SAS Sits Down With Gabriel "Fluffy" Iglesias - SAS CLASSIC

Transcript

I saw people before me who had left and go into other companies, and I think that's a really easy way people get sucked into other cults, whether it's MLM or whatever, the man must have been the reason I felt good, and so I'm going to try a different one. If I could go back, I would work really hard to look for things that actually fill those needs. Welcome back to was I in a cult? I'm Liz Ike and I am Tyler, and on this show we highlight personal stories of those who have been through cults or call tech environments and have come out on the other side straight kicking a*s. We are here recording in studio today at the gorgeous PodcastOne offices right here in Beverly Hills, California, and it is quite a nice studio. It has a pool table, an espresso machine and fresh flowers, and the smell of Ozempic is in the air. Now today's episode is quite a fun one. Yep, it's it's about a survivor of an MLM. Multilevel marketing companies are thankfully becoming recognized more and more as cult companies like Nu Skin, Young Living Rodan and Fields, Beach Body and Pampered Chef. Pampered Chef is an MLM. I had no idea. We previously had a guest on our show, Roberta Blevins, who was in an MLM called Lula Ro. You guys should listen to that because we both get a pair of sexy a*s pants. We sure do an update on my Lula Ro leggings. I took them home. My wife loves wearing them. However, they are still hideously ugly, so she only wears them in the dark and they still smell like farts. So we hear on Was I in a cult? We hate Anna Lamb's hate, hate, hate Adam. So we wanted to do something to keep people aware of how easily one can get sucked in. Without further ado, let us meet today's guest. She. So I am Emily, Alan Paulson, and I am a wife and a mom in my real life and in her fake life, she is a writer and wrote a book, a real book called Haven of Sales, Sisterhood, Supremacy and the other lies behind a multilevel marketing. And it is about my experience in MLM. There's so many things looking back that are so cringe. I think like a lot of people who leave a cults are like, I cannot believe I did or said that. And so I try and add a humorous spin on it because a lot of it is very funny to me now. In your book, you don't name the MLM. Is there a reason? The reason I really don't name it is for people sake, for the fact that I want to be as honest as possible without throwing other people under the bus other than myself, right? But all these situations are true. But the bigger reason is it doesn't matter. It could be any insert any MLM company in there. And it's the same story. I guessed it Tyler. Yeah. I can't tell you which one it is, but I guess you can say what it was, right? So I guess you can guess pretty well. Guess the first CD I owned did. Yeah, CD or mixed tape C.D. My first album was Styx Paradise Theatre. My first CD was Guns n' roses. Not bad. Actually, not bad. I wish it was Guns N Roses. I'm kind of embarrassed. It's its Genesis Can't Dance album good albums. Genesis Underrated Band The Can't Dance album is not one of their best. OK, I love this series. I love the video. It is a good video. True, it is a very good video. It's a very good video and not a bad album. Rob's in studio here. Two white men talking Dana White Man music that I don't understand. My first he was Mariah Carey Music Box. Anyway, but one of the reasons I really wanted Emily on our show is because her story is quite unique. She didn't get f**ked over per se by the MLM. She was one of the rare ones in the top one percent. Emily was what the Muslim world calls a boss, babe. She hates that word. The boss baby. What would be a the equivalent of a boss baby? If you're a man, a CEO? Oh, I grew up in Helena. Montana, went to college in California, met my husband in Portland, Oregon, and when we decided to start a family, I went back to school to get my master's in teaching, thinking, you know, teaching will be a great job for when we have kids, which anybody who is a teacher is probably rolling their eyes right now because it's a really, really hard job when you have kids or not. Oh yeah, I mean, elementary school teachers do have a tough job, but that million dollar paycheck they bring home does make the job easier. Am I right? They just really need to stop paying teachers so much and start paying politicians and athletes and CEOs, right? Once my first was born, we realized that it was not going to be sustainable for both of us to work out of the house. My husband had a very demanding job, so I stayed home and we landed in Seattle, had several more children. I was like, OK, I've been having kids now for seven, eight years. I couldn't go back to being a teacher because I couldn't afford care. I just felt trapped in my life. And so I was in this place where I kind of wanted to do something that made money and I was feeling kind of lonely. And so I had a friend from high school. Like many people who join my limbs, that's how it starts. Is like a someone in your Facebook messages, Hey, hon, I'm going to be in your area or hey, hon, you know, have you seen my products? And that's why it's always like these generic haven. Hey, girl, hey friend. Hey, sis, because it's you don't want to accidentally put someone else's name in there. You get in this robot mentality of just cut, paste, cut, pay, send, click, send, click send. It doesn't matter who you're sending it to. It's like a funny joke that it's like, Oh, I got hund or like the Huns are out. That's just like a general nickname for mom chicks. It's also very heteronormative, and it's it's women, right? Because women are targeting other women. So it's never Hey bro, hey bud. Hey buddy, Ayla's, have you ever been hund? I've been handed a couple times, actually, I