My embarrassingly unsuccessful stint as a Herbalife distributor

Embarrassing all right, but not for the reasons you think.

Years ago, when I was as naïve as they come, I responded to a classified advertisement in the local newspaper. “Be your own boss! Work your own hours! Unlimited earnings! Register yourself for this life-changing seminar now!!!” Being at a loose end at the time and frustrated with my day job, I found myself paying a hundred bucks to get registered for a presentation outside the conference room of a hotel on Lavelle Road. The speaker was motivational all right. He had practically everyone in the room salivating at thought of making as much money as he claimed to make himself – one lakh rupees a month after just a year’s worth of efforts. All-expense-paid working vacations in Los Angeles. Rubbing shoulders with the mighty top brass in the organization and wowzers, with the pictures to prove it too! Having a flourishing business and being completely in charge. Really cool. Being someone. After a couple of hours of being bombarded with testimonials of fabulous incomes by various speakers who tried their level best to build up the pitch to a frenzy we were repeatedly urged to sign up as distributors. Cost of the starter kit: Rs. 1,500. I had a vague feeling of unease but went ahead anyway, hoping to discover what this was really all about in due time. After all, I had a slew of manuals to go through and whatever it was obviously had immense potential.

Over the next few days I found myself understanding bits and pieces of it, but mostly becoming hopelessly confused with their seemingly illogical policies. The supervisor who was assigned to me seemed genuinely helpful. Except that he clammed up when I quizzed him about what seemed to be a hardliner approach by the company, unfair percentages hopelessly skewed in favor of the upper levels and so on that put the newest member in a situation he’d want to wriggle out of ASAP. Give it time, he told me, and make all the efforts you can to sell, sell, sell. The money will follow. The uppity positions will follow the money. And make certain you purchase your Herbalife products from me (because that way he’d get a greater share of the profits). Meanwhile I came to know what an MLM is, what a pyramid scheme is, and why the people on the bottom rungs always end up losing. But this was a company traded publicly on the Nasdaq and had been around for decades in 52 countries around the world (this was drilled into our heads about 1 gazillion times) so it couldn’t possibly be a scam! Could it?

My supervisor rubbished my fears. Bangalore is still a nascent market, he assured me. Everyone’s making money. You will too, and so will the people under you. The potential is just incredible! I believed him. I met a distributor who corroborated his version and convinced myself to get cracking instead of questioning. After all, these were tried and tested ingeniously engineered products that promised to be a nutritious blessing for everyone who needed to lose weight without having to go on a starvation diet. Maybe I could even get a foothold in heaven for making this stuff popular!

Wonder of wonders, in my 4 months of distributorship, I didn’t make a single sale for cash. Not one. This being India, it’s practically indecent to take money from family. So, I peddled the stuff to my overweight sisters and aunts who blithely expected me to foot the bill. Not that I minded … lol… but it would’ve been nice to offset the costs with ONE sale!! Obviously strangers were the way to go. This company requires you to purchase every single bit of advertising with your own money, whether it’s a hugely overpriced brochure from their distributor office, or a badge, or flyers, or anything else… or placing an ad in the papers inviting people to lose weight with these miracle products. Since all distributors are strongly encouraged to become lifelong consumers “to lead by example”, (and it works the other way round as well) I would dutifully make myself some Herbalife shake every morning while strategizing my sales calls. I noticed how people tended to switch off the moment my “mentor” and I appeared with our sales pitch. He’d blather blissfully on while it was painfully obvious that no one wanted Herbalife products. Not a single one. It never occurred to me that they already knew what they needed to know, had already made up their minds. He didn’t make any sales over a whole week, and after I was left to my own devices, neither did I. Damn, it was crazy!

I couldn’t understand why no one wanted to try the stuff, but time after time it was drummed into my head that pushing myself into good-natured people’s houses and trying to ram it down their throats WAS the way. After all, they didn’t know what they were missing out on – ultimately it’s for their good!! As a single girl trying to make a go of it all by myself, I had my qualms about that (which I didn’t say aloud though). I was advised to create flyers and walk down Commercial Street, make eye contact with strangers and hook them in. And to “get chatting” with strangers at petrol pumps by begging for a minute of their time. Aww hell!! At least I never actually did it. It kinda takes the zing out of “being your own boss”, to say the least!! But I did do something else that seemed a bit more respectable. The flyers were printed in hundreds and deposited in every human family’s mailbox in all of Jayanagar by midnight. I even met a friendly guy on his porch who told me to get off this s**t because some of his pals have burnt their fingers with Herbalife and it’s only the company and the topmost-level distributors who end up making all the money. I told him I’d keep it in mind. The next day I stayed stuck to the phone, willing it to ring. Ha! ONE call. One call! And… The caller insisted on knowing the name of the company and hung up on me the moment I said the H-word!!!

Fed up by now, I approached my supervisor and said this wasn’t working. He invited me to attend a lecture on marketing techniques organized by a distributor many levels up. Fifty odd students were given the low-down on all the ol’ tricks in the book and admonished for not being aggressive enough (yeah right, it’s all our fault). Interestingly, all the people I interacted with in the class had similar stories of failed sales calls to tell. Our potential prospects were perfectly pleasant with us until we popped the H-word.

I went back home and thought to myself, maybe it's time to quit. My supervisor gave me a mind-blowing suggestion. He said that maybe what I needed was to purchase a huge number of shakes in bulk from him (nothing to do with the fat percentage he would get of course) so that I could get bulk discounts, and next step – set up an advertising blitzkrieg in multiple channels (newspaper, mags, flyers) to maximize the probability of achieving sales in a short time. When I seriously got down to number crunching though, I realized the advertising costs would cut so deeply into profits that the end result just wouldn’t be worth it. Maybe a couple of hundred bucks at most. Pooh.

As a last resort, and frustrated as hell, I convinced myself that I should be doing what they do, i.e. recruit others to do the dirty work while I feed off the percentages from their efforts. Bingo! This time my 400-buck classified ad promising an appealing business offer for people who “wanted to be their own boss” elicited a tremendous number of calls and I directed them all to attend the presentation on Lavelle Road the next evening. Congratulating myself on my smart move – about time!! - I turned up at the conference hall to find four bakras beaming with anticipation after the presentation, and signing up for distributorship just like I had four months ago. I looked at them for a long time while they chatted with my supervisor. He made them feel so safe and comfortable with his soothing tone exuding warmth and that toothy trademark grin.

That’s when I realized I’d come full circle. And that by luring these unsuspecting lambs into that room I’d become as low, as conniving, as avaricious, as supremely pathetic as any of the men present in the room that evening. Maybe this is what they call the moment of truth. I left the venue without saying goodbye and drove straight home, deeply (and privately) ashamed.

I never did take my supervisor’s calls after that. The kabadiwaala happily lapped up my Herbalife shakes and manuals. Thankyou sir. But I suspect you got ripped off too.