Multi-Multi-Level-Marketing

Hey dream listeners, there's now an ad-free version of the dream that you can subscribe to, the dream plus at thedream.supercast.com.

Five bucks a month gets you every single episode of this show with zero ads, which you love and I love.

And we're hoping that this will help us pay the bills and the main goal being that we can keep making this show.

Go to thedream.supercast.com and subscribe.

To make it easy, we have put the link in the show description.

Just look down underneath this episode.

It says thedream.supercast.com and just click on that easy peasy you're gonna get a lot of extra stuff too we're working on all that another thing you need to do please subscribe to our instagram it's the dream x the letter x jane marie see you over there

So my name is Aaron Bees.

I'm a wife, a mom, a military veteran, a certified personal trainer.

I spent 13 and a half years in multi-level marketing and healed my way out.

And now I'm using all of my social media platforms to educate and raise awareness around the dangers of multi-level marketing companies and the tactics used by the reps.

And what companies were you with?

I was in Slumber Parties, Pure Romance, Arbonne,

Modaire,

Love Winks,

and then Prove It.

Jesus.

I was six companies.

Mm-hmm.

You may recall this voice from season three of this show.

In season one, we did a deep dive on MLMs, also known as direct marketing, network marketing, direct sales, and according to me, pyramid schemes.

As Erin said, she used to be in a diet culture MLM called Prove It, whose top seller, and a friend of Erin's, was a woman named Jesse Lee Ward.

During the production of last season, Jesse Lee died.

And most of what Erin and I talked about was Jesse Lee before that happened and the grief after that happened.

But I wanted to know more about Erin herself and her current crusade against MLMs.

She's a big deal in the anti-MLM and anti-scammer world and she attacks it from all angles and literally all platforms including YouTube.

Her videos are great.

But let's start with her personal journey from MLM devotee to anti-MLM crusader.

Okay, so what made you keep switching companies?

Well, the first company, Slumber Parties, that I was a part of was actually acquired by Pure Romance.

So that was why I switched from there.

Once I got into that company and started to see that, in my opinion, they were just wanting specific downlines to come over to Pure Romance or teams.

They weren't really interested in everybody because they were giving a lot of us the runaround, even though they're like, Oh, we have a whole leadership chat for you.

You couldn't get a hold of anybody to ask any questions, that kind of thing.

So, it just for me at that time, I was like, Yeah, I don't, I don't think, I don't think that's you fizzled out because of an acquisition.

I just didn't like the leadership.

Yeah.

So, then I was like, at that point, I was like, Well, maybe I'll just get out of MLM as a whole.

And then, after that, my upline

in

slumber parties and pure romance was starting her own.

And so, that's where Love Winks came into play.

We got sued by Pure Romance and they ended up winning and we had to take a year off.

Yeah.

What were they accusing you of?

Basically cross-recruiting, which I did nothing.

I didn't do any of that.

Then from that,

we got sued.

I had to take a year off.

In that year, we ended up moving here to Vegas.

And I joined Arbonne for a short period of time before we moved.

And I sold a lot of product and I made absolutely nothing and it pissed me off so I didn't do that.

Wait, I'm going to slow you down just a little bit.

What at the time was drawing you to do these types of ventures as opposed to what we now understand to be like quote-unquote real jobs, you know?

Can you recall that person?

Because I know you've changed so much and you've learned so much and you're different, but who was Aaron back then when you're maybe heading into your third or fourth MLM?

Yeah.

Well, at the time, Mia, who's going to be 18 in March, was a baby.

That was what I was doing full time.

So I was home with her.

And even though I was spending all of my time working, in my mind, at that time, I was still home with her.

So that was the only option that I had, that I felt like I had at that time.

Do you look at it differently now?

Oh, God.

Yeah.

How do you look at it now?

I mean, granted, we're talking about this was

2013, 2014-ish, somewhere in there.

Now there's so many ways that you can make income.

And, you know, if you want to work from home, there's legit ways that you could do that versus making all your money on recruiting people.

So now there's just so many resources out there.

And I think that that's the coolest thing about all of this.

But did you feel like you were being the stay-at-home mom that you wanted to be?

At the time, yeah.

When you're in an MLM and you are working and on Zooms, and at the time I was doing parties, so I was driving an hour and a half one way, two or three times a week to do parties.

