A review, and reflections on my own MLM experiences.
This week we watched the first season of On Becoming A God In Central Florida, on SBS on demand.
(No spoilers.)
It’s set in the 90’s and stars Kirsten Dunst, so my little 90’s kid Kirsten-Dunst-loving heart was already won. I was ready to watch her wear tie dye crop tops and do some weird Florida hijinks.
I didn’t realise how it wasn’t a comedy. I had no idea how emotional this show would be.
Kirsten Dunst plays Crystal Stubbs, a water park employee and mother of one. Her husband Travis is part of an MLM – multi-level marketing scheme – and he was in deep. He’d drunk the Kool-aid and paid for more.
It made me uncomfortable. It made me angry to see Travis’s manager pull both Travis and Crystal up on stage at a FAM ‘rally’ and tout this broke couple as a success story to convince other FAM devotees that there was indeed light at the end of the tunnel. Crystal’s very real financial concerns for her family were dismissed both by Travis and his sleazy manager as ‘negativity.’
It was too real, somewhat painful to watch the ‘up line’ gaslight Travis into working more, recruiting more, buying more, with promises that huge amounts of unpaid work that he was doing every day for their company would eventually pay huge dividends if he just believed, kept the faith and kept at it. All the time, Travis fell deeper into debt and dragged his wife and daughter down with him. I wanted to see Crystal succeed, but the deck was truly stacked against her.
This series was brilliant. It was hard to watch at times, hard to watch people being taken advantage of and take advantage of others in turn, but Kirsten Dunst and the supporting cast all give real, deep performances, Beth Ditto is fantastic as one of Crystal’s neighbours – I didn’t even realise it was her until the credits. It’s coming back for a second season.
I remember being small. We were sitting in a semi circle in our North Hobart sunroom, around a woman whose face I don’t remember. I remember being scratchie tickets being handed out, and one was given to me, because my mum would have insisted that I was included.
I was too young to read, so I scratched the silver lines and counted the letters several times.
‘C, C, C’ – ‘H, H, H’ – ‘E, E, E’.
‘No one won? That’s ok, that happens sometimes.’
‘I think I have something.’
I remember that it felt like the whole room jumped towards me in excitement. I had won a cheese keeper for my mum. It’s the first time I remember being able to give her something. We had that thing in our fridge for years, keeping our family size block of cheddar fresh. It always gave me a warm glow to pick it up and remember how I’d won it for Mum.
Years later, once I had a toddler at home myself, I decided to join an MLM and become a home demonstrator. I’d grown up with the products. I loved the products. I still do, actually – my tomato-coloured big red bowl that I use every week to store leftovers, the set of four colourful plastic bowls that my son still uses for his cereal. They’re the good shit. These long-lasting, durable products are the reason that all plastic containers are universally known as ‘Tupperware’.
I joined a team headed up by a lady called *Liz, ordered a demonstration kit, and started the time-honoured MLM process of wearing out the goodwill of all my family and friends.
As soon as I started, there were problems. I was expected to attend regular meetings at the home of my manager, as well as big company gatherings held in a mostly empty conference room. These evening meetings usually took a good 3 hours and mostly consisted of listening to a shrill lady talk on a microphone. Team managers who’d reached targets could compete for – honestly, crappy prizes – such as spinning a wheel that awarded them a handful of fun-size chocolates to ‘share with the team’. There were other, better prizes too, new products mostly, but our small team never seemed to achieve those targets.
At Liz’s house, the team complained about the long hours and boredom of the frequent meetings. We were asked to ‘cheer more like they do in America’ and we looked at each other in confusion. Cheer for what, exactly? None of us ever won anything.
The actual parties were the fun part. I liked demonstrating. I enjoyed the creativity of creating games and entertaining a crowd. Sometimes I’d even make some money. A few times, I’d made a couple hundred dollars in a two-hour party. $100 per hour sounded great – except there was much more labour involved behind the scenes.
After a party, the orders had to be entered into the online system. Instead of shipping direct to the customer, the product was then delivered to the demonstrator, in boxes, to package each order for the customer before delivering it personally. (I’ve heard that they’ve now moved to direct shipping, at a cost to the customer, but that wasn’t an option at the time).
There was a cost for catalogues, for order forms, for return forms, for the bags to pack up orders, for the little random giveaway utensils that end up in everyone’s cutlery drawer, which I was expected to give away. To ‘my’ customers. Everything came at a price to the demonstrator.
I knew the product was good, because I’d grown up with it. The product guarantee was also great – lifetime replacement without a receipt? Amazing! Less great was the fact that any returns had to be posted back to the company by the consultants, or returned to the manager. At least that gave me a reason to check in to one of Liz’s meetings occasionally, because there was no way I was paying to-and-from postage on a return for which I was earning nothing to process. I also had to fill out an assessment form, even though I didn’t get the final decision on whether the item should be replaced.
