thank you so, so much for being here. i am a long time fan. feel like this is a real first time caller. longtime listener situation. you know, before we hop in, i just want to say i have this really great business opportunity for you that i think you'd be into. and i'm obviously obviously joking, but that's kind of what brings us here today, sort of that that line that a lot of us hear from a lot of people in our lives who are into multi level marketing around the labs. and i guess since maybe a lot of people have never heard of mlm before or they've heard of them and they don't know what they are to start out, just like to set the table. i wonder if you could just talk through a little bit. like what you're talking about

in your book. what market are we addressing here? what are we talking about? sure. well, we're not addressing a market. i'll get to that. but we are talking about an industry. let's took years to really try to distill down a definition, but mlm, if anybody's heard of them, they would have heard of amway, herbalife lately. the lulu ro because they got in a bunch of trouble for selling crappy leggings and stf. avon tupperware, mary kay, those kinds of companies are all implants and the way our work is shaped like this, there's a person who owns the mlm and then there's like a line of recruits and then all those people recruit people and then all those people recruit people. and it's supposed to kind of spread out and you earn money off of all the sales of the people underneath you. but what really happens is that the people on the bottom rung have to pay a fee to to get in

and the system is designed sort of to fail, which means that the people paying to get in, very few of them stay in. but there's like an endless supply of people that want to get in at the bottom because the promise is really good. the promises are great. like, if it was true, it'd be awesome. i would do it, but the price is really good. so the people pay a couple bucks to order books, 500 bucks to their upline and that money gets distributed up to this shape. and then they quit because they can't make any money. and then another set of people does the same thing. and that's how all mlm operate. only 1% of participants make or don't lose money because 99% lose money trying an mlm. so it's just a not. it's not or it's a it's a story. it's more a story than a business. right. and and you said 99% of people fail. so basically nobody makes money on this except for the people at the very bottom or the very top. right.

right. and i think what's interesting to me is that like everyone knows, like the restaurant business, for example, is very hard to succeed. and i feel like profit margins are like a lot, 10%. and, you know, almost all of them shut down, too, but they're at least it's talked about that way. you know, if you were to tell someone, i'm going to start a restaurant, they'd go, ooh, you know, like, good luck with my it's talked about like, oh, i can't wait to go on your yacht. you know, when you've made $1,000,000, like, we don't tell each other and we don't the people in the organization don't tell each other how impossible it is. and that's kind of what we're trying to change. so i guess i want to get to that, but i do want to back up a little bit to what got you into this in the first place. like, i think we have similar backgrounds. i'm also from the midwest and i grew up around mary kay and avon and like to be honest, i didn't realize until even five years ago that those were mlms. like why? i was just so sorry, but why? why talk about this? why delve into this?

why look at this? well, the story is that our producer at stitcher years ago called me to see if i wanted to produce a show about i'm alums, kind of knowing i'm from the midwest and all that. and i kept her on the phone for like an hour just regaling her with stories about my grandma and stuff. and then they were like, why don't you just make this show? so that i did and became even more obsessed than i already was with that world. and it kind of took off from there. mm hmm. and i know, i mean, i guess like. and i'm sure i'll talk about this later, but are they always bad? are they always. yeah, i guess. yeah. yeah. yes. i mean, do you think that there's any kind of silver lining where people who do feel like, okay, whatever, like they my leggings suck, but like, i enjoyed my time selling them or i had my mary kay parties. do you feel like there's any

kind of redeeming quality here? definitely. there is a social aspect to all of them that's really important for a lot of people. again, my problem with it would be, yes, you can get a lot of social interaction out of it. you can get accolades, kids, you get to go on vacations. you don't have to be around your kids 24 seven and all of this stuff is great. it would be better if it were sold as a club or kind of. i always think of beauty pageants like, you know, in a beauty pageant, your chance of winning is like almost nothing and you pay a lot of money to be in it. but it's mostly for the fun of it or like, you know, to kind of dress up and things like that. and if it were marketed that way again, i wouldn't have a problem. but if you ask, you know, are there any good melons, i think that the very structure of this business is bad and i don't think there's a way. i just don't trust that anyone who has a real product couldn't sell it for more in the marketplace. if it's a good, real product,

why do you have to keep it behind closed doors? why does it have to be, you know, door to door sales in this day and age, like that? it doesn't it doesn't make sense unless you understand that the money isn't really coming from that right? yeah, that yeah. in the book, there is one section, i think, on sex toys, of all things that a woman who is selling them. and then i remember being like, oh, you could get this a lot cheaper a place. and so people don't even realize that you're selling, you're buying things that are enormous. you're selling things or buying, i guess both an enormous markup. or you can get whatever the product is at cvs or somewhere else for a lot cheaper. it's funny, you just said buying or selling. it's both. you are right. you're the same person who is selling and also buying. so, for example, that that story was about a woman who worked at pure romance, which is like an adult accessories. they call it bedroom accessories company and she was encouraged by her up line to stock a bunch of stuff like she wanted to get

