S1 E11: And That’s When I Woke Up

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There's a refrain you've been hearing on this show all season long.

There's no pyramid scheme.

Those are illegal.

I would never be part of that.

You don't, you may not know, but pyramid schemes are illegal.

First of all, it is illegal to have a pyramid scheme.

First of all, pyramid schemes are against the law.

That refrain is bullshit.

Not the part about pyramid schemes being illegal, that's true, obviously.

But the part about a company not being a pyramid scheme because it's still in operation, that's bullshit.

That's just not how crime works.

Murderers who haven't been caught don't get to say, murder's illegal, and I'm not in jail.

So, nadoy, I'm not a murderer.

And it's not like when you open an MLM, the government slips you a note asking, are you a pyramid scheme?

Check yes or no.

A business can be found to be a pyramid scheme based on a number of characteristics that must be proven by a thorough investigation.

A la Joe Brownman taking down holiday magic in episode 7.

In reality, the test of whether you're a pyramid scheme is not whether you're selling all your products to your own sellers in a closed system or whether you got a business model that makes it mathematically impossible for your recruits to make any money.

The real test is whether someone has called the authorities on your business and then whether the FTC has investigated you and said, yes, you're a pyramid.

Well, the Direct Selling Association, that's the MLM lobby, and the Direct Selling Caucus, that's their friends in Washington, they're trying to change that by pushing for the passage of a groundbreaking bill called H.R.

3409.

The sponsor of the bill, Marsha Blackburn, wrote an op-ed about it in The Hill in August of 2017, stating, quote, every year, far too many unsuspecting Americans fall victim to pyramid schemes.

Sold on the hopes of economic freedom that direct selling can deliver, many find themselves stuck with unmovable inventory and mountains of debt.

Worse, operating under the guise of a reputable direct-selling business, these schemes often target the most vulnerable among us, such as single parents, immigrants, and retirees.

She continues, I have long said that the fundamental goal of American government is to protect the people and to make sure they are provided with the environment to succeed.

These illegal get-rich-quick schemes hurt unsuspecting consumers and aspiring entrepreneurs, and they need to be stopped.

After hearing Marsha's take, you'd think we'd be all for this legislation, right?

Well, no.

Because this bill that sounds ever so much like it's trying to protect consumers, in fact, if it passed, it could prevent the FTC from ever shutting down another MLM.

I'm Jane Marie, and this is the dream, episode 11.

And that's when I woke up.

Leave it to those stinkers in Washington to bamboozle us once again.

The bill, now called the Anti-Pyramid Promotional Scheme Act of 2017, has gone by a few other names in recent years.

Last winter, a version of it was called the Moulinar Amendment, which Congressman John Moulinar unsuccessfully tried to squeeze into the omnibus bill.

John Moulinar, by the way, happens to be the representative from Michigan's 4th District, Owasso's district.

My district.

We couldn't get Marsha Blackburn on the phone, and we were similarly ignored by John Moulinar, even though I played the, but I'm a former constituent and my grandma lives there card.

So here's Dan to tell us what H.R.

3409 is all about.

What it does is it attempts to define for the first time

what a pyramid scheme actually is.

The way it sounds is like some sort of consumer protection.

It does sound like that, and I think it purposefully sounds like that.

It even sounds like that in its title.

The Anti-Pyramid Promotional Scheme Act uses roughly 1,000 words in that definition, but I'll paraphrase here.

It says that an MLM is not a pyramid scheme so long as they don't require their distributors to buy a bunch of inventory and they must have a refund policy.

Voila, that's it.

But as we know, those refund policies can be a little shady.

For instance, part of the bill, at one point in the bill, it says, does not include inventory that has been clearly described as discounted, seasonal, a special promotional item, or, and this is important, or it's not subject to the plan or operations inventory repurchase program.

Wait a minute.

Wait.

So the inventory repurchase program doesn't need to apply to products that are seasonal, like these, um, right now Limelife has a bunch of holiday stuff up and it doesn't apply to discounted products, but that's also something that they advertise a lot when you're signing up.

Like you can get so many discounted products that's not doesn't apply to those and it doesn't apply to perishable stuff like diet shakes or oils or makeup because makeup has an expiration date or anything that isn't currently marketable uh it actually says that which who gets to judge that and then the last line says that the refund policy doesn't apply to products that aren't subject to the refund policy, which reminds me of my dad's favorite law ever.

