What Emotions Are Driving Your Job Search? What We Can All Learn From a Multi Level Marketing Memoir

What emotions are driving your job search or desire to do something new? I’m writing about my considerations about going out and getting a job after 17 years of being self employed. After that I’ve identified the leading two emotions are fear and anxiety. I’m on the fence whether these tricky emotions are a solid foundation to drive a huge change.

This week’s Anxious Achiever is about patriarchy, supremacy and the very human need to feel special. It’s a tale from the world of multilevel marketing and stars writer Emily Paulson. You'll also learn what a "love bomb" is!

This story is a cautionary tale about taking on a job or role to fill an emotional gap- without understanding the emotions you’re feeling in the first place. It’s a very human thing to do, and it’s often healthy. When we feel constantly under-appreciated for doing a good job in a thankless role, we get angry and we find a new job.

Emily Paulson dove into selling expensive skin care for a national multi level marketing brand at a vulnerable time in her personal and professional life.  The job seemed to offer fun, camaraderie, and external validation, all things that were scarce in the life of this busy mom with many young kids!

Looking back, she realizes she was lonely. She missed the company of adults and colleagues. She was bored after many years of high intensity parenting. Those emotions made her vulnerable to take on a job that wasn’t healthy for her. Look: much of modern life is built on brands selling us things that prey on our emotions, and tap into our desire to feel a certain way. This happens in our jobs, too.

If you’re considering a big jump: what are the emotions informing your desire? Is the new role you’re considering a good fit for what you're feeling? Consider this list from Susan David, Ph.D.:

I love the idea of really interrogating which emotions are driving your actions. Because as you know, actions have consequences. Emily Paulson learned this and tells the story in her new book, “Hey, Hun: Sales, Sisterhood, Supremacy, and the Other Lies Behind Multi Level Marketing.”

Morra: Your work and time in multi-level marketing was at a time when you were technically out of the workforce. You were technically a stay-at-home mom of your five kids “fitting the work into the nooks and crannies of your time.” And yet my experience of reading about you and your colleagues in the multi-level marketing scheme was that this is the most anxiety provoking environment I have ever read about. It is like the epitome of anxiety!

Emily: Sales is just that: sales. In multi-level marketing, it's the multi-level that's important. It is when you are not an actual employee of a company, you're a contractor and your “job” is to recruit other people to join that company. You also sell products, but the money is really made through recruiting people to join in as contractors for the company, spreading the message of the company, recruiting more people, and yes, selling the products while you're doing that, the products are just really a ruse to get people in the scheme. They're essentially pyramid schemes with products.

Morra: You have what's called an upline and a downline. Can you define that?

Emily: In a traditional job you have a boss, you may have managers, you know, all those people in those managerial layers get a salary, they get benefits. In multi-level marketing, you typically join with a friend. You join, uh, maybe your sister, your mom, your friend, maybe just a random girl who comes in your DMs that is now your sponsor, your upline (different MLMs have different names for them). But essentially that person gets a cut of any sales and your recruiting that you do. And then you basically do the same thing. You go and recruit people and those become your downline. And then those people recruit people. So you kind of have this genealogy tree upline and downline of people who make money off of you and people you make money off of.

And the company pads the products because they're basically paying people cuts of every sale. So it seems like the products are very, very expensive compared to what you could buy at Amazon.

Morra: You're a chemist by profession, right?

Emily: I loved chemistry, I loved being in the lab, I loved doing research. So that's what drew me into that field. So I got my first job out of college in the US but at a Japanese led company. I was the only woman who was working there. Part of it, there was a language barrier and some microaggressions with me being the only female, there were a lot of men who worked there. I had a situation where there was a guy pursuing me. Then I talked to my HR manager and just said, hey, this guy just won't stop, picking on me and trying to hit on me, he asked me out.  I keep turning him down and it's just making the work situation really difficult. He told me, you know, he'd take care of it, he'd talk to him, but that I was a pretty young thing. 

And so this was like within the first six months I was working there. So I was already very defeated. I loved the work, I loved what I was doing, but the environment was so anxiety producing, there was kind of this weird understanding because actually there was one woman who worked there when I started and she felt pushed out because she was like passed over for things. It was just a very toxic environment. And so eventually I decided I'm gonna go back to school because that was comfortable for me.

I got my master's in teaching, I did that and that was wonderful. I became a chemistry teacher, then I got pregnant. One of the reasons I went into teaching was that I thought it was a very flexible career for moms, and it turns out there's no flexible career for moms, spoiler alert, spoiler alert! I was married at that point, a lot of things were happening behind the scenes at this time. My husband's job, he traveled and it was much more higher paying than my new teaching job was, so it just made sense childcare wise on paper that I would stay home.