the smallest starter package and was like talked into sending tons and tons more to make sure she had everything available for samples. she didn't really sell very much and she was her own customer for the most part, right, because she's just trying to keep her inventory stocked up with the new products and companies also do this thing where they like, discontinue stuff and then reintroduce stuff over and over again. so you're if you do have things in your trunk that you're going to take around a party, a lot of times you have to check to make sure there's even available. and then they'll be replaced by something else that you have to put in your trunk. but yeah, she she lost a ton of money doing this. and and that. the number of ways that moms keep you in and spending money like that are just countless. i mean, it's. i could go in. i mean, there's like all kinds of stuff that they sell to you, like self-help and conventions

and things like that. but yeah, i think i got off track. but no. okay. i guess. and i just before we have a little bit more into the book, can you just kind of talk me through like what the life cycle is for most people into the, the friend approach of you and says, i have an idea or i have a business opportunity. i've been selling earrings, essential oils, whatever. what happens next? while. there are two different types of people, one types, as this sounds like a money loser and so no, thank you, i'm not going to do it. and then usually your friendship's over for a little while because they're focused on getting all their friends. and this company. the other one is some people see the 1% and are like, that's me. i'm i can do that. or they believe so much in the dream and they have so much hope that they want it to be true that you can do, you know, have

no experience. you don't need an education, you don't get any sales experience. you don't even need a phone, etc. to do this work. and you can become a millionaire. there are people who buy into that right away, and i understand why they do so. those folks who do get in usually leave kind of quickly within like six months. but it then but a bunch of things happen in that six months that can keep you in for a very long time. and some of them are the things i'm talking about with you spending more and more of your own money to rank up to like to to get higher in the ranks so you can earn a little more commission. people will spend their own money to do that. and then you come to a place where you're you run int these like, logical fallacies that all of us participate in. basically honoring sunk costs is a big one. so like you spend $10,000, are you just going to quit like or should you keep trying for another year and not realizing that that trying for another year is going to cost you

$20,000? so it takes a while. i mean, the people that i spoke to that were really high up have been in most of these islands for ten years or something. and have still quit eventually. and i spoke to a guy from amway that estimated it's over a ten year period. he lost $200,000. oh, my goodness. that's you didn't even realize for a lot of it. or did he know? he didn't know. he felt he. no, he didn't, because, well, first of all, the bookkeeping is really dicey. it doesn't it's not part of the training of any of these companies. so, you know, you're not you're not writing off your gas and your phone and all of this stuff which is necessary. and and kind of recognizing the cost of just the cost of doing business. how many hours are working. and a lot of people i talked to would do their hours and go, oh, i'm making less than minimum wage. like, what am i doing? and they do keep you know, they keep the compliments flowing. they keep the accolades flowing. they keep you get a small check. so the checks are coming in, but it's not enough to make up for

all the money you're spending. and it is easier just to put the blinders on and go. it's got to work. one of these days. otherwise, why would all these people that i really trust be involved in this? like, i must be doing something wrong? right. well, and also kind of isn't the the mantra sometimes or the idea that you're not making money, you're not trying, you know, you're not trying hard, right? your fault. yes. yes. because once again, no one's being honest. so the man i'm talking about who lost 200,000, his up lines were telling him that, like the people above him were saying, that's really weird because i'm making tons of money. it's like so crazy that you're not making money. mm. truth is, they probably weren't either, but it's it's the mythology of these organizations. so he he really did think, oh, i'm, i'm bad at this and i need to train more. and he started buying all kinds of training materials from amway and just thinking more and more

money into this thinking he was the problem. but when really the problem is they just sell boring. so that's like a regular self. it's very, very expensive. so that doesn't even look that pretty. i did like i'm like because i feel like i've never seen amway in the wild and i did like i've never or we came here. we're like, what do they even sell? i've never seen it, which is very weird. i feel like i've seen the other stuff in there. it's very telling. it's very it's very telling, though, right? like they're one of the biggest in the world and you've never seen it anywhere. what does that tell you? where is it? right. it's in a trunk or a garage. you know, if it really was that big of a company that couldn't sell at cvs and couldn't get into target because it's so special and one in five people, you know, they say one in five people has an amway product in their home. and i don't know, i'm from michigan and i don't even know people that have amway products. it's really strange. it's not it's very much an inside, but i've even asked

around in my life and nobody is seen it. and i just a way where are in them but different different day so i did want to obviously dive in a little bit more into the book and the title on this is selling the dream, which obviously refers to the american dream here. and you talk about in the book like there are these ideas of like limitless potential that, you know, anything can be achieved with optimism and willpower. and those are very quintessentially american ideas. what do you think about i mean, makes them and they they obviously are like a very multinational lot. what is american specific about them? well, they were built on that philosophy. i mean, the men who started mlm were totally like capitalist, you know, rugged individualist who believed they were growing up in a meritocracy in the early 20th century. and did believe like, oh, and

bootstrap thinking and that sort of thing. so it's a chicken and the egg. like where what came first? well, the the hope and the dream came first. and then these people i don't can't tell you how intentional it was, but they exploited that. i mean, exploiting hope is very profitable as we know. and so it it it taps into that thing that we're all raised with still to this day, that this place is great, that anybody can make it if they try hard enough that, you know, again, we're a meritocracy, that it doesn't matter where you come from or how much you have or don't have, like this is the land of opportunity. and people who you don't want to profiteer from that essentially can on it. and it's it's totally understandable that they would i mean, i don't think it's understandable and i don't think that there could people but it it's not that hard it's not that hard to take a big group of of of hopeful people who feel like