just quit. I got hunt down the street. That sounds interesting. I got picked up, right? I was jogging, OK, and I got hand from a lady who came out of her house and brought out some, like Arbonne potions, literally and was like, You look thirsty. Wow, this will rejuvenate you right there on the street, right down the street. And she had like a very attractive man, bring me the potions and I was like, What's going on here? And then a girl I know well, I was friends with her husband. Growing up, she, without fail, sends me a Facebook message every two to three months, and I've never replied, Hey, how are you? How's today? You know, and like the whole, never take no for an answer. We need to teach these people about consent and the word no. Maybe they'll listen. OK, so back to Emily. She's feeling lonely and she's mom and hard, and one day she gets shunned by this old high school friend. I knew of her, but I don't think we'd ever spoken. And she's like, I'm going to be in Seattle meeting with some people from my company. Would you want to come out and have some wine? And she could have been selling anything. You know, it was like an avenue like, I can get out of the house. I could put makeup on and shoes and brush my hair, and that was really enough for me to go meet with her. All the moms listening feel what she's saying so hard. So, Emily, she dresses up. She goes to the bar to meet her old high school friend, who is sitting with some other women. And after a while of shooting the s**t, she pulls out some products the MLM products, which could be anything from skincare to leggings to chocolate shakes or leggings. That makes me want a family right now. And so when it also came with this, oh look, there's some products here that I was like, Cool, those those look good. Oh look, I could maybe make money from this. All the people there were validating all of the things that I wanted like, Oh gosh, I you know, I got divorced last year and I felt so alone, and this gave me an instant community. Or I started using these products last year. My skin looks better than ever. And I was like, Oh, this is someone from my hometown who I trust, who wouldn't lead me astray, right? Wrong. Like most cults with MLMs, you often get recruited in by your close friends or people you trust. That's what makes it so tricky. It gets tricky. You're trying to run to you, run to run this. Like, you know, it's tricky. Tricky. That's Run DMC over referencing it so we can now play it on the bad guys. They're useless. I. Was the perfect target of wanting all of those things that an MLM seemingly fixed, and so I joined that evening, you know, put the thousand dollar purchase on my credit card to sign up. The first I was like, I'm not going to tell anybody about this and I'm going to tell my husband about this. Like, I still felt cringe about it and I got a text from my mom like, what did you sign up for? Because my up line had posted about me on social media and I'm like, Oh, OK, well, I guess it's out there. Up line is the term for people above you in the MLM or the people who live up a line. No, I don't have a job. You know, somebody give me an up line joke. Please write in with an outline joke. And I did initially have people are like, Oh, what is that company? And so people were intrigued. I was like, OK, well, here's some info. I don't really know a ton about it yet. And my best friend, she was trying to get out of this marriage and, you know, she was like in between jobs and she's like, Cool, this could be something for me. So she joined me really quick. So I had that very initial dopamine rush of, Oh my gosh, this is working, and I just kind of ran with it like, wow, what she said was true. You know, I joined at, I believed, and it's all working out for me because the one reason I was able to be successful at first was there weren't a lot of people in my area selling this particular product. So I was like a very quick success story and I got all these like bonuses. Like, I was getting gifts from my opinon. There were these trips that I could qualify for, and so I got very addicted, very quickly to that success. And I was like, Wow, now I can actually make some money a year, and I was making like three or four thousand dollars a month, which is pretty damn good for like a stay at home mom. OK, so let's back up what is an MLM and what makes it different from a real company? Multi-level the smell of the MLM that makes all the difference. There are MLM companies who will sing and dance around the fact that they're MLMs over a direct sales company where a network marketing company or a social commerce or like a direct to debt company. Nice. But if you are incentivized to recruit other human beings, or if you buy a product from a company and you're buying from a person in that company who has joined another person who has joined another person, if you sign up as a distributor or a wholesale customer or whatever, like, it's the multi-level aspect of it that there's someone financially benefiting from you and the difference from a just a normal sales job. And it doesn't matter if you have a million managers employees under you, they're actually getting a salary. They're getting an actual payment for their time. A multilevel marketing independent contractor gets nothing. You are not only not getting paid, you pay, you pay to join and then ninety nine point seven percent of the time. You will never make a dime. And you do a lot of labor. I mean, I could list a million reasons why it's different, but the multi-level aspect of it is what makes it different. According to a report by the Consumer Awareness Institute and written by John M. Taylor, less than one percent of MLM participants actually make money, but small business is a gamble, right? Well, that's true. But