Opinion: I made 40 grand in a single month as a multi-level marketer. Here’s why I quit.

Yes, I was one of those people — a multi-level marketing (MLM) rep. You’ve seen them, maybe you purchase from them, but their messages are typically all the same: opportunity of a lifetime, make money from home, be a #bossbabe, blah blah blah. I joined because I really believed (due to the nudge from a trusted acquaintance) that it would add to my life financially, give me a sense of community and be a fun distraction from the mundane day-to-day duties as a mom. And it did, to a point, especially the distraction part. 

But sending these messages, and many of the other activities I was “coached” to do, weren’t behaviors I initially felt comfortable with. In fact, part of my “training” was listening to my “uplines” (the people who I “joined” in “business”) tell me that “some of these activities would feel uncomfortable,” but to “just push through the discomfort, because that’s the way you grow!” And that’s how it began. My six-year descent into what I now believe to be a commercial cult.

Coercion can be defined as the practice of pursuading someone to do something by using force or threats. Nobody ever held a gun to my head to send cold messages, of course, nor did anyone tell me they would blackmail me or that I was actually joining a cult. But from the beginning of my MLM indoctrination, specific methods were employed to maintain control over me and the other members, just like cults.

I was told to ignore my intuition; the gross feeling that came up when I sent a cold message, the uncomfortable rejection when pitching the “business opportunity” to someone, or the awkwardness of bugging yet another friend to buy products nobody wanted. All of those intuitively negative feelings were expected to be squashed, because toxic positivity reigned supreme.

Instead, we were told that those “ick” feelings were simply the signs that we were “growing into the SHE-E-Os we were meant to be.” Even the use of the infantilizing monikers like “SHE-E-O” and #girlboss and “bossbabe” felt cringy, but, again, we needed to push that down for the sake of “stepping into our greatness.” And as I started making money (I made $40,000 in my largest-paying month in the MLM), it became much easier to ignore any nagging feelings.

It may not seem like a big deal to ignore a little intuition, pound a glass of wine and send a series of cold messages. Yet the longer you ignore little nagging feelings, it becomes second nature. It starts to feel OK sending those generic messages, and before long, you will ignore many other red flags. Like the fact that my experience was the exception, and that 99.7% of people never make a dime because that is how the MLM business model works (in the shape of a pyramid). But your upline would have you believe it’s because you didn’t work hard enough. And your worn-down sense of self, from days, weeks, months or years of ignoring your intuition,  may have you believing it too. 

Once I set the wine glass down (I got sober in 2017), it wasn’t as easy to ignore that pesky intuition anymore. I started evaluating the love-bombing, manipulation and toxic positivity that I had come to believe was business and friendship. I read and listened to formerly-banned-by-my-company sources of information, and in doing so, I found the “BITE Model” (which stands for Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotional control) by Steven Hassan, mental health counselor and expert on cults and mind control. He describes cults as organizations that exercise undue influence over their members to make them dependent and obedient, which we often refer to as brainwashing.

In an MLM, this is done by showering an individual with praise and promising them money, friends or a better life. Then, once you are hooked, the organization and the people in it systematically disrupt your ability to fully think for yourself. In order to become aware of my own coercion, I had to educate myself on how the MLM’s behavior mimicked cults. 

Through behavior control, I behaved differently (those cold messages!), dressed differently and surrounded myself with different people. My time and even my sleep were manipulated by month-end trainings, sales goals, conventions and other retention events. My leisure and family time were restricted since so much time was spent on group indoctrination, like pointless Zoom calls and other unpaid activity. I was financially “stuck” because I had come to depend on the income the MLM pyramid had afforded me. I was subject to rules and regulations that worked to instill dependence, and I was pushed and pulled by rewards and love-bombing. 

Through information control, I was deceived by deliberately withheld information and shown only cult-generated materials and propaganda. My critical thinking was discouraged by being kept busy and being placed in a hierarchy to compartmentalize information into different levels of the pyramid. I was encouraged to share very private things about my personal life, which served to dissolve my identity boundaries. 

Through thought control, I adopted the MLM’s reality as my own, by developing an extremely black-and-white way of thinking, and organizing people into “us versus them” categories. I became my company title and used loaded language to stop constructive criticism. I used rationalization, justification and denial to remain aligned with the company and the people in it. 

Through emotional control, I shut out my intuition, believing that any success or failure was completely my doing. I had a deep fear of being shunned by the people in the MLM, and the extreme highs and lows from love bombing and public shaming, as well as the sunk-cost fallacy, kept me stuck in believing there was no legitimate reason to leave. 

Worse than that, I placed all of those controlling behaviors and feelings on other people and coached my team on how to do the same, because that’s the way the MLM system works. 

Once I started connecting the dots on the rampant unethical practices, financial and emotional manipulation, and the many other ways MLM leaders and corporate executives coerce millions of women to follow their lead and ignore their gut instincts — all in the name of female empowerment — I knew I needed to leave. 

But it wasn’t as simple as sending in my resignation notice. I had an entire team under me (one that I built with these same tactics), and the golden handcuffs of a paycheck to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars per month. I felt trapped and continued to “stick it out” with the women I manipulated into the scheme. But eventually, my intuition got too loud, and I decided to walk away. 

Even now, years later, I’m still picking up the pieces and gaining clarity from my intuition coming back. I can’t believe I was so manipulated, and that I manipulated others. However, I’ve learned enough to know that the things you do are just the things you do; they aren’t who you are. I believed for a long time that I was doing the right thing, as do many women who are still trapped in their own pyramid-shaped commercial cults, disguised as empowerment projects. And now I know that the right thing was to leave. 

Emily Lynn Paulson is the author of “Hey, Hun: Sales, Sisterhood, Supremacy, and the Other Lies Behind Multilevel Marketing,” (Row House Publishing, May 2023.)

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