Episode 4: Diet Pills & Country Heat

Clips: 

7:10:

“I thought I was in cosmetology school. I was working enough to, I mean, I had to pay my own way. I had to pay for everything. So I was working enough to pay my bills to live. And I just thought to myself like, oh, when I finished school I’m gonna make, you know, I’m gonna make good money and I’m gonna be able to just pay this back.

You know? Right. Sure. I had also had a Sally May loan to go to cosmetology school, which is like the biggest scam ever. Yeah. I was able to pay that off way, way early, but you know, it’s just the whole concept of you think, oh, someday I’m gonna be able to pay this off, and unless you figure out a way. It’s a massive chunk of money or take a tax return or whatever it may be.

Like, it just never happens and it just adds up little by little, very quickly.”

18:30:

 

I went to an event. They announced still bonuses. I could, you know, hit this status. And get this double bonus. So I hit this status the next month, hit the next status, got $60,000 in bonuses. So this was March, in April, may, I had like a $4,000 paycheck, but I also spent close to 2000 in, uh, product, which is called Bonus Mine.

Um, that was in. My paycheck was in May, June. I lost the first, you know, the higher status just because momentum, it would’ve been double diamond, right? Yep. So it was a diamond bonus and a double diamond bonus. In May, I lost double diamond, which means that second half of that bonus I lost. Because in order to get paid out the full bonus, you have to maintain your status for 24 months.

Didn’t have a clue that that’s how it worked. You know, people walk around all the time like, oh, I earned 60,000 in bonuses. I earned a hundred thousand in bonuses. Most of ’em didn’t actually ever earn that because you don’t, most likely don’t maintain your status for that long. Um, because it’s a lot of costing to maintain it.

It’s a lot of replacing.

22:10

I mean, there was a, a month where we were scrounging around getting my dad’s coffee can money to go get prepaid cards.

To fill boxes so that we could get our bonus, because that bonus was what was paying our bills for us. It was a 100,000, which was split out into 25 months, um, which was 4,000 a month. And so even if I was spending 3,900. It was worth it to make 4,000 because then it kept the 4,000 the next month. But when I look back, what I knew, what I know is that that company knew that we would do that.

They knew that we would lose it. They knew they would never pay out that money. They knew I would buy a ton of product and then they knew that they would at least get a couple months worth, and then they knew I would post that I made a hundred thousand dollars bonus, and then hopefully some other idiot would come along.

And do the same thing over and over and over again. And there were really no real customers in the mix. It was just you and me trying to pay our bills.

25:55

My, my business was all me. I filled every box. I had a couple people that worked the business that, you know, could get one or two customers, but they couldn’t, you know, all the people that went Ruby by, like those people were all their boxes filled by me.

And you can only keep up that pace of hustle for so long. Yeah. Before like, I cannot do this anymore. Yeah. And I, it was like embarrassing like at some point I just woke up one day and I was like, I am never gonna be able to like, say again that I earned 60,000 in bonuses when they paid me 4,000. And then it was, you know, gone.

Like, it just, yeah. One thing I just realized like, that just feels so wrong. Like I don’t, I mean, knowing that I was supposed to say that and it was wrong, and then knowing what happened to my paycheck, I just was like, I cannot bring people into this business and tell ’em that they can go do this. I can’t help people make money here because nobody wants to hustle like I’m hustling.

27:45

I think some people just don’t have morals or that like guilty conscience and I do. Like if I stole a pencil the next day, I’d be like, I feel guilty. Like I cannot live with myself just knowing that I’ve, you know, done something.

And not anybody has that. People, some people really only care about themselves and can continue to do things like that knowing that people are gonna get hurt, and I just knew I couldn’t. Um, and then also I think that we almost believe the lies. It’s like when you tell yourself a story and you start to believe it.

Um, we believed it for a while. We just really believed that that was the greatest opportunity and everybody could make a million dollars and we were gonna go to the top and we were gonna be those elite people roped off one day and it’s just, you know, they, they sell something that’s so much hype and so much excitement that you just, you just eat it all up and you’re like, I’m gonna do it.

29:48

I think some people just don’t have morals or that like guilty conscience and I do. Like if I stole a pencil the next day, I’d be like, I feel guilty. Like I cannot live with myself just knowing that I’ve, you know, done something.

And not anybody has that. People, some people really only care about themselves and can continue to do things like that knowing that people are gonna get hurt, and I just knew I couldn’t. Um, and then also I think that we almost believe the lies. It’s like when you tell yourself a story and you start to believe it.

Um, we believed it for a while. We just really believed that that was the greatest opportunity and everybody could make a million dollars and we were gonna go to the top and we were gonna be those elite people roped off one day and it’s just, you know, they, they sell something that’s so much hype and so much excitement that you just, you just eat it all up and you’re like, I’m gonna do it.

31:15

I can dance, like what I can do, and I don’t have to go lift heavy weights. So I didn’t, I didn’t, I had never been really to like a gym to lift weights before that I had gone to the gym and ran, or, you know, I had done, um, you know, a lot of like elliptical, that kind of thing. But like the weights were never my thing.

And so I, I was terrified, but I was like, I can do that Dance uhhuh. I can do that. And to make a, Hey, I just have to make a video of me doing that dance and like I don’t even care. That’s fine. So, I mean, I still have those videos on my Facebook of us doing that. I’m gonna find them. Country heat. I find the country heat.

I didn’t know that. Country heat’s what got you, huh? Yeah. Oh, your story about this diet pill and country heat may be that they may they, I was cranky when I started today, but I’m now no longer cranky because of your diet pill sales and country heat.

41:54

We experienced some crazy, we were the dumbest of the dumb. We met face and learned a lot of stuff the hard way. And so there just needs to be more people talking about what happened to them. You know, education and just different things about what to look for, because we didn’t, we thought, I mean, even when we joined Nirium, we were like, this is it.

