Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of LuLaRoe

Episode Date: October 19, 2021

In the wake of the zealously consumed LuLaRich docuseries on Amazon Prime, we’re releasing a bonus episode on the leggings multilevel marketing company that shook American suburban boss babes throughout the 2010s: LuLaRoe. Ex-MLMers (and fascinated docuseries viewers) keep saying LuLaRoe is nothing but a massive “cult”… but is it really? And if so, how bad is it? This week, we’re unpacking all the culty elements of this fanatically followed group with the help of a special guest: former LuLaRoe retailer Roberta Blevins, who identifies as the company’s “public enemy #1” and who you might recognize from the LuLaRich docuseries or her own “cult-followed” podcast Life After MLM. Follow us on socials! @soundslikeacultpod @amanda_montell  @isaamedinaa

Hi, my name is Marisa Z. I'm from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I think the coldest thing about Lula Rowe is the recruitment process and how much power all of the trainers and mentors have over their downlines. This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern day cults we all follow. I'm Issa Medina, and I'm a comedian. I'm Amanda Montell, author of the book Cultish, The Language of Fanaticism. And we're just two pals who are obsessed with the fanatical fringe groups that exist everywhere nowadays, from anti-vaxxers to prep schools to this week's cult, Lula Rowe.

Every week here on the pod, we discuss a different cult from the zeitgeist to try and answer the big question. This group sounds like a cult, but is it really? So as Amanda just mentioned, we are finally talking about the highly anticipated Lula Rowe. The cult taking over the damn culture at the moment, Lula Rowe, the subject of Amazon Prime's cult-followed docu-series, Lula Rich. Lula Rich, bitch.

I keep confusing them two now. The two names are too similar, Lula Rowe, Lula Rich. What am I talking about? Money. Money. For those who literally don't know what we're talking about, what is Lula Rowe? Lula Rowe began as a clothing company, started by a woman named Deanne Stidham, who's married to a man named Mark.

They went into business together. It's always a Mark. Always a Mark. Yeah. Oh my God. The name of my best friend's ex-husband. Ugh. God damn you, Mark.

Sorry, Mark. I don't know you, but we don't like you. So it was started by Deanne and Mark Stidham. Deanne was selling maxi skirts out of the trunk of her car, and then the business turned into something quite different. So Lula Rowe ultimately escalated into a leggings multi-level marketing company. Mark and Deanne recently had to pay over $4 million after being sued for pyramid scheme activity, but interestingly, Lula Rowe was not actually shut down and is still an MLM

that anyone can join. If you're not familiar with the details of multi-level marketing, we already did an episode on it, so you should totally listen to it. Yes. If you don't know about the structure, the history, go give that a listen for a little bit of backstory. Yes. So Lula Rowe would sell the idea to these small town women that they could start their

own legging business out of their home. They were selling really comfortable leggings that were trendy at that time. These leggings were super brightly colored. They were described as buttery soft. It was the mid-2010s when athleisure was becoming a huge trend. But before they were allowed to buy wholesale from them, they had to put down a $5,000 down payment to become a part of the community, I guess. This opportunity, this movement, this blessed group of people.

Yeah, they were like, join our community to start your own small business, but pay us to buy from us. Right. So this classic MLM pitch that you'll hear all the time, talk of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be a boss babe and make a full-time living with part-time work without ever having to leave your kids. All you have to do is sell leggings to your friends, family, and followers while also recruiting those people to become sellers, aka retailers for Lula Rowe themselves.

And you'll be swimming in cash in no time. So their target demographic was these, as you were saying, suburban wives and mothers who were looking to make a little extra cash on the side. The problem was that this was just a pyramid scheme in sheep's clothing. And they tried to explain it as something as simple as, we sell you a legging for $10 and then you sell it out of your house for $20. So for every legging you sell, you make $10 and it's like, then why am I paying you $5,000 to be a part of this?

And why am I having to recruit more sellers every single month, which is the telltale sign of a pyramid scheme? Yeah, like my parents own a wholesale flower business, so they import flowers from all over the world and then they sell it to florists, but they don't charge florists a fee to sell them flowers. Of course not, because they're not scammers, to my knowledge. Shout out, Issa's parents love you both. No, I love you.

Denise of Flowers. Our original sponsor, because they birthed me. Oh, that's beautiful. You know that something is a scam when you have to pay to make money kind of thing, but Lularo was much cultier than just your average scam and we're going to get all into that in a second. Hi, my name is Taylor. I'm calling in from Los Angeles and I feel like the cultiest thing about Lularo is that

it basically created a generation of women wearing the exact same style that didn't follow any sort of applicable fashion trend. The trend was Lularo and all these women just started wearing it. For this episode, we're going to compare and contrast Lularo to other MLMs. Yes, how it's culty in similar ways to other MLMs and what's even cultier about Lularo. Yes. There was this convergence of events that made Lularo so popular and explode so quickly. First of all, it was the dawn of Facebook Live.

