S1 E5: Do You Party?

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Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 It's about all of your favorite characters from MLMs and some that you've never even heard of, I hope. Check it out.

Speaker 1 Previously on The Dream.

Speaker 1 So William Pimpatrick basically took from the power of the mind to affect your circumstances, the power of positive thinking, large group awareness training, prosperity gospel.

Speaker 27 The mind is like a fertile field. Its size, the limits of your imagination.

Speaker 27 This leads me to the point of the principle which I have discovered as the foundation of my security and happiness, which is success.

Speaker 28 And he made it dark.

Speaker 26 How is one individual tied to the cross?

Speaker 1 Answer. Well, how would you normally tie someone to the cross?

Speaker 1 And that I have to host parties where I need to serve people food and drinks, I assume. Just get them drunk enough that they can't drive to CBS.
and buy regular makeup.

Speaker 1 Get them drunk enough so they don't notice that I can't do their makeup and I'm not a good makeup artist. And now I see Amy's house.

Speaker 1 I remember one time they were all together at one of these parties and they were all laughing so hard they were crying. They were always really warm and really happy.

Speaker 1 And I've never experienced that again with any of the parties that I hosted or anything like that.

Speaker 1 Party. It's a word that can mean a lot of different things.
We're having a birthday party. Ugh, I partied so hard last night.

Speaker 1 The Democratic Party, the Republican Party, or the dreaded and fully loaded, so do you party?

Speaker 1 One thing that may not come to mind when you hear the word party is going to a friend's house with a bunch of other women to buy plastic bowls.

Speaker 1 In the world of multi-level marketing, though, this is what's referred to as a party.

Speaker 1 Not all MLMs work this way, of course, but many do thanks to one woman, Brownie Wise, and her pioneering work at...

Speaker 27 This is Tupperware. The airtight plastic containers that keep good foods fresher longer.

Speaker 27 The one way to buy Tupperware is a fun way. At a Tupperware home party.
To find out about Tupperware parties, write to Tupperware, Orlando, Florida. Stay tuned because we'll bring them on.

Speaker 1 Ah, the good old days when you could just put Tupperware, Orlando, Florida, on an envelope, and it would probably get there.

Speaker 1 You may remember that at my grandma Ruth's house, we didn't do Tupperware parties. We didn't go to Tupperware parties.
We didn't purchase Tupperware.

Speaker 1 We didn't have any Tupperware at the house. Tupperware was a waste of time.

Speaker 1 But my mom, who only married into that family, did go to Tupperware parties. And that's mostly because of the work of this one woman, Brownie Wise.

Speaker 1 Things to know about Brownie before I tell you how she changed the world of direct sales and multi-level marketing. She was born in Georgia in 1913.
Brownie is her real name, and I just love that.

Speaker 1 It's one of those cutesy, old-timey names like Sugar Sugar or Kitty, or like my aunt babe.

Speaker 1 Brownie looked and dressed exactly like Doris Day, so naturally she was married at 23, had a son at 25, and divorced her Ford Motor Company executive husband a few years later.

Speaker 1 Which means, dear listener, she got her start in Michigan.

Speaker 1 At first, Brownie sold Stanley home products, mops and brooms and things like that. That company was part of the early first wave of MLMs sold by women to women in women's homes.

Speaker 1 But once Brownie switched over to selling Tupperware, the real party started.

Speaker 1 Contrary to her male counterparts at the time, Brownie wasn't filing for bankruptcy all over the place, she was not making vinyl albums full of faux-thinky, laissez-faire capitalist propaganda, and she was definitely not gearing up to motivate her sales force by having them reenact the crucifixion.

Speaker 1 No, Brownie decided the path to success should be paved with fun.

Speaker 1 I'm Jane Marie, and this is The Dream, episode 5.

Speaker 1 Do you party?

Speaker 1 Brownie's sales tactics were simple, but genius. She'd have themed parties, there were fun contests and sing-alongs, and she started giving away gifts to hostesses and lucky raffle winners.

Speaker 1 Now, you'd think that those gifts would be like an extra plastic bowl or something, but no. Brownie gave away items from her own wardrobe.
Dresses, jewelry, hats.

Speaker 1 So you'd go to a party, crossing your fingers, Brownie would be there.

Speaker 1 and yeah, you'd get some cute little pastel colored plastic stacking cups that your kids can't destroy, but maybe you'd also get a fabulous rhinestone brooch.

Speaker 1 She made being a Tupperware sales lady aspirational and tapped into the desires of housewives to not only make some extra cash, but look good and feel good doing it.

Speaker 1 So she's doing all this on her own and starts out selling Tupperware in local stores. At which point, Earl Tupper, yes, his real name as well, gets wise to Brownie Wise.

