. Needless to say, she had lots of free time. Her circle of friends lived a similar lifestyle and next thing she knew, she was on top of her own little pyramid making bank.