A multi-level marketer enters the house.

A couple of days back, I was approached by a guy who is into network marketing. He did not drop the term, of course. He reached out to me via LinkedIn (I was quite surprised given my LinkedIn profile is pretty shoddy) and asked if I was interested in entrepreneurship.

To tell the truth, at first it did not occur to me. I had done odd workshops for students to discuss careers, behaviour and the growing tendency of young professionals to avoid the beaten track. Hence, I thought this guy wants my two paisa along those lines.

I understood about it barely two minutes into the meeting. You may ask why I still entertained him. I like to peek into human minds, especially of heavily influenced people. If you understand the pattern of how they try to persuade others, this helps you in all walks of life.

In that brief session, he mentioned entrepreneurship at least twenty times. Obviously, he was reading out from some material handed over to him by the person who had such a series of Zoom calls where that person was reading out the same handed over to him by another.

He spoke of his mentor, an American multimillionaire, who is looking to train young people into entrepreneurship. He trains a very limited number of people and only those who are passionate about entrepreneurship get to avail themselves of his mentorship.

He did not drop a name, either of the mentor or of the company/agency doing this thing. He read out some of the essentials, like “four bullet points”, the necessity of building intangible assets and asked me if I believe whether my current job can make me a millionaire and so on.

Towards the end of the meeting, he suggested a book, Kiyosaki’s “The Business of the 21st Century”, and asked me to read it in the next six days after which we are supposed to have another meeting. He even forwarded a pdf of the book on WhatsApp.

When he asked if I dislike something, I said that I absolutely hate people with multi-level marketing pitches. I thought this would make him uncomfortable, instead, he went on to acknowledge it by giving examples like Amway etc.

How do young people, especially from a country like ours, fall for these? How strong is his conviction that even after receiving red flags from the other end, he continued to have the entire meeting with me? And most importantly, how was he convinced in the first place, given everything is just a Google search away these days?

From my limited experience of dealing with soon to become professionals, I believe India is a fertile playground for these hawks. Growing uncertainty about the future, an unstable job market and the overall myopic vision generated from instant gratification make our young adults the most vulnerable among all age groups. Social media only adds to the FOMO.

Another important contributor is how we are biologically and socially conditioned. In most middle-income households, the bottom line is to secure a permanent job. Brown parents are never really concerned with job satisfaction as long as a constant sum hits their child’s account on the first of every month.

This apparently harmless goal-centric approach eats into our desire for more. We are never taught to enjoy the process, as long as the results are great. Hence, even before telling a prospective hunt about the work itself, they try to sell the end effects.

Read his very first pitch. An “American”, “multimillionaire”, “mentor”. The very image of a shining career is a luring prospect to many of us. They try to exploit this basic human tendency, a strong desire for a step-up in lifestyle while looking for a shortcut at the same time.

I sometimes wonder what happens when someone is in this line for a considerable number of years. How do they finally come to terms with it? Or do they still continue, unable to come out of the quicksand that is sunk costs?

For all I know, a large number of enterprising young folks from my country are investing a sizable chunk of their early professional life in search of an oasis. If you are reading this and have made quite a name for yourself in this field, well, congratulations. But if you haven't, do read about how pyramid schemes function.

Multi-level marketing is like Christopher Nolan’s Doodlebug. Will it be too late by the time you finally understand it?