It's the Michigan, there's a Michigan seatbelt law that says kids have to use seatbelts unless there's more kids than seatbelts.

Right.

So I would say to anybody who is looking into becoming a distributor, I would look very closely at that fine print.

So you could say we have a buyback policy.

None of our products are eligible for it.

Yes.

Moving on.

Moving on.

Moving on to.

So moving on to what ends up being the most confusing part of the bill to me, which is they have this little provision about not requiring inventory loading.

Which is like having to have a lot of stuff on hand.

Well, in the bill, it says it's a practice in which a planner operation requires or encourages its participants to purchase inventory in an amount exceeding that which the participant can reasonably expect to use, consume, or resell.

So to me, if you have a buyback policy, then you're automatically not requiring inventory loading.

I wonder if it's in there to clarify like what happened to McKenzie where she was encouraged to buy $1,000 worth of stuff from her upline.

She was encouraged, but they're saying.

But there's nothing in the bill that says this is how we're going to get around inventory loading, aside from the fact that there is a buyback policy that is required.

Right.

All it says is, in the definition of what a pyramid scheme is, it's a company that requires you to have inventory.

Right.

By putting this in the bill, in my mind, they are calling attention to something they've gotten in trouble with before, but they're not doing or saying they're going to do anything about it.

Just saying we don't require inventory loading is just saying we don't require inventory loading.

That's it.

Right.

There's no plan of attack as to how.

There's nothing.

Right.

And so then it's that's why to me, it's just a part of the bill that's like whatever.

Yeah.

You know.

Yeah.

Okay.

So in the bill, the ultimate user is someone who is described as an individual who consumes or uses the product or service, whether or not that individual is a participant in the plan or operation.

And traditionally, the FTC has shut companies down when they find that most of the people buying the product are people who have signed up to sell the product.

There have been plenty of cases where the courts have shut companies down because they found that there was no end user outside of the company.

So basically what they're trying to do with this bill is they're trying to redefine the ultimate user as either someone who's inside the company or or outside the company.

But if you don't know that that's a bad thing, then you could totally miss that.

So they're taking the most problematic parts of their business model, like the fact that it is really impossible to get refunds, that you do actually have to buy a lot of product, that you

don't have to have an outside ultimate end user, like that it could just be going into your garage.

So they're looking at the big problematic parts that we're looking at and in this bill, saying

those don't count.

Right.

So, what the bill is trying to set in stone is: as long as you're a multi-level marketing company and you have a bona fide repurchase agreement, which again, you can get around completely by just saying in the fine print of your compensation plan that any or all products do not apply to the bona fide repurchase agreement, then you cannot be prosecuted.

So, that's why people say that this is essentially a bill that provides immunity to companies going forward.

What are the chances that this will pass?

So far, it's moving in the right direction.

They're adapting to the issues they've had in presenting this bill and trying to get kind of sneaky in how they get it in.

They're not going away.

There is

nothing to say that they won't continue, including the conversations that we had with the head of the DSA.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that despite Marsha Blackburn and John Moulinard ignoring our requests for interviews, one request actually came to us from the head of the Direct Selling Association, who were partners in crafting this bill.

Joe Mariano heard our show, or at least heard of it, and asked if he could speak to us on the record.

On the one hand, very brave of him to reach out.

We've repeatedly contacted the heads of every company we've looked into, Lime Life, Amway, etc., and the politicians doing their bidding.

We've exchanged plenty of emails, but none of them wanted to talk to us on tape.

So getting this note from their advocate was surprising.

until I thought about it a little more.

And as grateful as we were to speak to someone from the other side, it is also his job.

I mean, he literally gets paid to do damage control on behalf of the members of his association, but still.

He just happened to be visiting LA while we were wrapping up production.

So he came into the office.

Well, I'm glad you're here.

And I've been thinking about whether I was going to tell you this when you came in.

I'm worried that you're going to lie to me.

Do you get that ever?

Not really.

Nobody's ever said that to me.

Nobody's ever said that to me.

Can I tell you what I'm worried about?

Yes.

To be honest, I'm worried that in a broadcast or a podcast like this,

where my words can be taken out of context, that you won't necessarily lie to me, but you won't accurately represent the thrust of what I'm trying to say.