Speaker 1 He stops selling Tupperware in stores and hires her to kickstart their exclusive home party-based business. This is in 1950.

Speaker 1 Now, if you didn't see this next part coming from a mile away, I don't know what to tell you. Maybe you should read a book or watch more TV.

Speaker 1 After a few years and loads of success, Earl starts to think Brownie's getting too big for her britches. She's becoming a little more popular than his plastic bowls, so he fires her.

Speaker 1 She sues for $30,000 in severance and Earl turns around and sells the company for $16 million that very same year. Brownie dies in obscurity, but her innovations and inspiration live on.

Speaker 1 Party-based MLMs are big business to this day. And not to brag, but in my hometown, we have our very own larger-than-life saleswoman extraordinaire, and I know her.

Speaker 1 Ladies and gentlemen, Danielle Jean Johnson.

Speaker 29 Growing up, I always knew that I wanted to be a leader. As a young child, I used to say I wanted to be the first woman president.

Speaker 29 I was president of my class four years all through high school school and one middle school year.

Speaker 1 Middle school. That's when I met Danielle.
She was in the class ahead of me, but we rode the bus together every day and we lived out in the middle of nowhere, so those rides were really long.

Speaker 1 Danielle was cool and pretty. I remember in seventh grade finally getting hair almost like hers, long dark brown spirals.

Speaker 1 And then I got braces and I was looking at myself in the bathroom mirror at school and thinking, oh, I almost look like Danielle.

Speaker 1 She was popular and outgoing, obviously. I mean, she was a five-term president after all.

Speaker 1 She married her high school sweetheart and they're still married, the Neuve, and they have two beautiful teen daughters.

Speaker 1 After graduating high school, Danielle became a dance instructor, which is about the coolest, sexiest job you can even imagine in Shiawase County.

Speaker 1 And then, six years ago, Danielle Jean Johnson changed course and began her career in direct sales, selling monogrammable bags for 31, for those of you that are not familiar.

Speaker 29 First of all, it is a faith-based company.

Speaker 29 The name 31 actually comes from Proverbs 31, which is all about celebrating women as wives, homemakers, mothers, teachers, friends, you know, all of those wonderful things that we can be as women.

Speaker 1 MLMs and religion are a match made in heaven. 31 isn't the only Christian MLM, not even close.
There are tons of them.

Speaker 1 Unique, Young Living Oils, Amway, and Proverbs 31, the proverb that this bag company named itself after, helps explain why.

Speaker 1 It's about this guy, King Lemuel, who had, in my reading anyway, a pretty overbearing but smart mom. She taught him stuff like, watch out for loose women and don't be a drunk.

Speaker 1 She was also like, stand up for the poor and needy and whatnot, which is all great. But then she goes on this whole rant about the kind of daughter-in-law she wants and it's like, relax, lady.

Speaker 1 I'll paraphrase here, but Lemuel's mom said a good wife, gets up while it's still night. provides food for her family.
She considers a field and then buys it.

Speaker 1 Out of her earnings, she plants a vineyard, Sets about her work vigorously. Her arms are strong for her tasks.
Her lamp does not go out at night.

Speaker 1 Then there's this whole section about all the fancy clothes she's supposed to make for herself and her family. Out of fabric she wove herself.
Out of wool, she spun herself.

Speaker 1 And then, finally, she's smart and funny and her husband and kids adore her. And they say unto her, Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all.

Speaker 1 Okay, so that's Proverbs 31. This ideal Christian woman, one who is both a wife and a mother, who stays up all night working while remaining lovable, also happens to be the ideal MLM salesperson.

Speaker 1 And methinks that's by design.

Speaker 1 Companies like these bank on the trappings of domesticity, not just through the products they sell, which are often housewares, makeup, or diet shakes, but they operate in such a way that you can't really escape this version of domesticity once you're in one of them.

Speaker 1 You work nights and weekends because you're supposed to homeschool your kids and feed your husband. And most people in this industry don't make any money selling bags on nights and weekends.

Speaker 1 So even if they wanted to do something other than be a stay-at-home mom, they couldn't. So they're stuck.
That's my cynical view.

Speaker 1 But for Danielle and many women like her, working for a Christian company reaffirms her faith. It gives her a sense of community.

Speaker 1 She gets to be a Christian in every part of her life, all day and all night. And that's worth more than a paycheck.
Right before joining 31, she was.

Speaker 29 I was doing everything from cleaning houses. I was still dabbling in teaching dance.
I was doing homeschoolers because it was during the day while my kids were at school.

