A review of Bridget Read's "Little Bosses Everywhere," and why it might not be the change the anti-MLM movement needed.
- Julie R. Neidlinger
- 5 days ago
- 19 min read
It starts with a pyramid scheme.
A pyramid scheme is a fraudulent business model in which participants generate the majority of their income by recruiting new members, rather than from the sale of products or services.
The focus necessarily is on recruiting more people under you, and the income generated comes primarily or substantially from recruits' payments, fees, and purchases rather than from what we'd consider typical business activities through actual sales you've made. The presence of products or services mixed in does not mean that something is not a pyramid scheme. The question is where a majority of the money comes from: sales or recruitment.
The shape of this model resembles a pyramid, hence its nickname, with a few people at the top and more people at each level going down, where those at the top enjoy the profits of everyone below them. The harder those on the bottom work, or the more they spend on the products or services, the more those above them profit.
There is obviously a problem here, in that mathematically, this model can't be sustained for long. Pyramids collapse when there are not enough new people to keep the bottom going. I've read that you can only go about 14 levels before you've eaten up the population of the world, but I don’t have the math wherewithal to substantiate that.
Few have clarified it as well or as simply as "The Office."
That’s your definition of what it is. But what is it really, in terms of the impact on human beings?
Pyramid Schemes and Multi-Level Marketing
Over the years, I or my family have been involved in multi-level marketing (MLM). MLM may also be referred to as direct selling, network selling, or relationship selling.
In most cases, it was to gain access to a specific type of product we liked, understanding that we were participating in a system that might not have been scrupulous. Years ago, it was difficult to find certain kinds of products and services, although with the internet, that has changed. Admittedly, MLM products are often priced higher than necessary, allowing each level to take its cut. That pricing is why many become distributors: to access a reduced price.
Common concerns expressed in the anti-MLM realm over the products themselves are:
A lack of true third-party (outside) testing
Proprietary blends and mixes that hide the actual amounts and contents of some products.
Reliance on outside studies that are based on general ingredients or practices to make claims, but not necessarily a reflection of the actual proprietary blend or product.
White labeling of already-existing cheaper products (i.e., they use someone else’s product and pay to put their label on it)
Bold claims and promises on what the product will do (guaranteed financial, health, or emotional outcomes, etc.).
I don’t think I, or my closest family members, have ever seen MLM companies (if we understood that’s what they were) as a real, full-time business opportunity, but more as a hobby or side-gig, a social connection tool, or for product access. I don’t come from a family inclined to aggressively sell things.
In addition to the products, anti-MLM content creators will often discuss some other concerns they have with MLM companies, including:
A cult-like atmosphere in which everyone must be a product of the product (i.e., their entire lifestyle is about the product or service being sold).
Pressure to view people, from friends and family to church members to random people you meet in stores or online, as potential recruits.
Comparative living based on the MLM definition of success and happiness, with the need to constantly be on and upbeat, regardless of the reality of your life.
Gaslighting, love-bombing, and emotional and spiritual manipulation.
The threat of being ostracized if you decide to step away or speak up about concerns (negative thinking is not allowed).
Selling a positive message that your fate and success are within your reach and that you can change your life through hard work, turning that against you if you fail, and suggesting that your failures are your fault because you didn’t work hard enough. (Hint: as you’ll see, a pyramid scheme is built on the assumption that the lower levels fail.)
The glorification of constant hard work and hustle as both the path and the pinnacle to success, with either an assumed or boldly stated assertion that if you don’t hustle, you’re a loser.
Confusion, self-blame, and shame when failure occurs. (Not if, but when, if the definition of success is one the MLM provides and you adopt their goals instead of yours.)
Not all MLM companies and products do all of these things, nor do all people in an MLM behave this way. Also, there are federal laws on what kinds of claims can be made, in theory. However, I’d say this is a good, general list, based on what I can gather. Most MLM companies are quick to assure you that they aren’t one of the bad ones, to which I can only advise caution.
Some MLM companies require you to buy a minimum amount of product each month, or they'll send you a "default" order whether you want or need it or not. Some will charge annual fees so that you can stay in the company and be allowed to buy their stuff. Some require you to attend training or purchase training materials. Some operate on a party model, hounding you to ask your friends and their friends to host a party.
And some don't do any of this.
They often differ somewhat, and that’s why it’s hard to decipher what you’re being confronted with when someone suggests they’d like to coach you, mentor you, or offer you a business opportunity or a chance to change your life and be your own boss.
