S1 E9: Leave a Message

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if you thought goldenly breaded mcdonald's chicken couldn't get more golden thank golder because new sweet and smoky special edition gold sauce is here made for your chicken favorites at Participating McDonald's for a limited time.

Hey, dream listeners.

If you like this podcast, you're going to love the book.

Yeah, I wrote a book.

It's called Selling the Dream, and it's coming out March 12th, 2024 on Atria.

It's about all of your favorite characters from MLMs and some that you've never even heard of, I hope.

Check it out.

Previously on The Dream, McKenzie started bawling.

Remember that from last week?

There's also, of course, been a lot of deep, depressing history from me and Dan.

And then crying with my aunt and reminiscing with grandma and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Today, we're letting you guys take over.

For the past few weeks, we've been asking you, our listeners, to call in and leave us voicemails about your MLM experiences.

And we're going to listen to some of those today.

But first, I need to put some people on blast.

A lot of you called in just to rat out your friends.

You called and gave us your friends' actual phone numbers and asked me personally to call them up and tell them that they're being scammed

or you asked me to do some recon on your behalf you know find out if they're lying about how much money they're making or whatever um her name is

her number is fila

and you're totally okay to you know inform her

that i passed her info along um if you get in touch with her i'm just i'm so curious.

All right.

Love you guys.

Bye.

Look, I have enough calls to make for this show already, including one at the end of this episode to the woman who skipped her best friend's wedding to attend Limelight Palooza.

Stick around for that.

But before we get to her, let's listen to your stories.

We're just going to let these roll.

So I've never actually done an MLM myself, but one of my best friends, she's done everyone possible.

In college, she filed for bankruptcy and she was one of my bridesmaids.

I haven't actually talked to her in about four years

because

every time I talk to her, she tries to sell me something.

This was her last text to me.

Hey, how was your child's first day of school?

My youngest has her meet the teacher night and it starts next Tuesday.

She's really excited.

I'm also wondering if you'd be interested in helping me out with something.

Super close to earning a free cruise and leadership for her husband and I with Plexus.

I'm curious to be willing to make a one-time purchase to help me earn this opportunity.

I have a great sale for you to make the deal sweeter, but I really only desire to help people.

If you think this would be a good fit for you, I want to help you out.

What do you think?

Again, it's been four years since I've had a conversation with her.

A couple years ago, my marriage was on the rocks.

I didn't really know why,

but

my wife at the time was wanting to divorce.

And so I reached out to my father-in-law, who I had a pretty good relationship with, and asked him if he could maybe sit down and talk with me, because I knew that he had gone through something similar with his marriage, which made it work.

The time came to sit down, talk to him, and he proceeded in basically dismantling me as a person and as a provider,

telling me that my education wasn't good enough, my job wasn't good enough, which led to the question, what are you going to do?

What will you do?

And I was flabbergasted.

I just sat there

holding back tears, to be honest.

And he said, I'll tell you what you can do.

And his solution was melaluca.

He

obligated me to sit down and listen to his presentation about Bella Luca and explain how that was going to get me into

financial freedom and how that would essentially win back the heart of his daughter, who is now my ex-wife.

It was a moment in my life where I was devastated beyond belief

and just reminded me why I have stayed away from direct sales, as we call it, my entire life.

Thank you for the show that you're doing.

It's important work.

My name is Jason,

and I run an immigrant health clinic in Phoenix, Arizona.

I've seen it again and again how a lot of our patients who are already financially struggling have gotten sucked into some of these MLM schemes, especially Herbalife, but others as well.

And I think that what makes our patients especially vulnerable to this is that so many of them are highly intelligent, but because of America's broken immigration laws, they're sort of locked out of the dignified labor markets.

And so they find themselves forced into these very menial and degrading jobs, you know, scrubbing other people's toilets and cleaning other people's offices.

And

they have such a desperation to have work with dignity that when somebody tells them they can run their own business and

have control of their life,

they understandably really want to fall for that.

And I've just seen such an expansion of

some of these scammy MLM businesses in the Spanish-speaking market.

