THE ANTI-MLM INFLUENCER WHO JOINED MONAT | we need to talk about this...

hello and welcome back to my channel everything i say in this video is my own opinion and i ask that you do not send hate to anybody mentioned in this video and if any rude comments are left below i will have to delete them but constructive commentary i welcome it this video is about kimberlea the anti-mlm creator who joined monate the hair care multi-level marketing company [Music] before monad i used to work in corporate america and i had what you would call the dream job on paper an ongoing federal investigation into a trendy line of hair care products reveals concerns about the company's manufacturing plan complaints about scalp sores and hair loss are piling up across the country my life before monet was completely different i wasn't feeling inspired but now when i meet with people in person and i hear their stories they're wise i see their face when they try our products the fda sent inspectors to the florida facility where monat products are made the federal government released this inspection report finding in sanitary conditions and one thing that i just love the most about this amazing business is that i can actually get paid to do things that i was doing before for free jessica says her kids had problems after using monet's junior line she's lost i would say three quarters of it her hair is breaking off i found massive clumps of hair that were concerning in her crib she says her son aj developed patches of hair loss and painful sores getting together with my friends dressing up doing our makeup doing our hair taking pretty pictures incorporating our beautiful products well that's what life is all about makes the best products for both humans and pets they work just as well on your chocolate lab or your great art bass your cocker spaniel or your cousin daniel i just started noticing that all those clumps coming out and cut my brush and i have to clean it out every day or two just like how much hair loss i had monet's line is sold mostly on social media through multi-level marketing the products are advertised to promote hair stability and growth but multiple lawsuits say customers have experienced significant hair loss or thinning and other complications such as itching scalp irritation sores and cystic acne after using monae products in march the fda sent inspectors to bnr products monade's miami area manufacturing plant several months later the fda released this report which found monet cosmetics being prepared packed or held under insanity conditions whereby it may have become contaminated with filth i have not recorded any of kim's videos to show you in this one due to the fact that she does not respect the law of fair use as she submitted a copyright strike not a claim a copyright strike against a small creator named tiana lis who used some of her footage to do a commentary video on which is completely um legal so be sure to check out tiana lis i became a licensed cosmetologist in 2009 and i remember around the year of like 2017 or 2018 a friend that i went to paul mitchell with contacted me on facebook to ask me if i would be interested in joining under her and selling those hair care products she was using them in her salon she was extremely happy with them but the more i looked into that company at that time frame the more i would hear distributors of monet making unsubstantiated claims so it was definitely a no for me especially the claim about hair growth because i have never been witness to an over-the-counter topical that increases hair growth or one that detoxes hair in fact that's that's not a thing nowhere in cosmetology school do they teach us about detoxing hair because it's just not a thing women in san diego and across the country were claiming to have been affected i started noticing my hair was just falling out in handfuls pam benson says her hair fell out after using monet hair care products i had also tried this on my daughter and my granddaughter and i tried um the children's version on my granddaughter and her hair was falling out and my daughter's hair fell out this was pam's hair before money my hair was so thick that i couldn't put a ponytail holder around it twice and my hair got so thin i could put it around four or five times when she complained to the company a monat rep told her it was detox and they said that your hair has to detox and get rid of all the buildup that's on your hair that's just one of the claims the multi-level marketer is no longer allowed to make to understand how kim got to where she is now we need to take a look back at her history kim graduated from law school in florida while she was also trying to become a model actress and singer after law school she moved to california and according to one of her youtube comments i found she is not a licensed attorney she wrote quote i think many people have a misconception about what a lawyer is i am a lawyer i'm just not licensed as an attorney and don't care to be i made enough money working with attorneys under the guidance of other executives to forego the time and investment it would take to sit for the bar in california a lawyer is someone who is learned and trained in law yet they may not actually practice law they often give legal advice by attending law school in the united states one can be considered a lawyer i still have interest in law but i'm only going to be this young once so i'm choosing to focus my time elsewhere at the moment i just felt i needed to clarify this since i like being transparent unquote that is from 2017. the interesting thing is that even though she consistently references that she went to law school um i never see her use a legal disclaimer even in the videos where she is doing commentary or giving advice and according to my research the state of california or calbar.ca.gov tells us quote if someone gives legal advice without a license that's called the unauthorized practice of law in california only attorneys can