Speaker 1: Hey, Dream listeners. If you like this podcast, you're going
Speaker 1: to love the book. Yeah. I wrote a book. It's
Speaker 1: called Selling the Dream, and it's coming out March twelfth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, on Atria. It's about all of your
Speaker 1: favorite characters from MLMs and some that you've never even
Speaker 1: heard of. I hope check it out. Previously on the Dream,
Speaker 1: MLMs came to the attention of the FTC. They went
Speaker 1: after him pretty hard for about fifteen years. Well, they
Speaker 1: was saying enough is enough. You know what, I know
Speaker 1: what it means. It means there's nothing incredible to discuss
Speaker 1: any longer. Oh there's one word, am We. The Amway
Speaker 1: decision by the Federal Trade Commission changed everything. It invented
Speaker 1: what it called rules. Who came up with the Amway rules? Amway?
Speaker 1: I always assumed it was the FTC that came up
Speaker 1: with them. No. No, In this post Amway decision world,
Speaker 1: it seems like MLMs are everywhere, And as we told
Speaker 1: you earlier in the season, we wanted to find out
Speaker 1: what they look like from the inside. So we joined
Speaker 1: one a makeup company called Lime Life, formerly known and
Speaker 1: referred to in our tape as Limelight. Remember they had
Speaker 1: to change their name mid reporting. When they went international.
Speaker 1: Our producer Mackenzie signed up, got a starter kit, and
Speaker 1: ordered a bunch more makeup at the urging of her upline.
Speaker 1: So last we heard from her, she was struggling to
Speaker 1: kickstart her Limelight career. She had zero sales from anyone
Speaker 1: other than herself. Her posts on social media were going
Speaker 1: largely ignored by everyone but me, her mom, and her upline.
Speaker 1: And that opening party. I sent out invitations on Facebook,
Speaker 1: individualized invitations to everyone, and not a single person responded.
Speaker 1: And I'm talking like my closest friends, Like seriously. Some
Speaker 1: people claimed after the fact that they never got them.
Speaker 1: But you know face book, you can see if someone
Speaker 1: opened it, and I had a range of excuses, everything
Speaker 1: from I would have to hire a babysitter to it's
Speaker 1: a week night, to my mother in law's in town,
Speaker 1: and then everyone kind of ended it with also, I
Speaker 1: don't really get why you're inviting me over for a
Speaker 1: makeup themed party, so no party for us, which is
Speaker 1: a bummer. I love a party and was really looking
Speaker 1: forward to finally getting to know some of the products
Speaker 1: while having my ties with friends. Plus we already invested
Speaker 1: a lot in it. Remember, Mackenzie's upline just convinced her
Speaker 1: to spend around three hundred bucks to Beef Upper Kit.
Speaker 1: We asked around a bit to find out why friends
Speaker 1: ignored the invite, and on the whole, no one felt
Speaker 1: like spending money on babysitters and expensive makeup in order
Speaker 1: to hang out with us when they could just spend
Speaker 1: money on babysitting and a cheap bottle of wine like
Speaker 1: we normally do. As much as everyone loves Mackenzie, even
Speaker 1: attending one party was way too much of an investment.
Speaker 1: Oh and if you think they said no because they
Speaker 1: know this is a silly project for a podcast, you
Speaker 1: are wrong. We didn't tell them. I'm still feeling that
Speaker 1: like overwhelmed feeling where I just I don't know where
Speaker 1: to start, but I'm not doing anything. I'm sort of
Speaker 1: like paralyzed by fear because there's just so much I
Speaker 1: should be doing and I'm trying to do it and
Speaker 1: it's not working. So what are you gonna do? Well,
Speaker 1: that's what I wanted to talk to you about. I'm
Speaker 1: Jane Marie and this is the Dream Episode eight Destination
Speaker 1: Amazing Limelight has all of these events that they do
Speaker 1: everything from something called the Happiest Hour. Wait, what is that?
Speaker 1: I have no clue to Limelight Palooza, which is like
Speaker 1: this big cruise or something, or that Caribbean destination some
Speaker 1: kind of like sales conference or something. Here is Limelight's CEO,
Speaker 1: and that stands for Chief Empowerment Officer. I'm not kidding.