according to that same study, 39 percent of small businesses are profitable over the entire life of the business. That's significantly better than one percent. That's like the chances of getting a gold medal or the Nobel Peace Prize or hitting the bull's eye blindfolded. Yet bored moms all over the world are like, Give me that dirt. I can do that. Yeah, we joke around. But sadly, most of the people who sign up for an MLM have no idea the low success rate. And not only that, the recruiters are feeding them the exact opposite rhetoric. Inflated stories in social media posts about boats and second homes and mom caves filled with champagne and Godiva chocolate and beds for uninterrupted naps. MLM in your knowledge. How prevalent are they? So in America, the MLM industry is almost a 200 billion billion with a B dollar industry. It's huge. It's bigger than Hollywood Pro sports. That's nearly as much as our podcast makes. Just add two more zeros and then you got our our podcast. There's over 200 multi-level marketing companies that you could just Google and find on any given day. And of those two billion, two hundred billion to hunt 200 s**t. I can't even do any math today who's actually making the money, the companies, the companies are making the money. It's an interesting side note. It's like MLM reps love to malign corporate America like ditch your nine to five. Corporate America sucks. Join my MLM, make your own hours. Every MLM is a corporation, so you know you've got these corporations, so they're making their money. The CEOs, the employees of this company, make the money and then the very, very few independent contractor reps who are at the top of the pyramid. You know, less than a tenth of a percent of people make a livable wage. Any company that has an income disclosure, you can go Google it, you can look at it, and it is abysmal how much money people actually make. The only people making money are the very few people at the top. As we've mentioned, it's not really about selling the products, it's more about recruiting people into your downline, which basically means annoying the s**t out of your friends and family. So really, my recruiting was just friends, my closest friends, and they knew, liked and trusted me. They all had their own reasons like I'm bored to. I want some products to it, like checked boxes for them too. The first thing that you have to learn is how to squash other people's objections. A lot of like the training and language look at messages that MLM hands have sent you. They're like, Hey, I thought of you when I joined this committee, the first person who came to my mind, of course, you weren't the first person that came to my mind. I had a list of a thousand people because I was told to make a list of a thousand people, and I'm sending this message to everybody. I don't know if this is for you, but I'd love to just talk to you. So like your goal is to just get someone on the phone, which is the exact same when it comes to cult recruitment. And then you get someone else in the company on the phone with them. They'll do the selling and then it's like this validation from someone, quote unquote more successful. And then meanwhile, I've told my up line all the objections they're going to have, right? Like she works out of the house and she doesn't think she's going to have time for this. And so then my apply and I'll do all this dancing around like, Oh, this is a great option to exit your nine to five and spend more time with your kids. And it's all just designed to hit pain points for people, whether it's the products, the financial, the the community piece. And then when I recruit people, my down line will then bring these calls to me and I'll talk through other people's objections. And it's a lot easier to take the emotion out of it when it's a complete stranger. So it's just this system that's it's really cringe. It's called the three way call, which again is it's all like stupid innuendo. Yeah, you would think they could come up with a better term for three people on a phone. Yeah, it's super awkward. If you're talking to like the PTA leader at your kid's school and you want to get the principal on the phone and you have to say, Well, we could do a three way, although you could be saying what everyone's thinking anyways, would you like to have a three way with me battle? That'll. Do you know how many times I've been approached for a threesome? It's too much to count. No, please count. We've got all day. You know, they used to call me threesome me some back in the day. They never called me that. Should we move on? Yes. And the recruitment process with MLMs is intense. So I'm going to squash any objection you have, no matter how critically thinking it is. It's all about making you feel like you need this and what you're doing in your life and your situation isn't good enough. Hey, put this purchase on your credit card. Don't worry, you'll have the money to pay for it later. Or don't worry, there's a refund policy. True, there is a refund policy. But by the time you join, your likelihood of canceling is going to be so much lower because you're going to have all these MLM checks on your ass, telling you not to quit and telling you that you'll make it. And if you just believe in yourself and they saw that I was quickly successful, so I was very honest and I really believed, okay, I joined it. I'm already making this much money or I've already earned this trip. What was your first trip? My first trip was actually a retreat. Like, I earned this retreat. You pay your own airfare, you pay your own everything. And it was a retreat in the mountains in this cabin. Like, Wow, I earned this trip. And then you post pictures of it and it's like, we're all lined up in matching outfits, and that's the sisterhood and this