And it's frustrating to me because these are some of the people who are already preyed upon in so many different ways.

And now I see them being taken advantage of.

What's up?

Please don't use my name on the show, but I'm going to tell you my name.

I work as a youth minister.

I went through like two years of moms at the church constantly approaching me about their MLMs because they thought that because I am a leader in my church and I work with all these kids and I work with all these moms, that I would be able to grow their downline so quickly that I would make them a lot of money.

And I would be like, no, you idiots.

This is not something.

Okay, I didn't call them idiots.

It's not very pastoral.

But they would would like make up reasons to talk to me and not tell me that it's MLM and they would be like oh my kid is you know struggling and I need to talk to you about my kid and I'd be like oh okay cool come on into my office and they'd come into the office and they'd be like talk about their kid for two minutes and then

it would be like oh have you heard about isogenics

or have you heard about MA and then it was like the other thing that like really frustrated me was that they knew that because I chose to do church work I don't make you know a ton of money so they would lie about their kids having problems just to get to me and then try to sell me on their so-called business anyway I just I just needed to rant

I just wanted to share my experience

As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, first I want to stress that the church has nothing to do with MLMs officially, but as you stated, Utah is the unofficial global capital of MLMs, and I believe this is because of the nature of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Firstly,

just like a lot of other churches, Latter-day Saints are generally trusting.

You might say gullible.

They're optimistic and sharing.

And importantly, we have lots of friends and family.

So when your uncle comes to you and says, I have this great life-changing opportunity, sometimes it sounds a lot like a message you would hear at church.

Secondly, Latter-day Saints often believe that because they are good people, good things will happen to them.

Of course, this is a false belief, but joining the latest MLM to come their way just has to work out because they say their prayers, go to church, help their neighbors, so forth.

Another thing is that being self-sufficient is very, very strongly preached.

And as you've discussed in your podcast, women are generally not supposed to work.

And so being part of an MLM is a perfect fit because they feel like they can earn money for their family without officially having a job.

My last point, Latter-day Saints are born and bred to be missionaries.

A phrase you'll hear all the time at church is, every member is a missionary.

And so preaching the gospel to friends often naturally flows to selling MLM products to their friends.

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Hey, Jane, my name is Nick.

I live out in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

So, my experience, I moved to Harrisburg about two years ago, right?

And as I'm settling in, you know, you go to grocery stores, and

first grocery store I'm in, I end up meeting this guy, and he started, you know, I think he started talking to me about sports.

He said, oh, you look like you work out, which is weird, right?

And, you know, we started talking and just real casual and about what we do and for work.

And he tells me, yeah, I also do this thing on the side.

It's in sports marketing.

It's really neat.

You know, it's a group of guys that are similar to yourself.

We should get together and talk more about it.

I'm like, okay, that

sounds cool.

I'm new to the area.

I'd like to make some friends and let's do it.

So this guy's like asking me if you can come over to my house or where we can meet and when we can meet.

And I'm just like, you know, the more I think about it, it smells like an MLM.

So I get him on the phone and I'm just like, hey,

let me know what's the product?

What am I selling?

Oh, it's marketing.

Okay, so there's no product.

No, no product.

Okay, then how does it work?

Do you make money?

How do you make money?

And none of these questions, he could give concrete answers.

And then he starts flipping the script, which I've heard of and I've seen this multiple times.

They flip it and they say, well, I don't know if you'd be the right fit for us.

We're looking for people that are like-minded.

And then he, you know, tries to make you or me

feel self-conscious.

You start to wonder, well, am I the right fit?

Like, what's wrong with me?

You know, and I realized he was doing this, and I just kind of wrote him off, and that was that.

But funny enough, I continue going to grocery stores because I need to buy food.

And I see, this is like a month ago, and I see this guy, the same one that approached me the first time, and he's walking around.

And I see him.

He's got this other dude cornered, and they're talking.

And so this is so funny.

So I leave the store, and I'm driving out.

I got my groceries and I see him leaving the store with no groceries.

