THE WOMAN WHO TOOK LULAROE TO COURT | Anti-MLM Interview with Roberta Blevins

the more i shared my story the more friends unfriended me they invested all their hard-earned money for you guys and you guys screwed them all i wanted to do was sell some clothes there's a core at this company that is so strong of people who just built this from nothing how did deanne get the capital to start lulu oh i can tell you this story too i want to know i don't know she slipped on some chicken grease at sam's club and sued sam's club and got a bunch of money and then we believe that money was used to start lularoe meanwhile i was a concrete contractor and i was i was working my business came to me one day and he said deanne i think that you're overwhelmed i want to go no kidding i was like way overwhelmed and with a happy heart overwhelmed i was so happy that i was so happy he came to me and said dan i've decided i've thought about it i prayed about it and i've decided i'm going to turn over all my business to my brother kurt our goal then became how do we help our retailers find their best self so lularoe is currently facing a 1 billion dollar lawsuit from former retailers claiming that the company is in fact a pyramid scheme the lawsuit alleges that some consultants were told to borrow money take out credit cards some even asked to sell their breast milk in order to purchase more inventory lularoe sells clothing like leggings and dresses to independent fashion retailers well they resell the items to customers through online and in-home sales some of the plaintiffs say their association with lularoe has brought them to financial ruin we spoke with one of the proposed lawsuits class action members who says that lularoe wasn't what she thought it would be i worked day and night it was far from being part-time it was definitely more than full-time work this one is called an amelia gabriella randa is a former lularoe retailer she said she joined the company this past spring to spend more time with her family but ended up investing and losing more than nine thousand dollars in just a few months anytime anybody asks you to sell your breast milk i think i have some [Music] questions lularoe the multi-level marketing company known for leggings and lawsuits if you are familiar with the anti-mlm movement you most likely heard how lularoe distributors were scammed out of thousands of dollars after receiving inventory that was wet moldy and so thin they could poke their fingers through it distributors had a hard time getting refunds and many are still waiting for their refund to this day in 2020 i had the honor of interviewing a woman named roberta blevins after she was featured in the vice documentary about leaving lularoe and what was most shocking to me in the interview was how lularoe's ceo told her to find a lularoe husband after hearing that roberta's husband at the time was not supportive of her mlm business yes they told her to find a new husband i wasn't surprised by that rhetoric as cutting out family members and close friends is commonplace in the multi-level marketing industry if those family and friends don't support your mlm business but i was shocked the ceo said it to her face as most mlm ceos prefer to let others do their dirty work for them but that's not all that's been said as roberta heard and saw so much that she was asked by the washington state attorney general to be a witness into the destructive business practices of lularoe roberta happily worked with the washington ag to provide them with all the evidence and insider knowledge she had knowledge she wasn't allowed to yet talk about in our last interview but today she is able to share all that because as of february 2021 lularoe settled the lawsuit and paid over 4.7 million dollars after building her leggings empire and being at the top of the pyramid only to peek behind the lularoe curtain roberta is now a fierce advocate for the anti-mlm movement in fact after walking away from the mlm industry myself roberto was one of the first people who inspired me to speak out and share my truth in hopes to undo some of the damage i did after recruiting so many women to something i thought was a real opportunity i love that roberto chooses not to be the good girl and speak out this is her story as told to me roberta welcome back to the channel you are one of my favorite people to interview um i have felt connected to you since i watched your vice documentary before i'd ever talk to you personally and i just love your personality i love you your spirit i love how much of a fighter you are like that's one thing that drew me to you so we need to talk about this lawsuit oh my gosh because when i originally interviewed you the first time i remember you telling me like there were some things you couldn't talk about because the lawsuit was under way so before we jump into that will you please give our listeners our my audience uh an insight into your rise and fall a brief description if you can um of how you got started in lularoe and why you decided to leave and when you noticed started noticing things going wrong yeah of course so i joined lularoe in 2016 at the time uh and i i had been interested in 2015 and i had been researching and looking and there really wasn't anything negative you know i i was familiar with pyramid schemes and mlms and things like that so i was sort of looking for those tail tilt signs honestly one of the first things i googled is lularoe a scam and there was nothing then if you google that now you'll find very different things but back in 2015 i couldn't find anything um i was a a new mom a new wife i was living at home my father had passed away a few years before i still hadn't gotten over that i was incredibly vulnerable um i just wanted people to like me and be proud of me i just wanted to provide for my family more than i was um i wanted to fill in every single crack you know like that we do as moms it's like and even just as women like oh i have 15 minutes here to do this thing for you no problem and so for me i was like i could sell leggings in the 15 minutes that i'm not doing something else um and at the time it seemed like a really great opportunity i joined i started making money immediately i had people joining me i never had to recruit everyone was coming to me oh my gosh you saw those leggings i've been wanting to join can i join under you sure no problem people from all walks of life i mean these were like girls that i went to high school with that were reaching out to me they were my sisters friends that were reaching out to me these were people that i had worked with uh people that i i mean just all walks of life were like i want to do this with you and i was like okay and for my audience sorry to interrupt tell them how you had established such a large network because if you are in the mlm industry they will tell you that you are only successful because you are attracting success to you or because you know you have a positive mindset or just because you're working really hard and the people that work really hard succeed and that's not true because there are some people who work so hard and invest so much time and money and don't succeed at all so establish for us where you established a network oh well i'm just the the person you see now is the person that i was five years ago 10 years ago 20 years ago i'm just this person i'm bubbly i talk to strangers um i speak in public i've never had a problem doing that i know that that's not the case for everybody um i'm a hair stylist i've been behind the chair for 15 or sorry 20 years wow 20 years behind the chair so for me um talking to strangers comes natural for me making people feel comfortable within the first five minutes of needing me is part of my job it's part of my life you're you're are a hairstylist as well you know exactly what i'm talking about you have five minutes to convince the person in your chair to trust you and to spend exorbitant amounts of money with you um and sit in your chair and listen to you and hang out with you for hours on end and so i'm very good at making people feel comfortable and not in a predatory way and just like i understand i can help you let's do this sort of way um and so already knowing how to do that as a hair stylist and at that point i had been in it for probably at least 15 years at that time so all kinds of experience doing that i had was a platform artist i was an educator i traveled around beauty schools and top beauty schools i went and taught salons so i was very versed in going into situations that i was completely unprepared for and killing it every time and you had a large number part of my life which was part of my life and then what i did on the side was i'm i've always been very open with sharing myself and my life on social media um the good and the bad i was a blogger um i was working i was an ambassador with target and i worked with walmart and i worked with coke and mars i mean huge companies with huge campaigns and again i knew how to market myself i knew how to post things on social media that were engaging i knew how to post pictures that were pretty uh that got people interested and got people uh just wanting to follow not even necessarily purchase or or ask more questions but just like oh i like this girl i want to follow her so i mean just starting off with all of that experience put me at a massive um advantage to everyone else massive privilege to everybody else just just starting so you know my upline saw that immediately because i wear it on my sleeve and she was like oh my god we need you you're going to be a rockstar you're going to be amazing you're going to be a team leader you're going to be you know cashing these checks and going on these cruises this is what you're going to do and she saw that in me um as a master recruiter she saw that in me she stacked me under somebody else i had no idea what that meant at the time stacked me under somebody else to build that leg that girl when i joined both of them uh ended up ranking when i actually signed because i was the the tenth person for the girl i was under and she was the whatever to hit the next girl so both of the girls ranked above me when i joined that's stacking in work and in progress and working right there um and so then obviously they knew i was a strong leg or assumed i was a strong leg um and started stacking me as well so the people that were underneath me were not only just like my friends like i said earlier that people are like i want to do this but they were people that i didn't know that had reached out to my uplines upline who i had originally reached out to and i was stacked so was a binary comp plan and you were put in the power leg the strongly yeah so i was i was a strong leg i hit uh trainer which is the first rank well i hit the first rank which is like having someone underneath you while i was still in the queue before i had even joined i was waiting to join and had people that had signed up underneath me also waiting to join so before i ever signed on to lularoe i had a team so the first month i got a bonus check because as soon as that girl joined like five days after me i got that bonus because she spent over five thousand dollars to join little row cause that's what the basis was at the time so anytime anybody joined you're like dude anytime somebody on boards that's like minimum 300 bonus minimum because of how much they're spending and again at the time it didn't seem predatory it was like oh my god that's a that's a bonus for teaching somebody something it didn't you know i mean i know now we all know now but back then it was like wow this is incredible i'm going to get 300 for whatever so i had people on my team before i was even official and they were getting leggings and clothing so it wasn't like they were just signing up and getting nothing you're and you're like oh this is legit and it's hello yes and the ones that were local i would go to their house i would help them i would send them all the links for all the things i had to buy this is the stuff i use this is stuff that works for me it's easy to pick up breakdown whatever by all means use whatever you want this is what i use so they're using all that i should have had like an affiliate link i would have made money that way too but i didn't even think about that um sending people to amazon to buy all these things they needed then going to their houses helping them set up their racks helping them set up their boutiques helping them put their clothes on hangers i remember sitting there my my downline's like my boxes came today and i'm like girl i'm on my way and sitting