Speaker 29 Anything I could do to basically that was flexible that kept me going to my kids' activities. So I was a seamstress, so I was doing take-ins and that sort of thing and sewing.

Speaker 29 I was making basically my own edible arrangements and doing those for like Mother's Day and everything, right? You name it. I was doing it.

Speaker 29 I was dabbling in eBay and Etsy and kind of flipping things from garage sales, just all that kind of flexible stuff.

Speaker 1 And then she found 31.

Speaker 29 So I've always been Christian, but I was at that point

Speaker 29 when I joined, was not going to church, was not, you know, had done plenty of things with my kids, taken them to vacation Bible school, had spent my earlier years of my marriage faithfully going to church.

Speaker 29 And life got busy, basically, you know, and I had had not been doing as much. What I love is that it actually brought me back to my faith.

Speaker 29 Yes. So I have now since just in this last year joined a church again,

Speaker 29 have a group of women that I love being around, and it is 100%

Speaker 29 because 31 has shown me that I needed that back in my life, that I needed the support of other people, that there's so much to learn from the Bible, and there's so much about being part of a community.

Speaker 1 Earlier, I compared Danielle to Brownie Wise. And not just because she's vivacious and outgoing and works in the party business, but because she's exceptionally good at it.

Speaker 1 And because she's so good at it, she's really high up in the um,

Speaker 1 oh, what do you call it? I'll let her describe it.

Speaker 29 We have a ladder, obviously, like most truck sales companies have. It is not a pyramid.
I always like pointing in there's no pyramid scheme. Those are illegal.

Speaker 30 I would never be part of that.

Speaker 1 You hear this from a lot of MLM distributors, especially in their recruitment videos on YouTube. They must get asked this all the time.

Speaker 15 The very first thing I think of when somebody says it's a pyramid scheme, I'm like, oh, you don't know.

Speaker 15 You don't know.

Speaker 31 Oh, see that.

Speaker 31 Let me help you out here.

Speaker 31 You may not know, but pyramid schemes are illegal.

Speaker 1 First of all,

Speaker 6 it is illegal to have a pyramid scheme.

Speaker 1 First of all, pyramid schemes are against the law.

Speaker 29 It's really that simple.

Speaker 1 Okay. Pyramid schemes are against the law, okay?

Speaker 1 But this is not one of them.

Speaker 1 So, okay, check. 31 is not a pyramid scheme.
It's a multi-level marketing company that has rungs, and Danielle is way the hell up on that ladder.

Speaker 29 The first level is senior consultant and then director and then senior director. That's how where I'm at in the ladder.

Speaker 1 How many people in the organization are at your level?

Speaker 29 Ah, good question. Last I knew we're at about 200, I believe, in our executive director level.

Speaker 1 It's actually 283. And there are three rungs above her with fewer folks as you go up.

Speaker 1 At various points over the years, Danielle has been crowned the number one salesperson in all of Michigan and the number one recruiter in the entire company.

Speaker 1 There are tens of thousands of people on the rungs below her, and on her team alone, she has 170 distributors. I bet you're dying to know how much she makes.

Speaker 29 Um, yes, so my actual take-home after expenses this last year was a little over 42,000. Yep.

Speaker 29 So, in the beginning,

Speaker 29 the biggest example I always give is from the beginning, I have paid my mortgage. Now, with that, that was my personal sales.

Speaker 29 So, I was not a director yet, meaning I wasn't making any extra commission off of anyone underneath me. I was partying, I was partying a lot.

Speaker 29 At this point, I still make that a goal. So, even to this day,

Speaker 29 my mortgage is always paid by my own personal sales. It's kind of like a little personal goal that I like to do.

Speaker 1 Can I ask you what your mortgage is?

Speaker 29 Yes, so it was 833 is what it was when I first started. So it's always in the 800 range.
So my goal is usually 900 and that's MS Scroll Girl.

Speaker 29 So that's your insurance and all that good stuff in there with it.

Speaker 1 Wait, here's a question. So 800 times 4, so you get 25% from the beginning.
So you were selling over 3,000 a month in retail sales. Absolutely.
Right.

Speaker 21 Okay.

Speaker 29 My personal goal has always been 4,000 minimum. That is, when I drop below that, I'm not going to lie, I'm a little disappointed in myself.
And it happens from time to time.

Speaker 29 But throughout the years, I've been able to to do way more than that. Now I've shot it more up to usually my goal is more like $6,000 a month that I'm trying to do.

Speaker 1 How do you do that? That's like a hundred products.

Speaker 29 So for me, I'm a home party gal. A lot of people on my team are,

Speaker 29 they're doing, you know, the big trend is social media, Facebook parties. It's not to say that I don't do those, but for me, those are the icing on top is what I like to say.