Not for sure it was. Yeah. But we can’t, anybody truly, like we didn’t, there just wasn’t knowledge on, you know, real, we hadn’t ever seen a good comp plan before. So to us, every comp plan looked like the best one cuz we hadn’t seen a truly good one. You know, I think a lot of people just haven’t gotten to that point where they can even understand a compensation plan.

Plan, let alone actually get one, you know, join a company and do a thing where they’re gonna make. The amount of money that they wanna make.

 

Transcript:

 Hey, I’m excited to have you back for another episode of the M MLM Exposed Podcast. Don’t let the title freak you out. We are not anti M L M and these are not bash sessions. We are however, pro truth and pro dialogue, and you deserve to hear it all, the good, the bad, and the ugly. If you’re new to our community, we drop a new podcast each week.

Everyone here has a story to tell. Some may horrify you, some you’ll relate to, but no matter what the best lessons learned are through the experiences of others. And we think those stories are worth sharing. If this episode helps you, please subscribe so you don’t miss a thing. And even better leave a review unless it’s bad.

Then keep your opinions to yourself. Jk. We love the truth here. Thank you again for being with us and MLM exposed. We believe firmly that when you know better, you do better. And we think this conversation is more relevant than ever. Begin.

 Okay,  so I am Abby. I’m a MA of four. I’m a former hair stylist. Um, I like to exercise. I love Jesus, and I just love, um, the whole concept of working for yourself and being an entrepreneur. So, I know your story, but if you were to tell me your story in the m MLM space, so the gist of this conversation and, and I.

I think we’ll just say this over and over again, and I think you agree with me. I am not anti m l m in any way. Um, I am, this is not an anti m l m channel. This isn’t something where we’re gonna sit around and make fun of people that are in M mlm. But what I think is that the concept of M MLM exposed, or ml M P T S D, um, is really, it’s an important thing that needs to be discussed.

I think that knowledge is power. I think there’s some really bad stuff that happens in that industry. I think that a lot is done very poorly, and I think that way too many people get hurt. So that’s the gist of this. I feel like you agree. Um, so if you were to tell me your m l M journey, where did it start?

 So I was probably 18 years old when I, um, went to a lady’s house. She, I had known her for a long time. She’s from my hometown, but I was in cosmetology school and she invited me over, actually, I had went to a makeup party for a friend, and then from that party, everybody there had to book like a one-on-one with this lady in order to get like a discount.

So, um, then I go to her house for my little one-on-one and she has. You know, convinces me to try the business side and she has a form to fill out or to apply for a credit card. So I applied for the credit card. I got approved for $3,000. And so we went on and placed an order for $3,000 worth of makeup.

So that’s kind of how I started. Um, most of that makeup sat in a tub in my closet for years, way too much that I could ever use. Um, and didn’t. I was working like two jobs going to school. 35 hours a week and I just didn’t have time to do a ton of parties. I did a few parties, but couldn’t get rid of that product before it expired.

 So the plan when you got your $3,000 worth of makeup was that you were gonna sell it all at parties. That was the expectation. Was there, was there a plan in place, like once you pay for $3,000 worth, this is how many parties you’re gonna have to do to get rid of it? Or what was the what?  No, there was no plan.

Um, and then to stay active, you had to place like a $400 order every couple of months. And I did like the product. I mean, I enjoyed it, but I couldn’t order enough to, I mean, it just kept piling up after that. And then it was like, I could sell a couple of things here and there. You know, I had a couple friends that would use some stuff, but there was no plan in place.

It was just simply, Go have some parties and then I, there was, she, there was a lot of communication about like, you know, leadership meetings and that kind of stuff, but not about truly, you know, helping me figure out how to get rid of that product, pay off that credit card. Um, it was a lot of product, a lot.

 This is probably just digging into too much of your personal life, but what ended up happening when that credit card, when did you pay that sucker back? When I joined Melaluca,

that’s the credit card that, I mean, that it, I hadn’t,  I mean, I was 18 and I had a credit card. What was it? What was I gonna do with it? I didn’t like go crazy, but I had a credit card, so if I really wanted something, I didn’t have the money, I’d bought it. Um, and that was the credit card? Mm-hmm. A Mary Kay credit card.

Well, it’s not Mary Kay. It was just a. It was like to a bank, like a US bank or whatever they, you know, know that they can get whatever they use. Yeah. Um, so when I, you know, how many years later was that? That was probably 2006. 2007 ish. So 10 years later. Later. And it wasn’t like a outrageous credit card. I mean, probably had like $5,000 on it, which.

Could be much worse. So I had a similar ex, uh, this is off topic, but it’s not,  we could totally go on rants about financial literacy and that I think that we need, this is a topic that we need to discuss, don’t I, I feel like, let’s put it on our whiteboard of really important things that. We need to discuss with our teams, with our families, with our friends, with whatever this channel ends up being.

But um,  my thesis in college was on financial literacy and the fact that college students are not taught how to balance their checkbooks. We’re not taught how to budget. We’re not taught how to pay bills. We’re taught algebra, and we’re taught geometry. But then our colleges are offering credit cards and we’re leaving college with a hundred thousand dollars in debt, or $20,000 in debt.

And the only way that you can defer your student loans is to go back to school and add more loans. So that’s a whole nother racket that we could talk about. But  I did a similar thing when I was in my early twenties, um, and it wasn’t an mlm, it was a wedding. I had a friend that got married. Way out of town, um, a way fancier life than I could afford.

The dress alone was like $380. The shoes was one, were one 50, the travel out there, the house, the, all the stuff. And so I ended up with a couple thousand dollars on a credit card, and then I only paid the minimum payment. For years and I, I literally ended up with some sort of settlement. Like that credit card company got sued and I didn’t know it.

