A Sucker Is Born Every Minute?

I recently wrote a post called the greatest showman. It was inspired after seeing the movie about PT Barnum called "The Greatest Showman". I was reading up about the term "There's a sucker born every minute". There is controversy about who actually coined that term and it may not have been attributed to PT Barnum. But in either case, it appears to be true, and it is the only reason why Amway and MLMs are not saturated.

Think about it. If Amway infiltrated an island with a finite number of people, eventually, the opportunity will have come and gone with a wake of failures in its path and everyone on the island would know about Amway. You would be hard pressed to find anyone who truly knew nothing about Amway. In the US, Amway has been around since 1959 and most adults in the US have heard about Amway and likely heard something negative. Because Amway is unable to control their distributor force effectively (IMO, this is why MLMs should be illegal), IBOs prospect others with all kinds of misinformation, deception and outright lies. I myself was lied to about Amway at one time.

I heard a diamond say at one time, that Amway is not saturated because every single year, there are tens of thousands of high schools graduating millions of people who are turning 18 and seeking income oppportunities. And likely, these young people are naive about money and finances and more likely to be open to hearing about Amway since it's often pitched as a shortcut to wealth. And thus the term "there's a sucker born every minute" applies here, regardless of whether Phineas Taylor Barnum said it or not.

This is how Amway and other MLMs survive. They must continue to recruit new people because the attrition rate is staggering. Many people get wooed by the hype and the glitz of the big meetings. They join and get started (or they do nothing and quit) and they quickly see that there really isn't a viable opprtunity to make money and they quit. And I might add that young people often do not have resources to build Amway for long if they aren't making money. So people come and go in droves. Without the abillity to continuously recruit new people, Amway and other MLMs will simply wilt.

Yes, Amway and other MLMs count on the fact that a sucker is born every minute (to join), but with some knowledge and due diligence, you don't have to be one of the suckers.