there with her all night unlock and look at what you've got and putting them on hangers i mean i was doing that for i didn't do it for everybody obviously but i did it for a few people it got to be a lot so i was like i can't do this anymore um but you know i was really serious about it uh i thought it was a serious opportunity i was making money hand over fist i was making i made back my initial inventory investment probably within the first week i mean i'm talking it was the beanie babies of 2016. like i'm i wish that i could have something else like i'm sure all these 90 kids are like okay okay i get it it was supply and demand scarcity whatever they use to get these people to freak out over pants with clowns on them i have no idea but and what was the startup for you when you joined i paid so here's the thing i listen back to interviews that i do and i was like oh those numbers are different i don't remember it was in 2016 i don't remember it was somewhere between seven and nine thousand dollars i know i know it's a lot and like i said i made it back within like the first week that you think it's one of the numbers that that was happening in this company it was an illegal pyramid scheme at the time i didn't know that um and so yes it was like they said to do this and i did it and it worked oh my god it works oh my god it works it works it works i'm living proof that it works join my team be on my team we're going places this is crazy i will also say that the team that i was on was a recruiting team the person above me was a coach which was the next rank after i was in and then every single leg above her every single up line above her was a mentor which is the highest rank i want to say there was like seven mentors on my team so i'm on a team that's like the top and then it's like another one another one another just straight down so it was very much like you will be a trainer you then you will hit coach and you will hit mentor by the end of the year we are going to stack you we are going to build you it is going to be incredible you you just wait to see the checks that you're going to get once you hit these ranks wait how you're just going to see your checks are just exponentially double and triple it's going to be incredible and that's exactly what happened confirmation bias because you have all these successful people above you and you're like oh my gosh they're selling these leggings they're helping other people sell these leggings like i can do this i'm already seeing success and you think this is real if you haven't already been educated on it yeah and it's scary once you start waking up when did you start waking up and seeing the facade so 2017 there was a lot of stuff that happened um i was very much aware because i did think this was a legitimate thing and i was making legitimate money i was like i need to be really serious about this and so certain things started happening and i started asking questions and the answers that i got didn't satiate me i thought okay yeah that makes sense but i have additional questions um those questions are like well i'm not really sure so we're gonna have to ask so-and-so and like even the answers i got from so and so we're still like okay but they're always big and they were very vague and they were very like i don't really know that's never happened before um i had gotten a ton of like moldy and wet and stinky leggings the summer before and everything that i was told was like no that couldn't be happening and i'm just like you're literally gaslighting me i'm holding wet leggings and you're telling me that's not happening there's it stinks so bad my entire house smells like this dead rat pool party and you're telling me that that's not happening well that's so strange you're the only one so those were the sort of things that i saw you know it was like a lot of gaslighting a lot of like you're crazy here's a cookie go sit on the bench um [Music] and i was feeling that way i got invited to the cruise i didn't qualify for it i was gifted it um i didn't have to qualify so when people tell you you have to qualify that's a lie uh there's lots of cruises they'll give you it for anything you could probably just ask and they'll be like sure um so i never experienced that like it was so shocking when you told me that i remember like they just gave you a creative qualifier but see the other thing that they did is they would give the mentors and the leaders other cruises to gift so then you could use those to say hey whoever on my team recruits the most people in march will get a free cruise and if you've already qualified for your cruise you can then use that cruise and gift it to someone on your team and you could do the same thing you could then offer that whoever recruits the most whoever sells the most whoever buys the most whatever so there are these huge incentives that you already want to be on and if you've already qualified for it wouldn't it be great to have it so you could bring someone and and bless them with this vacation as well and so that's sort of what happened my my leader was like hey i've got all these extra free cruises i thought of you first you want to come and i was like yeah she's like give me the names by the end of today five o'clock or you know whatever so go on the cruise everything seems weird everything's just starting to feel weird how did it feel weird to you very like entourage and very like like faux celebrities like people were following around home office and mind you i know i knew home office because i live in southern california like i would hang out with these people before and after trainings and go get pizza with them and things so they weren't celebrities to me they were just the people that work in the office but it was very strange that people were like following people around and can i get you a towel oh let me get you a drink refill and i'm just like this is so weird it was culty and odd and i was already feeling that way and i was already sort of like something's off um and i just was more something's off and then i was like asked to go spy on someone and to see what they were saying and to see if there's any legitimacy because they were a blogger and i had been a professional blogger so apparently the only people that can tell the differentiation between a real blog and a not real blog are bloggers so they're like go look so i when i looked and i read them and i was like oh my god validation oh my god she's like these are things i was already thinking and feeling and i reported back and they're like is she real and i was like well it's a blog i mean i don't know if what she's saying is real or not but it could be and they're like okay well then just don't ever look at it again so then i looked at it every day so who was it that asked you to look at it my uplines both of them my my coach upline and my mentor upline were like can you just see who this girl is and like what she's saying and if it has any and i reported back well she's claiming this this and this and they're like oh my god that's not happening she's clearly not and i was like are you sure because the other things she claimed are happening because i experienced those and why were they scared of her because nobody wants to know the truth in a cult you can't have critical thinking in a cult you know so you think that they were trying to find have you find dirt on her to delegitimize what she was saying exactly yeah like well she's not a real blogger she's not like you know what i mean like don't trust her because she's just a nobody and i was like whether or not she's a nobody has no like nothing about it it's it's what she's saying maybe some of it seems far-fetched but the other thing she's saying i've actually experienced and so like i had that connection and i was like maybe what she's saying isn't all lies so i read it every day i checked on it made sure as other things came out and i saw confirmation and people leaving and things were going strange and honestly the reason i left was because i saw what was happening and i had confirmation of what was happening like isn't cool this is a cult i was watching leah remini's show and i was like oh my god i'm in a cult um and once i realized that and i know you and i have talked about that before but it was like i realized it was a cult i started looking i started having more thoughts the things that i was hearing from the inside i double and triple checked um and you know it got to the point where i felt like i was living two completely different lives and i just couldn't do that anymore oh so and like i felt like i had a very normal life when i wasn't selling and i wasn't on 24 7. but then when i had to be on 24 7 i was neglecting my family i wasn't expecting my kids we were eating a lot of frozen foods which is i mean we still eat frozen foods let me tell you that like not that's not the problem the problem was that i was like oh i don't need to cook dinner and i can do this thing and we'll just eat a pizza again and like frozen pizza work but it was it was not a solution it was a fallback for me it wasn't and and i didn't like that i didn't have a solution for the problems and i was just like well we'll just see pizza again just go to whatever and just grab one um it's just it it became a lot and then i started having like mental stuff where i was like i try to talk to my upline told i was negative and i just need to stay a little longer and i need to stop reading and talking to people outside and i need to not be friends with those people because they're they're negative and they're making me think things that aren't true and i just none of that felt real like it all felt like a big flim flam like don't look at the man behind the curtain look over here and i was just like no um and i remember telling her all of my concerns and having a very long conversation and sitting there and saying look this is how i feel and and i don't know if i'm gonna not feel this way because you keep saying that they're making it better and they're not nothing's gotten better it's the same thing it's the definition of insanity i've been through this the last 18 months nothing has gotten better i don't know what now my sales aren't even as good because now people know that it's a scam now people don't even want to buy it and so my bonuses are clearing up uh nobody wants to you know like i they were getting sm like everything was bad and i had seen all this happening and i knew it was all and um you know i just i couldn't sit and watch people who were suffering be told that it was their fault because i was not experiencing the same suffering you know i was i hate to say it but i was successful and it sucks and i've come to terms with that and you know i don't feel that guilt anymore that was four years ago and i've moved past that but i have a lot of guilt when i left and i knew that i i had to not only just be a voice for me but a voice for everybody that was on my team that didn't have a voice um and believed if you're not successful you're not pulling in the numbers you're a nobody in the mlm you just weren't working hard enough yeah you didn't want it hard enough you didn't want it bad enough you didn't put in the hours you only had two parties a week and not four i mean it's ridiculous anything you know we talk about that it's like the praise the praise always goes to the mlm and then if there's anything bad it comes and falls on you um and i saw that i had friends that almost lost their houses i had friends that almost got divorces i had friends that were struggling uh with postpartum depression and saying i can't take and i'm freaking out like what do i do and these were people i loved that were actually people these were not just anybody that i didn't know these were literal people that were like roberta i don't know what to do like i'm about to lose my house because i just keep buying more because i just thought that if i sold it i could remake and i said you need to quit i'm not even joking with you anymore courtney right now the woman who is featured in the lularoe documentary uh by vice with you she did lose her house i believe she was talking about in the documentary didn't she yeah and i talked to her the other day it's so sad it's so sad but i mean lularoe was having you guys pay so high amounts like so many yeah crazy amounts of money for these leggings and clothing tell me um i think it's important for our audience to understand and for other people to understand because it gets confusing with the type of rhetoric that's used around mlms and whatnot a lot of people and even um lularoe themselves and they've had lawyers