escape. They were busy as hell. We're all having these power hour sessions morning to night. You were doing business activities or having sessions on personal development and all this stuff to make you a better boss, babe. Like all cults, they want to keep you as busy as possible, so no critical fact can spend. OK. Reality show ideal is you take me and you put me in the middle of this MLM cabin retreat and you see how long it takes for me to become an axe murderer. OK, that series would not go the full season. No, it would be like the shining on fast forward, I'd be full on Jack Torrance before the first commercial. Break your hands. Okay. And here's Tyler. I'm not going to hurt you, Wendy. Just going up line the s**t out of you all work and no play makes Jack a boss, babe. But these boss vapor treats are a way to further indoctrinate and bring together the like mindedness of the group. We're all fighting the same thing. We all feel very lonely. We're all maybe fighting with our spouses. We all feel burdened by motherhood or whatever. And I think there's the systemic part of it that moms really exploit because the whole country is held on the backs of women's unpaid labor. That's the reality. There's a lot of trauma bonding that goes on in these things. You talk about very vulnerable things. You know, I would leave those knowing very personal things about people that maybe I should have known about complete strangers. And that trauma bonding makes it harder to leave later because you're like s**t. These people know everything about me, right? But it's not really solving anything. You're leaving for a weekend and you're coming back to all the same stuff. And now you've spent a whole s**t ton of money and you're probably making the problems worse. Right? I went on at least a dozen trips or retreats incentive trips. I earned dozens and dozens of like iPads, purses, Louis Vuitton luggage, you know, diamond encrusted necklaces. What makes you get that gift? You have to get to a certain either sales number, recruit a certain number of people, host an event, have a Facebook party and you have to recruit three people. It was always all these weird things. So you were just kept so busy and confused. One day an iPad just landed at my door because I had apparently fulfilled the requirements that I didn't even know I was fulfilling. You get your ten ninety nine statement at the end of the year and I was like, Holy s**t, I didn't make this much like my paychecks didn't show this much. And then I see the line items. Oh, the thousand dollar iPad is on there. Oh, the $500 products I won are on there. That's all listed as income. So my income now that I have to pay taxes on is like $10000 more. So all of these things are given to you as income products are great. But like, I can't pay my phone bill with an iPad. Did you find that your personality was shifting from what it was into something new? It happened slowly at first, and then very dramatically where I became the MLM. And that's very addictive and a lot of ways. And I was pushing away friends and family like my brother, who was like, You are in a Ponzi scheme. And it did affect our relationship because that's what you're told. You're told to block out the people who don't support you and you're coached on how to ignore opinions outside of yourself. So when you're not allowing yourself to get any feedback on those things, that's very detrimental. But it's not a cult, right, guys. Right? What was your husband's feelings about what you were involved in? So at first, he was very much like, Oh God, don't be one of those people, you know? And I told him, like, I'll make my money back in a couple of months, and if I don't, I'll return the stupid kid. And he saw. It was like making me happy on paper, like I was getting out more and I was feeling more accomplished and it was giving me something to do. So he was like, That's cool. And yet there were periods of time where he would question things like when I earned the car. There's a lot of air quotes here because the car is not free where he's like, You know, this isn't free, right? He try to like, just be very realistic about it. So I'd be like, Oh, he just doesn't get it. It's fine. Why do you look so tired, Tyler? Because I'm tired, I'm tired of shopping and cooking and cleaning and then shopping and cooking and cleaning. Sound like a 50s housewife. Get over yourself, man. All right. Don't get me wrong. I love to cook. But honestly, you would just rather someone cook for you. You're trying to sell me on something, aren't you, Liz? Yep, factor. They're delicious. Ready to eat meals? Just made your life a whole lot easier. Oh, now it's my turn. Factor has chef crafted meals delivered right to your door with dietary options like keto calorie, smart vegan veggie, literally over 35 different variations. So even my L.A. friends can find something for them, and there's no prep. Just two minutes. You have restaurant quality meals, just heat and eat. Plus they have smoothies and snacks too. We love snacks, snacks and factor is less expensive than takeout, you guys. So kind of makes it a no brainer. Get as much or as little as you need by choosing six to 18 meals per week. Plus, you can pause or reschedule your deliveries any time you guys upscale meals with no prep and no mess. So, Tyler, you can put your cleaning skills to use in other places like my house. You know, I think I'm just going to catch up on my sleep. It's probably a better idea. Had two factor meals.com/ was i five zero and use code was I five zero to get 50 percent off. That's code was I five zero at factor meals.com/ was I five zero to get 50 percent off. Sometime in the early 80s, Aria's Speedwagon airplane made an unannounced middle of the night landing. This is my friend Kyle McLaughlin, the