Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey, Dream listeners, it's Jane and I'm back with
Speaker 1: The Dream season three point five. Just kidding, but kind
Speaker 1: of not. That's what I've been calling this. It's an
Speaker 1: excerpt of my audiobook. We're going to listen to chapter
Speaker 1: seven of the audiobook, which is kind of like a podcast.
Speaker 1: It's available for pre order right now, Selling the Dream.
Speaker 1: You can get it anywhere and pre order the audiobook too.
Speaker 1: It makes a huge difference for some reason that I
Speaker 1: don't quite understand, but please go do that and enjoy
Speaker 1: chapter seven of Selling the Dream. In the spring of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, amid the backdrop of panic surrounding the emerging
Speaker 1: coronavirus pandemic, casual users of social media may have noticed
Speaker 1: a new type of post appearing in their feeds. This
Speaker 1: is to inform us all that the pH for corona
Speaker 1: virus varies from five point five to eight point five.
Speaker 1: All we need to do to beat coronavirus we need
Speaker 1: to take more of an alkaline foods that are above
Speaker 1: the above pH level of the virus, some of which
Speaker 1: are lemon, lime, tangerine orange. Hashtag COVID. The above is
Speaker 1: from a real post shared by a distributor for Dotera,
Speaker 1: an extremely popular MLM based in Utah that produces and
Speaker 1: markets essential oils and proprietary essential oil blends for use
Speaker 1: in homeopathic remedies and aromatherapy. This is purely anecdotal, but
Speaker 1: chances are if you've seen an MLM product on store
Speaker 1: shelves or at an earth mother's house is from Dotera.
Speaker 1: Despite its being against company policy to sell its products
Speaker 1: at traditional retail outlets, you'll find their oil collections at
Speaker 1: health spas, crystal shops, and alternative medicine clinics, adding an
Speaker 1: air of legitimacy to the brand. But make no mistake,
Speaker 1: Dotera is an MLM, although Doughtera got its start marketing
Speaker 1: its oils simply as more purer than its competitors. Over
Speaker 1: the past few years, distributors have begun making increasingly bold,
Speaker 1: often downright bogus claims about their health benefits. The government
Speaker 1: has taken notice. Given the difficulty the Amway decision created,
Speaker 1: the FEDS in recent years have gone after MLMs less
Speaker 1: for being pyramid schemes and more for making false claims.
Speaker 1: During the Ebola outbreak of twenty fourteen, the FTC issued
Speaker 1: Dotera a warning after complaints rolled in that certain distributors
Speaker 1: were advertising that Dotera oils could combat the disease, even
Speaker 1: though it should be noted there is still currently no
Speaker 1: approved cure for it. Oregano is effective in inactivating MNV
Speaker 1: non enveloped miurine neurovirus within one hour of exposure, wrote
Speaker 1: one Dotera distributor on social media. Some of the primary
Speaker 1: uses for oregano include athletes, foot candida, cankersurs, ebola virus,
Speaker 1: intestinal parasites, MRSA ringworm, staff infection, viral infections, warts, and
Speaker 1: whooping cough. It might be soothing to think that an
Speaker 1: oil derived from plants you can grow in any home
Speaker 1: herb garden could cure serious disease, but the suggestion is
Speaker 1: potentially deadly. Not only might it lead patients to avoid
Speaker 1: legitimate and successful treatments for the false hope found in
Speaker 1: a bottle of oily perfume, but the oils can cause
Speaker 1: serious harm to the body. Over the past twenty years,
Speaker 1: poison control centers across the country have seen a steep
Speaker 1: rise in calls regarding essential oils. In Tennessee, the number
Speaker 1: doubled between twenty eleven and twenty sixteen, and most calls
Speaker 1: were regarding poisonings in children. In twenty eighteen, the state
Speaker 1: of Georgia received a record breaking one thousand calls involving
Speaker 1: essential oils. Not only can they cause skin irritation, but
Speaker 1: if ingested as a lot of essential oil companies recommend
Speaker 1: many popular oils, including eucalyptus, tea tree, camphor, time and
Speaker 1: winter green, are toxic to humans. The list of what
Speaker 1: could happen to you or your child if you drink
