Is that MLM a self help cult?
Multi-level marketing companies (MLMs, aka “direct sales,” aka pyramid schemes) are hard to miss. If you’re on social media—and especially if you’re a woman—you’ve likely seen friends, family, and distant acquaintances selling everything from lipstick to leggings. Maybe you’ve been invited to a “party” hosted by a friend who’s agreed to let someone bring in a selection of jewellery, handbags, or sex toys along with a bunch of games and prizes. Somewhere along the way, you were probably told that you, too, could become a business owner and rake in limitless cash.
As Jane Marie details in her book, Selling the Dream: The Billion-Dollar Industry Bankrupting Americans, MLMs have been around for a quite a while, and despite the illegality of pyramid schemes, they continue to thrive.
You might think you’re well out of the way of the world of MLMs, but I bet if you reflect on it, you’ll realize that MLMs are all around you. I wouldn’t think of myself as being in the demographic likely to be surrounded by MLMs. However, I once had a co-worker who was once so high up in the Mary Kay Cosmetics pyramid, she had one of their signature pink Cadillacs. I’ve been to “parties” where skin care, lingerie, and sex toys were sold. I’ve had cousins, hairdressers, and even academic colleagues involved in the so-called “direct sales” world.
As someone intrigued by the world of scams, I gobbled up Marie’s podcast, The Dream, and have eagerly tuned in to recent documentaries like LuLaRich (all about the problem-plagued LuLaRoe leggings empire).
Long before the recent spate of media about MLMs and their cult-like, evangelical leanings, I had a taste of the weirdness of MLMs in the form of an Amway motivational cassette tape (known within Amway as “The Tools”) that I found in the console of a then-boyfriend’s parents’ truck. Even a short listen showcased the bizarre overlap of flimsy positive psychology (believe and it will happen!), capitalism (it’s your right to get rich!), and God (specifically Mormonism in the case of Amway).
As I made my through Marie’s book last month, it dawned on me that my interest in MLMs makes sense given my obsession with self help:
Some purported self help organizations (which may or may not be sex trafficking cults, e.g. NXIVM) are also pyramid schemes.
MLMs use the language of self help to convince people to join the organization, to “motivate” them (as they almost inevitably fail to make money), and to blame them when they don’t get results.
MLM recruits pass on this discourse to their customers and potential downline recruits.
MLMs make additional money by getting their recruits to purchase self help materials, perhaps most famously Amway’s “tools” but also motivational videos, conferences, coaches, cruises, and more.
In many of the scammy self help organizations (NXIVM, Twin Flame Universe, One Taste), participants move up the organization and gain more power and access to income by bringing in new members, selling courses and programs, and building their own mini-empires within the larger organization.
It’s truly a snake-eating-it’s-own-tail situation: you’re selling self improvement by using the tools of self improvement which convince people that they need more self improvement.
Arguably, MLMs would not operate they way the do, or perhaps even exist, without self help discourse around to play a key supporting role. Long before we had #girlboss #sidehustle #mompreneur, MLMs such as Avon and Tupperware pitched fulfillment, self-actualization, and the power of a positive mental attitude.
As Marie notes in her book, much of the content provided to recruits by MLM organizations is just self help word salad, often given in lieu of any concrete information on how to make money, how compensation works, and what to do if you’re struggling (because of course if they told you that, the jig would be up).
Once all this seductive self help has hooked you into an MLM, you need to turn that discourse around and use it in your own sales pitch. As we know, the actual products (if there even are any) in MLMs are secondary. The point is not really to sell leggings, or night cream, or dildos (essential as all of these things are!). The point is to recruit people to “sell” these things under you: to form your downline, from whom you get a share of their “profits.” I put “sell” and “profits” in quotation marks, because it’s estimated that the vast majority of sales of products are to other people within the MLM, not to an outside consumer.
Sure, MLMers are going to tell you how great the product is. But what they really want you to know is how great the lifestyle is, how happy they are, how their dreams are coming true. They need to convince potential recruits that they, too, are capable of achieving some kind of greatness through “owning their own business” and all it takes is hard work, manifestation, and self-belief.
If the actual products sold by an MLM are an afterthought, and there’s little “direct” consumer uptake, MLMs have to find creative ways to keep the money flowing upstream (or upline, as it were). Peddling all kinds of self help and self help adjacent materials and activities is one way to do this. Twin Flames Universe, for instance, made long-time members into coaches, who sold their services to newer members (with a kickback going upline to the founders, of course).
Now that no one is going to shell out for a cassette or VCR videotape, MLMs sell “experiences” like cruises and conferences that offer little more than hype to those who attend (paid for from their own pockets, by the way). Attendees expecting actual business advice or clarity on the business will be disappointed, but maybe a celebrity will show up and talk for five minutes about persevering to achieve your dreams.
MLMs showcase one of the dark sides of self help, which is that it can be used to manipulate people in all kinds of ways. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with “believing in yourself.” The problem is when ideas like this are wielded as weapons to blame individuals for what, in the case of pyramid schemes, is an inherent flaw in the system (i.e., that it’s mathematically impossible for most people to make any money in the scheme). So it becomes “you’re not hustling hard enough, you have negative thoughts, you don’t believe in the power of whatever enough, etc.” Rather than the truth, which is that no amount of self worth can overcome the fact that you’ll run out of people on Earth to recruit after something like the 13th level down on the pyramid.
On a recent episode of her CultureStudy podcast,
had Jane Marie on to discuss the topic, Is Personal Coaching a Scam? As a coach myself, I obviously had to listen in! I won’t say too much about the episode overall, but at one point Petersen asks whether coaching is an MLM. In other words, do coaches make money by converting other people to become coaches? In organizations like NXIVM and TFU, maybe (mostly you want people to buy more courses). But luckily those situations aren’t the norm. I understand the impulse to ask the question though, because MLMs are very wound up with the world of self help, of which coaching could be considered a part.There’s an uncomfortable of overlap in the Venn diagram of self help, cults, and MLMs. Sometimes I shudder to think of my own proximity to this mess, both in terms of my coaching work and my interest in self help. I can confidently claim, however, that as May 2024 at least, I’ve never recruited anyone, or been recruited into, a cult/MLM. Fingers crossed!
What I’m reading: Right before I read The Dream, I read The Hunter, by Tana French, the second in her Cal Hooper series. A bit slow at times, but always a memorable cast of well-developed, unique characters.
What I’m watching: I’m part of the way through High Country, an Australian show about a series of mysterious disappearances in the, you guessed it, high country. I don’t think I knew there were mountains in Australia? Shame on me. Also, this is the first TV show I’ve ever seen with a land acknowledgement at the start.
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