The Dream Team

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I'm Brandy Hadfield.

I'm 45 years old and I'm in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

And right now, I'm a psychotherapist in clinical supervision.

So I'm in my fourth of five years of training as a psychotherapist, which I restarted after I left a multi-level marketing company.

I'm Jane Marie, and this is the dream.

What area do you focus on in your therapy work?

Well, I'll be doing my thesis next year, and so I have to submit it for approval.

And I want it to be about commercial cult recovery.

But right now, as I'm in supervision, I work with anyone.

My school is also a referral network.

So they actually give the students in supervision clients.

That was my first therapist.

My mom was going to the University of Michigan, and we had, there was a family therapy place that was all referral for students like during the supervision or I thought about doing their rounds, you know?

And guess what happened?

Like six months into Judy?

She died.

Oh, my very first therapist talked.

Shit.

I just had a mammogram yesterday.

Sorry about that.

Of breast cancer.

No.

Yes.

No.

Yes.

The next therapist that took over from her, she was like, well, now we have another trauma to explore.

And I was like, ah.

I want to talk to you.

The reason I wanted to reach out to you and talk to you is because I feel like you know so many corners of this world that we're interested in.

One being you were in a multi-level marketing company.

Two,

you have a lot of thoughts about the wellness world, which is also our favorite and coaching.

And three, you're aiming for a career to help folks like you get away from all of that.

So where should we start?

What company were you a part of?

So I was part of the Juice Plus company.

That's the name of the company?

Yeah.

It used to just be called Juice Plus, but then they changed it to the Juice Plus Company.

And they sell

like fruits and vegetables, powdered, encapsulated, and like a plant-based omega and

protein powder that's vegan.

And then they also sold an aeroponic tower garden, which

is like a tower garden.

So you can grow produce in your home, but that arm of it or whatever ended up severing ties.

Like they're like, we don't want to be part of you anymore.

We're just going to go to affiliate only recently.

Meaning they're getting out of the multi-level recruiting game.

Okay.

Correct.

Yeah.

What was that company supposed to, I guess it's, what were they promoting?

Inspiring healthy living around the world.

Was that the pitch?

Yeah.

Give me the rest of the pitch.

Helping everyone to realize their dreams was part of it.

When I began my journey with them, a lot of the people within the company are very evangelical Christian and I was more like the new age,

which feeds into it just as conveniently for their intents and purposes.

And I called, you know, how the MLM boss babes name their teams, like we're team, whatever.

I was the dream team.

And then I, and then when I was like coming out and I found the dream podcast, I was like, fuck, I like literally changed my Instagram handle because it was dream with me or something like that.

And I was like, oh boy.

Yeah.

And I was like, that's perfect.

You knew it was all a dream.

Full circle.

Tell me about how you got into that.

How did you find this company?

Well, they found me.

I was working for a very large fitness company in Canada for about a decade.

I was in the human resources department and I was on maternity leave.

And as I got closer to like my firstborn, who's now 13 when he was born and I was getting closer to going back to work where I traveled a lot for work and I worked like 50 hours a week, which they would have adjusted, but I was very like.

I always give my 150%.

Like I couldn't fathom doing less than what I was doing.

So I was looking for something else.

I started taking certifications, like health coaching, parent coaching all these different like coaching certificates you had just had your first baby uh-huh the audacity

oh yeah parent coaching

well yeah

were you just like i got this like the minute you drive out of the opposite like nailed it afterwards no the opposite i struggled so so much because my firstborn was what they call like a higher needs baby or like a highly sensitive baby.

So I was, I was the complete opposite of feeling like I had it all under control.

And then I wanted to learn as much as I could

and share your knowledge with the world.

Yeah.

So I had found this parenting guru slash pediatrician, took the coaching certification that he had.

And then his daughter, who was also certified, which is now defunct, it recently became defunct.

This coaching body,

she sent me a package in the mail, which was basically recruiting me into the juice plus.

And because I had read books that literally described her and I could, and she was my age now and a mom, I was just like, it felt serendipitous.

Yeah.

I have to ask, and I don't want to get into like a lot of body talk, but

What were these products

for again?

They were, it was the pitch was.

I know, like in the UK, they're very much about like weight loss and stuff.