and people high up they've you know brought in to say oh we're not a pyramid scheme because we have product distribution so a pyramid scheme is only when there's no product being passed what happened with the lawsuit for them to say this is a pyramid scheme what made them say that okay so i want to say it was probably about three years ago um i was in the middle of my advocacy speaking out and honestly i probably would have never spoke out had my uplines not treated me so horrible i probably just would have been like okay this didn't work out but the the hoops i jumped through i was like uh the world needs to know about this so the the lawsuit uh investigation started like three and a half three years ago um they reached out to a couple of us in our defective defector support group um and and they reached out to me and they said hey uh everybody i talked to said you're the person i need to talk to i said okay and they said this is this is what we want to do and i don't even think i had done vice at this time maybe i had i'm not sure that was a long time ago too um and they said you seem to know all the people who know all the people that's me and they said we're investigating this company um would you be interested in helping us and this was the irs yeah this was the attorney general's of washington state okay so a lot of times people say well how come these scams aren't processed how come these scams get to run willy-nilly a lot of people don't know government involvement is involved in multi-level marketing how deep it goes how many people's pockets are filled with multi-level marketing money from the dsa things like that so um a lot of people are like well why doesn't the ftc step in and i always have to tell people the incredibly shocking fact that the ftc cannot criminal execute anything um and i say yeah the government agency regulated like that regulates these companies cannot actually criminally prosecute them at all they're all civil prosecution so nothing ever happens to prosecution it's a slap on the wrist and please don't do that again and okay we won't wink wink and it continues so um the only reason that wrote even was sued by washington is washington state as a state as an anti-pyramid scheme law and so we knew that people um would have to the squeaky wheel gets the grease right we knew we weren't going to get any movement on the federal side and we knew we weren't going to get any movement from just complaining to whoever we told people you need to complain to your attorney general because your attorney general might listen if there's enough public outcry and there's enough people complaining and um so i think combination of a lot of washington consultants and um and consumers of lularoe complaining plus the anti-pyramid scheme lawsuit that is in enacted in the state of washington and here's a fun fact that i didn't know and robert fitzpatrick told me this lula that was the first time that they had ever tried anything using the anti-pyramid scheme lawsuit or that's like yes this was the first time it had ever been enacted and and gone through so you know they reach out to me three or so years ago and they said you're interested i said absolutely so for the past three years behind the scenes i've been taking calls with the washington attorney general's office meeting with their lawyers on the phone talking with the investigators getting to know these people i was really sad because of covet i wasn't able to go to washington because uh the investigator was like i really wanted to go like go hang out and have dinner with you and like hang out because we really became friends talking on zooms and talking on the phone for three years were the same goal and i feel like investigators and reporters things like that when they interview somebody who has been a part of this world they don't realize how deep the rabbit hole goes absolutely not and that was definitely something that they were like okay well you know i would say something and they're like oh well do you know those people that we could get a hold of those people and talk to those people said sure yeah i can yeah so then you know i would i would have to do things a lot of times i would post things that were very big hello if anybody is reading this that can have blah blah blah i mean and those were posts that i literally sat on the phone and wrote with the attorney general's office with their wording and their um and things so that we could sort of get information without flagging anything um wow and those were those were happening for years just to get people that knew things or get people that had evidence or get people that could corrupt stories there was a lot of phone calls that had talking to people saying please just talk to them just talk to the investigators you don't have to be on the stand just corroborate some stories okay please please okay fine okay fine roberta fine i will i could see how that would be scary for somebody who's been involved in the mlm industry because you're a victim but you're also a perpetrator because you tried to recruit and bring people in so you're like oh my gosh are they coming after me yeah so i did i reached out to a lot of like the top sellers and the top um leaders who were out and felt similarly to how i felt i mean not as passionately as me similar and i said look you know i know you have a lot of guilt based on how many people you recruited and how much money you made and how many of those people are bankrupt and hurt i said this is a way for you to make amends at least start to make amends by admitting you were part of the problem and using that for good to um corroborate some stories or take the stand and um i was incredibly proud of those people that were brave to do that it was very scary i will say um i did uh i did have to do a deposition and so that happened in the summer it was like 12 hours on zoom so that must have happened right after i interviewed you last may yes it happened in uh i want to say like july maybe july or august i'm not sure i remember it was very hot and i was like in this leather recliner in my living room and it was so hot and i do remember it was very strange i've never been a part of a deposition and it was really interesting especially being online because we had like the washingtonian uh the ag's lawyer and then we had lularoe's lawyer and then we had like the court reporter and then we had like the dude that was in charge of making sure we stayed on time and on track and me so there's five of us in this big zoom like this but you know and it would be like okay uh strike the motion whatever minute break i'd be like okay everyone come back in 15 minutes so there's a lot of breaks so it wasn't me sitting for 12 hours uh we did take like an hour at i think every every hour we took a 15 minute break and then for lunch we took like an hour but it really was like so many questions uh roberta in your opinion or your experience objection uh please rephrase okay you know it was that sort of thing what did you find that they objected to the most that you were trying to answer spill the tea it really i mean i would have to look at my deposition to know for sure but i mean which it was like anything and i'm just like why is he objecting and he was like i have to object because that's the way we do it because we can come back and and and do something and i was just like okay but it would be it'd be stuff that happened to me i i don't know specifics but you know be something like you know what was your experience well in my experience this happened objection you know uh objection uh like what's the word like speculation i'm like okay speculation all right all right moving on so it's just that sort of thing i mean i guess that's totally normal and they were like he's gonna object to a lot of stuff just keep talking it's totally fine it's the way that it's done i'm like i've never done this before i have no idea what i'm doing um i think i had like eight hours with washington and like four hours with lularoe or something like that's how it was broken up um it was interesting it was uh just another cool thing i got to do being an anti-mlm advocate did you find that the lularoe attorney was trying when they were questioning you that they were trying to spin a narrative and if so what was it or were they trying to make you look uh less credible yes that's that's all it was it literally was just trying to uh make me look less credible um [Music] and it was insulting in a way where i'm just like this has nothing to do with anything but okay and and the lawyer told me he's like he's gonna ask you things you know just answer them i i love and here's the thing i don't know if anybody knows about the anti-mlm conference at the end of the month that was it's something that's happening at the end of april so yeah it's like april 30th and may 1st whatever right so the wonderful i love him so much lawyer that i dealt with through the whole thing joe kanata is actually speaking so joe canada is the lawyer that was the lawyer against lularoe for washington and he's on i was ah i was like all of these people i know are talking and i was like how come i'm not talking [Laughter] um so i was like oh joe's gonna speak too that's really cool so if you have if people listening to this that one or he would definitely be the person to listen to and and get that information from him because he's just he's brilliant um but uh i'll link that i posted about it the other day i'll link the registration link below this video in the description sure yeah robert emailed me and he was like hey and i was like oh my god sign up now um i love it i love this it's incredible so um we lost hold on oh now we're back okay sorry we lost thing so okay so he was trying to make you look less credible he was asking me about um so at the very beginning of the year last year most of last year i didn't work um i was on bed rest um my back went out at the beginning of covid um i have a degenerative disc disease that i found out that i have called spinal canal stenosis which is the narrowing of the cartilage of my spine which is so fun and what it does uh is it pinches the nerves as as this as the spine gets closer it can pinch nerves and so it pinches my sciatic nerve it shoots down the right side up up the right back and down the right thigh it makes my foot go numb um as long as i i stay relatively uh good like not working too much now staying stress-free things like that it doesn't really flare up sometimes when it gets cold it hurts but for the most part it's fine but during this i couldn't work and i couldn't stand and then covered and so i was like whatever i'm on medical leave and so uh and then i didn't have any money and my license my cosmetology license relapsed i was like hey it's time to pay and i was like i don't have any money oh no so i was like it's fine you have like up to it two years or whatever you pay a late fee it's fine it's happened before it's not a big deal but so what they were like they're like why is your cosmetology license expired and i was like i'm not working on it right now i'm on bed rest and covet has me closed i'm in california high we've been closed like nine out of 12 months like i'm not even working and they're like oh oh okay okay never mind next question and i was like what's the point of that and joe was like to discredit you trying to make you look like you were working like i'm some loser person that's not you know doing the right thing or whatever and i was like one i'm close two i don't have any money three i can't even stand a hair if i wanted to um you know everything's fine now but at the time i was like wow really you like looked that up that's so strange um but and i was like uh and then the other thing of evidence that i thought was really weird and i think they're trying to discredit me as well was they showed my numbers in lularoe now i will present these numbers to you and you can tell me what you think it proves because i don't know why lularoe was using these numbers against me but their lawyer was like hey um you know we pulled these numbers from bless and you spent over seventy eight thousand dollars again these are rounded numbers seventy eight thousand dollars in inventory in eighteen months to sell i said okay and like but you only sold like 83 000 of it and i said okay and they said so where's where's that uh in missing inventory you didn't sell i said uh it's in my garage what what okay next question i'm like well your bonus checks and i said yeah how much are my bonus checks i'm like 65 000. and i said okay so my boutique made 5 000 before expenses and my bonus