Working for LuLaRoe w/ Roberta Blevins

The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast, and do not represent the opinions of Red Table Talk productions, I Heart Media, or their employees. And then, all of a sudden, from not having anybody to talk to you besides my daughter, now I've got a huge group of people who, on the outside all appear to want me to be successful. They're celebrating my ups, They're like console me in my downs.

I'm feeling like there really is an amazing community of people who knew that leggings could teach us about narcissism and toxic relationships. For those of you who haven't heard of it, lu La Row was a constant on many people's social media feeds, people feverishly trying to sell the buttery soft patterned leggings which were being featured on social

media and at parties. According to media reports, lu La Row grew to a two billion dollar business by two thousand seventeen and had over eighty thousand people whom they

called consultants, selling their clothes and their famous leggings. But just like any system which requires more and more people lower on the scale to make more money for people higher on the scale, the system fell apart, and apocryphal stories of moldy leggings and well meaning sellers, almost always women, losing life savings, marriages and homes became the reality for some of the people who were just looking to make

a little extra money for their families. Today, we are going to hear from Roberta Levin's, a Lula Row consultant featured in the series Lula Rich, which tells the story of the experience of sellers in the company. Roberta initially found success selling the leggings, but then learned about the dark side of multi level marketing systems, which often have all of the top notes of a toxic relationship. Let's

hear Roberta's story. You know, Roberta, I want to take it from the beginning sort of your story with Lula Row, and what I'd love to hear is what your life was book for Lula Row ever came into it. What were you up to and what were you doing before all of this? In two thousand and fifteen is when I first heard about lular Row. I was mom. My daughter was like three or four at the time. I was married, I had lost my father pretty recently, was very vulnerable, and I just was floundering. I was lost.

I think that happens a lot when you have vulnerabilities and big questions come up into your life. And I do remember feeling very much that I wasn't myself, that I didn't have my own identity, that I felt like I had just become like Abby's mom and Charlie's wife, and I wasn't like Roberta, and I wasn't my own

person anymore. Not that I needed to be doing more, but you know, I feel like also in society, women are constantly told that we could be doing more, and we could be filling in the free moments with other things that need to be done because we have so many responsibilities in our lives. And I think I felt like I was busy, but I could be doing more. I could be doing better, I could be making more money, I could be staying home more. I've always felt like

I'm not enough. That comes from my childhood, which will probably also get into those with all of this as well. But I literally grew up never feeling like anything I ever did was enough, that I could never make some of the people in my life happy, and so I was just like, you know, like just ripe on the vine for picking. And that's essentially what happens, ROBERTA. When

I hear you say this. We're about to talk about multi level marketing, right, But as soon as I hear those words I am not enough, I sit up straight, because those are the ultimate anthem of vulnerability of a person. Two a narcissistic relationship of any kind, because in a way, that kind of a relationship is a mirror for not feeling enough. It's something that will just keep reminding you of up. But initially they come in and make you feel like you're more than enough, and that's the trick.

And so for a minute, you're given exactly the thing you needed to hear. Because everybody's enough, We're all born enough, but too many of us have gotten that messaging early in life that we're not so to me, it's it's actually amazing because here we're talking about something sort of non traditional in the when I'm I really do think m l m s are a narcissistic relationship space. And I'm gonna have you you're going to be the teacher

about MLMs today. But it's a that right there. You I got chills down my spine because that's a red flag that people have within them that they don't even know is a red flag. And on top of that, you were going through a transition and loss and grief of your dad and then the ongoing role of being a mom. I mean we're all as a mom myself, we're supposed to think it's a blessing and I remember what it was like being with little kids and you think this is magical. And how many games of shooting

ladders can somebody play in one? So it's a lot. How did Lula Roe even come into your life? It's not as though they came and knock in or because I didn't know these things about you? So how did that moment happen that here you were living with that roberta of it all? How did Lula rou come into

your life? So I think already, because of that vulnerability of not feeling like I was enough and that I could do more, I was already just had this heightened sense anytime I saw something new, because that might be the answer. At the time, I've been doing hair for twenty one years, and at the time, I was working in Los Angeles, and I'm from San Diego and that's where I live now. And I was working once a month, driving up doing hair on the weekend, just powerhousing through

and then coming down. And in the very beginning when my daughter was born, she wasn't in school, so I wasn't missing field trips, I wasn't missing plays and things like that, and so it really wasn't a big deal because she was with my mom or my husband at the time, and it wasn't a big deal. But she got into kindergarten and I was out of town on those fridays that things would happen are times that I

could be volunteering in her class or being there. I started realizing like, Okay, like this job has been great, working out of town, but like I can't continue, Like I can't keep this up, Like my daughter needs me. I need to get l a off of my routine, and I need to stay in San Diego and not count on that money, and I can't let it go without having something to replace it. And so I was

always constantly thinking, like what that could be. So when these leggings came across my Facebook face, my Facebook feed, it wasn't that big of a deal because it was just another mom friend from like a mom Facebook group. It was just like a picture of her wearing leggings. It was just her legs and she was like, oh my god, I never thought I would love leggings as much as I do with these are amazing. And it was just something where I'm like, I had already I

wore leggings at the time. Some of the things I didn't like about it is I was having to call instantly pulled them up because they wouldn't stay up properly. And so I was asking her questions and she's, oh, my gosh, they stay put, they're super thick, you can't see your undergrow when you've been down. They're really great.

You can work out in them, all of these things, and I was like, Hey, maybe these leggings will solve the problems I have with leggings, and I I think it was like ten bucks shipping, with shipping, you know, why not, I'll try a pair for ten bucks. I help my friend out, I'll try these things, why not? And she only had two or three pairs, none of them were

really my style. But I picked the one that was the most not my like the most mind style, out of the not my style, and um, I was like, oh, these can just be like hanging out watching Sesame street pants with my kid, right. And I got them and they were so soft. I know everyone says buttery, but to me, butteries greasy and slippery and these were like velvety and they were solved and they were comfy and thick, and I was like, dang, okay, okay. And I wore

them and I loved them. And then I was like, you know what, I want to wear these outside, but I'm going to find a black pair. And I remember it took me about a week to find a person that had them in my size available and we're willing to sell them to me without being in this party or pairing them with something else. It took me about a week and I was like, oh my god, and I remember getting them and being like I win. It was the weirdest feeling, so funny, because those brow legs

were the holy grail of leggings in that world. I remember that, Yeah, but that's just black leggings, black leggings, just black leggings. But I had allowed them to be more than just black leggings, and so they came with excitement, They came with dopamine. They came with adventure and hunting and like that. That like chasing the rainbow and getting the pot of gold at the end of it, and it was like a game. And so I understood that,

and I was like, dang, okay. And then I would go into these parties and I would see it happen over and over and over again, and they the thing for flying off the shelves. I would come into a party ten fifteen minutes late and most of it would be sold out. So this second thing that I was thinking is okay, Like, if I'm going crazy for these and these other women are going even crazier for these,