Hi, my name's Mimi.

I was part of the Amway organization, but in like a sub

categorized MLM within Amway.

It was called Worldwide Group.

And it was from the start so controlling from every aspect of my life, from how I spend my money and then who I would associate with.

It was highly encouraged that if other people did not want to be a part of Worldwide Group, that you should, quote, sniff them out of your life.

I'd rather not use my real name, so you can call me whatever you want.

Amy, Lisa, whatever.

I don't care.

So here is what happened to me.

In 2002, I was pregnant with my first child, and I was a virtual assistant, and I had a client in town who was starting a new business.

She was a professional motivational speaker.

So her sales pitch was bought on.

She was super excited, and she talked me into

being part of her, of course, amazing opportunity.

She said she couldn't even explain it or she wouldn't.

And I could be part of it for only $300.

And she was going to, she was quite sure she was going to be making $20,000 a month before she knew it.

And it was going to be so easy.

So of course it sounded great to me.

And I quickly signed on, not even understanding what I was signing on to do.

Her website was literally swimmingincash.com.

That was what her website was.

Of course, it was just pictures of...

her family and vacation places they'd gone to and no other information whatsoever except for 800 members that you could call for more info, which didn't really even give you anything.

So within hours of spending my initial $300, I was on the phone with her and her supervisor.

It turns out that what I'd done was to sign up to sell Herbalize.

The phone call we'd had was to explain to me how I could go on to become a supervisor without even selling a thing.

All I had to do was buy $5,000 worth of product and ended up me up to the next level.

Their sales pitches were phenomenal.

By the end of the call, I seriously couldn't wait to give them $5,000 so that I could, too, get in at the ground level.

Of course, never mind, the Herbalife had been in business for years and there was no ground level left.

Never once during the phone call did they mention sales or even the product.

It was all about recruitment and building my team.

When I during the call, when I raised objections to them that I didn't want to recruit any friends or family, they told me that I wouldn't have to, that they would teach me how to do it through classified ads in the newspaper, putting signs up, mailing out booklets.

So at this point, I am now $5,300 in the hole.

My business is up and running.

That meant that for the next few months, I spent my time buying classified ads in target markets in newspapers, which in my case turned out to be Chicago.

I was running ads in the newspapers that were anywhere from $700 to $900 a week.

And then I was buying mailing lists that were similarly cost.

And I was mailing out these booklets that literally had pictures of people in yachts and on vacations.

And that was it.

There was no other information in it.

By this time, I was about seven months pregnant, and I was also putting up signs around town.

I was literally seven months pregnant and climbing ladders and trying to put my signs high enough so that other people wouldn't take them down saying, work from home, earn thousand a month

never during any of this time it all told it was about four or five months never during any of this did I sell a single herbalized product or even really learn that much about the product I really had no idea what I was supposed to be doing and all I was supposed to be doing was listening to these motivational weekly and daily calls telling me how to sign new people up because the more supervisors that I signed up, the more money I would make.

After having my son, I quickly realized this was not for me.

I quit the business and was like $20,000 to $25,000 in the hole.

I

never, ever, ever have told my husband any of this.

He has no idea.

Hi, Jane Marie.

My name's Amanda.

I'm calling from Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada.

I actually used to work in the customer service department of a multi-level marketing company here in BC.

And let me tell you, it was an interesting couple of years.

One of the things I had to do was stuff envelopes with commission checks.

And so you would have a stack of checks as thick as your wrist, and they'd be going all over North America.

And there was the same names that just kept coming up over and over and over again.

And I started to recognize them.

There was maybe 20 or 30 names that would always be receiving checks.

And we're talking hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars.

And then there were other names that I didn't recognize.

And they would be receiving checks for just the most insultingly minuscule amounts of money.

We're talking 40 cents, you know, 10 bucks here, $15 there.

And I didn't know why they were so low or what these people were doing or anything.

And I just felt bad towards the end.

My name is Billy Warren, and my experience with an MLM was a friend of mine called me with a great business opportunity, and I went to his house and sat down with him and several of his family and friends.

