A friend has today posted up an interesting piece relating to “magic juices” – you can check it out here – and it reminds me of a part of my MLM journey to date, and why product is so important to me.

For a while I was a distributor for Xango, one of the “magic juices”. Now I’m not going to get into whether it does what it says it can do, I have no proof either way. The fact is, I really like the taste of Xango juice, but the monthly autoship cost me more for 4 bottles of juice than I would pay in my local bottle shop for a case of very drinkable Pinot Noir.

The mistake I made with Xango was being sold on the compensation plan (which I will freely admit is one of the better ones available) and the product became an unimportant aspect – a “vehicle” for wealth creation. Now you will hear the term “vehicle” used quite often in this context; sometimes it’s simply because the person’s focus is on the wealth creation aspect, other times it can certainly be seen as an attempt to divert attention from an over-priced product, a hollow or value-less product etc.

So why am I no longer with Xango? I would happily buy the juice (I really do like the taste) if the pricing came down to around $10 per bottle, but at over $100 for a case of 4 bottles I estimate the product to cost roughly double what is a reasonable price. When you have a good product that is overpriced this way, or a product with no real value at all, it becomes necessary to “sell” the opportunity based on the earning potential.

If there was evidence that any of these juices really did do everything that is implied about them, would the product value increase? I’m fairly sure they would, and that would lead me to think that these companies would be falling over themselves to compile a body of research-based evidence to allow benefits to be clearly stated. What we get instead are simply anecdotes and disclaimers – the reader is left to draw their own conclusion as to what this may mean!

Overall this all highlights, for me anyway, one important thing: If you can’t sell a business opportunity on the strength of the products, then you may as well promote cash gifting, pyramid schemes or even chain letters!

p.s. If anyone from Xango reads this, drop your juice down to about $40 a case and I’ll be back