So

at the time you think, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to put all of this effort in.

And in a few years, I'm going to be able to slow down.

I'll have a bigger team.

And

that never comes.

The goalposts are constantly being moved.

But that's part of the MLM brainwashing is you buy off on this idea that one day you'll be able to retire your spouse or be able to, you know, take all these vacations.

But it's a spinning plate analogy like you see at the circus.

The clowns are spinning these plates and they've got both hands going.

Well, the second that you stop spinning those plates, that crashes.

So you can never stop working.

And that's the part that is really confusing.

And that is the part that I think takes a lot of time to process when you're in an MLM and you're starting to see some of the red flags and you're starting to experience cognitive dissonance and work your way through kind of the chaos and asking questions and answering them for yourself versus going to your upline or the company.

That's the part that,

aside from the relationships that you thought were, this is my family.

And the second you get out, all of a sudden you're no longer family kind of thing.

So

it's really hard to, especially after being in for so many years,

to process all of that at once.

But at the time, yeah, I did think that this was my option and i thought it was working you know

so your motivation for jumping companies when things became apparent that they weren't working

was because you still wanted to be a stay-at-home mom yeah am i hearing that right okay yeah yeah i mean that's like a that's totally reasonable that you would just say oh

well this company had bad organization or they had bad leadership or they had a bad business plan or they had bad products or whatever, but the MLM model is still worth my time.

Do you remember during your six different MLM company experiences, the moment that the cracks started to show?

Yeah, you know, that wasn't until 2020.

That wasn't until the 2020.

Seven years in.

You were seven years in.

Well, I was more than seven years in by that point because I joined my first MLM in 2007 at the end of 2007.

Yeah, so we're talking 13 years in and making no money still.

I was making money on paper, but one of the aha moments for me was we had done our taxes and my accountant called and said, oh, well, you netted 10K for the year.

And I said, what?

10K?

And she was like, yeah, that's great.

And I was like, so wait, 10K for the year?

That's like $800 a month.

What are you talking about?

And she was like, yeah, you know, that's great.

And I was like, that's, that's not great.

That's not.

Talk me through how that happens.

Talk me through that.

Like, how did that happen to you?

So,

this is where the undue influence from your upline encouraging you to buy the new products, the new flavors, get to the event, you know, all of these expenses.

They're like, listen, it's, it's fine.

It's a tax write-off.

It's a tax write-off.

It's, it's totally fine.

That's where this all comes into play.

And then here's what.

Is kind of big enough to make your eyes go googly.

Yeah.

but you're not counting your expenses correct yeah

yeah and i mean it it it happens to so many people in multi-level marketing and that is why i talk about profit and loss statements is because that was not language that was talked about

in mlm when i was a part of it right

Right.

And so I want people that are in a multi-level marketing company that happen to be watching my content

to do a profit and loss statement so that they they could wake up faster than i did yeah

even if these mlm companies or these uplines had people that came in and were like okay this is what you need to know about taxes people would realize what they're participating in faster

and they they would be like oh no no no no no because the numbers don't lie you know

Was there another tipping point?

Which company were so many?

Okay, let's talk through them.

I want to hear them all.

Okay.

I want to hear them all.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This just shows us like how many things have to stack up against the brainwashing, essentially.

Yeah.

Does that make sense?

Like how many things have to occur to you if you've been in the kind of cultish environment for a decade plus?

Like how many bad things need to happen for someone to have the scales fall from their eyes.

Yeah.

And I think part of the reason that I had to have so many,

wait a second, this doesn't seem right kind of red flag moments was because i had been in it for so long

i don't think somebody that is in it for six months or so is going to have to have the same amount of wake-up calls that i had to have in order to realize what i was participating in right so during the height of the pandemic there was a push from prove it to recruit people and again prove it is what sorry i i

need to remind people because we've been off the air for a while yeah that's okay prove it is a company that sells ketones They're exogenous ketones that you drink, and they claim that it puts you into nutritional ketosis, even though that's not how physiology works.

I don't know what any of the words you just said are.

They sell ketones, like what is it?

Like a

supplement.

It's a powder you mix with water, and they say that when you drink it, it puts you into ketosis, which is basically when your body is burning fat for fuel instead of burning carbs and using glucose for fuel.