give legal advice if an attorney loses their license to practice but continues to take and advise clients that's also considered the unauthorized practice of law there is no charge to file a complaint you do not need to be a u.s citizen to file a complaint the state bar does not ask for or track immigration or citizenship status unquote and the unlicensed practice of law program that was established by the florida supreme court pretty much says the same thing kim's first youtube video predates back to 2010 but it wasn't until about five years later in 2015 when she started uploading consistently her rise on youtube really started with a variety of content everything from diy to instructional videos to hauls to makeup and beauty and even one about how to put antifreeze in your car she can be shown in that video putting antifreeze into her bmw and we love a queen who likes to break gender stereotypes and i'm all here for it the sad thing is i couldn't find any other videos like that on her channel but would have actually been interested in them because i would like to know how to maintenance and take care of my car better even though kim didn't really have a niche with her channel she seemed to do pretty well as far as views are concerned it seemed like she earned anywhere from like 10 000 to 100 000 views per video sometimes less sometimes more but it seems like she really struck gold when she started filming videos about pop sockets one of her pop socket videos garnered over 2 million views it seemed like kim recognized that she was doing really well with these pop socket videos as she made a lot more but something happened around 2018 when she uploaded a different kind of video in this 2018 video she was ranting about how she lost like three to six months worth of content because she lost her memory card i don't even have that much content filmed ahead of time but that would be devastating yet kim went on to say something that i found very interesting in this video she said quote i want to be true to myself at the same time i want to give my subscribers you who care about me the content that you want to see from me and not the people who search something and want to find a review not the people who are fly by night and not really interested in my content but the people who are really interested and that's been a struggle unquote this really struck me as odd because i don't understand why somebody would film product reviews or how to's if they didn't want to help people with the topic that was unique to each video not that a viewer can't be interested in all those different topics and it's not wrong to not niche down as a creator but then to be upset that viewers wouldn't subscribe and be loyal to you no matter what content you post i find that to be pretty strange and it kind of seems like unrealistic expectations it's interesting that kim decided to join an mlm hair company because in 2019 she posted a video titled why i'm convinced hair vitamins don't work in which she interviews a hair transplant doctor and emergency physician this was done after kim had already done six different reviews for halo beauty for those who aren't familiar with halo beauty it is a company that was created by a youtuber who is somewhat controversial and she's a beauty youtuber and it was created for hair skin and nails westbrook started on youtube in 2011 one year after kim posted her first video westbrook built up a subscriber base of 9 million followers and then created halo beauty in 2018. halo beauty's first product was a vitamin that supposedly helps improve hair growth minimizes fine lines and wrinkles and claims to have anti-gray fighting enzymes that's not a thing whether one gets gray hair or not greatly depends on their genetic programming i just i'm sorry i think that's so funny anti-grave fighting enzymes i'm sorry moving on but it seems like this is where kim's contradictions start because it was only in 2016 that kim was paid to do several instagram ads for sugar bear hair vitamins sugar bear vitamins are made by a company called be sweet creations llc and often promoted by beauty youtuber james charles the specific sugar bear hair vitamins that kim promoted on her instagram promised to help consumers reach their hair goals within three to six months in this interview kim did with the hair transplant doctor she asked him a bunch of questions and he goes on to dispel the myths around miraculous hair growth and talks about you know all the false claims made out there and what can actually help your hair it's really actually a good interview which is why it surprised me that kim joined a hair care company that had a legal altercation with the florida attorney general because of some of the claims they made the ag's office launched its investigation into monad's claims and business practices after a 13 investigation in march of 2018. the ag was aware of more than 800 consumer complaints women across the country shared similar experiences in our initial investigation i literally had almost a baseball size of hair in my hand it was supposed to strengthen your hair it was an expensive product and i thought it would help my hair um but instead i'm devastated with what my hair looks like right now the florida agreement addresses those concerns a statement from attorney general ashley moody says through our action the company is permanently barred from making false or misleading statements in its marketing and sale of its beauty products including with respect to its discount offers and for making unsubstantiated claims regarding the supposed health benefits safety performance or efficacy of its products but if we have learned anything about multi-level marketing it's that it's not necessarily about what the product is because you don't make the big money through selling product you make the big money through recruitment so whether a company an mlm company's product is good or not like that to me never comes into question because most