Speaker 29 I'm a people person, so I love the home party. That's what fills my cup.

Speaker 1 How much does it cost to have a party?

Speaker 29 Absolutely nothing.

Speaker 1 Okay, this is sort of true. And I'll let Danielle go into more detail in a second, but this framing of things being totally free in the MLM world happens a lot.
You won't have to spend a dime.

Speaker 1 But baseline, you'll need a phone or a computer to invite people to a party, right? Those things aren't free. And you need a place to have the party.
That's definitely not free.

Speaker 1 And then you need time, which if you have kids, means you might have to get a sitter. And those are not free.

Speaker 29 The only thing that you're ever out would be snacks and drinks.

Speaker 29 And I try to keep that light. I schedule my parties at times where people are not going to be wanting actual breakfast, lunch, or dinner.
So I like to do a 10 a.m.

Speaker 29 brunch, which again, I always say, hey, you know, if you think your friends would like mimosas and muffins, that's a good theme and that's super easy.

Speaker 29 2.30, again, that's a snack time. And then 6.30 after dinner.

Speaker 29 And themes are a great way that they can also not only have fun, but the other thing I say sometimes too, so let's say we're going to do chocolate and wine, we're going to do a 6:30 chocolate and wine.

Speaker 29 I will also take some of the heat off of the hostess by saying, Hey,

Speaker 29 let's have all of your guests, anyone who brings a chocolate dessert or a bottle of wine, they're going to get extra tickets for me to be entered for that prize.

Speaker 29 So, that's another way that I take the heat off of the hostess that she doesn't have to spend anything.

Speaker 1 Oh, one thing I forgot to mention: Danielle only works part-time, and guys, she lives in a really nice house.

Speaker 1 Like, what is the level that you're kind of more selling to people when you're at, when you're offering them the opportunity?

Speaker 1 I mean, obviously you want to tell them about your success, but like, what is the kind of take-home pay?

Speaker 1 And how does it affect people's lives at the level that's actually like what most people can achieve?

Speaker 29 Yep. So the biggest thing with that is that you're exactly right.
And in fact, not only is it a little bit harder and it's a little bit of a stretch, it's actually intimidating to a lot of people.

Speaker 29 There's a lot of people that

Speaker 29 think, oh, I can see how much time she's putting into this and I already have a job and this would be my second, you know, side gig type of thing. I don't have the time for that.

Speaker 29 And it's not so much about figuring out what level it works. It's more figuring out what works for them and what the money can do for them.
So for me, it's more listening to their story.

Speaker 29 It's easy for all of us to do those prejudgments and those assumptions. And I think when they say, you know, let's just give an example that someone says, oh my gosh, I really need money.

Speaker 29 We're strapped for money. And for me, I automatically may think, okay, that means she needs thousands of dollars.
We got to work this girl fast. But for her, it might not be.

Speaker 29 It might just be that she needs $200 to keep the lights on or, you know, something a little more simpler than what I'm assuming.

Speaker 29 And I like to say, if you need a thousand or less, I can get you there right away.

Speaker 29 If you're ready to party and you're willing to put a little bit of work in, whether that's five hours a week, 10 hours a week, or less, that thousand and less range is very achievable for girls, you know, women right away.

Speaker 29 Anything above that?

Speaker 29 Yes, then we're going to need to look at leadership for you and we're going to need to get on a fast track to leadership for you if that's, you know, if your numbers are a little bit higher.

Speaker 29 I've seen directors become directors in, you know, four, five, six months if they've got the time and the energy and the want and the need.

Speaker 29 But I will say one of the things that a leader above me had taught me from the beginning is that we have a bathtub with a drain open and the water is forever flowing and going out that drain.

Speaker 29 So that is where you're constantly needing. If you want to be a director above like myself,

Speaker 29 you have to be constantly bringing people in because they're going to leave. And it happens all the time.

Speaker 29 I mean, some of my best friends started off selling and they're not anymore, you know, and plenty of people come. And it's not for everyone.
That's the other thing I always say to people too.

Speaker 1 Do you ever

Speaker 1 have any hesitation signing people up? Like knowing that there is a high turnover, knowing that it is really hard to like make money?

Speaker 1 Are there people that you want to sign up and you go, I can't do this to her?

Speaker 29 When I first started out,

Speaker 29 it's such a mindset and such a mind game of getting yourself in the right place. When I first started out, you would hear so many different theories.

Speaker 29 There are some consultants who will say that they only recruit what they want to recruit, which is people that they think are going to be like them, are going to be successful.