Speaker 1: His name is Jacob Heiser. We found this video of
Speaker 1: him from last year's Limelight Palooza and he's possibly having
Speaker 1: the greatest day of his life. Yeah. It validates. Been
Speaker 1: here validates all the time and hours an effort you
Speaker 1: put into everything you do while you're home alone or
Speaker 1: in your office. So when you're feeling stressed out and
Speaker 1: then you get here and you really get to realize
Speaker 1: the impact of who you are in the way that
Speaker 1: you touch and affect people, and the impact that you
Speaker 1: have on the world, it's amazing. It's really amazing. How
Speaker 1: do we get on that? I don't know. I feel
Speaker 1: like Sugar Ray will be there. Yeah, well, so that's
Speaker 1: why I'm here. I wanted to ask you. There is
Speaker 1: something called Destination Amazing happening in San Francisco, which is
Speaker 1: just a hobinis skip from here. Do you have to
Speaker 1: pay to go to it? Yeah, so I was kind
Speaker 1: of like doing the math it and the happiest hour
Speaker 1: I think is like twenty five dollars. The destination Amazing
Speaker 1: Sales conference is like fifty or seventy five, I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: And then yeah, flights are cheap ish. And then I
Speaker 1: was thinking I could stay in the hotel where the
Speaker 1: event is happening, so I don't miss anything. It's a
Speaker 1: hotel event. Oh yeah, it's a hotel. Do if these
Speaker 1: count toward your income or anything, like how buying your
Speaker 1: own supplies like counts as a retail sale. No, No,
Speaker 1: this is like personal enrichment. You might think, well, okay,
Speaker 1: so lots of companies encourage you to attend conferences and
Speaker 1: get training, but oftentimes those conferences are run by a
Speaker 1: third party, some sort of professional association or something, or
Speaker 1: they're part of training and licensing people in the professional sector.
Speaker 1: My dad, for example, is a dentist, and every few
Speaker 1: years we'd go to an American Dental Association conference. It's
Speaker 1: usually somewhere fun, like Cancun or whatever, and yeah, that
Speaker 1: costs money, but my dad attended classes there on the
Speaker 1: latest route Canal techniques or patient retention strategies or other
Speaker 1: stuff you need to know to get your dental license
Speaker 1: renewed by the state each year. And if you didn't
Speaker 1: have the cash for one of those fun ways of
Speaker 1: earning those credits, that was okay. You can get them
Speaker 1: through volunteering at free clinics or taking affordable courses at
Speaker 1: your local community college. Yes, all of that costs some money,
Speaker 1: but it's a legal requirement to practice dentistry. There are
Speaker 1: similar things for teachers. Schools often promise a raise or
Speaker 1: a promotion if you're teaching and want to seek a
Speaker 1: master's degree, and often the employers help with those costs.
Speaker 1: All you need to invest is the time. Even an
Speaker 1: office retreat where you do trust falls with people you
Speaker 1: don't trust, even those are funded by the office hosting
Speaker 1: the retreat. With MLMs, the very company you're selling for
Speaker 1: in our case, one that does zero vetting or training
Speaker 1: before charging you a fee to work for them, also
Speaker 1: makes you pay out of pocket to get the training
Speaker 1: they claim you must have in order to be successful. Wait,
Speaker 1: how much is this going to cost? Though? Actually I
Speaker 1: think it's going to cost maybe six ers seven hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: Oh my, God, I mean, I need to stay in
Speaker 1: a hotel. I'm over one thousand dollars now. No, we're
Speaker 1: way over one thousand dollars now we're at to like
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred bucks. So based on the videos that I've
Speaker 1: seen online, this seems to be like the magic bullet
Speaker 1: for people who are not good at this. What are
Speaker 1: the videos? I found a bunch where people talk about
Speaker 1: all the sacrifices that they make to go to these events.
Speaker 1: One of them is a girl who missed her best
Speaker 1: friend's wedding to go to Limelight Palooza. I almost didn't
Speaker 1: go to Limelight Palusa this year because one of my
Speaker 1: best friends is getting married that same Saturday and I'm
Speaker 1: supposed to be a bridemaid. And I remember crying when
Speaker 1: I found out that Limelight Palooza was that same weekend,
Speaker 1: and it was one of the hardest decisions I've had
Speaker 1: to make business wise. However, I made like a promise
Speaker 1: to myself that this year, no matter what, I was
Speaker 1: gonna go because last year I didn't go and I
Speaker 1: missed out and my is my bad. So this year
Speaker 1: I was like, I don't care, I'm going. So I
Speaker 1: took her out to lunch and I broke it down
Speaker 1: to her and I explained to her why I had
Speaker 1: to be there. She was crying. I was crying, but
Speaker 1: she's such a good friend that she was like, you
Speaker 1: need to go. So now I'm telling you, guys what
Speaker 1: my friend told me. You need to go. If I
Speaker 1: would have called you, like a couple of weeks before
Speaker 1: your wedding and been like so sorry. But here's the thing,
Speaker 1: I do think it's friendship ending, or at least friendship reconsidering. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but there is the promise that it's gonna make you
Speaker 1: good at this. I've researched this, I study this. I've
Speaker 1: been in direct sales for a very long time, and
Speaker 1: I have failed in direct sales for a very long
Speaker 1: time because I never took convention. Seriously, if you want
Speaker 1: to make some serious money in this business, you must go.
Speaker 1: Don't think for a second that we didn't call this woman.