Oh, I forgot about that. Everybody was demonstrating their wares on Facebook Live. It meant that you weren't restricted just to people that you knew in real life. You could promote to the internet. It's so funny to me because it's like Facebook Lives get like three views. I know. But I think at this time, it was actually pretty huge. I remember when I was working at Beauty Magazine at the time, we had to do Facebook Lives every

day because the algorithm was promoting them like crazy. Yes. I think that was at the time that I was interning at the United Nations and they were like, we're going to change the world with a Facebook Live and I was like, oh my God, East is younger than me, everyone. There was this phrase Lula Famous like on Facebook Live, people who, you know, on boarded to Lularo as they called it, wanted to become micro influencers of sorts. Yeah.

Famous. It was the OG influencer game. Yes. It was the early days of influencing. For a stay-at-home mom, I mean, that's the move. Oh, that probably felt so good, you know, you're locked out of the dignified labor market. With your kids all day who are screaming and pooping, here's a way for you to feel like a goddess on earth, you know, something about Lularo that is shared with other MLMs is that

it was founded by Mormons. So Mark and Deanne are practicing members of the Church of the Latter-day Saints. They would preach explicitly Mormon rhetoric at the Lularo conventions and conferences and such. Utah is unofficially the MLM capital of the world because it's Mormon and the MLM message and the Mormon message really go hand in hand. First of all, Mormons are born in bread missionaries, which makes them primed to recruit, recruit, recruit.

When Mormons come to you with the good news about the book of Mormon, it sounds not unlike an MLM pitch for the once in a lifetime opportunity to change your life and become rich. Because the multi-level marketing industry has historically targeted non-working wives and mothers, well, that works great for a Mormon family where wives are not really traditionally supposed to work. Yeah, why aren't they supposed to work? Huh? Utah, answer to that.

Those may remember from the documentary that Deanne was very into preaching super-normative oppressive standards of femininity. Yeah, Deanne is from Pasadena, California, which is this like perfect little LA suburb. It's kind of uncanny actually how pristine it is. It is like stepford-wife vibes. No shade Pasadena, but like shade. So it's like the stepford-wife vibe, and that's literally what Deanne looks like. It's like perfectly manicured woman with like her makeup, hair, earrings, dressed to the

nines to go to the grocery store. Layers of chunky necklaces. Am I making that up? That's what I'm seeing in my mind. I'm also on her seeing a strip lash. Oh, oh, fake lashes to the nines and not the way that like dojo cat wears fake lashes. No, very much like I'm going to prom in 2008 type of eyelashes, bleach hair. And I think the reason it's important to talk about what she looks like is because that

was one of the aspects that drew our attention in terms of cultiness because if you joined this company, everyone was literally wearing the company brand, the materials, they weren't just selling them, they were wearing them on their bodies. One more thing that struck me as super culty was the fact that Deanne would pressure people or her members into getting weight loss surgery. Yes. Oh my God. This was part of the conformity aspect at Lularelle, which I think was extra-specialy

culty. Deanne was obsessive about holding her recruits to this physical standard of feminine beauty. She would control their makeup, their outfits, their weight. Some of their top recruits were coerced into flying down to Mexico to get gastric sleeve surgery. Not to mention Deanne and Mark would try to coerce their top sellers to get their husbands to quit their job to go full time on Lularelle with them. That's crazy because that's when it starts to affect your physical and mental health.

I mean, of course, it's been affecting their mental health this whole time, but when it's taking a toll on their physical health and now they're going to get surgery, that is red flag. Exactly. We picture cult members as these people wearing white robes on compounds, not French bulldog leggings in the suburbs, but I think that's a huge reason why MLMs are able to get away with their culty antics because on the outside, it looks like nothing more than the American dream.

The cultiest aspect of Lularelle to me, at least in a shallow sense, is the fanaticism surrounding the leggings. These leggings had super kooky patterns and whenever there was a super desirable pattern, that was called a unicorn. Everything from flowers, chevron, the basics to bees in the vagina area. Yeah, there were some really fucked up ones. The bigger that they expanded as a company, the lower the quality went and the more the money had to come from recruits.

