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Speaker 1: Heart Media, or their employees. And then, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: from not having anybody to talk to you besides my daughter,
Speaker 1: now I've got a huge group of people who, on
Speaker 1: the outside all appear to want me to be successful.
Speaker 1: They're celebrating my ups, They're like console me in my downs.
Speaker 1: I'm feeling like there really is an amazing community of
Speaker 1: people who knew that leggings could teach us about narcissism
Speaker 1: and toxic relationships. For those of you who haven't heard
Speaker 1: of it, lu La Row was a constant on many
Speaker 1: people's social media feeds, people feverishly trying to sell the
Speaker 1: buttery soft patterned leggings which were being featured on social
Speaker 1: media and at parties. According to media reports, lu La
Speaker 1: Row grew to a two billion dollar business by two
Speaker 1: thousand seventeen and had over eighty thousand people whom they
Speaker 1: called consultants, selling their clothes and their famous leggings. But
Speaker 1: just like any system which requires more and more people
Speaker 1: lower on the scale to make more money for people
Speaker 1: higher on the scale, the system fell apart, and apocryphal
Speaker 1: stories of moldy leggings and well meaning sellers, almost always women,
Speaker 1: losing life savings, marriages and homes became the reality for
Speaker 1: some of the people who were just looking to make
Speaker 1: a little extra money for their families. Today, we are
Speaker 1: going to hear from Roberta Levin's, a Lula Row consultant
Speaker 1: featured in the series Lula Rich, which tells the story
Speaker 1: of the experience of sellers in the company. Roberta initially
Speaker 1: found success selling the leggings, but then learned about the
Speaker 1: dark side of multi level marketing systems, which often have
Speaker 1: all of the top notes of a toxic relationship. Let's
Speaker 1: hear Roberta's story. You know, Roberta, I want to take
Speaker 1: it from the beginning sort of your story with Lula Row,
Speaker 1: and what I'd love to hear is what your life
Speaker 1: was book for Lula Row ever came into it. What
Speaker 1: were you up to and what were you doing before
Speaker 1: all of this? In two thousand and fifteen is when
Speaker 1: I first heard about lular Row. I was mom. My
Speaker 1: daughter was like three or four at the time. I
Speaker 1: was married, I had lost my father pretty recently, was
Speaker 1: very vulnerable, and I just was floundering. I was lost.
Speaker 1: I think that happens a lot when you have vulnerabilities
Speaker 1: and big questions come up into your life. And I
Speaker 1: do remember feeling very much that I wasn't myself, that
Speaker 1: I didn't have my own identity, that I felt like
Speaker 1: I had just become like Abby's mom and Charlie's wife,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't like Roberta, and I wasn't my own
Speaker 1: person anymore. Not that I needed to be doing more,
Speaker 1: but you know, I feel like also in society, women
Speaker 1: are constantly told that we could be doing more, and
Speaker 1: we could be filling in the free moments with other
Speaker 1: things that need to be done because we have so
Speaker 1: many responsibilities in our lives. And I think I felt
Speaker 1: like I was busy, but I could be doing more.
Speaker 1: I could be doing better, I could be making more money,
Speaker 1: I could be staying home more. I've always felt like
Speaker 1: I'm not enough. That comes from my childhood, which will
Speaker 1: probably also get into those with all of this as well.
Speaker 1: But I literally grew up never feeling like anything I
Speaker 1: ever did was enough, that I could never make some
Speaker 1: of the people in my life happy, and so I
Speaker 1: was just like, you know, like just ripe on the
Speaker 1: vine for picking. And that's essentially what happens, ROBERTA. When
Speaker 1: I hear you say this. We're about to talk about
Speaker 1: multi level marketing, right, But as soon as I hear
Speaker 1: those words I am not enough, I sit up straight,
Speaker 1: because those are the ultimate anthem of vulnerability of a person.
Speaker 1: Two a narcissistic relationship of any kind, because in a way,
Speaker 1: that kind of a relationship is a mirror for not
Speaker 1: feeling enough. It's something that will just keep reminding you
Speaker 1: of up. But initially they come in and make you
Speaker 1: feel like you're more than enough, and that's the trick.
Speaker 1: And so for a minute, you're given exactly the thing
Speaker 1: you needed to hear. Because everybody's enough, We're all born enough,
Speaker 1: but too many of us have gotten that messaging early
Speaker 1: in life that we're not so to me, it's it's
Speaker 1: actually amazing because here we're talking about something sort of
Speaker 1: non traditional in the when I'm I really do think
Speaker 1: m l m s are a narcissistic relationship space. And
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have you you're going to be the teacher
Speaker 1: about MLMs today. But it's a that right there. You
Speaker 1: I got chills down my spine because that's a red
Speaker 1: flag that people have within them that they don't even
Speaker 1: know is a red flag. And on top of that,
Speaker 1: you were going through a transition and loss and grief
Speaker 1: of your dad and then the ongoing role of being
Speaker 1: a mom. I mean we're all as a mom myself,
Speaker 1: we're supposed to think it's a blessing and I remember
Speaker 1: what it was like being with little kids and you
Speaker 1: think this is magical. And how many games of shooting
Speaker 1: ladders can somebody play in one? So it's a lot.
Speaker 1: How did Lula Roe even come into your life? It's
Speaker 1: not as though they came and knock in or because
Speaker 1: I didn't know these things about you? So how did
Speaker 1: that moment happen that here you were living with that
Speaker 1: roberta of it all? How did Lula rou come into
Speaker 1: your life? So I think already, because of that vulnerability
Speaker 1: of not feeling like I was enough and that I
Speaker 1: could do more, I was already just had this heightened
Speaker 1: sense anytime I saw something new, because that might be
Speaker 1: the answer. At the time, I've been doing hair for
Speaker 1: twenty one years, and at the time, I was working
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles, and I'm from San Diego and that's
Speaker 1: where I live now. And I was working once a month,
Speaker 1: driving up doing hair on the weekend, just powerhousing through
Speaker 1: and then coming down. And in the very beginning when
Speaker 1: my daughter was born, she wasn't in school, so I
Speaker 1: wasn't missing field trips, I wasn't missing plays and things
Speaker 1: like that, and so it really wasn't a big deal
Speaker 1: because she was with my mom or my husband at
Speaker 1: the time, and it wasn't a big deal. But she
Speaker 1: got into kindergarten and I was out of town on
Speaker 1: those fridays that things would happen are times that I
Speaker 1: could be volunteering in her class or being there. I
Speaker 1: started realizing like, Okay, like this job has been great,
Speaker 1: working out of town, but like I can't continue, Like
Speaker 1: I can't keep this up, Like my daughter needs me.
Speaker 1: I need to get l a off of my routine,
Speaker 1: and I need to stay in San Diego and not
Speaker 1: count on that money, and I can't let it go
Speaker 1: without having something to replace it. And so I was
Speaker 1: always constantly thinking, like what that could be. So when
Speaker 1: these leggings came across my Facebook face, my Facebook feed,
Speaker 1: it wasn't that big of a deal because it was
Speaker 1: just another mom friend from like a mom Facebook group.
Speaker 1: It was just like a picture of her wearing leggings.
Speaker 1: It was just her legs and she was like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, I never thought I would love leggings as
Speaker 1: much as I do with these are amazing. And it
Speaker 1: was just something where I'm like, I had already I
Speaker 1: wore leggings at the time. Some of the things I
Speaker 1: didn't like about it is I was having to call
Speaker 1: instantly pulled them up because they wouldn't stay up properly.
Speaker 1: And so I was asking her questions and she's, oh,
Speaker 1: my gosh, they stay put, they're super thick, you can't
Speaker 1: see your undergrow when you've been down. They're really great.
Speaker 1: You can work out in them, all of these things,
Speaker 1: and I was like, Hey, maybe these leggings will solve
Speaker 1: the problems I have with leggings, and I I think it
Speaker 1: was like ten bucks shipping, with shipping, you know, why not,
Speaker 1: I'll try a pair for ten bucks. I help my
Speaker 1: friend out, I'll try these things, why not? And she
Speaker 1: only had two or three pairs, none of them were
Speaker 1: really my style. But I picked the one that was
Speaker 1: the most not my like the most mind style, out
Speaker 1: of the not my style, and um, I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: these can just be like hanging out watching Sesame street
Speaker 1: pants with my kid, right. And I got them and
Speaker 1: they were so soft. I know everyone says buttery, but
Speaker 1: to me, butteries greasy and slippery and these were like
Speaker 1: velvety and they were solved and they were comfy and thick,
Speaker 1: and I was like, dang, okay, okay. And I wore
Speaker 1: them and I loved them. And then I was like,
Speaker 1: you know what, I want to wear these outside, but
Speaker 1: I'm going to find a black pair. And I remember
Speaker 1: it took me about a week to find a person
Speaker 1: that had them in my size available and we're willing
Speaker 1: to sell them to me without being in this party
Speaker 1: or pairing them with something else. It took me about
Speaker 1: a week and I was like, oh my god, and
Speaker 1: I remember getting them and being like I win. It
Speaker 1: was the weirdest feeling, so funny, because those brow legs
Speaker 1: were the holy grail of leggings in that world. I
Speaker 1: remember that, Yeah, but that's just black leggings, black leggings,
Speaker 1: just black leggings. But I had allowed them to be
Speaker 1: more than just black leggings, and so they came with excitement,
Speaker 1: They came with dopamine. They came with adventure and hunting
Speaker 1: and like that. That like chasing the rainbow and getting
Speaker 1: the pot of gold at the end of it, and
Speaker 1: it was like a game. And so I understood that,
Speaker 1: and I was like, dang, okay. And then I would
Speaker 1: go into these parties and I would see it happen
Speaker 1: over and over and over again, and they the thing
Speaker 1: for flying off the shelves. I would come into a
Speaker 1: party ten fifteen minutes late and most of it would
Speaker 1: be sold out. So this second thing that I was
Speaker 1: thinking is okay, Like, if I'm going crazy for these
Speaker 1: and these other women are going even crazier for these,
Speaker 1: I could make money selling these. At one level. I
Speaker 1: could almost say that you kind of love bomb by
Speaker 1: the leggings because they were so soft and they felt
Speaker 1: so good. But they were of people that so let's
Speaker 1: talk about that next then, right, because it was more
Speaker 1: than just black leggings that stayed on you, that were
Speaker 1: really soft, that people were really trying to buy, right,
Speaker 1: there was something more happening here. Okay, beyond the leggings,
Speaker 1: So beyond this product that could just sell itself, what
Speaker 1: really drew you in and inspired you to want to
Speaker 1: work with lu lu lu row given like you said that,
Speaker 1: there were other ways you could get cheaper leggings to sell,
Speaker 1: and above and beyond just the fact that there was
Speaker 1: the sales infrastructure. Was it that simple that they've got
Speaker 1: the software, they've got the infrastruy uture, day've got the leggings,
Speaker 1: I'm off to the races. Was it that simple? I
Speaker 1: think there was. I think that was probably like the
Speaker 1: factual driving force where I could go back to that
Speaker 1: as this is what they're offering and this is what
Speaker 1: I'm paying for. But in between that business transaction came
Speaker 1: the community. The community started with my friend. She was
Speaker 1: like my messager. I was like, hey, thanks for the leggings,
Speaker 1: as are great. She's like, yeah, I'm thinking about selling them.