star of Twin Peaks, and he's telling me about how he discovered a real life Twin Peaks in rural North Carolina, not far from where he filmed Blue Velvet. What was on the plane was copious amounts of drugs coming in from South America. Supposedly, Pablo Escobar went looking for other spots quiet out of the way places to bring in his cocaine. My name is Joshua Davis and I'm an investigative reporter. Kyle and I talk all the time about the strange things we come across, but nothing was quite as strange as what we found in Varnum Town, North Carolina. There's crooked cops, brother against brother. Everyone's got a story to tell, but does the truth even exist? Welcome to Varnum Town. Varnum Town is available wherever you listen to podcasts. OK, let's if you could start your own MLM, what would it be? I think my MLM would target the realists of the world, you know, for those who have given up smart names like old skin or couch body or forever dying. What about you, Tyler? I mean, mine would probably be like Tupperware, but with lids that never seal and tons of BPA plastic. So Tupperware. Yeah, but maybe different colors in the name would be safety. Last organization. First safety last. And how many days a week were you working and what did it involve? At first I was working a lot. I was just always on my phone and I have to make these calls in the car. I'm doing all these three way calls in the car. I had to have a certain number of reach outs every day. I had to do power hour zoom calls. Two hours I was working became a lot. So like, here is my life where I want to spend more quality time with my kids and also earn an income and I'm spending less time with them. I missed several first days of school because I had to go to these conventions. And you know, I can look back on so many first days that, like grandparents were taking pictures of or whatever that I wasn't present. When you do these conventions. You are a leader, right? The first one I went to, I had only been in for a few months and it was like, Hey, there's this trip, you can go on. And I was like, Trip cool. Me and my best friend went, like, we had a great time. You get there and it's like all these sessions, like there's musicians and it's like you dress up and it's very electrifying. Feels very important. Reality show idea. Last year we got to take Liz and you put her in this convention and watch as I slowly turn into Tyler. Stupid. I get short, curly blonde hair and abundance of useless facts and knowledge of every REO Speedwagon album that ever created kind of spot on. You know, there's all these speakers and they're all talking about the benefit of this company and how life-changing it is. And there's some product unveiling. And oh, by the way, the people who didn't show up at convention don't care to get it. So you feel like you have to buy it. Every consultant buys it. Their closets are full of leggings, their cabinets are full of skin care. They're whatever. Their showers are full of shampoo. That's how the company makes money. And that's why it's like, Oh, look, we're a billion dollar brand. All you've done is created a new thing that your consultants have to buy. And then you see the people on stage, the million dollar earners, and you're like, next year I'm going to be walking across the stage. And so that very much was motivating to me the same feeling. The first time Tyler saw Richard Simmons on TV, I was like, I'm going to be that guy. I'm going to have that party. When my second convention, I was in little over two years at this point. I earned whatever milestone it took to get a walk across the stage. You know, I felt like, Oh, I had achieved something. And so it kept me even more sucked in. And then it was like, Oh, here I am walking on stage again, and there's all these people again out there. It's all of us are like the same people walking across the stage. And it's now this pool of people who aren't like, I'm still a leader. Why aren't more people leveling up? It must be something they're doing because you're told it's all your personal work. Hey, it must be that it's not me, it's not the system. Follow the system and you will to succeed. But if you don't, it's your fault and it's your fault. You're not Richard Simmons today, Tyler, because you didn't do the work, and it's always my fault. And here's another depressing stat for you. According to the same study from the Consumer Awareness Institute, yet this guy's less than one in 25000 new recruits will ever achieve the substantial quote residual income touted at opportunity meetings. Wow. Less than one in 25000 wow. And those who do make a profit are usually those who joined very early in the company when the market had not been saturated is later. Recruits are being sold a ticket for a flight that has already left the ground. Shares of some of the dogma with us. Yeah, it's all very much like stuff you'd see on a poster like in your dentist's office. Like, no change happens in your comfort zone in an MLM that's manipulated because you're going to be uncomfortable all the time because you're doing things that are s**tty, like you're you're cold messaging people, you're selling people a dream that doesn't exist, that's not stepping out of your comfort zone. The worst is like, never take no for an answer. That's the worst one, because first of all, let me know if someone says no like respect that they say no. But you are told if someone says no, it means not right now. And so I need to keep following up or I need to educate them because what sane person wouldn't want to do what I'm doing? Look how wonderful this company is. And so there's a lot of loaded language around when people give you reasonable objections, like, Oh, is this a pyramid scheme? The answer is pyramid schemes are illegal. That's not an