So I have this good friend who is Mormon. Actually, I met her on LDSSingles back in my TBM days and we have stayed in touch.

Recently she started telling me about a business she was involved in and how much money she was going to make. I said, Oh what business? She answered "Melaleuca." I had never heard of it, but my spidey senses told me this had "MLM" written all over it.

So I looked up there website and I was right!

Why are Mormons so drawn to MLMs?

I checked their headquarters address and it operates out of Idaho (not Utah but close enough.)

Have you heard of this company? Is it a racket?

ps. Oh, and she gave me the age-old line of how the owner is independently wealthy and he doesn't need to be doing this, he only wants to help people BWAAAHHHH LOLOL How gullible can she be?

Same shit as Amway. Stay away fuzzy.

Mormons flock to MLM's on the premise/promise? that they can get rich off the backs of others...and, and this is my own take on Mormon's and Evangelicals....if your scheme goes tit's up and some people outside your particular cult get burned...well, it's OK 'cause they were unworthy to begin with.

Ron Burr

MLMs are rackets. They usually run on fees collected from wanna-be entrepreneurs who sign on. Watch for a start-up kit that you have to purchase. You'll be expected to order a certain amount of product along with other materials each month. They operate much like Mormonism--suckers receive promises and nothing more.

My guess is that many Mormons, especially Mormon women, don't have the education or drive to pursue more traditional careers. Utah is dead last in women who graduate from college and while some women do a great job of making a career without a degree, many Mormon women have a lot of strikes against them. They are busy at church, feel obligated to stay home, usually have more kids than the norm and are working on a significantly lower budget than many two-income families. When someone comes along with an easy way to make money from home in your spare time, it's very tempting to these sort of people. Well, actually you can see how it would be tempting to anyone. Especially since you can usually start with a low cost compared to going back to school and finishing your degree or the startup costs a more traditional business require.

Melaleuca seems to be a green version of Amway. I know people who did Amway and even the smartest, most driven people had problems making much money at it. I suppose there are some success stories but I never heard of anyone who sold Amway who was truly happy about the experience. Melaleuca is probably over-priced and hard to make a career out of but if the products work and you like them, its probably not bad to be a customer.

I was in Melaleuca close to 20 years ago.

It is an MLM.

I have not sold it for years. Just like any other MLM, it is extremely hard to make money with it.

I will say a couple of thier products I still buy to this day. I buy them at the retail price from a person that I know that is in it. They do things for me that I have not found anywhere else.

I don't want to go into the products that I like because I do not want to promote it.

My advice... never do any MLM.

Some of the MLMs have OK products but dealing with the autoship, membership, some type of sales quota....just never ends.


Maybe buy a cleaner if you want to try it out but your friend will be working very hard and get little in return. It's a very small percentage in MLM's that ever really "make it" big and that's because they already had a very large network that they convinced to come over in the first place.

I had a friend trying to sell me on something and although I was impressed with the product, I explained to her that I just don't like MLMs. To convince me she said, "Well, the Church is an MLM." I looked at her open mouthed. I had never thought about it that way. She was right, of course. Farewell, MLMs.

Because, if you really think about it, LDS Corp is a MLM as well. It just takes a more disguised form. As such, Mormons are primed to be suckers for just that sort of thing.

They are building a massive office building just off the freeway in Idaho Falls. It will rival the IF temple in both tackiness and douchbagery

With MLMs, the "distributors" are really the customers. There is some retailing going on, but the main "customers" are the distributors themselves, that is the irony, and nine out of ten don't make any significant money at all, especially when you factor in their time, and many actually lose money, sometimes in the tens of thousands of dollars.

They are sold this fake BizOp and told they are going to make real money with it. MLMs hold "opportunity meetings" or trainings or pep rallies/extravaganzas where up-line "Diamonds" or "Chairman's Club" members(or whatever the particular lingo is for that MLM) get up on stage and give testimonials about how much money they've made, and the cars and mansions they own, the vacations they go on, etc. the face they show to the public is that they are selling product, but at the trainings, almost all the talk is about recruiting.