Speaker 1: them is long and includes vomiting, respiratory failure, cerebral swelling, seizures,
Speaker 1: and even coma. But that hasn't stopped essential oil makers
Speaker 1: and their purveyors from continuing to loudly preach the benefits
Speaker 1: of oils as part of a healthy diet. Doughtera has
Speaker 1: even gone so far as to offer empty capsules like
Speaker 1: the ones pharmacists use, made of innert vegetable ingredients as
Speaker 1: part of its product line, so users can ingest the
Speaker 1: oil in pill form. The only warning Dotera issues if
Speaker 1: using with essential oils, it is not recommended to prefill
Speaker 1: capsules for future use, as the properties of the essential
Speaker 1: oils will compromise the vegetable capsule. The government is well
Speaker 1: aware of the danger of this sort of marketing, which
Speaker 1: is why the FTC sent a letter to Dotera early
Speaker 1: on during the COVID pandemic in April twenty twenty, telling
Speaker 1: the company to knock it off. It is unlawful under
Speaker 1: the FTC Act fifteen us C Section forty one at
Speaker 1: seek to advertise that a product can prevent, treat, or
Speaker 1: cure human disease unless you possess competent and reliable scientific
Speaker 1: evidence substantiating that the claims are true at the time
Speaker 1: they are made, the letter read. The letter went on
Speaker 1: to tell the company to stop making such claims, to
Speaker 1: tell their distributors to stop making such claims, and to
Speaker 1: email the agency's COVID nineteen Task Force describing the specific
Speaker 1: actions you have taken to address the FTC's concerns. Dotera
Speaker 1: was hardly alone and needing a legal refresher. The FTC
Speaker 1: sent out hundreds of letters to companies, MLMs and otherwise
Speaker 1: that tried to profit on the fears of COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: by claiming their products offered some magical defense against or
Speaker 1: cure for the virus. In the fight against COVID nineteen,
Speaker 1: keep moving every day and eating healthy Read an ad
Speaker 1: from a distributor of Isogenics International, and MLM that sells
Speaker 1: weight loss products such as protein bars and shakes. Isogenic
Speaker 1: Shakes boost your immunity five hundred percent. Hashtag virus corona worried.
Speaker 1: Read a social media pose from a distributor for Plexus Worldwide,
Speaker 1: another MLM that sells nutritional supplements. I've been boosting my
Speaker 1: immune system for several years with high quality Plexus supplements.
Speaker 1: You can too hashtag Plexus provides excellent all natural supplements
Speaker 1: that truly work. Be sensible, not fearful, Have no fear.
Speaker 1: Plexus Worldwide is here. The FTC letters all ended with
Speaker 1: the directive to immediately stop publishing such claims, either directly
Speaker 1: or via distributors, and to respond within forty eight hours
Speaker 1: letting the agency know the companies had done so. Step
Speaker 1: right up. MLMs present a unique challenge to regulation for authorities.
Speaker 1: While the FTC has the authority to go after companies
Speaker 1: engaging in deceptive marketing, such as saying cinnamon oil can
Speaker 1: cure diabetes, in practice, the FTC has little power. Ensuring
Speaker 1: the individual companies do what they're told requires a lot
Speaker 1: of resources, and, as we saw in the discussion of
Speaker 1: Karl Renborg and neutralite. The law still provides a lot
Speaker 1: of gray area as to what makes a health claim illegal.
Speaker 1: Before nineteen oh six, when the first national legislation appeared
Speaker 1: around food and drug safety, sellers were not prohibited from
Speaker 1: making false therapeutic claims on packaging and in sales pitches,
Speaker 1: and they didn't have to provide proof of what was
Speaker 1: in any food or drugs they marketed. One could just
Speaker 1: bottle up whatever, pitch it to the public and make
Speaker 1: some cash. Capitalism was being tested in its purest, newest form.
Speaker 1: The market would decide if something was a good product.
Speaker 1: Spurred on by industrialization, the Gold Rush, a transcontinental railroad,
Speaker 1: and a slew of diseases no one could cure because
Speaker 1: penicillin hadn't been discovered, snake oil salesmen flourished across America.