Rest assured that those involved in a questionable MLM have an answer to the accusation of being a pyramid scheme, particularly since we use different language today for such business arrangements.
"Pyramid schemes are illegal, and we are allowed to operate, so we aren't a pyramid scheme." This is bizarre logic that suggests that if you were to murder someone, you've done nothing wrong until you finally get apprehended, charged, and convicted. It's the idea that nothing is illegal until you're caught, as if the definition of being legal is based on the speed of law enforcement.
"Normal corporations have pyramid structures with the CEO on the top and then managers below, and so on, so why aren't they called pyramid schemes?" Again, not logical. It's as if the age-old structure of hierarchy, with its obvious shape, found in ancient militaries, modern businesses, and any organization, is the problem. It's not the shape and structure, but the way the money flows. In a pyramid scheme, workers at the bottom send money to the top, whereas in a corporation or regular business, the opposite occurs.
Remember, pyramid schemes are where you make more money from recruitment than sales.
But that becomes the catch.
If companies don’t provide actual retail sales statistics (i.e., sales from a distributor to customers, but not including the sales of personal purchases or peripheral/recruiting income), we can’t easily determine if actual retail sales are what’s happening. And most MLM companies don’t provide precise data on any of this. Anti-MLM content creators are very good about finding the reports these companies are obligated to generate on revenue and average incomes at each level; what you’ll see is that, in general and significantly, most people in MLM do not make money, but lose money.
Now, if you’re in it just to buy the products at a price closer to normal retail and you understand all of this reality, and the annual fee isn’t too bad, and you aren’t forced to keep stockpiling required purchases every month that you can’t use, okay. You’re still feeding the machine, but if you go in with that understanding, that’s how it is.
Most people don’t understand that. They are told they can make money.
They think they’re going to finally quit the job they hate, have free time, earn six figures, work from home full time on their terms, spend more time with their kids—whatever it is, that’s their goal. An MLM will parade and promote the top levels of a pyramid to entice those at the bottom to stick with it so they can succeed like that. At that point, it’s not just about having access to a particular product, but instead, chasing a particular lifestyle. They want to be “business owners” and run their own business, unaware that they aren’t actually business owners but more like a middleman buying wholesale from the real business and trying to sell it marked up to others.
Again, if you understand all of this and go ahead, fine, but this reality isn’t made clear to people.
As many MLM participants have learned, when an MLM collapses or they do something that’s not allowed in the terms of service, their entire business is gone in a moment. The business they thought was theirs to manage is taken from them. They lose all customer contacts, all products, and maybe even ownership of their social platforms they’d been using to sell products or services. They also find out that the yucky regular job didn’t crack the whip and force them to hustle non-stop 24/7 like an MLM does.
Now we get to the book.
Little Bosses Everywhere: A Decent Book About MLM That Manages To Fall Flat
My interest in MLM stems from my own experiences, as well as the curious rise of coaching and schemes I observed gaining popularity online. The self-help movement and some of the client writing work I’d done have also had a severely negative impact on me, as false positivity and promises do, forcing me to figure out what was going on so I could better understand the reason for that impact.
As a business owner with varying levels of success, I noticed numerous attractive, highly positive, high-energy, seemingly Christian women (and uber-fit men) discussing their businesses and their success online. Some are so high-energy and positive that, to a personality like mine, they almost seem manic and deranged, I kid you not.
This was such a contrast to my own experience and feelings of running my freelance company for two decades that I couldn’t take the cognitive dissonance. The hint of something dark and destructive behind the gleaming white smiles and luxurious homes only compounded the need to dive into what was really going on.
Enter the latest book on MLM and pyramid schemes, angling to take a look at its history and roots. I purchased a Kindle copy of Little Bosses Everywhere: How The Pyramid Scheme Shaped America by Bridget Read, wary that I'd read the usual anti-conservative slant, which seems to come from all non-fiction books unless they come from very specific publishing houses.* But I was hopeful, because I was very interested.
Read dives into the very earliest days of how MLM companies started, how they glossed over that history years later, winding it through politics and government regulation while weaving in some personal stories of people who have had what could probably be considered typical experiences in these kinds of companies. Despite protestations, it is safe to say that, in general, most MLM companies are pyramid schemes and would be revealed as such if truly accurate sales, income, profit, and loss data were collected. (I say in general and allegedly, because some of them are also notoriously litigious.)