checks were 65 000. so how does this prove you're not a pyramid scheme i was like how is that evidence positive for lulu and and joe says i think he was trying to prove that you were selling things without paying like you know like that i was not paying the taxes or something and i was selling things on the side and i was like my inventory is not only pictures of it in bloomberg and in the vice documentary but come on over and i'll show you there's boxes to the ceiling there's boxes to the ceiling it's just wow that's where it's at if that's you know if you want it that's where it's at do you want it back because i would have loved to give you guys it back but you told me you weren't going to give me any of a refund any refund at all so i kept it that's scary because if you had donated that which a lot of people donate their leftover mlm inventory they could have been like oh you sold it and didn't claim it and didn't pay taxes on it again it's just to discredit me but i mean like everything was like a mic drop like even and that was one of my favorite things i wish i had the video because when he goes where's the extra inventory roberta i i saw joe's face in this doom and and he looks at me and i go it's in my garage bill and joe's just like damn and i remember like getting off that and joe calling me on the phone um and saying thank you so much i know it was a long day he's like i'm so happy you're the one that went first because you literally set the precedent for lularoe that that's you know we're not we're not gonna be screwed with like you are not gonna come in here um and bully these women and so um you know i i got to go first and and i i feel like i really did set the precedent and then my friend that i had convinced she went the next day and i wasn't allowed to talk to her about it or anything until after and then her and i talked and she was like i was so scared but like joe told me like you know like that you killed it and i just went in there going i'm gonna kill it too and she's like and i killed it and i'm so excited and i was like yes and so my the thing i was looking the most forward to of taking the stand was actually being able to do that again and be like boom again and i didn't get to do that because they settled two weeks before i took the stand so they settled so which meant that they most likely did not have a strong case oh no i mean we literally have a video of them you can find it on youtube maybe if i if you can't find it i'll find it i'll send it to you you can link it in the show notes too there's literally a video of jordan who is the son of deanne on a zoom call saying we gotta get away from being a pyramid scheme you guys how do we do that so that's like the main one uh which was great uh and then my numbers and then um also i sold my team um at a point where i couldn't get out of lularoe i was trying like the get out of lularoe website was down i clicked it you got an email i email it bounces back i'm like what is going on i just don't want to be in this company anymore and at the time i just said you know what set it aside i'll figure it out whatever i'll go inactive if that's what i have to do and my team came to me and said hey we noticed even though you're not selling that you haven't been active but you have this whole team that i'm not getting a bonus on because you're not buying anything and i was wondering if maybe you wanted to sell your team to someone laterally so that they could then grow their team and you could be out of lularoe and at the time in 2017 when i was just like get me out of this company and i'm having panic attacks and anxiety and everything i was like fine and it's legally called transferring your business okay so there you go yeah so she goes she's gonna give you to transfer i think there's like 25 people and i knew that like 10 of them would be leaving within the next three months because they told me that i'm sorry you did sell your so they're selling your team and then there's transferring your business i've transferred my business before i didn't transfer the business i literally just just took the whole downline and just she just she was lateral to me so she wasn't underneath me she we had the same upline so they just took my team and transferred it to her and i was gone um it was the only way that i was like i had the media already going hi we want to talk to you when can you talk and i was like i'm still with this company i can't talk yet well we would love to talk to you when can we talk to you because i had been speaking out in in public forums you know about multiple things like that so when can we talk to you and i was like um i got a stuff so they made it difficult for you they made it difficult for me to leave but i don't know if that was necessarily intentional for me specifically i think it's just intentional like as a blanket i think so too hard for everyone to get out i've seen that with a lot of mlm companies so she gave me 500 bucks the team got transferred everything was an email because everything was emailed so that entire exchange was also pyramid scheme evidence because if it's not about recruiting why do we need to transfer the team over if it's not about building this huge team then it shouldn't matter that i'm leaving and it's getting rolled up but it does because if it rolls up to my up line now she's got 20 more people on her main line and she doesn't want that she wants those people under somebody else so that she can rank because she's still trying to rank and even if she's not trying to rank she's still trying to at least qualify for the ranks she currently has yeah and when i wasn't like producing she wasn't getting that rank and that bonus because she wasn't qualifying for it because of me um and so i think she was just like enough is enough i get it you want out this is what we're gonna offer we're gonna offer you 500 and you're out and then this person's going to get a team and i'm nothing's going to change on me and the people that want to stay will actually have an active leader that cares so for me at the time it felt win-win win and then also an additional win i didn't think of pyramid scheme evidence in a future lawsuit that i didn't know i was going to be a part of that i was so i get so mad when you go in active like i remember and i was like i know i remember that being so intentional yeah i stepped away for like my last oh my gosh at least like the last six months because i was like i don't know if this is what i want to be a part of i need to take time and think and i mean our experiences are so similar yeah well we're in that we were in the top 1 and i feel like so many people in top 1 have these experiences that's part of why i walked away because i talked to other one percent and i was like none of them are happy none of they're just scared none of them are happy right they're scared and i was like i'm not scared and like i say in the vice documentary lularoe already took everything away from me what are they gonna take i don't have anything yeah you know i i don't know what they're gonna take from me yeah i'm done they're done we've moved on uh you know they settled the lawsuit um which again you know the number was a little disappointing and the settlement was a little disappointing but then i look at it from other perspectives and being an advocate and knowing and having that perspective of being able to see everything from the middle and being in the middle of it i think i call it a win you know lularoe wasn't convicted but we knew that wasn't going to happen they were going to settle before any of that happened they know that yeah we knew that too uh i wish the number was a little bigger um what was it uh we settled for 4.75 million the state of washington took the 0.75 million to pay for the three-year investigation so they basically did it at cost they told me that too they said we want you to know that we're trying to keep as much of the money for restitution so we are literally taking our bear cost and that was calculated into the settlement as well so the settlement was 4 million and then the 0.75 went to pay for the entire investigation okay got it about 4 million went into a restitution fund the state of washington um had it had it so good they had cross-checked they knew who they had this algorithm they knew exactly who was getting a refund and who wasn't who was eligible and who wasn't they had all the information um listen you think you deserve a a roof a refund and you didn't get one you can go onto a page which is uh the real roberta blevins and i believe the pinned post is all of the information that you will need to claim uh your unclaimed you know settlement uh it's roughly eleven hundred dollars which is fi like you know twenty percent of what they paid minimum to get in which sucks that they're only getting a twenty 20 refund how much was it about eleven hundred dollars per person yeah per because it was just washington um and so four million dollars split i don't know how many there were but it was a roughly eleven twelve hundred dollars each does it only go to people in washington yeah so it's strictly washington so if you if you're listening to this and you're like but i'm in florida contact your florida attorney general's office they've already done it from monet they probably do it for lularoe too and here's the other thing that i talked to washington they said to me hey roberta if anybody in any other state wants to open this up the information and the and everything the investigation is done they just their attorney general contacts our attorney general and we will just give you the case so most of the legwork is done all of the evidence is done all of the findings are there they said sure you can take it i mean obviously washington and florida are a little different so there's going to be you know slight discrepancies in the case but the main pyramid scheme evidence is done and so why not right so that's the best way and in my research of being an anti-emblem advocate and i'm sure you've found it as well is you federally it's really hard federally it's protected and so a lot of times you have to um even with big cases that that do end up going to trial federally like herbalife right it was a fraud case it wasn't a pyramid scheme case it was a fraud case and it was fraud because of wall street and because of bill ackman not because people were like well i bankrupt me and so a lot of times they're like well how come we can't do that again and it's like well there's a lot of stipulations mlm is protected they know exactly you know what to do and who to pay and how to go about it so that they keep their nose clean as possible but the people in the ftc retire and go work for these companies in their compliance departments it's ridiculous so unfortunately the way that you get around these things is all again loopholes um state pyramid scheme laws or state fraud laws or local ordinances or things like that because unfortunately you know it's it's pretty insidious i remember interviewing doug brooks the attorney who sued um herbalife and him saying that the the class action suit the people that he was representing at the end of it they got like ten dollars yeah it was so sad it was so ugh that's what's horrible about class actions unfortunately because when things go to trial and that's the other thing if we were to have gone to trial there is no guarantee that the restitution would have been higher even if we won we could have gone to trial with lularoe and got a 10 million dollar settlement but the case cost 8 million and so now there's only 2 million for restitution you know so it's like there's no guarantee and so looking at everything and going do we go to trial or do we do this do we take this you know because i was like why did we settle and they're like these are the reasons why and this is because at the end of the day it's about restitution for the consultants and i'm like oh i do want to see these companies pay but at the same time she's com they were completely right you know it is about getting restitution and and and helping these people that were scammed and so i was like okay i guess did you receive any compensation for all the work you did no yeah and the investigator was like roberta i wish i could cut you a check and i said it's okay she's like you're not even in washington and you helped us and i said it's okay um you know for me it's more about as an advocate it's clout um you know i talked to robert and he's like yeah you know i'm an expert witness in pyramid schemes and i'm like boom i got to do one of those i have one under my belt already that's true