Is it "Coachability" or Coercion?
The Illusion of Consent in Multilevel Marketing
“Why did you stay so long? I would have seen right through it."
If you've never been targeted by a scammer or been in a toxic work environment or an abusive relationship, you might think that nothing could ever convince you to join a pyramid scheme cult. Nothing could allow you to spend upwards of a decade pouring your heart out for some phony cause. But, as NXIVM whistleblower Anthony “Nippy” Ames always says, “If you think you're too smart to get sucked into something culty—you're already prime recruitment material.”
Photo credit: Halay Alex from Shutterstock
Before joining an MLM, I would have said I was all about personal development and growth. I had managed teams of personal trainers and salespeople. I had been a human resources manager. I would have described myself as a seeker, as open-minded, and a believer that each of us holds the power to shape our reality and manifest what we believe we are worthy of. I read a ton of personal development books, was the first person in my friend group to read, “The Secret,” I attended Hay House events, led Vision Board parties. After becoming a mother, I worked my way up to a leadership position within The Company, feeling proud and deserving of all my success.
You might wonder what is wrong with all of that. It all sounds pretty good, right?
Except for the fact that it was a lie.
The truth is, many of us would be shocked by what we could be coerced into doing under the right circumstances. Cult leaders and those at the tippy tops of pyramid schemes are no different than traffickers in how they succeed at recruiting and grooming wonderful people. It often begins with someone you know, and usually someone that you love or trust. These people are in chain of command that have taught them to become adept at identifying moments of vulnerability, manipulating situations, and exploiting fears. In Multilevel Marketing, it is common to glorify “coachability,” which is supposed to evoke a feeling of being flexible, adaptable and willing to do the work, but in reality it describes the act of subjugation and exploitation for the false promise of freedom and abundance. This process is methodical, intentional, and highly effective.
Recently, I have been made privy to the problematic mean-girl behaviours in the popular Wellness MLM Arbonne. Arbonne has annoyed me for years, rubbing me the wrong way with their cliquey cool-girl vibes. It makes sense that I was recruited into a different MLM that filled the void and put a band-aid on my vulnerabilities as an anxious mother. There is a scam for everyone, as they say, and Arbonne seems to provide false answers to women looking for validation, acceptance, and personal growth. I have been watching a dynamic unravel with one woman I will call Carrie. Her upline, who I will call Samantha, had been dripping on her to gain her commitment to go “all-in.” Carrie had tried to go for Nation in the past, but she missed her targets. She was discouraged. She pulled away. But Samantha did not stop stalking her give up on her. Once Carrie gave in to Samantha and decided that, for the third time, she would “Go for Nation,” Samantha got very involved in Carrie’s life.
I know all of this of course, because everything is all over Instagram in the name of the “know, like and trust” tactics that any BossBabe uses to recruit, oversharing everything happening in their lives while casually mixing up a Fizz. As I watched this “Going for Nation” saga unfold with likable and relatable Carrie, all I could think about was NXIVM, and in particular, the sub-group DOS ("Dominus Obsequious Sororium” which Latin translates to "Master of the Obedient Female Companions."
While each situation is unique, the overall grooming process into labour trafficking for a commercial cult, whether it be NXIVM or Arbonne, typically involves the following steps:
Targeting the Victim: Once a recruit has bought in sufficiently to believe the group and/or the products are life-changing and that the ends justify the means, they are instructed to target specific niches of vulnerability. Often, in MLM, these are new mothers. With social media being leveraged, building online relationships with people in attachment parenting groups or people with health challenges, such as autoimmune conditions, is a common tactic. Aside from these individuals, really anyone in their life is fair game, but they will have a think on what each person’s “pain point” is, so that any weak link can be pulled upon to get the target to agree to the next step.
Gaining Trust: In trafficking, the next step is to obtain the person’s trust; however, in MLM, trust is often preliminarily acquired. Either way, obtaining a deep sense of trust is a necessary step, and so the upline(s) in MLM will ensure they spend time bonding over shared interests or have video chats where the only goal is to listen to the prospect for the purpose of collecting information, (finding their “why”), lowering their defences, and making them feel comfortable.
Meeting Needs: Once the prospects’ “pain point,” “why,” and specific vulnerability are well honed in on, a trafficker or upline illustrates how a deeper commitment is the key to solving their issues. On a psychological level, all the attention, listening, validation and praise meet the most innate human need of all, fostering an attachment bond for which the coercion can be later leveraged.
