9 | My MLM Experience

I’ve been selling things since as early as age 5. Which to me is just astounding! Also probably breaking some sort of child labor laws, but we’re not gonna talk about it.

Today’s episode explores my journey through one of the last MLM companies that I sold for. It’s the company that pushed me toward building my own business, which has always been a dream of mine.

Running a business whether it’s your own or a multilevel marketing company is not for the weak. It requires a lot of time, energy and effort.

Walk down memory lane with me and hear about some of my joys, hardships, and triumph with this business.

🎧 Subscribe, follow, and share Permission to Rise with a woman who’s ready to rise into her next chapter.

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I'm really pumped to talk about my business this week. I mentioned that I've been selling things since as early as age five, which to me is just astounding. Also, probably breaking some sort of child labor laws, but we're not gonna talk about it. I can't tell you how many MLM parties I have gone to where the consultant is like, oh my God, you'd be so great at sales. You should consider signing up. And I'm like, yeah, you're right. Absolutely. I'm not oblivious to the fact that this thread runs through my veins. It's literally in my blood to sell things. I like to say that it's an entrepreneurial spirit that I gained by spending time around my grandparents. My grandma sold Stanley Home Products, which at one point merged with the Fuller Brush Company. Not to sales pitch anyone, but if you ever need cleaning products or cleaning tools for your home, I highly recommend it. The brooms are fantastic. I can send you on over some Amazon affiliate links if you need the specifics. Okay, I'll stop now. My grandpa had his own accounting business and did taxes for over 50 years before he passed away. He also built the ambulance service in our town from the ground up. I remember reading his obituary and thinking, man, I have to get started because this dude did it all. He was such a pillar in our community and his church. It was something that I aspired to live up to. When I moved home in 2016, I was actually selling Sensi at the time. It was a fun ride, but I found myself buying more for myself than what I actually sold. And I was buying wax melts that I couldn't actually use in my mom's home because her allergies couldn't tolerate heavy scents. And if we're honest, any scents at all. So no candles, no perfumes, no body sprays, nothing. She used to get frustrated with me for doing my laundry and hanging it up in the house, telling me that my detergent was too strong. Like I said before, when I started dating Jack, again, the name has been changed for the purpose of the podcast, I decided that I needed something bigger to help me get out of debt. I was introduced to Lularoe summer of 2016. It was a multi-level marketing business that sold clothing to women online or in person. I had worked with clothing in the department store that I worked in, and as much as I wanted to own my own business, I never really saw myself selling clothing. I also knew that this business was quite the investment, and I didn't know that I would be able to stretch my budget to even come up with the onboarding costs. But I took a moment to ask all my questions and get as many details as I could about what was actually necessary to be a consultant. At one point, I even asked my mom if she wanted to join in and do it with me. I thought this would be a great bonding experience. It would be something where we could work together and I could show her how to use Excel and help her boost her computer skills. That was something that she wanted, and I thought this was a great opportunity to give her some sort of hands-on experience. I saw how other people were doing this business together with their friends or family, and I wanted to create something that might help us both financially. But she was having none of it. She gave me her usual excuses of, well, when I have time, or I just don't have the money right now. And I thought to myself, that's such a bullshit excuse. You might never have the money, and the only time you have is now. It shouldn't stop you from doing things to better your life or have a new experience. So I said, fuck it. And I came up with the money all on my own. I opened up another credit card, I extended the credit limit on another, I submitted my application in August and was onboarded in October. I started my business with about four to five thousand dollars in inventory, which was the average onboarding cost at the time, and had only about $600 for business expenses like polymailers and tape and goodie bags. I didn't even have a laptop when I started, which is kind of necessary when you need to print shipping labels. I told myself that it didn't matter that everything wasn't perfect, come hell or high water, I was going to do this. When I launched Lularo in October of 2016, it was a little slower to start. I didn't have these extreme expectations, but I think a lot of other consultants who signed up had this expectation that you just go live and things instantly happen for you. I also lived in such a small area that our internet service was very shitty at the time. It's gotten much better, I will say, but I had to spend an extra $20 a month to increase our internet speed just to be able to go live effectively. I think that was my favorite part about Lularo. I loved doing the live shows and interacting with people. It was giving me a platform to speak and be able to use my voice in a way that reminded me of Speech Team. Only this time I was selling things, which