And initially we kind of thought like, oh, I'll stay home for the first year and then I'll go back to work. Because again, you don't know what you don't know. And then you come to find out like a one-year-old actually needs more attention than a baby. We just didn't know what we didn't know. We then ended up moving across the country for my husband's job. 

After a few years we had a few more kids and my teaching license  lapsed, just the hoops I would've had to jump through to go back to either working in a lab or working as a teacher. It got so much more difficult. And of course by then you're already accustomed to this lifestyle where I'm the one running the show. So, fast forward, we had five kids and we knew we were done and we were kind of settled in the place where we were gonna live for a long time. 

And then I was kind of stuck. There's no way we could justify childcare for five kids at that point. And I had been out of the workforce for so long

Morra: And that's really, sort of where the story of your multilevel marketing career opens. Obviously I come from old school mom blogger land and the sort of stay-at-home mom debate is very toxic online and very, very challenging.  I usually try to stay away from it. But obviously it is really, really important because I think it just highlights all the structural inequities in America where basically the equation is,  Am I going to pay for childcare for five kids? That's ridiculous! Do you know how much money that is?  I think a lot of couples say: it's not worth it for one of us not to work because childcare is so expensive, someone's gonna sacrifice or someone's just not gonna work.

Emily: And I really felt kind of trapped in this prison of my own making, like this wonderful prison. I always wanted to be a mom. I loved being home with my kids. I felt on one hand, so incredibly blessed and grateful that we were financially able to do that. And yet I was required to do that,  I didn't have a choice to not do that.

Morra: This is a safe space to talk about how motherhood is really a pain in the ass because I think that as a majorly working mom, my whole mom career, I've always felt the guilt on the other side. But I love to work and I think it's totally okay for moms to be like, you know, motherhood feels like a trap sometimes. That's again structural reasons and it's okay to talk about. I think that vulnerability probably was what drew you to joining Rejuvenate, the skincare multilevel that you talk about in the book.

Emily: When you're a mom it can be very isolating. Your family has this little organism that you don't necessarily know how to keep alive all the time. Nobody can crack how to be the perfect mom. You have a few close friends you can confide in, but just like, you can't hack motherhood. So I think there's this level of feeling alone, and that's really where I was, I was like, okay, I've had all these kids and I felt like I've had this purpose this whole time because I had a baby and then I would have a toddler and then I get pregnant again, repeat, repeat, repeat. Now we're done, now what is my purpose? 

I always say, oh, I joined a friend, but like, I don't think I'd ever spoken to her actually. We went to the same high school, she was several years younger than me. She reached out on social media, and was like, hey, I'm gonna be in your area, would you like to get together for drinks? When I was in that place I was just feeling like I'm on this island, I'm alone. I knew that my husband was going to be in town and I could be available and he could watch the kids while I went out.  I jumped at the chance, she could have been doing anything, selling anything, I just was so desperate for a night out. 

I went out to meet her for wine and she was meeting other women in this organization. It was like, oh wow, all of these instant friends, they all look happy. They were dressed cute and trendy, it just looked so aspirational.

When I got there, there were already people there, people who could offer testimonials of not only the products, but the scheme itself and how it's changed their lives. There were many stories that were like mine. “ I was home with my kids and gosh, I do this now and my skin's never looked better.” A lot of women would post things like, “I got divorced and I was lonely and this gave me an instant family.” It was just ringing endorsements off the bat. And then once she got really talking to me about it, clearly she wanted me to join.

I would be her downline, it was really spoken as if it was a gift to me instead of being, hey, will you join me because I will earn money off of you. It was never phrased that way, even though that's what's happening. It was,  “I've seen you on social media, you're so pretty. You have such great connections. You could get all this product for free.” I really was interested in trying new stuff  and I'm a total sucker for things that come in my feed anyway.

And it was very much, you can do whatever you want with this. It was very open. You can post, you can not post. You can do whatever you want with this.

Morra: They used the term that you can fill in the nooks and crannies of your time with the business. 

Emily: Yes. And that, you know, you can use whatever sales techniques you want, you can just buy it for yourself. You never have to do a thing, all these things that sound too good to be true. And they are. I asked questions and I was like, I just don't feel right reaching out to friends and family. Her answer was very much like, oh, I felt that way too. You will feel weird about it, but that's the way to get results, so it was almost preempted. When I did eventually go reach out to people, or I did eventually have someone say, no, I already had these responses. I was told this would feel weird and it does, so I'm just gonna keep going. It wasn't as if any of my objections were actually addressed.

It was a lot of smoke and mirrors, but I kind of thought what's the worst that could happen?

Morra: And it turns out you were really good at it quickly. Why do you think you were good at it?

