Dream and Hustle

It’s Time to Confront the Two-Bit Hustle Known as MLM in the Black Community

Multi-Level Marketing or MLM model has evolved into the biggest example of buffoonery in the Black community in regards to how we handle our business and self-empowerment. MLM is nothing more than a broke hustle and Black folks in our community who push MLM talk too damn much and front too damn much at the same damn time. The Black community need to straight diss MLM and migrate to non-commodity products, solid marketing frameworks and establish supply chain channels to compete and thrive in the 21st century global economy.

Backgrounder on Multi-Level Marketing

Multi-Level Marketing is a system designed for an entrepreneur to push their products or services outside of traditional marketing and supply chain channels. Basically, Black serial entrepreneurs found significant barriers attempting to go through White and Jewish owned marketing firms and distribution firms and found multi-level marketing to be a better alternative to get their product or service to market.

Black folks during the Great Migration of the 1910s to 1950s used to have our own distribution and supply chain selling catfish and watermelons from Mississippi and Alabama up to Northern Cities. Then it went to Black insurance and Black banking. But after Civil Rights was passed, some Black folks lost their damn mind and decided they want to assimilate with people who don’t like them and never liked them and enslaved and raped and lynched their ancestors and these Black folks ran out to the suburbs and abandoned the economic foundation created to establish Black communities during the Great Migration period. So we Black folks f*cked up big time not creating our own foundation after the Civil Rights legislation was passed and you can blame all the 1970s and 1980s Black generation for that.

However during the 1950s, Brownie Wise of Tupperware created a system known today as the “party plan” and here is the Wikipedia entry on that:

The party plan is a method of marketing products by hosting what is presented as a social event at which products will be offered for sale. It is a form of direct selling. The primary system for generating sales leads for home party plan sales is the home party itself: the salesperson uses the home party business model as a source for future business by asking attendees if they would like to host selling parties, too.

Direct selling through the party plan typically uses multi-level marketing (salesperson is paid for selling and for sales made by people he recruits or sponsors) rather than single-level marketing (salesperson is paid only for the sales he makes himself).[1]

This plan has been used primarily to sell items whose main appeal is to women by women, such as kitchen utensils, home decor items, jewelry, cosmetics, handbags, and similar products.[2] Recent additions to the field include lingerie, wine and sex toys. Sometimes a combination party is held, at which a wide variety of such merchandise is offered for sale.

Many of you cats do not know this but during the Civil Rights movement, many White women from up North would introduce these Tupperware parties to enable Black women down south to find a way for sistas to make extra income as Tupperware parties were marketed as a “women’s right” thing. If you think about it – this is the early form of micro-funding as we know it today. So this is how MLM was introduced to the Black community.

So after the Civil Rights movement in the 1970s, we starting having too many Black intellectuals, Afrocentric and Hebrew converts chasing after some alternative Black identity instead of building an economic framework creating out own supply chain and communication framework like we were doing in during the Great Migration period. Now that we are in the 1980s up to today, it appeared that many Black people were being introduced to the new form of party plan that was more grand and blown over.

This is the important part I want cats to realize about the history – it was discovered ethnic markets were doing exceptionally well promoting products and services through party planning, both in the Black, Hispanic and Asian communities. The reason behind this goes back to these ethnic groups do not have access to traditional supply chain and these ethnic groups formed social groups around churches and social events and had stronger networks than Whites.

So what happened was the not an empowerment push like the Tupperware parties of the Civil Rights movement but an exploitative push was on to target these ethnic groups with promises of wealth and success and the same White folks starting up White operated churches in “multi-cultural” communities are the same ones running these MLM programs to their ethnic followers to infect the community at large. This is how Amway and other MLM programs ran by Whites looking to exploit entered the ethnic arena with these cats looking to assimilate at their churches and social functions.

So what happened is instead of the house party like Tupperware, we are looking at lavish grand gatherings of hotels and conference centers, people being recruited to “make more money” to show up at these events and people coming on stage and get on the mike talking about they was broke, laid off and busted like most of the cats in the audience but now they making $12,000/month from the MLM program and cats are wowing and clapping and stuff like that. So brothas and sistas got all caught up and brought that hype into the Black community. That’s how modern MLM was re-introduced to our community in current form.