Speaker 1: We called this woman, and we'll hear from her in
Speaker 1: an upcoming episode. You don't want to miss that. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, we sent Mackenzie off to San Francisco. I'm
Speaker 1: at the hotel. I'm riding the elevator up to Bayview
Speaker 1: at the Grand Height for Happy Hour. Mackenzie arrived Sunday
Speaker 1: night just in time for the Happiest Hour, which cost
Speaker 1: twenty five dollars and included one free drink after that.
Speaker 1: Cash bar wine was fourteen bucks, cocktails fifteen if you
Speaker 1: got a sprite that was eight fifty. And this isn't
Speaker 1: even Limelight Palooza. From Mackenzie's count, there were roughly sixty
Speaker 1: or seventy people in attendance, all but a handful of
Speaker 1: them women, and Mackenzie said Happiest wasn't exactly the way
Speaker 1: she'd described this cocktail hour. Surprisingly, most of the folks
Speaker 1: she talked to were kind of downers. Their businesses were stalled,
Speaker 1: they weren't reaching their goals, and they were desperate to
Speaker 1: get the secret to success. Okay, So I walk in
Speaker 1: and it's this really casual look cocktail party, and it
Speaker 1: seems like everyone's kind of grouped off into their little clicks,
Speaker 1: which I later learned were most likely their uplines and
Speaker 1: downlines people and their team. Oh they already did each other, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: and so I kind of found this group that looked
Speaker 1: really welcoming and friendly, one of the only ones. So
Speaker 1: I went and kind of forced my way into their
Speaker 1: group and started talking to them, and they kept asking
Speaker 1: me questions like, you know, how's your business doing, how
Speaker 1: much are you making, how much you're selling? And You're
Speaker 1: like bad, nothing, nothing, exactly. I just stared at them
Speaker 1: with a blank look on my face. That fifty spread,
Speaker 1: that's right. So I just kind of kept turning it
Speaker 1: around saying, well, how's your business doing? What about you?
Speaker 1: And then found out that most of them were also struggling.
Speaker 1: I mean, they were pretty optimistic, but they had all
Speaker 1: acknowledged that they had hit some kind of wall and
Speaker 1: were so they weren't there just for fun. No, they
Speaker 1: weren't there for fun. One of the girls who kept
Speaker 1: coming in and out of the group brought cousins or
Speaker 1: something to it the cocktail party so that she could
Speaker 1: see what kind of culture it was and see how
Speaker 1: much of a sisterhood it was and how fun it was,
Speaker 1: so she could recruit them exactly. Yeah, So I was
Speaker 1: asking everyone in my group how they were doing, and
Speaker 1: they were so nice and again very optimistic, but all
Speaker 1: acknowledged that that business wasn't doing great and they were
Speaker 1: there to try to figure out how to get better.
Speaker 1: So that night, What they got was a bunch of mingling,
Speaker 1: expensive drinks and an eight minute pep talk from Dan
Speaker 1: DA da DA Chief Empowerment Officer Jacob. Jacob is a
Speaker 1: jet setter. It turns out he's running this event in California.
Speaker 1: It's illegal to record someone without their knowledge, and we
Speaker 1: knew if we asked for interviews it would end Mackenzie's
Speaker 1: time as a seller. So we don't have any sound
Speaker 1: from inside the Happiest Hour or from Destination Amazing the
Speaker 1: next day. But Mackenzie did sneak away to call me, Hi, Hi,
Speaker 1: how are you? The question is how are you? I'm surviving. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to find a space where it's like
Speaker 1: people keep sitting next to me and I don't know
Speaker 1: who is. All right, hold on, I'm picturing you with
Speaker 1: like one of those nose like eyebrowsing nose glasses on
Speaker 1: and a newspaper with holes cut out of it. I
Speaker 1: literally just just had my hood on in a in
Speaker 1: a hotel lobby in a corner, all right, And now
Speaker 1: I'm in an elevator banquette like hiding in a corner.
Speaker 1: So I have I don't know, no, I have to
Speaker 1: go back in I can't be late, all right, wish
Speaker 1: me luck? Okay, good luck, I'm sir be late all right?
