a tale of pyramids

at some point last week, an acquaintence of mine (via leadership) (we’ll call him fred) called me to see if i had some free time coming up. the story was that another acquaintence (that we’ll call bob) was doing some internet marketing and wanted to talk to me. my assumption was that this would be a consulting gig.

so i pick a time and suggest meeting at a local pub. concern one – instead of the pub, they want to meet at bob’s house. strange, but fine. i arrive at bob’s house, still confused as to why this was set up via fred and not via bob directly.

fred and bob greet me, we shoot the shit for a few minutes, and bob asks if i want anything to drink. i ask for a diet whatever, and bob suggests i try one of the energy drink that him and fred are drinking. there are four flavors, and all are low fat, low carb, etc etc. sure, what the hell.

concern three occurs when two more people show up, and they start talking about the project. concern four — they call it “the opportunity”

as it turns out, i was suckered into being bombarded by a group of people about a pyramid scheme. had two of the people not been personal acquaintences (and had i not seen this as a good future story to tell), i would have just stood up and left.

i wish i had a tape recorder, as i only remember enough to piece together the jist of it all. i was pretty much tuned out for most of it. first, fred was actually the one trying to sell me. he was new in the program and trying to get underlings. having no experience, bob was running the show. it’s an internet shopping deal, where they’re all trying to compete with wal-mart by selling the simple stuff (toilet paper, etc) online. but they also link with office supply stores, electronics retailers, etc. “all they’re asking me to do” is buy from myself, and get other people to buy from me and/or become part of “the opportunity”. oh, and pay $65 to join some “independent business alliance”. and buy $150 in product, because you can’t sell something that you don’t use yourself. i’m guessing that the books and dvd’s they talk about as part of the communication channel were more than likely things i would need to buy as well.

i could tell that he was playing on me as a small business owner, with comments about how we all know you can’t get rich quick, and that this opportunity takes hard work. the best, however, was when he asked me what my dream car would be, probably expecting a standard 25-year old male answer. i told him that i was happy with my honda.

i finally politely told them that the “opportunity” was not for me, and they thanked me for my time.