people who are in an mlm do love their company's products i know when i was in it i love the products i sold although i do believe in my opinion that all mlm products are significantly overpriced it's it's really not about the product at the end of the day because the big money comes from recruitment having been in the top one percent of the mlm industry how i was for almost six years something i fully regret to this day kim would have definitely been somebody i would have been more than happy to recruit because on paper her numbers look really good i'm sure she's getting a lot of attention right now from the higher ups because she has over 200 000 subscribers she gets thousands of views on her video and most importantly she was a skeptic what some people fail to realize about multi-level marketing companies is that they can be highly persuasive you have these distributors who believe anything and everything the ceos and those at the top of the pyramid say and they believe it and they they dream it and they think that they can achieve it and when you have somebody who is a skeptic and they join you can then use that as a recruitment tool to promote your business and to recruit others by saying like hey look she was a skeptic she joined my team because she fell in love with fill in the blank whether it was the product or whether it was the fact that she saw the financial freedom opportunity or because she realized whatever like it doesn't matter they're going to make a story out of it and they're going to use that to promote i believe she already has um she's already talked about how you know she was skeptical of the company and now she saw the light and realized it's not all bad and those types of stories really really pull people in that kind of hyperbole really speaks to the skeptical nature in other people and it makes them think like oh well if she was a skeptic then you know i'm really skeptical maybe i should give it a try and it opens you up to suggestibility it's always about the stories you sell it's always about what tools what stories you can use to recruit others because as the mlm industry loves to say facts tell but stories sell i had my own wedding planning company it was a very successful business but i knew i wanted more from being one that had no friends to be one that has a family it's something i'm so grateful for i love being with my family and all the amazing people i've met because of our name in october of 2020 kim released a video titled why i'm not anti-mlm anymore exposing my truth in the now deleted video she says quote i'm a strong ass [ __ ] this is not about me being brainwashed because i watch the monate and then she says something something she laughs as she says it and it was really hard for me to make out what she said it was like one word and she goes on to say quote i'm not going to actually apologize because this is my perspective i lost my ability to be myself because i don't have the same views as the anti-mlm community i just don't i've said it so many times and it's annoying as [ __ ] and i'm sick of hearing myself say it and explaining it i never wanted to be anti-anything i'm not an anti i went to school to be a lawyer it is about being impartial you know lady justice has a blindfold for a reason unquote later in the video she said quote the captions the titles the thumbnails everything is completely strategized and i would be lying if i didn't say dude i knew this content would take the [ __ ] off i'm analytical guys if for one minute you think i just shoot in the dark you're wrong unquote okay do you remember when lipstick gate happened with jaclyn hill when she released her moldy lipsticks and people started like questioning what was going on they were asking her to come forward and explain herself they're like why you know why do these lipsticks have mold in them why is there hair in them what's going on and jaclyn hill made a video in response to the backlash and i just remember watching that video and thinking she is coming across as mad at her subscribers and mad at her customers for not even just like asking for refunds before questioning why there were plastic shards and hair in the lipstick and i remember watching that video thinking like i didn't even buy the lipstick and i feel like she's mad at me what in the world like why is she acting like this i'm like what did i do i didn't make no moldy lipsticks i feel like that is how kim came across in her anti-mlm video where she well she talks about how she's no longer anti-mlm and she's now pro mlm it was very defensive it was like very in your face it was very in my opinion angry and like she was mad at her subscribers and it was after this video was released in october of 2020 that her views significantly plummeted and in a strange twist when i was looking back through the years of kim's videos i expected somewhere along the way to when she was uploading videos consistently for five years i expected to see a sharp decline in views and i figured that was probably why she started making anti-mlm content to increase her viewers or her viewership but that didn't happen there there was never any sharp decline or loss of views nothing like that it seemed like her views stayed pretty consistent over the entire span of time so i was like well what what's going on she suddenly and i almost think unknowingly developed a niche something she had never had before on her channel because remember she was a creator who had a large variety of content with really no rhyme or reason which is totally fine if that's who you want to be and that's what you want to create but all of a sudden she mainly did anti-mlm content and occasionally she would throw in some other videos about her future wedding or pop sockets or maybe some business advice on growing on youtube but for the most part it was anti-mlm content and those videos brought her in the views and who was it bringing in the views from it was bringing in the views from a lot of people