I could make money selling these. At one level. I could almost say that you kind of love bomb by the leggings because they were so soft and they felt so good. But they were of people that so let's talk about that next then, right, because it was more than just black leggings that stayed on you, that were really soft, that people were really trying to buy, right,

there was something more happening here. Okay, beyond the leggings, So beyond this product that could just sell itself, what really drew you in and inspired you to want to work with lu lu lu row given like you said that, there were other ways you could get cheaper leggings to sell, and above and beyond just the fact that there was the sales infrastructure. Was it that simple that they've got the software, they've got the infrastruy uture, day've got the leggings,

I'm off to the races. Was it that simple? I think there was. I think that was probably like the factual driving force where I could go back to that as this is what they're offering and this is what I'm paying for. But in between that business transaction came the community. The community started with my friend. She was like my messager. I was like, hey, thanks for the leggings, as are great. She's like, yeah, I'm thinking about selling them.

And I was like, oh yeah, me too, and so we were talking about that, and then I remember, like I said, joining those groups and talking to those other the reps and saying do you like doing this, like as we would get in a message, because I was just dipping my toe in. And so I'm talking to all these people. And when you're talking to people in this organization, they want you to join too, because most likely they want me to join. Underneath them, they're like,

it's amazing. You're gonna love it. It's so great. I've met all these amazing people, and I found my best friends and we've got these meetings. And the other thing that I felt I was lacking my was that community.

Being a stay mostly stay at home mom who was working out of town and out of the home at night, away from my family, I didn't really have a friend group because I didn't know My daughter wasn't in school, so I wasn't meeting other moms with age appropriate similar aged children, and so I felt very isolated as well as like this mom that lived at home and like

only saw people at the grocery store. So when these new people came into my life in the form of zoom calls and group chats and Facebook pages, and I'm gonna add you to my shopping group, and let's send me yours, send me your phone number and I'll text mess with you. And then, all of a sudden, from not having anybody to talk to besides my daughter, now I've got a huge group of people who, on the

outside all appear to want me to be successful. They're celebrating my ups, They're like consoling me in my downs. I'm feeling like there really is an amazing community of people. These are my friend, These are people who genuinely care about me, even though I just met them. Even though I just met them, they're telling me they loved me.

I'm amazing. They were pandering to that, and they were love bombing me, and they're just inflating my I don't really have much of an ego, but they were inflating that ego that I did have, and I did have an ego when I was in lular row, which was something that was one of those red flags, and I was like, WHOA, who am I? It was slow and innocuous, but at the same time quick and obvious, if that

makes sense. But I didn't know it was love bombing, and I didn't know that was the thing, and again, growing up with narcissistic people in my life, I find comfort in that chaos. I always it's always really up, we're really down in my life and the people around and it's just it's this toxicity that I was like

born into. And again, like a lot of this stuff I've been unpacking since leaving lular Row because so many of these topics intersect with the things that I talked about as well, which has led me to being like, oh, I should probably unpack my baggage before I started helping others something back. There's and through this journey, I've well, that's trauma bonding. ROBERTA. That's what we're talking about, that idea that chaos feels familiar and in a way, chaos

equels love. So when all of that that, where someone else might have said, whoa, this is a lot and might even step back for you, you're thinking, okay, there might be something happening here. It's almost primal. But what is really interesting And I think of this as love bombing. We think of love bombing is such an individual phenomenon, right, Like you may you meet somebody, you're dating somebody, right

and they put to the full court Press. We don't think of of organizations groups of people as love bombing you. What is so seductive is because you don't think they're on the make, so they're not trying to get you to bed or something like that. Right would be a great salesperson. You're so great on social media that doesn't fall under our traditional definition of seductive. And so you're thinking, like, it's kind of true and how great that somebody is

actually noticing me. But it is so profound to actually be seen, you know that. I think to me, that's where that's the thing that you're capturing here, Roberta, is that especially when you're a new mother, And I think that's something that not only do you have the vulnerability you bring into this historically, but there's something very unique

when you're taking care of a young child. Like you said, sometimes your social contacts are at the grocery store and and so, and even if you're working outside of the house at that time, you often feel isolated because most

of your colleagues wouldn't have a young child. So at the core of it that that isolation and somebody seeing your gifts, because again it's not like, oh, you're giving your child cut up pairs so nicely, but when we're being loved bombed, we're never as discerning as we should be, so because we want to, we want to believe it. And it's true you were good at those things, but

little did you know what was going to come right? Yeah, I mean I say a lot of time, when you join these companies, you really are just a cog in a machine. And they were just missing that cog, and I just fit what they were looking for. And it didn't have to be me. It could have been anybody. It could have been anybody that fit in that square hole. Right. They were just looking for another square peg to go into a square hole, and I just happened to fit

into it. But again, it doesn't matter. I happened to have the right vulnerabilities and the right concerns and the right needs and wants, and they came in and offered me all of my dreams to come true if I was willing to do this, and I was like, why not, Let's try it? And so you did. You know what what ended up happening was you gave it a shot and then you were in it, and it was as though they knew exactly what to say, as though they

almost had their own formula. This is our target person, this is what we're going to say and do, and it worked absolutely. One of the things that we did a little bit deeper into my journey when I was in a leadership position, goes right along with what you

just said, is they had us take personality tests. They made us yea, so we had to do the color lenses, which is like yellow, blue, green, and red or orange or something, so that we could and it came under the guise of let's learn what your color lens is so that you can take this back to your team

and figure out what their color lenses are. And so they really wanted us to understand the four lenses so that we could then diagnose essentially our teams with their colors, so we could have more effectively communicate slash manipulate them for whatever we needed. But you know there's something else they were doing with that, ROBERTA. I'll tell you because this this is a little bit of a narcissism trick they were doing with you, and a culti trick too.

Not only in their love bombing did they create a sense of belonging, like come be with us, you're so smart, we want you in our midst. Then they were even subcategorizing you greens, yellows, oranges. The more we can help make people feel like they belong to something, especially on the basis of a skill or ability or quality, it really hooks us. We are a species that likes to believe we belong to something. So that was not a

personality test. That was a let's even hook you further, so all you blues are going to stick together as blues. It was almost Orwellian. What they were absolutely is Orwellian, and that's exactly what happened. Like we would come back to do these and as I'm doing this, someone would be like, I think I'm a blue. I'm like, I'm a blue too. Of course you're a blue. That makes

total sense. Us blues gotta stick together. And it was very culty and I never thought of it that way because I had done like Myers Briggs in college and things like this, and so I was used to sort of taking these compartmentalized tests in order to better adjust

your skills sets and what you'd learned better. Because it also sounds though at the time, it played upon a need to belong and you know, so not only did this organization that you could belong to, you could make money and you could even belong even more in this sort of sub group. So it's so now we're using this interesting word cult, right, Cult narcissism are pretty much synonymous.