Read is a skilled writer who has clearly conducted extensive research and work to gather as much information as possible from various sources. (Her research is so extensive that the last half of the book consists of detailed notes on the references made in the book; I was done with the main book at 48% through on my Kindle, which surprised me.) Of particular interest to me was the discussion on how, in an effort to avoid being considered a pyramid scheme through recruitment, the sale of “training tools” became the vehicle for the upward flow of money to the top of the pyramid.
What started as cassettes and books decades ago has now evolved into monthly and annually paid subscriptions for apps, audio speeches, virtual training, in-person and virtual conferences, books, and Zoom calls, among other things. Read noted that it didn’t even come from the actual MLM company in some cases, but from the top levels of the pyramids feeding their downlines their own books and training on how to be successful. Distributors at the bottom pay money to their upline leaders to be told how to be successful, not so much at selling products, but at being their own business person or recruiting others.
Selling training, whether requiring payment for that training or making it free but requiring it of your downline as you encourage them to keep hustling, is how you keep the bottom of the pyramid propped up longer.
As the “coaching” industry has discovered—an industry which is so rampant today and which Read nicely ties in at the very end in a way that could be a segue to a second book—training is the moneymaker today. We have coaches training other people to be coaches of more coaches, sending them to friends who are financial coaches, metaphysical woo-woo coaches, health coaches, and everything under the sun, except for actual mentoring and tangible help to individuals. As Read notes, the prices of these services are high, and anyone offering training tools, coaching services, or making the speaker circuit at motivational or MLM events is using their position in the pyramid to make their fortune in this manner, even though the message sent downline is that they can get their through hustle, product sales, and recruiting more people.
These training tools and coaching systems are shoved under the umbrella of passive income.
Building once and selling many times is passive income, and it’s not a bad model if your resources are actually valuable. Any author or musician is working from this model, where royalties come in every time someone enjoys the thing that was created once. Lots of people make use of passive income with nary a pyramid in sight. But when you put the idea of passive income in the MLM structure, some problems occur. Mostly, there’s a question of value as well as the issue of forcing people to purchase training materials whether they want them or not.
Many of these training materials are high on the big promise and woo-woo scale, but low on tangible and practical aspects. It’s about feelings, manifesting, journeys, you go girl, you can do it if you stay positive, and all things vague. Your hint that the training you’re receiving is questionable is not just the price tag, but also if they make big promises and end it with “but you have to work hard,” which sounds logical but is actually code for “when you fail, I’ll just tell you that you never worked hard enough.” That’s something you can say until the end of time and get away with it, which is necessary due to the fact that a pyramid scheme is based on the lower levels never succeeding, but sticking around on the hope that they might someday.
Real businesses have very practical requirements to run properly, needing to worry less about vision boards and aspirational speeches, and more about very measurable things.
For example, as an independent contractor with a varied work history, I understand the importance of tracking profits and losses, keeping a close eye on my income to stay informed about my financial situation. This is not generally the case for many who are in MLMs, because if it were, they would see that they spend far more on products or training tools than they earn from selling. From what I can gather, based on both Read’s book and other online anti-MLM content, most MLM companies don’t encourage or make it easy for distributors to track profit and loss.
But now we get to why Read’s book, as good and useful as it is, will fail at changing anything.
The further into Read’s book I went, the more I became frustrated at the assumptions she was making regarding conservatives, the right, and religious people. When people make assumptions, you know that not only do they not understand the group they are painting with a broad brush, but they don’t respect or care about them enough to find a fine brush. Even worse, you lose trust in them and start to question what they’ve written. Read is not at all familiar with the demographics she is portraying, something all journalists and writers struggle with in attempting to shed their bias and present facts that they don’t fully understand.
How do I know what Read wrote elsewhere was correct when she was playing so fast and loose with stereotypes of people like me? I wondered as I read the book.
The conservative characters are wrapped in dismissive packaging, while those on the left are portrayed as heroes and described as such.
While the context of the book necessitates that we can’t provide a full biography on everyone, it was not lost on me how Read prefaced people in descriptive terms. For example, her reference to Francis Schaeffer as merely a "Christian theologian and antichoice crusader" is woefully insulting to a man who was far more intellectual and nuanced than the author of the book could ever hope to be. I understand that to focus on a narrow topic necessarily means that broad historical issues will be shaved of their context a bit, but the fact that abortion is even alluded to (and was done so in her preferred language; I would have called him pro-life) in a book about MLM tells me the author wasn’t trying to be a purist and keep unnecessary biographical information about people out if it didn’t apply to the MLM topic. Instead, it comes off as the assumption that her readers operated on a set of norms like she had, and would nod along with her.