Speaker 1: Bye bye? How did it go? Okay? So on Monday
Speaker 1: morning I woke up and went downstairs to the conference
Speaker 1: room to destination Amazing, which I actually had no idea
Speaker 1: what that was getting into it, and I heard some
Speaker 1: people at lunch saying they thought it was going to
Speaker 1: be more like product training or something like that. But
Speaker 1: apparently in the fine print it did mention that it
Speaker 1: was something about how to be your best self and
Speaker 1: you know, push yourself to the next phase. So it
Speaker 1: was like a motivational seminar. Yes, it starts off like
Speaker 1: you know, it's in one of those stadium seating conference
Speaker 1: rooms at Hyatt. To give you a sense of Jacob's
Speaker 1: teaching style that Mackenzie experienced while she was there, Here's
Speaker 1: a video of him we found on Facebook called Fempire
Speaker 1: Illuminating a New Possibility. It's so easy to use excuses
Speaker 1: because it means you don't have to be responsible for
Speaker 1: your results. You get to blame someone or something else
Speaker 1: for why you don't have what you want. It's a
Speaker 1: really easy and comfortable way to live. But is that
Speaker 1: how you want to live. Let's relate this example to
Speaker 1: a sport. Let's say you were at a baseball game
Speaker 1: and the losing team, in their interview after said, well,
Speaker 1: if there were only two bases instead of three, we
Speaker 1: would have absolutely scored three more points in that last
Speaker 1: round and we would have won. Or well, the other
Speaker 1: players have longer legs, so they're naturally faster and can
Speaker 1: outrun us. If our legs were longer, we totally would
Speaker 1: have won. Bro sounds crazy when we hear it in
Speaker 1: those terms, right, but this is essentially what we're doing
Speaker 1: in our industry. There are certain things that we can
Speaker 1: come to expect and if we start thinking of those
Speaker 1: things as conditions of the game rather than as obstacles
Speaker 1: that stop us from winning. In our businesses, how much
Speaker 1: more successful and free from stress do you think you
Speaker 1: and your business could be? And you know what, each
Speaker 1: and every single one of you has the ability to
Speaker 1: be that way right now, right this very second. We
Speaker 1: are human beings being each and every moment is a
Speaker 1: new moment to choose who you're being. So that was
Speaker 1: a vibe coming from Jacob intense. It was pretty intense,
Speaker 1: and it was it very much felt like we were
Speaker 1: in Oprah's studio, and Jacob was Oprah. A lot of
Speaker 1: like cheering. Everyone's mesmerized by everything he's saying. A lot
Speaker 1: of people are frantically writing down every word. There was
Speaker 1: just this energy in the room and everyone was really
Speaker 1: hypnotized by it. And I get it because did I
Speaker 1: already tell you this would the lipstick thing? No? So
Speaker 1: I get it because when I first sat down, I
Speaker 1: had applied limelight lipstick red or really red lipstick. You
Speaker 1: look great and red, by the way, thank you. So
Speaker 1: I've heard now, So I sit down in this limelight
Speaker 1: lipstick because I want to, you know, dress the part.
Speaker 1: And Jacob is walking down the stadium stairs and he
Speaker 1: does a double take and stops and looks at me
Speaker 1: and says, oh my god, this gorgeous woman with this lipstick.
Speaker 1: It's incredible. Everyone look at this. What is that? Of course,
Speaker 1: I say, it's limelight lipstick. He says, oh, I knew it.
Speaker 1: I knew it. And then people start truly patting me
Speaker 1: on the back and like whispering to me, and people
Speaker 1: are smiling at me from across the room, and I
Speaker 1: felt like his light had shined on me. He's like
Speaker 1: a celebrity, this warm glow, I was bathing in it.
Speaker 1: You get a compliment, you get a compliment, you get
Speaker 1: a compliment. I mean I get it because from that
Speaker 1: moment on, or at least at that moment, I felt
Speaker 1: really special. Then he gave us time to write her diaries.
Speaker 1: I can't remember I who was calling them journals or diaries,
Speaker 1: but something that felt really intimate. We had to write
Speaker 1: down what our four year goals were, so gave us
Speaker 1: some guidelines for how to think about it. You know,
Speaker 1: it could be abstract, it could be something really concrete.
Speaker 1: And then people start getting up one by one, they're
Speaker 1: called on to share their goals. And I kind of
Speaker 1: was expecting, based on like things I've seen online from
Speaker 1: other conferences like this, whether or not they're related to
Speaker 1: MLMs or just kind of like sales conferences, some really
Speaker 1: energetic interactions where people are like cheering each other on
Speaker 1: and saying, like, you know, my goal is five years
Speaker 1: from now, I see myself driving in like a Lexus convertible,
Speaker 1: you know, wearing a mink and I don't know, whatever,
Speaker 1: what if people fantasize about eating caviar in one hand
Speaker 1: and like steering with the other. So the first woman
Speaker 1: gets up and she's a mother of four children. She
Speaker 1: homeschools them and her husband I think something like something
Speaker 1: ridiculous and unbelievable, like three jobs to support them. And
Speaker 1: she's telling the story of how he never sleeps, he
Speaker 1: never eats, He comes home just a shower and then
Speaker 1: go back out, and so they're really struggling, and obviously
Speaker 1: their relationship is struggling, and her dream is to allow
Speaker 1: her husband to get a good night's sleep. She wants
Speaker 1: him to be able to come home at the end
Speaker 1: of the night and just sleep and not have to
Speaker 1: get dressed and go to a second job. So she's
Speaker 1: doing Limelight so that she can take that burden off
Speaker 1: of him, at least some of that burden. So that
Speaker 1: was one story. Another woman has a son with special
Speaker 1: needs who isn't getting the care that he needs in
Speaker 1: the school that he's in, and she really wants to
Speaker 1: be able to either put him in a different school
Speaker 1: or get him some sort of support in the school,
Speaker 1: but that requires her paying for it. So she's doing
Speaker 1: Limelight so that she can have that extra income to
Speaker 1: help her son who's disabled. Who's disabled. There is another
Speaker 1: woman whose husband's in the military. I think he's been
Speaker 1: in for four years. He's deployed now, he's missed all
Speaker 1: the major milestones of his kids growing up, and she
Speaker 1: really feels like he deserves to spend time with his children,
Speaker 1: and so she's doing this so that she can allow
Speaker 1: him to what she called retire from the military, so
Speaker 1: that he can get another job that maybe doesn't pay
Speaker 1: as well, but she can help supplement that income. And
Speaker 1: then the one that really I sat next to this
Speaker 1: woman and really really sweet, normal, down to earth woman
Speaker 1: from Michigan who got up and same story, Like you know,
Speaker 1: she wants to help her husband. He's really over extending himself.
