Shaking the Money Tree

Shaking the Money Tree

From Amway to Equinox, multilevel marketing schemes have won 7 million devotees on the promise of unlimited wealth and freedom. But when the numbers don't add up, distributors lose more than their dreams.

By Ami Chen Mills

MY EXPERIENCE with multilevel marketing began with Mark, the classified sales rep in a small newspaper office where I once worked. After an unremarkable stint at an ad desk, Mark announced that he had struck gold--and was leaving us to make a fortune in his own business.

He would work for the Boss Man no more, and we who stayed behind would regret our miserable lives when, in a few years, Mark* tore himself away from the country club to visit, and paid for lunch with a tiny fraction of his $50,000-a-month salary.

"You'll be sorry," he said on strolls to and from the taqueria for our usual low-budget burritos.

"You'll see." Mark was suffering from an acute case of Americandreamitis, the symptoms of which first surfaced, as he now tells it, at a recruiting meeting in Santa Cruz for Equinox distributors. For two months, the only language Mark could speak was the language of Equinox International, an ostensible environmental and health company which produces herbal supplements, water filters and other sucking and sifting gadgets to ward off air- and water-borne toxins. Yet the miraculous Equinox products were not the main event for Mark. Rather, Equinox and its executive progeny had convinced Mark that if he did not sign up to become an Equinox distributor right away, he would be squashed flat by the thundering steam train they call the Opportunity of a Lifetime.

When we coworkers learned that Mark had already maxed out two credit cards to fly to Equinox "training seminars" in Portland, Denver and Hawaii, when we learned Mark was preparing to take out a $5,000 loan to buy into the company as a "manager," we each decided to take our turn with Mark, to talk some sense into the boy.

My own conversation with Mark took place in the office after hours, and went something along the lines of, "So, are you sure you can make all that money? "

"Oh yeah, no problems." Mark looked at me askance, considering something, then retrieved a magazine from his desk. "Look at this," he said, flipping through pages filled with pictures of Equinox founder Bill Gouldd. (The extra "d" was added by Gouldd according the advice of a "spiritual adviser." Mark told me it stood for "dollars.") There was Bill Gouldd next to his sports car collection. There was Bill Gouldd at his expansive mansion on a hill. There was Bill Gouldd with a buxom blonde at his side. According to the magazine, there was no doubt that Bill Gouldd was making money.

My next approach was to question the fundamental premise of multilevel marketing, the sketchy business of selling not a product, but a dream. The conversation was making Mark uncomfortable. I saw a flash of panic in his eyes before they glazed over. Then he said this: "They told us there'd be ripe apples who are ready--who see it. They told us there'd be green apples that weren't ripe yet. And they told us there'd be rotten apples. ... You're a rotten apple," he said. There was an uncomfortable silence. I smiled thinly and suggested we both go home.