Speaker 1: Historians still debate the origin of the term snake oil,
Speaker 1: but the most agreed upon story is that when China
Speaker 1: and these laborers came to America to help build that
Speaker 1: transcontinental railroad, they brought with them some remedies to suthe
Speaker 1: their aching bodies after endless days of brutal labor. One
Speaker 1: of those remedies was said to come from water snakes,
Speaker 1: and if you rubbed it on your joints, you'd feel better.
Speaker 1: Come to find out, the omega three, fatty acids in
Speaker 1: actual snake oil, like those in fish oil, have been
Speaker 1: found in some studies to rival enseids such as aspirin
Speaker 1: and ivuprofen in their anti inflammatory effects. So there was
Speaker 1: something to this treatment, But since no one knew what
Speaker 1: it was and water snakes weren't available everywhere, other versions
Speaker 1: started popping up that contained god knows what, and hucksters
Speaker 1: started selling those across the country. The most famous of
Speaker 1: these salesmen was Clark Stanley, and his backstory won't surprise
Speaker 1: you at this point. Born in eighteen fifty four in Texas,
Speaker 1: he grew up to become a ranch hand, but decided
Speaker 1: he'd rather be rich and took a short educational trip
Speaker 1: to a Hope village to learn natural medicine, or so
Speaker 1: he said. He began concocting his own snake oils and
Speaker 1: wrote a forty one page handbook about them, and about
Speaker 1: himself and about being a cowboy. He used the book
Speaker 1: at sales presentations to look smart and accomplished. I mean,
Speaker 1: how many people can claim to be authors lol at me.
Speaker 1: He was definitely skilled at one thing, though, ripping people
Speaker 1: off dressed in a fancy suit and christening himself the
Speaker 1: Rattlesnake King. Stanley began touring the country chopping heads off
Speaker 1: rattlesnakes in front of huge crowds while preaching the benefits
Speaker 1: of his snake oil liniment, which he said could cure,
Speaker 1: among dozens of other things, neuralgia, lame back toothache, sprains, frostbite, bruises,
Speaker 1: sore throats, and snake bites. He got so good at
Speaker 1: this he was given a stage at the eighteen ninety
Speaker 1: three World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The bottles sold for
Speaker 1: about fifty cents apiece, which is close to fourteen dollars
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one, money about in line with the
Speaker 1: cheaper essential oils you can get today. In nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 1: eleven years after Congress created the Food and Drug Act
Speaker 1: to protect consumers from people like Stanley, his tinctures were
Speaker 1: found to contain no snake oil whatsoever, just mineral oil,
Speaker 1: beef fat, and turpentine, along with some culinary spices such
Speaker 1: as capsaicin, which is found in hot peppers gross. His
Speaker 1: business was shuddered for good, and he was fined twenty
Speaker 1: dollars or the equivalent of the cost of forty bottles
Speaker 1: of his snake oil linament. From there, snake oil became
Speaker 1: a catch all term for any vitamin supplement or medicine
Speaker 1: making unsubstantiated claims. The next year would see an explosion
Speaker 1: of businesses like Stanley's thanks to a disaster closely resembling
Speaker 1: the pandemic we faced today. The nineteen eighteen influenza outbreak.
Speaker 1: Newspapers and magazines were chok full of advertisements for cure
Speaker 1: alls or preventative tinctures that promised to eradicate the Spanish flu.
Speaker 1: It was cast by a novel H one N one
Speaker 1: virus that was thought to come from birds, though similar
Speaker 1: to the ongoing debate around coronavirus, that hasn't been definitively confirmed.
Speaker 1: It's said that one third of the world's population became
Speaker 1: infected over two years, with over fifty million deaths. Everyone
Speaker 1: wanted to find a cure or preventative concoction. There was
Speaker 1: a beef gravy, Yes, beef gravy that boasted. It increases
Speaker 1: nutrition and maintains vitality in the system, and thus an
Speaker 1: effect of resistance is established against the attacks of the
Speaker 1: influenza organism. People bought it literally. In Wisconsin, a doctor
Speaker 1: was known for administering camphor oil intravenously to desperate patients.
Speaker 1: Considering that the most common legitimate pharmaceutical prescriptions you could
Speaker 1: get included heroin, cocaine, and opium, it's easy to see
Speaker 1: how other scary sounding treatments could enter the mainstream. Though
Speaker 1: the government did crack down in fits and starts on
Speaker 1: the sale of these implements, the industry continued to thrive.