And they started giving this spiel about this business where you convince people to change their

phone service from one service to another and and Donald Trump backed this thing and then he showed a video with Donald Trump talking about this

landline telephone that had a video screen on it how it was this great

new technology and I'm thinking this is crazy they had these things in the 1960s at the World's Fair this is not big technology But I was just shocked at how gullible these people were.

They were just eating this up because Donald Trump was putting his name on it.

So when I got up to leave in the middle of this thing, my friend followed me to the door.

He's like, well, why are you leaving?

I'm like, you just need to snap out of it, man.

You just

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We do have one more call to play for you.

It's an outgoing call.

Remember, we promised to reach out to this lady?

I'm really, really passionate about Limelight Palooza.

Her name is Anjeti, and she's a Kardashian-adjacent-looking makeup artist from Philly.

Last week, we played you a little bit of this YouTube video we found of her talking about the importance of Limelight Palooza, the annual convention that that makeup company puts on.

Here's more of that.

I almost didn't go to Limelight Palooza this year because one of my best friends is getting married that same Saturday.

And I'm supposed to be a bridesmaid.

And I remember crying when I found out that Limelight Palooza was that same weekend.

And it was one of the hardest decisions I've had to make business-wise because, you know, my friendships are important and my business is very, very important to me as well.

However, I made like a promise to myself that this year, no matter what, I was going to go.

And so we both cried about it.

She was crying, I was crying, but she's such a good friend that she was like, you need to go.

So now I'm telling you guys what my friend told me.

You need to go.

If you want to make some serious money in this business, you must go.

I've researched this.

I study this.

I've been in direct sales for a very long time.

And I have failed in direct sales for a very long time

because I never took conventions seriously.

There's a pattern here.

I'm not going to conventions and I'm not succeeding.

It's time to break that.

Network marketing doesn't care about your past.

It doesn't care about like how how broke you are right now.

It doesn't care if you're a single mom.

It doesn't care if you've lived on welfare.

It doesn't care if you finished high school.

It does not discriminate.

Like success can happen to anyone in this business, but you have to invest your time and money in order to get it.

Just get to convention.

And I promise you, I promise you, you won't regret it.

So we called Njetti to see if attending Limelight Palooza made all of her dreams come true.

Is she rich beyond belief?

You know, was missing her best friend's wedding really worth it?

It's my biggest regret.

I took her to dinner.

Like I was gonna break up with her.

You know what I mean?

This is not mentioned anywhere in the video, but it turns out that Njetti wasn't just any old beauty guide.

No, she was a beauty ambassador, a special title for a handful of makeup artists/slash influencers who were recruited in the early days of Limelight to stump for the brand.

She knows Jacob, you guys.

Side note, we reached out again for his comment and he's just, he's so on all the time, even in his emails, so incredibly Jacob.

It's almost enviable.

It wasn't 100% clear, but we think he's listened to the show now, and he still has no interest in speaking with us.

Maybe that'll change after he hears what M.

Jetty, his former colleague, has to say.

So we, as ambassadors, we were required to go to the conference.

Oh, you didn't say that in the video.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, so

we were,

it was one of those things where it wasn't like written in paper, but the way they implied it was like,

You are required to go, but if you're like, you don't go,

it's going to be very frowned upon, and we're not going to know if we're going to be able to take you serious.

And

again, I wasn't just a beauty guy, I was an ambassador.

I had relationships with the CEO and with corporate.

And so they were all expecting me to be there.

And I look back at it now, and I think, oh my God, like, what were you thinking?

What were you thinking?

What were you thinking?

I was just thinking that, like, if I did all these things,

again, I was going to be,

I was going to have all this success and I was going to have all this money and I was going to have all this admiration and

I was going to be happy.

So are you still with that company?

No, I'm not.

I was terminated.

What?

Say it again.

I was terminated by them.

Why?

Corporate.

I was let go.

So it came to a point where it was no longer fulfilling me.