They start people out purchasing and reselling product, on which supposedly they can earn retail profit. Usually the distributor's discounted products prices are so high, though, that the recruit can't sell very much at the supposed retail "SRP". The distributors are sold the idea that their distributor price is at a "discount", say 75% SRP, but the SRP doesn't necessarily reflect fair market value, it's just a made up number, not necessarily what is competitive in the real marketplace. The MLMs need these large margins on the product, this is the loot that is then divided among the up line as recruitment rewards. That's why the prices are high. Usually they are just commodity products, but they try to tell you their product is The One True Product (of whatever category it is) on the Face Of The Earth. Meanwhile, the recruit is being pushed to buy overpriced and useless training materials to learn the "no fail, proven business method", which is mostly about recruiting. They may be sold "leads", at say, $100 a pop, most of which are dead ends. They are also being pushed to buy tickets to the pep rallies (maybe $70 for example) and there are travel expenses and advertising expenses that come out of the distributor's pocket as well. They are also pressured to buy business website packages, usually a monthly charge, from their up-line, or other "tools" that they are told they need to make a go of the business. The up line makes big money on all these "tools"(and sometimes the MLM corporate umbrella company can profit from "tools" as well) The recruit is at some point told that in order to make the real money, they need to be at a certain level in the company, then they can earn passive advance commissions/royalty income (again, lingo varies) from their downline that they are supposed to be recruiting. In order to be at that level, though, they have to purchase a certain amount of product, to use and sell (good luck with that). Have to USE the product to sell it, is part of the whole culture. This buy in to the passive income level can be for example a few thousand dollars of product. This is sort of the "pyramid" buy in level of the scheme. There are many sides to the fraud, though, and it's not a true pyramid, there is no such thing, but it's pyramid-esque. It is really a lot of mini-pyramids, that constantly collapse (failed distributors quitting, known as the "churn" of distributors at the bottom levels).

Long story short, for nine out of ten people, expenses outstrip any profits, either from retailing or passive commissions. Even people at levels that sound successful, like "Millionaires Team" are not making a living wage at it. Usually it's only the top one percent or so who are making real money at it. You have the rare people who did not get in at the beginning, with the right personality, who might break through to the top. They have to be willing to lie, though, to do it. Joseph Smith would have made it to the top of an MLM, that is the type of personality needed.

Since I can't talk about Mormonism to my Mormon convert son, the MLM story has become my hobby this past year and a half. MLM is a business cult-tactic group, and it is so much like Mormonism. Cults are very predictable and follow the same patterns. If you want to see a parallel universe to Mormonism, sign up for the Seeking Alpha website and read all the posts related to the Herbalife battle (thanks to Pershing Square shining a bright light on MLM via the billion dollar Herbalife short). Unfortunately, it would probably take you a year to catch up, there have been so many articles and long long comment threads there. The Herbalife/MLM defenders/apologists sound pretty much like TBMs/Daniel C. Peterson. Lol.

MLM Herbalife is now being investigated by the FTC, the SEC, the DOJ, and two state Attorneys General. So far, the regulators have been taking MLMs on a case by case basis, but that is futile, it's pretty much a game of whack a mole, with the regulators losing. When they shut one down, another one pops up somewhere else with the same players and a different product. Some are hoping because the Herbalife case is so huge, and has received so much publicity, the regulators might enact some meaningful change that effects the entire industry this time. BTW, Amway, NuSkin, HLF and other MLMs with deep pockets have been buying political influence for decades.

Note Utah is indeed very MLM friendly.

There are variations. Tupperware has distanced itself from MLM, Pampered Chef may be okay...these are both "party plan" direct sales companies, not MLM...Tupperware does actually track retail sales, that is the key...are there significant retail sales to non-members at full SRP?