The cult is like an organized narcissistic group. But I came to find out that you, Roberta, actually googled is Lulu ro and MLM in the beginning, okay, and nothing came up. So, because really, what I'd love to hear from you is if you would explain what an MLM or a multi level marketing system is, so people understand because I'm using the term, you're using the term. We happen to know what it is, but not all of our listeners do. So what was your experience of what an M l M l M is and why, more

importantly do do you google that? So I had been a part of an MLM before Lulu Row. It's a very cringe e one that a lot of people know of. It's called it works. They sold those fat wraps that were supposed to, like, you know, suck all the fat out of you. I got sucked into that almost immediately after my father died. Because I was very vulnerable and there was a lot of things that it was going on. I probably only lasted three or five months. It felt very scammy. It felt very this is not what I

signed up for. I remember doing like a craft fair and just feeling embarrassed the whole time and being like I can't do this more than once, like I don't want to ever do this again. And then I remember looking into it and talking to some people after the fact, and people were like, oh, like, that's a par of scheme, and I was like, yeah, it's kind of weird. Oh that's an m l M. And so I understood what they were. I had been a part of that one. I had bought from so many My aunt had sold

Mary Kay when I was a kid. She had the pink car, my mom sold it to We had avon in our home. We had used thirty one bags, my mom has cut code knives. There were so many normalizations of m l M in my life, because that's the whole point. So for me, it was like comfort in

the chaos. It was normalized, and so when it came across my desk, I was like, sure, okay, why not so experiencing that a year before lulu Ro, I learned what I hated about mL m's and unfortunately, when Luluro came along, they didn't look anything like it works, and so I was like, oh, those are flags, and because it looks so different, I just glazed over it. And the things that I was worried about that were MLM things. That's why I googled that is Luluro and MLM is Luluro,

a pyramid schemes, lulu Ro scam like. I looked these things up, hoping that there would have been somebody that had come before to be like, yeah, it is, don't bother, and I couldn't find anything. I couldn't find anything at all. And every single person that I talked about lulu Ro, whether they sold it or whether they bought it, had nothing but positive things to say. I could not find anyone that had anything negative to say about lulu row

in two THO. Yeah, it's almost like you were dating someone where there's a lot of red flags and you're asking, is this a good guys Everyone's like, oh, great guy, great, great, and then unfortunately you weren't talking to this entire other group. And I wasn't talking to any of his excess at all. I couldn't find them at all. No, there was one thing that I found that was a little kind of but I found it months after, and at that point I was like, this guy sounds like a hater. This

gun sounds super bitter. I wouldn't believe him. I'm having a really great time. Everybody I know is also having a really great time, and that guy just sounds like maybe he just didn't try hard enough. Like that's what it felt like when that came across. Had that come

across before I joined, maybe things would be different. But it didn't show up for months and months and months, and at that point I was very willing to explain it away with any sort of excuse that I could battling with my own cognitive dissonance for a very long time in this right, So let's so, then, it's so many things you just said, you just created questions ding it's first of all, and something I didn't know, and

this is really fascinating, is sort of intergenerational participation in MLM. Right, So, I think that for folks to understand that a multi level marketing involves merchandise that cannot be purchased in traditional retailing outlets like in a pharmacy or department store, grocery store. That these things could only be purchased through retailers who sign up to sell the product and usually at parties. For the longest time, Mary kay a Von, all of those had to be done at a party or door

to door, they come to your house. Now, in the era of social media, people could but you know, it's a new way to do that, right. But the key is is that with a multi level marketing system is that you there is actually the sale of goods kind of, but money is also being made through recruitment of sellers under you. That if all you do is sell, you're never going to make big money. The only way to make big money is to recruit sellers who are under you,

and now you're making a percentage of their sales. But there is and so the point at which it all goes upside down and recruitment is making you more money than sales is now when you're kind of going into pyramid scheme territory where you're right, what does I mean if you were to ask me what the difference between an MLM and a pyramid scheme is literally the only difference is the government protects MLMs. They're on paper, they're

exactly the same. Yeah, I don't disagree with you because I I yeah, I agree, yes, yes, And really they say people will say it's not a pyramid scheme because we're selling product, and I'm like, okay, the product is just a replacement for money. You're just exchanging money for product now, and then you're exchanging product back for money, Like it doesn't matter because it's something of value being traded for something of value, whether it's paper money or

whether it's a product. That is one of those governmental rules that makes it legal, right, because the MLM lobby is quite strong on capital. Honestly, that's what it is. I mean, I really have done the deep dive, honey, and I was like, you know, so you're absoluting at Utah, we're looking at you. Yeah, no, no, no, it's a very powerful lobby. But ultimately, though, it's fascinating though that for you, there was, like you said, a normalization and

a lot of people may not have even realize. For example, Mary kay Avon, those were of topperware. Those were all early multi level marketing kinds of systems am way, and now in modern times we're seeing things like Lula Row oral life, you know, certain cosmetics, cosmetics, things that people can do at home and all of that, like how many mass because one person going to use you know what I mean, But apparently a lot so the but that for you, like you said, you had been exposed

to it, that they had this almost ability. And I would imagine even back in the days of Avon and Mary Kay was still similar. It was women who were looking to make some walking around money and the pink car was always dangled out there as the ultimate get. And you even saw the pink car happened, so it wasn't just a fever dream in your world like it was a thing it couldn't really happen. That absolutely legitimizes it. Yet it's not just me saying, like, you can get

a pink car. It's me saying, my aunt, my blood, the person I see on Christmas and talked to who is related to me, she has the car. And that's incredibly powerful. And like I said, it also goes to this other point where you it's so fascinating for me because when we think about narcissistic relationships people will initially say something doesn't quite feel right here, but with people it's hard. Right, there's I mean, I guess you can nowadays you could google someone, but even then there's some

people out there. Like I've said this on multiple episodes of Navigating Narcissism, there's no such thing as YELP for people. You can't go and read someone's one star reviews like burped during the first state and then called his ex girlfriend zero rating near zero star rating. You're not gonna mind that person, And it's it's called slander and defamation.

So we don't have a way of doing that. So unless there's a word of mouth way or they've really done something egregious that would show up online, you can't find that. And in a way, you were obviously something wasn't sitting well with you, so you went and checked this out. But I think your story, even though it involves an MLM and not a person, it almost really humanizes a lot of people say, gosh, darn it, I saw those red flags early, but I didn't do anything.