Speaker 1: But the bottom line for her is that her dad
Speaker 1: has not had a gravestone in the ten years that
Speaker 1: he's been dead, and she is doing limelight to try
Speaker 1: to raise the money to get him that tombstone. Oh.
Speaker 1: Also another woman whose marriage is falling apart, and she
Speaker 1: is doing this to get the money to pay for therapy,
Speaker 1: couples therapy for her and her husband. This is really depressing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So at this point, I'm kind of a mix of
Speaker 1: angry and also sad on their behalf because I feel
Speaker 1: like they want real information, useful information. You guys have
Speaker 1: been talking about that the night before, right, and I
Speaker 1: thought that's what we were going to get. And then
Speaker 1: I get there and it's all this vague gibberish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like empty, empty words. And so I'm sitting here
Speaker 1: just thinking I wish I don't know, I'm not a
Speaker 1: financial advisor, but that someone would come in and say,
Speaker 1: like open a four oh one K or start a
Speaker 1: savings account. And I was also hoping for tips on
Speaker 1: how to actually sell, like concrete things you can do
Speaker 1: to sell products, like this sort of Instagram post works exactly.
Speaker 1: This is your call to action in your email. Here's
Speaker 1: what you write exactly. It gets people to click the
Speaker 1: embed a link exactly. Use this photo. Yes, the things
Speaker 1: that you would typically learn from a professional development class
Speaker 1: also kind of unbelievable that people in these dire situations
Speaker 1: that this would be the thing. I don't really understand
Speaker 1: it either, And I tried to ask the woman next
Speaker 1: to me, like why this, and I couldn't really get
Speaker 1: an answer, although she's done these before and her husband
Speaker 1: is not happy with it. But he's not happy because
Speaker 1: she's spending a lot of time trying to kickstart this business,
Speaker 1: and he feels now like they spend no time together,
Speaker 1: so that's their issue. But I went in thinking this
Speaker 1: was going to be some like raw Rah type event,
Speaker 1: and instead it started off. I mean, people were crying
Speaker 1: by nine fifteen, sharing these stories of the things that
Speaker 1: are lacking in their lives and what they're here for
Speaker 1: and what their four year goal with Limelight is is
Speaker 1: to be able to get their special the special needs
Speaker 1: resources that they're for their child or a tombstone for
Speaker 1: a deceased parent. Like it's not it's not like the
Speaker 1: fancy vacations. No one. No one was mentioning, you know.
Speaker 1: I think one lady said she wanted to go on vacation,
Speaker 1: but it was more like, I've never taken a trip
Speaker 1: with my family ever. So it wasn't like, you know,
Speaker 1: we just want to move to Paris for a month.
Speaker 1: It was more than that. So already there was something
Speaker 1: very interesting about everyone being made to feel vulnerable, or
Speaker 1: like being encouraged to feel really vulnerable. That was something
Speaker 1: that was initiated from the very very start of the day,
Speaker 1: and I don't looking back, I don't think that's coincidental.
Speaker 1: I think there is something to the fact that like,
Speaker 1: within ten minutes, everyone crying. Everyone feels like super connected
Speaker 1: to each other. There's this emotional thing happening in this room,
Speaker 1: and it feels like therapy. It absolutely feels like therapy.
Speaker 1: And that guy Jacob is the therapist, and he's sitting
Speaker 1: there saying like, well, how would you feel if this
Speaker 1: thing happened? Now, talk me through that. What do you
Speaker 1: feel when this thing occurs? But then at the end
Speaker 1: of it all, he just goes like, oh, honey, or
Speaker 1: give some Instagram meme wisdom instead of like, I think
Speaker 1: this traces back to something that happened with your that
Speaker 1: you told me about in our last session with your father, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Instead of jotting down notes, he's like dismissively throwing out
Speaker 1: tomorrow's a new day and then just moves on to
Speaker 1: the next person. And the things he was having, you imagine,
Speaker 1: were not like how would you feel when you sell
Speaker 1: twenty lipsticks? It was like nothing to do with makeup. Well,
Speaker 1: so this is this is the other thing I realized
Speaker 1: now having a day just a day's distance from it.