Emily: Very, very few people actually make it right. The very, very small percentage. But if you look at the small percentage, they all have this very same set of circumstances. They have money, which I had, I had a husband with a good income, a good job, so I had money to spend on things I didn't need. I also had a very large network of people who also had money.  It was an upper middle class area that I lived in. I had a lot of kids, which meant a lot of kids who have friends, who have moms who need stuff. I just had a big network and there were not a lot of people in my particular area who knew about this company, who were using it, who were selling it, so all those three things had to be there.  All of those things have to be available to get to that top of the pyramid. But it doesn't mean you'll get there. It just means those are the common denominators, so it was that and just dumb luck. Just dumb luck, honestly. I think the fact that I was quote, unquote successful upfront kept me going. I had success from the beginning, I just kept going and I assumed other people could achieve that too.

At the time, people would've described me as a party girl, because I drank to lower those inhibitions. When I went out, I went out. So it almost gave me a reason to talk to people. It gave me a reason to socialize. Obviously I was craving connection, I was craving some sort of deeper connection with people in the community and I thought this was the ticket out, so I used that social lubricant of alcohol. I went out more and when I drank  the floodgates opened and I would say and do anything.  I guess long story short, I'm not an extrovert, but this gave me a reason to be one.

The MLM epitomized hustle culture, like grind, right? The grind mentality and the glamorization of it. We already see it and we think that money fixes things, so we'll do whatever we need to, to chase money and we'll do whatever we need to do to fix whatever situation we're in that feels uncomfortable. So when you are in a MLM, you're already primed for those sob stories to become your success stories because that's what you hear even from the outset.  I was bored and I joined this and now I'm not bored, they can be very benign. They can be really targeting your insecurities, like I had terrible acne and now I use these products and now I sell them.

Now "I look wonderful" or "I lost the baby weight" or whatever. You're primed with those. You listen to the stories of people who were a shy kindergarten teacher and now I'm a six figure earner.  You feel like this company, this business, this whatever is like the ticket to the thing, whatever, that anxiety, that thing in the back of your head, that insecurity, this is the ticket to fix it. And when you believe that, which I will tell you that I believed like the sky is blue, that this helped my life. This was the best gift I've ever gotten. And I really wanted to offer that to other people. That's really why I think it spreads because there's so many endorsements and so many aspirational stories that make you think, oh, this could really help my financial situation. This could really help my… fill in the blank. It’s like the cure for whatever ails you.

Morra: And it pops into your story  like a version of Glinda the good witch, except she's not really a good witch, she's kind of a bad witch coming into Oz. I want you to tell us about Kimberly and the sort of totemic aspirational role she played. She's also kind of like an evil queen bee. She's fascinating to me, but I, I feel like her role was very purposeful for getting you into the program and prey on those anxieties.

Emily: Oh, a hundred percent. So, you know, Kimberly is an amalgamation of lots of different personalities, right? I guess the difficult part is that nobody's all good or bad, right? Everyone, of course, who seems like a  wonderful person still employs these tactics and then teaches them to you and you employ these tactics, right? So Kimberly is really just the personification of all of these bad tactics and characteristics of, of all these people, but those people, the people who are at the pinnacle, the people who are earning a million dollars or whatever a year or sometimes like a month, ungodly amounts of money. They are necessary because, again, the stories you see are the 0.001% of stories, right? And if those don't exist, people aren't gonna strive for anything. They are the ones who truly hold up the pyramid.

And they are typically the people who got in first, like they were the first three consultants or whatever. You'll see them, you know, they'll be in the company for the entire reign of the company. You'll see them on every leader trip every year. You'll see them on stage every year, and they are necessary and everybody repeats what they do. Everything's duplicated down the pyramid because what other model do you have? She is the tippity top number one earner in the company, and here's the thing she's telling us to do. So obviously we're gonna do those things. You have no other option because the 99.7% of people below are all not up there. They're all losing money. And that person is always asked to speak. That person is always the face of everything. So it's very difficult even when it's not possible to ignore what they're saying. And you ultimately just want to be in proximity with them. You want to be in their sphere.

Morra: It was so funny because we all experience this, and I think especially in entrepreneurial culture, there's always that person, you wanna smell their perfume, you wanna be close to them so you can see the richness of their beautiful handbag or you know, their beautiful manicure or their jewelry, I'm sure there's an allegory. For men, maybe it's the watch or they're in such great shape. I think that there is that allure and the truly inspirational message of our hustle culture, which is, if I only work harder, I can have the buttery leather bag. 

Morra:  Emily, can you talk with us through a day? I think it would be interesting for the audience to just hear a little bit about how you literally used weaponized social media to cultivate the fabulousness of this all...

Emily: Everything is used as a tactic to get people to join you. You're selling yourself, you're selling this lifestyle and you're supposed to be on all the time. And so it's all about hey, I'm at the park right now, I'm so lucky that I have a job that's so flexible. Or yay, we're on the beach, I'm so happy that my side gig allows me to work from anywhere and pay for this or whatever. It can be  fake because if you really did a profit loss statement, you would know the cost of the trip and you're not really making that much money. It's not really paying for it, but it's all about selling the story and getting people to join the lifestyle.

