Someone you trust has invited you to a meeting. Maybe a cousin. Maybe a friend from work. The room is warm, people are happy, and somebody on stage is holding a cheque.
By the end you feel two things at once. Excited, and slightly unsure why.
That feeling is not stupid. It is information. The meeting is designed to move you fast, and the questions that matter are the ones there is never time for. So take them home with you. Ask them the next day, in a quiet room, with a pen.
None of these are gotcha questions. A real company answers all ten without blinking.
1. Where does the money actually come from?
This is the whole thing. Every other question is a smaller version of this one.
Ask: if nobody new joined this month, would I still get paid? If the answer is yes, the money comes from customers buying products. That is a real business. If the answer needs a long explanation, the money comes from people joining. That is a chain, and chains break from the bottom.
2. Would you buy this product if there was no business attached?
Be honest with yourself. Not "is it good." Would you pay that price for it in a shop, as a normal customer, with no plan to sell anything?
If the honest answer is no, then your customers will mostly be other sellers. And a company whose customers are its own sellers is not selling to the public. It is selling to itself.
3. What does it cost to start, and what does it cost every month to stay in?
Two separate numbers. People remember the first one and forget the second.
The joining fee might be small. The monthly cost is the one that quietly eats you: the minimum order, the website fee, the training, the tickets to events, the fuel. Write all of it down. That is your real monthly bill before you have earned anything.
4. Do I have to buy stock before I have sold it?
If yes, walk carefully. This is how the money moves from you to them while everyone still calls you a business owner.
Stock in your spare room is not income. It is money you have already spent, sitting in boxes.
5. Can I return what I do not sell, and how much do I get back?
Ask for the exact number and the exact time limit. A serious company has a clear buy-back rule and will tell you straight away. If the answer is vague, or "nobody ever needs that," you have learned something.
6. Show me the income figures. Not the top. The middle.
Every company can show you someone earning well. That tells you nothing, the same way one lottery winner tells you nothing about lottery tickets.
Ask what the person in the middle earns. Ask what share of people earn nothing at all. Ask whether those figures are before or after the seller's own costs, because that difference is usually enormous.
If the only proof is a photo of a cheque, you have not been shown anything.
7. How many active people do I need for the income I want?
This one is maths, and maths does not get excited.
Say your team gets 8% of what they order. Say the average active person orders 80 a month. Then every active person earns you about 6.40. To clear 2,000 a month you need over 300 active people, before your own costs.
And "active" is the word to press on. In most companies, far fewer than half of a team order in any given month. So the real team you need is much larger than 300.
Do it with your own numbers in the direct selling calculator. It counts your own monthly purchase as a cost, which no whiteboard ever does.
8. What happens to my income if I stop for three months?
People join for passive income, so this deserves a straight answer.
If your income falls to nothing when you stop, it was never passive. It was a job with no contract and no sick pay. That does not mean it is bad. It means you should call it what it is before you plan your life around it.
9. What do you earn if I say yes?
Ask the person in front of you. Kindly, but ask.
Anyone honest will tell you. They have a real interest in your answer, and that is fine, as long as it is on the table. The problem is never that they benefit. The problem is when you do not know they do.
10. Can I take the papers home and read them for a week?
This is the best question of the ten, because the reaction tells you more than the answer.
A real business says yes. Of course. Take your time.
If you hear that the offer ends tonight, or that the price goes up tomorrow, or that hesitating means you lack belief, you already have your answer. Good opportunities survive a week of thinking. Only bad ones need you to decide in the room.
The three things that end the conversation
If any of these are true, stop. Not "think about it." Stop.
- You get paid for signing people up, not for products reaching customers.
- You must buy stock you have not sold, and you cannot return it.
- Nobody will show you what an average person earns.
And if the answers are good?
Then it might be worth doing. Direct selling is a real model. Products reach people through other people instead of through shops, and some companies run it properly.
Just go in with clear eyes. It is a business, not a shortcut. It pays slowly and it pays people who keep going for years, the same as any other business. The ones who do well are usually the ones who liked the product first and the plan second.
If you want the longer version of how this model works and where it goes wrong, read Direct Selling, Explained Honestly.
And whatever you decide, decide it tomorrow. Not tonight, in the room, with everyone watching.