Speaker 29 And there are some that are a little the same idea, but maybe different, that they're like, no, I'm always just looking for those girls that I know that I can help.

Speaker 29 For me,

Speaker 29 no, and when, and sometimes, is it a disappointment sometimes that you get people that, you know, you recruited and you put time and effort into them and it didn't work out and they didn't do, you know, anything that let's say, let's be honest and in the most transparent, don't mean this in an ugly way, but that it didn't do anything for me.

Speaker 29 You know, there were no sales. I made nothing, but I put a lot of time.

Speaker 29 But it all just has to equal out and average out because there's some that I know when I devote that time to, they're becoming a director, they're becoming what I need to help me move up the ladder as well.

Speaker 29 And so, it just all equals out. And that's why I just look at it as the big picture: this is what I'm spending on my time.

Speaker 29 Doesn't matter whether I spend it on this individual or that individual, you know, a certain amount of time. It's all gonna come back.

Speaker 1 Money goes pretty far around here if you know where to find it. And Danielle says she does.
She invited me to a 31 training and recruitment meeting so I could see for myself how her business works.

Speaker 1 It's not a party, but it's a training to train people how to party.

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Speaker 1 All right, it is a

Speaker 1 cold, rainy

Speaker 1 Saturday morning in May and I am headed

Speaker 1 to

Speaker 1 Calvary Baptist Church on the south side of Owasso just passing Central Elementary School which is where my little sisters go and I went there too

Speaker 1 I just heard from my stepmom that this company that Danielle works for for a while somebody in the elementary school was slipping slipping information packets about it into the kids mailboxes

Speaker 1 so when you would pick up your kids homework

Speaker 1 after school there'd be some flyers in there about selling 31 but um i guess somebody put the kibosh on that and they haven't done it in a little while oh this is This is my favorite.

Speaker 1 There's a storage place that's in the old recycling plant and it's called Outback Mini Storage. And they just stole the logo from Outback Steakhouse.

Speaker 1 Outback Mini Storage.

Speaker 1 Calvary Baptist Church, character is paramount in leadership.

Speaker 1 Character is paramount in leadership. And oh, the lot is full.

Speaker 1 hello hello

Speaker 1 look at you little New Yorker my gosh how the heck are you I'm good how good

Speaker 1 we're in a conference room in a newish kind of fancy church The kind of room that's seen a lot of bridal and baby showers with fluorescent lights overhead and long folding tables set in a rectangle like we're all supposed to be facing each other.

Speaker 1 But then too many people show up, 27 in all, and the middle of the rectangle gets crowded with chairs and babies, there were three, and a projector.

Speaker 1 Before coming to this meeting, I had heard of 31. A few other friends sell it on Facebook.
I jokingly called it the Ugly Chevron Bag Company.

Speaker 1 In my defense, one of their most popular bags is called a utility tote. It's enormous and could fit like all of your hockey equipment and all of your weekly groceries.
And it comes in a chevron print.

Speaker 1 I was ready to hate hate 31.

Speaker 1 However, the minute I sit down here, Danielle plops a stack of catalogs in front of me and they actually have some really cute soft insulated cooler things and vegan purses.

Speaker 1 And for not the first time during this experience, I start to enjoy myself, leafing through the seven flyers of new product lines.

Speaker 1 Also, I find out that you can become a distributor for $1.

Speaker 1 No product purchases necessary. Though there's a pretty hefty starter kit you can get for $99.

Speaker 1 And you only have to sell $200 of retail items every three months to stay active, whatever that means.

Speaker 1 At the risk of sounding like an MLM apologist, I do start to have some positive feelings about this particular one.

Speaker 1 There are others that require so much more financially, and no one's promising these bags will cure cancer or anything. But then here comes the Christianity again.

Speaker 1 Danielle kicks things off with a prayer, one from a 31 handbook, and I'm back to not having any fun.

Speaker 29 Thank you, Lord. I want to be that tree.
I want to move beyond thinking that I'm I'm still a seed.

Speaker 29 Take me and grow me into the woman you would have me be, unwavering, unaffected by others, seeing only your plan, flexible and willing to do the work to grow to amazing heights in my faith.

Speaker 1 Real quick, before you start filling in the blanks about my thoughts on Christianity, my family is Methodist and I had plenty of exposure growing up.

Speaker 1 But every time I go to church or think about that God, I start to panic that someone I love might end up burning in hell.

Speaker 1 And I get that the positives probably outweigh the negatives, what with the wonderful community and inner peace and going to heaven and all that, but I can't shake their need to threaten eternal damnation.

Speaker 1 I do get a genuine kick out of the Bible, though. Remind me to tell you about the physically giant demigods in Genesis.