On a personal level, one's honor is important to me, as hopefully it is to everybody.

And there are two things that I really don't like.

I don't like being lied to, and I don't like people

thinking that I'm lying to them.

So I do my best to convince them that even if we disagree, that at least you know that I think I'm telling the truth.

Great.

Joe has been with the DSA for over 30 years.

Today, about 200 companies are members of the organization, and they include many we've reported on.

Amway, Mary Kay, Herbalife, Avon, 31, and even that landline video phone company at the center of the lawsuit against Trump, ACN.

Current members.

So here we go.

Our chance to hold the industry's feet to the fire.

And just a warning, Joe isn't a politician, but he has his talking points and rhetorical acrobatics down.

I don't know if he was on the high school debate team, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Our mission as an association is not only to represent the interests of those companies, but to represent the interests of the individual sellers or people who sign up with those companies to sell in the marketplace.

And indeed, a lot of my interaction is with members of the field.

For example, a few weeks ago, I guess it was a month or two ago now, we had about 150 to 200 individual sellers come into Washington, D.C.

and tell their stories to members of Congress and others as individual sellers, regardless of the companies.

Where were they in the company?

They're junior sellers.

Some of them are more senior sellers who've been successful.

They were chosen by the companies.

Right, so

they weren't people who were failing.

Well, no.

They weren't the majority of people who failed.

Well, actually, no, I won't put it that way.

You used the word failing, so that's, I know, one of the issues that we want to get to.

There are actually a lot of motivations for people to be involved in direct selling.

How do you know that?

We do a couple different surveys.

We do Salesforce surveys where we go out and talk to the people who were involved in direct selling

through a variety of mechanisms.

In the National Salesforce survey, which is the one we're talking about, the companies will provide us with a pool of names.

So it's self-selecting.

Absolutely.

It is self-selecting.

But that's the implication of your question is that, you know, okay, we're only talking to successful people.

The reality is, no, if we look at the statistics

of the folks who are involved in direct selling, and that's the term I use, involved in direct selling,

you will see that we've actually begun to do a much better job as both an industry and as individual companies in segmenting the sales force in terms of their motivations, why they're involved in the business, what they're trying to do in the business.

This quote segmenting of folks quote involved in MLMs is something Joe really wanted to talk about a lot.

He's particularly interested in segmenting out a group that he calls preferred buyers or discount buyers, which is another way of saying distributors who are the end consumer.

Remember, back in the 70s when the FTC was going after MLMs successfully, one feature that would label a company a pyramid scheme was where a significant portion of their profits were coming from within the company itself.

In other words, each new recruit who has to spend X dollars for their starter kit or each new distributor who's encouraged by their upline, as McKenzie was, to buy samples or inventory to have on hand to show people or sell, sell, if those purchases are driving the business rather than there being a genuine market for the product, that's a scam.

In light of this, Joe Mariano and his colleagues are hoping something like H.R.

3409 passes so that they no longer have to worry about that being a crime.

So in the meantime, they're aiming to create a category of people, quote, involved in direct selling called preferred buyers.

But even Joe admits that people in direct sales resist the label.

Interestingly, a number of people who are in fact preferred buyers, meaning that their primary and seemingly exclusive motivation is to get products at a discount, have resisted being categorized and said, actually, you know, I would still like to stay part of the plan.

Joe, they're either preferred buyers or they're not.

The reality is that the vast majority, or at least a significant percentage, of people get involved in the business for a variety of reasons, including to purchase the product at a discount for themselves.

I need you to back up just you said the vast majority

get involved for a variety of reasons.

Correct.

That's exactly right.

Well, of course.

I mean, a vast majority of people get jobs for a variety of reasons.

I have a job to pay my rent,

but not to pay my child's private school because she goes to public school.

Like the reason I work every day is for a variety of reasons.

So anyone getting a job anywhere would be getting a job for a variety of reasons.

But you're saying that like it's like it means something.

Yeah, it does mean something.

What does it mean?

There are about probably six or seven motivations.

and again i'll provide you with the survey data in in detail um but your surveys okay

i want to talk about where your surveys are coming from because even in your own literature it says that you've only asked 1500 people that that your proprietary survey group artemis strategy group has chosen so it's not it's not a randomized survey of people we've done we've done randomized surveys as well okay

but the the motivations for sellers to get involved in a direct selling business are and not necessarily in this order,

financial.