who had been victimized by the mlm industry and who were watching her and thinking that she truly was anti-mlm as they were and when her subscribers voice their concerns and complaints as they are allowed to do that they were upset with this new change and that she admitted to doing anti-mlm content for coin she got upset and she became extremely defensive in my opinion and then started creating videos about cancel culture and echo chambers in december of 2020 kim uploaded a video where it looks like she's been crying and she talks about how she's went through dark times in her past and speaks some on her mental health keep in mind in this video we will not be discussing her mental health as i believe that is completely between her and her doctor in this video kim talks about how she's been all over the place with her content on youtube and how it's really hard for her to narrow down and pick one topic to show on youtube which is understandable any creator can become frustrated with only having one topic for a creative outlet but she goes on to state how she loves to share everything about her life and even admits that she at times overshares she goes on to say how she wanted to do true crime content but once she started doing that she got tired of it and that it's really um easy to take a hobby make it your job and then hate it which is how she kind of feels about youtube now she then went on to share a poem that has helped her in hard times in her life and while sharing this poem she starts tearing up and gets emotional and to me in my opinion this comes across that she's in a vulnerable state and that's important because if you've watched any of my other anti-mlm videos and from my knowledge of the anti-mlm industry vulnerable men and women are taken advantage of by the mlm industry in my opinion and the more vulnerable somebody is the more likely they are to join an mlm company that's why mlm companies thrive during recessions so now we're at this very critical moment in kim's journey because whether she feels persecuted or is actually being persecuted online um that doesn't matter because the fact is she she feels um like she's going through a hard time and that's the perfect opportunity for any mlm to swoop in and do what they do best which is love bomb a new recruit so they're going to be offering validation they are going to be offering community and they're also going to say that they are offering the chance of financial freedom i already know that i'm going to get attacked by current market partners especially ones really high up because i'm honestly telling you the truth they're thinking this but they will never tell you i'm just here to share why i decided to say yes to this opportunity and i wasn't fulfilling what i wanted to do to make myself happy i wasn't doing what was best for me and that's really what held me back from being the best version of myself and i could not be happier that i said yes to this opportunity i never thought i would be that girl you've probably heard people in this business say that you know joining it since joining the business they have gained like a huge new social circle of friends and that just everyone truly has their back it is so loving it is such positive energy and vibes all the time that is the biggest lie ever for the most part nobody really cares about you i would judge all these girls in the past before i opened my mind up to it and trusted a friend about the products and about the business and they help you every step of the way because the better that my girls do the more successful they are the better than i do if you can already dream it you can do it you are viewed as a number you are viewed as a business opportunity i genuinely think a lot of these people seek people out who are maybe a little bit lonely in search of friends just in search of something in search of a purpose which we are all looking for everybody i'm surrounded by it's just so inspiring being around people who support you and what you do and who believe in you what this business has done for me it has helped me fund my passion anyone who has an open mind and approaches it and 18 enough and has a smartphone can be successful doing this anyone can do it they only care that you are going to sign other people up do you really think that they would want to hang out with you if you were not signing up for this business because you're viewed as dollar signs that is all you are to these people in this business a little later in that video kim goes on to say quote the closer i get to 40 the closer i get to feeling like why am i not living for me why am i pandering to strangers who don't even subscribe to me or know me unquote remember we heard this same type of rhetoric from her video in 2018. she goes on to say in this december 2020 video that her end goal is freedom which if you've been in an mlm you might be triggered by that word like me and she goes on this kind of rant where she talks about how she doesn't have to have a lambo that's not what she's meaning but then she said that who knows because if she can afford one she might have a lambo and then she went on a rant about how her dad had one and it's definitely a showpiece but the car was uncomfortable speaking of kim's father in 2017 kim replied to a comment on one of her videos that her dad made her go to law school and if she could go back she would go to school for something in the medical or psych field before everything went down in the anti-mlm community when she decided to walk away in fall of 2020 i had only watched maybe a handful of some of her videos they just weren't my taste which is okay my videos aren't um some other people's tastes some people don't even trust me or like me because i was in the mlm community for so long and i recruited people but she also came a bit across a bit misogynistic to prove my point in april of 2019 kim posted a couple tweets body shaming people who work out including a woman at her gym one tweet reads most