Speaker 1: The great danger today is that those messages of alternative
Speaker 1: cures can spread much faster. Thanks to social media and
Speaker 1: thanks to the massive modern wellness industry. Spurred by dissatisfaction
Speaker 1: with and earned distrust of the traditional medical community and
Speaker 1: big pharma. Wellness culture has risen made popular by celebrities
Speaker 1: such as Gwyneth Paltrow and her brand Goop, by a
Speaker 1: whole host of social media influencers, as well as by
Speaker 1: companies such as Dotera that capitalize on our desire to
Speaker 1: feel better and look better naturally. The industry is estimated
Speaker 1: to be worth over four trillion dollars today with no
Speaker 1: signs of slowing. The twenty twenty Netflix docuseries Unwell explores
Speaker 1: the rise of this industry and the impact it's had
Speaker 1: on our health and our wallets. The first episode is
Speaker 1: entirely dedicated to essential oils, and Dotera is a main character.
Speaker 1: In the episode one Diamond Rank, Dotera Rep Alison pitches
Speaker 1: new recruits by telling them a harrowing story about how
Speaker 1: she was diagnosed with a brain tumor at age twelve.
Speaker 1: She underwent surgery, but then her tumor couldn't be treated
Speaker 1: with chemo, and the idea of radiation sounded scary, she says,
Speaker 1: to her credit, it is, but Huish was so scared
Speaker 1: that when a friend of the family recommended treating her
Speaker 1: cancer with frankincense and clove oils, which they said had
Speaker 1: anti cancer properties, her family began administering the oil's daily.
Speaker 1: She also took a regano and tea tree oil to
Speaker 1: fight bacteria and viruses, she says, but her family made
Speaker 1: sure never to tell her doctors about this self medicating.
Speaker 1: My mom was very careful that she never brought up
Speaker 1: that we were using essential oils, which explains to a
Speaker 1: roomful of potential recruits. If she had told my neurosurgeon that,
Speaker 1: he could have easily called Child Protective Services hot tip.
Speaker 1: If you're aware you're doing something to your child that
Speaker 1: would get CPS involved, stop doing it. Whish concludes the story.
Speaker 1: And ever since then, I've used essential oils. On screen,
Speaker 1: we can see that she is alive, so confirmation bias
Speaker 1: kicks in and one might think, wow, yes, the oils worked.
Speaker 1: Immediately after her pitch, some of the women begin asking
Speaker 1: how to treat other ailments, such as diabetes with dotera.
Speaker 1: Essential oils help clean up the blood, but we're not
Speaker 1: supposed to say that essential oils cured this disease. That
Speaker 1: is due to the FDA. Our healthcare system doesn't really
Speaker 1: like essential oils. It takes away from our big pharma
Speaker 1: and all of those sales. That is some slippery and
Speaker 1: skillful language with Wuish basically saying what she can't be
Speaker 1: saying lest she get in trouble with law enforcement. The
Speaker 1: shpiel about our healthcare system not really liking essential oils
Speaker 1: is a cornerstone of many MLM supplement pitches these days.
Speaker 1: The government doesn't want you to have this, so you
Speaker 1: can't buy it at the drug store. You can only
Speaker 1: get it from me, your friendly neighborhood, or reganal oil dealers.
Speaker 1: One huge hole in this logic. If the oils worked,
Speaker 1: wouldn't this evil big pharma create a monopoly on them
Speaker 1: and mark them up and get richer. Never mind that
Speaker 1: anti establishment thinking often only goes as far as declaring
Speaker 1: the powers that be evil doers. There's no burden to
Speaker 1: explain how or why they'd want to deceive the masses.
