People Are More Likely to Fail Than Succeed
A comment from a gentleman who believes that people are more likely to fail than succeed at anything they do. What an outlook on life! Why do anything at all in life? What a sad life you are going to have if you’re most likely going to fail at everything!
Every negative you described appears in every sales opportunity on the planet. There will always be things out of your control. What is in your control is your attitude and response to these negatives. Your work ethic is in your control.
If your dumb enough to buy your way into a sales goal to achieve recognition, you will not succeed. That is bad business. If you open a McDonalds and buy 1000 big Macs to hit your sales goal, you’re a terrible business owner and a hollow shell of a person who believes that is success. And you will never succeed.
What you describe is not exclusive to MK. People are more likely to fail than succeed at anything they do, and we as sales people are entitled to nothing we don’t create for ourselves. The problem isn’t MK or MLM, it’s the people in them that blindly believe it’s an easy way to make 6 figures or better. They’re naive. And shame on the recruiters who aren’t straight with their distributors, hut again this isn’t exclusive to MK or even MLM.
As an insurance broker I talk to agents daily who blindly believe they are guaranteed to make 100k in passive incone just because someone else did. Only 10% of agents make that type of money or better. The other 90% are hardly ekibg out a living. But let’s blame the insurance company or better yet the insurance industry as a whole instead of taking responsibility for our poor business savvy, naivety and weak work ethic.
I challenge you to show me one business opportunity where 51% or more of the people succeed long term making an above average income. And back it up with facts. You cannot do it. 70% of businesses fail within 10 years. If you can prove me wrong, I will quit my job and sign up under you, then pass your lazy ass.
Visit the
“If your dumb…”
‘Nuff said. If a native speaker is going to make such a dumb (and ironic, and easily correctable) error while criticizing the intelligence of others, I’m pointing it out.
“If you open a McDonalds and buy 1000 big Macs to hit your sales goal, you’re a terrible business owner and a hollow shell of a person who believes that is success. And you will never succeed.”
If you knew anything about the franchise model, you’d know that they have realistic sales projections based on actual market research. You need an actual business plan. They’re selling a product people actually want. They make sure not to put too many of the same business (their own, or a competitor) too close together because that’s detrimental to everyone. My local McDonald’s has a drive-through line around the building at peak times while the MK huns can barely give their products away.
“As an insurance broker I talk to agents daily who blindly believe they are guaranteed to make 100k in passive incone just because someone else did. Only 10% of agents make that type of money or better. The other 90% are hardly ekibg out a living.”
And the lightbulb goes on. Who wants to bet that Mr. Grumpenfuss here is with Primerica or World Financial Group or some other insurance MLM? Passive income = commissions, the outrageous income claims, the inordinate number of people barely making any money at all. Try working for Allstate or some other REAL insurance company. Not being MLM, they actually pay their employees actual money, and people actually want to do business with them.
“But let’s blame the insurance company or better yet the insurance industry as a whole instead of taking responsibility for our poor business savvy, naivety and weak work ethic.”
Whatever helps you feel smugly superior to everyone else in the world, brochacho.
“I challenge you to show me one business opportunity where 51% or more of the people succeed long term making an above average income. And back it up with facts. You cannot do it. 70% of businesses fail within 10 years. If you can prove me wrong, I will quit my job and sign up under you, then pass your lazy ass.”
As if. Whatever facts we provide, no matter how well researched, you’ll just keep moving the goalposts as to what you meant and what’s acceptable to you. The old saying about wrestling with pigs comes to mind.
And I don’t think anyone here will mind me saying that none of us want you anywhere near our lazy asses.
Jerk.
“Try working for Allstate or some other REAL insurance company. Not being MLM, they actually pay their employees actual money, and people actually want to do business with them.”
ASK ME!!! I now work for an competitor to Allstate… But I started my insurance career working for a very small independent Agency in my small farming town. I was and am paid a real paycheck, on actual pay dates, I make bonuses by basically just doing the daily work requests that call or come into the door, I do occasionally make commission but I am not that motivated by money, so my regular paychecks don’t vary by hundreds of dollars every payday…. I work for a franchise and across the street there’s another well known insurance franchise, an independent agency, and 3 blocks down is another agent that is a franchise if the same company I work for… Every single one of these offices have been in these locations for the past 30+ yrs. And I promise you the lead agents to every single one work night and day and the thought of passive income is laughable …… I manage the calendar for the lead agent and he will meet with people from 7AM thru 8PM any day I clean the office and sometimes have to schedule that around him meeting people. As for the competition that surrounds us, well, we even refer customers to each other.