Speaker 29 All right, let's celebrate our new people in the room. So first of all, if this is your first meeting, stand up.
We want to celebrate you. Clap, clap, clap, clap, clap.

Speaker 1 Danielle's energy on this cold Saturday morning is impressive, but I guess that's what's possible if you aren't grinding away at a 9 to 5 or a 9 to 7 seven or a nine to nine all week like the rest of us.

Speaker 1 Her assistant, Julinda, sitting directly across from me, pulls out a giant roll of raffle tickets, tears off a few feet of them, and hands them to Danielle.

Speaker 29 So everybody,

Speaker 29 we'll start with, this is May, so we'll start with April. If you had 600 or more, stay standing.

Speaker 29 If you had 800 or more, stay standing.

Speaker 1 Woo!

Speaker 1 Danielle's asking people what their retail sales were for the previous month. A handful of folks are brand new and have no income to report.

Speaker 1 But then again, neither do some of the women who've been selling 31 for quite some time. Only six of the 27 folks in attendance sold more than $600 worth of stock in April.

Speaker 1 And the most anyone sold was $1,800 for the month, which she got a 25% commission of. But that doesn't take into account expenses.

Speaker 1 So doing quick math in my head, I'm thinking, this just doesn't seem like enough money.

Speaker 1 But then I talked to Ayla Marie, a very young mom sitting to my right, who told me she averages around $300 a month in commissions when she's really focusing on 31 and not doing hair.

Speaker 29 It doesn't seem like, it didn't seem like a lot at first, but when I actually started getting it and it was paying like three to four bills and then

Speaker 29 for me, it wasn't necessarily the money that paid for us to get a house, but that was enough to prove that much more income to get a mortgage on a house.

Speaker 34 So

Speaker 34 for me, without 31, we would not be, we'd still be living in a trailer park.

Speaker 34 Like not necessarily taking that money to pay for the house, but it was being able to prove the income to get a mortgage. So that was pretty awesome.

Speaker 1 Ayla Marie owns her own home.

Speaker 1 I do not.

Speaker 1 Aside from how much people are making, I also start wondering who's buying. Remember how one of the things to look out for in an MLM is whether it's a quote closed system?

Speaker 1 As in, is most of the actual selling going on within the structure of the company itself, or are there outside customers?

Speaker 1 Turns out that there is a ton of buying going on in this circle of sellers, but it's more complicated than I would have guessed. The majority of the new women in the room started out as collectors.

Speaker 1 They love the product. And some of them, they treat these bags like beanie babies.
Apparently, the brand is very popular.

Speaker 1 One woman collected for years before finally plunking down the $99 fee for a starter kit.

Speaker 29 Sandy, you had your hand up though to share something.

Speaker 32 10 years ago at Christmas time I was introduced to the 31 bags from my mother-in-law who had a party and got some bags and gave them out for Christmas gifts.

Speaker 32 So then I started to seek out who was selling the 31s and I had several friends that sold 31.

Speaker 32 They would always tell me, you know, you can get all this stuff for $99. I'm like, no, no, no.
But I would order the stuff and spend more than $99 getting it.

Speaker 32 And then the next month I'd call them up and say, hey, I saw this was on sale.

Speaker 32 I would like to place an order. So I did.
And of course, that was, again, more than $99.

Speaker 32 So it's taken me 10 years to finally pay that $99.

Speaker 29 And could have been saving, but you're not alone. There's plenty of people who do that.
So absolutely.

Speaker 32 One of my friends at work, we had a hobby day. We were supposed to dress up for our hobby.
So I looked at her and she's a big dresser-upper. And I don't like to dress up whatsoever for work.

Speaker 32 And so she looked at me and she goes, you have a hobby and it's 31. I says, no, I don't.
I just like 31 because at that time I wasn't selling.

Speaker 32 And she's like, you're going to come into work tomorrow and you're going to have all your bags on you.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 32 So I had one of the

Speaker 32 pink 31 bags that the consultants put my stuff in at one time. I cut the bottom of it.
I put it through my legs, put it all the way up, put my name tag on the top, and I was the 31 bags.

Speaker 32 I had no shirts that said 31.

Speaker 1 And I wore that the whole day.

Speaker 32 I work at a nursing home, Pleasant View. And I had residents ask me what I was doing.
I had people look at me and say, I want the bag person over here.

Speaker 1 Do you have pictures of this?

Speaker 32 No, I shut them.

Speaker 32 I shut shut up.

Speaker 29 But I was because that is so fun.

Speaker 1 I'm doing next Halloween, right?