is another joy of mine. I don't know what the rush is about selling product or making a sale, but I love it. Even now with my business on Shopify, I absolutely love hearing the little ch-ching sound when a sale comes in. Eventually I was selling about five to six thousand dollars per month. I was taking hordes of packages to the post office every single day. Winnebago Post Office told me I was their largest volume shipper in town at the time, which is not surprising considering it's a town of 1,400 people. I did a couple of pop-up parties and had open hours for women to shop from the porch of my mom's house where I was living, but I wanted to reach a broader base of customers outside of the internet, and it was kind of hard to get into vendor events. A lot of the events only wanted one consultant per business, which is totally understandable. But the thing about Lul was that it was not the same for every consultant. Even though it was an MLM business, it wasn't your typical catalog company. Each consultant bought inventory based on their needs, wants, budget, etc. And when you ordered product, you ordered by style and size. So for example, if I ordered classic T's and I ordered two of each size, I knew that I was getting two of each size, but I didn't know what color or pattern or print I was getting. It was all a mystery. Sometimes that really pissed me off because I'd get some really crazy patterns, or I needed solid tops so that I could make outfits with my fun pattern leggings. And I didn't have control over any of that. I'll be honest though, having a boutique now, I almost missed that because it was like getting a mystery box, but in a fun way. There's so many decisions on what to buy and what colors to order that I wish that decision was taken away from me some days. Another thing that I do miss about Lulu was just spending time creating outfits. Starting my own boutique meant having to make all of the decisions and procure product in a way that was intentional. It meant having so many options that I couldn't think straight. Even now, when I try to create outfits, they're very simple and not as fun and exciting as they used to be. But it is really fun to be able to accessorize them in a different way. It's the one thing that I miss and don't do often enough with my current business. I didn't want to be one of those consultants that forced people to buy outfits, but I found that a lot of my customers really enjoyed the combinations and most often would say, I need something to go with this. And so selling two pieces at a time wasn't all that challenging unless I didn't have enough variety. There were a lot of consultants that forced people to buy two to three items at a time every single time they got these like unicorn pieces. That was the phrase. If you got a popular piece or something that people desired, it was called a unicorn. So everyone was always out to find their unicorn. I also remember sometimes opening boxes and looking at some of the prints and thinking to myself, this is the ugliest fucking thing I've ever seen in my entire life. There is no way that this is selling. I will have this on the rack till the end of time. And then it was the first thing out the door. I literally told myself, I know nothing. I know absolutely nothing. Anyway, it was often frustrating when I wanted to find a new platform in which to sell, especially in my local area, so that I didn't have to ship anything and so that people could actually get a feel for clothing. But I wasn't allowed in a trade show because there was one other consultant already. Her inventory was bound to be vastly different than my inventory, but you couldn't explain that to anyone who was heading these vendor events because they just didn't understand the concept. So the answer was always no. I remember my grandma telling me one time to bring the clothing to her house so she could sell it for me in the front office. And as generous of an offer as that was, and as much as I would have loved to have done something like that with my grandma, I couldn't because we weren't allowed storefronts, and that would have been technically breaking my contract. It makes me wonder how things would have played out in my life had my grandma been alive when I was doing my boutique. Had I been able to move in with her and build that business and the office she owned, I think she would have absolutely loved what I built. I do remember this little bit of advice she gave me one year. She told me, don't buy too much inventory. And I was like, okay, grandma, but like I have to have inventory to sell it. That's how this works. If I don't have it, I can't sell it. And now that I have my own boutique, I've gone through phases where I've bought completely far too much inventory. I probably have already done that this year by buying all these squish toys that I hope I can sell. P.S. Here's a little quick ad. I have dozens of Squish Toys at the Rise Boutique. So you can visit thrise boutique.com and you can check them all out. They're in the Squish Toys collection from the shop menu. I still have dumplings and cheese and cake and pigs and paw prints and a few sticks of butter. Also some axolotls and highland cows, which I will say by far this year has been the oddest verbiage to come out of my mouth live on Facebook. Definitely did not have that on my 2026 bingo card. Anyway, her advice was wonderful, but I wasn't listening to it at the time because it didn't make much sense to me. But knee deep in my boutique business, I recall that phrase popping into my head and I went, okay, grandma. I fucking hear you. I get it, I hear you, you're right. And she's done that on a couple of occasions