“I challenge you to show me one business opportunity where 51% or more of the people succeed long term making an above average income.”
Franchises…particularly the one you mention: McDonalds. Of all the McD franchises I’ve come accross, I have not seen a single one that has gone out of business. Starbucks, Subway, same. Some fail, of course, but nowhere near 50%.
And since Mary Kay is not a “business opportunity” (proof: you can’t sell your “business”, because it is not a business), let’s compare your alleged “opportunity” to regular jobs. Research shows 99.6% of MLM participants lose money. With the exception of 100% commission jobs, every regular job provides guaranteed positive income. No one loses money. Which is the better “opportunity”?
The folks who work for me are highly skilled, and have no aspirations to “pass me up”. But if they did, I’d do everything in my power to help them achieve their goals.
Unlike MLM, where everyone is doing the exact same job (with 99.6% losing money doing it), folks who work for me have unique skills for unique job descriptions, and they are very well paid because those skills are in high demand. No one is losing money under me. To contrast, in every MLM, no matter where on the pyramid you choose to look, the downline under every individual is losing money as a whole. This cannot be avoided.
You will never see a job recruiter calling folks in one MLM to work for another MLM (except maybe for the salaried folks at corporate).
Sorry OP, but you’ve been had. You are the customer of a large multinational corporation who has fooled you onto believing you are a business owner. They lied to you.
“Of all the McD franchises I’ve come across, I have not seen a single one that has gone out of business”
Years ago, McD opened in the small city where I grew up. It was in the center of “downtown”, and no drive-thru was possible. I guess they were relying on weekday workers and the local college for business. But downtown was dead evenings and week-ends. McD became a hangout for homeless, causing even week-day customers to avoid. It closed within two years.
I know the exact one you mean, e. I spent a lot of money there (when I worked at that store you can probably guess the name of!) and I was upset when it closed, but man there were some… interesting characters in there. The building is now a very nice restaurant that seems to do pretty well, but parking downtown still sucks so I’ve never been there.
That certainly happens, but not at a rate of 50%. I can name all the McD franchises in my area, all of which have been around for over 10 years. Meanwhile I can’t point to a single McD in my geography that has gone under. Do they fail? Of course. But OP is implying that MLM has similar success rates to all other business opportunities, which is an outright lie.
Mature franchises are one of the lowest risk business opportunities out there, since the “model” has already been proven. If you manage your franchise poorly, you risk losing money. But the best practices are well documented, and a new franchise owner has plenty of resources to draw on to be successful. Since the franchisees have territorial protection, they are not competing directly, which makes it more likely to find a fellow franchisee to help you if you find yourself struggling.
The successful in MLM depend on failures in their own down-line. Every MLM down-line since the beginning of time has lost money as a whole. This is the nature of pay-to-play endless-chain recruiting schemes. A McD franchise, on the other hand, can be successful for everyone involved, from the owner on down, with no requirement for any of the employees losing money. That’s quite a contrast.
The one McD failure you mention is unfortunate, but it is far from the norm for McDs. The norm for MLM is down-line losses proportional to the successes of those at the top.
“it is far from the norm for McDs.”
For sure! I thought this one would be a goldmine.
They always had coupons for free small coffee, and there was one day a week where they had like 30 cent (something ridiculously cheap like that) cheeseburgers, so the place would fill up with… interesting people buying a cheapo cheeseburger and free cup of coffee and helping themselves to refills for hours. If you went in at lunchtime there was nowhere to sit.
Once I was there when the cashier told some mean old lady her coupon was expired, and the mean old lady whipped out a new one and said, “here, choke on it.”
Not really the kind of customer base you want.
“…a hollow shell of a person”
Now, we’re not just lazy and stupid but without souls too?
This post is filled with non sequiturs. The insurance field (and most other legit fields) are not blamed for failures because the agent has a decent chance of success. MLM’s have less than a 1% chance of success, which is something wrong with the field, not the person.
But all that aside, thank GOD someone explained to me that life is often difficult. Here I’ve been for nearly 50 years, thinking life was, and should be, so darn easy.