Paulson increasingly turned to alcohol to keep anxiety at bay, but she’d been drinking since she was 14, and alcohol had been a problem in the past.

Emily: And with all of the anxieties of motherhood and everything going on in the world, that nightly glass of wine was there, it was always there. And then it became, one or two became a whole bottle. The more my anxiety went up, the more I drank. Because when you use something for anxiety and you have more anxiety, you're gonna use more of it. So in a way it allowed me to continue doing a lot of things I was doing in the MLM and ignore a lot of red flags. I just continued to drink away all of this intuition, all of these feelings.

But then it started to get really out of control. It really, really sent me towards rock bottom. I had a lot of moments where I thought  this is kind of bad and I'm drinking a lot and blacking out more. Nothing “bad” had happened, I hadn't been arrested, I hadn't… fill in the blank like all those things you think you need to do to hit rock bottom. Then all those things started happening. I did get arrested, I did get a DUI, I did end up in the hospital. All of these things started to happen. I couldn't stop and I really wondered, how would I continue this lifestyle, this boss babe lifestyle if I wasn't partying, if I wasn't drinking, I was in this weird stuck place.

Morra: I was reflecting also on the dopamine drive of sales. You talk about this, that this model sort of preys on our mental ill health and offers dopamine hits to make us feel better. And you're a chemist, you know all about this stuff. What role do you think that played for you?

Emily: Oh, it's huge. Love bombing is one of the things that keeps people stuck. And love bombing is just what it sounds like. You're showered with gifts, with praise. This happens very quickly when you join an MLM, and this is by design because again, most people never make money, so there needs to be something to keep them in. That's one thing that struck me initially is when I joined it was all of a sudden I had all these friend requests and I had all these people praising me on social media and I hadn't been praised for anything other than being a mom. When you get those accolades, you want more of it and when you see what other accolades you could get, like, oh gosh, well if I keep going, I could get this and a trip, I could get this and a purse!

You get these love bombs from the people at the top and it's like, wow, you just feel special.

Morra: I can't imagine there isn't a listener out there who doesn't relate to this at some level. 

Emily: The love bombing would be my upline sending me a bracelet for not selling anything. Why would someone be tagging you on social media when you haven't actually sold anything? It's because you have the potential to make them money. So that is the key, love bombing is to keep you in this toxic system. And again, those stories, the trauma bonding that goes on, it is done so that you feel closer to these people. So you feel like they are your friends, that you're in some sort of sacred society. If I leave this or if I back away these people know all my secrets.

Morra: What is it about the trauma storytelling and bonding that is so effective as a technique? Because you became sober and you braved your cancer diagnosis, that seemed to be a fabulous sales tool for you. Then eventually your sobriety story becomes part of your narrative as the ultimate success story at Rejuvenate.

Emily: So an MLM will make any story a success story. Every convention I went to, every retention event, I can't tell you the number of stories I heard. Someone who became paralyzed and now they're talking about the company, the company had nothing to do with it, but they're using that story so that you sit there, you feel, you know, love for this person, you feel appreciation for this person, you feel inspired by this person. And then in your brain, you know, that cognitive dissonance is like, I'm at a Rejuvenate convention and this company is what has done that, even though it has nothing to do with it. So when I was in this place where I got sober, I realized that I could not do a lot of the things that I was doing. 

When you get sober and you're doing your amends and you're looking at all of these terrible, horrible things you've done, you're trying to make amends for things and find your part in them, you just feel like, God, I just wanna make good on this. So for me, I share my story, that's helping people, not realizing how duplicitous it is because it was just keeping people stuck in that system. But I really felt like I was doing something good. It felt good, and I think that's very much by design that the MLM will make any story fit their narrative.

The MLM gave me a platform which I benefit from today. Sharing those stories made me realize that that is actually what I wanted to do. I wanted to go into recovery advocacy. I didn't want to do this. I didn't want to sell skin care anymore. I didn't want to recruit people into an MLM anymore. I didn't necessarily know what that looked like, but it led me into the direction that I ended up going, which is a very good thing. It also inflated how important my story was. I wrote my first book, which to me was very cathartic and it really aligned with who I was because again, when I got sober, I had to go back to why did I take that first drink when I was 14?

What happened to lead up to that and why did I take all the ones going forward? All of these things I was running from my whole life. It was very cathartic to put it all together and put it out there. I was so ashamed because I had so many secrets and it was very freeing to put them out there, but at the same time, I wondered how much of myself I needed to put on display. I realized how much I'd put my kids on display. I stopped posting so much about them on social media. I changed my settings so that I wasn't public anymore. It was this interesting dichotomy of being glad that my story was out there and also wanting to get quiet.