they're exceptional who feel like they are different than the rest of the world. and in a special way and who feel like there is money to be had out there just sitting around because like, look at donald trump. well, what we know now is donald trump doesn't even have money. what do you. but for a while, like he was he ran in on my lamb and he's been a spokesperson for lambs and for a while people would look at him and i think secretly think like, well, he's a dance like and he's a billionaire. so when i can do it, you know, like and right. and he's telling me to do it he's saying that the mlm help you get there and i believe he's a billionaire. well, now again, you know, because of the court cases, but also because he can't pay his $450 million fine, that guy doesn't have money just like the up to don't make any money. i think it's, you know, it's the kind of the same thing. but you have these sitting ducks in us and us regular people who have since kindergarten or early urban pledging allegiance to the flag and then talking about, you know, how what college we're going to go to and what, you know, what do you want to be when you grow up as if like

astronaut is even a possibility? a side note i found out that astronauts are actually just like mechanical engineers when i was my way too old to find that out. i thought they were i don't know what i thought they were, but they like, use wrenches and stuff. they like build things in space. and i was like, oh, i really i could have it announced or not. but, you know, we talk about that. you could do it. the sky's the limit, basically. and, and i don't think that's a i don't think that's a bad attitude. so long as no one's taking advantage of it right. and yeah, i learned i learned that about astronauts in this very moment. you have, you know, you did mention, you know, the men who founded a lot of these missions in the 20th century. and i think, yeah, you know, obviously today i like is very much seen as women do emblems. i mean, we joke i joke that, you know, crypto is like emblems for

boys. but yeah, right. but there are no limits for boys that are really close to crypto stuff, though i will say there are emblems for dudes that are all like finance, telecom, you know, things like boy stuff. there's plenty of those. yeah, but i mean it is a lot of it, especially in 20 centuries. women selling perfume, essential oils, mary kay, avon, even tupperware with a woman named brownie. why tupperware founded it. what are the gender dynamic here? why, i mean, why could it if these guys are found in these companies, why couldn't they sell their stuff so well? the first answer is that it really was in the very beginning, a great idea to have women as your sales force because we're talking about a time where it was around just after the industrial revolution and around the time that, like cities were happening and there

were big urban centers all over the place, but at that time, most people were living in rural areas up until like a couple of decades into the 20th century. so people were living in rural areas and they were getting a lot of their products from door to door salesmen or, you know, like a stanley brush or, you know, fuller brush company or stanley home products coming by your house. they went to my grandma's house. i remember that. and my grandma talks about it very fondly. but these were all itinerant dudes who maybe weren't from your community and didn't like our milkman. i was growing up was from like saginaw, which is like an hour from my house. so i don't know anything about him other than he showed up at our house and had a key and walked in and put the milk inside. if we weren't allowed you know. and so i think they early on, the founders of these companies thought, well, what if we had, like, ladies doing it? and then they thought, what if we had those ladies recruit their friends into doing it?

and then you start to see this big group because it's like 75 to 80% of all american participants are women. you start to look at this, and i'm going to sound like a broken record, but you start to look at them as a group. what do they have in common that looks attractive to an mlm these days, right? because we don't need to worry about door to door salesmen creeping people out or like going into strangers homes anymore. that's not the issue that we're trying to solve with that now. loans now. so what do they have in common now? they have they have, you know, difficult economic process. their mothers, a lot of them stay at home moms. a lot of them christian. so their belief system is that they should be at home with their children. a lot of them are employed and don't make enough money, pay gap. hello. so there is an opportunity to sell them this like don't you need extra money? i guess. of course i need yes, i need 25. i need the 25% that my male coworkers getting. so i guess i'll do it on my loan

because i can't fix the system right. and i'm being serious about that. like that is the thinking. it's like, how could i ever get ahead? how could i ever leave my husband? how could i ever and we've done a lot of we've gone to these conferences and stuff where people will talk about the reason the monetary reason that they got into mlm is and a lot of times it's just for fun, but a lot of times it's really sad. like a woman who needed to pay for her dad's headstone. he hadn't had one for three years and she was working for three years in this make up mlm and didn't make enough money to buy a headstone in that much time. so i think as a group, women are vulnerable in that way. and it's also true that other vulnerable groups are becoming are like race and, you know, competing with women. now to be like the big group of grandma. so you have a lot of immigrants, you have a lot of people in developing countries or neo liberal societies that are kind of just beginning their capitalist experiment that we

started a long time ago. and they're perfect targets for these companies. so it's just kind of turned out that there's good idea for sales is also a really good idea for scams and uh. right, well, it makes sense. you know, in 1920 you don't want a creepy guy in your house. makes more sense if it's a woman and better if it's a woman who's your friend. and maybe now they're not showing up at your house, but they're showing up on your facebook feed on like facebook. they're in your lives. yeah. or your church or whatever. but also, you know, the women, these these the recruitment process requires a large social network and trust. so, you know, trust the story that i'm telling you because it's not true. the recruitment has gotten easier, at least at least recently because of social media. so in the last like ten, 20 years, it's been easier to recruit people outside of your community. but before that, women had these very, very strong social networks that would happen in the daytime when their husbands