Speaker 1 Another part of the appeal of this line is that you can get everything monogrammed. I started wondering if Ayla Marie and Julinda were even the most creative names in the room.

Speaker 1 And having a unique name is hard in that you never get a keychain from the airport with your name on it. So maybe having your name monogrammed monogrammed on a wallet would be nice.

Speaker 1 And then I'm like, Jane, snap out of it. They don't really make Jane keychains either, and you're fine.
Usually goes right from Jamie to Janet.

Speaker 1 For the next two hours, Danielle is walking around handing out raffle tickets one by one for literally anything anyone says about anything.

Speaker 29 Does anybody have any just it's always fun just to hear life celebrations. Anyone got something cool that they want to share?

Speaker 27 My fucking daughter got married and I got two graduating in two weeks and I'm done.

Speaker 30 My two brothers and my sister and I were able to pull up a surprise 50th anniversary party for my parents.

Speaker 1 Very cool. Yeah.
Woohoo!

Speaker 1 We watched some promotional videos about new products, including this really cute little unicorn lunch bag.

Speaker 33 June and July, we're excited to be holding the summer print event. For two months, we'll be offering five exclusive new prints.

Speaker 1 Shark Party, Unicorn Dreams, barn fun sweet sparklers and happy campers then we finally get to the raffle and i'm sorry to bum you out but i was bummed out the raffle prizes were promotional materials like catalogs and key fobs i was hoping for i don't know a bag or two and oddly most of the raffle winners picked the key fobs which i'm assuming are less useful in their business pursuits than the catalogs

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Speaker 1 It's third down.

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Speaker 1 We did end the day on a high note, which was a game Danielle taught everyone to play at their own parties.

Speaker 1 You're only supposed to use one prize for this game, but Danielle, being the beast that she is, brought a surprise gift for everyone in the room and had them practice the game. Here's how it works.

Speaker 1 One volunteer reads a kind of ode to 31 out loud.

Speaker 1 And every time the words left or right come up, which is quite often this ode was written for the game, you pass your mystery package either to your left or to your right.

Speaker 1 The person holding it at the end wins, kind of like hot potato. I can't even describe to you how huge the smiles were in the room at this point.

Speaker 30 I'm a stay-at-home mom, sometimes left with lots of free time, and I have gotten the opportunity to make a few friendships. I mean, I didn't know some of you until tonight, right?

Speaker 30 So starting 31 was the right decision for me.

Speaker 30 If this sounds like fun and you would like time to play and money to play with, then ask me how you could try it right now.

Speaker 30 Now, what do you have to lose, right?

Speaker 1 In the end, everyone got a little fabric container about the size of a lunchbox and one of of the new summer fabrics.

Speaker 1 I got sure.

Speaker 1 We're getting a unicorn, a contractor. I got a corner.

Speaker 1 After we all put away chairs and tables and everyone rushed their babies home or rushed home to their babies, I sat and talked with Danielle.

Speaker 1 I wanted to know how she, as one of the chosen few who actually make real money doing this, how she gets people to join, knowing they probably won't get to where she's at.

Speaker 1 Do you feel like a a lot of the folks you're working with, the women that you're recruiting, like, I mean, when you and I were kids, it was kind of prosperous here for a bit when GM still was around and everybody had a job.

Speaker 1 And I don't know if it's felt, I'm not here, so I don't know if it's felt like it's gotten worse or better in recent years. Are there a lot of options for people right now?

Speaker 1 Or is this kind of like one of the main things you can do to ensure that you make a good living?

Speaker 29 I think in our direct Shiawase County, no, I do not think that there's been a huge improvement with job availability.

Speaker 29 I think there's been some, but I wouldn't say it's enough to really show that, you know, it's huge.

Speaker 29 But I think direct sales as a whole has just taken a huge boom in the last few years for that reason, that I think a lot of women and men, depending on the companies, have seen that it's something that they can do for themselves.

Speaker 29 And demographically, you know, there are some, I always give the example that I will go to, you know, a party and we'll say Grand Blanc or downriver Detroit and you just assume and think oh boy this is gonna be it this is gonna be the honeypot because it's this beautiful neighborhood and they're the ones that don't spend where I can go to the trailer park and they're the women the women that just got their paycheck and they live a different world than the rest of us and when they have money they they're afraid where it's gonna go so they use it so you know and I've definitely I've learned that I've even done you know there's studies on that I've actually taken classes on that so you never can prejudge first of all and it's where it does work taking classes on how people spend their money?

Speaker 29 So it's funny. It's not actually how they, it wasn't specifically a class for that.

Speaker 29 It was, it's a series of classes. So we have, believe it or not, a huge homeless.