I would argue Robertie, you did do something I did, but it took me some time to do it. We joke often that and MLM. It's all sunshine and rainbows. We're wearing rose colored glasses and everything is Peachie keen, hungry dory, and it's really hard to see red flags when you're wearing rose comedy glasses because they just look like regular flex's. We will be right back with this conversation.

So yeah, I saw so many red flags that I ignored, and not even necessarily that we're happening to me, that we're happening to others. And I was like, day, I'm glad that's not me, you know what I mean, and like making that excuse and looking back on it now and being like, there were so many red flags that I just blatantly ignored or like pile drived or made excuses for. But I didn't forget them. I filed them away. Whether I ignored them or made excuses for them, they

were definitely not something that I forgot. And so when it happen and again, I'd be like, Oh, this is happening again, And then when it would happen again, I'm like, that's weird. And eventually it wasn't a coincidence anymore, became a pattern, and I think again within narcissism. We ignore a lot of those red flags until they become patterns that we can call and you're like, this is what's

gonna happen next. And when I could do that, when I could be like, well, this is what's gonna happen, not even gonna bother because this is what happens all the time, and I could call the trauma and the toxicity before it even happened, which I think a lot

of people can do. And we had group chats because there would be sales right like a new style would show up and it would be like Thursday at ten am, it's going on sale, and so we would get in these group chats because we would all be on our computers refreshing the page, refreshing the page, trying to get anything, and we're talking mad shit in these group chats about how stupid Lulu ro is and the website crashing again.

They should talk to my husband. He works in I like people giving every single time and still to this day, still and in every other MLM, when there's new product,

the site crashes. It's designed this way because if the problem is still happening, the crashes are still happening, you get into the system, and you are so terrified that you're gonna get kicked out that you're gonna buy anything you possibly can and try to check out as fast as you possibly can, just to get something, just to say you've got something of this thing that everybody wants.

Narcissistic people are so good at creating a sense of scarcity by doing things like withholding and making themselves unavailable, responding but then pulling back. This behavior keeps you on the hook, and you may even forgive bad behavior just to stay in it because it felt bad when you couldn't reach them. They are also really good at triangulating and making it seem that someone else is interested in them.

In this case, we see this dynamic play out when there was a desperate desire to get onboarded into the company or to get new inventory, and things like website crashes and limited inventory made people just want to grab it up without thinking. This kind of rushed decision making impairs our clarity and our discernment, and as ROBERTA found, it made everyone spend more money than they had intended, and the scarcity kept them hooked. Just like in any

narcissistic relationship. When I onboarded in March of there was about a six to eight week wait list that I had to wait through, was called so they created that Yes, so they created that sense of oh, you're even lucky to be at this party, You're so lucky to be in this list, right, to be on this list. And they would do things like we're going to onboard a hundred people today, and they made a list. It was

called like lulu, o q dot com or something. You could go to the website and you can find your name and you can see where you are on the list, and then you could be like you'd get the email in the morning, the onboarding email, the Q club is what they called it, and it would say congratulations to everyone that's gonna be on board today. We're onboarding a hundred people. If you're ready, if today is your day, because everybody knew what day, everybody knew within four d

eight hours. If today is your day, make sure you've talked to your bank and that the process like it's gonna go through and it's gonna process without a problem. Make sure that you've got your phone on ready so they don't miss that call, etcetera, etcetera, and so you'd get that email in the morning, you go, they're doing a hundred today, you'd go, you'd find your name, you count. You're like, I'm three hundred and fifty two. That means

I'm getting my call in four days. If they're doing a hundred a day, I should get my call by it's Monday. I'm gonna get my call Thursday or whatever. So we're doing these crazy things. We're calling our back like, I can't even explain why I would have ever acted this way or done this or anything except for that. It was that cult mentality. That's what everybody was doing. It created chaos, right. And what's so interesting, though, is what you're also describing is how a slot machine works.

Any fool knows putting money into something that's going to give you nothing. It's probably a bad play, but it may really give you something. And that it's actually in psychology, it's called a variable reinforcement schedule. And I always say it's exactly how narcissistic people work. Am I going to get the best of them today? Am I? Not? So? I better keep showing up because I never know. Maybe this is the big day and it's going to be

so exciting. And it's going to be so wonderful, and it's they won't text you back for three or four days, and you're like, oh my gosh, how am I going to live without this person? And then the person I'm getting so tense, and then they text after the fourth day, and a person starts thinking, I'll do anything this person wants, so I don't need to go another four days without being texted. It's exactly the same ground game. And if you don't know that that's what you're dealing with, it's

actually evil genius kind of stuff. That is how manipulative it is. And if the people who are in this system don't know that this is what's being done to them, and most people don't because they're playing on a vulnerability. Every single person was being love bombed as you would in any narcissistic relationship, but they thought they were lucky when they actually finally got pulled in please take my money. And so it's really really remarkable. But so you finally

got onboarded, Yeah, I got onboarded. Oh yes, because we were talking about how easy it was to sell everything. In the very beginning when I joined. I could probably get a box and sell to it very quickly within the week. The prints were better, the quality was better. There wasn't as much scarcity. Whether or not that was real or perceived, I'm not really sure, but there wasn't

much scarcity. I felt like I could get a box, I would get really good prints, a really good variety of not only prints and like novelties, but solids as well, and things went really well. I was never really one person that felt like I had to bundle things in order to push product, like, oh, these are ugly lit parrot with something that people actually want and make them buy two things so I can get rid of something ugly.

I never really did that. I did it once for Christmas, and then what we did is I donated I think pretty much my profit to a local family and adopted a family. So that was like the only time I ever did that. But again, I felt like, if I was going to do something, I felt very manipulative to me to force people to do that. I didn't like that. So I felt like, if I was going to do something like that, it needed to go to charity or

something like that. But people did that all the time, and I think that's how a lot of people were really big sellers, and how things moved so fast because there was a lot of ugly stuff. Yes, there was, so I do wonder though some of the earlier sets of inventories that were given to people were more movable. And then as time went on, I wonder if you were getting so even that at that level of manipulation,

this is like love bombing. In the first few days, you're going to go to the best restaurant in town, the best bar in town, the coolest venues, and about around the devaluing phase, about four months in you're lucky to be getting sort of fast food in the back seat of the car. So were you promised anything else other than money when you started working with Little World. Was it just I'm going to do this, I'm gonna sell my leggings and I'm going to make money or

were there any other incentives involved in selling there? And I think when I initially looked into it, for me, it was just the selling aspect. And then when you get deeper into the organization and you realize that there are these bonuses and these trips and these adventures and these meanings, I know you have to qualify and only the most serious people qualify. It was that sort of