And then I ended up with a little bit of my money back because they probably saw broke people like me that got swindled into like 35% interest or something just completely out of control. But I lived on that little hunk of debt, um, forever. I would bet 90% of people have some version of a. Debt story that started with something.

Um, well, and what happened is I,  I thought I was in cosmetology school. I was working enough to, I mean, I had to pay my own way. I had to pay for everything. So I was working enough to pay my bills to live. And I just thought to myself like, oh, when I finished school I’m gonna make, you know, I’m gonna make good money and I’m gonna be able to just pay this back.

You know? Right. Sure. I had also had a Sally May loan to go to cosmetology school, which is like the biggest scam ever. Yeah. I was able to pay that off way, way early, but you know, it’s just the whole concept of you think, oh, someday I’m gonna be able to pay this off, and unless you figure out a way. It’s a massive chunk of money or take a tax return or whatever it may be.

Like, it just never happens and it just adds up little by little, very quickly.  Yep, a hundred percent. Um, okay, so you did your, you know, big pile of makeup. Did I ever tell you my BD control story? I think, yeah, I think you did. I don’t remember it, but I, I, I had a similar story where I went to a party and.

We tried all this product and I was in college and I was, I did like mystery shopping and stuff like that. Like I would do anything to make a buck. Like I, I mean, I sold my poop in Mexico and made enough money to pay for my bus for a week. So like, I know I am a survivor, but in college I went to a beauty control party and I, she did all these products and they were fine, but at the end she had one of those like fancy head scratchers and she went around the room and scratched all of our heads, which also makes me think like, How many people got headlights because of the head scratcher?

I don’t know. Anyway. Now as an adult I’m like, Ugh. But, and in college I was like, that fricking head scratcher is the best thing I’ve ever used in my entire life. And I joined with a $300 kit just because of the head scratcher. That actually wasn’t even a part of the company that you could just buy on Amazon.

Um, and then I, I ended up going to a bunch of meetings. I bought bigger kits. I went to this one meeting, and then I, by the time I went to, I went to my party, then I went to a big, Like Saturday training where I bought my big kit. Then I went to a meeting with the big, the big woman. You know, like there’s always like the leader in the village.

And she was like the leader and she was this very loud, kind of obnoxious, bossy woman. And so at the training, she was like the one that told us all, we better get to work and yada, yada, yada. But when we went to her house, the last half of the meeting was her crying and how her marriage was ruined. It was just this crazy thing and then this old lady farted really loud and it, and anyways, that was the end of my beauty control career.

But um, and then I, same thing, I left it all in drawers in my basement and then I would just randomly give people it for Christmas for like five years. I mean, many people in my family got expired beauty control products. So, um, okay, so then what was next? So I finished cosmetology school. I moved back home, um, started working at a salon in my small town and quickly decided I didn’t want to work for anyone.

 I wanted to own the salon. So I bought the salon and worked a lot doing that. And that was great. But um, I always just wanted something extra and so there was always something and it was kind of whatever came to town or whatever I could get my hands on, I could tell you, I don’t even know. Which one was exactly next, but um, one that was really short-lived was the Mishi bags.

Um, I don’t, they were like, it was like a purse and you bought the hard shell and you could change out the hard shell. They were so stupid. And they were so expensive. But actually my cousin was super excited about ’em, and so she talked me into it and we had ’em in the salon for a while. Um, there was another brand of bags.

It wasn’t 31. It wasn’t, I can’t remember what it was, but it was like, Kinda like a knockoff Vera  Bradley? Oh yeah. Uhhuh. I can’t think of what it was called, but I still have some of them. But I had to buy a bunch of ’em. But I thought like, it’s fine cuz I can sell ’em in the salon, which I did, but I could sell a couple and that was it.

It was never enough to like make money. It was just enough to like cover the cost of my own bag or, you know. Right. One was the A diet pill. And I, that diet pillow is no longer available because it’s, it’s that bad. But it worked. Like I, I tell you all the time, like if like, to get my hands on that again, we’d all be, I mean it, it’s called crack.

Okay. It’s called cocaine. It’s called illegal drugs. Yeah. That one I sold a ton of, A ton of it. People bought the heck of it because it worked, but it was. Horrible for you. Uh, ba it basically completely took away your appetite. Was it like a fedra? It was called Ace. Um, I am a friend that still is like, where do we find that?

Like, look again. Um, story, I got addicted to Hydroxycut in high school. I could take some, I could take some hydroxycut that I bought at the Dollar General and then go all day without food. And then I’d go to school af after school, I worked a Dairy Queen and I’d have one piece of toast and a stir fruit or whatever those were.

And that would be my meal for the day. Mm-hmm. Where was therapy? I don’t even know, but I needed it cuz I was eating starfruit and some toast and running three miles and starving. I don’t know why my guts are a mess today. We would take this stuff and just took away your appetite and it was like the best, like I don’t even need any food ever again.

Like, this is great. Yeah, I did that. In which, I mean, people would buy the heck out of it, but nobody wanted to buy it forever. They bought it for a couple of months, lost a few pounds. And then a couple months later they’re like, oh, I think I need another bottle. And we sold sample packs. It was more of like a, I bought a ton of it and then sold it, but Okay.

It wasn’t like a big income. It was like, you know, I bought ’em for $30 and could sell ’em for 40, you know, so called drug dealing. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. Something so that it was their problem, but um, What was next? Um, after that was probably when I did the Visas shakes, which, oh wow. I mean, I, I liked the taste of the shakes, but I didn’t sell many of them.