“If you open a McDonalds and buy 1000 big Macs to hit your sales goal, you’re a terrible business owner and a hollow shell of a person who believes that is success. And you will never succeed.”—
Let’s back up for a second:
What kind of company considers someone who BUYS those thousand Big Macs as literally hitting their sales goals? Not only that, the company celebrates them and gives out prizes even though they may have never made a single sale.
And what kind of company encourages you to recruit your own customers to open up the same restaurant across the street? And preferably on every single corner in the neighborhood. Huh?
This moron doesn’t understand the MLM system, especially Mary Kay.
Every negative you described appears in every sales opportunity on the planet. There will always be things out of your control. What is in your control is your attitude and response to these negatives. Your work ethic is in your control.
Every negative is a sales opportunity?? I don’t think it always works that way. And yes, your personal attitude and work ethic count for a lot in sales. Especially when it is commission based.
If your dumb enough to buy your way into a sales goal to achieve recognition, you will not succeed. That is bad business. If you open a McDonalds and buy 1000 big Macs to hit your sales goal, you’re a terrible business owner and a hollow shell of a person who believes that is success. And you will never succeed.
I don’t need to buy 1000 Big Macs to succeed, I need to sell them. I’m not the end customer. Also, I would not be needing my friends and family to also purchase a McDonald’s franchise from me thus diluting my sales further.
If I want to buy a McDonald’s franchise, I have to prove I have the finances to make it succeed and also a large enough customer base in my designated hinterland to provide me with the necessary turn-over I need.
What you describe is not exclusive to MK. People are more likely to fail than succeed at anything they do, and we as sales people are entitled to nothing we don’t create for ourselves. The problem isn’t MK or MLM, it’s the people in them that blindly believe it’s an easy way to make 6 figures or better. They’re naive. And shame on the recruiters who aren’t straight with their distributors, hut (sic) again this isn’t exclusive to MK or even MLM.
Mary Kay Wagner Rogers Eckman Weaver Louis Miller Hallenbeck Ash’s company has spent 60 years honing the “executive pay for part-time work” mantra. And yes, far too many people do believe it. Is it naivety? Probably, but it is a well-crafted , pretty pink illusion.
As an insurance broker I talk to agents daily who blindly believe they are guaranteed to make 100k in passive incone (sic) just because someone else did. Only 10% of agents make that type of money or better. The other 90% are hardly ekibg (sic) out a living. But let’s blame the insurance company or better yet the insurance industry as a whole instead of taking responsibility for our poor business savvy, naivety and weak work ethic.
I’m just wondering if this guy’s in Primerica.
I challenge you to show me one business opportunity where 51% or more of the people succeed long term making an above average income. And back it up with facts. You cannot do it. 70% of businesses fail within 10 years. If you can prove me wrong, I will quit my job and sign up under you, then pass your lazy ass.
I don’t recall any-one saying that. Indeed, watching “Kitchen Nightmares” shows that even some-one as talented and as business-savvy as Gordon Ramsey can’t help people succeed. Often there are outside events such as the landlord raising the rent but often, people just fall back into their old patterns of behaviour.
This guy certainly talks a big game.
“As an insurance broker”
So…Primerica?
His lack of proofreading is concerning in a profession that requires contracts and paperwork to be mistake-free. I would not trust him to handle any of my insurance needs.
“If your [sic] dumb enough to buy your way into a sales goal to achieve recognition, you will not succeed.”
Hey, I agree with you that buying more than you can sell to gain recognition is folly. But why does Mary Kay offer recognition to those who buy inventory, rather than for selling products? You’re calling it a “sales goal,” and so does Mary Kay. But you and I both know sales doesn’t enter into it. All recognition is based on purchases by the consultants. They never have to sell any of it.
I say Mary Kay is playing dirty, offering trinkets based on how much consultants are willing to spend, rather than what they manage to sell. Mary Kay equates inventory purchases with business success (ever hear of “success level”?), which is the opposite of sound business practice. All the contributors on this site say the same thing: our beef is with Mary Kay’s scam business model and with those who tout it.
You want to blame victims for following bad advice, instead of the greedy corporation (and its minions) that misled them. Shame on you.
Ahh…. Fridays. *uncorks wine bottle*