stuff that really drove me. I am very much like reward based dopamine, hit the bell, get the prize kind of person, and so for me, I was like, you mean I can get a watch. It's a gold watch? Is that watch right there that everyone else is wearing? All the serious people have this watch on? All the people on stage are wearing this watch, all the people in the videos have this watch on. Dianne is wearing this watch. And I can earn this watch and be

part of this like special fancy watch club. What do I have to do and how do I get it? And within four months I had that watch because I really wanted it and I really really needed it. I have no idea where that watches right now. It was a Vestal watch. I don't know, probably like a hundred and fifty dollar watch, nothing crazy, not like a Rolex or anything, mid mid range, I guess. It had the luuro logo on the face it was like special, and then on the back underneath it was engraved and it

said be the kind of leader that you would follow. Okay, so it's a little bit like the snake eating its own tail, but okay, I was thinking it's like this sort of a ski ball set up where you spy like seven in an arcade to get like a five dollar choy. So basically the way you got your watch was you had to hit the first leadership rank, which was trainer, and that's ten people underneath you who are qualifying. What do you mean by ten people underneath you? What

did that mean? So we talked about multi level marketing where there are these companies where you've got the multi levels. So essentially what you do is you recruit people like we talked about, and those people become If I recruited you, then I would send you my link, you would sign up, and then on Lularo calls it a tree, you would show up underneath me on our family tree and you would be on my team. And essentially what that means is I am now supposed to be invested in your

success because when you are successful, I am successful. And it is this um sort of like exponential money transfer that goes up where I'm getting a small percentage of everything. But when you have a lot of people one to three really and there's other ways to you could you could qualify for other things to tap into other money pools that you could get money in other ways. It was. It's incredibly complicated. It's incredibly convoluted. Every MLM compensation plan

is like this on purpose. It is very much that orwelly in where it's here's our compensation plan. It's so easy to understand, isn't it, And you're like, this is so fucking complicated. Yeah, it's so easy. I totally get it. Yeah, moving on where it's so complicated and they make it seem when they give it to you. Look how easy this is. You don't ever want to be the person that's I'm confused. I don't get this, so you're going to agree and you'll just be like, I'll just figure

it out later. I'm gonna agree now, smile. Oh, it's great. This is one of the best complaints I've ever seen, and it's intentionally confusing. Even now, I look at complaints for a limiting I look at these complaints and I dissect these companies and I'm like, they're all convoluted, and a lot of times they're just copy and paste of each other. And I'll look at one I'll go, oh,

this is just like someone says, complained. So it's intentionally confusing, and if you look at it and you don't understand, you are in the seven percent of people who also don't understand what this really truly is. So I have a question, then what if a person never recruited someone to work under them. They're like, I'm just content selling my likings. That's all I want to do. I don't want other people involved. What would happen to them? So as long as you're moving enough product, I guess you

could make a viable living. But here we go. We would buy a pair of leggings for ten dollars and fifty cents. You had to buy a two pack. There were twenty one dollars for two plus tax. They didn't charge a shipping or I don't think they charged a shipping, but it's twenty one dollars for two, and we sold them for twenty five dollars. So we got them for ten fifty or whatever. But I'm in charge of shipping,

whether I'm going to charge for shipping or not. There's also tax that's that's going to be tapped onto that and taken off all of my expenses. All of the things that I'm paying or is all tacked into that

it's insane how many you have to sell. And it's not that selling eight leggings a day is hard, but you're selling the same leggings to the same people in the same saturated market on the same social media and nobody wanted it when they saw him last week, and you haven't had enough money to buy anything else, so you're still selling the same stuff that nobody wants. It

is a vicious cycle. It's a very vicious cycle. So early on you were told, though in your own in order to make big money here and watches and trips and all that other stuff, you're going to need people working under you. Yeah, there was there was like, you don't have to have a team, but you can if you want. And if you have a team, you then open up all of these things. You can qualify for

the monthly bonus. You can build a big enough team that you hit a rank and then once you hit this rank, you unlock the ability to hit this bonus. And then once you hit this rank, you can unlock a new level on that other bonus that you have it and go even deep for. And so it's like playing a video game. Sometimes in an MLM, if you don't hit that qualification. You say, you have to sell two hundred things and you only sold a hundred things,

so you don't qualify. So that bonus check that you thought you were going to get, you're not gonna get. So a lot of times people get stuck in that right we call these This is something that happens all the time in MLM, and this is where I come in and say, this is concerning. So say you have to sell two hundred things, but you only sold a month. Well, now someone has to buy those five things. And it's usually the last couple of days of the month where

you're like, hey, I'm so close to that bonus. You guys see it on social media all the time. I'm so close to that bonus. It's always at the end of the month. I just need five more people to buy one to billipstick each so I can hit my whatever whatever whatever. Maybe they do and maybe they don't. But what happens on the back end is panic. You start reaching out to people in your team. Do you

need any ellipstick? Can you buy ellipstick from me? If I buy ellipstick from you, can you buy ellipstick from me? Because you need the sale and I need the sale and we can help each other out. So now you're doing this incestuous inside selling to get your right right, and that product is not actually leaving the MLM its staying within and it's being sold between Or you're making

a fake account. You're opening up a new account as a new customer on a fake email address, and you're you're so purchasing those five things as a fake person. And then you justify this sun cost by going, well, I either needed that shampoo, or I can use those lipsticks that got as a giveaway next month, or Christmas is coming and so I'm just gonna throw those in stockings, or I'm just gonna give those two people like so

you're also going to justify those unnecessary purchases. Most of the time that unnecessary purchase happens because maybe you're going to get a thousand dollar bonus. Okay, so you've got this thousand dollar bonus looming above your head, but you have to spend three hundred dollars to hit the thing to qualify for that thousand dollar bonus. So the mL ends like you're going to leave seven on the table.

What do you do? You're throwing money away? Mark the CEO of Lularo used to say when we would do that that we were burning his money. And you're just burning my money if you're not participating in the leadership bonus plan, which is what they called it, that's their pyramid scheme. If you're not doing this, you're burning my money. And I was like, are we because you are. If you're not giving me the money, you're still keeping it.

So I'm not really sure, but he would say that, and he would be like, you don't understand how much money you're leaving on the table. And absolutely I had to do that like probably once or twice where I was like, oh, no, I need to sell three more shirts, and so I just bought them, yes, yes, yes, and I just marked it on the back end and I was like, those are free bees. I just now have three free shirts to give away that I paid you.