Like, they have a different flavor in the UK, but here it was more like family health.

It was more like we know we're supposed to be eating like 200 servings of fruits and vegetable.

Actually, they said 12, but it was just an insane amount per day.

And this is all the reasons why you're supposed to, because you have all this oxidative stress ricocheting in your body like bullets.

And the antioxidants will be like Pac-Men eating those bullets and preventing cancer and disease and et cetera.

So it was more about your children.

You know, we all know that they should be eating fruits and vegetables and they're not.

And this is a way to bridge the gap.

That was a big tagline too, is bridging the gap between what we should eat and what we actually eat.

The reason I like your story and that I've been following you online is because I feel like you represent the mark for one of these companies who is really smart, very thoughtful, industrious.

You're a mom.

You seem to have your shit together.

And yet you got involved in one of these companies.

Can you talk about that?

You know, like people are always like, oh, they're all just suckers.

And I'm like, no, they're like you and me.

Yeah.

You know, like they're not, there's nothing weird or special about people who get involved in MLMs.

It could be anybody.

Yeah.

Like Arbon was really big at the time when I joined Juice Plus.

And I already knew, like, you know, it sounds too good to be true.

It probably is.

So I already had my spidey senses up about multi-level marketing.

Like, by the time I was approached, I had read like hundreds of pages of material by literally a world-renowned pediatrician who's well-respected.

I thought, okay, you know, I know in general, these things seem suspicious, but this person

I've trusted with all of these other areas has been my go-to resource.

And he's getting his children to become distributors for this company.

So there's got to be, maybe there's something to it.

Maybe I'll just give it a shot.

What's the worst that could happen?

So I was just willing to kind of, okay, well, I'll give it a shot.

I didn't realize the grooming and the indoctrination and all of that, that part of the MLM beast had never been on my radar.

Just that it was a scam and unlikely, not the whole coercive control piece.

So that's, yeah, that's how that works.

So this person who suggested it to you, how did this person come into your life again?

So

he has written parenting books.

Okay.

And then he linked up with this MLM.

Right.

First of all, just like, how did things go?

You, you joined.

What happened in your career?

How was your experience?

At first, it was, it was difficult because it's awkward when you're pitching an MLM to your friends and family.

But one of the things they told me, which they all do, is that one of the keys is going to events and attending these trainings and events and get yourself to a conference.

So, this is where like the whole indoctrination piece happens.

And you're just like in this large group awareness training kind of environment where it's like so much pizazz and

all of these other individuals and you're being shown all of these success stories and you are really starting to believe well look she's doing it she's just like me i can do this too and the conditioning is yes you can do it and anybody who's suspicious of that or doesn't think that you can they're not believing in you rather than they're not believing in a predatory quote unquote business model Do you remember the math you were doing in your head about like, this can't be one of those because of X, Y, and Z?

Like, you already knew what a pyramid scheme was and that MLMs are suspicious.

Do you remember like other than it came from a guy who had written some books that you respected?

Was there anything else about this particular one that made you a reasonable person?

Set it into a different category?

Because I was getting into those events and into those meetings and trainings where I was forging relationships with people who looked as though they were doing it.

It is my inclination to trust people that I was building relationships with.

And I think with most people, if you spend enough time, like I remember when you in the first season i believe a friend actually joined the company and went to the event and how she was like oh i kind of feel bad like i you know like you could feel the shift of when she actually got in the environment how she started to feel a little bit like immersed in it yeah some camaraderie there and and getting to know the people's personal stories yeah yeah

what got you into those events did you have to just spend money to be there or was there some qualifying thing No, well

it's the conference.

I mean, everyone,

the quote was like, if you wait until you can go to conference, you'll never get to conference.

So just go to conference, just put it first.

And I am the type of person who

I follow a recipe.

Like I cook out of cookbooks.

If you, I follow instructions.

So if you're telling me

you will be successful and this is how you do it, I'll do that like 150%.

So I did follow the quote unquote system.

And I told myself, if nothing else, this will be an experiment.

I'm just going to do all of the things and see what happens.

Yeah.

And

it was slow going, but I was getting recognized a lot.

Not on the street.

I didn't know.

What do you mean?