Okay.

How?

Exactly.

Exactly.

And then you're in the fasting kits.

Yeah, they have like a, I think it's a five-day fasting kit where you're taking, I believe it's like six or seven of their products.

Arbonne does the same thing, right?

Yeah, their 30-day to living, I think is what their program is called through Arbonne.

And it's a bunch of protein shakes.

And yeah, it's, yeah.

All of these companies, especially quote-unquote health and wellness companies, have some sort of a kit that people buy.

Diet program.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's disgusting.

So what was that next red flag?

Sorry, I interrupted you because the ketone ketosis did dip, blah, blah, blah.

I was like, I know we've talked before and like, I've seen the boxes, but I'm like,

is this science?

Like, what's going on?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So another red flag was they were trying to get us as prove-it distributors to recruit people under the guise of, oh, you can join for a dollar.

And it was called the Dollar Keto Club.

And so basically people would pay a dollar and it was their annual promoter fee.

That's now, I believe, $49 a year.

They dropped that to a dollar, but you still had to buy product.

So they were asking us to pitch this keto dollar club, saying it was for a limited time.

A registration fee, essentially.

It was supposed to cover the website, but they went from $49 to a dollar.

And so they were wanting us to pitch this.

Hey, you can join, prove it for a dollar and start making money at home.

But when people would join they were like oh okay so i joined for a dollar but i don't get any product now i have to buy a box of prove it ketones for 130 before shipping in tax so it was very bait and switch

and that really bothered me because of what we were dealing with with the pandemic

and what people were facing and then it felt very deceptive and i was like i i do not like this and i remember very distinctly telling my team that i was not going to promote it because it didn't feel right to me.

So that was another wake-up call.

And then

I remember

there's another one.

I know.

Oh, there's more.

So remember when there was a shortage of hand sanitizer?

Prove it wanted us to sell hand sanitizer.

Okay.

And I was like, if you have access to hand sanitizer, why would you not send it to your distributors and the boxes of products that they're ordering?

Or you could donate it or no, they wanted us to sell it.

And then they were selling things like tide pens and stuff like that.

And I was like, what is this money grab situation that's happening?

It's called profiteering.

Yeah, I hate it.

I was so, I was so mad.

So there was a lot of that.

And then several times I would get on our team trainings with my upline and

I'd be like, what are we doing here?

What are we even talking about?

All she's doing is talking about herself.

How is this training?

How is this helping anybody?

Oh, look at me.

Look what I bought.

Look what I'm doing.

If I can do it, you can.

No, because if that were the case, that would be happening.

Yeah.

I think that's the majority of kind of the red flags that really just rubbed me the wrong way.

And I was like, I'm done.

I'm done.

We'll be right back.

Here come some ads.

Back to school is a time when routines reset and so does screen time.

With all the pickups, practices, and after-school logistics, kids need a way to stay connected.

But handing them a phone designed for adults with internet access and social media, that's where the real concern begins.

Teens already spend an average of nine hours a day on screens outside of school.

That's basically a full-time job just scrolling.

The U.S.

Surgeon General says that kids who spend more than three hours online daily are twice as likely to experience depression and anxiety, and most of that time is spent on social media.

It's staggering.

Nearly half of teen girls and a third of boys say social media causes overwhelming stress.

A quarter of teens say it makes them feel worse about their own lives.

Here's the good news.

Gab is doing something no one else is doing.

Their approach called Tech in Steps offers safe, age-appropriate phones and watches with no social media, no internet browsers, and GPS tracking built in.

From young kids to teens, each device grows with the child and helps build healthy tech habits.

Bottom line, you don't have to give a kid an adult device.

This school year, give them Gab.

Safe connection, no distractions.

I can't recommend Gab enough.

Use our code to get the best deal on something that gives peace of mind, whether you're a parent, a guardian, or just someone who cares.

Visit gab.com slash thedream and use the code the dream for a special back-to-school offer.

That's Gab, G-A-B-B.

We're back with anti-MLM activist Aaron Bees.

So much has changed in the world of MLMs since we launched our show, which was in 2018 when we did the season about pyramid schemes and multi-level marketing.

And then my book about it, Selling the Dream, came out in March of this year, of 2024.