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh yeah, me too, and so
Speaker 1: we were talking about that, and then I remember, like
Speaker 1: I said, joining those groups and talking to those other
Speaker 1: the reps and saying do you like doing this, like
Speaker 1: as we would get in a message, because I was
Speaker 1: just dipping my toe in. And so I'm talking to
Speaker 1: all these people. And when you're talking to people in
Speaker 1: this organization, they want you to join too, because most
Speaker 1: likely they want me to join. Underneath them, they're like,
Speaker 1: it's amazing. You're gonna love it. It's so great. I've
Speaker 1: met all these amazing people, and I found my best
Speaker 1: friends and we've got these meetings. And the other thing
Speaker 1: that I felt I was lacking my was that community.
Speaker 1: Being a stay mostly stay at home mom who was
Speaker 1: working out of town and out of the home at night,
Speaker 1: away from my family, I didn't really have a friend
Speaker 1: group because I didn't know My daughter wasn't in school,
Speaker 1: so I wasn't meeting other moms with age appropriate similar
Speaker 1: aged children, and so I felt very isolated as well
Speaker 1: as like this mom that lived at home and like
Speaker 1: only saw people at the grocery store. So when these
Speaker 1: new people came into my life in the form of
Speaker 1: zoom calls and group chats and Facebook pages, and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna add you to my shopping group, and let's send
Speaker 1: me yours, send me your phone number and I'll text
Speaker 1: mess with you. And then, all of a sudden, from
Speaker 1: not having anybody to talk to besides my daughter, now
Speaker 1: I've got a huge group of people who, on the
Speaker 1: outside all appear to want me to be successful. They're
Speaker 1: celebrating my ups, They're like consoling me in my downs.
Speaker 1: I'm feeling like there really is an amazing community of people.
Speaker 1: These are my friend, These are people who genuinely care
Speaker 1: about me, even though I just met them. Even though
Speaker 1: I just met them, they're telling me they loved me.
Speaker 1: I'm amazing. They were pandering to that, and they were
Speaker 1: love bombing me, and they're just inflating my I don't
Speaker 1: really have much of an ego, but they were inflating
Speaker 1: that ego that I did have, and I did have
Speaker 1: an ego when I was in lular row, which was
Speaker 1: something that was one of those red flags, and I
Speaker 1: was like, WHOA, who am I? It was slow and innocuous,
Speaker 1: but at the same time quick and obvious, if that
Speaker 1: makes sense. But I didn't know it was love bombing,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know that was the thing, and again,
Speaker 1: growing up with narcissistic people in my life, I find
Speaker 1: comfort in that chaos. I always it's always really up,
Speaker 1: we're really down in my life and the people around
Speaker 1: and it's just it's this toxicity that I was like
Speaker 1: born into. And again, like a lot of this stuff
Speaker 1: I've been unpacking since leaving lular Row because so many
Speaker 1: of these topics intersect with the things that I talked
Speaker 1: about as well, which has led me to being like, oh,
Speaker 1: I should probably unpack my baggage before I started helping
Speaker 1: others something back. There's and through this journey, I've well,
Speaker 1: that's trauma bonding. ROBERTA. That's what we're talking about, that
Speaker 1: idea that chaos feels familiar and in a way, chaos
Speaker 1: equels love. So when all of that that, where someone
Speaker 1: else might have said, whoa, this is a lot and
Speaker 1: might even step back for you, you're thinking, okay, there
Speaker 1: might be something happening here. It's almost primal. But what
Speaker 1: is really interesting And I think of this as love bombing.
Speaker 1: We think of love bombing is such an individual phenomenon, right,
Speaker 1: Like you may you meet somebody, you're dating somebody, right
Speaker 1: and they put to the full court Press. We don't
Speaker 1: think of of organizations groups of people as love bombing you.
Speaker 1: What is so seductive is because you don't think they're
Speaker 1: on the make, so they're not trying to get you
Speaker 1: to bed or something like that. Right would be a
Speaker 1: great salesperson. You're so great on social media that doesn't
Speaker 1: fall under our traditional definition of seductive. And so you're thinking, like,
Speaker 1: it's kind of true and how great that somebody is
Speaker 1: actually noticing me. But it is so profound to actually
Speaker 1: be seen, you know that. I think to me, that's
Speaker 1: where that's the thing that you're capturing here, Roberta, is
Speaker 1: that especially when you're a new mother, And I think
Speaker 1: that's something that not only do you have the vulnerability
Speaker 1: you bring into this historically, but there's something very unique
Speaker 1: when you're taking care of a young child. Like you said,
Speaker 1: sometimes your social contacts are at the grocery store and
Speaker 1: and so, and even if you're working outside of the
Speaker 1: house at that time, you often feel isolated because most
Speaker 1: of your colleagues wouldn't have a young child. So at
Speaker 1: the core of it that that isolation and somebody seeing
Speaker 1: your gifts, because again it's not like, oh, you're giving
Speaker 1: your child cut up pairs so nicely, but when we're
Speaker 1: being loved bombed, we're never as discerning as we should be,
Speaker 1: so because we want to, we want to believe it.
Speaker 1: And it's true you were good at those things, but
Speaker 1: little did you know what was going to come right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I say a lot of time, when you
Speaker 1: join these companies, you really are just a cog in
Speaker 1: a machine. And they were just missing that cog, and
Speaker 1: I just fit what they were looking for. And it
Speaker 1: didn't have to be me. It could have been anybody.
Speaker 1: It could have been anybody that fit in that square hole. Right.
Speaker 1: They were just looking for another square peg to go
Speaker 1: into a square hole, and I just happened to fit
Speaker 1: into it. But again, it doesn't matter. I happened to
Speaker 1: have the right vulnerabilities and the right concerns and the
Speaker 1: right needs and wants, and they came in and offered
Speaker 1: me all of my dreams to come true if I
Speaker 1: was willing to do this, and I was like, why not,
Speaker 1: Let's try it? And so you did. You know what
Speaker 1: what ended up happening was you gave it a shot
Speaker 1: and then you were in it, and it was as
Speaker 1: though they knew exactly what to say, as though they
Speaker 1: almost had their own formula. This is our target person,
Speaker 1: this is what we're going to say and do, and
Speaker 1: it worked absolutely. One of the things that we did
Speaker 1: a little bit deeper into my journey when I was
Speaker 1: in a leadership position, goes right along with what you
Speaker 1: just said, is they had us take personality tests. They
Speaker 1: made us yea, so we had to do the color lenses,
Speaker 1: which is like yellow, blue, green, and red or orange
Speaker 1: or something, so that we could and it came under
Speaker 1: the guise of let's learn what your color lens is
Speaker 1: so that you can take this back to your team
Speaker 1: and figure out what their color lenses are. And so
Speaker 1: they really wanted us to understand the four lenses so
Speaker 1: that we could then diagnose essentially our teams with their colors,
Speaker 1: so we could have more effectively communicate slash manipulate them
Speaker 1: for whatever we needed. But you know there's something else
Speaker 1: they were doing with that, ROBERTA. I'll tell you because
Speaker 1: this this is a little bit of a narcissism trick
Speaker 1: they were doing with you, and a culti trick too.
Speaker 1: Not only in their love bombing did they create a
Speaker 1: sense of belonging, like come be with us, you're so smart,
Speaker 1: we want you in our midst. Then they were even
Speaker 1: subcategorizing you greens, yellows, oranges. The more we can help
Speaker 1: make people feel like they belong to something, especially on
Speaker 1: the basis of a skill or ability or quality, it
Speaker 1: really hooks us. We are a species that likes to
Speaker 1: believe we belong to something. So that was not a
Speaker 1: personality test. That was a let's even hook you further,
Speaker 1: so all you blues are going to stick together as blues.
Speaker 1: It was almost Orwellian. What they were absolutely is Orwellian,
Speaker 1: and that's exactly what happened. Like we would come back
Speaker 1: to do these and as I'm doing this, someone would
Speaker 1: be like, I think I'm a blue. I'm like, I'm
Speaker 1: a blue too. Of course you're a blue. That makes
Speaker 1: total sense. Us blues gotta stick together. And it was
Speaker 1: very culty and I never thought of it that way
Speaker 1: because I had done like Myers Briggs in college and
Speaker 1: things like this, and so I was used to sort
Speaker 1: of taking these compartmentalized tests in order to better adjust
Speaker 1: your skills sets and what you'd learned better. Because it
Speaker 1: also sounds though at the time, it played upon a
Speaker 1: need to belong and you know, so not only did
Speaker 1: this organization that you could belong to, you could make
Speaker 1: money and you could even belong even more in this
Speaker 1: sort of sub group. So it's so now we're using
Speaker 1: this interesting word cult, right, Cult narcissism are pretty much synonymous.
