 Little Bosses Everywhere: How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America, by Bridget Read. Little Bosses Everywhere didn't contain any real surprises, but it's a solid examination of the phenomenon of "multilevel marketing" pyramids. The book follows Monique, who joined Mary Kay in 2013 as an "independent beauty consultant." As with other MLMs, there are almost no employees, only "independent contractors." Each is expected to purchase thousands of dollars worth of beauty products, theoretically for resale, but the company doesn't actually care if the contractors ever sell any of it - the company already has their money. There's a huge amount of pressure to move up the chain by recruiting other contractors, with fancy titles and tokens dangled as incentive, and get-togethers where the higher-ups lavish praise and brag about their own wealth. Companies like Mary Kay and Amway stay just this side of the legal line because ostensibly they sell an actual product, and their regulations state that contractors can't just sell to other contractors (but there's no way to actually track or enforce that part). In fact, most of Amway's profit is not from selling cleaning products, but from selling motivational recordings, books and seminars to their own contractors. Lots of high-pressure "visualize success" talk, coupled with the message that if you're not making sales, it's because you're not trying hard enough, and you need more motivational seminars. (A Fundamentalist acquaintance once told me she "could get more inspiration from an Amway meeting than from church.") The MLM companies are mostly spinoffs of each other. Someone tried to work their way up in a company selling vitamins, realized that only the people at the very top made money, and then set themselves up at the top of a new company selling cookware or skincare products or whatever. One thing that comes up is how MLMs turn all the contractors' relationships into transactions. When contractors can't sell a useless product, they'll push friends and family members to buy them, and then to take slots below them in the selling pyramid. The book mentions a woman who was looking to meet women friends on Bumble BFF, and kept encountering women with suspiciously similar stories who wanted to sign her up for "mentoring." As for Monique, she spent at least $75,000 and went deeply into debt over her 8 years with Mary Kay. The last straw was getting sales pressure from her "topline" (person above her in the pyramid) while she was recovering from surgery. She later connected with another ex-Mary Kay contractor, who got her to shell out additional thousands for "financial coaching," which included a lot of encouraging her to become a "financial coach." Monique finally took a job in a conventional workplace. While the MLM sales pitch talks about independence and being your own boss, Monique experienced more top-down pressure in Mary Kay than she did in a regular job - or even in the military. Somehow, the moment that really broke my heart was when Monique leveled up at Mary Kay, getting the red jacket and applause she'd coveted. At that point, she'd spent $10,000 to get there, and her walk across the stage only lasted a brief moment. And they charged her for the jacket.
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