were home. you know, the neighbor dy, your sisters, your aunt's, your grandma, and that's what happened in my family, was one person joins. then the next person joins and the next person joins in. and then all of a sudden, everybody selling herbalife. you know, and that's just a literally what happens over and over again in my family. mm hmm. yeah. right now, the popular thing in my community, you what you felt like was no go. i was saying the one in my the one in my neighborhood, it's really taking off right now is like there's a couple of different companies that sell those nail stickers, like the nail polish stickers i have. oh, the nail. and my mom's next door neighbor can't sell them because it's enamel and you can't sell them. so every time i go home, she like, left me rifle through this giant basket she has of, like thousands of these sets of mail stickers and takes on the. oh, but yeah, they have fun. oh, yeah, it is. it is. i can tell in my hometown just by observing from afar.

kind of. i can tell the girl who is like the top of the pyramid usually. and then i can see everybody else get into it and then it changes. it's very funny how it cycles through and and how people don't quit. i mean, they quit one mlm, but then they pick up and do another one a lot of the time, right? yes, because you have to. it's so hard. it's so much inner psychology, so. okay, if you figure out you're not making money at this 1 million in order to quit and not want to do it again, you have to first identify as a victim. you have to understand that you are a victim. you have to understand that probably during your tenure there, you victimize other people. right? you rope them into this thing and they're not making money either. and they happen to be your sister. so you have to, like, recognize those two things. you have to also know that it wasn't your fault, but it wasn't what you were doing wrong. and instead what happens? the story that gets told often is that wasn't the right mlm and i didn't have the right attitude about that product, so i'll quit this one, but i'm still believe

in in the the dream. so we talked to a woman and named jd who failed miserably. and like a number of islands and i thought we were doing this interview like, oh, i'm so glad you came to your senses or whatever. and then at the end she was like, so now i'm doing landmark, which is another. i was like, what are you talking about? i mean, we had a laugh about it, but i was like, you don't learn anything from this. and she's like, no, i really think it's a good idea. like i want to make money like you're not this isn't not working. yeah, it is tricky. this is. and then i'm like, frozen years ago, i had i worked on a story about these $5 earrings that were in mlm and they had it was a horrible story. they had a conference in las vegas and it was a superspreader event and multiple people attended, died of covid and oh my god, it was awful. and i still follow some of the ones who had spoken out on

facebook or whatever. and i do see how many of them are still doing. and you think you had just like a horrifying experience. and obviously i don't want to be judgmental towards people, but it's wild how they say, well, this one was bad, but the other ones are good. it's the same pressure mechanisms that they just repeat over and over again, which i guess does bring me kind of to where i want to go next, which is, you know, how do they get you in these emails? you had a story about one of these. it was called holiday magic, where they would i really laughed at this part. they had a manual that would they would teach you about how to get a pen into someone's hand to some paper design drop the pen and then have jan pick it up and then kind of back away. yeah. and then just really care, like, just silence. if you don't know what's going on here. but you know, what are some of the tactics that they use, i guess, to initially like to get you in besides the promise, like are there any certain like tactics that just have stood out

to you in terms of like, how do they get you? well, one tactic that i learned about more recently is this thing that i learned from jennifer rila, who was an arbonne salesperson for a long time, and it's called dripping. i thought it was so weird, but it's called dripping. and you essentially create a target list, like a a list of people you would like to recruit. and for a while you drip on them, meaning you, you gift them things, or you invite them to the parties, but you don't pitch it to business opportunity, but you just keep in touch. text them every once in a while about something unrelated. give them another candle, etc. i do that for a long enough and then you pounce when you feel like they're ready to sign up. and she had a she has a notebook. i've seen it in person. it was called her direct list. that was like a three ring binder with just tons of names, addresses, information about people like when is their birthday? who are they married to?

you know, like, like a dossier, essentially, about her entire neighborhood and everyone she knows. and what they how to drip on all of them, turn them into recruits. and that was an interesting attempt. but even lately, i just seen the it's kind of sad. i was at the airport going to michigan for thanksgiving, i believe, and there was an amway lady in one of the restaurants just walking up to people, strangers with her briefcase. and i was like, i wonder if she's even going anywhere. she bought like a really cheap spirit airlines ticket just to, like, hang out in there for it to go hang in the airport and we keep trying to recruit her, she told. oh yeah, she was training. yeah. yes, yes. yeah. she would like chit chat people a little bit and then they would be like, so what are you doing? she's like, i'm going to a business conference. oh, you would love it. like, and then it was like immediately, here's the pitch. wow. and i'm over in the corner of the russia shopping, like top arabesque. my goodness. we that is what.