Speaker 1: The cult is like an organized narcissistic group. But I
Speaker 1: came to find out that you, Roberta, actually googled is
Speaker 1: Lulu ro and MLM in the beginning, okay, and nothing
Speaker 1: came up. So, because really, what I'd love to hear
Speaker 1: from you is if you would explain what an MLM
Speaker 1: or a multi level marketing system is, so people understand
Speaker 1: because I'm using the term, you're using the term. We
Speaker 1: happen to know what it is, but not all of
Speaker 1: our listeners do. So what was your experience of what
Speaker 1: an M l M l M is and why, more
Speaker 1: importantly do do you google that? So I had been
Speaker 1: a part of an MLM before Lulu Row. It's a
Speaker 1: very cringe e one that a lot of people know of.
Speaker 1: It's called it works. They sold those fat wraps that
Speaker 1: were supposed to, like, you know, suck all the fat
Speaker 1: out of you. I got sucked into that almost immediately
Speaker 1: after my father died. Because I was very vulnerable and
Speaker 1: there was a lot of things that it was going on.
Speaker 1: I probably only lasted three or five months. It felt
Speaker 1: very scammy. It felt very this is not what I
Speaker 1: signed up for. I remember doing like a craft fair
Speaker 1: and just feeling embarrassed the whole time and being like
Speaker 1: I can't do this more than once, like I don't
Speaker 1: want to ever do this again. And then I remember
Speaker 1: looking into it and talking to some people after the fact,
Speaker 1: and people were like, oh, like, that's a par of scheme,
Speaker 1: and I was like, yeah, it's kind of weird. Oh
Speaker 1: that's an m l M. And so I understood what
Speaker 1: they were. I had been a part of that one.
Speaker 1: I had bought from so many My aunt had sold
Speaker 1: Mary Kay when I was a kid. She had the
Speaker 1: pink car, my mom sold it to We had avon
Speaker 1: in our home. We had used thirty one bags, my
Speaker 1: mom has cut code knives. There were so many normalizations
Speaker 1: of m l M in my life, because that's the
Speaker 1: whole point. So for me, it was like comfort in
Speaker 1: the chaos. It was normalized, and so when it came
Speaker 1: across my desk, I was like, sure, okay, why not
Speaker 1: so experiencing that a year before lulu Ro, I learned
Speaker 1: what I hated about mL m's and unfortunately, when Luluro
Speaker 1: came along, they didn't look anything like it works, and
Speaker 1: so I was like, oh, those are flags, and because
Speaker 1: it looks so different, I just glazed over it. And
Speaker 1: the things that I was worried about that were MLM things.
Speaker 1: That's why I googled that is Luluro and MLM is Luluro,
Speaker 1: a pyramid schemes, lulu Ro scam like. I looked these
Speaker 1: things up, hoping that there would have been somebody that
Speaker 1: had come before to be like, yeah, it is, don't bother,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't find anything. I couldn't find anything at all.
Speaker 1: And every single person that I talked about lulu Ro,
Speaker 1: whether they sold it or whether they bought it, had
Speaker 1: nothing but positive things to say. I could not find
Speaker 1: anyone that had anything negative to say about lulu row
Speaker 1: in two THO. Yeah, it's almost like you were dating
Speaker 1: someone where there's a lot of red flags and you're asking,
Speaker 1: is this a good guys Everyone's like, oh, great guy, great, great,
Speaker 1: and then unfortunately you weren't talking to this entire other group.
Speaker 1: And I wasn't talking to any of his excess at all.
Speaker 1: I couldn't find them at all. No, there was one
Speaker 1: thing that I found that was a little kind of
Speaker 1: but I found it months after, and at that point
Speaker 1: I was like, this guy sounds like a hater. This
Speaker 1: gun sounds super bitter. I wouldn't believe him. I'm having
Speaker 1: a really great time. Everybody I know is also having
Speaker 1: a really great time, and that guy just sounds like
Speaker 1: maybe he just didn't try hard enough. Like that's what
Speaker 1: it felt like when that came across. Had that come
Speaker 1: across before I joined, maybe things would be different. But
Speaker 1: it didn't show up for months and months and months,
Speaker 1: and at that point I was very willing to explain
Speaker 1: it away with any sort of excuse that I could
Speaker 1: battling with my own cognitive dissonance for a very long
Speaker 1: time in this right, So let's so, then, it's so
Speaker 1: many things you just said, you just created questions ding
Speaker 1: it's first of all, and something I didn't know, and
Speaker 1: this is really fascinating, is sort of intergenerational participation in MLM. Right, So,
Speaker 1: I think that for folks to understand that a multi
Speaker 1: level marketing involves merchandise that cannot be purchased in traditional
Speaker 1: retailing outlets like in a pharmacy or department store, grocery store.
Speaker 1: That these things could only be purchased through retailers who
Speaker 1: sign up to sell the product and usually at parties.
Speaker 1: For the longest time, Mary kay a Von, all of
Speaker 1: those had to be done at a party or door
Speaker 1: to door, they come to your house. Now, in the
Speaker 1: era of social media, people could but you know, it's
Speaker 1: a new way to do that, right. But the key
Speaker 1: is is that with a multi level marketing system is
Speaker 1: that you there is actually the sale of goods kind of,
Speaker 1: but money is also being made through recruitment of sellers
Speaker 1: under you. That if all you do is sell, you're
Speaker 1: never going to make big money. The only way to
Speaker 1: make big money is to recruit sellers who are under you,
Speaker 1: and now you're making a percentage of their sales. But
Speaker 1: there is and so the point at which it all
Speaker 1: goes upside down and recruitment is making you more money
Speaker 1: than sales is now when you're kind of going into
Speaker 1: pyramid scheme territory where you're right, what does I mean
Speaker 1: if you were to ask me what the difference between
Speaker 1: an MLM and a pyramid scheme is literally the only
Speaker 1: difference is the government protects MLMs. They're on paper, they're
Speaker 1: exactly the same. Yeah, I don't disagree with you because
Speaker 1: I I yeah, I agree, yes, yes, And really they
Speaker 1: say people will say it's not a pyramid scheme because
Speaker 1: we're selling product, and I'm like, okay, the product is
Speaker 1: just a replacement for money. You're just exchanging money for
Speaker 1: product now, and then you're exchanging product back for money,
Speaker 1: Like it doesn't matter because it's something of value being
Speaker 1: traded for something of value, whether it's paper money or
Speaker 1: whether it's a product. That is one of those governmental
Speaker 1: rules that makes it legal, right, because the MLM lobby
Speaker 1: is quite strong on capital. Honestly, that's what it is.
Speaker 1: I mean, I really have done the deep dive, honey,
Speaker 1: and I was like, you know, so you're absoluting at Utah,
Speaker 1: we're looking at you. Yeah, no, no, no, it's a
Speaker 1: very powerful lobby. But ultimately, though, it's fascinating though that
Speaker 1: for you, there was, like you said, a normalization and
Speaker 1: a lot of people may not have even realize. For example,
Speaker 1: Mary kay Avon, those were of topperware. Those were all
Speaker 1: early multi level marketing kinds of systems am way, and
Speaker 1: now in modern times we're seeing things like Lula Row
Speaker 1: oral life, you know, certain cosmetics, cosmetics, things that people
Speaker 1: can do at home and all of that, like how
Speaker 1: many mass because one person going to use you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, But apparently a lot so the but
Speaker 1: that for you, like you said, you had been exposed
Speaker 1: to it, that they had this almost ability. And I
Speaker 1: would imagine even back in the days of Avon and
Speaker 1: Mary Kay was still similar. It was women who were
Speaker 1: looking to make some walking around money and the pink
Speaker 1: car was always dangled out there as the ultimate get.
Speaker 1: And you even saw the pink car happened, so it
Speaker 1: wasn't just a fever dream in your world like it
Speaker 1: was a thing it couldn't really happen. That absolutely legitimizes it.
Speaker 1: Yet it's not just me saying, like, you can get
Speaker 1: a pink car. It's me saying, my aunt, my blood,
Speaker 1: the person I see on Christmas and talked to who
Speaker 1: is related to me, she has the car. And that's
Speaker 1: incredibly powerful. And like I said, it also goes to
Speaker 1: this other point where you it's so fascinating for me
Speaker 1: because when we think about narcissistic relationships people will initially
Speaker 1: say something doesn't quite feel right here, but with people
Speaker 1: it's hard. Right, there's I mean, I guess you can
Speaker 1: nowadays you could google someone, but even then there's some
Speaker 1: people out there. Like I've said this on multiple episodes
Speaker 1: of Navigating Narcissism, there's no such thing as YELP for people.
Speaker 1: You can't go and read someone's one star reviews like
Speaker 1: burped during the first state and then called his ex
Speaker 1: girlfriend zero rating near zero star rating. You're not gonna
Speaker 1: mind that person, And it's it's called slander and defamation.
Speaker 1: So we don't have a way of doing that. So
Speaker 1: unless there's a word of mouth way or they've really
Speaker 1: done something egregious that would show up online, you can't
Speaker 1: find that. And in a way, you were obviously something
Speaker 1: wasn't sitting well with you, so you went and checked
Speaker 1: this out. But I think your story, even though it
Speaker 1: involves an MLM and not a person, it almost really
Speaker 1: humanizes a lot of people say, gosh, darn it, I
Speaker 1: saw those red flags early, but I didn't do anything.