In some MLMs, if you don't meet your recruitment quotas, you literally get kicked out. When you recruited to Lularelle, you weren't allowed to choose your patterns. They just sent you whatever patterns were available and you could end up with a box full of duds. Imagine if my parents ordered roses from Ecuador and they just got all yellow roses. Or all fucking carnations. Yeah. That's not how business works.

No, it's not. At Lularelle, if you had a problem, if you were like, I can't unload any of these leggings, they would blame you. That's part of the campaign to gas recruits. They'd be like, someone who's really dedicated to this business, who really had what it takes to become a millionaire in a year, would just make it work. Oh, so something I also thought was cultier about Lularelle than the average MLM was how high the buy-in fee was, five grand?

Yeah. For a lot of MLMs you're buying in, I don't know, $100, $200, $500, $5,000 could decimate someone. Yeah. For like anyone middle class or lower, that is like months of rent. The crazy thing is that the final numbers of the losses didn't even take into account the opportunity cost of like the hours that they worked. Oh my God.

Like they weren't getting paid hourly. Like when you work at a retail company, at least you're getting paid minimum wage for those hours and then commission, these women were only getting paid commission. So those 30 hours a week that they were working, they could have been doing another job. Sometimes they weren't even able to make commission because the market is so flooded with too many sellers that in order to remain on their team or whatever, they would have to buy up all the inventory themselves to make their quota. And another thing that's similar between Lularo and most MLMs is their targets.

So they preyed on mostly these sort of Pinterest, pseudo feminist, boss babe, older millennial types. That's the part that I had kind of trouble with because a lot of people are saying that Lularo like intentionally targeted vulnerable people and I get that, but it still was like these middle class, well adjusted women that it's like, okay, you're not that vulnerable. We live in the age with the internet. You can make your own decisions girl. Right.

That's a completely valid point. It wasn't like, you know, the people's temple, AKA Jonestown, which was preying on older black women in the seventies. It was preying on people who had some privilege and this is the target of most cults. Why would a cult want someone who didn't have the money, time and connections to suck out of them? You know, they want bright, enthusiastic PTA moms with lots of friends in the neighborhood and money to burn and like nothing else to do.

So you need a certain amount of privilege in order for a cult to recruit you. It's like girls, just listen to our podcast if you need a cult, join ours. We got one right here. So up next, we're going to talk to Roberta Blevins. Roberta was featured in the Lula Rich documentary because she used to sell Lula Roe. She was in the cult. She also hosts a podcast called Life After MLM. So we'll hear from Roberta in a second.

Woo. Hello. How are you? Yeah. First of all, first question is how are you? I'm great. How are you? Good.

Good. We're alive. Let's jump right into it. Can you briefly describe who you are and your connection to Lula Roe? Yeah. Okay. So my name is Roberta Blevins and I used to sell Lula Roe, but now I'm probably their number one enemy.

Public enemy number one. Yeah. Can you elaborate a tiny bit? Yeah. Lula Roe public enemy number one. I've been speaking out against Lula Roe since the day that I left is about four years ago when I figured out that they were a gigantic pyramid scheme and I said, you know what? I'm not going to deal with this anymore.

I'm letting everybody know and it's incredibly important, I think, that people know what these companies are. So I left Lula Roe. I started speaking out against Lula Roe and then what happened very quickly is I realized that all of these companies are exactly the same. And so now I just speak out on all MLMs. Yes. Yes.

Queen, protect the people. So what do you think is the biggest misconception that people have about the type of person who would, as they say, on board at Lula Roe? I think the biggest misconception is that they're stupid, that they're gullible. How could you be so stupid to join a pyramid scheme? Why wouldn't you know? How do you not already know that that's what this is? How did you not see it?

And like you say in your book as well, it's not dumb people. It's smart social people who have something to give and feel like they need to belong to something. And these groups are happy to have you. Yeah. I'm glad we're talking about this. I kind of, I mean, I'm not going to lie. That was like my misconception.

Absolutely. You just think like, oh, they got to be so stupid. But honestly, when I joined Lula Roe, I was a young mom, I was a young wife. My dad had just recently passed away and I was looking for something more than being just a mom or just a wife. Like I felt like I had more to offer and I was incredibly vulnerable, which I think really is the only thing you need to be to get swept up in these groups. And I think people forget that the people who enlist are not greedy looking to become

multi-gigillionaires, they're just looking for something to empower themselves. Yeah. Absolutely. I just wanted to make a little bit of money so that we could go to the zoo or do really fun things that wasn't going to come out of our normal budget. To me, Lula Roe looked like the perfect option. It came with this community of people and it was a product that people wanted and I could sell it so easily.