Speaker 1: Just think of the idea of the illuminati. Why do
Speaker 1: they exist to be in charge of people and money
Speaker 1: and scene. Cuisha's right about one thing. The government doesn't
Speaker 1: want people to say that essential oils are miracle cures,
Speaker 1: but it's not because they compete with big pharma. Quite
Speaker 1: the contrary. While there is some, albeit inconclusive research that
Speaker 1: shows certain oils can help improve mood or relieve stress,
Speaker 1: there is absolutely no evidence that they have any role
Speaker 1: in combating illness or disease. Unfortunately, the very selling structure
Speaker 1: of MLMs, though legitimized by the nineteen seven an Amway case,
Speaker 1: still makes it easy, if not imperative, for bad or
Speaker 1: just clueless actors to act illegally. That's not to say
Speaker 1: that individual sellers intend to hurt their customers. These sellers
Speaker 1: often believe their hype, but harm is harm either way.
Speaker 1: Think of all the blood diamonds you have lying around.
Speaker 1: In twenty eighteen, the FTC published Business Guidance concerning Multi
Speaker 1: Level Marketing, a kind of cheat sheet about what not
Speaker 1: to do if you want to stay out of the
Speaker 1: regulator's crosshairs. Item fifteen provides a perfect example of how
Speaker 1: much the FTC can actually do and how non threatening
Speaker 1: their threats can be. It begins the FTC has long
Speaker 1: supported industry self regulation as an efficient way to secure
Speaker 1: consumer benefits and promote a robust and competitive marketplace. MLM
Speaker 1: self regulation may create these same types of benefits. The
Speaker 1: FTC is saying that it doesn't want to get in
Speaker 1: the way of a free market trying to hinder business
Speaker 1: in any way, but it does place a lot of
Speaker 1: trust in these companies, and it is watching to make
Speaker 1: sure that trust isn't violated. The FTC goes on to
Speaker 1: say as much. Belonging to a self regulatory organization, however,
Speaker 1: does not shield MLMs engaged in unfair and deceptive practices
Speaker 1: from FTC law enforcement action under appropriate circumstances. The FTC
Speaker 1: can and will bring law enforcement actions against companies that
Speaker 1: claim to follow self regulatory guidelines but in practice do not. Similarly,
Speaker 1: the FTC can and will bring law enforcement actions against
Speaker 1: companies that, despite following such guidelines, nonetheless violate the FTC Act.
Speaker 1: In other words, we're trusting you to follow the rules,
Speaker 1: and if you don't, you'll be in trouble. And if
Speaker 1: you pretend you didn't know you were breaking the rules,
Speaker 1: that's on you, not us. So we trust you, but
Speaker 1: we don't have to trust you. And besides, who can
Speaker 1: stop independent distributors from saying whatever they want on their
Speaker 1: private social media accounts. They are the owners of their
Speaker 1: own small businesses. After all, a letter to the president
Speaker 1: of a company surely can't make its way all the
Speaker 1: way down to each new recruit. And remember, MLMs placed
Speaker 1: responsibility for failure or illegal activity on the distributors, not
Speaker 1: the company or its products. Any CEO of an MLM
Speaker 1: can throw their hands up and say, well, we can't
Speaker 1: control what independent distributors say. Besides, right here on our
Speaker 1: website it says that's a no no. The Amway rules
Speaker 1: paved the way for this passing of the buck and
Speaker 1: made it standard practice. This has been the case ever since.
Speaker 1: Carl Renborg and Neutralite encouraged distributors to dress up as
Speaker 1: doctors and plant themselves in local pharmacies with that broad
Speaker 1: health checklist to present to customers. No one at Neutralite
Speaker 1: said you had to do this to sell their vitamins,
Speaker 1: but if you wanted to succeed, that's up to you.
Speaker 1: Carl knew he was onto something, but didn't live to
Speaker 1: see the day alternative therapies would so publicly and successfully
Speaker 1: compete with mainstream medicine. The wellness arm of the MLM
Speaker 1: industry offers a unique case study into what can happen
Speaker 1: when an MLM run by people without medical degrees gets
Speaker 1: into the business of selling so called healing products. One
Speaker 1: of those people can be credited with creating both of
Speaker 1: the top essential oil companies in the world. The MLM
Speaker 1: that started it all was called Young Living, founded in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three by Gary Young and his then wife Mary.