um and so for me it was more like i will do this because it's an experience uh it goes with my advocacy it gives me a competitive edge in terms of being an educator and being somebody in this movement that has put my money where my mouth is has put my feet on the ground i'm not just sitting behind it you know and saying they're very bad um you know and and that's fine too you can sit behind a chair and say they're very bad that's totally fine for me i wanted to go a little deeper than that and i wanted to be like uh i'm on the stand i'm the voice for these people that don't have a voice i'm i'm brave enough to be their voice um i just i felt like and and then standing up to your bully like i mean how many times does that ever happen to you where you're like i have been bullied by this company i've been bullied by these people i've been bullied by my upline i've been bullied by my down line i've been bullied by everybody and then this lawsuit comes in and they're like validation and i'm like yes yes so i i mean i don't think there's any amount of money um that that uh oh maybe maybe maybe some really heavy numbers but you know i just i like the clout and the experience and being able to be like yes i helped those people um because it made me feel good and it goes right along with my therapy of moving out of mlm by helping victims you know i say that i joined the anti-mlm movement and started speaking out um because i wanted to help 75 women get out of lularoe because that's how many people were on my team um i i stopped counting in the thousands i'm still helping people i do in my interviews on my podcast and people that i i'm fans of them and they're like oh i just wanted you to know that you're the reason i'm anti-mlm and i'm like i'm sorry what the vice documentary is is what made me fall down the rabbit hole and now i have this channel and now i have this and i'm just like what me yeah and they're like you yes you and now you're my friend like savvy said that to me on our uh we reviewed ponzinomics and she's like can i just say and i was like what oh my god that's crazy i was just listening to her on the persuasion pitch jesse's podcast she's great um so no it's absolutely true i feel that i don't believe i don't think that mlms will ever be shut down i'll be so shocked if the federal government steps in and sets them down because they are in bed with politicians they do lob lobby these politicians it's disgusting um but that's spreading awareness spreading awareness is what matters so more people can say hey this is not a good thing unlike you and i who just were like this looks amazing and jumped in you know and i i ask experts like you and like robert and like other people you know that i i value your opinion and i say what do you think will stop mlm and the people that know i i say i say education is the way to stop them you teach people and then they say i don't want to do this anymore and robert said and the other side of it besides education is public awareness which i think still is an education thing but once there's enough public outcry and he used the example of tobacco big tobacco because big pyramid is another one so big tobacco oh we don't cause anything there's nothing wrong with cigarettes they're delicious and flavorful and it makes you very cool and then people are like i have cancer now and then finally the government's like okay big tobacco we can't cover for you anymore and then opioid addiction and big pharma what are you talking about we're just helping people with pills i'm addicted to pills now oh sorry public outcry so it's the same thing there is not going to be any public outcry if you just go i failed in an mlm i should i just wasn't really good at selling nail stickers it's like that's not true it doesn't matter if you're good or not right it's a spam yes and it's no one you are it's formulaic and so the washington with their pyramid scheme law they called lularoe a pyramid scheme because white people were spending a certain amount of money and then when they made any money that all had to go back into the product or what was there there's a couple of red flags with the original uh business model of lularoe one in terms of the ftc and in terms of pyramid schemes and things like that anything over 500 investment is a red flag which is why now lularoe's investment is 4.99 one dollar under bob yeah so anything over 500 in terms of a multi-level marketing company is a red flag lularoe's minimum was 500 5000 minimum minimum um so that was a huge red flag pyramid scheme ding ding ding uh secondly we were being paid our bonuses based on how much we purchased and not how much we sold which is ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding i mean big big big so yeah i mean i remember being like the the upline's being like hey make sure everybody bought their 175 pieces this month because if you were a leader you had to buy 175 pieces so if you're not selling 175 pieces you're losing money right and there's all kinds of other scams inside where it was like you would buy things and like they wouldn't show up and instead of them sending it to you or crediting you know like crediting your credit card they would just give you a back office credit and then you would have to spend more money to get that money and it was a minimum order of 33 so you couldn't just buy the three leggings that were missing you had to buy 33 items to get the three thing so it was there was a lot of that sort of scammy stuff happening and there were so many little things like that but i think there were just too many red flags to ignore unfortunately wow but i feel like with the bonuses that's how it is it's not really your team bonuses come from how many people you recruit and how many will they keep recruiting because then they all have an active monthly order that they have to place right so it's not the bonuses aren't given to you based on how much you sell ever no no no bonuses and mlms are 100 recruiting bonuses but now i guess in lularoe you have to sell a minimum to so you know in mlm there's like certain things you have to do to qualify okay check that one off i check that when i whatever one of the new qualifications is that you sold a certain amount so you actually have to also sell it to check that box off to qualify um but here's the thing like you can say that you sold it people were selling things to themselves to hit those bonuses they'd be like oh my god i need to sell 10 more things okay well i'm just going to sell them to myself and then i'm going to zero them out and then i'll just do those as giveaways because i already paid for them twice yeah my last mlm that i was a part of we was skincare and cosmetics and when you checked out it would not let you check out and process your payment until you clicked the box that said i hereby say whatever that i have sold 70 percent of what i'm purchasing right which is not enough too and yeah and if you if you didn't check that then you didn't get paid your bonuses but it's like in california with the uh with like you have to take breaks in california the labor laws but there are like my ex-husband's company he was telling me one time that there's a spot that was like i choose not to take a lunch and you would have to check it if you didn't take a lunch that you chose to actively not take the lunch so you could be paid on that hour because they're like we have to pay you unless you check this box that you're not taking that you are saying i'm not taking a lunch today because if you were ever sue i never got lunch they're like well you checked this box of forever that you didn't want it yeah and nobody always loopholes to get around there's always all these loopholes because in our company nobody would have 70 of their orders sold most of the time and but you knew that if you didn't check that then you didn't get the bonus so you purchased it hoping to sell it but and the other thing is like you're sitting there going okay my bonus that i've calculated should be because there was never any way to know for sure should be about let's use my highest was like 6 500 okay so my bonus should be 6 500 for this month if i qualify but i'm 10 pieces away from qualifying and i have to buy those myself because i've got eight hours until the month is over so i'm just gonna buy those myself and use them as giveaways i'm just gonna write them off um and me buying 10 pairs of leggings it's going to cost me 250 and then sales tax is less than me forfeiting my 600 my 6500 bonus yeah yeah so you're just like well that's fine i'm going to spend 250 to get 6500 like that's stupid why wouldn't i do that so that happened a lot as well that's what happened in our last company people were like well i'll just buy this product even though i haven't sold it and i'll just give it to everybody for christmas or birthdays the bonus is bigger so yeah the bonus is bigger than the cost of me purchasing the thing to qualify for the bonus i don't miss the industry at all it's not the industry at all either so insidious so for people who haven't watched the vice documentary or whatever for me seeing you on the vice documentary i was like yes like she gets it because you were one of the i related to you because you were also in the top 1 percent and you what i loved about you was like because it's a sob story when you leave the industry i mean there's no happy endings but you had this fighter spirit to you where you were like i'm gonna knock him down and you know like i'm not gonna stay down i'm gonna i'm gonna bring him down and i was like yes yeah that's my daddy coming through for sure my dad right there that's what you taught me i hope he's watching from wherever he's at now looking down on me going yes because i'm like you made me this way i love it and it's what's needed to fight these companies because they can just wear you down i mean i was so i was just like i don't want to think about this anymore like it was so exhausting but it wasn't probably always you you might have not always had that spirit right when you left did you experience the cyber bullying like did you tell the audience a little bit briefly what happened to you when you laughed so they know it wasn't just like i left and i'm great right yeah no it took a long time for me to be great and honestly i'm still not great um i just hide it really well because mlm taught me that make it till you make it so i'm really good at that now um let's see uh you know i've always had a fighter spirit like i always have like forever so i'm not surprised that it came out but when i left um it was really tough uh i was getting text messages all the time talking to me about like you know i can't believe you're doing this or like you know just just really like i said with the four like the 45 minute conversation that i had with her before i wanted to quit she's like you just need to stay a little longer a little longer you just need to stay a little longer and when i quit she was like how dare you do this to me because i i removed her from my team page and everything because i was like she doesn't need to see my announcement and i type up the announcement my husband sends it we go it's out there now and um and she was like it was it got back to her within 10 minutes like someone on my team screenshotted it sent it to her said look i remember blaming and then um she was like how dare you how dare you do this to me we agreed we did it so that was great and then my upline her husband my mentor upline her husband because she was only thing she cared about was where she could get good bobby pins because i'm a hair stylist and i know where to get the best bobby pins she wanted one of those like one pound boxes from like cosmoprof is what she wanted so she's like can you send me some bobby pins and i'm like you can buy them everywhere you don't get that no what thanks so weird and like for the people that know her and know who i was under and hear that response they're like typical person like that's just she's just like that she's just like so um yeah not great when your husband her husband started texting me and harassing me and facetiming me and just talk to me just talk to me i just want to talk to you and i said stop and he goes it makes me sad when you don't answer my texts yeah i was all ill and then other people i'm reaching out and they're like we'll always be friends and then immediately they block me got to the point where i just i couldn't even look at my phone because i was terrified it was going to be somebody going why are you leaving why aren't you staying what's going on with the company explain it to me what's happening