answer. So is robbing a bank. People still rob banks like explained to me why it's not a pyramid scheme. And guess what? They can't because it it's it's a pyramid scheme with products. Actually, a pyramid scheme would be a better financial bet. According to the study from the Consumer A. Awareness Institute MLMs are, quote, worse than classic no product pyramid schemes for which the loss rate is only about 90 percent, that I break it down, guys, you have a 10 percent chance of making money in a pyramid scheme. In an MLM, it's less than one percent. Yeah. So if MLMs are in fact pyramid schemes, they're so bad that they make Bernie Madoff look good and she's right. Emma Lamb's aren't pyramid schemes. They're actually cults. How you got paid. I got like a $200 bonus for every person who joined, even though on the actual products you'd make like $20, $30, it wasn't that much. So then the way you make money over time is, I grew a network. All these people who join you have a minimum product purchase. I think we had to buy 100 dollars worth of our own products. So all of these consultants, all these recruits are buying their own products. Their recruits are buying their own products. That's where the money comes from. The money is trickling up to me. 80 percent of my paycheck came from people who I didn't know came from the bottom. I joined at the right time. I joined pretty early. I joined when nobody knew about it and I escalated very quickly. That didn't happen for anybody else who joined me. My whole pyramid, like I was the only one who succeeded. And over the course of the seven years, there were probably I couldn't even tell you, probably 3000 people who were in my domain. I was making just under $10000 a month. It's not like I was banking all of this cash. I was spending 2000 and thousands of dollars a month. When you look at the economics of it, people are not making that much money. So much of it is going back into purchasing products, incentive trips, paying your own team, buying gifts. You really start to realize how much money goes back into the system. You know, I've been in articles where they're like, Woman becomes a millionaire in an MLM. It's not like I had a million dollars sitting in the bank. You know, that million dollars was over seven years. If you divide that up and then also look at the fact that expenses aren't taken out, taxes aren't taken out because basically a regular job. So even me at the top of the top top, it's like I was working my a*s off for what I could have gotten a regular job for. Couch Body is going to be so different, you guys. To be in my MLM, I have to do is sit on your a*s eating our signature couch chips and then get like 10 other people to do that. Yeah. And then they get 10 people and then they get 10 people, no trips, no gifts. Just get a bunch of despondent a*****es who have given up to eat chips on a couch. And then you'll just make hundreds of bitcoin by selling chips. A good idea. There's lots of chips out there. Potato chips, corn chips, poker chips. We're on to something here. Liz Hurley chips straight couch potato chips that MLM would kind of crush. Guys, write us if you would buy our couch chips. Honestly, let us know, and perhaps we will start to sell. Wasn't it called couch body chips? Yeah. So chip in everyone. So now back to Emily. And what was interesting about the timeline of me, like succeeding was my personal life was falling like into abject failure, like I was drinking a lot. I had gotten in trouble with the law. I got a DUI. I got a DUI. The night I earned my car. The irony. I got a breathalyzer in my my fancy white car and it got towed away right in front of me as I was sitting handcuffed in the back of a police car. That was like basically what led to me getting sober. And then it was the next year at conventioneers. I was very newly sober and the company was like, Wow, congrats Emily. We'd love to hear your inspirational tale. I was like, That's so cool that they want me to talk to people. Realizing all I was was doing was giving another signal boost to this mom. I really believed everything I was saying. It was like enjoying this company, and you too can achieve your dreams, right? And yet at the same time, I couldn't ignore the fact that people beneath me were achieving the same thing. I hit like the top level of the company and the highest paycheck I ever had, and realizing it was because so many other people were losing money. What I was doing was selling the stream, and now I realized it didn't exist. That's where the wheels started to fall off. So I was in the MLM almost seven years, and about halfway through that point is when I got sober after I got sober. I grew a sober community. I had a sponsor, I had a therapist. I had all these other things that were telling me, Hey, baby, what you're doing isn't as on the up and up as you think and realizing that I very much had been a victim of coercive control like everybody who's in a cult. And once I allowed just a very small sliver of like, what if I'm not right? Then it allowed me to understand that I had completely siloed myself. And then as I started doing my 12 steps and all these amends, I had to make about things I had done in the MLM, things I had said and realizing that I could not believe the bulls**t I had been saying for all those years, and I couldn't keep repeating it. I really don't like this. I don't want to do this anymore. And so I changed my own behavior, right, I didn't reach out to people anymore, I didn't say any of the platitudinous buzzwords anymore. I didn't think at that point I would leave. I just thought I would start doing something else. So I started seeing more and more things that I didn't like and realized I had to be more honest with my team, my customers, letting them know, like, Hey, I'm