Speaker 1: According to company lore, Young had become a devout practitioner
Speaker 1: of essential oils after a logging accident in his early
Speaker 1: twenties left him unable to walk. After two failed suicide attempts,
Speaker 1: Young tried a cure of drinking water and lemon juice
Speaker 1: exclusively for reportedly the better half of a year. This
Speaker 1: is now known as the Master cleanse and is not
Speaker 1: recommended for more than ten days. Young claimed the liquid
Speaker 1: diet got him up and moving again, and he decided
Speaker 1: to devote his life to providing relief to others, both
Speaker 1: physically and financially. There's no evidence anywhere to back up
Speaker 1: this story. In nineteen eighty one, the then thirty two
Speaker 1: year old opened a natural health clinic outside Spokane, Washington.
Speaker 1: With only a high school education and a few uncompleted
Speaker 1: classes in nature apathy, he opened Golden six Health World,
Speaker 1: a facility that offered a variety of alternative medicine services,
Speaker 1: including some that he himself developed, such as taking blood
Speaker 1: samples from patients to interpret them, meaning examine them for
Speaker 1: signs of trouble. How farnocy, he said he could detect
Speaker 1: cancer cells and had developed a holistic regimen to cure
Speaker 1: the disease. One of the services offered at the clinic
Speaker 1: was a blood analysis for pregnant women to see if
Speaker 1: they were getting the vitamins and minerals they needed. And
Speaker 1: its popularity led him to offer these clients water births.
Speaker 1: At the clinic. On September fourth, nineteen eighty two, Young
Speaker 1: attempted to deliver his own daughter, but he and Mary,
Speaker 1: who also had no medical training, kept her underwater for
Speaker 1: more than an hour. The child died, and the Washington
Speaker 1: State Department of Licensing and local police staged an undercover
Speaker 1: sting operation of the facility, which landed Young in the
Speaker 1: local jail for the night, charged with practicing medicine without
Speaker 1: a license, which was only a misdemeanor if you can
Speaker 1: believe it. Later, Young moved to Tijuana and opened another clinic,
Speaker 1: where he developed a blood crystallization test and something he
Speaker 1: called orthomolecular cell therapy, both of which he claimed could
Speaker 1: be used to treat or cure most of the world's ailments.
Speaker 1: He promised cancer patients that after a six thousand dollars
Speaker 1: three weeks stay in his clinic, their cancer would be
Speaker 1: in remission, but for ten thousand dollars they could be
Speaker 1: completely cured forever. Words spread through southern California about this
Speaker 1: miracle worker just south of the border. Tijuana is still
Speaker 1: a popular destination for Southern Californians. Looking for medical procedures
Speaker 1: cheaper than those in Los Angeles or San Diego, cheaper
Speaker 1: and more experimental. After hearing about a number of Angelinos
Speaker 1: who had sought treatment at his clinic, in nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 1: a Los Angeles Times reporter decided to send Young a
Speaker 1: blood sample, except tih it was cat blood. Young diagnosed
Speaker 1: aggressive cancer. The reporter followed up with chicken blood, in
Speaker 1: which Young found signs of an inflamed liver. The fake
Speaker 1: doctor wrote, it appears as though you've recently undergone a
Speaker 1: high level of upset in your life, which has weakened
Speaker 1: your immune response considerably. We recommend a supervised program of cleansing,
Speaker 1: detox and rebuilding. Again, this was the recommended course of
Speaker 1: action for a chicken, but Young didn't know that. Young's
Speaker 1: interest in essential oils developed after he met a French
Speaker 1: lavender distiller at a New Age and Alternative medicine conference
Speaker 1: in the early nineties. Young traveled to France to learn
Speaker 1: distillation techniques, and in nineteen ninety three, after returning to
Speaker 1: the state, he and his wife founded Young Living Essential Oils.
