Network Marketing During a Pandemic

Well it's been awhile my friends and I have missed you all so dearly. It's been about 3 years since I last sat down and wrote up a blog post on here. In that space of time I feel I have lived a hundred different lives. So to catch up on all that would be too lengthy and frankly not very interesting. I'm starting fresh with a topic I've been mulling around during this very confusing season of life.

In January of 2020 I started a side hustle with an MLM (which I'm not going to name because I'm just not about defamation) and was thrown into a world of Zoom meetings, three-way calls, social posting, text groups with multitudes of people and a community of strong, entrepreneurial women. 

I am not a sales woman, in any capacity, which they tell you is not what Network Marketing is about. Well, I disagree with that notion. Product --> Market -->  Lead --> Conversion aka a SALE. You make a profit on that sale. You get notifications about the shipment of that sale. So I rest my case, this job is about selling. And with Network Marketing you are asking someone to purchase the good that you have. So... what happens when there is a global pandemic and millions of people have lost their job? 

Morality is a tricky thing when it comes to advertising - which I learned about in my college courses on the Ethics of Advertising. What is "moral" about projecting an image of a product influencing your life? It's a fine, fine line with this and not one that can be easily defined in my opinion. Couple that with a devastating virus ransacking the earth and well that is absolutely the definition of a moral dilemma.

Just to make things more spicy how about we throw in another caveat to conversation. What about the women in this MLM who support their families with this job? What about the women who have lost their jobs and need to pay their bills? There are people still working and there are definitely people looking for a way to make money from their homes while in lockdown. So what does the general public have to say for these entrepreneurs? "Stop working"? Well, they have bills to pay too. "Stop asking people to buy your product"? Well, people still purchase beauty and nutrition products online.

So it's not so cut and dry with the current status of the world because there are two sides to this conversation and each one has its valid points. But how do we as a collective unit identify the ethical and the unethical arguments? It's either all or none for Network Marketing because you either profit or you don't.

Changing the conversation around advertising in the current pandemic is something that needs to happen. We can't pretend that there aren't vulnerable people out there that would be desperate enough to jump head in to a business they see opportunity in. But we also can't be blind to the fact that people don't need products or opportunities marketed to their weaknesses either.

Where do you stand on the subject and what basis do you form that opinion around? I'd be curious to hear additional insight into the conversation because I, quite frankly, am at a loss as to what is appropriate behavior at this time. With that said keeping anger out of this is my main objective - I know how MLM's are viewed to most of the general public and I'm not looking for a lynching. Just a friendly "whatcha think?" answer will suffice.