Or, for example, was it not possible to make the same point she was ultimately going to make, regarding an MLM conference in Las Vegas in 2021, without taking yet another Biden vs. Trump jab and regurgitating what I'd call questionable grasp of some pandemic facts regarding the success of the vaccines that we are now discovering? In the places where she wrote passages with a whiff of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), I found myself skimming. I’m tired of hearing it day in and day out. Any great piece of information tucked in there is lost.
An author who is attempting to establish authority on a subject with (I assume) the hopes of changing minds and making a dent in MLM in this country, only to then take pot shots at half the country in this manner, makes me question the editors of this book. Clearly, the people most caught up in MLM, if Read is to be believed, are religious conservatives. If you want to help them or, at the very least, convince them to abandon the thing they’re involved in, why would you go out of your way to turn them off and see you as just another “expert” who looks down on them?
Just like I told a dietician in the comments of a YouTube video months ago, you won’t change hearts and minds about some of the crazy wellness and food fads that are exploding across this nation by an appeal to authority and by regurgitating talking points. Mocking those who don’t trust doctors, the CDC, and the FDA is a bad idea at this point in history. Trust levels are very low, and for good reason, post-pandemic. Appeals to authority don’t work. Those will only be counter-productive and actually work against you, in light of what shifted during and since the pandemic. The monster you’re literally trying to overcome uses that against you, and you’re giving MLM leaders the ammunition necessary to dismiss the better parts of your message when they can dismiss the lesser parts. You have to teach people how to think critically about all information, rather than telling them what to think. You can’t talk down to them, nor can you talk only to the mockers, pointing fingers at them.
Read is making the same mistake in her book.
It is possible to be honest about the connections to the political, religious, and self-help movement leaders with conservative leanings without wrapping them in preferred derogatory packaging. By doing so, she ensures that the readership segment that most needs to listen to what she has to say to move the needle won’t listen at all. Instead, she’s given MLM companies another weapon, giving their people permission to dismiss her because she’s just another TDS sufferer who hates or doesn’t care to understand you.
Had she spoken in depth to Christians who, like me, are concerned about the spiritual intertwining used in MLM to abuse people emotionally and are open to this topic but may have still voted for Donald Trump, she might have surprised herself and her like-minded readers with a more nuanced take that strengthened her stance. But instead, it was the usual surface stereotypes that made Christian conservatives look like brainless cheaters out to destroy poor people and the entire earth.
There was no need to poison her point with such a left-leaning take, but she did.
Her editors allowed it.
I have to assume, since they are professionals, that they thought it was appropriate, necessary, or it didn't occur to them that anyone or any reader of consequence would think otherwise. Perhaps they are only surrounded by like-minded people who didn’t even see what I’m talking about.
And that's why this book's impact will be minimal.
Why This Book Won't Change Things
Without actual data, but going on what I know from experience and researching online, I would say that much of the MLM realm is populated with conservatives and religious (Christian and LDS) people. Not all, mind you, but a large percentage of it has taken root in those realms.
The reason this book won't change things is that it leans left while attempting to make an impact in a right-leaning realm. The best anti-MLM content creators are those who avoid politics, instead focusing on the troublesome aspects and discussing them openly for their viewers and readers in a way that helps them identify similar patterns of deception in other situations. Instead of saying “think this way,” they say, “here’s why this is dangerous or illogical.”
If the goal was to write the history of MLM in a way that rang true to a particular political segment without the need to change hearts and minds, Read’s book may do that. It comes off as a book preaching to the choir, one that leans left.
But even if pure history is the intent (and based on Read's writing and clever use of personal stories, I don't think it is; I think she does want to make a positive difference in combating MLM), it is yet again another book I read and limp to the finish line because every page has a bit of snark or passive descriptive wrap to let me know how the gatekeepers of publishing view me and mine.
Read repeatedly makes the point that politics and power hinder government agencies from truly doing what needs to be done. There is some validity to that, but it's the same tired approach: our government will solve the problem. That's what enabled MLM to gain its early foothold, as told by Read in the history of MLM, and it's also the same rallying cry that will continue to fuel MLM growth. Government interference is the tool of one side, and the fuel for the other, and the battle goes on.
As someone who has experienced the benefits of less restriction on how I make money, as well as the sharp end of being burned because employers had few restrictions, I don't see the perfect balance as something that can be achieved through law and government restrictions alone. Each side has its salient points, and as an independent contractor, I've experienced both the real pleasure and real pain that come with looser business laws.
Ironically, the real change will come not from the top (government and law) but from the bottom, the people targeted by MLM companies. And that’s why this book fails. A call to the governing class is empty. You needed to call out to the bottom of the pyramids.