Speaker 29 I don't want to say problem, but numbers in our community, way more so than we ever used to have. And a local community leader, basically, who is amazing, she has run a lot of classes.

Speaker 29 And her emphasis

Speaker 29 was for those of us that are business owners of any type or anyone in the community for that matter, was to make us aware of those lower demographics, not just the homeless, but those people who are, for instance, you know, in a trailer park situation or in a lower income apartments and residence and that sort of thing.

Speaker 29 how they work and how they think. And that was exactly it.
It was eye-opening. It was so huge to think about.

Speaker 29 You know, a lot of people think and assume, for instance, that like they're on welfare, but they have this huge, huge big screen TV. You know, how many of us have thought of that as an example?

Speaker 29 Why are they doing this? Well, you have to understand that they live in communities that we don't always all live in. So for them, that is their only entertainment is that big huge screen TV.

Speaker 29 And they work together. Unlike a lot of us, they know that their neighbor may be the one that has to go pick up their kids because they don't have a car.

Speaker 29 And so for them to have the TV that my neighbor picks up the kids, but hey, come over to my house. We're going to watch the big race on the big screen TV.

Speaker 29 So just kind of a small example, but learned a lot of things that was really eye-opening just as a human being in general to have a little more compassion, you know, because it's so easy to prejudge, but showed me a lot, you know, of what you can do with your business and how you're helping and how, like I said, they work.

Speaker 29 And yes, for them, their paycheck, that was one of the things that we learned right away in there is that they're used to someone taking that paycheck some way, shape, or form.

Speaker 29 And so there's no savings. for them.
They know that that's just not in their, they don't feel that's in their in their realm of capabilities.

Speaker 29 And so they that's where they get those big items and they you know they they do those things

Speaker 1 back when i was in elementary school here we had an annual event where the entire school played town we were given the freedom to choose a career set up shop and market our business however we saw fit.

Speaker 1 The ice cream stand guys didn't need any help in that area, and the counterfeit dollar printers could hardly keep up with the action. I always chose to run a salon and gave out coupons to passersby.

Speaker 1 My friend Shanna's mom had a real salon, and she let us borrow curling irons and crimpers, which my teachers, starting in second grade, let me plug in and use on other seven-year-olds.

Speaker 1 Any fear that I'd horribly maim a classmate was apparently outweighed by the fear that I'd end up a directionless hobo.

Speaker 1 We were being trained to be workers and to work hard. At worst, that meant working working hard at train hopping.
At best, working hard at running a family and a small business at the same time.

Speaker 1 Danielle probably got an A-plus in town.

Speaker 1 Next time on the dream?

Speaker 31 Toward the end of the month when things are winding down and we hadn't met our unit quota, and hey, I noticed you hadn't placed an order in a while. Do you think you could maybe put in $200 or $400?

Speaker 31 You reach out to your aunts, you reach out to your grandmother, you reach out to these people that you think are soft targets.

Speaker 36 All you know is this looks familiar to me. I've seen it in my Facebook feed, or my sister did this.
We have a lot of work to do with victims and even helping them self-identify as victims.

Speaker 36 I just don't think the accurate picture is out there.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 We appreciate you subscribing, rating, and reviewing the show wherever you listen.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Remind me to tell you about the physically giant demigods in Genesis.

Speaker 1 They're called Nephilim.

Speaker 1 And they are the children of the sons of God who are friends of God that were in heaven before the earth was created, which nobody talks about. He has all these homies up there.

Speaker 1 And they saw the women that God made on earth and thought they were super hot and told God, like, we need need to go down and get some. And he was like, sure, go ahead.
And they came unto them.

Speaker 1 They said, it says it came unto them, had babies with them. And those babies are Nephilim.
And they live to be a thousand years old, like Methuselah. And they were like 30 feet high.

Speaker 1 And they're the whole reason the flood happened.

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Speaker 10 You may have heard about growth factors as the must-have anti-aging ingredient, and that's why Medicaid is excited about their latest innovation, the Liquid Peptides Advanced MP Face Serum.

Speaker 12 This serum harnesses the power of Growth Factor Mini Protein, a cutting-edge technology that mimics natural growth factors but goes deeper, delivering visible, transformative results.

Speaker 16 Studies show immediate improvement in expression lines in just 10 minutes and a significant decrease in deep set wrinkles after eight weeks of use.

Speaker 20 The Liquid Peptides Advanced MP Face Serum not only reduces wrinkles, but also gives a filler-like effect, smoothing out your skin's appearance dramatically.

Speaker 9 Visit medicate.us.

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Speaker 1 The interface has it cataloged under AMA, Ask Me Anything. But I don't love rules.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 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.

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