I was getting recognized,

showered with praise for doing all of the right things.

Things would be said like, you are already there.

The numbers just haven't caught up to you yet.

Don't change a thing.

You're perfect.

Because you weren't making money.

Yeah, because I wasn't making money, but I was recruiting and I was leading events, leading trainings, acting as if, which is what I was told.

just act as if you are a national marketing director which fake it till you make it brand yeah act as if and it's inevitable.

So I believed all of these things with these people that I was spending a significant amount of time with, literally speaking with every single day, like pretty much seven days a week.

Wow.

Did you expect it to be so intense?

An over full-time job?

Yeah.

And so intense?

No, because that's another tricky thing.

It's not like a regular job where you're going to work and working those hours and then coming home and hopefully you don't really have to bring too much with you.

The catchphrase was: there's so many of them, they just keep coming up.

Just do life and bring juice plus with you.

So then it sounds good.

It's like, oh, I'm actually just living my life and it's just in my back pocket.

But what actually happens is it's your life.

And that's what happened.

When you said do life and bring juice plus, I thought you said Jesus for a second.

Well, fun fact: at the conferences, there's a lot of t-shirts that say

JC, JC plus JP.

No way.

Oh, so the Lord wants you to be doing this too.

It's the Garden of Eden, you guys.

It's the Garden of Eden.

It doesn't get more natural than that.

It's not a supplement.

What?

And so everyone was like into that branding.

Yeah,

the target demographic certainly was.

It's so crazy how many MLMs are tied up with the Lord, our Savior.

How did you feel about that part?

That gets complicated there because

there was definitely some people in my downline, like in my team,

believers and very much still in the company.

There didn't feel this divide like there feels like now between left and right and

Christian and not.

It was just some of my friends are Christian, some of them aren't.

So I didn't really care.

You know, my husband is though quite atheist.

So as I, you know, was becoming more and more immersed over the years, there would be things like prayer breakfast at the conference or prayer group chat.

And one of my downlines sent me

not a Bible, but it was like a Jesus quotes of the day kind of book.

Daily devotional.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Jesus quotes of the day.

Yeah, I didn't go to church.

Chicken soup for the soul.

Yes.

Like in retrospect, when I look back, I'm like, oh, I was kind of becoming Christian, like as I was going along.

And I talked to my husband about that.

And that was probably the thing that was most, maybe one of the most challenging things for our marriage with this whole thing, like the financial aspect is one piece, but seeing his wife get swept up into religion as well was difficult.

Do you remember those fights?

It wasn't a, we don't really fight.

Must be nice.

Okay, go on.

Yeah, it wasn't fights.

It was more like conversations and me getting frustrated and saying like, you know, sometimes there are some things in life that are so difficult that you need a more spiritual answer for.

And he'd be like, all right, okay.

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So how did you do business-wise?

So I ended up working my way up to the top 1.6% of the company, which in how many years?

I was in and out over the span of 10 years whoa yeah um the first few years i couldn't crack 500 a month and remember i'm buying all these supplements and going to conference i was at a negative for years right and then um i've shared this before but

in Ontario, we had a program that was government funded, which was like a business school.

The government would pay you the equivalent of like your maternity leave benefits for a year where you would go to a business school and they would actually help set you up to start a legitimate business

and

multi-level marketing businesses didn't count but I took this as my out like I shopping around for the thing that seemed legitimate enough were you nervous about what to tell your upload or something like who were you okay yeah tell me about that yeah yeah because i spent so much time with them and because i felt guilt and i felt like they were pouring into me and all and they had spent so much time with me and were counting on me it felt difficult to sever ties but then i felt like okay this is a real like black and white reason that i can leave because it's just not making sense um financially i'm not we're not we're just getting further in the whole and i i needed to be bringing in income you were top 1.6 percent how much were you bringing in not at that point oh okay not at that point Then when I left,

started school and I was going to start an actual business supporting families with the certifications that I held.

And then when I was going in the world and doing that work, I realized that these coaching certifications just are not enough that

I was feeling like

the, you know, they're coming to me for this, but what they could really use is a great psychotherapist.

And so I wanted to be that.

So that then I went to school for that.