And even since then, so much has changed.

So I'm hoping you can help us understand all of this nonsense that's been going on.

And some of it's very good.

A lot of it's really good.

Tell me about it.

Yeah, some of it is really, really good.

There's been several companies that have gone to an affiliate model.

Will you explain what that is?

Yeah.

So, a lot of times, what we'll see from companies and specifically the distributors in these multi-level marketing companies is they will try to act like the company that they're representing is an affiliate model, which basically, when you go on social media and you see somebody and they're sharing their favorite lip gloss or their favorite lotion or things for the home, and they'll say, oh, you know, click my affiliate link and you can grab this and save a little money.

They're supposed to actually disclose, according to the FTC, that they do make a little bit of money.

I see it as sponsored on the bottom of posts.

Are there people that don't mark their post as sponsored who are doing affiliate marketing?

Yep.

Yeah.

You're supposed to disclose that you do make a commission if people choose to use that link, that kind of thing.

So that's really important.

And that's according to the FTC.

What I was seeing in the last probably, maybe year, year and a half, maybe even two years is MLM companies and their distributors specifically are trying to kind of fly under the radar and appear to be like affiliate marketing.

But the big difference is there's not really a compensation plan that rewards people for having a team and or recruiting people to sell the same exact products and do the same exact things on social media when we're talking about affiliate marketing.

But in multi-level marketing, the majority of of the money is made off of recruiting people and having a team.

And so by them being deceptive and them being people within multi-level marketing, they were trying to come up with all these different phrases to fly under the radar so that people aren't immediately turned off knowing that it's a multi-level marketing company.

So it doesn't extreme Amway.

Yes.

What were those phrases?

Some of the companies, for instance, Modair, they've been calling themselves social retail, social selling

and some of these newer companies take make wellness for example they are calling their wait it's called make wellness is that the name of the company yeah it's called make wellness

yeah

yeah

but their shtick is bioprecision peptides absolutely not

hard pass for me shut it down

They're biohacking inside the pyramid.

Okay.

Essentially.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

That's definitely a company you should look into, just FYI, because of the claims that they're making.

Of course, it's a proprietary blend, all of that stuff.

Let's do a whole other episode about that.

Great.

I would love that.

Okay, fantastic.

So make wellness.

They did what in their changing of the language?

So what they did is instead of calling their distributors a distributor or an associate or something along those lines, they're actually calling them affiliates.

But they're not.

It's very they're no, they're not.

I've looked at their comp plan.

I've covered their comp plan.

And the person that had his hand in creating Make Wellness is Justin Prince, who was terminated from Moder last October.

And now all of a sudden, there's this new MLM company and they're in pre-launch and they were

strictly recruiting people into these affiliate titles within this company that are really just distributors.

There was no product.

It's this whole thing.

What did Modair sell?

Or quote unquote sell.

Yeah.

What did Modern?

sell

anything and everything oh so they're like an amway

yeah like makeup and soap and yep dye shakes yeah okay yeah

okay so the former moder guy who is now at make wellness is calling his distributors, quote-unquote distributors, his downline, essentially.

He's calling the people in his downline affiliates when

there's already a definition for affiliates that has nothing to do with pyramid schemes.

Correct.

Okay.

What else we got?

Yeah.

So we've had companies that have been traditionally multi-level marketing companies take Beach Body, aka body.

And here recently, they just announced that they were going to be going to an affiliate model, meaning people were only going to be earning commission off of the selling of their products.

There would be no recruiting bonuses or getting paid off of your downline.

And the thing that's fascinating, and we have seen this with Saint Makeup, we've seen it with Beauty Counter, we've seen it with Beach Body.

That was a big one.

What these people do that are in these companies, when they have ranted and raved all over social media and whoever will listen in person to them.

you know, about how great the products are.

I'll use these products forever.

And the second that their company says, oh, we're going to an affiliate model and you're no longer going to get paid to recruit people.

You're no longer going to get paid off of having a downline.

Now, all of a sudden, they're looking for a new company.

They join something new.

And it's not really about the product.

It's because they were no longer going to get paid off of having a team and/or recruiting, which we all know is how people in multi-level marketing make the majority of their income.

It's how the companies stay alive.

Right.

Who are the new up-and-comers?