Speaker 1: All of these women were here because they'd plateaued in
Speaker 1: their business. There wasn't a single person that I saw
Speaker 1: who got up into the microphone and said like, I'm
Speaker 1: doing great and I just want to do greater. Every
Speaker 1: single person was there because they started off okay and
Speaker 1: now they're just like really not making any more money
Speaker 1: or I you know, one woman said, I've been I
Speaker 1: thought within six months i'd be star director or whatever
Speaker 1: the rank is. And it's been two years and I
Speaker 1: haven't progressed past Beauty Guide. And that was a recurring
Speaker 1: as people got up kind of the WHI are you
Speaker 1: here question? The answer seemed to consistently be because I'm
Speaker 1: not moving forward in my business the way I feel
Speaker 1: like I should be. And mind you, most people who
Speaker 1: join these companies get out way sooner. So these are
Speaker 1: like either die hard Limelight fans or really desperate for
Speaker 1: this to work for some reason. And then it became,
Speaker 1: you know, the second part of the day was sort
Speaker 1: of well how do you get there? And very clearly
Speaker 1: identifying the problem. The problem in every single situation was
Speaker 1: the person. There was never any other problem. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've got slides where Jacob is saying, is the reason
Speaker 1: you're not selling because your mindset is the wrong mindset?
Speaker 1: Is it because you're not organized enough. Is it because
Speaker 1: you're not optimistic enough? Okay? So we has these slides
Speaker 1: up and they disappear in no joke, probably fifteen seconds.
Speaker 1: It's much faster than I can write them down. I
Speaker 1: was trying to take pictures of them. They're not online.
Speaker 1: They didn't send them to us or anything. So at
Speaker 1: the end of it, all I can remember is that
Speaker 1: we all just really suck at this. That doesn't really
Speaker 1: give you anything to work with, no other than just
Speaker 1: self loathing. No, and that's it. Like, so all these
Speaker 1: people are here because they've identified a problem. The problem
Speaker 1: is I can't move my business forward. I can't. I
Speaker 1: don't know what else to do than what I've been doing,
Speaker 1: and it's not working. And his answer is, well, let's
Speaker 1: go back and look at what's wrong with you. There
Speaker 1: are all sorts of excuses that take the blame away
Speaker 1: from the company a thousand percent. Not not at any point,
Speaker 1: and in fact, at multiple points it was stop blaming
Speaker 1: the company, stop blaming the products. Serious, Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it was, it's not us like it if to go
Speaker 1: back to the therapy analogy, like there was a whole
Speaker 1: section of like what's preventing you from being the best
Speaker 1: beauty guide you can be. And it was like looking
Speaker 1: back at what your parents taught you, what your education was.
Speaker 1: All these factors go into the type of beauty guide
Speaker 1: you are, and sometimes you need to reprogram who you are.
Speaker 1: And then there was this whole thing about showing like
Speaker 1: your inspired future and creating this mood board a secret
Speaker 1: yeah essentially, and like put it as your screen saver
Speaker 1: and that, but there was no there were no practical
Speaker 1: steps forgetting anywhere. It was very much like let's open
Speaker 1: ourselves up, talk about what's wrong, blame ourselves for those wrongs,
Speaker 1: agree that we're going to change them with no tools
Speaker 1: about it, right, none, And at one point they did
Speaker 1: this thing which which also now thinking back on it
Speaker 1: is so cheap and such a cheaters way. It's like
Speaker 1: the cliff notes version for them. He's saying, all right,
Speaker 1: so let's talk in small groups about like best practices
Speaker 1: for sales tactics, recruitment tactics, and so he breaks us
Speaker 1: into small groups and then we share what's working for us.
Speaker 1: And ironically I haven't started yet, so I said, you know,
Speaker 1: I'll take notes, but I don't have much to share
Speaker 1: in terms of what's working. The girl next to me
Speaker 1: was like, nothing's really working for me either. I have
Speaker 1: a few tips, but nothing major. And the two girls
Speaker 1: next to me said that they have like one or
Speaker 1: two tips, but yeah, recruitment, they've got nothing. So we
Speaker 1: only ended up coming up with We were supposed to
Speaker 1: come up with twelve ideas. We came up with like
Speaker 1: six because we only had six that worked between the
Speaker 1: four of us. And then they pooled all of the
Speaker 1: ideas and shared them for about thirty seconds on a
Speaker 1: PowerPoint slide. So literally, the only practical advice on how
Speaker 1: to improve your business was thrown up on a PowerPoint
Speaker 1: slide for third I'm not joking. I didn't have time
Speaker 1: to even take a picture of it. It was up
Speaker 1: and gone so quickly. So we didn't talk about any
Speaker 1: of them. No one shared any of them. And we
Speaker 1: had a couple on ours that were kind of interesting
Speaker 1: and sort of offbeat, like one of the girls does
Speaker 1: a grab bag with all of the random products she
Speaker 1: has and she'll say, you know, for twenty dollars, get
Speaker 1: you know, surprise surprise products, which I thought was kind
Speaker 1: of a cool idea. It just creates interest or whatever.