It seemed like a really good fit until you actually open up your eyes and you see what's actually happening. Yeah. When you say it like that, like a little extra money to go to the zoo, it sounds so innocent. What is wrong with that? That sounds like so smart. Especially when they're making these promises that you can have that and more. We don't automatically assume people are hoodwinking us.

So what do you think was the cultiest part of your Lula Roe experience? I think it was like the cult mind games, right? Yeah. So the manipulation, the gaslighting, just like attacking people for no reason, getting angry if we had questions. You shouldn't be asking that. I remember one time my sister asked, hey, has anybody gotten their boxes? I'm checking, tracking and it seems like shipping's kind of slow.

I wanted to know if anybody had gotten their boxes yet and where you're at, you know, because she just wanted to know how much longer she'd have to wait. The post was immediately deleted and my upline reached out to me and told me that I needed to talk to my sister and like get a handle on her because she was being incredibly negative. And I was like, about what? And she was like, she's talking about how shipping time is taking too long. And we have a lot of people in that group that haven't onboarded yet and I would really hate for them to see that and not want to join Lula Roe.

That's crazy. It's like toxic positivity on steroids. Yeah. Right? Then I had to text my sister and I was like, hey, apparently you're not allowed to talk about shipping. I'm sorry. They deleted it.

I don't know what's going on with shipping, but you know, I'll let you know when I get my boxes. It shouldn't be another day or so. And she goes, okay, thanks. I don't understand why we couldn't just say that. It also sounds like they're intentionally trying to put someone lower in their place. I'm powerful and I can tell you what to say and when to say it. And so you're intimidating people, questioning the system because they know the system is

flawed and they want to control you. Right. So like anybody speaking out on the system or thinking, hey, this doesn't seem normal or anything. It's like a little kink in the chain. Yeah. And any kink in the chain is like, ooh, we cannot have that by any means possible. It sounds exactly like a sorority.

Oh my God. Yeah. I guess in that circumstance that you were describing, in a normal entrepreneurial environment, they would jump on it. They would give you the truth. They would just be reasonable. But in an MLM environment, they tell you, this is your fault. You have a hashtag victim mindset.

Someone who really wanted success would just shut up and deal with it. Yeah. It's always like, you know that business is hard work, don't you? And I was like, I guess, I do know that, I do know that working is work. I get it. Like that's ridiculous. Yeah. You're like, if you want to be successful, you have to literally make the packages appear

from thin air. Have you not tried that before? Yeah. And like the other culty thing to me, aside from just like the gaslighting, the control of like what we wore, what we looked like, how we wore our hair like, oh, you're not wearing your lipstick. Like you don't have your hair done. Like why don't you have that done?

You know, oh, you're going live, you should have your hair and makeup done. And I'm like, it's 95 degrees in my house. Like I'm going to curl my hair and put on makeup. Are you insane? Yeah. The conformity. Yeah. Like conform.

Like this is what we look like. This is how we speak. This is where we go. This is how we act. And for me, somebody who's so unbelievably individual and like I changed so often with like what I'm into. Yeah. And it's strange that I, I didn't have that sense of like my own identity anymore.

That's where they would have lost me. Like you, you have to wear makeup, you have to do your hair out and be like, girl, I will talk to you later. I got PJs to wear. Right. And then Deanna would always tell us that like we had to wear lipstick and I just always thought like, why, I don't understand. So now we're going to play a little game.

It is just a classic game of would you rather, but cult edition. The first would you rather is would you rather have to wear Lula Roe leggings every day for the rest of your life. And just like retailers couldn't choose what patterns they receive, you won't be able to choose either or have to wear all white with a shaved head every day for the rest of your life. Like a classic looking cult member. Oh my God.

I'm going to have to go through the row at least they're comfortable, right? Oh no. I would go the other way all white and a shaved head. That's kind of chic out of anyone Amanda could pull off the all white shaved head. I would have to go leggings. Yeah. Amanda could pull off the shaved head. I have a weird head.

No. I will wear clown pants. I thought that one was going to be like we were all going to choose all white with a shaved head, but we're really learning a lot about each other. Okay. Would you rather attend a Lula Roe vision convention consisting of relentless motivational speakers, performances and group activities without being able to take a break or sleep for 72 hours straight or have to join the latter day saints and live as a practicing

Mormon for three whole months. Oh my God, that's really hard. I think I'm going to have to go with Lula Roe again. I think I'd rather do three days of cult than three months. I truly hate to break it to you, but it sounds like you never left. I know, right? But you're giving me really hard questions and maybe it is Lula Roe was more comfortable than the unknown.