and i was like i don't have the mental capacity to talk to you about this right now i'm freaking out right now like come to me in a month when i'm normal again i i i've never been that high like this high frequency that i was just like vibrating at such a high frequency i could not manage daily life yeah it was the weirdest thing that i've ever experienced it 100 watching that leah remini being like yeah that's what i'm going through clearly this is a cult i'm being like it's the anti-indoctrination now right all the people that were like you're amazing are like you're the worst roberta you're the worst we hate you how dare you get your negativity out of here we knew you wouldn't be successful sorry we wasted our time on you like that sort of stuff where i'm just like it's hard because any any level you're at when you leave you're shunned you're you know talked badly about but when you're at the top it happens on a scale that is so much bigger and so much meaner and it's scary having so many people mad at you yeah that was like i hate when people are mad at me like i grew up learning like this is i don't want people to be mad at me my dad was always like people are gonna just apologize okay just apologize that was that i don't know if you heard that that was my stomach grumbling whoa i should probably eat something i was at the salon all day i haven't eaten yet um it was like uh you know people are gonna be like that you know just apologize and it's just it's the easiest way to get if someone's mad you just apologize well i don't know what i did it doesn't matter that's all they want is an apology so i mean it's incredibly toxic and horrible advice but it's the device that i was raised on i'm from the 80s sorry like that's how we were raised as kids you just sort of put on a happy face and baked it till you make it right right let me know this totally sweep it under the rug yeah like just put on your happy face we'll just deal with this in therapy later um and so yeah like so i have this toxic trait that my number one thing to do is to to throw myself on the sword and be like it was my fault i'm sorry i'm sorry whatever i did to hurt you i'm apologizing whatever you need to hear is what i'll say just i'm sorry um and so it was like i i went through that whole thing again where i'm just like apologizing to people and i hadn't done anything wrong and i was like i need to get away from this toxic mindset like this is bringing up all this stuff in my past and so many things that are triggering me and honestly leaving lularoe and like finding my voice like i felt like i found my voice again like i felt like i had been quote-unquote just a mom and just a wife for so long that when i finally left lularoe i was empowered and like emboldened and like oh i'm i found myself again and i started speaking out and it's the best therapy in the whole entire world to talk to people and to help people and that's the reason i joined mlm was to help people right and now i'm helping people and i've helped way more people out of mlm than i ever helped people like while i was in mlm like i don't know what kind of stuff people needed help with buying clown pants but hey you know whatever um it just i like it on this side a lot better i feel that everybody's story is valid for and when they leave if they're able to find it within themselves to share it and speak up because i know that's hard um it's powerful i feel like it's like leaving like again it's like you're leaving a cult you've got people inside that maybe you're friends with that you don't want to offend you don't want to ruin those relationships so when you leave you're very oh it just wasn't a very good fit for us we still love the product um or whatever you know that they need to say it's like when you leave an abusive relationship you're like it's not him it's just didn't work you know you just need to say whatever you need to say to get safe yeah and i knew that i didn't want to talk out about lularoe because i didn't feel safe i was like ah i don't want to hurt my friends i had family members and friends that were in it and i didn't want to hurt their businesses but the way that i was treated i was like i can't let them get away with this i can't at least without telling my story to people that care like anti-lularoe people at least then and then those people were like oh my god roberta like yes what you say is what i felt and then um and then i started doing like interviews like this but it was on facebook live in our anti-mlm group and i would do these interviews with people and i interviewed courtney before vice or maybe it was out i don't know but you know and i was like man i love interviewing people i should start a podcast and that was three years ago i said that like on this interview i was like i should do this a more often and it took me three years to finally go roberta you should finally start that podcast you've been talking about and tell everyone the name of your podcast so they know where to find you okay so my podcast is called life after mlm it's very easy life after mlm and that's what we talk about we talk about life after mlm i talk to survivors and new episodes every sunday if it's a two-parter i try to release them consecutively so you don't have to wait um and i i talk to survivors i've talked to people you know i mean you know like you talked to people in arbonne and amway and melaleuca and nemo nades and lula i've interviewed a couple people with lularoe those are fun because we sit there and go oh my god did this happen you all remember that and it's more of like this ridiculous chat where we're talking over each other and going yes yes um so you know uh but i talk to these people and i and and i have them fill out a survey before i talk to them and the main thing on everybody is that everyone lost money 100 of the people i interviewed last month which is like wow okay um you know they fill out the survey that has like different like which manipulation techniques did you experience gaslighting and excommunication and the stories that that they tell me are the same it doesn't matter if you're in melaleuca or amway or acn or anything you know and i'll talk to anybody that wants to tell their story i don't think you know i have some people that are like you should really tell the big stories and i'm like no story is too small in this because the commonality i don't want to only hear top one percent people because i you know maybe i don't relate to that maybe i was just a little peon in 47 different mlms and was never in the top one percent and i can't i can't relate to you going on cruises and getting bonus checks i don't understand that so i talked to everybody i talked to people that were in it for three months i talked to people that were in it for three years i talked to people that were top one percent the bottom of the barrel whatever because the stories are the same the only thing that changes is the person i'm talking to the company they're in and not even always the company they're in and the ridiculous products and ranks that are legitimized to make this look like a business the more we talk to them the more we realize this is not a business the all the uh recognition posts and which oh my gosh got so super princess unicorn star diamonds rainbow she reached rainbow level rainbow princess magic unicorn oh my god you get a pen oh my gosh a pin i get a pin now i can write things with the pen that has my company name on it i'm so important i'm gonna bring it to convention when people see me right with this pen they'll know how special i am it's like all these little like the the rank incentives and the recognition it just keeps dangling that carrot in front of your face because you're like this is so amazing i'm getting recognized oh my gosh and finally someone sees my potential besides me yeah i'm like babe we see your potential it's not in an mlm okay it's not fast see your potential and it is not with life but it can be hard to leave because of those things and the community you create where it seems like they are cheering you on no matter what and they want to see you succeed because we don't have that in our regular life i have to remind myself it wasn't real all those relationships were conditional and it just it was a facade you had to qualify for the friendship every month too there you go yeah i mean for real you had to if i have to reset every first of the month it's a reset yeah all the hard work you did for the last 30 nothing today it was start fresh exhausting so exhausting yeah and if i have to stay in a company to remain friends with somebody what that's not a friendship it's not a friendship did he did mark and diane everyone nope excuse me her twin sister is diane she owned honey and lace different person oh mark it's a real thing this is a mess wow so did mark and dan ever speak to you again after leaving or during all this lawsuit stuff no did you hear from anybody in if they were saying anything about you or because she was very the things that i heard from you about what she would say to you like to leave your husband to find a lularoe husband because he wouldn't get on board with your business and he wouldn't support you that's weird crazy talk yeah um they never talked to me after no but i mean i'm at diane so many times it's it's i don't have a picture for every time that i talk to her you know because it was it was not a big deal because i talked to her all the time i probably have two or three pictures of z with diane or diane sorry wow see um but i met her so many times so like she would see me and she'd be like you know she has that like shrill shrieky voice that people are very familiar with if they watch any of the videos um and nothing after i left no um probably like who we don't even know who that is like she was nothing you know great cool i'm glad you think i'm nothing uh the only person i've really heard from is their lawyer but that's because he was you know deposing me um in terms of yeah i don't hear about any of it they've never come after me they've never sent me seasoned assists they've never tried to sue me they've never come after me or told me please don't say that um they've never offered me a settlement to stop talking i will say that i'm willing to uh to talk uh i'm willing to take a settlement in in a high number to not speak of lularoe ever again i'll still talk about mlms but i just won't talk about lularoe anymore and that price starts at a million and we can negotiate from there vice already has you talking so that will always be out there right and i'm like there's i've done a lot of stuff so like even though i'm not gonna continue speaking when you pay me my million dollars my past roberta will continue in speaking because people put these ceos on a pedestal they are god-like i call them the tom cruise of scientology um it's ridiculous how they're and it's in every mlm every mlm i've been in or witnessed or had friends who were in the top they all their ceos are looked at like god it's ridiculous for me the craziest things i heard about the lularoe ceos was the tijuana skinnies where she was trying to convince distributors to fly with her to mexico to see her she got a lot of people to do that like a lot of bypass i know of at least personally friends of mine at least seven or eight people that got it that i personally know yeah my gosh yeah and i was afraid i am not judging anybody who chooses the gastric bypass but the reason i'm so shocked by it is because that is not a little thing and there are long-term side effects that accompany it that's a huge that's a surgery that's an invasive surgery that's a huge thing and then and then her telling you to find a new husband what other shocking behavior did you see from them that didn't match up with how they presented themselves well um i know of uh i hate i'm gonna say allegedly because i don't want to get in trouble there we go um alleged alleged drug use um opiates uh xanax uh antidepressants and mood elevators um i've heard of stories of going to la pharmacia while in um where they go guatemala which is where one of our factories was and so they would take the mentors on these factory tours yeah so they could see lularoe being made and uh allegedly the bus often stopped at la pharmacia which is spanish for the pharmacy if you didn't know and uh in mexico you can very easily i live in san diego i could literally walk across the border by a month's supply of xanax and walk across the border hahaha don't even worry about it they it just it's that's how it is there so um i heard allegedly again pills coming coming back over the border