Speaker 1: I would argue Robertie, you did do something I did,
Speaker 1: but it took me some time to do it. We
Speaker 1: joke often that and MLM. It's all sunshine and rainbows.
Speaker 1: We're wearing rose colored glasses and everything is Peachie keen,
Speaker 1: hungry dory, and it's really hard to see red flags
Speaker 1: when you're wearing rose comedy glasses because they just look
Speaker 1: like regular flex's. We will be right back with this conversation.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I saw so many red flags that I ignored,
Speaker 1: and not even necessarily that we're happening to me, that
Speaker 1: we're happening to others. And I was like, day, I'm
Speaker 1: glad that's not me, you know what I mean, and
Speaker 1: like making that excuse and looking back on it now
Speaker 1: and being like, there were so many red flags that
Speaker 1: I just blatantly ignored or like pile drived or made
Speaker 1: excuses for. But I didn't forget them. I filed them away.
Speaker 1: Whether I ignored them or made excuses for them, they
Speaker 1: were definitely not something that I forgot. And so when
Speaker 1: it happen and again, I'd be like, Oh, this is
Speaker 1: happening again, And then when it would happen again, I'm like,
Speaker 1: that's weird. And eventually it wasn't a coincidence anymore, became
Speaker 1: a pattern, and I think again within narcissism. We ignore
Speaker 1: a lot of those red flags until they become patterns
Speaker 1: that we can call and you're like, this is what's
Speaker 1: gonna happen next. And when I could do that, when
Speaker 1: I could be like, well, this is what's gonna happen,
Speaker 1: not even gonna bother because this is what happens all
Speaker 1: the time, and I could call the trauma and the
Speaker 1: toxicity before it even happened, which I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people can do. And we had group chats because
Speaker 1: there would be sales right like a new style would
Speaker 1: show up and it would be like Thursday at ten am,
Speaker 1: it's going on sale, and so we would get in
Speaker 1: these group chats because we would all be on our
Speaker 1: computers refreshing the page, refreshing the page, trying to get anything,
Speaker 1: and we're talking mad shit in these group chats about
Speaker 1: how stupid Lulu ro is and the website crashing again.
Speaker 1: They should talk to my husband. He works in I
Speaker 1: like people giving every single time and still to this day,
Speaker 1: still and in every other MLM, when there's new product,
Speaker 1: the site crashes. It's designed this way because if the
Speaker 1: problem is still happening, the crashes are still happening, you
Speaker 1: get into the system, and you are so terrified that
Speaker 1: you're gonna get kicked out that you're gonna buy anything
Speaker 1: you possibly can and try to check out as fast
Speaker 1: as you possibly can, just to get something, just to
Speaker 1: say you've got something of this thing that everybody wants.
Speaker 1: Narcissistic people are so good at creating a sense of
Speaker 1: scarcity by doing things like withholding and making themselves unavailable,
Speaker 1: responding but then pulling back. This behavior keeps you on
Speaker 1: the hook, and you may even forgive bad behavior just
Speaker 1: to stay in it because it felt bad when you
Speaker 1: couldn't reach them. They are also really good at triangulating
Speaker 1: and making it seem that someone else is interested in them.
Speaker 1: In this case, we see this dynamic play out when
Speaker 1: there was a desperate desire to get onboarded into the
Speaker 1: company or to get new inventory, and things like website
Speaker 1: crashes and limited inventory made people just want to grab
Speaker 1: it up without thinking. This kind of rushed decision making
Speaker 1: impairs our clarity and our discernment, and as ROBERTA found,
Speaker 1: it made everyone spend more money than they had intended,
Speaker 1: and the scarcity kept them hooked. Just like in any
Speaker 1: narcissistic relationship. When I onboarded in March of there was
Speaker 1: about a six to eight week wait list that I
Speaker 1: had to wait through, was called so they created that Yes,
Speaker 1: so they created that sense of oh, you're even lucky
Speaker 1: to be at this party, You're so lucky to be
Speaker 1: in this list, right, to be on this list. And
Speaker 1: they would do things like we're going to onboard a
Speaker 1: hundred people today, and they made a list. It was
Speaker 1: called like lulu, o q dot com or something. You
Speaker 1: could go to the website and you can find your
Speaker 1: name and you can see where you are on the list,
Speaker 1: and then you could be like you'd get the email
Speaker 1: in the morning, the onboarding email, the Q club is
Speaker 1: what they called it, and it would say congratulations to
Speaker 1: everyone that's gonna be on board today. We're onboarding a
Speaker 1: hundred people. If you're ready, if today is your day,
Speaker 1: because everybody knew what day, everybody knew within four d
Speaker 1: eight hours. If today is your day, make sure you've
Speaker 1: talked to your bank and that the process like it's
Speaker 1: gonna go through and it's gonna process without a problem.
Speaker 1: Make sure that you've got your phone on ready so
Speaker 1: they don't miss that call, etcetera, etcetera, and so you'd
Speaker 1: get that email in the morning, you go, they're doing
Speaker 1: a hundred today, you'd go, you'd find your name, you count.
Speaker 1: You're like, I'm three hundred and fifty two. That means
Speaker 1: I'm getting my call in four days. If they're doing
Speaker 1: a hundred a day, I should get my call by
Speaker 1: it's Monday. I'm gonna get my call Thursday or whatever.
Speaker 1: So we're doing these crazy things. We're calling our back like,
Speaker 1: I can't even explain why I would have ever acted
Speaker 1: this way or done this or anything except for that.
Speaker 1: It was that cult mentality. That's what everybody was doing.
Speaker 1: It created chaos, right. And what's so interesting, though, is
Speaker 1: what you're also describing is how a slot machine works.
Speaker 1: Any fool knows putting money into something that's going to
Speaker 1: give you nothing. It's probably a bad play, but it
Speaker 1: may really give you something. And that it's actually in psychology,
Speaker 1: it's called a variable reinforcement schedule. And I always say
Speaker 1: it's exactly how narcissistic people work. Am I going to
Speaker 1: get the best of them today? Am I? Not? So?
Speaker 1: I better keep showing up because I never know. Maybe
Speaker 1: this is the big day and it's going to be
Speaker 1: so exciting. And it's going to be so wonderful, and
Speaker 1: it's they won't text you back for three or four days,
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh my gosh, how am I going
Speaker 1: to live without this person? And then the person I'm
Speaker 1: getting so tense, and then they text after the fourth day,
Speaker 1: and a person starts thinking, I'll do anything this person wants,
Speaker 1: so I don't need to go another four days without
Speaker 1: being texted. It's exactly the same ground game. And if
Speaker 1: you don't know that that's what you're dealing with, it's
Speaker 1: actually evil genius kind of stuff. That is how manipulative
Speaker 1: it is. And if the people who are in this
Speaker 1: system don't know that this is what's being done to them,
Speaker 1: and most people don't because they're playing on a vulnerability.
Speaker 1: Every single person was being love bombed as you would
Speaker 1: in any narcissistic relationship, but they thought they were lucky
Speaker 1: when they actually finally got pulled in please take my money.
Speaker 1: And so it's really really remarkable. But so you finally
Speaker 1: got onboarded, Yeah, I got onboarded. Oh yes, because we
Speaker 1: were talking about how easy it was to sell everything.
Speaker 1: In the very beginning when I joined. I could probably
Speaker 1: get a box and sell to it very quickly within
Speaker 1: the week. The prints were better, the quality was better.
Speaker 1: There wasn't as much scarcity. Whether or not that was
Speaker 1: real or perceived, I'm not really sure, but there wasn't
Speaker 1: much scarcity. I felt like I could get a box,
Speaker 1: I would get really good prints, a really good variety
Speaker 1: of not only prints and like novelties, but solids as well,
Speaker 1: and things went really well. I was never really one
Speaker 1: person that felt like I had to bundle things in
Speaker 1: order to push product, like, oh, these are ugly lit
Speaker 1: parrot with something that people actually want and make them
Speaker 1: buy two things so I can get rid of something ugly.
Speaker 1: I never really did that. I did it once for Christmas,
Speaker 1: and then what we did is I donated I think
Speaker 1: pretty much my profit to a local family and adopted
Speaker 1: a family. So that was like the only time I
Speaker 1: ever did that. But again, I felt like, if I
Speaker 1: was going to do something, I felt very manipulative to
Speaker 1: me to force people to do that. I didn't like that.
Speaker 1: So I felt like, if I was going to do
Speaker 1: something like that, it needed to go to charity or
Speaker 1: something like that. But people did that all the time,
Speaker 1: and I think that's how a lot of people were
Speaker 1: really big sellers, and how things moved so fast because
Speaker 1: there was a lot of ugly stuff. Yes, there was,
Speaker 1: so I do wonder though some of the earlier sets
Speaker 1: of inventories that were given to people were more movable.
Speaker 1: And then as time went on, I wonder if you
Speaker 1: were getting so even that at that level of manipulation,
Speaker 1: this is like love bombing. In the first few days,
Speaker 1: you're going to go to the best restaurant in town,
Speaker 1: the best bar in town, the coolest venues, and about
Speaker 1: around the devaluing phase, about four months in you're lucky
Speaker 1: to be getting sort of fast food in the back
Speaker 1: seat of the car. So were you promised anything else
Speaker 1: other than money when you started working with Little World.
Speaker 1: Was it just I'm going to do this, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: sell my leggings and I'm going to make money or
Speaker 1: were there any other incentives involved in selling there? And
Speaker 1: I think when I initially looked into it, for me,
Speaker 1: it was just the selling aspect. And then when you
Speaker 1: get deeper into the organization and you realize that there
Speaker 1: are these bonuses and these trips and these adventures and
Speaker 1: these meanings, I know you have to qualify and only
Speaker 1: the most serious people qualify. It was that sort of
Speaker 1: stuff that really drove me. I am very much like
Speaker 1: reward based dopamine, hit the bell, get the prize kind
Speaker 1: of person, and so for me, I was like, you
Speaker 1: mean I can get a watch. It's a gold watch?