Some of them are product devotees.

They become passionate about the product themselves, and they are really driven to share.

Some people get involved because of their desire to pick up some business skills and be acknowledged and rewarded for whatever they are able to do in their business.

The experience of getting up on stage and being applauded for having accomplished something is unusual for many of these folks, and they value that greatly.

They do, as we talked about with the red jacket status you can get at Mary Kay or the clap, clap, claps from Danielle for making a sales goal for the month.

But with what we know about MLMs, with 99% of participants losing money, I felt that there was a moral issue here.

Why should it cost money to get lauded on stage?

This isn't a beauty contest or even a bowling championship.

This is purportedly an opportunity to earn more than a good feeling that you have to pay for up front, right?

Joe did not see this as an issue.

And in fact, he tried arguing that all business enterprises work this way.

People get involved and go into different stores and environments all the time because of the experience, because of the sense that they get of satisfaction.

No, museums, that's what museums are for.

You pay an admission to have like an enrichment of your life, but stores.

I would respectfully suggest that you haven't been on top of the retail environment.

What do you mean?

Because folks actually get involved or go in as customers because the successful ones, because they're in an environment that they enjoy and they like.

It's more about people leaving with nothing or less than they walked in with.

And you're saying that if they leave with less than they walked in with, they got something out of it.

No, I'm saying that the people who are involved in the business or involved in the opportunity or involved in purchasing the product are indeed getting value.

That's in fact why they continue to do it.

I think it's more likely that they continue to do it for all the reasons we've found.

Loss aversion, honoring sunk costs, and you know, the shame and embarrassment and denial we all feel when we've failed, especially if we've roped friends and family into that failure.

But Joe is saying, no, they keep putting money in because it feels good.

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So back to segmenting.

On the DSA's website, I found these annual reports, one-page documents with graphics and pie charts that Joe would like me to believe offer some helpful info.

There were 18.6 million people involved in direct selling in the U.S.

in 2017.

900,000 of those were what we are now calling full-time business builders.

4.7 million were part-time business builders, 4.1 million were discount buyers, and 9 million became 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 are people who are business builders throughout the course of the year, year, have described themselves as business builders.

Right.

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 four.

I want to know, this is telling me nothing.

I don't know where.

The point I was trying to get at was that a snapshot of how people self-identify at any given moment says nothing about their behavior or experience.

Folks who become inactive over the course of a year, half of all participants according to Joe's numbers and a hell of a lot more according to others, those people may have started out hoping to earn a living, but couldn't and gave up after investing God knows how much money.

And those claiming to be full-time business builders, the pie chart doesn't tell me if that's working, if they're earning any money at all.

Collecting that data would be helpful and useful information, if it mattered at all to these companies' bottom lines.

But it doesn't.

I tried again to get Joe to address this, and that's when Joe blew my mind by redefining another term.

How many people who are attempting a full-time job in an MLM become inactive?

First, it's not a job.

Number one, it's not a job.

But it's not a job.

It is an activity.

Okay, so this entire season has been just some silly dream we had.

MLMs are like bowling or beauty contests.

That's funny because the whole time, based on promotional materials and videos and interviews we've done with countless people in the industry, we were under the impression that this was a business opportunity, a way to make money, a job.

And we weren't the only ones.

Michelle Gay of Lime Life and countless other pushers of this model think so too.

You know, direct sales is work.

It is amazingly rewarding work and it's work you can do during flexible hours.

This is net work marketing.

It's not net sit marketing.

It's not net play marketing.

It's not net think about it marketing.

It's not net one day I'll get to it marketing.

It's net work marketing.

And most people miss the W, the work part.

Share up with everybody and start, you know, making tons of money like myself while staying home with your kids, never missing a moment with them.

So I'm working less and I'm making three times the amount of income, y'all.

Three times the amount of income, almost four.

And leaders who are making the big bucks, they never stop going to events.

They're always constantly learning, learning, learning.

I recognize how,

you know, strategic and smart and savvy and hardworking this group is.

And as a result, I make sure that our sales field is paid their worth.

It's not employment.

This is a direct selling activity.

Why do you like this business model?

I think that you, perhaps others, with all due respect, have fallen, and your skepticism is probably indicative of this.