um purchasing large quantity of of goods that did not go through customs and did not pay any customs fees or taxes on because they were considered personal gifts and they weren't to be resold but then i saw them resold so i was like that's weird um things like that things like that allegedly i'm not the person that knows that stuff because i'm not the person that was on that bus but so and i there is somebody that i can get you in touch with that was knowing that they invited people to go to mexico to to get this gastric bypass surgery that doesn't surprise me that alleged that allegedly i know what happened for a fact i mean there's no alleged that that text exists that chat exists right and i know like i said at least seven people that did it right oh yeah no not a legend the gastric thing is not allegedly about visiting the pharmacy i believe but it's shocking to me that they would take their distributors there like these are mentors these are not distributors these are the top one percent this is like the point zero zero one percent this is the mentors these are the people that were making uh you know three hundred thousand dollars on a check like that like sixty thousand dollars 150 000 a month bonus recruiting check yeah these were the people that were four or five levels above me that were mentor mentor mentor mentor this woman on top her name's kim roy lance she's the first person in lularoe to ever make a million dollars in bonus in recruiting bonuses and that was in 2016 she hit that mark she hit the million dollar mark in 2016. um she was the top of my tree kim roy lance i had like six other mentors underneath her before you hit me so a mentor doing that much volume under the tree of that much volume that much volume down i mean i don't know how many millions of dollars but i will tell you that she knows where the bodies are buried what do you think is next for lularoe are they still gung-ho going on how do you think the company's faring now uh you know because i'm an anti-mlm advocate i try not to focus on one company too much obviously the majority like i do a lot of lularoe stuff but i'm not really so much focused on the day-to-day of what they're doing um i know that they're continuing to bring out new products because i see it i'm in the groups and i see it i mean the other anti-mlm groups where they're like look at this and i you know i see it everywhere so i know they're still in business um they're right now they're battling that billion dollar lawsuit against their former supplier my dyer so they're working on that right now i think there was another lawsuit it was a class action consultant lawsuit that was just filed like last week so uh that's happening there's multiple lawsuits that are still up and going unfortunately the defective leggings lawsuit was dropped because they found it to be too hard and to to discern like who actually purchased what and how to refund those people and because it was so convoluted and so difficult it unfortunately was dropped uh probably a couple weeks ago that was kind of a but you know whatever uh par for the course i guess um i i follow it to the point that i just know that they're still around but i don't know exactly what's happening uh i will say that there is going to be a lot of movement this year um on lularoe and when i'm able to talk more about that stuff uh i'll definitely come back and and spill even more tea because i can't really say wait a minute what do you mean so wait there's stuff you can't talk about now there's stuff i can't talk about right now why because i signed something that says i can't talk about it so it's so okay so okay got it so it wasn't signed on lulu rose and you signed it with somebody going after yeah yeah so their supplier that's suing them i remember seeing in the documentary all the shipment that was left outside in the rain in storms yeah so that was in the u.s now their their suppliers are in mexico uh well no so their their supplier uh was my dyer and they use uh factories outside of the us so i think there's there was one in china there was one in vietnam that they used for a while there's one in guatemala that they used i want to say there's some other ones maybe mexico i'm not sure okay but i saw all of those names like made in those places on the tags of lularoe so they have factories everywhere um i don't know why they never visited any other factories aside from the guatemala one i don't know i don't know why they didn't go to the china factory or whatever i don't know maybe they did and i just didn't know about it um yeah i i just i know that there's big things happening that this is a big story that deserves to be told that it is so deep and twisted it is a rabbit hole it's not even a rabbit hole it's a friggin ant farm okay it's not a rabbit hole it's an ant farm and you're gonna get and you're gonna go left or right and you'll be like i don't know uh it is so crazy like i was talking like you said like the weight loss surgery the alleged drug use guatemala the the smuggling of things um um uh the xanax backstage like handing out xanax and antidepressants backstage before you talk because you're so yeah allegedly that happened too like i know people that took it so i know that i allegedly know that that allegedly happened because i allegedly know those people that that took those alleged pills um things like that uh the buy-back issue the 100 buy-back issue that was a big drama um lularoe sending out returns and claiming they were new that was a big issue the leggings with the holes in it the mold the stink that was all a big issue the back office credit scam that was a big issue uh there was a tax issue that was a big issue i mean there's so many and then you meet the key players of lularoe and then you learn about them and some of these people i like to call this one guy in lularoe the billy mcfarland of lularoe um if you've seen the fire fraud festival documentary all of that you know who billy mcfarland is uh we have a guy like that in lularoe um so there's this huge story uh that i think just needs to be told and i'm hoping that it gets told and i'm hoping that uh when it's you know when it's time to tell it that people are are ready to listen to it um i always have projects working on things i was working on other lawsuits that ended up not you know i wasn't needed or whatever um always talking to talking to a lot of students which is really great i think it's really cool i've talked to a lot of students who are like hey i'm writing my dissertation on anti-mlm or i'm a business student and i'm i'm talking about multi-level marketing can i talk to you as an expert so i've talked to a ton of just students writing papers and and doing projects um i'd love to talk to that to kids like that and be like yes let's get this next generation so they don't even join them so they're just smarter than we were um so i'm always working on things i love it but there are some things i'm not allowed to talk about but when i can talk about them i will come back and talk about them because i'm so excited to talk about i wish i could talk i'm so excited in closing what advice do you have for anybody who is in the anti-mlm industry and may still be struggling with the pain of leaving the mlm industry and missing certain things or anything like that what do you because i mean even you and i still struggle with what we experienced there and how we felt so i mean it's it's normal i just want people to know that it's normal what advice is normal what advice would you have for them the best advice i have for you uh first thing you need to do is forgive yourself first thing uh and don't even start with number two until you get number one down because number one is going to take the longest um what you need to do to forgive yourself uh make amends with the people you hurt make amends with the people you lied to um let them know that you know that this was a problem and and you're apologetic uh if you don't have people to apologize to great that's awesome um maybe you just make a post on your facebook page that's like hey look i i looked into this i was a part of it i'm ashamed to be a part of it i'm just going to let you guys know that i'm not going to support this anymore uh a blanket sort of thing like that works great um then the next thing you need to do once you've apologized to yourself and to everyone and you've forgiven yourself um is to make sure that you're no longer supporting these companies and that includes going to your friend's party and just watching or just liking or just commenting or just sharing a post on your page or listening to a presentation or letting any sort of legitimacy happen if someone you love is stuck in one of these cults they're not businesses uh if you want more information there's so much of it out there now luckily this movement is just just rolling my podcast like i said i talk to survivors but i also talk to experts and i also break things down on bonus episodes mid-week so if you don't want to hear survivor stories just listen to the ones on wednesdays and those are going to be the educational ones um educate yourself that's another thing know what's going on don't just be like mlms are bad because they're planetary okay why are they predatory and understand why they're predatory so that you can educate others never call names always approach it with compassion as someone who's helped thousands of people out of mlm i will tell you that the only way is with compassion if you come at someone calling them names telling them they're stupid they're going to block you they're going to not listen to anything else you have to say you have to come to them and say i know where you've been i've been there too if you ever want to talk i'm here if you're ever ready to learn more i'll point you in the right direction never push just gently nudge um this is something that happened the other day and i'll share the story it's really cool um so my last survivor story on my podcast last sunday was a girl from lularoe named lindsay and she was in five different mlms and we were both in lularoe and we have this great discussion we spill a lot of tea that like maybe people don't know and um and and i posted it was great she shares it on her page she gets a message from a friend who's in color street and she says girl i'm done and she shows her the screenshot and she was like literally like everything that you talked about in that podcast episode just happened to me and she's like that's the last show i'm done so even just talking to me and sharing her story with me and then her sharing our interview with her friends a friend of her said i'm just gonna see what that's about listen to it connected to it felt related related to it and said oh my god this is what's happening to me and was able to snap out of the kool-aid cloud and go oh my god yeah i'm in a cult too and she left wow and so she sends me this text of the text and she goes we got one and she sends me the text and i was like yes you know i never tell people to leave i like i said i lead them to water and i say if you're thirsty yeah this is delicious water yeah i think the apologizing is a big thing even just a blanket apology like what i did i did reach out to like one or two close people i knew who became anti-mlm who had been on my team but a lot of them were still in the mlm world and they didn't want to talk to me or they didn't want to hear it and so in my video i apologized and i you know i explained i just my apology in my very first anti-mulan video but i think we need to normalize being wrong and making mistakes and saying hey i was wrong i'm sorry and it's okay it's okay like if you own up to it it's okay and i know that i know for me coming out with that video and and having to say like i was wrong i'm really sorry i it's hard to admit you're wrong it was so hard it's like really hard like i have a video i have a movie i have a documentary on vice of me admitting i was wrong that was not easy i cry in front of a national audience like a big fat baby like i ugly cry on vice you guys do you think that was easy or was it easy do you know how many text messages i get from people going i'll be your friend i'm like oh my god like i have friends i did that a long time ago everything is better now i appreciate it re-releases it like every six months like every six months there's this new wave of people like trying to friend request me and say i'm so sorry that happened to you i'll be your friend i'm like i appreciate the support please google my name first i know you googled my name somehow you found me on facebook how funny oh my gosh i love