And then when my, I had to take a maternity leave when my second son was born and we moved into the small town for a period of time

and then i've struggled with postpartum anxiety and health issues and at a certain vulnerable breaking point when my second born was around two and i wasn't going to school i had taken a break so i i actually contacted them that second time to get back in yeah

and i said

I want to basically get on the whole regime, the way of living, the lifestyle, because I was remembering what my health was coming in.

And I missed being surrounded by that kind of positivity, I guess you could say.

So I came back and I felt bad.

Were you isolated socially at that time?

Yes, I was very isolated socially.

We had moved to a small town, like my hometown.

So we.

We weren't in Toronto, but my husband still worked in Toronto.

So he was commuting and some days I was just solo parenting with a baby and

a five and six year old.

And it was really, that was like the hardest time in my whole parenting experience was those years.

So you were kind of craving like the getting recognized

by selling Jesus juice or whatever it is.

Yeah.

And

I was homeschooling my firstborn at the time.

And at a homeschool group, I met somebody who was very evangelical who ended up being part of my downline.

And then there was like this enmeshed friendship part of it, which is the the complicated relationship with the people in your downline.

It's so unbounded.

In psychotherapy, you learn about dual relationships and how if somebody's your client, they shouldn't also be your friend or your partner or whatever, because it makes it too messy and toxic.

And that's exactly the dynamic that MLMs thrive on because it does make it very enmeshed and tangly and hard.

And

then you avoid getting away from it because it's already too messy.

Yeah, it just feels, yeah, it just.

Can you describe the feeling that you get from your upline encouraging you to recruit those people?

Yeah.

And then what happens when you do recruit your nearest and dearest?

What happens to the relationship?

And how does it affect your experience with the MLM?

Well, I never recruited my very best, closest friends or any of my family members.

Nailed it.

And that ended up being like a pretty protective factor because when I left, like I had people that I still had very close friendships with.

It wasn't like completely starting over,

which is surprising that I still stayed in for so long.

So

I would recruit, you know, like a mom friend.

And that's where

it became hard because then you're just spending so much time together.

And for me.

And are you calling them all the time?

almost there for this, you know, like you're kind of being like a cheerleader for everybody.

What did that look like for you?

For sure.

We would have our overall group, Team Nutrition Tenacity, and then my group, like the Dream Life team.

And then once you get to the certain,

you know, it's okay.

I laugh at myself as well.

When you get to a certain point in leadership, then I was part of literally the special leader chat.

It was called like so-and-so's special leader chat, which was really intense meaning what like tough love then there's like a team call every single week and then there'll be bigger team calls like for the greater you know upline and then team retreats um

which you all have to pay for this just really makes me angry as i think about it in retrospect because you're striving to grow and be a better leader and and eventually make an income

and

one of the things that would be presented to us for example is this special uh training by a renowned self-help person

who everybody knows and

you want to whisper it to me we can go off the record for this one we'll bleep it what is it who is okay

She didn't want to be affiliated with it.

So like she

only agreed to be part of this if it would never be written anywhere.

Oh my God.

I am not surprised, but also I do want to know how much that check was.

Oh, yeah, exactly.

So it was like, if you get to this position and have this amount of volume, then you can get this special leadership development course.

And they was like really

talked up.

And then I strive for it.

Like I worked my ass off.

In Canada, there were different rules.

And like, I got it as far as the American rules, but I didn't get it for the Canadian rules.

And then my upline fought for me to get it.

And so I get it.

And it's $100.

Like I have to pay.

Like it's just.

You're just getting the opportunity to spend money.

Yeah.

For the opportunity for busy work and spending money.

Did you go?

It was all online.

Oh.

She's just watching recordings of her talking and doing these exercises, like talk to someone you're too scared to talk to on your chicken list.

And what's a chicken list?

I don't know what that is.

is well jane marie you would be on my chicken list because

it's somebody with influence who you feel like oh like i don't know if they would want to be friends with me but they would be so awesome that's somebody who's on your chicken list wow who came up with chicken list i have no i bet you it's something that's shared in multiple mlms just adding it to the list because we also I discovered the whole drip list thing with loving on dripping

Dripping.

Yeah, dripping on.

Loving on.

We used to say you just keep loving on them.

And I thought it was so creepy, like humping a leg.