I didn't take them out of the inventory. I just said, here's seventy five dollars plus tax to cover those whatever. It was like, it was that kind of thing, and I'll fix it on the back end. And I know because I have a podcast where I talk to people that does this. The only one that was what I did was nothing compared to some of the things that people do to hit those links. And that's when not

sunk cost fallacy starts to get really deep. The sunk cost fallacy is a technical term for throwing good money after bad. It's the error of continuing to put money into something because we already put money into it. The issue is that we can't get the original money back, and putting more money into it is not going to get us the original money back. But just as Roberta said, she and many others just kept buying more inventory to

get these bonuses. They would feel foolish if they chose not to, just like we would see in any toxic relationship, because all you're ever doing is chasing and ungettable carrot. The initial investment in these schemes, that's the bad call, and unfortunately people just kept throwing more money into them,

just like we do in any toxic situation. It may be money, it may be time, but we have to remember you can't get the original investment back no matter how much more money or time you throw into it. It's the wishful thinking that can take people to the point of utter devastation in these situations. Our session will continue after this break. It sounds like what I'm hearing here, and it's very interesting. Again, like any toxic relationship, it

has a cycle. In the beginning, you're so great. You're great on sales, you're great at social media. Come come, come join usjoin us, join us. You're in. You're selling good inventory, making money, recruiting people under you, You're making

their percentages great, great party cruise watch. Okay, there's got to be a day for almost everyone in these systems where now you're buying a bunch of shirts and you're buying more and more to make bonuses, or you can't get more people to work under you, or the people working under you who know the same people you do, who are you selling to? They're like, enough enough, squirrelhoad leggings,

I'm done, And so now you've run out of customers. Right, So when you were doing well, when you were selling well, were they telling you you're a great salesperson. Yeah, of course, yeah, absolutely, But it wasn't even sales. It had nothing to do sales. No one ever said anything like, wow, Robert just lild a lot of pants. No one ever said anything like that. It was like, oh my god, Roberta, You've got four new people on your team this month's couple. How are

you doing that? I'm like, I don't know. They come to me and they say, I want to sell Lula. Can I be on your team? And I was like, sure, there's my link. That's what happened. There were so many people that just wanted to join, Like I never felt like I ever had to convince anybody. We did have a Facebook group for people that had questions. There was a lot of people that were like, I just have questions,

I just can I talk to you? Sure? And we had a Facebook group with anybody that wanted to build a team that was on my team, and it was just sort of a funnel essentially of people that wanted to join. Now we weren't adding people that didn't want to join. It was always if you want more information, but it was basically a pool, and anybody on my team that wanted to build a team was an admin in that group and would go live and answer questions

and would really just essentially recruit from there. And to me, I was like, yeah, this works because everyone would essentially be on my team because I'm the head of this pyramid again, hindsight. But so for me, I was just giving these people to the people underneath me because exponentially in the Pyramids game, I'm still getting paid. I'm still making that money. I'm still getting that bonus check every single month because I'm still qualifying because I'm still buying enough,

selling enough, doing enough. People that don't recruit in an MLM are affectionately known as the last ones in, and nine times that attend, they're not to make any money. Really fantastic product that they can sell like nobody's business, but those people are few and far between. Really good sales people don't usually sell for MLMs, like really good salesmen have religion sales jobs. But yeah, how much was sort of your initial investment, like somebody after waiting all

that time and getting pulled into Lula row? How much money would one have to put up to even get into this game? Back then? It's changed now with the lawsuit and all of the trouble that they got, and it has changed, But back then it was a minimum buying a five thousand dollars five thousand dollars. Yeah, yeah, I've spent closer to nine though. Oh my, And so you're telling me the people waited. They waited all that time. Five thousand dollars is a minimum lot of money. But

here's the thing. Five thousand dollars for anybody who's getting into this racket was going to be a life changing amount of money. It was massive amounts of debt because anybody who's that liquid would not be doing this right. So, so five thousand dollars, which, like I said, I'm viewing all of this to a narcissistic relationship space. I'm thinking of somebody who is who has gotten so seduced by something that they're giving up a huge part of themselves

and in this case it's resource. Oh my god, it was like it wasn't even about the five thousand dollars because the five thousand dollars at that point was just five thousand dollars. Like I can figure it out because it was the idea. And what MLM cell is the idea of the possibility of having everything you want, so interesting you put, it's the idea of the possibility of having something you want, which is like even worse than future faking because but I do talk about in toxic relationships,

it's all about narrative. Someday we're just going to be this Really, we're just gonna be the super happy family. We're gonna be happy. And I'm thinking this person like lies to you a lot and betrays you. Help me make sense of this, but they're telling themselves a story. But you also brought up something really interesting, this idea of people putting up five thousand dollars. You brought up

the sun cost fallacy for people listening. Sun cost fallacy is a theory and behavioral economics, and that it's I think that the old saying is you throw good money after bad, which is that once you've put money into something, we then instead of walking away saying, Okay, I screwed up, I'm out, we keep throwing more money at it and we justify it because most people have something called what's

called loss of version. And loss of version is this idea that I'm uncomfortable with the idea of losing money, but the money is already lost us. Right, there's so much of this and MLM because it keeps you there. Right. Once you realize the emperor isn't actually wearing any clothes, you now then have to, you know, justify why you're still here, because it's clearly not what we signed up for. But now I'm invested. Now I'm investment. I've put a

lot of money in it. And they keep telling me if I keep working harder and I'm doing the steps and I'm doing the things and I'm working the thing and they're doing the thing, and it just keeps keeping on the hook for longer and longer and longer. Like I remember leaving and one of the sunk costs that they tried to use against me was something cringe you called your why, which is the reason that you're doing this.

And we always would say if you're why doesn't make you cry, then you're not digging deep enough, which is so toxic. And we play this game where we would play the y game where you'd have to give your why and then your partner would say why, and you'd have to answer and they say why until that other person was like like to the point where you're literally like breaking down and you're finding your true why. And so we have this like why that we're following, and

everything we're doing is for this thing. It's our why. So when I left, that was the first thing when I was like, I don't think I want to do this anymore. That was the first thing they brought up, Well what about your why? And I was like okay, and they're like, the reason you're doing this that was your kids. You wanted to stay home and be home with your kids, like you wanted to be able to be there for your kids and be the mom that you always wanted to be. And I'm like, crap, got

me on a technicality, that's true. And I was like and I ended up agreeing with her on the phone and deciding to stay. It was very short lived. I only stayed for about an extra hour, but I did decide to stay because she had manipulated me on that the love. But you're doing this for your kids. It's gas lighting their doubting reality. Obviously you're still committed to your kids. Okay, you don't want to sell pizza leggings. You're not committed to your kids? Is it's to me?