Isolation: Once the new community has become central to the recruit's life through regular, frequent touch points and manufactured emotional highs and experiences, the recruit becomes dependent. Creating an “us versus them” dynamic where a narrative of “people who don’t support your new endeavour just don’t want to see you shine” and having the recruit reduce everyone in their life to a prospecting “list of peeps” distances them further from anyone outside the increasingly insular group.
Exploitation: The final stage is the end-game, but it begins subtly. In this case study, Carrie, a young postpartum mom, “In her Coachability,” agreed to make foot fetish content as per her upline’s testing. This became an ongoing “joke” as she pushed to make her numbers in October, and now she is working on wrapping up November so that it will be official. And then…? Well, any former BossBabe knows that it never ends. The goalposts keep on moving. So when Samatha texted Carrie, “No mom guilt allowed!” on Halloween, instructing her to get her husband to deal with all the details while she pushed for QV (Qualifying Volume), Carrie actually felt grateful to Samantha, illustrating the point of the power plays in MLM. The upline/downline duo recently did a live video where Samantha was asking surprise questions to Carrie, with some of the transcript going into humiliating Carrie about not having owned a sex toy until Samatha entered her life to take her on a “first date” after calling her multiple times a day for weeks to hang out. What does any of this have to do with buying or joining Arbonne?
Well, my friend Julie Anderson tackled it recently on her YouTube channel.
“Nobody held a gun to your head.”
Maintaining Control: In order to continue profiting off of downline, leaders have to continually exercise control over their team. This is done through keeping them “plugged in” to constant events to hear the same messaging and simular anecdotes over and over again. A gun to one’s head is not necessary, just as it was not necessary in NXIVM. The goal is for participants to feel bound, but if they ever leave, to feel personally at fault for any failures, as the seed of “coachability” and “how bad did you want it?” victim-mindset rhetoric to be the default thought process when the inevitable happens.
Just like Carrie is now, I was only selectively perceiving my own experience in the ways I was groomed to—an experience that lasted nearly a decade, causing me deep regret and complicated grief. The total damage included betrayal trauma, deferring my education (and therefore, stalling the start of an actual career), and costing me over $100,000 when all was said and done. So now, I see my role as helping provide insight into exactly how these long-haul scams operate in plain sight, to mitigate the shame that survivors face.
In both NXIVM and in any MLM, coercion and manipulation are prevalent under the guise of empowerment and personal growth. In DOS, a subgroup within NXIVM, leaders used tactics such as “collateral” to exert control over their members, creating a master-slave dynamic which served to strip participants of their autonomy. Similarly, in Arbonne and every other MLM to ever exist, leaders use the promise of freedom and personal development to lure recruits, only to place them under significant financial and psychological pressure. Convincing her downline to “go live,” where she then asked humiliating questions and got her on record committing to her Coachability and disclosing personal information, the sunk costs are ever deeper, no different than the collateral given in DOS to ensure each member's commitment. Within the bond of an anxious attachment constructed between upline and downline, so-called accountability coaching, the guise of mentorship and support masks the true intent of exploiting members for financial gain and control. Both systems create an illusion of empowerment, while in reality, they entrap individuals in cycles of learned helplessness, dependency and subjugation.
Adding celebrity influence to lend legitimacy to the group works well to disguise the evil underneath it. Using a fresh-faced fitness Influencer like Samantha serves to blind viewers to what is really going down. Actress Allison Mack played a crucial role in attracting victims into NXIVM and its subgroup DOS. Allison was trained to use her fame and charisma to attract and recruit members. Her involvement gave the group an air of credibility and respectability, making it easier for NXIVM to present itself as a legitimate self-help organization. The Halo Effect of her looks, demeanour and fame made her a powerful recruiter, convincing many that the group’s teachings and practices were beneficial. This enables the underlying coercive and abusive practices to be masked for years, continually drawing in individuals who might otherwise have been skeptical. Looking back on Allison’s past endorsements of the personal development programs from NXIVM, you can really see how convincing she was and how she believed she was creating a legacy and changing the world by infusing it with joy.
Watching this video, you can see just how she was capable of wooing many into what became known as a “sex cult” through not only her celebrity influence but her beauty, her relatability and her charisma.
When I think about how one of the primary defences that cult leader Keith Raniere used in the case against NXIVM was that the victims could not have been victims because they were all consenting adults—many of them accomplished, highly educated individuals—I think this is precisely where coercive control comes into play. It is quite phenomenal how these conditions are intentionally created so that the door is technically open, but the mind is imprisoned. This is why MLM is called “a relationship business.” We will do almost anything for those we are attached to.