people in the gym honestly don't know what the f they're doing and in the past six months i have seen no change in their bodies yet they're working hard yes i'm judging because i was a personal trainer for years and the other one says there's this one lady that does seriously the craziest moves in the gym that probably does nothing for her but make her look like a lunatic it's a shame that kim hasn't realized that some people don't work out to shrink themselves into an unrealistic beauty standard but sometimes just work out to make themselves feel better regardless of their outward appearance she would say certain things that gave me that vibe of that mentality where where some women think oh i'm friends with a lot of guys because i'm not like most girls that that irks me and it's unfortunate because kim is a highly intelligent beautiful woman who can be capable of anything she puts her mind to it makes me sad that she's chosen to join an mlm what i take away from all of this is that nobody is making kim do youtube nobody is holding her hand to the fire and saying she can only do true crime or she can only do one type of content here or there that's not what's happening in my opinion it really seems as if kim's identity is wrapped up in youtube and her social media following and now she's getting upset at her audience for only expecting one thing from her whether that's videos on pop sockets or beauty or hauls or true crime and this is setting the scene for the black and white thinking that mlms love to push which is that us versus them mentality it's you know i wouldn't be surprised if people were saying to her behind the scenes distributors from an mlm company we're saying you know forget the people who unsubscribe to you forget if they have any type of criticism or complaint even if it's valid because they're just haters forget about it forget about them you don't need them you're better than them and they're toxic people i know because this is what we were taught to say in the mlm industry it's not just that we were taught to say it we were fully indoctrinated to believe it like it didn't matter if it was somebody you had never met online or if it was your grandma and her cat like they were haters if they didn't fully support you 100 in your mlm business a trendy shampoo that made all sorts of promises to its customers is once again under the microscope monat is mostly sold person to person through multi-level marketing but in 2018 its users started reporting balding and scalp sores now monet is signing a compliance agreement and issuing refunds dr ross can you answer that um exactly what she said the most of what we think about in terms of hair shedding you probably experiences your clients coming in and saying my hair is thinning and we get it all the time we get it every day those are most often internal things that they're doing it is not ammonate or any product that they're necessarily putting on their scalp 199 consumers reported adverse reactions to the fda and more than 500 people filed complaints with the better business bureau in 2017 alone so this is the smoothing shampoo we asked usf chemistry professor james lahey to analyze the ingredients in monet's shampoo and conditioner a lot of uh the same sorts of uh ingredients that you would see on most other shampoos may he a veteran chemist explained there's no way to know what's inside ingredients listed as extracts and peptides some people might be sensitive to them but it's impossible to tell the fda does not regulate most cosmetics monet actually sent us links to three different studies it did on hair strands they say it proves that their products do not cause damage or breakage monet confirmed their tests were conducted on strands of hair not attached to the scalp hair is uh not something that you're going to be able to measure anything dealing with the scalp john yang shunis with morgan morgan filed one of the class action cases against monet the suit calls the statements from monet that their products are naturally based and safe as patently false it has representations for instance that it is sulfate-free and in fact it has sulfates monet denies the presence of sulfates a known skin irritant but that doesn't explain reports of dramatic hair loss to have this happen in such a short period of time statistically is impossible monet says it has hundreds of thousands of customers the miami company would not answer our questions on camera but a spokesperson granted a phone interview to our fellow script station in las vegas there's nothing in the products that would cause this kind of reaction in a large population the lawsuits accused moneta fraud deception and strong-armed tactics like suing credits we had to file a lawsuit to protect ourselves from the attack the company's repeated response to the bbb complaints although monet's ingredients are naturally based safe pure and sustainable we understand some may experience a reaction and should discontinue use on that september video call monet president stuart mcmillan described some of the company's critics as haters don't let the haters dictate to you what you can and cannot say let that come from us here's something that came from them after signing the agreement with the florida ag screenshots posted about a new sunscreen line claimed monet's sun veil spf 30 is approved by the skin cancer foundation but in this email shared with our affiliate in las vegas the skin cancer foundation said monat has not submitted an application for that product and therefore it has not earned the seal of recommendation for being safe and effective finally we get to the point in the video where she says that uh she she wants to become unstuck and she has to share her truth no matter what that is even if it means she makes less money because as long as she's living in her passion people will come she ends the video talking about how she's gone through some really sad things over the last few months and she hopes eventually