with things in my life and in my business. And she's right every time. I love that woman. I miss her every day. Lularo clothing itself was relatively simple at the time. It was a very conservative company, so everything was very modest, and you could wear it to school, to work, to bed. It had so much versatility, which was fantastic. But as I've said on a previous podcast, I found myself using it as a crutch because a lot of it was very forgiving. And for a lot of ladies who needed that extra little wiggle room, it was wonderful. But I think for me, it enabled me to not take care of myself because I knew that I could just throw something over my body and style it in a way that looked flattering while also ignoring the bigger problems, like the fact that I wasn't taking care of myself. I was hustling with LulaRoe day and night. I was living, breathing, eating, sleeping LulaRo while working a full-time job and juggling a relationship. There were nights that I would get home from work and I would set up my live sale. I would do my live sale, I would pull orders, invoice orders, and answer questions, and then ship those orders. Then I would set up the promotion for the very next day. Then I'd get up and I'd go to work and I'd come home and I would do as much as I could before I had to shower and pack a bag and go to my boyfriends. Sometimes I'd get a little more work done there, just constantly on the go. It was always frustrating if someone had a fabric question because I'd have to wait until the very next evening to answer it for them. The thing about not having a catalog company is that all of the mystery clothing that I got in my box, I had to promote. I had to photograph it, feel it, stretch it, know what it's like so that I can give those details to the people who are shopping online. Now, I think I've gotten really lazy with stock images, and I don't take as much time to actually promote my product the way that I had to with Lulue. If I had free time at work, sometimes I would work on my business. I will admit that there were a lot of people who asked me how I was doing it, and honestly, I was doing it all day long. I was utilizing my breaks and my lunch hour to answer customer questions or post on threads or create images or type posts. I had these extensive to-do lists that broke everything down into pieces of what images to make, what text I needed to type, because I was a one-woman show. I still am. I did all of it from top to bottom. There were some mornings on my drive into work, my stomach would growl, and I thought to myself, did I eat last night? And I really had to think about it. And then I would recall, oh yeah, I did because mom made food, and I went downstairs and I got it. But I would bring it upstairs and I would be eating it as I was sitting there on my computer, and all of a sudden I would realize that the plate was empty and I would put it aside, and then I'd keep going. I never took a moment to actually sit down and enjoy my meal, no matter what I was eating or where I was at. I don't always like to play comparison, but sometimes I take a walk down memory lane and think about how different LuluRoe was from my current business, how things functioned, how things were a lot simpler. I didn't have a website where people could just shop at their leisure, at least not to start. LuluRoe eventually came out with a website model about a year before I stopped selling, but before that, I had to invoice everyone for everything, which took up a lot of my time. It really sucked when people didn't pay their invoices. I think toward the end, I would leave them open for a week or two, hoping that somebody would eventually pay it, or that they were just waiting for a paycheck because I was so desperate for sales at that point. I think I just miss the simplicity of having all my money come into one single account and to have access to it instantly. I was shaving off debt left and right. The first $500 that would come into my account, I was buying inventory to replenish my stock. And when I bought inventory, I didn't have to pay shipping. I think we had to hit a minimum of 15 items, and then we got a 5% discount if we used our Lularo card. They would deposit all of our money instantly into essentially what was a sub-account of theirs. So if we use that account to order product, they gave us a 5% discount because all it was was them moving money from one of their accounts to another account. So it cost them absolutely nothing. The Lula Row card was also a Mastercard that we could use anywhere. So you could turn around and put gas in your car, buy groceries, buy supplies, anywhere. I will say that I never used that card to buy anything other than inventory because it wasn't backed by a bigger bank. And the more money you left on that card, the more susceptible you became to locking your account if anything went wrong. The next $500 that would come into my account, I would transfer to my bank account, so that I could use it to pay on my debt or pay down my credit card that I used to charge my shipping or business expenses to. It was a back and forth that I did two or three times a week. Buy inventory with the first $500, pay debt with the next $500. Back and forth. By the time I decided to start my own boutique, I think I'd reduced my debt by almost 75%. Now, I don't want to turn this podcast into a Lularo tell-all, but things became a little problematic after a while. If you did not know, there's a whole documentary on Amazon Prime regarding Lularo. Or at least there was. I'm not sure if it's still there. When this documentary first came out, a lot of people sent it to me like, oh my gosh, you should watch this. And