so i mean, does anybody ever want to i mean, somebody has to come into thinking they're going to sell. i have i have friends. and on the first season of our show, we spoke to my friend danielle, who is a childhood friend. we grew up together in michigan and she has really high ranking in mlm called 31 bags. it's a christian bag company and i think she's like four levels from the top or something like that and has like in the thousands of people under her. do you believe that she is one of those people that thought she was going to be president from kindergarten? you know, like she just really likes the idea of this society. we have going on here and like how she can run it and she's done really well. but guess what? he works her -- off. i mean, far more than full time, i would say probably if she really wrote down hours and her biggest take home pay, i think

ever in a year was $45,000 to not actually be like get health insurance. they don't have health insurance benefits. there's not a401k, there's not vacation time, that's for sure. i mean, you can't take a day off because your sales are are counted monthly. it's really hard to get any time off actually, to get approved time off because you're sales, sales, you're recruiting count for the whole group. so you're really discouraged from taking your own time. so none of the benefits of a regular job. plus you're only making $45,000 a year, right? right. which is not a bad income, i guess, for where i grew up. it's fine. you can live on it, but it's not something to brag about or to rope someone else in, too. i feel like unless there unless they feel like it's their calling, like i know social workers who will take that much. right. but they also get really good government benefits. right? it usually you're the one kind of making the most, and that's

kind of the that's the feeling to it. certainly not the feelings. they're three other people above you. but if that's a steal it like that's not a great place for the feeling to be. no, no now and there are a couple people above her. a couple? you know. but if you think about how many people the exponential growth of that triangle right to and then say you have ten and each of them get five and each of them get five and each of them get five. once you're down like four or five levels, you're talking hundreds of thousands of people. right? and so if these couple up here in the first few rungs are making $100,000, like who am i going to beat out? like, how would i how would leapfrog best friends for one or like a mom and lula ro, for example, almost everyone at the top of their organization is like related to one another. so how are you going to squeeze in there? mary one of them, i don't know,

right? and it just doesn't seem like a good economic plan to think like, i'm going to infiltrate this really closed organization at the very top and then i can make her money, you know? okay. income, but also daniel, my friend who does the bags, he's been doing it for like a long time. like eight, ten, 12 years, something like that. same thing with jennifer raiola, who also wasn't making any money. eight years. scott lost. the 200,000. was it ten years or something? so they're even the ones that are making a little bit of money, or it takes a really long time to get up there. uh huh. and is jennifer the one who had the the convertible, or is that someone else, the mercedes suv, white mercedes suv? yeah, yeah. and so you just tell that story. that's all i, i, i genuinely just while because she's the one who outwardly she sells arbonne right. she looks like she's succeeding,

but she's. oh, so yeah, just tell that story. but she's not and she had to she's now seeing a cult d programmer like wow, seriously therapy to try to take it out of her head. what happened? so jennifer was selling arbonne arbonne. if you don't know, it's like it's a weird company. it's like diet shakes and makeup, like, perfect for ladies, you know, just exactly what the ladies need. diets and makeup and it's claims to be like all natural and whatever, but it's again, it's like you can get that it's like you can get that whole foods we all have you don't get that are going to get natural products but they that's what they sell and they have this program where i just explain a little bit more about the levels. so you know if you're way down here, you're like a an associate or a represented or a distributor. and then if you sell or recruit, you know, enough people in a month, it's usually not from

selling, it's from recruiting and their sign up fees. but they put it in a dollar amount. so like, let's say you recruit five people and they're each $200, and then that means you sold $1,000 for their starter packs, essentially. so you, you hit a certain sales goal every month for, let's say, three months, and you get to rank up and it gives you like a couple of benefits, like maybe another percent in your compensation or something, or you're your discount on products and things like that. and so you just try to rank up and rank up. so jennifer was ranked up pretty high and a lot of her friends and family had joined her. and one of the levels is, i think senior vice president, it's called, or senior regional president. i have my book right here, but i'm not going to open it. i'm so sick of looking at that thing. i'm just kidding. it'a great book now. so she wanted to get to the certain level and it's called the mercedes level. and this will sound familiar to anyone who's heard of the mary kay pink cadillac in arbonne. you get a white mercedes, you

get a white mercedes, you don't get a white mercedes. so essentially you get to a level where they allow you to go to your local mercedes dealership, apply for a loan or a lease in your name. there. their name is an anywhere except on the outside of the car. there's like placards that say our born on the outside of the car. but they don't have anything to do with the actual ownership of the car. and then they set the sales goal. i think for her it was like 40,000 a month or something for her and, her team. and if you hit that every 44, maybe a quarter. so it was a lot of money. if you keep hitting that, you get $800 from the company to go toward your car. so it's like what? it's just a manipulation tactic to keep you. like, first of all, why not just give them the $800 right. but it's to keep you roped in

like it's to keep you stuck with this company. so now she's paying eight or just getting $800 a month a couple of times. but like the the the goal is so high that the sales goal and the way she reached it even to get this mercedes was kind of shady. like not shady. she didn't do anything wrong. but arbonne encouraged all of their salespeople and all our moms do this. they encourage all of their salespeople to like buy multiples of any new product that's coming out so that they can sell one to their friends and have one in their house and have one in their car and all that stuff. so she did that one time when there was this big new product launch and her team all bought everything and then she hit the sales goal. so doing that month after month does kind of impossible. so now she has the mercedes is an $800 a month. i'm sorry but a brand new white mercedes suv in northern michigan, a white car. first of all, what dirt roads everywhere? i don't think so. you're not even going to cover the lease, let alone insure or