NXIVM got shut down though. And MLMs still run, so make that make sense!
One of the main reasons NXIVM operated successfully for twenty years, from 1998 to 2018, was due to the financial support of Clare Bronfman, a thoroughly indoctrinated Executive Board member and Seagram heiress. With an estimated net worth of around $500 million, Clare reportedly spent upwards of $150 million to support the cult and its legal battles. Her father, Edgar Bronfman Sr., grew increasingly concerned about her involvement and leveraged his power and notoriety to help her escape, including publishing an article in Forbes magazine in 2003 titled "The World's Strangest Executive Coach," where he voiced his concerns and exposed NXIVM as a dangerous cult. Despite his efforts, he was unsuccessful, which further strained his relationship with his daughters. It took another 15 years before Clare Bronfman was arrested for her involvement with NXIVM as a top-ranking member of the inner circle.
Similarly, wealthy figureheads in Multilevel Marketing fund legal battles to maintain operations. While NXIVM, (with Clare’s financial support and connections) had been able to secure an endorsement from the Dalai Lama, MLM companies take the endorsements all the way to the top. Companies invest heavily in obtaining government and even presential ties by funding political campaigns and influencing legislation through financial contributions. The Federal Trade Commission, responsible for consumer protection and regulating MLM compliance, employs only around 1,100 people, while the MLM industry involves millions of independent representatives worldwide. These representatives often promote themselves and engage in unethical behaviour on social media platforms, where their activities disappear in their Stories after 24 hours, making them impossible to monitor. The loopholes that allow these companies to exploit the resources of innocent people to a criminal degree are a topic deserving of an entire article, but include law-violating practices moved to independent websites lacking company branding and the grey areas I aim to highlight by showing how "coaching" in these arenas actually functions as coercion.
Photo credit: Mark Reinstein for Shutterstock
In “The Vow,” co-founder of NXIVM, Nancy Salzman says, “17,000 people got good results—” which I think is important to mention because of course, many leave MLM just like they left NXIVM, thinking, “I was not harmed, in fact, I had a pretty good time.” The level of damage done seems to correlate with the level of investment in the organization. Just as only a relatively small group of women became part of the inner circle of DOS, only 1% of participants can climb to the top of the ranks within any network marketing company. Everyone who knew me as a leader in The Company can attest that I was “all in.” Those who stayed on the periphery looked at me and thought, “I don’t think I can get to her level of success,” and today, most of them think, “Isn’t she exaggerating things?” They didn’t get me then, and they still don’t get me today. But before, at least, I was a confident spokesperson for the cause. As a defector, they no longer want to engage, which plays right into the “us versus them” tightly controlled narrative that all cults thrive in.
What are my hopes and wishes for Carrie? I wonder if Julie’s video, or, maybe even content from another creator who gets wind of what is going down, will get back to Carrie. At the time of this writing, Carrie and Samantha’s Instagram accounts are now set to private—which illustrates the precariousness of being a 1099 contractor for an MLM and relying on a steady flow of recruits each month. How do they feel right now? I think Samantha needs to be held accountable just like Allison Mack was, though I am unclear as to whether she is a victim too and whether she will ever experience any moral injury for what she put her friend up to. I worry that Carrie will think others think she allowed this to happen. I am guessing right now, with less than a week left for that final push for “Nation,” she is likely too exhausted from lack of sleep and excessive social media use to address the cognitive dissonance she must be feeling as her behaviour diverges further from her authentic self; in her quest to be, do, and have more, so that she can feel worthy of love and acceptance. My hope is that Carrie knows we know this was not what she had ever signed up for, and that we see how a highly effective coercion playbook was methodically used against her. I hope Carrie knows that many people are rooting for her freedom. We don't judge her. We are no different than her.
Me in my culty days.
It’s been nearly a year since I appeared on “A Little Bit Culty,” a podcast hosted by NXIVM whistleblowers Sarah Edmondson and Anthony “Nippy” Ames. So, if you have not heard that interview, enjoy it! And if you haven’t watched HBO’s “The Vow,” definitely check it out. There are very relevant parallels which is why this documentary exposing NXIVM has helped so many people deep into MLM’s wake up and get out!
The intention behind this article is to share my personal opinion and experience for informational purposes, from my perspective, and not to malign any specific individual or business entity.
*Some details were changed, including names, to protect the anonymity of those involved.
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