Who's absorbing the people leaving these companies that are switching to an affiliate model?

Shackley is one of them.

There's a lot of people that are going to Shackley from body.

Shackley is kind of like Melaleuca or Amway.

In that

they sell everything.

Yeah.

Vitamins, skincare, probably toilet paper.

I don't know.

Probably toilet paper.

If anyone from Shackley is listening, I will take a sample of your toilet paper

in our office.

I just want to see how great this toilet paper is that you wouldn't.

just pick up at the grocery store.

Okay, so Shackley's absorbing a lot of people.

Are they just shameless in their MLMism?

It's the same rinse, wash, and repeat that we see from other MLM companies.

Oh, this is the greatest.

And the comp plan is the best.

And come over here.

And another company that just went to an affiliate model was Rodan and Fields.

That was another really big one.

A lot of those people are going to Shackley.

Oh, wow.

Really?

Huh?

It's just been interesting to watch these big companies that have been around for so long and very clearly a multi-level marketing company now all of a sudden are going to an affiliate model.

And it's the same thing from their distributors.

Oh, these products are great.

I'll use them forever.

And to watch them just jump to the next company and now start raving about vitamins is wild to me.

Because it's not the products.

The products don't matter.

Right.

It's the recruiting model.

Right.

That's what's important to them.

I think also Rhodan Fields did that marketing framing a few years back where they were quote unquote transparent with their income disclosure statement with that one piece of paper that every MLM nowadays has, but even five years ago didn't have.

But they were kind of revolutionizing transparency inside of these schemes.

And it was all fraudulent, but they packaged it like, we're going to be the ones that are very upfront about who makes money and how much money they make and what your opportunity really is here for an income.

And so to see them be one of the first to like ditch the MLM model, I don't know, how did you feel?

I just felt like, is this just another pivot?

Does it mean anything to you?

Are you trying to stay out of jail?

Did someone like knock on your door?

Like, what happened?

A couple things.

One, we could sit here and talk about income disclosure statements.

I need to.

Okay.

So income disclosure statements are something that are put out by the company.

They basically go into their software, their back office, if you will, and they pull the numbers by rank, by the amount of people, all of that stuff.

They pull all the numbers directly from their company's software.

And then there's no standardizing with how this information is put together.

So, for example, if you were to take two random MLM companies that both have income disclosure statements and you were to look at them,

they would be set up completely different.

So, there's no standardization when it comes to this to make it easier for the consumer to say, okay, well, you know, 78% of the company is only making a hundred bucks a month before expenses.

And that's being very generous.

That's being very, very generous.

So there's no standardization when it comes to these income disclosure statements, although they are a really great tool because, in my opinion, these companies really do try to pad the numbers to make it look like, oh, this is better.

You know, you can do this.

A small percentage of people have hit this top rank, you can too.

And that's just not how the math in multi-level marketing works.

Did you see that FTC report?

The FTC did that study of, I think it was like

hundreds, like 300 or something, MLMs looking at their income disclosure statements and said to a company, like to a person, to a T, every single one of them was committing fraud.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's because the majority of people make money off of having a team.

No, not just that.

I mean, inside the income disclosure, they didn't include people who dropped out.

Some of them didn't include someone who made $0.

Like they fudged the numbers and every single one of them lied in various ways.

And the FTC finally like came out this year saying, we actually spent a lot of time and money and looked into this and you guys are all.

phony bro.

You know, and the interesting way that a lot of these MLM companies get around this

is they will put a stipulation in their compensation plan where they will say, well, in order for you to become an active distributor, you have to spend X number of dollars.

You have to have an auto ship or you have to have customers or team members.

There's some sort of a buy-in in order to be considered active.

And so what you'll notice on some of these income disclosure statements is it'll say, active distributors from 2023.

And what they're doing is they're excluding anybody that bought in on any kind of a starter package and never got a customer, never got a distributor.

Right.

They're essentially wiping those people off of the income disclosure statement, even though those people spent money, they paid to join, but oh, they didn't make any income.

So we're going to get rid of these people as far as the document.

Even though that would be a very, very eye-opening statistic for people, especially consumers to have in front of them if they were even considering in the year of our Lord 2024, joining a multi-level marketing company.

Well, this is the same fight that I had with Joe Mariana when he came into my office during season one.

