This is how some MLM Wellness companies approach you. “Hi I know we haven’t talked in a while but I want you to watch this video about how you can get healthy and build wealth.”
If you’ve ever rolled your eyes at this pitch sitting on your lock screen, you’re not alone. Since grind culture has seeped into every crevice of our lives, invitations to join “teams,” “crews,” “squads,” and “families” that promise increased energy, passive income, and a cinched waistline have been at an all time high.
How MLM Wellness Companies Fat Shame You Into Joining
These fly by night wellness enterprises all have different names, color palates and catch phrases but they all pretty much have the same business model. If you have a couple dollars and no aversion to repeatedly hounding your family and friends to buy ambiguous “natural” products with an abnormally long shelf life, you too can be rich and thin.
Being pitched to consider shilling these products alone is not particularly offensive to me. I’m all for people shooting their entrepreneurial shots. But having people I barely come into contact with express assumptions about my health in order to convince me to do so is.
As trainer and TrifectaStrong owner Paul Bamba often says, “healthy means different things to different people,” and for me it means making choices about what I put into my body. A $50 bag of mystery power touting 74 ½ ingredients that’s somehow capable of sitting in the unrefrigerated trunk of a dented Honda civic for the length of 38 Judd Apatow movies without going bad isn’t on the list.
MLM Sales Tactics
Yet somehow, when I politely explain to people that their product isn’t for me they feel compelled to argue with me about it. Some have been so bold as to tout the effects of the product on themselves, their friends, family, and even children as bait. “My cousin does it and she lost 27 lbs,” they say or “I gave it to my son and he slimming right on down.” The most irritating of all is, “It will be good for you.” Not one of the people hawking these items is a healthcare professional but they swear they know how their wares will impact me.
When I have replied that I have my own regime of vitamins and supplements approved by my doctors (you know the nice people in the white coats who actually get paid to look after people as opposed to fat shaming them for free), I have had people outright ask me “well how much weight have you lost?”
Not only is this question half past inappropriate, it’s also irrelevant because no matter what answer I gave they’d be ready with a counter to convince me to chip in on their Sprint payment. I thought people were just trying me but after hearing from my good friends Tays House Of Vinyl and Aaliyah D. at The Stop at Central and Halsey. I realized I wasn’t the only one on the receiving end of these hard sales tactics.
Fat Shaming People Aint It
If our collective inboxes are any indicator, desperation has started to outweigh decorum. When did people become so obsessed with purporting to be “CEOs” of businesses they discovered six months ago that they forgot their home training?
Asking people to support your goals is fine on its own but the conversion crosses over into shade, we have an issue. I understand grasping at straws to be able to meet your sales goals but I don’t understand one of those straws being a fat woman who was minding her own business. I shouldn’t have to provide you with bloodwork and an EKG for you to accept a “thanks but no thanks.”
Fat shaming people into joining your MLM ain’t it sis, because no means no, even for fat people.
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