That’s where online anti-MLM content, even though it, too, leans left, will likely do the work if they can stay on task and keep politics and assumptions out of it. It comes through online forums and videos in which anti-MLM content creators are, in the midst of sometimes unfortunately taking passive jabs at Donald Trump and his supporters, still able to break down the twisty techniques used by MLM companies, including gaslighting, love-bombing, guilt, shame, lying, or tapping into fears or other emotional triggers for leverage. They are also able to focus on the many tangled MLM-adjacent movements that I’ve mentioned, such as modern "coaching" and Master Resale Rights (MRR) content, among others, which take the idea of passive income and turn it into a tricky pyramid scheme.
It matters, because people are being destroyed.
Not just financially, mind you, though that is significant and real. Credit card debt fuels a lot of those frantic purchases to maintain or obtain ranks. There’s also a serious emotional ruin that’s taking place, since many of the techniques (which are so ingrained in our advertising and business/tech culture, we don’t recognize them anymore) are highly manipulative on an emotional level.
I’m mostly concerned about a different kind of ruin, one that the anti-MLM content rarely touches on. These MLM companies have too many that are wrapping the things of God into them and polluting the Gospel. They are far beyond the moneylenders that made Jesus angry, far exceeding the predatory nature of those men who dared set up shop in the temple. They are attributing timeless truths for life and eternity to temporary business goals and success.
And they don’t know it.
At most, anti-MLM content creators will acknowledge how dangerous it is to use sacred language to manipulate people, and that is correct. It’s another easy button to push to bypass nearly every defense and get right to the heart of a person to get them to do what you want.
Read doesn’t touch on this in too much detail at all (though she talks about Calvinists and religion in a way that seems odd to me, indicating someone not familiar with the things of faith), and that’s too bad. It’s a key part of the movement she seems to dearly want to end.
I cannot explain the anger and disgust I feel when I hear MLM folks so closely wrapping self-help, motivation, guilt, hustle, sales, freedom—you get the idea—with their product, service, or compensation plan.
At no time did Jesus die on the cross for our sins so we could sell jewelry or soap.
Anything that would harm another person done in the name or trappings of how people understand the God of the Gospel is literally taking God’s name in vain. You put his name on you and what you’re doing, and then go out and hurt people. You’re saying you are a Christian and then using that to circumvent a person’s defenses and get them into your downline.
If you fail, it's because you didn't work hard enough.
You can do it if you work hard enough.
A positive mindset is all you need.
Hustle.
You can change anything if you put your mind to it.
You can get a solid “no” on all of these false ideas just by reading the book of Psalms, much less the rest of the Bible.
If you’re a Christian in an MLM and aggressively recruiting, be careful. You’re using the empty and godless promises of manifestation and positive thinking and telling people that they are the masters of their fate and soul if only they work hard enough and ignore the warning signs, forgetting that God says nothing of the sort in His Word. At no time are we told that we’re the driving force of this life, that we have control over our destiny through the works of our own hands and power. At no time are we promised all comfort and rewards in this life. We only get the desires of our heart when we ask God to change our hearts to what he desires in our lives. Your manifestation and dare-to-dream-it have no place here.
People who were brought into an MLM with this kind of spiritual packaging will likely have zero interest in the true Gospel of Jesus Christ after they get out, and I tell you, God doesn’t take the harm of his Gospel lightly. Those are eternal consequences we’re talking about, not just a question of doing whatever I can to get a nice trip to Cabo if I can sell $4K in makeup by the end of the month.
Why MLM Will Never Go Away
Though I think MLM will wax and wane (and might be waning right now), it will never go away. Human greed is in infinite supply, and greed is what makes the top of the pyramid do what they do, and frankly, greed—even if wrapped in desperation—is what makes people sign up at the bottom. They want the money.
But we’re also lonely and want to be loved, and people join an MLM because they want to feel part of something. They want to belong. They have all kinds of wants, and there’s always someone to promise to deliver for a price.
Additionally, MLM thought is so tightly woven into the motivational and self-help industries that it will be impossible to eradicate the mechanisms that feed into the pyramid. Read herself notes that the publisher of her book had published a book by one of the MLM-recommended crowd. There’s a market for it. Anyone online will have already been exposed to even the mildest form of this content and already been programmed to accept the offers made to them.
The lure of money and the lifestyle that comes with it will almost always work on a person. The trick is to know what bait you need to use, and MLM companies have perfected it. Unfortunately.
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