It's the most distorted, twisted gas lighting. And I've heard it all. This is a new level. Okay, you can't sell bizarrely patterned clothes, you don't love your kids. That kind of reality shifting to a person who now may actually feel like they are failing because they're not moving inventory because the inventory is not attractive, or there's too many people selling it. It's cruel. It is cruel, and there were people, and there's still people in the lure

that fall for it every day. There's still people that are loyal, maybe not even in Lulu Ro anymore, that are still loyal to Lulu Ro while harass me on the internet and leave nasty comments. It is funny, but they're still loyal, and they still think that what I'm saying is ridiculous and I'm just complaining and I should

be lucky. The fashion industry has defects and it's part of the thing, and like you should again, you should have worked harder, or I'm so thankful that Lula Row did all of this for me, Like you're just ungrateful. So that's the enabling you're saying, is that the system, though, still has a lot of enablers in it. People who will say you're bad, you're wrong, the abuser basically is right. They trauma bond to the abuser, and as part of that denial structure, they shame people. I get people that

come at me all the time. I'm pretty out there on social media. I'll have those people that come to me and they're like, mm, it has been And I'm like, all right, well, I guess I'll make an example out of you today and educate people and say, like, what's happening right here? This is enabling, this is gas lighting. You know, this is what colts do. This is what mL ms do. This is what high demand toxic groups do.

Whether it's one on one like in narsi assistic relationship, or one on however many in an MLM or a pyramid scheme or a cult, like, it's the same, it's just different size. It is a different size, and I

think that there's slightly different issues. But I think a lot of people who get pulled into the MLM world, if you're not familiar with the concept of a narcissistic relationship, or if you've been in nothing but narcissistic relationships and don't know the alternative, there's a real vulnerability just thinking that what's happening here is normal. Right. I want to ask you, other than money, what are the other things

that you think people lose two MLMs. Money is obvious, right, five thou dollars right off the gate, But other than money, what do you think people lose sanity when they're in an M LM sanity, sanity, definitely sanity, sense of self since of their individuality. They lose who they are, They lose their real friends, they lose the real family, they lose the people that actually care about them, They lose whose sense of belonging because it's so freely given and

then so quickly taken away. The excommunication of MLM was the hardest part for me, the way yesterday we were bestias and today you blocked me. I have massive abandonment issues from being raised by a narcissist who was always withholding and was great at the silent treatment, and so that is my biggest trigger that you blocking me, you ignoring me, you silent treating me on purpose. All of

that is very hard for me. And that was probably the most difficult thing, was leaving and losing my sense of self, in my sense of community and everybody that had been my friend for eighteen months that I just thought I was a piece of ship now like instantly overnight, because I didn't want to be a part of this game anymore, because it was I was losing myself. I was having panic attacks. I had never had bad anxiety. Before I had never had panic attacks, and I have

them all the time. Now I have very bad anxiety, a very bad paranoia about a lot of trust issues, abandonment issues, like all kinds of things that we're just triggered that just came back up and are things that I've been working through and fixing in my life over the last few years. But you know, those are some things that people lose. But I'd say that if you don't know what you're dealing with, it's going to take it.

And I think you raise something here that's so important to comment on is that I will say that in the wake of whether it's lu lar Row, which got a lot of public coverage because of the series, but any MLM, there's a real tendency to blame and shame the people who did it. Well, you should have known you got into it without as much attention to the perpetrators, the people who really brought people into these sort of

shady kinds of business models. But our tendency is to always blame the people, saying that's her fault for not paying her mortgage, rather than not identifying the vulnerability people have, historical vulnerability and the the world class level of manipulation that's being applied to people who don't understand what's being done to them. Like you said, you lose your sanity. You don't know what's up and down anymore. Now you don't, and so it's not a great place to make decisions from.

And honestly, what I'm hearing is that people went into this in a really well intentioned, innocent way, saying, here's a chance for me to make money. It's all a lot of this was happening after the recession. Sometimes it was just people wanting to just feel like they were also participating in the family, but not wanting to leave the house when they had young kids. The motivation what's so,

I mean, I think in some ways very pure. The manipulators we're act they were playing with an entirely different deck of cards. And to me, that's not okay. It's so easy, it's so easy to blame the people who were scammed by these things instead of and we've got to get out of the habit of congratulating the manipulators and blaming and shaming the p bowl who have been harmed by these systems. You know, I will say one interesting thing about multi level marketing in terms of victims

and perpetrators is everybody's both. Everybody in an MLM is a victim and a perpetrator. That's interesting. What do you mean by that? Because what happens is you get into the pyramid and you realize the only way to make money in the pyramid is to bring more people in, and so you become the perpetrator. And you don't realize you're the victim who has become a perpetrator. But because you are the victim and you are stuck in this,

I guess I gotta do this to be successful. And you sort of flipped that switch, and you do that, you then become the perpetrator. And there are definitely people who come on my show who have a lot of hard time with that, the realization, like, oh, I found your podcast and I was listening and I was like, yeah, thank god, and then you talked about my M a limb, and then I went, oh, my god, I'm the perpetrator too. Did you ever feel like a perpetrator, Roberta? Not when

I was in it? No, never do you feel like one now? I felt like I was one when I was in I'm definitely not a perpect trader anymore. When I started to realize what was going on, that was like my goal and I stayed at the end of Lulu Rich. Was that I at the peak of my team, I had seventy five women that were directly underneath me in some sort of way, underneath me or underneath people that were underneath me, like my pyramids, seventy five strong.

And so I realized that I'm a big like keeping my karma scales like balanced or at least in the good. I realized that I was very much upside down in my karma, that I had hurt more people, and I thought I was offering an opportunity because I had made money and I had a positive experience, and so offering that opportunity and helping people join, I became that perpetrator. But it didn't realize it until after I had left. And so I vowed to at least help seventy five women,

just get me back to slate zero. And I've been able to help a lot more than that. And in realizing that I was in a cult, that I had brought people in, that I had been a part of it, that I had told people things that were maybe not a hundred percent truth in order to sugarcoat things or to make things seem better than they were, or ignore things or say that hasn't been my experience. I just I realized, oh my god, I was a part of this,

Like I was a monster too. And I think it's really hard for people to admit that there's a lot of lies in an MLM. And I like, did, well, I don't understand where you or you must be bitter, you must have lost money, you must and I'm like no, I just I see it for what it is, and I can't sit around. Like my dad always told me, never be a cheater, a liar, a thief in business. Whenever be a cheater and alier and a thief, because you have nothing to fall back on at that point.

If you always start off as a cheater, a liar, and thief, you can never become one. But if you start off as an honest man, you always have a plan B. That was his joke, and so try to be as honest as possible. And I started realizing what I was doing was being a liar, a cheater, and a thief. And I was like, oh, I can't do this, And I just I had to tell everybody. I had to apologize for it. I had to come clean. I had to up as many people as I could get out of lu La Row if that's what they wanted.