Um, people thought it was gonna help ’em lose weight, and it’s a shake, like, you know, it was back for a day when people would do anything to lose weight and there really wasn’t as much knowledge and information on weight loss. You know, there just really wasn’t, you know, that 10, 15 years ago. Um, I feel like now there’s just so much more people are educating now and so, right.

That didn’t last long either. I’m trying, I had a guy, so I know you’re continuing down your story, but  I had a guy that was a youth minister, um, at a church. That I attended for a period of time, and he started Body by Sal, by VI or by Salas or whatever it was. And, um, I, it was when I had started… 

So I had gone down the train. I was really excited, I was having a great time. And his message to me was, if you’re ever done playing around with Skinny Wrap, you can join the real, you can join a real team or you can join a real company. Um, And I told him to shove it up, the Lord’s whatever.

Probably I probably just totally cussed at him and told him to buzz off, and I don’t think he’s with Visalis anymore. I don’t think Visalis, exi, does Visalis exist? I don’t think so. Like now they’re still travel. They lined with something. They do travel. Yeah. Isn’t then what Clinton did? Clinton? Mm-hmm. Yeah.

That kind of group. Mm-hmm. Yeah. They went from weight loss shakes to traveling. Makes sense. It’s totally a, it’s like the same product line. They’re passionate about their products. Okay, so Visalis  after that, I can’t really remember. There was probably a few other little things here and there, but um, somewhere between there I started having babies.

I did, I wanna say you did another makeup company. I did some makeup again, I can’t remember, but anyways, somewhere in there I started having babies and then I had ano, so  I had my twins, and then Tegan was born 22 months later, and it was after Tegan was born that I was like, okay, well actually, after my twins were born, I realized that I didn’t wanna work six days a week in the salon anymore.

So after my twins are born, I cut down to three days a week and it was great. Three days a week, plus like weddings, et cetera, on the weekends. Um, but then I had a third baby and I was like, wow. Like realizing, you know, the cost of three children, three in diaper for over a year. Yeah. For me, you know, health insurance as two people that were business owners of their own, you know, we didn’t have insurance through a job, all those things.

And I was like, I don’t wanna work more hours in my salon. I’ve gotta find something I can do on the side. And that’s when we did one company. Teagan was just born. Um, and I joined at works and worked that like the first year of her life a lot. I worked it a lot. It was very much till 1:00 AM every night, you know, sending all the messages, doing all the, asking people to post and all the things.

And so that was the whole first year of real life. I mean, I had three tiny children at home and I worked three days in the salon, and I did that. So what brought you there? What was the appeal for you? So it was, there was a lot of people locally doing it already. I kind of got in late because I had all these other experiences and I was like, haha, skinnier wraps, that’s not gonna last.

You know? I had seen what happened with all the other things I had seen, what happened with the diet stuff and all of that. And so I got in late, but I watched a lot of local people. Really wanna buy the stupid wraps. And I was like, whatever. If that’s what people around here want right now, I can do it.

Like I’ll do it. Um, right. I had went to a couple of parties and tried it and I was like, I’m gonna come buy this stuff. I’m gonna sell it. It’s just, you know, and it’s something that I was always, I enjoyed talking to people in my salon about things outside of. The salon, you know, was selling, um, hair care products, but if I could get them on, you know, something else, I, I could sell it to ’em.

 And I enjoyed that and people enjoyed like, asking me things like that. And it was like, I kind of had a reputation for it at that point for selling something. And so, um, there was just a couple local mamas and by the time I joined, the one that I joined with wasn’t even doing the business anymore. She was just collecting a little paycheck.

Yes, I remember this now. And then it was her sister-in-law that connected me with kind of the KC people. And so we went to a lot of meetings in Kansas City and that’s where I met you. Um, okay, so you worked sunup to sundown. For the first year, made some decent income, went to a lot of events. Um, what was the, what happened there?

What was the turning point? So, um, let’s see.  I went to an event. They announced still bonuses. I could, you know, hit this status. And get this double bonus. So I hit this status the next month, hit the next status, got $60,000 in bonuses. So this was March, in April, may, I had like a $4,000 paycheck, but I also spent close to 2000 in, uh, product, which is called Bonus Mine.

Um, that was in. My paycheck was in May, June. I lost the first, you know, the higher status just because momentum, it would’ve been double diamond, right? Yep. So it was a diamond bonus and a double diamond bonus. In May, I lost double diamond, which means that second half of that bonus I lost. Because in order to get paid out the full bonus, you have to maintain your status for 24 months.

Didn’t have a clue that that’s how it worked. You know, people walk around all the time like, oh, I earned 60,000 in bonuses. I earned a hundred thousand in bonuses. Most of ’em didn’t actually ever earn that because you don’t, most likely don’t maintain your status for that long. Um, because it’s a lot of costing to maintain it.

It’s a lot of replacing.  

 ​

 And so the next month I knew I could probably maintain Diamond and get that bonus paid out. And then right at the end of the month, I found out that I was gonna be getting divorced and like life came crashing down. So the next month lost diamond and like by the, it was probably by like September, October, my paycheck was like $200.

Like it was just gone. So the month I made 4 40, 400 ish, I spent like 2000. And the next month my paycheck was like 2000, and then 1000, and then 800 and then 500, and then it was like nothing. It was just that quickly. It was just gone. What did you do with all the product that you bought? Oh, it just piled up for a long time.

Um, you know, it was that fall that I met Chantel, you know, and reached out to her. And so I just had all that product sitting there for a long time. I eventually, I eventually sold it, I think on eBay. Mm-hmm. I, um, so you mentioned the double bonuses, so this could be a rant that we could go on.  We can literally dissect.