Speaker 1: Essential oils were gaining popularity and enough competitors were out
Speaker 1: there to inspire his unique niche marketing pitch essential oils
Speaker 1: but make it Morbon. The pitch worked, and today there
Speaker 1: are over two million distributors of Young Living oils in
Speaker 1: the United States. In twenty twenty, the company claimed two
Speaker 1: point two billion dollars in revenues. To this day, after
Speaker 1: his untimely ironic death by stroke at age sixty eight
Speaker 1: and twenty eighteen, the health Guru's company publishes a massive
Speaker 1: handbook extolling its oils as essential to one's health. It
Speaker 1: outlines in great detail how the frequencies of specific oils
Speaker 1: can alter the frequency of the human body, bringing it
Speaker 1: to equilibrium where everything from anorexia to diabetes to cancer
Speaker 1: cannot thrive. The book also details the extremely intensive and
Speaker 1: confusing distillation process, using a hodgepodge of quasi scientific sounding
Speaker 1: jargon to help explain why Young Living oils are so
Speaker 1: pure and why anything less than a pure, unadulterated oil
Speaker 1: could pose significant danger to one's health. The index for
Speaker 1: personal use includes entries on everything from yeast infections to
Speaker 1: strap throat to strokes, uterine cancer, and West Nile virus,
Speaker 1: as well as autism, multiple sclerosis, and aids. One thing
Speaker 1: stands out about the book above all, the overwhelming majority
Speaker 1: of footnotes cite the Bible. It drives me nuts members
Speaker 1: of my family sell but more important and scary, they
Speaker 1: use young living oils to treat all kinds of ailments.
Speaker 1: After reading the handbook pretty much front to back, I
Speaker 1: want to scream my concerns at them. Oil cannot cure
Speaker 1: lime disease, even if there's a quote in the Bible
Speaker 1: written two thousand years before lime disease was even discovered. Infuriating,
Speaker 1: this book is doing too much like those claims made
Speaker 1: in that five pounds, six hundred and forty page spiral
Speaker 1: bound text. Young himself was a bit extra. In videos
Speaker 1: his company posts on YouTube. He stands before crowds preaching
Speaker 1: the gospel of Jesus alongside the gospel of essential oils,
Speaker 1: reminiscent of a televangelist, though more overtly capitalistic. Before his
Speaker 1: death in twenty eighteen, he was planning to build an
Speaker 1: amusement park featuring a monument with his face carved in stone.
Speaker 1: He operated clinics in South America, where it was said
Speaker 1: that patients could receive gallbladder surgery or intravenous essential oil
Speaker 1: treatments from the man himself by the hand of God.
Speaker 1: As he grew hardened in this approach, some in the
Speaker 1: company became disillusioned and irritated by Young's bombast. One of
Speaker 1: those most over it was David Sterling, then COO of
Speaker 1: Young Living. He left in two thousand and eight and
Speaker 1: took with him some of the company's top brass, the
Speaker 1: director of scientific education and support, the senior director of
Speaker 1: new market development, a regional business to and the director
Speaker 1: of events. Together they launched Doughtera, gutted. Young Living eventually
Speaker 1: filed a lawsuit against them in twenty thirteen, claiming they
Speaker 1: falsely advertised their oils as one hundred percent pure when
Speaker 1: they contained man made materials. A shit slinging back and
Speaker 1: forth lasted for years, with each side attacking the veracity
Speaker 1: of the other's marketing materials and claiming disparagement. But then
Speaker 1: Gary Young kicked the bucket and the contentious relationship cooled
Speaker 1: amid booming success for both companies. While Young Living remains
Speaker 1: a godly enterprise, Doughtera markets itself as much more mainstream,
Speaker 1: advising customers to add a few drops of lemon oil
Speaker 1: to homemade cleaning products or to put lavender oil in
Speaker 1: a diffuser to help aid sleep and reduce stress. Other
Speaker 1: than that, the two company's product lines are virtually the
Speaker 1: same and both are wildly successful. Although you can purchase
Speaker 1: essential oils at the grocery store or on the internet,
Speaker 1: the two MLMs are by far the biggest companies in
Speaker 1: the industry, with more than a billion dollars in annual
Speaker 1: sales each. Given the selling structures of the companies, it's
Speaker 1: impossible to know how many of those dollars are profits
Speaker 1: or are made from retail sales to people outside the organizations.
Speaker 1: So that was a chapter from my new book, Selling
Speaker 1: the Dream, available March twelfth. But you can pre order
Speaker 1: it right now, And I'm supposed to beg you to
Speaker 1: do that for I don't know why, but I guess
Speaker 1: it matters a lot. So go pre order the audiobook
Speaker 1: or the hardcover book, and then hit me in my
Speaker 1: DMS and tell me if I did a good job. Okay,
Speaker 1: love you Bye.