I was like, oh my god, I lived it. Okay, not all of it, because I didn't have a downline, I didn't have consultants signed up underneath of me, nor did I ever earn commissions or a cruise. But I knew the challenges of this business firsthand. A lot of consultants started because those that talked them into it didn't give them information and they probably didn't ask for it. There was so much excitement and hype over being able to just go live and sell clothing and make thousands of dollars. I think people assumed that it was easy. And when these consultants were selling them on the concept of signing up, that's what they claimed. But Lularo was an actual business. You didn't just get a catalog to sell the product, have the company take care of your taxes, and get a commission check. You had to navigate and balance purchasing inventory, keeping track of it and counting it at the end of the year or month or how many other times per year you did that. And if you were in a state where there's tax on clothing, if you sold anything in person, you had to collect and remit that tax to the state. Some women bought in, and onboarding was an average of $5,000. So when they went live and couldn't sell anything or struggled to gain a following, a lot of people were discouraged and frustrated. They felt lied to and manipulated. I don't blame them. But as a business owner, I feel like I had a better understanding that these things aren't that simple. At some point, the consultant market was pretty saturated. I think there were almost a hundred thousand consultants. The way that I've explained things to friends and family over the years is that LulaRoe grew far too big, far too quickly. They didn't take a moment to step back and find support for their consultants and their customers. They pushed their designers to design so many things in such a quick period of time and threw out all of these crazy wacky prints and fabrications, not caring about the fact that some of them were just absolutely awful, and that they should have spent more time focusing on bringing product that was intentional to the table. I think they only saw the money, money, money, money, money and just wanted to cash in. I'm not saying everyone had a bad experience, because I do have people still on my Facebook who talk about it with such joy and appreciation. And I wouldn't say that my experience was horrible, but at some point it did go downhill. By the time Lulero started generating support for their consultants and customers, I think the damage was already done. There was a point in time where they were producing clothing so quickly that they were making leggings far too fast, and the fabrication process for those leggings was causing there to be micro-tears in the product. So when women got leggings, oftentimes they tore and ripped and had holes in them. People were enraged. And I think Lularo was inundated by so many complaints that they tried to find the quickest, fastest method to solving the problem. So as consultants, we were told that we needed to fix that situation since we were on ground level with the customers. I was supposed to take your damaged leggings and offer you a free replacement pair. Then I was supposed to fill out a form with Lulu for a reimbursement claim for all the damaged leggings that I had collected. The problem with that is that if I allowed women to grab any pair they wanted, they could grab black pairs of leggings that I could have easily profited on. And I know that sounds a little greedy, right? But even if I'm getting my money back, I'm losing profitability on all of the leggings that I have. So essentially, yes, I can go buy more leggings, but again, I don't know what I'm getting. So I could get a lot of the same ones that I had, I could get a lot of different ones, I could get a whole lot of nothing that will sit and never sell. It wasn't really truly supporting the consultants, but they were doing what they could to use us as a funnel for reaching out to the customers rather than having their phone lines tied up. At some point, a lot of people started branching out and starting their own boutiques, which I think scared the company a little bit. There was often talk from our upline that you don't want to start a boutique because that's gonna cost a lot of money, and then you have to go procure all your inventory and you have to do so many other things and you don't have a company backing you. I took a lot of that in and thought, yeah, you're right. I don't want all that busy work, but then I started to realize that I was just really sick and tired of only selling clothing. I wanted to be able to market accessories and other items that people might want to buy. There's more to fashion or more to lifestyle than just clothing. I felt restricted. As the consultant numbers dwindled down and a lot of people started leaving, I thought maybe this would be better. Maybe I'll have a better chance of being able to procure new product launches. But I was wrong. At one point, there was approximately 10,000 active consultants. Lularo would drop a launch every week or every other week, and only about 1 to 2,000 consultants would get product in that launch. So essentially, that's like 10% of your active sellers that are the ones getting consistent product. Think about it. It's like a catalog company saying, here's the catalog that every consultant is going to get for spring, summer, or fall, winter, and these are all the amazing products, but you don't get to sell pages one through five. I couldn't wrap my brain around it. I thought of all the times I helped my grandma with her catalog company, and I thought, yeah, maybe there was something she