Speaker 1: Is that watch right there that everyone else is wearing?
Speaker 1: All the serious people have this watch on? All the
Speaker 1: people on stage are wearing this watch, all the people
Speaker 1: in the videos have this watch on. Dianne is wearing
Speaker 1: this watch. And I can earn this watch and be
Speaker 1: part of this like special fancy watch club. What do
Speaker 1: I have to do and how do I get it?
Speaker 1: And within four months I had that watch because I
Speaker 1: really wanted it and I really really needed it. I
Speaker 1: have no idea where that watches right now. It was
Speaker 1: a Vestal watch. I don't know, probably like a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty dollar watch, nothing crazy, not like a Rolex
Speaker 1: or anything, mid mid range, I guess. It had the
Speaker 1: luuro logo on the face it was like special, and
Speaker 1: then on the back underneath it was engraved and it
Speaker 1: said be the kind of leader that you would follow. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's a little bit like the snake eating its
Speaker 1: own tail, but okay, I was thinking it's like this
Speaker 1: sort of a ski ball set up where you spy
Speaker 1: like seven in an arcade to get like a five
Speaker 1: dollar choy. So basically the way you got your watch
Speaker 1: was you had to hit the first leadership rank, which
Speaker 1: was trainer, and that's ten people underneath you who are qualifying.
Speaker 1: What do you mean by ten people underneath you? What
Speaker 1: did that mean? So we talked about multi level marketing
Speaker 1: where there are these companies where you've got the multi levels.
Speaker 1: So essentially what you do is you recruit people like
Speaker 1: we talked about, and those people become If I recruited you,
Speaker 1: then I would send you my link, you would sign up,
Speaker 1: and then on Lularo calls it a tree, you would
Speaker 1: show up underneath me on our family tree and you
Speaker 1: would be on my team. And essentially what that means
Speaker 1: is I am now supposed to be invested in your
Speaker 1: success because when you are successful, I am successful. And
Speaker 1: it is this um sort of like exponential money transfer
Speaker 1: that goes up where I'm getting a small percentage of everything.
Speaker 1: But when you have a lot of people one to
Speaker 1: three really and there's other ways to you could you
Speaker 1: could qualify for other things to tap into other money
Speaker 1: pools that you could get money in other ways. It was.
Speaker 1: It's incredibly complicated. It's incredibly convoluted. Every MLM compensation plan
Speaker 1: is like this on purpose. It is very much that
Speaker 1: orwelly in where it's here's our compensation plan. It's so
Speaker 1: easy to understand, isn't it, And you're like, this is
Speaker 1: so fucking complicated. Yeah, it's so easy. I totally get it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: moving on where it's so complicated and they make it
Speaker 1: seem when they give it to you. Look how easy
Speaker 1: this is. You don't ever want to be the person
Speaker 1: that's I'm confused. I don't get this, so you're going
Speaker 1: to agree and you'll just be like, I'll just figure
Speaker 1: it out later. I'm gonna agree now, smile. Oh, it's great.
Speaker 1: This is one of the best complaints I've ever seen,
Speaker 1: and it's intentionally confusing. Even now, I look at complaints
Speaker 1: for a limiting I look at these complaints and I
Speaker 1: dissect these companies and I'm like, they're all convoluted, and
Speaker 1: a lot of times they're just copy and paste of
Speaker 1: each other. And I'll look at one I'll go, oh,
Speaker 1: this is just like someone says, complained. So it's intentionally confusing,
Speaker 1: and if you look at it and you don't understand,
Speaker 1: you are in the seven percent of people who also
Speaker 1: don't understand what this really truly is. So I have
Speaker 1: a question, then what if a person never recruited someone
Speaker 1: to work under them. They're like, I'm just content selling
Speaker 1: my likings. That's all I want to do. I don't
Speaker 1: want other people involved. What would happen to them? So
Speaker 1: as long as you're moving enough product, I guess you
Speaker 1: could make a viable living. But here we go. We
Speaker 1: would buy a pair of leggings for ten dollars and
Speaker 1: fifty cents. You had to buy a two pack. There
Speaker 1: were twenty one dollars for two plus tax. They didn't
Speaker 1: charge a shipping or I don't think they charged a shipping,
Speaker 1: but it's twenty one dollars for two, and we sold
Speaker 1: them for twenty five dollars. So we got them for
Speaker 1: ten fifty or whatever. But I'm in charge of shipping,
Speaker 1: whether I'm going to charge for shipping or not. There's
Speaker 1: also tax that's that's going to be tapped onto that
Speaker 1: and taken off all of my expenses. All of the
Speaker 1: things that I'm paying or is all tacked into that
Speaker 1: it's insane how many you have to sell. And it's
Speaker 1: not that selling eight leggings a day is hard, but
Speaker 1: you're selling the same leggings to the same people in
Speaker 1: the same saturated market on the same social media and
Speaker 1: nobody wanted it when they saw him last week, and
Speaker 1: you haven't had enough money to buy anything else, so
Speaker 1: you're still selling the same stuff that nobody wants. It
Speaker 1: is a vicious cycle. It's a very vicious cycle. So
Speaker 1: early on you were told, though in your own in
Speaker 1: order to make big money here and watches and trips
Speaker 1: and all that other stuff, you're going to need people
Speaker 1: working under you. Yeah, there was there was like, you
Speaker 1: don't have to have a team, but you can if
Speaker 1: you want. And if you have a team, you then
Speaker 1: open up all of these things. You can qualify for
Speaker 1: the monthly bonus. You can build a big enough team
Speaker 1: that you hit a rank and then once you hit
Speaker 1: this rank, you unlock the ability to hit this bonus.
Speaker 1: And then once you hit this rank, you can unlock
Speaker 1: a new level on that other bonus that you have
Speaker 1: it and go even deep for. And so it's like
Speaker 1: playing a video game. Sometimes in an MLM, if you
Speaker 1: don't hit that qualification. You say, you have to sell
Speaker 1: two hundred things and you only sold a hundred things,
Speaker 1: so you don't qualify. So that bonus check that you
Speaker 1: thought you were going to get, you're not gonna get.
Speaker 1: So a lot of times people get stuck in that
Speaker 1: right we call these This is something that happens all
Speaker 1: the time in MLM, and this is where I come
Speaker 1: in and say, this is concerning. So say you have
Speaker 1: to sell two hundred things, but you only sold a month. Well,
Speaker 1: now someone has to buy those five things. And it's
Speaker 1: usually the last couple of days of the month where
Speaker 1: you're like, hey, I'm so close to that bonus. You
Speaker 1: guys see it on social media all the time. I'm
Speaker 1: so close to that bonus. It's always at the end
Speaker 1: of the month. I just need five more people to
Speaker 1: buy one to billipstick each so I can hit my
Speaker 1: whatever whatever whatever. Maybe they do and maybe they don't.
Speaker 1: But what happens on the back end is panic. You
Speaker 1: start reaching out to people in your team. Do you
Speaker 1: need any ellipstick? Can you buy ellipstick from me? If
Speaker 1: I buy ellipstick from you, can you buy ellipstick from me?
Speaker 1: Because you need the sale and I need the sale
Speaker 1: and we can help each other out. So now you're
Speaker 1: doing this incestuous inside selling to get your right right,
Speaker 1: and that product is not actually leaving the MLM its
Speaker 1: staying within and it's being sold between Or you're making
Speaker 1: a fake account. You're opening up a new account as
Speaker 1: a new customer on a fake email address, and you're
Speaker 1: you're so purchasing those five things as a fake person.
Speaker 1: And then you justify this sun cost by going, well,
Speaker 1: I either needed that shampoo, or I can use those
Speaker 1: lipsticks that got as a giveaway next month, or Christmas
Speaker 1: is coming and so I'm just gonna throw those in stockings,
Speaker 1: or I'm just gonna give those two people like so
Speaker 1: you're also going to justify those unnecessary purchases. Most of
Speaker 1: the time that unnecessary purchase happens because maybe you're going
Speaker 1: to get a thousand dollar bonus. Okay, so you've got
Speaker 1: this thousand dollar bonus looming above your head, but you
Speaker 1: have to spend three hundred dollars to hit the thing
Speaker 1: to qualify for that thousand dollar bonus. So the mL
Speaker 1: ends like you're going to leave seven on the table.
Speaker 1: What do you do? You're throwing money away? Mark the
Speaker 1: CEO of Lularo used to say when we would do
Speaker 1: that that we were burning his money. And you're just
Speaker 1: burning my money if you're not participating in the leadership
Speaker 1: bonus plan, which is what they called it, that's their
Speaker 1: pyramid scheme. If you're not doing this, you're burning my money.
Speaker 1: And I was like, are we because you are. If
Speaker 1: you're not giving me the money, you're still keeping it.
Speaker 1: So I'm not really sure, but he would say that,
Speaker 1: and he would be like, you don't understand how much
Speaker 1: money you're leaving on the table. And absolutely I had
Speaker 1: to do that like probably once or twice where I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, no, I need to sell three more shirts,
Speaker 1: and so I just bought them, yes, yes, yes, and
Speaker 1: I just marked it on the back end and I
Speaker 1: was like, those are free bees. I just now have
Speaker 1: three free shirts to give away that I paid you.
Speaker 1: I didn't take them out of the inventory. I just said,
Speaker 1: here's seventy five dollars plus tax to cover those whatever.