Or just like love bombing, like weird.

Literally love bombing, but we call it loving on.

And then the chicken list is like, you're daring yourself to speak to these people.

Okay.

So you're.

Chicken listing people.

So yeah.

So I come back after the whole vulnerable state and back in my small town with a second child deferring my education i come crawling back and i'm like i'm so sorry i ever quit on my dreams and they're like yep one of the things they did was give me free leads and i think it's because i was this person who would do 120 so if you gave me a lead i would like call them like immediately on the spot i would do a great job with them i'd be able to easily um flip them over close the deal yeah Close the deal.

So the reality is like, there really isn't that many people.

Like there really is a finite amount of people.

So the only way to get ahead is if you get some, if you come in with some sort of advantage or you're given an advantage.

And so I'm given this advantage because I'm golden child behavior.

And that was another.

another reason why I felt guilt and felt like, well, they're really trying to help me out.

And then I'm repeating that behavior to my downline, trying to give them advantages, like buying them sales.

And like, it's just so mucky yeah but i come back and i

end up growing quicker the second time than the first time where i was stuck stagnant at 500

second time i come within three months i hit comma club which means i got like a thousand dollars canadian for a whole month's worth of work

but as i hear

congratulations

i don't know

well it it's like one of the milestones that are greatly celebrated.

You know, you've got this reality where if you actually took a moment and work it out, you're getting paid less than minimum wage.

But

congratulations, Brandy.

You just got a 67% increase on your pay.

That never happens in corporate America.

And how many years was this from the time you joined to the time you hit $1,000 a month?

And then also, was it minus expenses?

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Okay.

Okay.

So you're spending money still in in this business and you're getting a check for 900.

Wow.

You know how Stephen Hassen talks about in cults, like fear induction?

There is a lot of that where, you know, they're talking about every disease and autoimmune condition and cancer imaginable and painting this tale of how if everyone could just basically flood their bodies, quote, with the massive amounts of nutrition, then, you know, we wouldn't have so much disease.

And they use videos with sad music.

And, you know, what if I never approached my friend whose daughter was having open heart surgery and this, like,

it's heavy duty, this kind of fear induction, where I'm buying it for people because I'm like, I felt that.

sure that it would make a difference.

Wow.

Which if I feel like an idiot.

Did you ever feel a difference drinking this stuff, taking this stuff?

So

they would say eating it because it's food.

Oh, sorry.

Did you?

Okay.

Wasn't it like liquids and powders, though?

They were encapsulated.

So it's like this tiny amount.

There's been McGill University in Toronto has done like a debunking of the science of Juice Plus, and they actually showed how it's really like the equivalent antioxidants of a bite of an apple a day.

So like you could literally say an apple a day keeps a doctor away is more sound than what they're saying.

When I think of like food in a capsule, I just think of Soylent Green,

which is the whole other gross thing.

But

so did you ever feel anything?

So the first time I had come in, I was already like

totally immersed in like health and nutrition.

So I was already taking a greens powder.

No, I didn't feel anything right away, but I was like, okay, I'm just swapping this for that and I'm being my own customer.

And I'm just explaining the benefits of Whole Food Nutrition.

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Studies show immediate improvement in expression lines in just 10 minutes and a significant decrease in deep-set wrinkles after eight weeks of use.

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So, how did it fall apart?

How How did you leave?

So, during the pandemic, there was lockdown and the film industry shut down.

And my husband works in the film industry.

So,

he was home and we didn't have that full income.

So, I was working extra, and it was a perfect storm for multi-level marketing.

Like, everybody's business was booming because sadly, people's vulnerabilities were being exploited.

I was just hustling my heart out thinking I was changing the world.

And then, I just

hit a wall where I burnt out.

And I was like, shit.

I actually had

one of my team members was concerned about her daughter's use of her phone.

And so that had me looking at my kids and their relationships to screens and my own relationship to my phone and how I was always on my phone.

And my kids were always playing.

Like we were all in the same roof, but we were all separated.

And I thought,

we're going to just take like a screen-free 30 days and reconnect as a family.

And that was like,

when I wasn't on the team meetings, like constantly connected with these people every single day, it was like a huge exhale.

And then I fell into a depression.