There's a new book out by a guy that was a top level MLM player. "Downline - an Intolerable Potential to Decieve" author E. Robert Smith. It's not Shakespeare, but it's quite readable, and if you know nothing about MLM, it's kind of like when you read the real story of Joseph Smith for the first time....you can't make this stuff up. I mean, did you know that the Bush appointee as head of the FTC during the early 2000's, Timothy Muris, was an Amway lawyer? And there were no MLM prosecutions during his tenure? Things like that.

If you want to learn more, check out Robert Fitzpatrick's excellent website "Pyramid Scheme Alert". Or check out Ackman's sites. herbalifepyramidscheme.com and factsaboutherbalife.com. Or for a more Utah version, search Jon Taylor/NuSkin, you should find his MLM education site.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/18/2014 11:22PM by 2+2=4.

Smells like puke-a.


Actually, it smells like turpentine.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/18/2014 01:42AM by Mnemonic.

Oh lordy..... my aunt and uncle were always pushing this stuff when I was growing up..... you got a mosquito bite? Melaleuca.... aches? Pains? Melaleuca Melaleuca Melaleuca!

I doubt they made two dimes off it... but I bet they will still bear testimony of it to this day.

It's like that guy with Windex on "My Big Fat Greek Wedding".

My teacher in the MTC was a Melaleuca heir. She always bragged how she would take the private Jet from Provo to Idaho. I knew the Roney's that started Nuskin and the Owner of Tahitian Noni. They all seem to come from Utah or Idaho where it's easy to dupe the mormons. The ones on the top make all the money, everyone else is just selling to themselves.

There is a huge development just south of Idaho Falls on the west side of the highway. My wife pointed it out and said it's the new HQ for Melaluca. Rather fancy construction from what I could see. As we drove past I kept thinking of the parallels with Mormonism. fancy buildings all for show, keep the peons paying and paying.

IN 2008, MRS. MELALEUCA GAVE $100,000 TO HELP PASS PROP 8 IN CALIFORNIA.

MR. MELALEUCA IS ALSO ON RECORD AS AN ANTI-GAY VOICE, AND THEN LATER TRYING TO COVER HIS ILL-ADVISED PR GAFFE.

IMO, these are reasons enough to leave it alone!!

The way to make "easy" money is to set up a business telling people how to make "easy" money. And convincing them that what you tell them works, when it doesn't. The only ones who make money in such businesses are the ones who can convince other people that they know how to make "easy" money, and get them to pay them for that information. That's what ALL MLMs are.

My dear father, after being financially ruined by another Mormon, was looking for ways to generate some cash in his senior years and got into a couple Mormon MLM deals that I warned him away from, Sunrider being one of them. I have a very low BS tolerance and have greatly angered a few Mormons after telling them they were snake oil salesmen. They either believed the bullshit they were promoting or were angered that I'd called their bluff. The HP geezer who was my nemesis for 12 years until I resigned, had cases of Melaleuca stacked in his office and tried unsuccessfully to get me into the scam.

Ron Burr

A very tbm, anti-gay conservative. He may be a billionaire or close to it, made off of Melaleuca, so I guess he is independently wealthy--due to Melaleuca.

The Melaleuca products are great. Its a good buisiness, I have nothing against it.

My husband's TBM friend ordered some Melaleuca products and has been trying for over a year to stop delivery of these products and has had no success. He just keeps receiving them and getting charged for them.

"Let me get this straight. You want me to pay you to sell your products?"

Roadkill...

I drive by the new Melaleuca headquarters building almost every day. It's a castle- like lterally. That thing is so huge and LOOKS like a damned castle.

I personally know people who work for the business- not the MLM side of it but at its headquarters. While I completely disagree with Frank Vandersloot's politics, I hear he treats his employees really well.

But ultimately the company is an MLM... Run by a very VERY TBM.