Speaker 1: It was like, it was that kind of thing, and
Speaker 1: I'll fix it on the back end. And I know
Speaker 1: because I have a podcast where I talk to people
Speaker 1: that does this. The only one that was what I
Speaker 1: did was nothing compared to some of the things that
Speaker 1: people do to hit those links. And that's when not
Speaker 1: sunk cost fallacy starts to get really deep. The sunk
Speaker 1: cost fallacy is a technical term for throwing good money
Speaker 1: after bad. It's the error of continuing to put money
Speaker 1: into something because we already put money into it. The
Speaker 1: issue is that we can't get the original money back,
Speaker 1: and putting more money into it is not going to
Speaker 1: get us the original money back. But just as Roberta said,
Speaker 1: she and many others just kept buying more inventory to
Speaker 1: get these bonuses. They would feel foolish if they chose
Speaker 1: not to, just like we would see in any toxic relationship,
Speaker 1: because all you're ever doing is chasing and ungettable carrot.
Speaker 1: The initial investment in these schemes, that's the bad call,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately people just kept throwing more money into them,
Speaker 1: just like we do in any toxic situation. It may
Speaker 1: be money, it may be time, but we have to
Speaker 1: remember you can't get the original investment back no matter
Speaker 1: how much more money or time you throw into it.
Speaker 1: It's the wishful thinking that can take people to the
Speaker 1: point of utter devastation in these situations. Our session will
Speaker 1: continue after this break. It sounds like what I'm hearing here,
Speaker 1: and it's very interesting. Again, like any toxic relationship, it
Speaker 1: has a cycle. In the beginning, you're so great. You're
Speaker 1: great on sales, you're great at social media. Come come,
Speaker 1: come join usjoin us, join us. You're in. You're selling
Speaker 1: good inventory, making money, recruiting people under you, You're making
Speaker 1: their percentages great, great party cruise watch. Okay, there's got
Speaker 1: to be a day for almost everyone in these systems
Speaker 1: where now you're buying a bunch of shirts and you're
Speaker 1: buying more and more to make bonuses, or you can't
Speaker 1: get more people to work under you, or the people
Speaker 1: working under you who know the same people you do,
Speaker 1: who are you selling to? They're like, enough enough, squirrelhoad leggings,
Speaker 1: I'm done, And so now you've run out of customers. Right,
Speaker 1: So when you were doing well, when you were selling well,
Speaker 1: were they telling you you're a great salesperson. Yeah, of course, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: But it wasn't even sales. It had nothing to do sales.
Speaker 1: No one ever said anything like, wow, Robert just lild
Speaker 1: a lot of pants. No one ever said anything like that.
Speaker 1: It was like, oh my god, Roberta, You've got four
Speaker 1: new people on your team this month's couple. How are
Speaker 1: you doing that? I'm like, I don't know. They come
Speaker 1: to me and they say, I want to sell Lula.
Speaker 1: Can I be on your team? And I was like, sure,
Speaker 1: there's my link. That's what happened. There were so many
Speaker 1: people that just wanted to join, Like I never felt
Speaker 1: like I ever had to convince anybody. We did have
Speaker 1: a Facebook group for people that had questions. There was
Speaker 1: a lot of people that were like, I just have questions,
Speaker 1: I just can I talk to you? Sure? And we
Speaker 1: had a Facebook group with anybody that wanted to build
Speaker 1: a team that was on my team, and it was
Speaker 1: just sort of a funnel essentially of people that wanted
Speaker 1: to join. Now we weren't adding people that didn't want
Speaker 1: to join. It was always if you want more information,
Speaker 1: but it was basically a pool, and anybody on my
Speaker 1: team that wanted to build a team was an admin
Speaker 1: in that group and would go live and answer questions
Speaker 1: and would really just essentially recruit from there. And to me,
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, this works because everyone would essentially
Speaker 1: be on my team because I'm the head of this
Speaker 1: pyramid again, hindsight. But so for me, I was just
Speaker 1: giving these people to the people underneath me because exponentially
Speaker 1: in the Pyramids game, I'm still getting paid. I'm still
Speaker 1: making that money. I'm still getting that bonus check every
Speaker 1: single month because I'm still qualifying because I'm still buying enough,
Speaker 1: selling enough, doing enough. People that don't recruit in an
Speaker 1: MLM are affectionately known as the last ones in, and
Speaker 1: nine times that attend, they're not to make any money.
Speaker 1: Really fantastic product that they can sell like nobody's business,
Speaker 1: but those people are few and far between. Really good
Speaker 1: sales people don't usually sell for MLMs, like really good
Speaker 1: salesmen have religion sales jobs. But yeah, how much was
Speaker 1: sort of your initial investment, like somebody after waiting all
Speaker 1: that time and getting pulled into Lula row? How much
Speaker 1: money would one have to put up to even get
Speaker 1: into this game? Back then? It's changed now with the
Speaker 1: lawsuit and all of the trouble that they got, and
Speaker 1: it has changed, But back then it was a minimum
Speaker 1: buying a five thousand dollars five thousand dollars. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've spent closer to nine though. Oh my, And so
Speaker 1: you're telling me the people waited. They waited all that time.
Speaker 1: Five thousand dollars is a minimum lot of money. But
Speaker 1: here's the thing. Five thousand dollars for anybody who's getting
Speaker 1: into this racket was going to be a life changing
Speaker 1: amount of money. It was massive amounts of debt because
Speaker 1: anybody who's that liquid would not be doing this right. So,
Speaker 1: so five thousand dollars, which, like I said, I'm viewing
Speaker 1: all of this to a narcissistic relationship space. I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of somebody who is who has gotten so seduced by
Speaker 1: something that they're giving up a huge part of themselves
Speaker 1: and in this case it's resource. Oh my god, it
Speaker 1: was like it wasn't even about the five thousand dollars
Speaker 1: because the five thousand dollars at that point was just
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars. Like I can figure it out because
Speaker 1: it was the idea. And what MLM cell is the
Speaker 1: idea of the possibility of having everything you want, so
Speaker 1: interesting you put, it's the idea of the possibility of
Speaker 1: having something you want, which is like even worse than
Speaker 1: future faking because but I do talk about in toxic relationships,
Speaker 1: it's all about narrative. Someday we're just going to be
Speaker 1: this Really, we're just gonna be the super happy family.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be happy. And I'm thinking this person like
Speaker 1: lies to you a lot and betrays you. Help me
Speaker 1: make sense of this, but they're telling themselves a story.
Speaker 1: But you also brought up something really interesting, this idea
Speaker 1: of people putting up five thousand dollars. You brought up
Speaker 1: the sun cost fallacy for people listening. Sun cost fallacy
Speaker 1: is a theory and behavioral economics, and that it's I
Speaker 1: think that the old saying is you throw good money
Speaker 1: after bad, which is that once you've put money into something,
Speaker 1: we then instead of walking away saying, Okay, I screwed up,
Speaker 1: I'm out, we keep throwing more money at it and
Speaker 1: we justify it because most people have something called what's
Speaker 1: called loss of version. And loss of version is this
Speaker 1: idea that I'm uncomfortable with the idea of losing money,
Speaker 1: but the money is already lost us. Right, there's so
Speaker 1: much of this and MLM because it keeps you there. Right.
Speaker 1: Once you realize the emperor isn't actually wearing any clothes,
Speaker 1: you now then have to, you know, justify why you're
Speaker 1: still here, because it's clearly not what we signed up for.
Speaker 1: But now I'm invested. Now I'm investment. I've put a
Speaker 1: lot of money in it. And they keep telling me
Speaker 1: if I keep working harder and I'm doing the steps
Speaker 1: and I'm doing the things and I'm working the thing
Speaker 1: and they're doing the thing, and it just keeps keeping
Speaker 1: on the hook for longer and longer and longer. Like
Speaker 1: I remember leaving and one of the sunk costs that
Speaker 1: they tried to use against me was something cringe you
Speaker 1: called your why, which is the reason that you're doing this.
Speaker 1: And we always would say if you're why doesn't make
Speaker 1: you cry, then you're not digging deep enough, which is
Speaker 1: so toxic. And we play this game where we would
Speaker 1: play the y game where you'd have to give your
Speaker 1: why and then your partner would say why, and you'd
Speaker 1: have to answer and they say why until that other
Speaker 1: person was like like to the point where you're literally
Speaker 1: like breaking down and you're finding your true why. And
Speaker 1: so we have this like why that we're following, and
Speaker 1: everything we're doing is for this thing. It's our why.
Speaker 1: So when I left, that was the first thing when
Speaker 1: I was like, I don't think I want to do
Speaker 1: this anymore. That was the first thing they brought up,
Speaker 1: Well what about your why? And I was like okay,
Speaker 1: and they're like, the reason you're doing this that was
Speaker 1: your kids. You wanted to stay home and be home
Speaker 1: with your kids, like you wanted to be able to
Speaker 1: be there for your kids and be the mom that
Speaker 1: you always wanted to be. And I'm like, crap, got
Speaker 1: me on a technicality, that's true. And I was like
Speaker 1: and I ended up agreeing with her on the phone
Speaker 1: and deciding to stay. It was very short lived. I
Speaker 1: only stayed for about an extra hour, but I did
Speaker 1: decide to stay because she had manipulated me on that
Speaker 1: the love. But you're doing this for your kids. It's
Speaker 1: gas lighting their doubting reality. Obviously you're still committed to
Speaker 1: your kids. Okay, you don't want to sell pizza leggings.
Speaker 1: You're not committed to your kids? Is it's to me?