Compensation plans. Shannon and I talked about this earlier. We could dissect bonus structures and what’s really happening behind the scenes. So for us, in the past tense, what our company would do is during not just slow seasons, but during busy seasons, they would announce these bonuses and during really crazy times, they would double the bonuses and at the time, I would cry my eyes out thinking, oh my gosh, this is gonna save my life a $100,000 bonus, or a $50,000 bonus, or a $20,000 bonus.

And again, Abby, you mentioned that people would post, we, we would make posts. I had, I probably still have them in my Facebook memories with a graphic of my family, and it says, I earned a $100,000 bonus. That’s what we were told. That’s what we were sold. Um, and that’s then what we did. The company would announce these bonuses, and here’s what I now know that they knew.

They knew that you and I would work 25 out of 24 hours a day. We would contact everyone we’ve ever known in our entire lives. We would probably sign up our dogs and our chickens. Um, we would Oh, scrounge around for, I mean, there was a, a month where we were scrounging around getting my dad’s coffee can money to go get prepaid cards.

To fill boxes so that we could get our bonus, because that bonus was what was paying our bills for us. It was a 100,000, which was split out into 25 months, um, which was 4,000 a month. And so even if I was spending 3,900. It was worth it to make 4,000 because then it kept the 4,000 the next month. But when I look back, what I knew, what I know is that that company knew that we would do that.

They knew that we would lose it. They knew they would never pay out that money. They knew I would buy a ton of product and then they knew that they would at least get a couple months worth, and then they knew I would post that I made a hundred thousand dollars bonus, and then hopefully some other idiot would come along.

And do the same thing over and over and over again. And there were really no real customers in the mix. It was just you and me trying to pay our bills.  Yep. I remember calling my in-laws at this time, oh, it’s so late, and I just need like a couple more customers. Can you just, you know, let me use your card and I’m gonna buy this amount of stuff and I’ll pay you back cause I’m gonna get this huge bonus.

Like, what the heck? I’m like, I don’t know. You know, looking back like, ugh.  When I went triple, when I went presidential, I actually almost went organically. It was really wild. But when I went triple diamond, I probably spent five grand or six. It was insane because it was, it was so patched together that the diamond that I had to patch was like a dead leg.

And again, it was built for us to constantly be patching. The compensation plan wasn’t built to work with workers. It was, it was built to screw us over. I firmly believe that. But so the last day of the month, or maybe the, the day before, I think it was the last day. Somebody had hadn’t canceled or returned their product or had done something crazy and it was a Ruby.

So it was one of the rubies under the dine end that I needed for triple had like returned her auto shipment because she wasn’t working it and she didn’t want the product and she didn’t care about going Ruby, but I needed her to be Ruby. And so you either had to have your a D, BV auto shipment, or you had to have the 400 BV box.

So I had to go to this woman’s house. Bring her a check, I think written by Stephanie Doss. I think Stephanie Doss had to give me a check that I then had to pay her back. I had to write this woman a check. She had to deposit it into her bank account, and then we had to order 400 and something dollars worth of product under this one woman’s.

Account and that chick I hadn’t talked to in months because she wasn’t working, I was just filling her boxes. I showed up and she was like naked under a robe. It was like the messiest, stupidest thing. And here I am, college grad, left a really high paying corporate America job, and I am bringing random paper checks to naked women in bathrobes so that I can, I mean like, oh my god, you know?

Um, well, What else happened? Anything else that happened and that, that’s our main hunk, like that’s where you and I met. Um, anything else happened. Why do you think that your paycheck went from 4,400 to 200 in such a fast time period? Why do you think that happened? Well,  the biggest issue is people order because they have to for three months, because they have to do three months worth.

And so we beg ’em to order a product a month for at least three months so that we can, you know, know that box is filled. They nor never order again after that. Um, but it was the same thing. My, my business was all me. I filled every box. I had a couple people that worked the business that, you know, could get one or two customers, but they couldn’t, you know, all the people that went Ruby by, like those people were all their boxes filled by me.

And you can only keep up that pace of hustle for so long. Yeah. Before like, I cannot do this anymore. Yeah. And I, it was like embarrassing like at some point I just woke up one day and I was like, I am never gonna be able to like, say again that I earned 60,000 in bonuses when they paid me 4,000. And then it was, you know, gone.

Like, it just, yeah. One thing I just realized like, that just feels so wrong. Like I don’t, I mean, knowing that I was supposed to say that and it was wrong, and then knowing what happened to my paycheck, I just was like, I cannot bring people into this business and tell ’em that they can go do this. I can’t help people make money here because nobody wants to hustle like I’m hustling.

 You know? I just realized that what I thought was a great opportunity wasn’t. There was too many holes in the compensation plan. They weren’t there to truly help us win. They, they were there for other reasons. So, um, you mentioned something that I think is another topic we could go on and on and on about, which is just that hustle culture.

Why do you think that people, so like you said, you woke up one day. And said, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t lie to people. I can’t, I can’t tell people I’ve done something that I haven’t, and I certainly can’t make a promise to somebody that they can do something that I don’t think they can do. Why do other people get stuck?

What happens? What do you think is the diagnosis that some people stay in it forever? Well, first of all, I,  I think some people just don’t have morals or that like guilty conscience and I do. Like if I stole a pencil the next day, I’d be like, I feel guilty. Like I cannot live with myself just knowing that I’ve, you know, done something.

And not anybody has that. People, some people really only care about themselves and can continue to do things like that knowing that people are gonna get hurt, and I just knew I couldn’t. Um, and then also I think that we almost believe the lies. It’s like when you tell yourself a story and you start to believe it.

Um, we believed it for a while. We just really believed that that was the greatest opportunity and everybody could make a million dollars and we were gonna go to the top and we were gonna be those elite people roped off one day and it’s just, you know, they, they sell something that’s so much hype and so much excitement that you just, you just eat it all up and you’re like, I’m gonna do it.