It got pulled to a point where I was working so much, working around the clock.

And I'm still young.

So, I mean, I'm 29 now.

So at the time, I was about 27.

So I still kind of wanted to live my life.

But some girls didn't see it that way.

Some girls, they told corporate, you know,

she's not doing what she's supposed to be doing as an upline.

And I felt like I was, even though I wasn't happy, and I was starting to slowly pull away.

Like at one point, I got, I told the girl that I was going to have business hours.

It got to that because I said, I cannot be awake at 2 a.m.

I mean, even your doctor has Google.

Right.

So after I got terminated, I went into a really bad depression

and I developed pretty bad anxiety because I got terminated over an email.

Never got a phone call from corporate.

Despite having a very close, intimate relationship with the CEO,

I never got a phone call.

It was an email.

So then what did you do next?

So I did join another direct sales company.

What?

I know, I know.

So one of my

good friends in my downline, her mom was in Senegal's lipstick.

Oh, yeah.

And

she's like, come on, Ann Daddy, like let's let's do it.

And I'm like, all right, fine.

So I did it, but after two months, I was like, you know what, this isn't for me.

But then after that, she goes, all right, well, I just joined another company.

And this company is going to create bonuses, and you're going to get these bonuses so quick.

So we joined the name is Koove It, and they sell this keto, this ketosis drink, like a diet.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

Which, by the way, it does work.

And but again, I start seeing that same pattern where I'm giving it my all.

I'm spending too much time on my phone.

You know, and so then after that, I joined MCN.

What?

Yeah,

Yeah.

Yeah.

I know.

You're like a fascinating character to me because you really want it to be the answer.

It seems like it's like it's like an addict.

I'm like an addict.

That's what it is.

Like you're just like an addict.

And like you got that taste of success.

You got the taste of the money and the potential and you see it and you know it, but you know it's not that good for you.

Like you're gonna go after it anyways.

So we're just gonna chase the neck high.

You know what I mean?

Megan, if you're listening to this, I thank God you're such a special and understanding and forgiving, kind friend, because I think had that been done to me,

I don't know if I would have been able to have been so accepting of it.

Coming up on the last two episodes of this season of the dream.

Well, thank you, Dick DeVos.

Dick Johnson.

Dick DeVos, thank you for that very warm and generous welcome.

And what was enforcement like during the Bush era?

Non-existent.

A moratorium.

And thank all of you for that welcome.

You sure know how to make a fella feel a part of the Amway family.

Clinton himself later publicized a video that was done for the Direct Selling Association, promoting it internationally.

Three-quarters of you are women, trying to strengthen your families and raise strong children without the fear that a glass ceiling will hold you down.

In a very real way, your work promotes our values all around the globe.

They can look at the law and the judicial decisions, as I'm sure you have,

from the last 35 years.

I've followed your industry's growth for years now, and even I was amazed to learn that there are more than 100,000 direct salespeople in Russia and over 600,000 in China.

I want to thank the leaders of Amway China

for contributing to causes

that make the communities in which you live a better place.

Well, that's a loaded question, as I'm sure you know.

I mean, I'm fine loading questions.

I have no problem at this point in my research loading a question.

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.

I've spent a year studying this.

Well, you accused me once of lying, which I...

I take great offense to.

Back to your piece of- I'm not afraid of offending people.

I'm a reporter.

It's part of my job, you know.

We offend people sometimes.

I'm offended by a lot of what you're doing.

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 the lawies you represent tracking that are the companies you represent tracking that that's up to the companies to do it, that's up to you.

You represent them.

No, no, no.

You represent them for our government.

You represent them for the people.

It is up to you.

There's a presumption of innocence in our situation and our system of government, which I'm sure you understand.

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

We are edited by Peter Clowney.

Our fact-checker is Michelle Harris.

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

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

Hello, the dream listeners.

Have you had a personal experience with MLMs?

We want to hear from you.

Leave us a voicemail at 715-600-0326 or send us an email at thisisthedreampodcast at gmail.com.

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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.

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It'll be fun.

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