Like I, I was just got into a funk and I didn't know what was wrong with me.

So I started just asking myself, like, what do I want to do?

Like, I'm going to draw birds.

I'm going to challenge myself to draw a bird a day for 100 days.

I'm finding talking to people that you're all like everyone who's been higher up in these companies and then leaves, you're all still the person who likes to like set a goal or make a list and accomplish everything on it.

Like there has to be some structure to

your existence.

Yeah, I'm actually in the process of trying to create a nonprofit for a commercial cult recovery.

We started our first peer support group meeting meeting last month.

So, you know, it does follow that pattern of like, I feel, you know, like I've learned something important and now I'm going to pay it forward and help other people.

Well, I've seen videos that you've made about, you know, just like how scammy the wellness world can be.

When did your skepticism around that start?

For me, the very prescriptive way that we were told to eat ended up for me becoming disordered eating.

And that was very difficult to disentangle from because in addition to being fed a lot of the

power of beautiful produce,

we would also be fed like the dangers of dairy and how it's inflammatory.

And it's one of the gluten and dairy are the two of the most inflammatory foods.

My son is celiac, so we already have a gluten-free home, but I was still developing food phobias and

to start eating dairy again, for example, was difficult because I was afraid that it was going to like make me arthritic and all of these things based on the trainings and videos and indoctrination that I had endured for all of those years.

But food control is part of the behavior control, I now realize.

Like controlling what you eat is a way to control you in the cult.

Yeah, because if you can successfully control one area, like if you can successfully control the information that somebody is exposed to, then

the other things become easier to shift.

So if you can successfully make somebody follow a very strict diet, they're going to be more liable to follow you in these other ways as well.

So it just makes the member more malleable, essentially.

So yeah, looking at that type of eating, have you heard of orthorexia?

Yeah.

Would you call it that?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

So that is what I was dealing with when I was coming out in addition to all the other aspects of recovery.

Can you describe what it is?

You're obsessed with the purity and naturalness of your food.

So you're going to be like obsessively looking at the ingredients and you might not eat something if it's not going to fit within the parameters of what your prescribed lifestyle is.

And so it causes stress and anxiety.

And it's actually

more unhealthy than if you just eat the potato chips or right you know right

I'm still really finding my way out of the wellness

world because

it was such a huge part of my identity and it's so it's like trying to find the gray the gray area and that's been difficult hearing that like making someone or encouraging someone to have an eating disorder is kind of part of the plan or you know part of

how cults succeed.

Like, I knew that there was disordered eating and diet culture happening, but

you get all that when you're pregnant too.

So you were like right in this perfect spot of like having to listen to a bunch of other experts on a thing.

Yeah.

And I can lean on the hypochondriac side.

So it was more that for me, it wasn't like I need to be as fit as possible.

It was like, I need to not die and not get cancer.

But then that, yeah, but then that turns into disordered eating.

And that's, you know.

Yeah, 100%.

So tell me about some of the most interesting things that you've learned in your studies now that you're hopefully becoming a expert in this world of getting out of these sort of coercive control groups.

Like what are your,

what were the aha moments throughout that training?

Something that I really want to explore more when I work on my thesis next year is about borderline personality organization and pathological narcissism.

And I had this light bulb moment that I'm really dying to explore more where I propose that multilevel marketing companies induce or commercial cults in general, purposely induce disassociation, denial, and narcissistic grandiosity.

So they're almost,

not almost, they are with their systems, with their training, with their events, with their indoctrination.

creating little narcissists because that's the only way to

survive in that world is being disassociated, denial, and narcissistic grandiosity.

Believe it, achieve it.

And every man for himself.

Exactly.

Can you talk more about that?

I mean, I've been wondering that since day one of making this show, like, why

do the same types of characters, namely megalomaniacs and narcissists, start companies like this?

and you know join companies like this like what's the

what's the common thread here?

But what you're saying is they may not have that in common at the beginning, but the ethos of these companies creates those type of personality traits.

Yeah.

I'm not sure if you heard about the recent Arbonne where the upline was having her downline make foot porn on Instagram.

Yeah, I wrote a sub stack about it.

What happened?

So there was an Arbonne upline.

