Hunzoning is the trend that sees you going from friend to MLM recruit

Hunzoning is the trend that sees you going from friend to MLM recruit

Standing in the smoking area of the pub, I chatted to Katy about nothing in particular.

Making friends as an adult is hard, and I felt pretty excited to be getting on with a new person that I had a lot in common with.

The night went on and we had a laugh, then as we headed off for different night buses Katy added me on Facebook, insisting that we stay in touch.

We sent the odd message here and there, with her always being super enthusiastic about meeting up some time soon. It’s not like I thought we’d be each other’s maids of honour, but I did see a potential pal.




That was until a message came through about her ‘amazing business opportunity’ and how I was such a ‘boss babe’, she just had to ask if I wanted to get involved.

I had been ‘hunzoned’; lulled into a false sense of security with someone who purported to be interested in me as a person, but was actually just trying to recruit me into their multi-level marketing scheme.

MLMs – as they’re known – can also be called pyramid selling, network marketing, or referral marketing. There are hundreds of companies that run in this way, with the main characteristic being that recruitment is the heart of the business.

Those who work for MLMs aren’t on a salary, and instead rely on selling products and getting their recruits to do so too. These recruits are then known as an MLM worker’s downline, and they get a percentage of what the recruits make, as well as the profit from what they make.

The term hun has been used widely on anti-MLM online communities, poking fun at the over-friendly terms that tend to be used to create familiarity with potential recruits. They’ll call you ‘babe’, ‘hun’, ‘love’, and all manner of Fiat 500 pet names to make you think they’re your mate. A large sprinkling of compliments may also be used to curry favour, too.

They literally have a script to what you should say to people

This corporate love-bombing can serve a hun well, bagging them new downlines and potentially more money (MLMs are renowned for extremely low pay). However, if the desire to join their business isn’t there, it can easily sever a new friendship there and then, leaving the hunzoned person feeling used.

It’s not just new friends. A girl I’d worked with years ago – and really got on with – now sends me regular messages and voice notes that start off saying we’re overdue a catch-up and end in ‘anyway, DM me for more info, it seems like it’s right up your street, and it’s genuinely changed my life’.

This is partly down to the way MLMs tell their members to recruit people. One user, posting on the MLMRecovery subReddit, stated that she was given a FRANK sheet when she first joined up.



She wrote: ‘I was given a FRANK list and that’s when it all went downhill but I didn’t even see it. A frank list is this… F is friends , R is relatives, A is acquaintances, N is neighbours, K is kid connections….. So basically I wrote down a list of every person I knew. Everyone.’

The offshoot of this, she says, was this: ‘My relationships were distancing because of my association with an MLM company. If I called or talked to anyone my intention was to sell. I deceived myself and others when I called to say hi or text and transitioned every convo into a sly sharing sales thing.’

This is much the same as the experience of Rachel*. She was recruiter into a fitness and nutrition MLM back in October 2017.

‘When you sign up as a coach, you’ll be provided with a login to what’s called your “Coach Online Office (COO)” where you see your sales, your upline/downline, promotions, events, training documents, client details, price lists, etc,’ she told Metro.co.uk.

‘In the COO, there are several scripts you can download that tell you how to recruit, or post about the “business” in general. What to say in your opening message, how to respond to objections to get the person to change their mind. You’ll also receive training on “inviting techniques” from your upline, which basically means befriend as many strangers as you can, compliment them a few times a week, comment on their posts so your name shows up on their feed and then slowly sneak invites or references about what you’re doing/offering into the conversation about fitness challenge groups.


‘You are also encouraged to invite friends, colleagues, neighbours, mutual Facebook friends… Because “they would totally support you if they are a real friend”,’ says Rachel.

It’s thought that in some UK MLMs, members make very low wages (or net losses). Amway, for example, publish their statistics, and have shown that their average retail consultant makes £40 monthly. Those that are active in the anti-MLM community (such as former cosmetics rep Elle Beau) state that they’d often buy their own products to make their sales seem higher, meaning this total could be lower in some businesses.

It’s easy to see then, why some people may be willing to alienate those close to them just to be able to turn a profit. With messaging coming from above to push harder to make things work, and having extolled the virtues of your new business to those around you, it can seem preferable to be somewhat embarrassing over failing in the venture.

Another self-titled escapee, Dawn*, told us about her experiences with a well-known MLM: ‘Their “tactic” is to give you very little information at first. They literally have a script to what you should say to people.

‘This is the script: They want you to casually drop in conversation how you were lucky enough to have met a couple who were able to retire at the age of 25 from their corporate jobs. How you were amazed by that, and HAD to know more. So they agreed to mentor you and now you know you are going to retire in the next three years.


‘Now here’s the tactic that works, when someone asks how they did it/more in depth questions you’re instructed to tell them how you’re not qualified to explain it, but if they were serious about learning more they would have to sit down with you and your “mentors” for a meeting at a later date and they could tell you more.’

This level of mystery is designed to hook in only those who are vulnerable to being poached by the company. If they’re immune to the smoke and mirrors, then they simply won’t go any further.

Dawn found that most people were immune, and that instead of finding recruits, she was met with incredulity.

‘Anyone I talked to about my new “lifestyle” acted strange,’ she tells us. ‘No one actually believed I was going to retire in a year, and if they asked more questions, they acted annoyed I wasn’t “allowed” to tell them anything about it.’

Rather than the ‘diamond’ status she’d been promised – along with access to a private island and a million dollar yearly paycheck – she was left with meagre reward for her work, and friends who thought her tactics were suspect.

If you have a friend (new or old) trying to hunzone you, the first thing you may want to do is call them out on the whole thing. This can be counterproductive, though, as the messaging from their upline will likely be along the lines that those who try to show the negatives of the business are ‘haters’.

Instead, focus on your relationship with your friend. Let them know that you don’t wish to get involved, and although you’ll be there for them whenever they need you, you want to keep business out of the friendship.

If you genuinely feel worried about them, it may be time to show them some of the cold hard numbers of what members of their MLMs make, but make sure to do so in a non-judgmental way.

Some have accused MLMs of acting in similar ways to cults, with isolation techniques sometimes used to cement members’ commitment.

Although you may be angry that a friendship you had with someone was reduced to recruitment, try to remember that they might have been brainwashed too.

*Names have been changed.

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