I think you've fallen into a little bit of a trap and the trap is being skeptical of the business model only because it's a little bit foreign to you it's not foreign to me and i think you came at it with a degree of skepticism if i could suggest that and part of that is as a result of look we're used to walking into a mall or a store and making a purchase that way we think of companies or products as legitimate or for that matter opportunities as legitimate much more readily when we see advertising when there's a super bowl commercial or they're advertising in the newspaper or what have you yeah And because this model doesn't do that, people go at this with a degree of skepticism.

Why is my question?

It's a model that works.

For who?

It works for the companies.

It works for individuals who are getting involved.

It works for people that I have met and spoken to.

And I think if there's one flaw in the way that our business model has been structured over the years, is that we were too attentive to the distributors in the sales force and not aware enough of who those ultimate consumers were when they were outside of the sales plan.

Well, doesn't that seem backwards in a capitalist society?

That seems like the first thing you'd be concerned with is who's buying at the end?

I think it's one of the things that has been unique about the model.

It's been one of the things that has been the least understood and is still the least understood.

And why, in fact, today, as a result of the attention that people like you and others have given the model and the lack of understanding, is that there is a clear movement and a clear understanding on the part of certainly DSA members that we collectively have to do a better job in making sure that we can establish without question

that people outside the plan are using the product or that people inside the plan are in fact using the product and that they're not just purchasing large amounts of inventory for other reasons to get higher commission levels sort of on the easiest way to do that would be to get rid of the incentive why why have uh purchase quotas why have why did you open your business when you opened it i mean there are reasons are you doing a show about podcast companies

At this point, when Joe used the pee-wee Herman tactic of, I know you are, but what am I, Dan decided to tag me out and get us back on track with that troublesome bill, H.R.

3409.

To me, and to I think a lot of outside observers, it appears that you are trying to set up a definition for what a pyramid scheme is so that you can look at that definition.

You can say, see that?

We didn't do that.

And I can show you the different reasons why.

Sure.

Point them out, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

All right.

Would you like to hear again again my interpretation and my understanding of the intent of the legislation?

It is to make sure that when an individual who's involved in the plan also personally uses the product

and/or their sales organization, members of their sales organization use the product legitimately for their own use and receive something.

There's no way to try to get it.

Can I finish my statement?

I have to interrupt and say there's absolutely

no model.

There is no way

to make that distinction.

How would you

possibly be able to tell whether someone is buying something

to try and hit a commission or whether someone is buying something?

I would send you back to some of your research and look at some of the actions that have been taken against pyramid schemes when there have been very clear factual situations that have been alleged by the prosecution and ultimately in some of them proven in some of those circumstances that people were in fact claiming to use the product themselves but were not.

And law enforcement was clearly able to identify the fact that these people were not using that product.

If a person is purchasing $1,000 worth of toothpaste each month and suggesting that they are using it for personal use on its face,

that is clearly not doable.

I'm not law enforcement, but in fact,

when a law enforcement is

tracking fences, are the companies you represent tracking fence?

That's up to the companies to do it.

In fact, it's up to you.

You represent them.

No, no, there's a presumption of innocence in our situation and our system of government, which I'm sure you understand.

And if a law enforcement agency or others makes a determination that this is a likely pyramid scheme, as in any criminal or other civil case, they are obliged to provide evidence.

And part of that evidence, which would be allowed under this potential law, is to say, look, this is a sham.

You're not really engaged in personal use.

And then to prove that they're not engaged in personal use.

Now, to answer your question and your thoughtful question,

yeah, there is an obligation on the part of companies and the association to some extent, to the extent possible, to determine that in fact companies are engaged in real sale of product to real people.

And that's why companies companies have large compliance departments.

There's a compliance department within a multi-level marketing company, is what you're telling me.

And I need to rely on their company.

And I need to rely on their compliance department to make sure that they're doing the right thing.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

Okay, well, then who is it?

Who is overseeing the compliance department?

Again, you're going down this sort of path that you have an agenda that is understood.

And I understand.

But are you?

Let's just be clear about what our agendas are.

Okay, at this point.

And your agenda is clearly to question and suggest that no matter what these companies do, it's illegitimate.

I wish I could say that.

And that's not the case.

I wish I could say that.

Well, here's what I'm saying.