Speaker 1: They didn't even put that on the list. So the
Speaker 1: list was literally like be open and cheerful at your parties,
Speaker 1: always leave your business card behind. I mean it was
Speaker 1: stuff that was like, yeah, no kidding. The thing though
Speaker 1: about this that like really struck me is that he's
Speaker 1: sitting here saying like he thought a four hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars house was so much, and now now he's in
Speaker 1: New York and like he's looking at seven hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars houses and that's reasonable in New York.
Speaker 1: And so that's his new that's like what he's striving
Speaker 1: for for his new budget. And it just felt really
Speaker 1: out of touch to me that you've got these women
Speaker 1: in this room who cannot pay their rent and a
Speaker 1: seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars house is your example,
Speaker 1: is your example of like, come on, guys, if you
Speaker 1: just dream big enough, like you could be looking at
Speaker 1: seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars houses like me. As
Speaker 1: he's walking around in his suit and speaking of suits,
Speaker 1: the girl next to me like, I don't even know
Speaker 1: what this means. I just need to say this. So
Speaker 1: the girl next to me told me that she went
Speaker 1: to Target last night and bought herself a suit at
Speaker 1: Target to wear to this event because it's a business meeting.
Speaker 1: And so you know, again that contrast of this guy
Speaker 1: standing up there in his like what looks like a
Speaker 1: bespoke suit and he's giving an example again of buying
Speaker 1: these going shoe shopping on Fifth Avenue or whatever, and
Speaker 1: the girl next to me is like spending all of
Speaker 1: her money on a Target suit so that she can
Speaker 1: come to this and look professional. There's just something really
Speaker 1: disconnected and like gross gross about it. There were two
Speaker 1: women from corporate sitting in the back, and you know
Speaker 1: they must do this all the time, obviously that this
Speaker 1: isn't the first event like this they've done, but they're
Speaker 1: sitting there and as at the end, there was this closing,
Speaker 1: closing moment where women were invited up to share what
Speaker 1: they've learned for the day or what he was calling
Speaker 1: their AHA moment. I think Oprah coined that, but anyway,
Speaker 1: so there are there are aha moments. And the last
Speaker 1: one that spoke was a woman who said that up
Speaker 1: until a few months before she joined Limelight, she had
Speaker 1: been feeling suicidal and she joined Limelight, and now she
Speaker 1: feels some sort of camaraderie and something else that was
Speaker 1: missing from her life. And she really feels like Limelight
Speaker 1: is sort of giving her this second chance for whatever reason.
Speaker 1: And I looked up and I looked behind her and
Speaker 1: the two women from corporate. One is like staring straight ahead,
Speaker 1: not even registering this. The other woman is typing furiously
Speaker 1: at her computer, and she'd been typing all day. I'm guess.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing that she was still working, and she's probably
Speaker 1: there but had emails to send or orders to fill
Speaker 1: or whatever. But this woman is talking about how four
Speaker 1: months before she joined Limelight, she a mother of two children,
Speaker 1: was contemplating suicide. Everyone in the room was crying, and
Speaker 1: this woman at the at the end of the row
Speaker 1: was hitting send on her email. It was a really troubling,
Speaker 1: troubling moment for me, because God, I feel emotional. I
Speaker 1: think people came to this because they have hope. They
Speaker 1: have hoped that something good is going to come out
Speaker 1: of it, and that this will improve their lives. And
Speaker 1: some of their lives in some ways sound really shitty
Speaker 1: right now. I mean, some of the daily struggles these
Speaker 1: women are going through are real struggles. I mean, this
Speaker 1: isn't about getting a nicer car. I mean, it's more
Speaker 1: fundamental than that. And you see that they're there and
Speaker 1: they're hopeful, and they think this thing is going to
Speaker 1: change their lives, and they're pouring their hearts and souls
Speaker 1: out to the room, and the woman from corporate is emailing.
