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A review by fleeno
Hey, Hun: Sales, Sisterhood, Supremacy, and the Other Lies Behind Multilevel Marketing by Emily Lynn Paulson
3.0
Early 2014 Emily Paulson received a Facebook msg from an old friend Becky. Well not a friend exactly, someone she'd gone to school with but never spoken to. "Hey hun, let's catch up!" Of course it was a ploy from Becky to recruit more members to her Multi Level Marketing scheme (MLM) and Emily, stay at home mum in desperate need of adult contact fell for it. Over the course of a decade Emily rose through the ranks, recruited a huge team, got the "free" car, and at one point was making over $45,000 a month. This insiders view of the MLM shows the predatory nature of MLMs, how the use and abuse customers and sellers, and why they are immoral to the core. Paulson refers to a lot of literature and studies and reflects on the cult like behaviour within MLMs, along with the dodgy (bordering on illegal) financial aspects. Throughout the book she also references the fact a lot of MLMs are largely white, Christian, often based in Utah, and how the pyramid upholds a patriarchal structure. She also makes comments about race and white supremacy which I don't necessarily disagree with, but there wasn't a lot of studies to uphold those views, it was just her opinion. There have been a few MLMs like Herbalife which purposefully targeted Hispanic communities, knowing they didn't speak English, didn't understand the contracts, and were less likely to go to the authorities for fear of being deported. Some of Paulsons arguments could have been better sustained by reference those types of events. I did appreciate though her views on how the company mined peoples misery - first her cancer diagnosis, then her battle with alcoholism, and then a second lot of cancer. The MLMs tumble into QANON, anti vaxer conspiracies during covid and the disturbing black face mask during BLM was awful but unsurprising.
Paulson doesn't name the MLM she was in, instead using a fictional name (though it was allegedly Roden + Feilds). She has said it's because she didn't want people to excuse their own MLM by saying hers was bad but theirs is OK, they're literally all the same. Herbalife, Young Living, Amway, Plexus, doTerra, Scentsy, Mary Kay, they are all the same - though arguably Amway is the blueprint for all MLMs and the most insidious (in my opinion). While I enjoyed the insiders view into my most loathed businesses, it was somewhat soured by the fact Paulson had reservations about the business very early on, was sure she needed to leave, and yet stayed for years, knowlingly earning money off people who couldn't afford it. The fact she was still pulling $10K from her downline when she hadn't sold any product or recruited new staff in over a year says everything about how dodgy multilevel marketing schemes are.
Paulson doesn't name the MLM she was in, instead using a fictional name (though it was allegedly Roden + Feilds). She has said it's because she didn't want people to excuse their own MLM by saying hers was bad but theirs is OK, they're literally all the same. Herbalife, Young Living, Amway, Plexus, doTerra, Scentsy, Mary Kay, they are all the same - though arguably Amway is the blueprint for all MLMs and the most insidious (in my opinion). While I enjoyed the insiders view into my most loathed businesses, it was somewhat soured by the fact Paulson had reservations about the business very early on, was sure she needed to leave, and yet stayed for years, knowlingly earning money off people who couldn't afford it. The fact she was still pulling $10K from her downline when she hadn't sold any product or recruited new staff in over a year says everything about how dodgy multilevel marketing schemes are.