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The journalist Bridget Reid has a new book about multi-level marketing, you know, Mary Kay Cosmetics or Herbalife or Amway. There are a lot of these companies, for example, in Utah. Her book is called Little Bosses Everywhere, and the title gets the main draw for people who get into these MLMs. It's the independence and the freedom to set your own

hours and set your own goals. The book is a history of the industry, but it's also a kind of

expose on its empty promises and hollow claims. What Reed is really interested in is the plan.

That is, the premise, the framework, the early MLM founders came up with. It's this idea that the real money doesn't actually come from selling makeup or soap. The real money comes from getting someone under you to do that. And at the heart of the book are the people who get swept up in this system.

Reed says the vast majority of people who join these MLMs, especially those at the bottom,

make very little or no commission because the system is designed to pay out at the top.

At the heart of this history are real people who get caught up in the system. And Reed

follows a woman she calls Monique, an Air Force veteran in South Florida, struggling to adjust to

civilian life and find work. When she joined Mary Kaye in 2013, she was out of the military living on a fixed income and she still can't really make ends meet.

So she joins a business networking club kind of thing.

And she meets some people and one of them is a Mary Kay independent beauty consultant.

And she doesn't really know what that means.

But this woman kind of chases her down to give her a facial, which ends up being a pitch

for Mary Kay products because Mary Kay consultants are not trained

facials. They are saleswomen selling makeup, ostensibly.

So after getting this facial, this woman invites her to an event at the local Mary Kay

studio, which is a place where these Mary Kay beauty consultants gather.

And this party is sort of the first time, I think, since leaving the military,

she really finds people who make her feel wanted, feel loved, feel excited about life.

A lot of the women at the studio are other consultants,

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