What I've seen from your industry.

Yeah.

I wish I could say that.

I wish I could say that

my intentions weren't pure because it would mean that I hadn't seen what I'd seen, that I hadn't seen people suffer, and that I didn't care.

right yeah well i've seen plenty of people too and i care and i've seen the way that this business model has affected people's lives in the thousands, positively.

You care in the case.

So you can talk about your care and I can talk about mine and I can talk about the devotion of the association and individual companies to do the right thing.

As frustrated as I was with our chat, I got to say, Joe was a real trooper.

He stuck around for two and a half hours and was gracious in the face of me basically refuting every claim he made because we have evidence contradicting almost every claim he made.

But Joe, for sitting and talking with us, we are very grateful.

We have heard narrow a peep

out of

proponents of this business model.

Why do you think that is?

I don't know.

It's a good question.

We have not.

Maybe nobody's paying attention to it.

Ouch.

We did hear via email from Michelle Gay of Lime Life, and she mostly expressed irritation that we didn't include her in the show from the start before we began investigating her company.

Given that Limelife doesn't seem to be super up on their ethics in general, we patiently explained to her how that would have been unethical.

We can't do an honest, candid exploration of how a company does business by first telling the company that we're looking at them.

Once we saw what we saw, we reached out.

Had we come up with nothing, then she'd have nothing to worry about, in which case, I'm guessing she'd be happy to talk to us.

We wrote Michelle back, begging her to prove us wrong, to stand up for her workforce, honor and defend her company and her products and her business model.

We asked for numbers.

How many beauty guides are there and how many lose money?

How much money does she make, etc.

She responded that we should guess.

Quote, here's my question to you.

What percentage of each dollar goes to the commission payout, to gross profit margin, and to me?

Given this anger you seem to harbor, I assure you that you're wrong.

Okay.

I'm not going to guess how much money you make, Michelle.

Amway also got back to us, but the the communication broke down when they began offering hearsay evidence to counter our claims.

For example, remember the Amway rules that Vanandel and DeVos presented as a defense during the FTC trial?

Amway claims those rules were always in place from the beginning.

But the two people who would know for sure are dead.

So we asked for some sort of proof, some documentation.

They provided none and wished us luck.

Not one company came to us with any evidence that our findings or those of Robert Fitzpatrick or John Taylor or any of the experts we referenced, were wrong.

They all offered lines like, this is sensationalism, not journalism, and our sales force is happy.

And then sliding all the way down the pyramid-shaped business model thingy we're looking at to the folks at the bottom, surely those folks on the ground, the ones Joe and all the MLM owners keep telling us are super content and successful and not complaining because there's nothing to complain about, surely those testimonials would pour in, whether true or not.

But nope.

Of the thousands of tweets, reviews, and emails we've gotten, we've counted around 10 anonymous notes from people claiming to be currently, happily involved with an MLM.

We'd gone into this hearing horror stories of cease and desist orders or defamation suits, but all we heard were crickets.

That may be in part due to our impeccable reporting, but we also found out via private message on our Facebook page that Limelife conducted a Facebook live event for their beauty guides, in which the owner, Michelle, directed her minions to ignore us, to stick with her, believe only her, and carry on business as usual.

Which, if you've ever watched a cartoon, is exactly the sort of directive you'd expect from an evil genius facing a worthy opponent.

Here's the thing I do know.

The losses, be they large or small, depending on who you ask, suffered by folks who get into MLMs, They aren't total losses.

I mean, they are to them, and much of the time, those losses are on a balance sheet as credit card debt, which compounds with interest.

But I say they aren't total losses because someone has that money.

To someone else, that's a gain.

And that someone else is whoever is sitting at the top.

Your credit card debt is in their coffers.

This podcast company isn't my first foray into entrepreneurship.

When I was 18, my dad and I rented a small, long-shuttered drive-through credit union in Owasso, Michigan, and turned it into a cafe.

I was struggling to finish high school after dropping out.

No colleges wanted me, and given that I'd worked in cafes since I was 14, we thought it could be an avenue to me getting back on track.

I also got a dog at the same time.

And I ran that cafe, shoddily, for three years until we closed, as most new restaurants do.

That loss, Joe Mariano and his cronies would argue, was no different than money's loss to an MLM.