Speaker 1: It's the most distorted, twisted gas lighting. And I've heard
Speaker 1: it all. This is a new level. Okay, you can't
Speaker 1: sell bizarrely patterned clothes, you don't love your kids. That
Speaker 1: kind of reality shifting to a person who now may
Speaker 1: actually feel like they are failing because they're not moving
Speaker 1: inventory because the inventory is not attractive, or there's too
Speaker 1: many people selling it. It's cruel. It is cruel, and
Speaker 1: there were people, and there's still people in the lure
Speaker 1: that fall for it every day. There's still people that
Speaker 1: are loyal, maybe not even in Lulu Ro anymore, that
Speaker 1: are still loyal to Lulu Ro while harass me on
Speaker 1: the internet and leave nasty comments. It is funny, but
Speaker 1: they're still loyal, and they still think that what I'm
Speaker 1: saying is ridiculous and I'm just complaining and I should
Speaker 1: be lucky. The fashion industry has defects and it's part
Speaker 1: of the thing, and like you should again, you should
Speaker 1: have worked harder, or I'm so thankful that Lula Row
Speaker 1: did all of this for me, Like you're just ungrateful.
Speaker 1: So that's the enabling you're saying, is that the system, though,
Speaker 1: still has a lot of enablers in it. People who
Speaker 1: will say you're bad, you're wrong, the abuser basically is right.
Speaker 1: They trauma bond to the abuser, and as part of
Speaker 1: that denial structure, they shame people. I get people that
Speaker 1: come at me all the time. I'm pretty out there
Speaker 1: on social media. I'll have those people that come to
Speaker 1: me and they're like, mm, it has been And I'm like,
Speaker 1: all right, well, I guess I'll make an example out
Speaker 1: of you today and educate people and say, like, what's
Speaker 1: happening right here? This is enabling, this is gas lighting.
Speaker 1: You know, this is what colts do. This is what
Speaker 1: mL ms do. This is what high demand toxic groups do.
Speaker 1: Whether it's one on one like in narsi assistic relationship,
Speaker 1: or one on however many in an MLM or a
Speaker 1: pyramid scheme or a cult, like, it's the same, it's
Speaker 1: just different size. It is a different size, and I
Speaker 1: think that there's slightly different issues. But I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people who get pulled into the MLM world,
Speaker 1: if you're not familiar with the concept of a narcissistic relationship,
Speaker 1: or if you've been in nothing but narcissistic relationships and
Speaker 1: don't know the alternative, there's a real vulnerability just thinking
Speaker 1: that what's happening here is normal. Right. I want to
Speaker 1: ask you, other than money, what are the other things
Speaker 1: that you think people lose two MLMs. Money is obvious, right,
Speaker 1: five thou dollars right off the gate, But other than money,
Speaker 1: what do you think people lose sanity when they're in
Speaker 1: an M LM sanity, sanity, definitely sanity, sense of self
Speaker 1: since of their individuality. They lose who they are, They
Speaker 1: lose their real friends, they lose the real family, they
Speaker 1: lose the people that actually care about them, They lose
Speaker 1: whose sense of belonging because it's so freely given and
Speaker 1: then so quickly taken away. The excommunication of MLM was
Speaker 1: the hardest part for me, the way yesterday we were
Speaker 1: bestias and today you blocked me. I have massive abandonment
Speaker 1: issues from being raised by a narcissist who was always
Speaker 1: withholding and was great at the silent treatment, and so
Speaker 1: that is my biggest trigger that you blocking me, you
Speaker 1: ignoring me, you silent treating me on purpose. All of
Speaker 1: that is very hard for me. And that was probably
Speaker 1: the most difficult thing, was leaving and losing my sense
Speaker 1: of self, in my sense of community and everybody that
Speaker 1: had been my friend for eighteen months that I just
Speaker 1: thought I was a piece of ship now like instantly overnight,
Speaker 1: because I didn't want to be a part of this
Speaker 1: game anymore, because it was I was losing myself. I
Speaker 1: was having panic attacks. I had never had bad anxiety.
Speaker 1: Before I had never had panic attacks, and I have
Speaker 1: them all the time. Now I have very bad anxiety,
Speaker 1: a very bad paranoia about a lot of trust issues,
Speaker 1: abandonment issues, like all kinds of things that we're just
Speaker 1: triggered that just came back up and are things that
Speaker 1: I've been working through and fixing in my life over
Speaker 1: the last few years. But you know, those are some
Speaker 1: things that people lose. But I'd say that if you
Speaker 1: don't know what you're dealing with, it's going to take it.
Speaker 1: And I think you raise something here that's so important
Speaker 1: to comment on is that I will say that in
Speaker 1: the wake of whether it's lu lar Row, which got
Speaker 1: a lot of public coverage because of the series, but
Speaker 1: any MLM, there's a real tendency to blame and shame
Speaker 1: the people who did it. Well, you should have known
Speaker 1: you got into it without as much attention to the perpetrators,
Speaker 1: the people who really brought people into these sort of
Speaker 1: shady kinds of business models. But our tendency is to
Speaker 1: always blame the people, saying that's her fault for not
Speaker 1: paying her mortgage, rather than not identifying the vulnerability people have,
Speaker 1: historical vulnerability and the the world class level of manipulation
Speaker 1: that's being applied to people who don't understand what's being
Speaker 1: done to them. Like you said, you lose your sanity.
Speaker 1: You don't know what's up and down anymore. Now you don't,
Speaker 1: and so it's not a great place to make decisions from.
Speaker 1: And honestly, what I'm hearing is that people went into
Speaker 1: this in a really well intentioned, innocent way, saying, here's
Speaker 1: a chance for me to make money. It's all a
Speaker 1: lot of this was happening after the recession. Sometimes it
Speaker 1: was just people wanting to just feel like they were
Speaker 1: also participating in the family, but not wanting to leave
Speaker 1: the house when they had young kids. The motivation what's so,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think in some ways very pure. The
Speaker 1: manipulators we're act they were playing with an entirely different
Speaker 1: deck of cards. And to me, that's not okay. It's
Speaker 1: so easy, it's so easy to blame the people who
Speaker 1: were scammed by these things instead of and we've got
Speaker 1: to get out of the habit of congratulating the manipulators
Speaker 1: and blaming and shaming the p bowl who have been
Speaker 1: harmed by these systems. You know, I will say one
Speaker 1: interesting thing about multi level marketing in terms of victims
Speaker 1: and perpetrators is everybody's both. Everybody in an MLM is
Speaker 1: a victim and a perpetrator. That's interesting. What do you
Speaker 1: mean by that? Because what happens is you get into
Speaker 1: the pyramid and you realize the only way to make
Speaker 1: money in the pyramid is to bring more people in,
Speaker 1: and so you become the perpetrator. And you don't realize
Speaker 1: you're the victim who has become a perpetrator. But because
Speaker 1: you are the victim and you are stuck in this,
Speaker 1: I guess I gotta do this to be successful. And
Speaker 1: you sort of flipped that switch, and you do that,
Speaker 1: you then become the perpetrator. And there are definitely people
Speaker 1: who come on my show who have a lot of
Speaker 1: hard time with that, the realization, like, oh, I found
Speaker 1: your podcast and I was listening and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: thank god, and then you talked about my M a limb,
Speaker 1: and then I went, oh, my god, I'm the perpetrator too.
Speaker 1: Did you ever feel like a perpetrator, Roberta? Not when
Speaker 1: I was in it? No, never do you feel like
Speaker 1: one now? I felt like I was one when I
Speaker 1: was in I'm definitely not a perpect trader anymore. When
Speaker 1: I started to realize what was going on, that was
Speaker 1: like my goal and I stayed at the end of
Speaker 1: Lulu Rich. Was that I at the peak of my team,
Speaker 1: I had seventy five women that were directly underneath me
Speaker 1: in some sort of way, underneath me or underneath people
Speaker 1: that were underneath me, like my pyramids, seventy five strong.
Speaker 1: And so I realized that I'm a big like keeping
Speaker 1: my karma scales like balanced or at least in the good.
Speaker 1: I realized that I was very much upside down in
Speaker 1: my karma, that I had hurt more people, and I
Speaker 1: thought I was offering an opportunity because I had made
Speaker 1: money and I had a positive experience, and so offering
Speaker 1: that opportunity and helping people join, I became that perpetrator.
Speaker 1: But it didn't realize it until after I had left.
Speaker 1: And so I vowed to at least help seventy five women,
Speaker 1: just get me back to slate zero. And I've been
Speaker 1: able to help a lot more than that. And in
Speaker 1: realizing that I was in a cult, that I had
Speaker 1: brought people in, that I had been a part of it,
Speaker 1: that I had told people things that were maybe not
Speaker 1: a hundred percent truth in order to sugarcoat things or
Speaker 1: to make things seem better than they were, or ignore
Speaker 1: things or say that hasn't been my experience. I just
Speaker 1: I realized, oh my god, I was a part of this,
Speaker 1: Like I was a monster too. And I think it's
Speaker 1: really hard for people to admit that there's a lot
Speaker 1: of lies in an MLM. And I like, did, well,
Speaker 1: I don't understand where you or you must be bitter,
Speaker 1: you must have lost money, you must and I'm like no,
Speaker 1: I just I see it for what it is, and
Speaker 1: I can't sit around. Like my dad always told me,
Speaker 1: never be a cheater, a liar, a thief in business.
Speaker 1: Whenever be a cheater and alier and a thief, because
Speaker 1: you have nothing to fall back on at that point.
Speaker 1: If you always start off as a cheater, a liar,
Speaker 1: and thief, you can never become one. But if you
Speaker 1: start off as an honest man, you always have a
Speaker 1: plan B. That was his joke, and so try to
Speaker 1: be as honest as possible. And I started realizing what
Speaker 1: I was doing was being a liar, a cheater, and
Speaker 1: a thief. And I was like, oh, I can't do this,
Speaker 1: And I just I had to tell everybody. I had
Speaker 1: to apologize for it. I had to come clean. I
Speaker 1: had to up as many people as I could get
Speaker 1: out of lu La Row if that's what they wanted.
Speaker 1: I never said you need to leave, but I definitely
Speaker 1: was like, if you want to, I can help you.