He's the head of the DSA, the Direct Sellers Association.

And he gave me a two-page document that had some pie charts and a few graphs and some clip art on it showing the state of the industry and how everything's going.

And I, I said,

these statistics, well, first of all, it was a, it was a study and all the statistics were in-house, essentially.

Like it didn't, the calls coming from the basement.

So they didn't go to an independent survey firm.

They didn't have like any forensic accounting or anything like that done.

And it showed

on their paperwork, here's how many people joined and how many people make money and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But they didn't have any information about people who failed.

Yep.

None, none.

And it's like, if 99% of people who have an interaction with your company company lose money or don't make any money,

it's important to include that in your statistics.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I love that you said he brought all these little charts and pie graphs because

the visual that I just got from that explanation.

The heart got the like the man standing next to like a chalkboard and pointing a stick at it and being like, see, everyone here in multi-level marketing in the United States makes money.

And he did this thing after I pointed that out.

He was like, I said, that doesn't make any sense.

I don't, you know, I'm not learning the thing here.

It doesn't make sense.

And he goes, of course it does, Jade.

Like,

oh, there's just this one moment in his tone of voice.

It was so gnarly.

Inactive during the course of the year.

How many of the 900,000 become,

quote, discount buyers and then inactive over the year?

Well, no, those are two different categories.

The business builders that we've described there people who are business builders throughout the course of the year, have described themselves as business builders.

So the inactives are the inactives.

So I don't know how you can look at that and say that that's not helpful.

I mean,

those are five.

Well, I want to know.

This is telling me nothing.

I don't know where

we'll be right back.

With the Wealth Front cash account, you can earn 4% annual percentage yield from partner banks on your cash until you're ready to invest.

The cash account grows your money with no account maintenance fees and free instant withdrawals whenever you need it.

Money works better here.

Go to WealthFront.com to start saving and investing today.

Cash account offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC member Fenra SIPC.

Wealthfront is not a bank.

The APY on cash deposits as of December 27, 2024 is representative, subject to change, and requires no minimum.

Funds in the cash account are swept to partner banks where where they earn the variable APY.

We're back with our guest, Aaron Bees.

What was the tipping point, if you could guess at any, for some of these companies to switch to the affiliate marketing model?

I think there's several things that are contributing.

I think the anti-MLM movement as a whole over the last years and years and years.

I'm clapping it.

Good job.

Erin, you did it.

It's not just me.

I mean, I'm happy to be a part of it, but I'm picturing listeners, Erin, dusting her shoulders off a little bit.

Oh,

I mean, the anti-MLM movement is so vast and there's so many people that are a part of it, whether they're content creators or not, people that are watching people that they have watched for years on social media that are saying, hey, this is weird.

All of a sudden, this person is talking about this and they're reaching out to their favorite content creators.

And their content creators are like, oh, I'm identifying this language, you know, where let's say that like Make Wellness, they're talking about bioprecision peptides.

So now they're seeing this person talk about bioprecision.

peptides that's you know a stay-at-home parent and all of a sudden now they're this science buff and it just doesn't make any sense and so a large part of the anti-MLM movement are people that are just consuming social media content and they're like hey this feels kind of weird.

And then they're reaching out, you know, and that's a huge part of it.

So I think that the voices within the anti-MLM movement and the education that is available, I think has made a big, big

impact.

And specifically on people joining these multi-level marketing companies.

I don't think people are clicking the join button.

to join an MLM like they were.

Even last year, the year before, the year before that, I just don't think that they have the numbers anymore.

And if they're not recruiting, that company is not making as much money because, in my opinion, they make the most money off of that person that they know is not going to make any money buying that starter pack and then having a monthly auto ship.

That's where a lot of the revenue comes from, in my opinion.

And then they have these top leaders that make, you know, thousands and thousands of dollars, but that's a very small percentage of people.

So if people aren't joining and the education and the anti-MLM movement is so loud, it's a losing scenario for them.

Right.

And so they're, they're switching to affiliate because they still believe in their product.

I mean, I think the company does,

maybe shareholders or yeah, things like that.

I was thinking also, what about the people who have spent one,

five, 10 years in these companies that are suddenly shutting down the MLM model?

Have you heard stories about what happens to them?