You know? And you, you started just believing the lies and I don’t know, I just, I, I eventually got a guilty conscience and I think some people just don’t. Yeah, they use the, this isn’t used in M mlm, but the, the phrase facts tell story sell. So that’s a very common sales phrase, which I think is very valid.

 And it’s very much used in the big name brands that are constantly selling to us and bamboozling us and tricking us, and Super Bowl, adding us and all the things. But in mlm, that’s really the case too, because, I remember hearing stories of people who had the same struggles as me, who had the same fears as me, who had the same desires as me, and they had built this beautiful life.

Um, and I would’ve clung to those stories even when I was sorting quarters in my dad’s coffee cans, buying volume, like I still hung onto that dream, and I just felt like I had to pay my dues. That’s how I felt for a very long time. But what’s so embarrassing is when I look back at it, I think there’s also a very long time that I knew that I just knew it was off and I didn’t really know how to fix it.

 I thought maybe I could do it differently, but I thought maybe there was still something to clinging to that was valid and true and real. Until, for me it was, I got added to a group message of a few people that said, we can’t do this anymore. This is going downhill. And the moment they said it, I was done.

Like, I had no remorse. I had no guilt, I had no sadness. I didn’t mourn the loss of that role. I j I literally ran as fast as I could, which makes me think I knew for longer than I would have cared to admit.  Mm-hmm. You know what I mean? Yep. And I think that’s the story all the time. We hear it all the time still to this day because the people that made fun of us then are the ones leaving now and you know, they’re admitting it.

Yeah. Yeah. Agree. Um, okay, so then you went to Beachbody. Tell me about Beachbody. So, um, I met Chantel and I. I wasn’t super excited about Beachbody because what I know about myself is that I don’t want anyone to hold me accountable to work out. I wanna do what I wanna do when I want to do it. So, um, what I liked about it was the concept that, um, at the time they had this completely ridiculous country eat, dance workout is what it was like.

 I can dance, like what I can do, and I don’t have to go lift heavy weights. So I didn’t, I didn’t, I had never been really to like a gym to lift weights before that I had gone to the gym and ran, or, you know, I had done, um, you know, a lot of like elliptical, that kind of thing. But like the weights were never my thing.

And so I, I was terrified, but I was like, I can do that Dance uhhuh. I can do that. And to make a, Hey, I just have to make a video of me doing that dance and like I don’t even care. That’s fine. So, I mean, I still have those videos on my Facebook of us doing that. I’m gonna find them. Country heat. I find the country heat.

I didn’t know that. Country heat’s what got you, huh? Yeah. Oh, your story about this diet pill and country heat may be that they may they, I was cranky when I started today, but I’m now no longer cranky because of your diet pill sales and country heat.  You’ve made my day, my whole weekend. Good. I’m glad.

Good. Yeah. Well, the thing about Beachbody was. Once I started it, I didn’t have a story. I didn’t have a weight loss journey. I didn’t have anything. I just started posting about it and I did this country heat and posted about it. Uh, I just, people wanted it. They wanted, but they didn’t want it for more than a month because they’ll just bowl boring and the shakes were so expensive.

Yeah. And so I think it was, their whole thing is called Success Club, and. You get in the, it’s like an incentive where you get so many success club points and you get this sense. Mm-hmm. And you get the free step and whatever. And Chantel was like, your goal is gonna be six success club points. And I was like, okay.

And then the next thing, I had like 22 and there was like the board and they’re all like, oh my gosh, who’s this girl? She has like 22 Success Club points. Like just signing people up. But then the next month I was like, Oh, these people aren’t buying that shake again. I’m like, we’re I got $50? Or, I don’t know.

I think it was $50 when you signed someone up on a pack and they shake the whole thing. You know, they have to get the whole pack, but then the next month they weren’t gonna get it again cause it’s too expensive, you know? Right. Uhhuh Access said to Beachbody, you know, they bought their program so they had their program, but they were not gonna use the Shake long term.

They only use the shake. Long term are business builders. So again, a place where your volume is based on business builders buying their shake, buying their energize, buying their product every month. Mm-hmm. That’s a class, because when they don’t make the money that they think they’re gonna make, they aren’t gonna stick around.

They’re gonna look for something else, or they’re gonna cancel buying the shakes. And, you know,  you don’t make money when you’re just having ’em do the programs. There’s no, you know, there might be a little bit of residual now with Beachbody on Demand, but it’s very, very little. Very little is Beachbody on demand and you can get Beachbody on demand from demand.

Like you don’t even have to go through a rep. So how did that affect them? I don’t know. I mean, it can’t be good. It’s just a, you have to really love working out every day forever and really love, you know, that whole concept to do that and stick with it long term coaching people for free. Literally coaching people.

A very small amount of money. And it’s a lot because when people, when people wanna get into weight loss, fitness, all of that, like, it’s a lot of work to teach them. And you know, there’s not a lot of training for them on that. There’s like, you know, these little meal things, but it’s like nobody explains how to use ’em or, you know, so you’re supposed to be a coach, so you sign up with a kit and then you’re supposed to be a coach.

Coaching other people who have a million questions about their nutrition. Mm-hmm. Were you giving them nutrition advice? I mean? We, we, we sold ’em a nu couple. There was a couple at the time, I think there was only one nutrition plan and it was just the little cups, little bowls, whatever. Um, that was it.

Now they have a couple options, but nobody told me anything about any of it. I just said, yeah, you just wanna buy the kit and it’ll come with a thing that says, eat this many. You know this many of this one each day and this many of this one each day, and that was the number one meal plan that never works for me.

Like, yeah, who carries around tubs to measure.