She's like this gorgeous woman who

feels like the girl at the sleepover who would like dare you to do things and egg you on and make you feel like you were a prude if you didn't do what she wanted you to do.

That's the kind of vibe.

Show your boobs and then they put itching powder in your sleeping bag.

Yeah.

And she's got this downline who is a more

relatable type of person.

So her upline with like coaching her was like, what are you willing to do?

Like show me that you're willing to get uncomfortable.

You're willing to do whatever.

And so we're going to start by pushing your boundaries by doing foot content because why not?

What are you willing to do?

Let's see if you're willing to do that.

For Arbonne?

Not for Arbonne, but like it's up to you.

No, just like on her Instagram.

It's all down.

She's taken it all down since it's been uncovered.

But do you love Arbonne enough that you would do foot fetish videos?

Yeah, it's really weird.

But this is the kind of thing that I'm seeing, like just in the wild, like this is how the uplines are feeling, feeling quite just about the way that they're treating their downlines.

That wasn't the vibe within Juice Plus.

It was more like this martyr, like mama on a mission.

It was, it was a different flavor.

The Arbonne stuff is a whole other flavor.

The enagic stuff is a whole other flavor.

But there's this common thread that I see in these boss babes where they do seem to truly believe that if you believe it hard enough, it will come to be.

And if it doesn't come to be for you, you stood in your own way,

which is a, I think, pretty sociopathic way to treat a person.

Yeah.

So they're almost training the empathy out of you.

And that was part of my leaving as well, is that I was just seeing people in my downline who were doing everything and who it wasn't happening for.

And I wasn't fully buying that it was their mindset getting in the way.

Now that I'm further out, I see, okay, it fully wasn't wasn't a mindset issue.

It fully was the system is designed in this way.

And there was a point where I was asking, like, this is my ratio.

This is my team.

This is how many people are at this position.

Like, this seems really bad.

And this leader was like, no, this is perfect.

This is exactly what you want.

Like, you need to have people down here, basically.

or else it doesn't work.

Like he was basically saying the quiet part out loud.

But in the environment that I was in when I was receiving this information I was at this large group awareness training where I'm getting this privileged time with this tippy-top leader in a quick moment.

I wasn't hearing the truth within that.

I was just like, okay, I'm good.

I'm good.

I'm good.

Okay.

You know, well, it's kind of like for there to be rich people, they have to be poor people.

For there to be good people, there have to be bad people.

Like that very binary thinking.

Of course, there's a bunch of people at the bottom of this.

And the more narcissistic they become, the better their chances of

the more narcissistic you are as a leader, the more apt you are to continue drinking the Kool-Aid and just stay in and bury your head in the sand and wear blinders.

And not worry about those people at the bottom.

Yeah, yeah, because they, yeah, exactly.

So what would you do in your practice going forward?

Like, how do you go out into that world and impart that knowledge to people?

Or is this still something people just have to come to on their, like, are you facing an industry that's like basically every one of your best friends that doesn't want to break up with their shitty boyfriend and there's there's no convincing them?

Or do you think that there's education that can be done?

Yeah, I don't think that there's like the way that I approach it is I'm not trying to change anybody's mind.

I'm not, I'm never approaching it from like, let me convince you that what you're doing is wrong or anything like that, but it's more like, here's the information and the psychoeducation when you need it.

Because

when, when you do, when you're coming out of it, you're then looking.

Like I was searching multi-level marketing recovery and I wasn't really finding anything there.

So I want to have, I want to have support and information and education so that when those available and promote those resources that I now know are there, like Cutting Ties by Megan Williams, for example, I want to help promote those things for the people that need them.

And also there needs to be more.

Yeah.

The fact that you've named all that I've read all the books you've named and I'm not even in an MLM.

Like there aren't enough is what I'm saying.

It's like a limited pile of resources there.

Well, and you know, there are the cult books, but I don't think most people in MLMs identify as being part of a cult.

Well, I wrote a book called Commercial Cult, a multi-level marketing memoir, but it's still on my computer.

Get it off your computer.

Come on.

I hit my page count.

I hit my word count, but it needs to be edited and a lot of work needs to be done.

And I'm kind of, I want it to be done right when it's ready.

Thank you so much for the time.

Thank you.

Bye.

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