How MLM Works

The way we are going to speak on how multi-level marketing work is from a position of a boss, not one of these punk ass peasants to the hustle who are the suckers way at the bottom tier who can only speak as a follower. Let’s put it this way – if a person in the MLM hustle ain’t the one pushing the product, then that person is just a top b*tch or a bottom b*tch to the pimp game they can get in where they fit in. At Dream and Hustle, we talk like a boss and walk like a boss and deal with cats like a boss and that’s how we going to approach how MLM works – like a boss. If these other cats really did know how MLM works, they would be a boss instead of some top b*tch to the MLM hustle, real talk.

The way MLM works is you go find a product or service you can peddle as an entrepreneur. Usually, this is some white label crap made in some foreign country that many Americans don’t know about or a white label commodity product. The goal is you need to hustle something that is recurring and not a one-time sale. Something where you hook cats up to a subscription plan or a refill plan like online backup to the cloud or automotive maintenance plan or even telecommunication services like duplex IP-based phones.

Now, you being a brotha or sista don’t got money to market the product in traditional channels, ain’t going to be invited to Radio One stations or morning shows to push your product. In addition, you don’t got the money to buy the inventory in bulk, so you basically shift all of that overhead cost to a bunch of suckers willing to believe in your hustle when you speak it to them from your mouth. So you bring in your “bottom b*tches” who can take the hustle out there to churches and other social environments like work and book clubs or whatever and push the hustle. Your bottom b*tches are aware of the overall hustle and their role in the hustle and they go to work on your behalf and promote you and the hustle and speak for you in high regard.

Now your bottom b*tches push your product to other cats and their goal is to recruit as many “top b*tches” to push your products – that’s their only goal. The more top b*tches that can spread word of mouth about your product, the better – that’s all you want as the boss in this MLM hustle, get the word out. So there is an incentive where you pay out commissions based on what is known as the upline and downline. Let’s look at the following diagram to explain how the hustle works.

See, the product cost only $20 for you wholesale but you want to retail it for $50. So your bottom b*tches don’t actually sell the product, they buy from you at $40 and that’s their only role. The top b*tches are the one who sell for $50 to the streets and the way it works is there is no money upfront – once the top b*tch sells the product for $50, you collect your $30, send the $10 to your bottom b*tches and they in turn send $5 commission to the top b*tches.

You being the boss, all you care about is they pushing the product you got that you buy low and sell high. What happens is the the bottom b*tches that have more people will get more parallel orders and more parallel commissions making them more richer. That is why these cats want as many people hustling under them and that is their primary motive – not the product, but getting a lot of people under them to make them more money in commissions.

So in essence, you become a serial entrepreneur pushing out stuff and letting cats below you sell to their own people, hustling their own people and you just take the orders and ship out the product and get paid – the marketing means little to you as the boss in this game. You will have a new product and a new MLM hustle and your bottom b*tches will still be on board with you when it’s time to push that second product out.

Problem with MLM and Within the Black Community

The number one main problem in the MLM hustle is your product will have a tainted images because you got a bunch of b*tches pushing your product. The top b*tches going to feel like they being played by the bottom b*tches and the last thing on their mind is your product and the only thing they care about is the commissions. That’s why you got to push white-label products and commodity services instead of original quality products. Now because the motivation is commissions, they are going to resort to doing unethical things to get commissions like spam people, mislead people and trick people while pushing your product.

Now, here is the thing – I’ve seen MLM done in Latin America and Asia and the program is transparent and cats know their role and everybody see the system as transparent. They don’t get into fighting and understand where they are in the pecking order and if you study many of their MLM systems in places like India and Vietnam and Costa Rica and Brazil, they are promoting it in the same way as it was done with the Tupperware parties as a modest way of making income. However in the Black community here in America:

Note: Look at this character above trying to hide all the tattoos on his neck while moving his mouth..