The people who are like in over their heads in debt, you know, or just the people who have profited off of the recruiting, the people at the very top, essentially, who have built down lines and now that's getting taken away from them.

I have read a few things on Reddit about that, about how furious.

Yes.

Can you talk about that a little bit?

I can.

So this goes into, I don't know if you and I have talked about bridge contracts before.

Does that sound familiar?

That term?

Okay.

So what happens when you have this quote-unquote top leader which i hate even saying that but let's take sarah robbins for example sarah robbins was one of the top and earliest distributors in rodan and fields and she went to shackley

and

what'll happen i'm not saying that this is the case with sarah robbins i'm just saying based on my experience and in my opinion this is how these bridge contracts come into play and i just want to let you know aaron we've never been sued on this show okay

okay good Don't have it.

It's just a habit.

I know.

I know.

I know.

I know.

And it's scary, right?

Like, have you had seasoned assists and things like that?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, gosh.

I've never seen it.

I turned it into a dramatic reading and monetized reading the seasoned assist on my YouTube channel.

Okay, we'll point people there, but like, sometimes it makes me feel like a loser that no one has sued us.

You're like, dang, somebody sent me a suit.

I've tried so hard.

Nobody has ever.

Okay, go on.

Yeah.

So a lot of times what will happen is when a company announces that they're going to an affiliate model,

they will actively start shopping for another MLM company.

And it kind of comes down to who's going to give them the best deal.

Sometimes they call it a bridge contract.

Sometimes it's called a sales performance based contract where they have to meet certain sales requirements and rank requirements.

The company kind of puts it together.

Or there could be top leaders that put together a bridge contract for this other person coming from another company.

There's usually a financial reward.

It's kind of like a, hey, we're going to pad your income coming over to this new company, but it's only that upline, the very top person that gets that bridge contract.

And then that person that got the bridge contract that has their income padded, do you think that they're going to disclose that to their downline that they're begging to come over to the new company while calling it, oh, our new home, and it has the best compensation plan?

I've never seen anything like this.

How are you finding out about this, Aaron?

Moles?

I have never had a bridge contract, but I know many people that have that have shared that information with me.

I also know, based on my experience, when I was in Modern people like John and Nadia Melton would be notorious for

flying in leaders that have a team in a preview or in another company, flying them into Moder headquarters in Utah, whining and dining them, letting them meet the corporate team, team, and then putting a bridge contract together for them.

They sign up with a new company.

They bring their team.

And

that's how that all works.

So that's how I know that.

Isn't that like expressly prohibited in the materials from every MLM that you're not supposed to transfer your downline or whatever to another company?

Yeah, that's why a lot of the lawsuits happen is because of the quote-unquote cross-recruiting.

Which would, in a normal world, not in the MLM world that would be called poaching which is not right against the rules like right you you know i could call up another podcast company and call one of their employees and it would be a it'd be a dick move and i haven't done it but i could right call and say ditch your boss come over here yeah and it might be uncouth but it wouldn't be like

written in the training materials or your onboarding paperwork that you're not supposed to do that.

And then you also wouldn't see the lawsuits and you wouldn't see the the snarky social media posts and the passive aggressive stories on social media because so-and-so decided to go to another company.

And it's just, all of it is just so, it's just weird, you know?

Yeah.

There have been closures lately, right?

Like with Tupperware.

Yeah, Tupperware closed.

Yeah.

They filed bankruptcy.

I think for people who have heard the show before and people who

feel kind of invested in your story and the story we presented the third season.

I would love if there's any sort of update about Jesse Lee's passing and how the show maybe affected people or didn't and what's happened to her following.

Do you know?

Yeah.

I do know that her Facebook page was taken down, which I'm really grateful.

I also can recognize that

I could see all sides of that.

I am grateful that her Facebook has been taken down because of the medical misinformation that she was spreading while she was alive.

But I also could understand how there's lots of memories from her Facebook page that her audience now does not have.

And I can, I understand and I can be empathetic to that situation, but I am really glad that that was taken down because of the misinformation that she was spreading.

I do know that her estate is gone through the court systems.

And I will say, since we're talking about Jesse Lee and ketones, I have had two rounds of heavy metal testing done on Prove It's ketones, and they do have small amounts of arsenic, lead, and cadmium in them.