I never said you need to leave, but I definitely was like, if you want to, I can help you. And then that led into me helping other people out of other MLMs, and that led to me being a witness against them in in the lawsuit in Washington, and being a part of Lula Rich and helping actually behind the scenes in other Lulua documentaries even though I wasn't on screen. I'm always I'm always on the back end helping as much as I possibly can and connecting as

many people. There are so many amazing stories of beautiful, wonderful people that were just chewed up and spit out that we haven't heard, and so I'm always trying to find those stories so that people can connect and people can feel validated, and people can say, oh, it's not

just me, Oh this is a whole thing. Yeah, I'm going to push back on your language that a little bit, okay, Instead of victim perpetrator, I almost feel like I'd love to prefer to see the language of survivor and manipulator like manipulator, And that is one thing is I I try to say survivor right because we are victims, but I want to help create survivors from victims. So I think actually survivors even a better term. I like survivor

than better than victim. But I also think like, it's the survival in that system, right, because as you said, I think if a person was said, hey, by recruiting other people, you're now setting up people who are going to have less likely to make money than you to invest the same amount of money and the harm that I mean, you're not given an informed consent form. Listen,

I'm not. Yes, I agree, people have to take personal responsibility, and that's part of what I do by teaching people about narcissistic relationship, telling everyone all that glitters is not gold, something's charismatic and charming, run the hell away, like those are my marching orders. Right. If it seems too good to be true, it is. However, at the end of the day, what ends up happening is that to survive

in a system, you had to become the system. And if you still believed in the system, you were slowly morphing into that, and a lot of people who have been in narcissistic relationships will say the hardest part of healing was I hated who I became. Yeah, absolutely absolutely. I didn't recognize myself anymore. I couldn't look myself in

the mirror. It was that, and I was like, I'm the only person that has to look myself in the mirror every single day and come to terms with what I have done and what I have excused or downplayed. I mean, there were people coming to me towards the end, before I had left that were like, I'm gonna lose my house or I'm going to this is happening, and I was just like, pay your mortgage. But I but if I could buy three okay, so I could pay my marriage, or I could buy five boxes a little row.

And then if I get those five boxes a little row, if I sold at least semi five of it, then I would not only make my money back, but I'd make more and then I could pay my mortgage and I'd have enough to do this and then by luttle row with that too. And I was like, that's not going to happen, No, And it's people future faking themselves and it's tough. So I've been listening to your podcasts.

I really enjoy it. Please, though, for people who are interested in hearing more about MLMs and people stories within them, please regrett to tell us about your podcast, tell us where we can find you and how we can support you. Absolutely. After I finished filming Lula Rich and I finished with the Washington lawsuits, I got the phone call that that they had settled and I that was like February fourth

or something of two thousand and twenty. It was like February fourth or something, and that was pretty much my last like thing that I had committed to, and I felt, okay, Roberta, your job is over. Now what? And I had just gotten divorced, and so for me, it was my first Valentine's Dale by myself, and I thought, what am I going to do? Why don't I tell my story and start that podcast I've been talking about for the last

four years. So I had been interviewing people on Facebook lives and all of these things for many, many years before that, but I had never turned it into anything like tangible. So I thought, okay, it's a podcast, like, it's free. You can download this app, this thing, and I just started telling stories. And in the beginning, I'm a hairstyles by trade. I didn't know how to edit, I didn't know how to interview people. I didn't know how to talk. I didn't know how to work out

an outline. I didn't know how to do any of that. I just knew that I wanted to talk to people that had been where I had been in other companies to end the stigma of failure, like we're not failures seven percent and people lose money in an MLM. That is not a statistic of failure. That is a statistic of systemic oppression. So it's a Norman nine loves like then that's how it is. Like we talked about gambling earlier.

Percent of people losing gambling, of people losing mL them like it's in an actual illegal Pyramids game, the one that the government shuts down. That's only one person, so it's really wild. And I would see these statistics, and I would find these articles and I would read these things, and I would be like, more people need to know about this, And so I started that podcast, and I sort of did a call to action. I had people follow me. I said if you want to talk to me,

I would love to have you. And we just started telling stories and I would just I didn't know how to edit, and I would just throw them up. What's your podcast called. It's called Life After MLM. And that's what we talk about. We are ending the stigma of failure in an industry that is systemically designed for you to fail. And we talked to experts, survivors, other advocates, other activists. I even cover fraud scams, colts and all

of that stuff too. In between to show you all the different red flags and how those Vin diagrams are circles. Yeah they are, Yeah they are absolutely Well, it's all the psychology yea of of narcissism. Ultimately, I'm gonna always gonna I'm gonna always bring it up that flag pole. So well, I again, thank you so much, because you know, like I said, I when I heard about MLMs, I was like, boom, narcissistic relationship. This is a no brainer for me, and I wanted to bring that frame and

hear your experience. But everything you describe what happened, the love bombing, the experience in it, and even the fallout, it's all consistent with what happens to people in narcissistic relationships. So, ROBERTA, thank you for this very lively conversation. And I still got me a pair of Lulu ro leggings with pencils all over them in my drawer that still have they asked in them. So I'm pretty happy to say I haven't joined him yet. Does a matter of time. These

are my takeaways from my conversation with ROBERTA. First, the very nature of MLMs is consistent with the telltale signs and features of a narcissistic relationship. The love bombing, future faking, manipulation, shaming, and then rejection of anyone that dares to speak out. It's the architecture of a narcissistic relationship in order to bring in financially or psychologically vulnerable individuals and sell them

on a bad idea. Empathy also is sacking. This means that any sales venture that seems too good to be true, that requires a major upfront investment, and plays games like delays and onboarding, those are all red flags. Our next takeaway is that ROBERTA story and statements like if your why doesn't make you cry, you aren't digging deep enough are great examples of connecting a business arrangement like sales to the personal and that makes it easier to manipulate someone.

While it's healthy to feel passionate about professional pursuits, it's dangerous when those with more power are trying to elicit such a strong emotional response, which can then be used as a tool to gas like you. When boundaries are being pushed and it is being implied that you don't

care enough, start looking for the exit. And finally, the power of any toxic system is the power to entice people with the seduction of community and friendship, and to use that sense of community as a weapon and withdraw and withhold when there is a sense that someone is not playing by the rules of the MLM. MLMs often have the most success with people who feel already isolated, lonely, or in need of social support and friendship, so from the very beginning, the MLM has the ultimate tool to

keep people in line social rejection. This is a reminder of why it is so important to give ourselves permission to keep cultivating healthy supports, and not just with people who are becoming friends solely because of their affiliation with something that will benefit them if you join. A big thank you to our executive producers Jada Pinkett Smith Fallon, Jethrow, Ellen Rakaton and Dr Rominey de Vassela. And thank you to our producer Matthew Jones, associate producer Mara Dela Rosa

and consultant Kelly Ebling. And finally, thank you to our editors and sound engineers Devin Donnaghe and Calvin Bailiff