missed out on because they sold out too fast. But in general, if there's new product, everyone has access to it. So after five weeks of this, I realized that this isn't sustainable. A lot of my customers went elsewhere because I was consistently not getting new product. The thing that sucked is that I was in the queue and I was ready and I had cash in hand to buy this product. I quickly watched my business start to slow. And it wasn't for a lack of showing up or commitment, but something completely outside of my control. My sales went from $5,000 a month to $2,500 a month. So I stopped trying to focus on marketing to my current customers and I went searching for new ones, which, if you don't know anything about business, it costs a hell of a lot more money and time to procure new customers. I was spending hours of my time glued to my phone, sifting through threads on various Lularo groups, creating Threads, dropping all of my product images under whatever thread I could find, offering free shipping just so that I could sell at full price. And that was the only way that I was able to sell my inventory toward the end. I think it also took a toll on my relationship because I became so inattentive. I hated it. It was such a desperate energy. It meant that I was having to just be on five times more than I already was. I made the decision then that I was going to start my own business. I think the thing that motivated me the most was watching a consultant go on one of our wholesale groups and completely sell out thousands of pieces of her inventory for $5 a piece. She kept telling them, nope, not going out of business, just completely revamping my inventory. I followed her and watched as a week later she went to LA, bought a bunch of product, and then dropped her boutique. I was so inspired to do the same thing that I started getting to work on my boutique. I even drove out to her place, which was about seven hours round trip into South Dakota, to buy some clothing from her. I probably spent a couple thousand dollars in her boutique just simply falling in love with clothing all over again and realizing that I wasn't happy with LuluRoe. It also helped me find a few brands because I honestly had no idea where to start with inventory. And unlike Lulux, I no longer had a group of women to consult with. I feel like lately I've checked out a lot because I've been so exhausted. I'll have more to say in the next episode as I talk about starting the boutique. I just still can't believe that it's been almost 10 years since I launched Lulu. It feels like such a long time ago, but it also feels like that much time can't have possibly passed. Creating this podcast and talking about a lot of things that I've been working through over the last six years has allowed me to really think about all the amazing things I've done. There's so much pride in the labor of love that I've put into everything. Even if it doesn't feel as successful as I want it to, it doesn't mean that I haven't actually found success or done some really great things. I'm also so grateful for all of the friendships and relationships that I've been able to build just by simply starting a community of women. I feel like that community is kind of dead as a doornail now, but I also know that social media works so much differently today. And I haven't been tuned in to TikTok or reels or making all sorts of crazy, silly videos just to gain attention, like some of the other people are doing. But it's nice to see some of my OG customers thriving and living their lives, and even if we don't talk anymore, I'm still cheering you on from the sidelines. It still makes my heart glow to read your updates on social media and to chat with a few of you who do reach out. It's also nice to see you still wearing some of my OG clothing from my boutique. It's nice to connect with new customers and find joy in the small talk. I have a really hard time with small talk because I like things to be more meaningful and more impactful. So it's something I've been practicing. One of my goals is still to travel and meet some of my favorite customers. That's not to single anyone out or make anyone feel like they aren't special if you're not on my list, but I got to meet a customer three years ago in Arizona, and we sat down for lunch like we were old friends catching up. It wasn't awkward. It wasn't weird. Conversation just flowed. I absolutely loved that because I find it hard to connect with other women sometimes, and just being able to have these friendships, even at a distance, is so amazing to me. I want to build an amazing community of women with this podcast. I love the feedback so far that some of you have been able to, you know, engage in really great conversation with me. It literally, for lack of a better phrase, makes my heart glow. I can't tell you how joyous I feel and giddy and excited that I get to have these really deep, open conversations with people. It's exactly what I'm trying to do. Create healthy, deep, meaningful conversation. Open, honest, raw, real conversation with women, where we can share our lives with each other in a way that isn't competitive or comparative. Maybe even understanding that we have more in common than we think. We can learn so much about each other and grow so much faster in our lives by just simply communicating. So once again, thank you so much for listening today. If you haven't listened to the other episodes, I highly recommend going back through them and starting season one from the beginning. This season will be a little more serial where the episodes will flow in order for a bit. Stay tuned for next week's episode where I talk about starting the boutique.