not going to really be selling this anymore. This is how I feel about it now. And again, like making those amends to the people who I recruited, you know, like if I had to start over now, I wouldn't have ever sold this to you. I went silent for a very long time and was like, just getting a paycheck. And I thought, Well, I'll just stay till it goes away, and that's fine. And I still had this kind of belief like company still fine. But by the time the convention came around, I was very much like, f**k this, I never want to do this again. I hate this company. No amount of money is good enough for this. This is a pyramid scheme. And that's what I sent in a termination form. And I got an email back that was like, Sorry to see you go. It was like all of those accolades. All those. Everything. Me being like this princess queen, like at the top was gone. Gone. I knew the second I left that people who I had maybe considered friends wouldn't be anymore. I'd also seen other people leave and see them get blacklisted. So I just knew what I was going to expect. These are my friends. These are the people who posted ad nauseum my recovery story and are like, Look at this amazing person who's involved in this company. As soon as I left, they were like, f**k her, right, like she's dead to us. If it smells like a call, it looks like a cult acts like a cult. It's probably an MLM. I think that's another reason people stay is. Well, now I've isolated myself in this cult where I've already pushed away all my and real life friends and family. And these are my friends and I know they won't talk to me when I leave, so I have to stay even if I'm losing money. I'm sure people looked at you like, Are you crazy? You make so much money doing nothing. This is the dream. At what cost, though, my own integrity. I knew too much at that point. And there are people who are in who want to leave, who cannot, and I understand that or are afraid to leave their community, right? So I never want to be like, Oh, if you don't like it, leave. It's not. It's just not that simple. Otherwise, I would have left years ago, too, because it just isn't that black and white. When did you learn about cults and combining them with them? And why did that happen? So when I was first looking to get sober, I wanted to listen to stories of MLMs and make myself feel better, like make myself feel like I'm not in the wrong. I'm the one doing it right and listen to the Dream podcast. And no matter how different some of those people were from me, there was so much similar coercion and behavioral control, information control, thought control, emotional control. And I found a way where I had been coerced and every single one of those categories. And I read Ponzi dynamics and I kept indoctrinating myself in the things I wasn't allowed to read before YouTube channels. I was, you know, forbidden from washing before, and thankfully, Emily had multiple talents up her sleeve. Getting sober made me realize how much I loved writing. Once I started researching and listened to other people's stories, I'm like, People have to know like how culty this is and made me feel like I had something to say and wanted to put it out there. When I was working with my editor, she said to me, like, you're a white woman and talking about how white people benefit from Muslims and how they're not equitable and like this is something needs to be talked about. I'll be honest, I am not qualified to talk about this stuff. But there's a reason why when you look at the line up of the leaders in an MLM, you look at a leadership retreat or a convention or whatever. They're all white chicks. The people at the top are all white men, right? CEO the the leadership, like it's pretty much all dudes and the people working are all unpaid contract workers that are women. And the way that is sold is like, Oh, the founders wanted to make more women millionaires. Now it was a way for them to get in households everywhere and make as much money for themselves. So moms are very intrinsically misogynistic, very much rooted in racism and implicit biases. Emblems and the recruiting practices are so systemically racist that people considered it like low socioeconomic status are actually protected from being recruited. Muslims exploit that idea that anyone can do this, and if you don't, it is your fault. So it just perpetuates that. White people are the ones at the top. And then at the same time, what you see in the marketing materials is like, Oh, this looks like a very diverse company, because the models there's Asian and there's a Latina and a black woman, but there's not actually those people in the company. It's very smoke and mirrors. And Tyler can probably speak to this more as an ex Mormon. But why are Mormons so obsessed with him? Oh, for sure. I mean, Utah is the birthplace for most MLMs cults. Love cults, I guess cults of cults, and it's the prosperity gospel. There's a lot of marriage in there. Of the more money you make, the closer you are to God specifically and in the Mormon church. Oh yes, something I actually know about. I can attest MLMs are everywhere in my former state of Utah in Utah. You either work for an MLM or you sell for an MLM or you are cooking on some bulls**t MLM frying pan. You know, you go into someone's bathroom in Provo. It's like walking into an MLM showroom. There's nothing but lotions and potions and pills. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, multi-level marketing drove nearly $2.7 billion in Utah in 2020. That's billion with a B.. Tyler that's almost as much as our podcast makes. Also, remember that Mormon missionaries who live in Utah, they're sent all over the world and their training translates nicely into direct sales. If you can sell Joseph Smith as a prophet in Sweden. You can sell skincare anywhere. Also, let's not forget that Mormon women usually have their children early and often, and then they're left in their late 30s and 40s with not much to do its lotions, potions and pills to their friends and then church groups. Because not just Mormon churches where people are exploited for millions, it's because they're their own closed environments. And so if you are doing something in a closed environment where you're already worshiping the same thing, we believe the same thing, I would never lead you astray. Right? Why do you think people have such a hard time still correlating MLM to cult? Because you see the pictures on social media where they have their fancy designer bags and they're going on trips? And how could that be bad? Anything for anybody listening that may be an animal. So if you're in an MLM and you're listening to this episode, please don't give it a one star review based on my speaking. Instead, give it one star because of Liz's annoying voice or Tyler's stupid facts that you all fast forward through. They love my facts like this one. Did you know that Elvis has sold over one billion records worldwide, one billion with a B list? He's had over 150 different opinions. This cut him off from certified gold, platinum and multiple stop. Just leave enough of an open mind that maybe it's things you believe the company you're in is not 100 percent right. Just allow yourself that critical information. Maybe listen to the stories of people who have very real experiences, who have been burned, who haven't succeeded and understand that it isn't their fault. Even if you've been told that that whether or not you decide to participate or stay involved, the system is rigged and survives because so many people fail just the way it is. Yeah, it's just the way it is. You know, I look in the past, but I don't stare. If I could go back, I would work really hard to remedy that. Why am I isolated? Why am I feeling like I need a drink? Why am I feeling like I need to join this company, right? And I would look for things that actually fill those needs. Like maybe asking for more support, asking for whatever I actually needed, you know, getting like a meetup group or something like organizing something that was actually helpful because drinking didn't help me, obviously. But you know, I want to go back and like, give myself a hug for thinking I needed all these other things. So today, what's your life like? How are you a boss, babe today? Oh my god, I hate that word. Hate that word. It's so lovely to be able to work when I want to really work, when I want to put down my phone and just being available to my kids, really available to my kids. God, my life is so much quieter and it is so nice. And since we've chatted, Emily has had some notable achievements. Her book, again titled Haven Sales, Sisterhood, Supremacy and Other Lies Behind Multi-level Marketing, was part of NPR's Books of the Year for 2023. Incredible acknowledgment, Emily. Congratulations. Yes, the book is also currently being shot as a scripted and unscripted series, so all of our ten fingers crossed. She's also the founder of the Sober Moms Squad, and per the website, it is just as it sounds, a squad of moms who are already sober, those who are just dipping their toes in exploring an alcohol free lifestyle and everything in between. We share. We connect. We talk about the hardship we create community and the lonely pockets of motherhood. And they sell sober drinks. And all you have to do is get 10 sober moms to buy 10 drinks and then they get some drinks and sober friends to sign up. Then they buy our chips now and now they actually they that they don't do that, but it does sound like a great community. So for any sober moms listening? Check it out. Emily has also given two TED talks and has been featured in many major publications. Links to her book and everything else will be in our show notes, so keep kicking a*s and taking names. Emily. And if you could just give me those names, I'd like to recruit them into my MLM called old skin. It's a company that sells face products to ensure you age appropriately. I mean, I look 40 when you can look 50. That's my that's my slogan. With that, we will leave you with one more quote from the study referenced by John M. Taylor as a business model, MLM is likely the most successful con game of all time. The very people who are out recruiting are themselves victims until they run out of money and quit. And because victims seldom file complaints, law enforcement rarely hacks. It's a vicious cycle. No complaints, no law enforcement action, no law enforcement action, no complaints. So the game goes on. So keep spreading awareness. That's what we do. If you or anyone you know has a story they want to share on our show. Email us at info at Was I in a cult? And thank you to all of you who have told your friends and continue to tell your friends and spread the good word we owe you are MLM cars we never got. Also follow us on Instagram at Was I in a cult? And support us on Patreon for some extra bonus. Yum Yum ! We'll be back next week with another boss, babe, Sara Tasnim. After that meeting, my dad basically told me that I was going to get married to that guy and I was going to be married to him that night. Everything kind of just moved in fast motion. After that, my aunt gave me a dress to wear. It was this green velvet dress. I remember putting makeup on, and then I was like, But wait, where am I going to sleep tonight? And nobody, nobody said anything. That's when it kind of hit me that something really bad was going to happen. Wasn't a Cult is written, produced and hosted by the top Hon Tyler Mazembe and the boss babe and my down line. There's a cozy sound edit and designed by the pyramid schemer Rob Parra. Couch, not. She.