And it is my great pleasure to be the moral authority here because I believe there is a huge difference.

The money we were out went into the bank accounts of our employees, kids who needed it to pay for college.

It went to a food supply company that provided us flour and eggs from local farmers, and that flour and those eggs went into the bellies of our customers, keeping them alive.

And it went to my rent, $300 a month to share one of the nicest apartments in the county.

I had my own bathroom.

On the other hand, Katie from episode 6, the money she lost went to Mary Kay.

Mackenzie's money went up the line at Limelife.

The woman who called in to say that she's hidden from her husband the fact that she lost $25,000 to Herbalife, despite never having touched any of their products, all she or anyone in her family has to show for that money is a dark secret.

Shame.

Herbalife, though, they have that $25,000.

Same goes for the tens of thousands of folks who've tried selling leggings for LulaRowe.

What they have to show for it are basements upon basements upon garages upon sheds, stacked full of boxes filled with unsellable leggings.

And there's no eccentric madman like William Penpatrick milling about outside to take it off their hands.

So, what can we do?

Start talking.

To ourselves, admitting that maybe we got in over our heads and it wasn't our fault.

To our friends and family, acknowledging our vulnerabilities and lessons learned.

And to the powers that be.

You can write your state representatives, easily found on the house.gov website, and tell them to vote no on H.R.

3409 or any other bill that serves to protect MLMs and not the people funding them.

And you can write Joe directly.

Send any information to me, Joe Mariano, M-A-R-I-A-N-O.

The website is www.dsa.org.

Feel free to send send me an email.

I'll give you the simple one.

It's joejoe at dsa.org.

Where are your young living

oils?

Yeah, can you show them to me?

Sit tight.

Back in Owaso, my grandma Ruth and Amy, though they long ago realized MLMs are not a path to riches, they still buy MLM products from friends and family.

They both believe in the healing properties of essential oils from a Christian company called Young Living Oils.

What do you use these for?

Oh my goodness.

Ah, you use them to inhale for different problems that you might have.

These you put on, what we do is we put it on like a collar or something like that when you're out places.

Then you don't usually pick up anybody's colds or anything.

They believe in the health benefits of taking a proprietary blend of very expensive vitamins sold exclusively through Life Vantage.

My grandmother still lauds Herbal life shakes for helping my grandfather lose weight.

And I get it.

We're from a part of the world where big business has upended business on Main Street.

The main street that politicians are always talking about.

We had one of those.

Quaint.

In fact, there used to be a little town out here on the road our farm is on.

It had a post office, a fire station, and a one-room schoolhouse that my dad went to.

But then cars made it easier to get to the bigger towns nearby, and so it disappeared.

Same with Bannon's family-owned grocery store once we got a Kroger.

Things are impermanent and businessmen are shysty, so are politicians.

Michigan is a state pockmarked with cancer clusters.

The hotspots for these being along the Saginaw River, which feeds the smaller Shiawassee River, which runs right through the middle of Owasso.

People believe the government is poisoning them on purpose because, famously, they did.

And doctors, they're in cahoots with big pharma, so put them in the untrustworthy column as well.

The only people left in the trustworthy column are relatives, friends, and neighbors who are selling my grandmother a miracle essential oil and the chance for a more prosperous future.

They don't know she's already rich the honest way.

That's it for this season of the dream.

But don't worry, I'll be back soon with another season.

It won't be about MLMs, but it will be about something just as fun.

If you have topics you'd like us to cover, please send us an email at thisisthedreampodcast at gmail.com.

The Dream is a production of Little Everywhere and Stitcher, written and reported by me, Jane Marie, Dan Gallucci, Mackenzie Gassab, Lyra Smith, and help from Claire Rawlinson.

We're edited by Peter Clowney.

Our fact-checker is Michelle Harris.

The Dream is mixed by Mike Richter.

The Dream is executive produced by Laura Mayer, Chris Bannon, Dan Gallucci, and me.

Special thanks today to Bill Irwin, Shirley Liu, Ron Gaskill, Amy Fitzgibbons, Dave Giles, Jordan Bell, Stephanie Karauki, Matt Most, Christine Richard, Michelle Solarier, Doug Brooks, Bruce Craig, and once again, Robert Fitzpatrick.

We appreciate you subscribing, rating, and reviewing the show wherever you listen.

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