Nothing but a bunch of coon ass materialistic f*ckery, ego-reinforcement and fronting ass people hanging out together bragging to me and you they are either a top b*tch or bottom b*tch to the MLM hustle. These top and bottom b*tches doing all the work to push the product orders to the boss and the boss is getting paid and probably looking on YouTube laughing at all of these Black people happy to be pushing the product.

And here is the funny part because it so predictable – these cornballs in the MLM hustle the first thing they try to say is “you are jealous of my money and success” trying to put you down and think they doing better than you! Then they try to gang up like a bunch of sheep circling the wagon and try to see if they can keep fronting, keep showing us pictures of checks and keep showing us these leased Bentleys or whatever they do to front a perverted picture of shallow materialistic success to convince us otherwise. I’m just waiting for these Black MLM characters to walk around with and show off a golden calf, real talk.

Look, the real problem is Black folks don’t think or want to put in work like a boss – they just want to pretend and associate with the image of success and this is what MLM exposed about the Black community. MLM was a way to push a product through channels directly to people instead of dealing with bigoted supply chains and media and marketing firms and also a way to help people generate a modest income, which is what it does. However, Black folks in America turned this whole MLM thing into one big fronting materialistic f*ckery and embarrassment and cats bragging about being top and bottom b*tches to the hustle while the boss of the MLM is doing it like a boss on all of them.

Multi-level marketing was nothing more than a stepping stone and alternative approach to selling products and services for entrepreneurs and people who need extra income. The other end of the bargain was once Black people got some money and establish themselves, we build out real marketing frameworks and real supply chains through re-investment so we can really push our own products and services. But instead, Black folks are acting like pure materialistic fools showing off luxury cars, flashing checks and jewelry. All in all, we African-Americans don’t own any operations and still stuck on the same stupid lightweight ish instead of progressing to bigger and better things.

It’s Time to Call Out These Black People on that MLM Ish.

Multi-Level Marketing as practiced in the Black community exposed one of our biggest flaws and what is going to destroy us as a people in terms of being relevant in the global economy. African-Americans do not want to grow up or advance to the next level and just want to be comfortable even at the low-level broke hustles. We just want to look successful and appear to our relatives, friends and peers that we are successful and have money right now instead of build the damn pyramids for our future generations to have a foundation to stand upon.

We African-Americans need to be beyond this MLM ish and should have long established marketing and supply chain frameworks to push our own products and services to market. All of these fake fronting cats and their parties and Bentley leases and paper checks you never see them go to the bank and cash out (have you noticed that??). Most of you know as I know cats too that lost money on these MLM hustles and the only ones who make money in MLM are those who truly understand they are a top b*tch or bottom b*tch and I don’t know if that is a good thing to brag about.

We ain’t going to see real money until we create measurable gross domestic product in the Black community to export and drive through our own supply chains worldwide. The problem with MLM is it relies on consumer spending which is shrinking and if cats around you don’t got money, then no one is getting paid. That is why the smart MLM bosses are now in India and Malaysia and Vietnam and other places in emerging nations, including Africa right now, particularly Nigeria and South Africa. America don’t got the consumer power and that’s where MLM hits the brick wall and why we brothas and sistas got to do better.

We don’t need to MLM hair weaves and I understand the hustle but real talk – why can’t someone take their Black ass over to Kuala Lumpur and set up the supply chain, dammit! Nigerians all up in Ghangzhou China setting up supply chains but our Black American highly-educated, disposable income having asses ain’t doing nothing! We don’t need to MLM coffee when Obama signed free trade agreement with certain nations in Africa and Latin America where we can go source raw produce and products and create some Kashi styled food and beverages and bring that into the supply chain and into our own stores!!

We got to move on from this MLM ish and it became shameful and perverted in the Black community. We better grow the f*ck up and start building out real economic infrastructure and foundations to create real communication and supply chains for entreprenuers to distribute their products to the end consumers. This create jobs, this create communities and it creates a better quality of life for brothas and sistas – someone got to be the first generation of Black folks that gives a f*ck about establishing a better world for the next generation of Black kids and that is us – grow up from this MLM crap.