They were like, listen, I am just here for the country heat, so I am gonna be over here doing this line dance, and you just need to buy those shakes. That’s what you need to do. Mm-hmm. Oh my gosh. Okay, so then I came along and we did Nirium. Um, let’s give me your spiel on Nirium. What do you think happened with Nirium?

 Well, it was so quick. Um, it’s so funny because when Chantel and I started talking, All we could talk about was like we could make a thousand dollars a BU thousand dollars a month with anything, but  if we could find something where we could make $10,000 a month, it would change our lives. Like that was our number forever.

Yeah. And when we came into Nirium, like I really thought that was gonna be it. You know, looking back five products, how did we even think it was gonna be it five products. Five products, hundred dollars skin cream people. Like why didn’t it click that people don’t buy that stuff every month? Well, and  their compensation was set up that a lot of what you earned was more free product.

Mm-hmm. Or an iPad or I know my lemon And all kinds of different, like there was suitcases and a lot of that. It was a lot of stuff. That was in replacement of a check. Um, you know, they’re in a lawsuit with the FTC right now for that. I’m pretty sure that’s what it is. I, I’m pretty positive it’s like the three for free program and the blah, blah, blah, because they,  they make you think you’re gonna get paid for stuff, but instead you just get a lot of stuff and then it shows up on your taxes.

Remember when we would get those line items? Yep. I, I feel like there, I feel like that year I made, you know, a good amount of money, but I also then got taxed for that and all the shit that I had earned, you know what I mean? Like, it was literally line by line, um, like a lot of, lot of stuff. Mm-hmm. Well, and part of that to me is like, that’s when I was probably like blinded the most, I think because like looking at my posts during that time, they’re almost worse.

It almost works because we were, we were so sure that  we were gonna go make $10,000 a month and help everyone remember that. Like, I don’t know, we had so many posts, about 30 people making 10,000. I found, you know, where we got those posts? We got those posts from some guy. That was in some company that said a hundred families making, making six years.

That was our, and we were gonna do the six figure summits and we were gonna go save the world. And, and here, here’s what I will tell you with, with that transition.  I wish it wasn’t even a part of my story. I don’t even like to talk about it. Like, it’s literally like the thing that I don’t even wanna talk about.

But we, we were very smart. In that we immediately created something different. We weren’t actually selling Nirium for a long time because I think, again, just like with, just like with our past experiences, we knew very quickly that Nirium, wasn’t it? Did you go to the convention? In Dallas? No.

Mm-hmm. It’s terrible. But I think we knew very quickly that what we had chosen probably wasn’t it, that we were what we had to sell. So we were the, it was the perfect storm. We had the hashtag, we created the videos with the music. We were. We were, we were what we were selling and we were gonna go help all these families make money.

And then when we had to transition to actually talking about night cream and product is when it all went downhill, we were like, uhoh, this is not gonna work out Rut row. Mm. Yeah. Literally found some of that in my mom’s bathroom. I’m like, do you not throw stuff away? That’s old, old and bitter. I’m bitter about it.

It’s old and it’s a sore subject. Um, It’s a sore subject for me because they, they had a batch that was something like 9 2 6 6 6, which is surprising. And it was the night cream and it started breaking me out and I thought it was the day cream, so I switched day creams. I thought it was, I didn’t know what it was.

And by the end of it, I’m doing skincare parties and I had whiten boils all over my face, but I didn’t know what it was because I had been fine up until that point. Well, it was a bad batch that they. That they pulled off the shelves but didn’t tell anybody about. And remember, we would do, we would get all the damn night cream for free because we had earned, we had gotten our three customers or our nine customers.

So I had like five bottles of batch 6, 6, 6 that I had been going through. And it was smelly. I should have known. I mean, I’m again like, um, yeah. Anyway, um, Okay, so we did naam. What else? What else was the, what else were, um, what are things that, as you look back, you wish you would’ve, coulda, shoulda have?

You know, I don’t know.  So the whole thing for me is just the fact that. I don’t, I don’t wanna like dog, anyone else’s company. I don’t wanna, you know, there’s a lot of great companies out there and great concepts and great products and all that, but the, there needs to be education and I think that’s what we’re going for because people need to know all of this comes from a, an experience.

This isn’t like, I heard this, or, you know. We experienced some crazy, we were the dumbest of the dumb. We met face and learned a lot of stuff the hard way. And so there just needs to be more people talking about what happened to them. You know, education and just different things about what to look for, because we didn’t, we thought, I mean, even when we joined Nirium, we were like, this is it.

Not for sure it was. Yeah. But we can’t, anybody truly, like we didn’t, there just wasn’t knowledge on, you know, real, we hadn’t ever seen a good comp plan before. So to us, every comp plan looked like the best one cuz we hadn’t seen a truly good one. You know, I think a lot of people just haven’t gotten to that point where they can even understand a compensation plan.

Plan, let alone actually get one, you know, join a company and do a thing where they’re gonna make. The amount of money that they wanna make.  And I think that’s just an education thing. So yeah, I think that I, I’m on the same page in that, um, I feel. You know, there’s this weird part of me that feels very self-conscious having these conversations because I never wanna make anybody mad.

I don’t wanna be offensive, I don’t wanna look like a judgey, whatever. I don’t want to, um, rub people the wrong way. I certainly don’t want me to p to make people feel bad, but I also feel like the only people that are talking about this are anti m l m and are people that. Are either, either they’re former MLM and they got burned and now they just make fun of people all day long.

Or they’re, they’ve never done it, they’ve never been inside of it, and they. They just make fun of it all day long. I, I don’t, I don’t feel like I’m either one of those because I still root for that concept. I still root for the work from home. I just think that number one, it draws the wrong people. I think that it, it draws the worst out of people.