texas or anything else. and like, it wasn't even a hybrid. so gas is a gas guzzler, right to me. and she stole on that. not in urban, but it's her car just to drive it around. so she's like a like a driving advertisement for our von, a company she doesn't believe in. she doesn't believe in a work for anymore. and when i was riding around and i wanted to take a screwdriver and like pry off because it's like a metal sign on above the wheel, well, i'm like, that's fine. and people also we went mushroom hunting one day when i was out there and just to take a load off and her car, we were like, park in a ditch and then go back into some and stuff where we knew where we thought mushrooms were. and i won't tell you any more than that, but people would pull over and be like, rila, jennifer her. and because they saw her car, like her car is so recognizable to everyone in the tiny town she

lives and like knows that's her work. they can just see her everywhere she's going, you know? it's like, yeah, i think a big flag, a big red flag, huh? oh, man. well, then there's also there's like a wellness point in this. a lot of the moms and obviously we saw during the pandemic and covered a lot of them discovered that they had ways to help with covid. but this kind of goes back to the beginning to right in our run this. but a lot of them do this. and even 100 years ago, a lot of companies were we're kind of started based on like a wellness promise that i feel like has really seeped into society, right? yes. and there's a reason for that as well. so like the earliest mlm were vitamins, one of the earliest of melons was neutralizer, which is now owned by amway, but guys who started amway started at natural light and naturally existed before that. and it was like vitamin supplements, i think. and it's since that's since then

that's become a huge share of the product market in mlm. and i think the reason is because. people who i think if you believe the story about america, there's things that you question that and then you question different things. so you a lot of people don't trust that the establishment, they say, oh, everyone really, you know, there's the pharmaceutical industrial complex, there's the medical industrial complex, there's, you know, the scientists don't want you to know that we actually have a cure for cancer. that's really cheap. so there's sort of keep an eye on anything. and i know i was kind of like that and like a lot of conspiracy theories and stuff about regular products on the regular shelves, like trying to kill you when in fact a lot of mlm products are gravely hurt people in the past. but it's like, yeah, that's

first of all, you're big believer in the american dream, but also you just don't trust the guys that are running it right now. that's kind of the combo. i think we all know like that. yes. and i think, you know, yeah, no, you got there's also like a religious aspect to this too. i mean, there's always the joke that it's like mormons. like, why do you think not that religion plays a role in this, but a lot of christian communities, this is moms really do take hold. what what do you think the connection is there on the connections? okay. so we can start with the women again being asked to stay in the household and not having a lot of economic opportunities outside the house. so this is something that's that's deemed acceptable all for you to be spending your time doing, especially since you're doing it around your your church folks, your friends from church. you know, like, who could be that? i mean, my friend danielle has

her meetings at a church and in my hometown. so that's like your husband. fine with that? your pastors, my mother. so that's one thing. another thing is that christian and i'm only talking christians here, i didn't do a lot of research into other religions participation and mlms, but i did look into protestants and catholics quite a bit. and one thing that you're taught in, especially in protestant churches and evangelical churches and mormonism, is to proselytize. so it's part of your job as a christian to spread the word, to tell people and save their souls. right. which is how you end up with people going off to weird islands and never coming back. and the the skills that it takes to do that kind of work is pretty much the same thing to do. recruiting in. and i'm all out. so you're already comfortable with the idea of walking up to

someone and offering them this gift of freedom of, you know, you can finally have what you want in life. and and we can do it together like that is all over the place in church, like we're helping each other, you know, we're helping each other against the ban and we're going to, you know, make this community, this little utopia better for ourselves. and so the idea of knocking on or walking up to strangers in a supermarket is not completely foreign to those communities. and then i also think that in some fact of especially like calvinism, i spoke about that a lot because that's where the amway guys got their beliefs system started in the calvinist church. and mormonism is similar where monetary gains are seen as a blessing or a sign that if there is predetermination, what signs

could you look for on earth that you're one of the chosen ones and those sects have decided that wealth is one of the things you can maybe would help you take a good guess if you're going to the good place or the bad place. so again, you get into a chicken or egg thing where it's like lot of these folks go out with the intention of making a lot of money so that it so that they do. and then it's like, well, why would they send me to hell? like i'm working. i bought off and i have a bunch of money. i'm an honorable person and i should be rewarded in the afterlife. and i know that's a really big thing in mormonism. and then lastly, want to say, i think also because so many mormons participate, that it has gotten kind of a bad rap for like targeting religious folks. but utah is the like the home of them all. and there's more per capita than anywhere any other state. but that's because they the people who run that state, have created a really lax pyramid scheme laws.

