A visit with Jess

I was visiting Jess yesterday and she told me about an experience with someone trying to recruit her into a multi level marketing regime.


Let’s focus on the power…as always that means examining the needs and abilities in play.

The persuasion process started with flattery. We all need to feel good about ourselves. Anyone who can make us feel better about ourselves has power.

She got recruited because she is a dynamic personality who is very persuasive with people when she wants to be. Her high energy and passionate approach to making every day “the best day ever” is engaging and contagious. That kind of positive emotional approach makes people want to be around her and makes people want to be like her. She represents what most people want – an incredibly happy everyday life.

So, when a new friend suggested that because she is such a dynamo that she must meet someone that has an incredible new business idea/opportunity, she was both flattered and enticed. It played into her need to be seen as a wonderfully positive person and her natural desire to turn her energy into success.

As I keep saying, Power is always bi polar - two sided.

Jess was invited because she had what the recruiter wanted - otherwise the recruiter would not be interested in her. A person like Jess who makes people feel that life is beautiful and dreams come true, is the kind of maven that can sell you anything if she believes in it. Everyone who knows Jess knows that she can find ways to make the impossible happen. If she tells you that you have to try a new product, or that you need to get involved in a new business, you are compelled to listen to her.

They wanted her ability to use power. She has the infectious charisma that influences us all – we all want to be as happy as she is.

She would be a multi-layer marketing dream if she believed in the idea.

So seduced by flattery and the possibility of success she attended the first meeting.

The person she met, let’s call him Mr. Business, had his credibility endorsed by a mutual friend who appeared to be facilitating Jess’s happiness. She was open and engaged.

Mr. Business started the conversation with the big hook – How much money would like to have? What would you do with it? What would your life look like if you had all that money?

Because of his credibility Jess played along and gave him what he wanted – an understanding of her needs and desires.

Yes she likes money, but it is not everything to her. Happiness and the ability to help others are just as important to her. So he pressed her until she told him this. He made her say it out loud. She had no reason to think he was going to use power. This person had been introduced by a friend – a friend that was sitting there and encouraging her to follow Mr. Business down his road.

Then what would you do with the money? Help charities? Alleviate poverty? Save the world?

Yes all those things! Jess would love to save the world and make everyone happy. She dreams, deep in her heart, that she will make a significant difference to the world. That is the place all her beauty comes from.

So this is when the power started. Mr. Business understood her needs and desires. As such he tried to show her how his idea would lead to her triumph.

You know, this is why we hate power. Because it is the process of using people to accomplish our desires by exploiting their needs. It’s why we all keep our dreams hidden. It is why we only tell our closest friends about your deepest desires. It is why we don’t even like to think about our wishes.

Our intuitive knowledge of Power makes us think that our dreams are somehow our weaknesses.

We know instinctively that when someone else knows what we want, they will use it to get what they want.

Jess was feeling a little skeptical and off balance at this point. (These are the emotions that tell our intuition that power is at work) She knew she was exposed but she wanted her dream to come true, so she hung in there. And the persuasion began…he used everything he learned about her to get her to choose to get involved.

Power is all about choice.

He showed her how easy it would be for her to sell the product. How easy it would be for her to succeed. How easy it would be for such a vibrant person to sell a product that makes people healthy and happy.

“Can you give someone a CD and ask them to listen to it? Just tell them it will change their life if they just give it a try. Just listen to the CD…here just try it? Try it on me…”

She played along…she asked, “This will change your life. Would you listen to this CD?”

Then he tried to set the hook.

“See, you are a natural. It’s so easy isn’t it?”

But Jess knows power when she sees it. And all the alarm bells started ringing. She realized this was a MLM scheme pitch and that he was using her honest openness against her.

She turned it around. She exposed him. He dodged and avoided but she had him figured. To save what was left of her trusting heart and get out of the rest of the meeting she did the “I’ll think about it.”

He wouldn’t give up. He called her later and tried to hook her on the phone. He used everything he knew about her to try to get her back. And that’s when it happened.

He lost her friendship forever.

And the friend that recommended them to each other? Well his friendship is now in question too.

Power destroys trust.

Every time we use power to try to control, influence or seduce the choice someone is about to make, we wreck the relationship we have with them. If someone is willing to use your needs to get what they want, then they see you not as a person, but as a means to an end.



Thanks Jess. You taught us a little more about power today.