Speaker 1: And then that led into me helping other people out
Speaker 1: of other MLMs, and that led to me being a
Speaker 1: witness against them in in the lawsuit in Washington, and
Speaker 1: being a part of Lula Rich and helping actually behind
Speaker 1: the scenes in other Lulua documentaries even though I wasn't
Speaker 1: on screen. I'm always I'm always on the back end
Speaker 1: helping as much as I possibly can and connecting as
Speaker 1: many people. There are so many amazing stories of beautiful,
Speaker 1: wonderful people that were just chewed up and spit out
Speaker 1: that we haven't heard, and so I'm always trying to
Speaker 1: find those stories so that people can connect and people
Speaker 1: can feel validated, and people can say, oh, it's not
Speaker 1: just me, Oh this is a whole thing. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: going to push back on your language that a little bit, okay,
Speaker 1: Instead of victim perpetrator, I almost feel like I'd love
Speaker 1: to prefer to see the language of survivor and manipulator
Speaker 1: like manipulator, And that is one thing is I I
Speaker 1: try to say survivor right because we are victims, but
Speaker 1: I want to help create survivors from victims. So I
Speaker 1: think actually survivors even a better term. I like survivor
Speaker 1: than better than victim. But I also think like, it's
Speaker 1: the survival in that system, right, because as you said,
Speaker 1: I think if a person was said, hey, by recruiting
Speaker 1: other people, you're now setting up people who are going
Speaker 1: to have less likely to make money than you to
Speaker 1: invest the same amount of money and the harm that
Speaker 1: I mean, you're not given an informed consent form. Listen,
Speaker 1: I'm not. Yes, I agree, people have to take personal responsibility,
Speaker 1: and that's part of what I do by teaching people
Speaker 1: about narcissistic relationship, telling everyone all that glitters is not gold,
Speaker 1: something's charismatic and charming, run the hell away, like those
Speaker 1: are my marching orders. Right. If it seems too good
Speaker 1: to be true, it is. However, at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, what ends up happening is that to survive
Speaker 1: in a system, you had to become the system. And
Speaker 1: if you still believed in the system, you were slowly
Speaker 1: morphing into that, and a lot of people who have
Speaker 1: been in narcissistic relationships will say the hardest part of
Speaker 1: healing was I hated who I became. Yeah, absolutely absolutely.
Speaker 1: I didn't recognize myself anymore. I couldn't look myself in
Speaker 1: the mirror. It was that, and I was like, I'm
Speaker 1: the only person that has to look myself in the
Speaker 1: mirror every single day and come to terms with what
Speaker 1: I have done and what I have excused or downplayed.
Speaker 1: I mean, there were people coming to me towards the end,
Speaker 1: before I had left that were like, I'm gonna lose
Speaker 1: my house or I'm going to this is happening, and
Speaker 1: I was just like, pay your mortgage. But I but
Speaker 1: if I could buy three okay, so I could pay
Speaker 1: my marriage, or I could buy five boxes a little row.
Speaker 1: And then if I get those five boxes a little row,
Speaker 1: if I sold at least semi five of it, then
Speaker 1: I would not only make my money back, but I'd
Speaker 1: make more and then I could pay my mortgage and
Speaker 1: I'd have enough to do this and then by luttle
Speaker 1: row with that too. And I was like, that's not
Speaker 1: going to happen, No, And it's people future faking themselves
Speaker 1: and it's tough. So I've been listening to your podcasts.
Speaker 1: I really enjoy it. Please, though, for people who are
Speaker 1: interested in hearing more about MLMs and people stories within them,
Speaker 1: please regrett to tell us about your podcast, tell us
Speaker 1: where we can find you and how we can support you. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: After I finished filming Lula Rich and I finished with
Speaker 1: the Washington lawsuits, I got the phone call that that
Speaker 1: they had settled and I that was like February fourth
Speaker 1: or something of two thousand and twenty. It was like
Speaker 1: February fourth or something, and that was pretty much my
Speaker 1: last like thing that I had committed to, and I felt, okay, Roberta,
Speaker 1: your job is over. Now what? And I had just
Speaker 1: gotten divorced, and so for me, it was my first
Speaker 1: Valentine's Dale by myself, and I thought, what am I
Speaker 1: going to do? Why don't I tell my story and
Speaker 1: start that podcast I've been talking about for the last
Speaker 1: four years. So I had been interviewing people on Facebook
Speaker 1: lives and all of these things for many, many years
Speaker 1: before that, but I had never turned it into anything
Speaker 1: like tangible. So I thought, okay, it's a podcast, like,
Speaker 1: it's free. You can download this app, this thing, and
Speaker 1: I just started telling stories. And in the beginning, I'm
Speaker 1: a hairstyles by trade. I didn't know how to edit,
Speaker 1: I didn't know how to interview people. I didn't know
Speaker 1: how to talk. I didn't know how to work out
Speaker 1: an outline. I didn't know how to do any of that.
Speaker 1: I just knew that I wanted to talk to people
Speaker 1: that had been where I had been in other companies
Speaker 1: to end the stigma of failure, like we're not failures
Speaker 1: seven percent and people lose money in an MLM. That
Speaker 1: is not a statistic of failure. That is a statistic
Speaker 1: of systemic oppression. So it's a Norman nine loves like
Speaker 1: then that's how it is. Like we talked about gambling earlier.
Speaker 1: Percent of people losing gambling, of people losing mL them
Speaker 1: like it's in an actual illegal Pyramids game, the one
Speaker 1: that the government shuts down. That's only one person, so
Speaker 1: it's really wild. And I would see these statistics, and
Speaker 1: I would find these articles and I would read these things,
Speaker 1: and I would be like, more people need to know
Speaker 1: about this, And so I started that podcast, and I
Speaker 1: sort of did a call to action. I had people
Speaker 1: follow me. I said if you want to talk to me,
Speaker 1: I would love to have you. And we just started
Speaker 1: telling stories and I would just I didn't know how
Speaker 1: to edit, and I would just throw them up. What's
Speaker 1: your podcast called. It's called Life After MLM. And that's
Speaker 1: what we talk about. We are ending the stigma of
Speaker 1: failure in an industry that is systemically designed for you
Speaker 1: to fail. And we talked to experts, survivors, other advocates,
Speaker 1: other activists. I even cover fraud scams, colts and all
Speaker 1: of that stuff too. In between to show you all
Speaker 1: the different red flags and how those Vin diagrams are circles.
Speaker 1: Yeah they are, Yeah they are absolutely Well, it's all
Speaker 1: the psychology yea of of narcissism. Ultimately, I'm gonna always
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna always bring it up that flag pole.
Speaker 1: So well, I again, thank you so much, because you know,
Speaker 1: like I said, I when I heard about MLMs, I
Speaker 1: was like, boom, narcissistic relationship. This is a no brainer
Speaker 1: for me, and I wanted to bring that frame and
Speaker 1: hear your experience. But everything you describe what happened, the
Speaker 1: love bombing, the experience in it, and even the fallout,
Speaker 1: it's all consistent with what happens to people in narcissistic relationships. So, ROBERTA,
Speaker 1: thank you for this very lively conversation. And I still
Speaker 1: got me a pair of Lulu ro leggings with pencils
Speaker 1: all over them in my drawer that still have they
Speaker 1: asked in them. So I'm pretty happy to say I
Speaker 1: haven't joined him yet. Does a matter of time. These
Speaker 1: are my takeaways from my conversation with ROBERTA. First, the
Speaker 1: very nature of MLMs is consistent with the telltale signs
Speaker 1: and features of a narcissistic relationship. The love bombing, future faking, manipulation, shaming,
Speaker 1: and then rejection of anyone that dares to speak out.
Speaker 1: It's the architecture of a narcissistic relationship in order to
Speaker 1: bring in financially or psychologically vulnerable individuals and sell them
Speaker 1: on a bad idea. Empathy also is sacking. This means
Speaker 1: that any sales venture that seems too good to be true,
Speaker 1: that requires a major upfront investment, and plays games like
Speaker 1: delays and onboarding, those are all red flags. Our next
Speaker 1: takeaway is that ROBERTA story and statements like if your
Speaker 1: why doesn't make you cry, you aren't digging deep enough
Speaker 1: are great examples of connecting a business arrangement like sales
Speaker 1: to the personal and that makes it easier to manipulate someone.
Speaker 1: While it's healthy to feel passionate about professional pursuits, it's
Speaker 1: dangerous when those with more power are trying to elicit
Speaker 1: such a strong emotional response, which can then be used
Speaker 1: as a tool to gas like you. When boundaries are
Speaker 1: being pushed and it is being implied that you don't
Speaker 1: care enough, start looking for the exit. And finally, the
Speaker 1: power of any toxic system is the power to entice
Speaker 1: people with the seduction of community and friendship, and to
Speaker 1: use that sense of community as a weapon and withdraw
Speaker 1: and withhold when there is a sense that someone is
Speaker 1: not playing by the rules of the MLM. MLMs often
Speaker 1: have the most success with people who feel already isolated, lonely,
Speaker 1: or in need of social support and friendship, so from
Speaker 1: the very beginning, the MLM has the ultimate tool to
Speaker 1: keep people in line social rejection. This is a reminder
Speaker 1: of why it is so important to give ourselves permission
Speaker 1: to keep cultivating healthy supports, and not just with people
Speaker 1: who are becoming friends solely because of their affiliation with
Speaker 1: something that will benefit them if you join. A big
Speaker 1: thank you to our executive producers Jada Pinkett Smith Fallon, Jethrow,
Speaker 1: Ellen Rakaton and Dr Rominey de Vassela. And thank you
Speaker 1: to our producer Matthew Jones, associate producer Mara Dela Rosa
Speaker 1: and consultant Kelly Ebling. And finally, thank you to our
Speaker 1: editors and sound engineers Devin Donnaghe and Calvin Bailiff