it i love the support i absolutely do but i also i really want to make sure that people know that that person in the vice documentary and me even though we have the same name and the same face are not the same person anymore right um and i've grown exponentially since and i've educated myself so much since but now you watch advice and i'm like man i wish i would have known what i know now because i would have added that in don't you guys don't let feeling like you don't know everything about the anti-male movement to to not speak up don't let that hinder you right that girl from that vice documentary spoke to me in a way that i had not felt since i left the mlm industry and i just was like okay yeah it was amazing yeah you know so you speak out and every day i say this on my podcast all the time every day just try to be better just try to educate yourself a little bit more um if you say something and someone that knows more than you goes actually that's not entirely true use that time instead of fighting back with them to go well what isn't true about it can you educate me yeah um yeah i'm all about education i'm i'm not gonna sometimes i sound a little gruff in comments but it really is like i'm trying to educate people um yeah unless you can sometimes you just don't see it until you see it yeah sometimes you just have to plant that seed in that little tiny crack and hope that some roots take and eventually they're like i think i'm ready to ask you questions now i think i think i'm ready to ask what happened i think i'm experiencing those things too and if you call names and you know like they're going to block you they're never going to hear your message so if you're just these little seeds just little seeds you don't have to be like mlms are the worst and here's why you can just be like hey check out this information i just learned and do with it what you will in reporting to the attorney general of your state if somebody doesn't have all the documents from before or maybe they ex you know they don't have all these receipts what would you still encourage them to yeah of course still encourage you to speak up uh you'd be surprised what emails you still have you'd be surprised what facebook memories contain butt loads of evidence you'd be surprised um yeah speak out speak up speak out educate educate yourself read ponzinomics that's a great book to read uh listen to my podcast watch josie you're already doing that um you know reached out to to people in this in this movement that care and aren't just doing it to be like haha look at this stupid hun because i'm not about the hun shaming no they're victims you know if 99.7 percent of people lose money then 99.7 percent of people are probably victims yeah yeah and if they didn't lose money they still experienced all the toxic positivity the gas lighting the cult like tactics it's it's sick you know i i hate to use other movements as examples but you know you would never tell someone that said hey that guy assaulted me well what were you wearing you know you would never say that to somebody unless you're i hope you wouldn't yeah i mean some of you would not probably not your listeners but maybe some people you know not your people no definitely not your people but some people might absolutely and so it's this victim blaming and this victim shaming that we see constantly which is so systemic in our just culture to just blame the victim well it's clearly your fault you are stupid and it's not it's not my fault it's not my fault that i trusted the wrong person it's not my fault that i put my faith in somebody who was a scam artist it's not my fault this is being human it's human and you know ending that stigma of failure that's my tagline on my podcast is let's end the stigma of failure in a in an industry that's systemically designed for you to fail because if you fail you succeed right because that's what it's meant to do so if you're failing congratulations in an ass backwards way you succeeded it's horrible but it's true and so i want to remove that stigma so when people are like i was in mary kay they're like girl tell me because i was too let's compare horror stories yes versus i know i tried to and i couldn't do it i'm just not a salesperson see and i think this is where it's different i think it started with gen x and then worked on its way on down to millennials why everyone else because we speak up and speak out about what we experienced whereas i've noticed women from the older generations which are still great but my mom would never speak out if she would stay [Music] yeah because that's how they were raised right you just you don't cause a scene you don't make a scuff you just just look pretty and sit over there and there's a lot of people still being raised like that i was raised like that here in missouri i mean yeah i mean i was raised like if you see something say something here in southern california and so my whole entire life i've been like um excuse me what are you doing that's scammy don't do that right and i'm i'm so sad at myself for not seeing it when i joined it seems so good to be too good to be true it can't be a scam that's just they figured it out you know yeah so forgive yourself forgive yourself thank you therapy is great too therapy is great too i'm a total pro therapy i have an appointment this friday i can't wait and there are some there are some really great anti-mlm creators that are also therapists and work in the mental health fields and you can find them on instagram and you can reach out to them and they will know your struggle and will say hey let me get you in touch with someone who can help you that's great so it's all the information's out there if you're willing and like me if you have to educate your therapist and say like psychology and that's what she's doing so my friend haley o'brien yeah my friend haley o'brien i i interviewed her on my podcast she's a counselor and she did her she did her master's in how to help uh people from these high uh demand groups like mlms and cults and so that's what she's working on and that's what she wants her practice to be nice um and so she i was just like what yes of course because it's this untapped mental thing that happens to so many people and we just don't talk about it we just sweep it under the rug like i failed and you didn't that and religious trauma absolutely yes yes high demand groups for sure yeah so her name is haley o'brien haley o'brien yeah perfect counselor haley is her instagram what is it taking a counselor haley she's taking a little break right now but she'll be back in june she's fantastic you can read her uh her thesis it's on her website it's like 85 pages of her anti-amalen thesis and it's incredible she's amazing wow yeah i can't wait to look into it well thank you so much for coming on get some food into your belly i appreciate you being here i know thank you i love talking to you i love talking in general this problem that's the main problem is that i love talking i was voted most talkative nice in my school's superlative so i'm like weird i guess everyone saw it before i did but it worked out now you have a podcast and you're helping people so it worked out perfect am i saying is it diane diane how's the twin sister diane i mean yeah she actually stole so diane and deanne went into it together we're still recording so if you want to put this in there they went into this legging business together they were selling maxi skirts so like deanne made a maxi skirt and her daughter posted it on instagram and was like oh my god look how cute the skirt is and all her friends were like we need master skirts too so diane and deanne started this like matt the maxi skirt sisters i don't remember what the name was but it was like a like a wordpress.com like slash whatever like website and they were selling these maxi skirts somehow some way i don't know diane got edged out and deanne took over turned it into lularoe and started it and was like [ __ ] you diane and then diane was like [ __ ] you dm and opened up honey and lace which was literally exactly the same as lularoe but slightly different and then honey and lace went under uh i something happened was it an mlm yeah exactly the same honey and lace went under and then it was sold to this guy named jack peterson and jack peterson turned it into epiphany and then epiphany yeah with a with a p epiphany was a like epiphany but without the epiphany was around and then there was all this scandal about epiphany and i talk about that in my last podcast scandal because this one guy's this guy named sam schultz he left lularoe went to fifa because it was his aunt's company his other ants company and recruited a [ __ ] ton of people from lularoe and got sued by lularoe this huge thing and he brought a ton of people over i have emails of the bridges he was offering people to leave lularoe we will pay you five thousand dollars a month you don't even just to recruit and we will pay you so you don't have to sell anything so you can recruit i put it on my instagram like i highlighted it and put it up there and then after that scandal happened obviously jack peterson who let it happen was like i have to resign sam had to quit amy francis who was a top person at lularoe who then became a top person epiphany had to quit this other girl who was a a witness in the lularoe whip lawsuit that with that i did she was in had to quit epiphany lularoe sued them and said you moved over and recruited that's not allowed if you don't quit your epiphany business and resign right now we're gonna sue you even farther and we'll take you for everything you have so either quit epiphany and end your clothing mlm business or we're gonna sue you and we'll continue and we'll actually take this to court and so i think all of them were like [ __ ] out we're done and they just signed they just said nah we're good sign it away we're done this happened last a year ago like a turtle around this time really involved at all no i don't believe so okay and then jack sold it to whoever owns it now and now it's called savvy what a mess that people don't realize this is exactly the real nature of mlms this is how they are i've seen them put that in oh i don't mean i've seen them sue so many people it's disgusting whether it was corporate people distributors who left and brought other people anything they've gone after them so are her and her sister estranged i believe so i don't know how did i don't think i don't think they're involved at all how did deanne get the capital to start lulu oh i can tell you this story too i want to know i want to know she slipped on some chicken grease at sam's club and sued sam's club and got a bunch of money and then we believe that money was used to start lularoe we don't know if she slipped on the chicken grease accidentally or purposefully but she slipped on chicken grease at a sam's club and hurt herself and sued sam's club and got a but but ton of money and then started lularoe not too far after that so that's the alleged story again i don't know i just know little bits here and there and what did her husband who he's he's the worst he used to own a construction company a concrete company and a lot of problems in there too like either not paying workers or not paying dates there was a lot of problems i believe that was defunct and the lawyers that he had in his construction company are the same lawyers he uses in lularoe which is why they're stupid and they have no idea about multi-level marketing and i was like you're a concrete lawyer not a multi-level marketing lawyer don't ask me stupid questions if you don't want me to talk to you like this right right wow was he and okay so they're like that's their second marriage correct yes so and here's the other thing she was married to this other guy and she met mark on an airplane they were both in this other mlm called enola which i believe was shut down for being a pyramid scheme they were in enola international together they met on an airplane well i believe both of them were still married whatever and then started this crazy love affair and then she ended up getting divorced and he got divorced and now they're together oh wow i mean whatever whatever but they like met on an area yeah it's super messy super messy girl thank you go eat i appreciate you [Laughter] totally you

Channel: NOT THE GOOD GIRL

Views: 47,317

Rating: 4.9429278 out of 5

Keywords: LULAROE, Deanne stidham, mark stidham, multilevel marketing, lularoe leggings, network marketing, work from home, scam

Id: P5NaeVYKOlY

Length: 106min 14sec (6374 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 05 2021