and then the ones aren't the only scam that are being scams that are being run out of utah. there's plenty of others, but i happen to be one of them. so it's kind of like if you've ever started an llc and your tax accountant will be like, set it up in delaware right? because delaware has like no something tax. i don't know, like some tax you don't pay. if your llc is registered in delaware, it's similar. so if you want to start going, my mom started in utah because. the state won't go after you for a pyramid law violation. that pyramid scheme violations. yeah, right. well that's i think like one of the things that for me about the book and i remember this from the podcast that was the most disturbing were the polish tax he where you kind find yourself talking enough about mlms and worrying enough about mlm and ultimately you landed the part of like, well, why the heck doesn't somebody do something about this? this is wild how is a business allowed to exist where 99% of people fail? i mean, some of it comes from lobbying, right?

the amway people have been very a lot of it very good. i don't want to just say amway, but a lot of it is amway, right? just kind of being able a lot of amway. but but the dsa that direct sellers association, which is the mlm lobby and individual companies do spend a lot on contributions to political campaigns for people who are friendly to muslims, mostly conservatives, mostly republicans, mostly people who have who just love bootstrap thinking and i think you know, those we've seen the political ties. i mean, they amway dudes were like in government. one of them like was part of the rnc and the other one this isn't government but like was part it was the head of chamber of commerce and now his kid is so which chamber of commerce is not a department in the government it's a it's a lobbying organization. but which i never knew before looking into this stuff.

so, yeah, there's there's a lot of a lot of politics going on in this in this world. mm hmm. but also like, it is politics on both sides, right? i think that was for me has been surprising where you kind of with you like, okay, i can understand a world where ronald reagan said, go ahead, mohammed. just like, you know, the mantra of is very much go ahead. all business. but it really is like we're and democrats, at least at the federal level, have not done a whole lot on this right. i think that we are in denial about what we've tasked the efforts with. i think that's the problem is, again, and this is why i like talking about this stuff, because it's stuff people don't know or think about very often. but if you spend a couple of minutes thinking about it, it's like, oh my gosh, the ftc, imagine this. you have you have a whole department of of a federal government that has less funding than like a medium sized mlm like annual funding, like compare revenues or profit

margins on and on all the big people up top, not the little guys to the ftc. they're like tiny, a tiny, tiny. i think it's like 350 million a year or something, which is like nothing. don't quote me on that, but it's somewhere around there and their job at the ftc is to go after credit card fraud, identity theft, telecom, you know, like spam calls, false product claims like, you know, or service claims that are wrong. all of the internet phishing stuff, catfish ring, all this stuff and on alarms. so how to get them to prioritize this thing that has branded itself so well as something good when you have these very obviously bad criminal acts going on which they don't even have the capacity to to to stay

on top of those like getting them to getting the momentum of the country to swing toward. let's let's take out the millions is hard and people are trying. but that's hard to do because when you have like people stealing like old people's identities and credit cards, like that's a you know, you kind of look at the two of them and you're like, well, these people signed up for it. and these people, you know, didn't. and we only have ten of us here or whatever. i've talked to the ftc a lot, and it feels very much like that's the main issue with why they wouldn't put this at the top of their docket although they are taking it much more seriously lately, especially since covid, they have been sending out warning letters for false product claims. a company saying our essential oils will cure or prevent covid. the warning letters. you know, i challenged them on this a bit like, what do they really do? like, are you knocking on doors? are you going showing up there and make sure they don't do their stuff? but a new initiative has started

a lawsuit just came out a couple of days ago, a class action lawsuit that might establish, distribute ers as employee is meaning when they go online and claim stuff like our products care, covid, they're actually you're representing the company right now. it's foggy because the company can say that's just an individual distributor. i didn't tell them to say that if i thought they but, you know, i didn't tell them to say that. that's not part of our training. and it's just like that's what everyone else is doing and what you told up lines to do. but now if they do, when this lawsuit, they are, you know, on their way to being held accountable because these people are not considered employees. i mean, that would be great. like that would be resolved. so many things had to, you know, pay taxes in a certain way if they had to offer insurance that they had to get social security and stuff like that, like all

that. i mean, it's a huge deal. and i'm keeping a close eye on that one because that would solve a lot of that. yeah, because it does have looked at this a little bit. but i remember like years ago looking because i think they do have to kind of disclose like what most people make or whatever. but even that's a lot of the time that they do disclose that by the time you're like the fourth spreadsheet, you kind of can't tell how much money. and you know, it's impossible for the public income disclosure statement. i've rarely seen one that's over one page. the compensation are so huge. the thing that i will tell you as a seller, what you're going to make are so huge and convoluted that like, i can't understand a word, but the sheet that they're supposed to show, not supposed to, they don't have to. no one has to. but but if in good faith, a few of these companies are not doing this, they're like offering up the info and it will be one page. it has a chart that shows you

well, first of all, it's a lot of like inspirational language up at the top. and there's a little chart that's like how many people make $1,000,000 .00 1% of the company? how many people make 500,000? it goes like that. and then it usually tells you like the 99% make nothing or make like $200 a year or something like that. what it doesn't you at all are the people fail, the people who drop out. so it doesn't there should be another row that's like actually these people quit within the year because they failed and they lost this much. that would be the most informative version of that chart to me, because if they included that and i asked the dsa to do it and they wouldn't do it, and they were like, i don't understand what you're asking me. and i was like, i just need to know. you're telling me how much people make and how happy they are, but who have you talked to? any of the unhappy ones? like is that part of your survey? and they were like, no. i thought, what are you talking about. this is an incomplete.