We can say out loud that we teamed up on this.

You were at Prove It, which Jesse Lee was your upline.

Yeah.

Yep.

And during the last season, we were talking about how do you see if this stuff is even whatever it is?

It's such a bummer that anything was found.

I want to say it was at the beginning of last year, I I think when Jesse Lee was diagnosed, or maybe right before that, I just felt really compelled to keep this list of people that were passing away or were experiencing some kind of cancer that were drinking ketones.

Let me also say, I'm not saying that if you drank proof-it's ketones, that, you know, oh, it's the cause of your cancer, but there was something in me at that time that I was like, I should start documenting this.

There's a pattern of the types of cancers that I have on this list that I haven't been made aware of that they have.

What types and yes so there's the types of cancer that i'm seeing are stomach cancer reproductive type cancer and breast cancer wow yeah could it be a coincidence of course it could be of course sure but just don't drink lead

and also don't tell people to drink something with lead in it like multiple times a day that's my concern and that's been my concern from the very beginning is the amount of products that these people are consuming

How have you been posting all of this nonsense?

I still have moments in my days where I'm like, I can't believe that she's gone.

It's so weird.

It does feel like the MLM world is a little bit more quiet.

It does feel like there are people trying to jockey for that position, which is so weird.

I find myself still being angry about some of the things that these people have said about her, specifically trying to monetize her still after her death.

And that really bothers me.

Eric Worry said after her passing that she was one of a kind.

And then it felt like in his next breath, he said, well, I'm going to find the next Jesse Lee.

She was bringing so many people to his mastermind group and to his events.

And I just feel like I've watched all of that kind of dwindle.

You know, their cash cow is no longer here.

So people can't make money off of her like they were, you know, and it's been interesting to watch that part and all the emotions that come with that.

Well, the cash cow is always a woman, right?

Right?

Right.

Right.

I'm thinking of Brownie Wise of Tupperware.

Yeah.

Who like started the whole party system and MLM party.

Yeah.

Well, I miss you, friend.

I hope to see you soon.

Bye, friend.

Okay.

Take care of you.

Bye, you too.

Bye.

Bye.

Thanks to Erin Bees for coming on the show today.

Her social media handle is at Erin E-R-I-N Bees, B-I-E-S.

The Dream is a production of Little Everywhere.

Wouldn't it be nice if your cash savings could just grow by itself?

With the Wealthfront cash account, it can, earning 4% annual percentage yield from partner banks on your uninvested cash, nearly 10 times the national average.

Just imagine if other things in your life work the way Wealthfront works.

If your houseplants grew at 10 times the average rate, you'd have 10 times fewer issues with sad, stunted succulents.

Your crocodile ferns would go to the size of crocodiles.

Wealthfront's cash account keeps your money thriving just like that, earning you an industry-leading rate with no account maintenance fees and with free 24-7 instant withdrawals so you can access your money whenever you need it.

Money works better here.

Go to WealthFront.com to start saving.

Cash account offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC member Fenra SIPC.

Wealthfront is not a bank.

The APY on cash deposits as of December 27, 2024 is representative, subject to change, and requires no minimum.

Funds in the cash account are swept to partner banks where they earn the variable APY.

The national average interest rate for savings accounts is posted on FDIC.gov as of December 16, 2024.

Hey, dream listeners.

It's finally here.

The dream plus, where you can get every single episode of our show with no ads.

It's $5 a month.

It's the only tier.

No commercials.

Plus, bonus content.

This helps keep us independent.

And your contribution will help change the way every listener hears the dream.

We'll be able to take out the ads that we don't even know are getting put into this show.

which is annoying to both you and us.

We're also going to have an amazing discussion board.

The interface has it cataloged under AMA, Ask Me Anything.

But I don't love rules.

So, what I did is started a bunch of threads like ask Dan and I questions, general chit chat, just to make friends and stuff.

And every time I've been in charge of a discussion board, I've made a tab called Women Be Shopping, and it's there.

And we're just going to talk about what we bought.

It'll be fun.

That's the dream.s-u-P-E-R-C-A-S-T dot com.

Supercast.

Please, please go subscribe.

It's five bucks.

It's less than a latte if you live in Los Angeles.

See you there.