she'll be able to share them and how she's made some new friends that will last her a lifetime no they won't and she talks about how she's even been betrayed uh by some former friends over the last few months and it leads me to wonder are those like you know the anti-mlm creators who had valid criticism of you and weren't actually haters we may never know but she ends with saying that now she wants to help people with what she's went through which i i don't know if she's talking about in her whole life or just in the last few months it seems like in just the last few months with what she's been through my personal assessment and my opinion of this entire thing is that kim needs to adjust her expectations for her viewers and if it's the attention she craves then instead of creating all different kinds of content and getting mad at your audience for not being loyal to every single video that's completely random and so different why not become a vlogger people watch vloggers like emma chamberlain not because of a certain product or a haul or something but because of who that person is and how they make them feel and their personality here's how it goes usually for people who first join an mlm and this is just speculation and my personal opinion from my nearly six years in the industry people love when they first join an mlm it's an exciting new time and they are completely showered with adoration and attention it's really hard not to eat that up it's why cults suck people in because of the love bombing that new recruit usually thinks that the mlm has their best interests at heart when really the mlm doesn't care about you at all they only care about the size of your network although kim said she was initially interested in anti-mlm content because she was curious about the industry she then admitted that she only did it for coin but she got mad at you um for getting mad at her for admitting to being disingenuous about it the black and white thinking that mlm companies love to perpetuate will only feed into this narrative that she is a victim unfortunately somewhere along the way she'll run out of her warm market like everybody does in an mlm and recruiting will get significantly harder for her and if she has her identity wrapped up in her social media following and now this new mlm it's going to be significantly traumatizing for her just like it was for me um when everything came crashing down we know that anytime you slow down in an mlm company you are treated as less than if and when that happens kim will no longer have as much clout influence or love that was showered upon her when she first joined the mlm company but to admit that would mean she sees something negative in her mlm community you gotta love love that toxic positivity but one day she could wake up and realize that she was a victim of a multi-level marketing company and i'm going to say something that might be considered unpopular in the anti-mlm community but that is if when she leaves the mlm industry i don't think that the anti-mlm community should judge her most of us have been through this i wouldn't wish what i went through or what a lot of you went through on my worst enemy i don't believe that this will happen overnight for me it took years and my first two years in the mlm industry i was flying high i was completely drinking the kool-aid and i was happy i really thought i had found a community i thought i had found people i could trust and i thought that i had found an amazing opportunity that i wanted to offer to others but eventually it will most likely happen because almost no one stays in an mlm long term because the business model is simply not sustainable and if the loss of income doesn't get you the stress will through her instagram stories kim has already begun promoting what she calls social media audits starting at 15 for 15 minutes coaching distributors within the same mlm company as you for profit is a known tactic among higher ups because if you're able to get a lot of the distributors from your company to pay attention to you although you know you can't make money off them by recruiting them because they're already in the same company you can monetize their attention in other ways although kim's numbers look really good on paper she's losing subscribers and views by the day and it's in my opinion she knows she cannot rely solely on recruiting to earn money kim like i said is highly intelligent she's beautiful she seems driven it's a shame that her father pushed her into a career that she wasn't passionate about but i think that it's never too late to start over and go back to school for something you want to do or for a skill or trade or whatever it is should she decide later in life to choose a career in the medical field i hope she does well because i certainly believe that would be a much better route than the mlm industry in my opinion overall it seems as if she is struggling with the lack of views and adoration she once received or as i like to call it forgotten influencer syndrome that's not a real thing i have no doubt that kim could do well with whatever she puts her mind to and i wish her nothing but the best reality lay winner is an american former intelligence specialist in 2018 she was the whistleblower who alerted the world to russian interference in the 2016 united states elections under the trump administration she was sentenced to five years in prison and denied bail twice we are now asking president biden to pardon reality winner and if you could please sign the petition below this video it would mean so much thank you for watching and i will see you in the next video you

Channel: NOT THE GOOD GIRL

Views: 128,751

Rating: 4.9266057 out of 5

Keywords: black history month, kimbyrleigha, MONAT, market partner, pyramid scheme, multilevel marketing, antimlm, MLM, Eric worre, ray higdon, beachbody, senegence, monat global

Id: gi5r-7aB42c

Length: 39min 15sec (2355 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 01 2021