I think that it becomes very clique-ish. I think that it’s filled with inaccuracies. I think it’s filled, you know, like you talked about, like the lack of knowledge. Um, The problem again is that it’s, it’s selling the dream to people like you and me and a and a lot of people we know without. Um, the, the other side of it, which is this is how hard you’re gonna have to work.

These are the skill sets you’re gonna have to learn. I mean, if we were to compare it to real estate, so you have a lot of real estate agents that sign up and never make a buck. Well, it’s the same thing with mlm, but. Even just the education that they have to have to go get their license is more than what you and I had to do to go jump into the ship of Nearium or the other companies.

And so I feel like it’s just so much easier to kind of bamboozle yourself into thinking that you’ve found something amazing because all we’re living on is hope and a prayer. There’s no content, there’s no real data. And I wish I would’ve found a channel like this. I wish I would’ve found a discussion going through the ins and outs because at least then I would’ve known what I was getting into.

Mm-hmm. Yep. You know, and I maybe still would’ve made the same decision. I still maybe would’ve gone down the path because I don’t, I didn’t wanna spend $50,000 on a franchise. I didn’t know how to do my own business. I didn’t have any money to do real estate at the time. So I maybe would’ve still done this, but I would’ve gone into it with two eyes open.

Understanding the questions that I needed to ask. Understanding the kind of hours that it was gonna take and the, you know, what that was gonna look like, and being prepared for the ugly. Mm-hmm. Well, even a lot of the people that are advocating for, you know, doing a research and finding the best company, even a lot of them are saying, ground floor, you know, only a few products don’t join a lon company.

Like all those things. And it’s like, you know, how many people are educating that aren’t even educated or that haven’t even seen enough things themselves yet. Right. Well, and I think that the problem is, is that anybody out educating and we’re the same. Like I have, I have a reason for starting this. I have a a, um, A why behind having this discussion.

And it’s not all just like volunteer service, like I, there is a reason behind it, but I think that for the most part, the posts that go out, that you need to find the brown floor and you need to find the flashy and you need to go after the sexy. And this is gonna be the best next, next thing. The only reason those posts are being made is because at this very moment, You are selling that and you are drinking that Kool-Aid and you’re hoping for the best.

Just like we were with Nearium, just like we were with wine, just like we were with, you know, just like we were in those moments where we were like, it’s all or nothing. We got families to feed. That’s what’s happening to people out there, but there’s just so much misinformation that, you know, people get hosed along the way.

I have friends that bought $500 Nearium kits and did the same thing that you did with Mary Kay. They put a whole bunch of money on a credit card. They put product on a credit card and are still paying that sucker off. And I mean, that makes, that sucks. Mm-hmm. What is, um, but I have a ton of people on my newsfeed right now talking, talking about high price ticket items, high ticket items.

What do you mean? It’s like this new saying where they’re selling buy ticket items and they can make like two to $3,000 a sale. Oh. Like the water machines and stuff? I don’t know. Mm-hmm. But they are talking about what they’re selling. They’re talking about how they’re recruiting people to go sell high ticket items and make two to $3,000 a sale.

High ticket items. I just.

Yeah, I don’t know. Okay. Here’s one

says, I’m just gonna send it to you. Mm-hmm.

This might not even be like what I’m actually referring to. Mm-hmm.

I have one girl that’s like all day, every day talking about it. Never says. Well, I mean, it’s similar. Oh Lord. All the checks, oh, come on.

It kind of makes me feel sad, but also laugh a little bit. Now when people say, I don’t know anyone who will buy or having a hard time to, here, this team is closing 10 to 15,000 sales all day, every single day, high ticket closing skills. The sky isn’t even the limit. Gosh, like what the hell are they selling?

That’s possibly,

oh, there’s another one. There’s a ton of ’em. But what, what are they selling that people can freaking a fool if they’re like, are they selling like coaching or an item? Like what? Uh, and. Um, three. She closed three quads this week. Well, I mean, everything I can see is that it just looks like a sales

system. I mean, here’s why companies also get shut down by the FTC is because they’re not selling any actual product. Right. Um, and, and it, and it’s all just a big recruiting scheme. Which then there is no product, which is why it gets turned into a pyramid scheme. I mean, I don’t even understand what this is, but the, that the, we need to do some investigating on this.

Yeah, I about it because, It may not be M mlm, but it’s still the same disgusting concept because Zenith, Zenith is on back order. We can’t wait for you to experience Zenith in your transformation journey to begin. We appreciate your patience as our clinically proven Zenith product is currently on back order.

Ooh, that.

Our products?

No, none. Nina. Weight loss, but that’s not a high, it’s only one product. It’s a weight loss pill. That’s what’s on the website. Hmm. Hi. I love your lipstick. Oh dear. Stick on today too. It’s red candy. It’s uh, oh, it’s candy. I wanna eat some candy. Yeah. No. All right. Go get kids at school. Yeah. We got a lot of good content out of this.

So it, it, uh, we actually could use that as our podcast, but not, I think we’ll just, I’m just gonna take it, watch it, take snippets out of it that you can put on your page. Okay. And mine, does that sound. Yep.

Wait, is she gone? Nope, I’m here.

Yeah, yeah. All right. Go get your, uh, sister and your brothers there, and then we’re going to eat at Texas Roadhouse for Hagan’s birthday. Ooh. Yay. Thinking about rolls all day long. Happy birthday. I know, right? Oh my gosh. Love my birthday. Like your sisters. I know. You better give her a big hug. Did you get her a present?

You did. Where’d you get her? At? Walmart and got tag. Whoop, she’s not here. She got her a baby doll. She picked a at doll for her at Walmart. Aww, I won’t tell. I’ll keep it a secret. Okay. Have fun. Eat some yummy food. Take tomorrow. Bye.