it's incomplete data. if you don't have that, like why a business would do that. like, not know their attrition rate. that's right. that's not how work works. yeah, like if walmart was losing like 99% of their workforce every year, like that would be a problem for walmart and it would something they would want to look into. and the millions are like, yeah, okay, cares. that's kind of a them problem. i guess. you know, knowing all of this. like why do you think people keep falling for this like everyone? so i think, well gen z smart and they're all on tiktok they are going to fix this. they're going to find why do we keep girl on tiktok selling. ml out there on yeah this is the truth but why do we keep because it sounds it sounds great and it sounds exactly like the story we've always been told. it doesn't sound out of the ordinary for this culture like it sounds exactly right.

like it sounds you can make a living without having to go deeply into student debt. all you have to do is now be online all the time, which you are anyway. and you can have financial freedom and you can spend as much time with your kids as you want to, and you can make as much money as you want to. it just depends on how hard you want to work. you set your own hours. you, you know, you decide how much to grow your business. all of that. like if that were true, i would do it tomorrow. like i, i love the idea of it and i think a lot of people love the idea of it and the person giving you the idea isn't giving you the bad side of any. you know, they're not saying what really what really happens. you kind of have to dig for that information. it's only really been in like the last five or ten years that you could get a lot by googling mlms. now, a truth in advertising has a nice collection of, you know,

information around the business practices, the dubious business practices and alliance. and the ftc now has more information on their website, obviously, like reddit groups and facebook groups that are anti mlm and then my show on my book and, other shows about this world, but it's been very, very recent. so i think, you know, let's say 20 years ago, i wouldn't have even known who to ask if this was a good idea or not. the chamber of commerce is certainly not who i can ask because they're run by an, you know, right. and have been forever. so i guess better business bureau or something. but who actually calls them? i don't know. yeah, that's what we used to say. well, you know, the ftc, it's i guess like i feel like i do this for a living and. i don't like about its website as much as i look it up, but it's like i and it is i mean, i do think too, sometimes we only have a few minutes left, but you don't even recognize sometimes that it's an email. i'm like, i think i'm a pretty astute person, right? i can think two years ago in a friend of mine with like asked

me to go to some webinar in back of my mind, i was like, oh, melanie sells cleaning products now, and it didn't occur to me that it was an mlm. i just thought, well, i'm she's doing something new, so you don't always recognize it either. well, they know not to advertise it that way, right? so, you know, not to just walk up to you and be like, are you interested in multilevel marketing? like that's not the sales pitch, but they're, they're getting sneakier. i feel like there's more like there does used to be a way against the rules, way against the rules. but they're now getting on store shelves, like making official partnerships with like a big brand like sephora. so, like beautycounter isn't on my lap and they sell products at sephora. i believe they have tupperware at target now. so they're kind of blurring the lines. and if you see it on the shelves at target, does that look like a potential pyramid scheme? no, no. and so now why don't you just sell it at home, not knowing which you talk about in the in the book that tupperware actually started in department

stores and failed miserably and then then moved over to the party system. but yeah, i think they're they're getting they' getting sneakier. they're getting better at the language they use to bring people in so that it's not just red flags all over the place. in the beginning and in my family anyway, people don't talk about it. i joined it. i know. and they say i got a new job. wow. that's the phrase. mm. and so and then if someone fails, it's kind of embarrass saying you also got your mom and your cousin and your sister in law into it. and so you don't talk about it. the easiest thing to do is like it wasn't right for me. mm mm. wasn't a good fit, you know, and then you're just on your way to the next level or whatever. but i understand that because it's, it's been really hard for everyone to talk to. that's like especially left out for a long time, like jennifer, it's really hard. like in my conversations with her, she's having realizations

all the time, like, oh my god, i can't believe i believed that or i can't believe i said that to someone or oh my gosh, like, it's it's all just coming up all the time. and she's making apology phone calls all over the place, like as she's realizing it's like coming out of a stupor, you know. right. and so you just once you figure it out, it's just takes some time to recognize what happened and your, you know, maybe $15,000 in the whole. yep. yeah. and with somebody like so i think about like the victims of bernie madoff. so that was a ponzi scheme, not a pyramid scheme. there was no product involved. but it kind of works similar, but folks can say this is a you know, this is a crime that goes after the other. you know, a lot of departments really want this guy behind and can see what's exactly illegal about it. and don't have such a problem self-identifying as victims, even though they did do the same thing by roping their friends and family into it. at least all of them can say like point the finger at you and

what millions have done by, you know, lobbying for the laws that they have is they protect themselves with this idea of if we were a pyramid scheme if we were illegal, we wouldn't be allowed to exist. and what i like to say is that's like saying i'm not a murderer because i'm not in prison. right. like you're you have to get caught. someone has to have the resources and the time to do the research and come after you and we just don't have that right now with the ftc. mm well. i wish. i mean, any other more hopeful note that that's the note, that we are going to end are going to be great. we'll be fine and it's going to be great. oh, here's a hopeful note. here's the cover of my book that's really pretty. oh, i will hold it up, too, because i think, well, thank you so much. i

good evening. and he represents