Once the broken item had been re-assessed by whoever the hell at head office, I was then responsible for the return postage for the new item, unless it could be included with one of my party orders. Once the item was returned to me, it was on me to take it to the customer. Some people waited a long time for their replacement sippy cup lids.
The worst part was when they assessed a customer’s item and decided not to replace it. Then I was responsible for returning the damaged item to the customer and explaining why it wasn’t being replaced.
And although everyone knew the lifetime guarantee, they were a little iffy on the details. Accidental breakages were not covered.
‘Because if you look at the crack, that’s the kind of crack that comes from the bowl being dropped.’
‘But I didn’t drop it!’
‘Well… you did tell me you dropped it.’
‘Oh, no, I said it looked like maybe it had been dropped, I never said I personally dropped it…’
This was when it occurred to me that this was bullshit. I was arguing with a Tupperware customer as to why she couldn’t return her lifetime-guarantee Tupperware, and I wasn’t getting paid by Tupperware for it. Oh right, because I was my own boss.
And considering that I was ‘my own boss, setting my own hours, working as much or as little as I liked’, I sure as hell had a manager, and I was hearing a lot from Liz. I had weekly check-ins, where I had to report sales, parties, how many parties I’d booked from those parties, and recruits. At first I felt guilty that I wasn’t reporting what she wanted to hear. After a while, that guilt went away, because I realised no one in our ‘team’ was reporting the results that Liz wanted to hear.
One night, I received a downhearted text message.
‘Girls, if we don’t make X amount of sales, I’m going to lose my company car. Please, do your best for me.’
Part of the way we were expected to grow our business was asking every person at every party, if they also wanted to host a party. But it wasn’t enough to ask once. The company provided scripts. They had a booklet that listed the reasons why a person might decline booking a party, and then there was a script to rebut their particular argument. The rebuttal always ended with suggesting a date for the party.
This is why, now, if anyone asks me to host any type of MLM party, all I will say is:
‘No, thank you.’
And smile.
The consultants count on the fact that you’ll be kind enough to offer a polite excuse, and therefore enter negotiations, when the reason is that you don’t want this person in your living room next week, running their spiel while your mum and your sisters and your friends prepare their own polite excuses. The blunt refusal is the only answer that works.
I never recruited anyone. I don’t think I ever even tried. At the start of a party, I’d do a little spiel about how great it was, all the benefits, and how easy it was to get started. And I definitely knew a few people that would have joined, half-convinced by the promises, maybe even just hoping to get out of the house, had I given them the hard sell. I didn’t want a downline – sorry, a ‘team’ of my own. I just wanted to work when it was convenient for my family, make as much money as I chose, be my own boss.
Then, there was also the obvious fact that no one ever seemed to mention – the second you recruited a friend, you were now in direct competition with them for the market. And the market was already saturated with demonstrators. One day, a friend posted on Facebook that she was interested in hosting a party. I commented, and sent her a message. So did a lot of other demonstrators. Finally, she posted that she was overwhelmed at the huge amount of interest she’d received and took the post down.
Sure, there was a social aspect to all this, but it wasn’t good. There was a weary sense of a favour being done.
‘Sure, I’ll hold a party. For you.’
Like most MLM consultants, after my friends and family had been exhausted, I was done. It wasn’t until years later that I read online that this was the usual scenario for MLM consultants. You’d burn through your contacts and leave with a lot of products, strained relationships and a sense of failure.
The last time I heard from Liz was a call out of the blue. She asked how I’d been, how ‘the kids’ were (I had one child). Finally, she got down to business. It was a sales call, attempting to book me in for a party with herself. I wondered if she still had her car.
‘So, we have the new catalogue out this month! Would you like to get the girls together?’
‘No, thanks. Not interested.’
And smile.
My MLM experiences were about ten years ago, and it seems things have only escalated since then. There are still people I went to high school with who refer to themselves as ‘entrepreneurs’ on Facebook – though thankfully, no ‘boss babes’. They are invariably women. Most of them are shy and sweet, and start their parties with the disclaimer that no one has to buy anything. They’re just looking to share the products they love, make a little money, work around their families. But these businesses – at least those at the top, not the people at the bottom doing the legwork – still thrive.
Hope sells. Just not for very long.
Did you ever join an MLM or attend a recruiting event? What kind of experience was it?
*Name changed for privacy. Also, please keep in mind that these are my honest thoughts on my own experience from ten years ago, I’m sure policies and procedures have changed in this time, etc etc.
Peace, Cristina xx
Apple Cinnamon 