Speaker 1: She isn't even listening, she's not even paying attention to
Speaker 1: what's going on, and Jacob is standing at the front going, yeah, girl,
Speaker 1: you know you got this girl, and giving some like
Speaker 1: hashtag wisdom, and it just felt so gross. At the
Speaker 1: end of it, I could not wait to get out
Speaker 1: of there. I could not wait to be away from
Speaker 1: the whole situation. I felt extremely dirty being in there
Speaker 1: and witnessing it. And when I went home and started
Speaker 1: thinking that a year from now, probably most of these
Speaker 1: women are not going to be in a better situation
Speaker 1: than they're in now, if anything, because they're investing money
Speaker 1: in this opportunity, and it's just really really disturbing. I mean,
Speaker 1: and they did it on purpose, and they did it
Speaker 1: on purpose. I've never been to a work conference where
Speaker 1: any of this has happened. Neither have I Neither I
Speaker 1: have been to a lot. I would quit if that
Speaker 1: was my job. Look, I think it's nice to be
Speaker 1: vulnerable with your colleagues, and I think it's important for
Speaker 1: people to be open and honest and trust each other.
Speaker 1: But like that's at the bar after the conference, right
Speaker 1: after you've learned all of the actual stuff you really
Speaker 1: need to go back to your office and implement. There
Speaker 1: was nothing. So the whole conference was share your share
Speaker 1: your goal, then talk amongst yourselves and figure out how
Speaker 1: you're going to get there. But none of us are
Speaker 1: being successful right now, so how is that going to
Speaker 1: be useful? And then the only other thing that was
Speaker 1: tangible thing was this Excel sheet where you plug in
Speaker 1: like based on where your average sales are now and
Speaker 1: how many parties you do. If you were to continue
Speaker 1: that for like six months and then try to like
Speaker 1: add a party or maybe sell two more products a month,
Speaker 1: where could you get in twelve months and then and
Speaker 1: then eventually four years financially. But it's completely arbitrary, and
Speaker 1: they don't tell you it's it's this is to help
Speaker 1: you visualize that. You know, if you're selling two hundred
Speaker 1: dollars a month now, if you could just bump it
Speaker 1: up to three hundred next month and then four hundred
Speaker 1: the month after that that by the end of the
Speaker 1: year you'll be making fifteen thousand dollars. But they don't
Speaker 1: tell you how to do it. It's just like add
Speaker 1: add money, yeah, sell more like duh Okay, I know
Speaker 1: this whole thing is a ruse designed to keep people
Speaker 1: in it and spending money. But lie to me at
Speaker 1: least pretend you think I'm smart enough to actually do
Speaker 1: this and treat it like a real business meeting. How
Speaker 1: hard is it? Like, just pretend like you're at a
Speaker 1: business conference. Yeah, I mean there, you can get a
Speaker 1: this is actually true. You can get a book at
Speaker 1: the library that gives you real ways to be successful
Speaker 1: in business. Fucking take a book out of the library
Speaker 1: and read it to me at the conference, right, do
Speaker 1: something right, don't just sit there and have it be
Speaker 1: a farce. I think really early on we used to
Speaker 1: jokingly have conversations about like, are people who start businesses
Speaker 1: like this in on it? Do they know that what
Speaker 1: they're setting up is taking advantage of people? Or is
Speaker 1: it just Oh, this seems like an interesting business model.
Speaker 1: Let's try this. And I think maybe the only one
Speaker 1: around here who really was like, I don't know maybe
Speaker 1: they just think it seems like it's a nice business
Speaker 1: model and they're not realizing that there are people on
Speaker 1: the other side of it, or whatever. I kind of
Speaker 1: tended to give people the benefit of the doubt. After yesterday,
Speaker 1: there is no doubt in my mind that everyone involved
Speaker 1: in that entire organization knows exactly what they're doing. They
Speaker 1: literally were just confronted with the faces and the stories
Speaker 1: of the people they're affecting and couldn't even bother to
Speaker 1: look up from their computers. We reached out to Limelight
Speaker 1: for an interview, and we heard back from Jacob by email.
Speaker 1: It sounded exactly like you'd imagine he's still deciding whether
Speaker 1: he wants to listen to the show let alone talk
Speaker 1: to us next time on the Dream, as promised the
Speaker 1: woman who missed her best friend's wedding for Limelight Palooza,
Speaker 1: I was terminated by them. Why I was let go
Speaker 1: under false accusation. The stuff that you didn't see behind
Speaker 1: the scenes, was crying in the corner of my apartment
Speaker 1: because I was just so stressed out, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I need to make this money, but
Speaker 1: at what expense. The Dream is a production of Little
Speaker 1: Everywhere and Stitcher. Written and reported by Me Jane Marie,
Speaker 1: Dan Galucci, Mackenzie cassab Lyra Smith, and help from Claire Rolinson.
Speaker 1: We are edited by Peter Clowney. Our fact checker is
Speaker 1: Michelle Harris. The Dream is executive produced by Laura Mayer,
Speaker 1: Chris Bannon, Dan Galucci and me. We appreciate you subscribing, rating,
Speaker 1: and reviewing the show wherever you listen, Hello the Dream listeners.
Speaker 1: Have you had a personal experience with MLMs. We want
Speaker 1: to hear from you. Leave us a voicemail at seven
Speaker 1: one five six zero zero zero three two six, or
Speaker 1: send us an email at This is the Dream podcast
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com.