I know how to survive that. Yeah. Also, you're like I left once I can leave again. That reveals a lot of human nature. It's like, okay, this abuse is abuse that feels like home. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

I can do this for three more days. Chaotic energy. Yes. Chaotic. Good. So the last question is, would you rather have to legally change your name to Boss Babe Blevins or have Deanne and Mark's initials branded onto your ass? Oh my God.

You're giving me nexium vibes right now. Could I change it back eventually? Well, you can go by whatever you want, but legally, like on your, yes, on your tax forms. So my taxes. Okay. Sure. Yes. Legally, I will be Boss Babe Blevins.

Mark and Deanne's initials on my ass is the worst thing I could possibly think of. Yeah. Deceased. We're just going to call you BBB from now on. BBB. Yeah. BBB. BQ.

I don't know. We'll work on it. All right. Well, wow. We really thank you for being such a good sport and playing, would you rather, coalition with us. Thank you for this quick, but amazing interview and thank you for your work in the MLM community. People need to know, you know.

Thank you so much for even thinking of me. This is amazing. Oh, come on. Always. You guys are awesome. And I will talk to you later and see you on that. Yeah. Talk soon.

See you on Instagram. Bye. All right. To me, one of the cultiest things about Lula Rowe is that you, as a consultant, when you get your starter kit, you don't get to choose your patterns and sizes of the products. And when you start out as a Lula Rowe consultant, they're basically like, you take what we give you and if you don't make the best of it, that's your fault. Even though, you know, if you're in an area that, let's say, for example, you're a vegan

mom and, you know, most of your friends are vegan too, like, what are you going to do with 20 pairs of bacon and egg leggings? So Issa, out of the three cult categories, live your life, watch your back, or get the fuck out. What cult category do you think Lula Rowe falls into? So when I was watching the documentary, it was really hard for me to empathize with these women because I was like, girl, why didn't you see the red flags? And also something that was really unclear to me was you don't have to recruit other

people if you just focus on the legging part of it. So I think this all speaks to a real failure on the part of the Lula Rich docu series. And this is not a unique failure. This is a failure on the part of a lot of cult documentary series, I feel, which is that, first of all, they lead with sensationalism for entertainment value, of course, but they paint this portrait of the followers, in this case, Lula Rowe retailers, as these crazy deranged gullible, bored housewives with really bad taste and clothes. How could anybody miss the signs that this was an MLM?

And what that does is dehumanize those people because you as an outsider are like, oh my god, they were cuckoo, I would have never fallen for that. What it doesn't do, and this is much more interesting in my opinion, is paint a holistic portrait of the type of conditioning and coercion that they were under because these people were not idiots, there were tens and tens and tens of thousands of people. They couldn't all be- A lot of them are still in it, right? A lot of those people were new signups after Lula Rowe rolled back some of its cultiest

requirements after they were sued. I mean, what makes something a pyramid scheme versus a valid MLM is legislatively nebulous, I guess I'll say, because of just the direct selling association's relationship to Washington. But that's a different story for another day. So I think that that's a huge problem because documentaries like this cause you not to empathize with these people. Yeah, and I feel like the reason they did that was because in order to interview them for the documentary, they had to not make it look that bad.

Does that make sense? Yes, and this is a great point because I think this is another failure on the part of a lot of these cult documentaries is that they only interview sources that made out like bandits or that ended up completely fine, whereas the majority lose everything. I know someone who sold for Lula Rowe and ended up bankrupt and overdosing on drugs. They aren't interviewing those people and that partially must be because those people are hard to secure or hard to find. But when you're only interviewing people who ended up okay, that's doing nothing to

pay a realistic portrait of what it's like to be involved with an MLM like this because studies show that up to 99% of these people never make a dime. Even though they were vehemently promised, they were going to become a millionaires within a year if they only tried hard enough. Yeah, it's like, it's not if they only tried hard enough, it's if they only joined early enough. Exactly. Exactly.

That's the truth of it. Like if you, let's say go on Shark Tank and you are pitching an investment opportunity to the sharks and the sharks listened to your pitch and they're like, oh, I want to work with you. And then later it comes out that all your numbers were bullshit. That shark can pull out. You can't just fucking lie. Yeah.

But in the MLM industry, which is again, just pyramid schemes dressed up in a slightly friendlier outfit, in these groups, lying is a fundamental part of the structure. Yeah, they lied, I guess that's true. I guess that's true because I was like, oh, these women just made an investment and they regret it. It's easier to blame the victim in these circumstances because we want to tell ourselves it would never happen to me. Yeah.

I also like, I really do stick to the fact that like the documentary did not make it clear whether they were required to recruit or not, but if they didn't recruit, then their upline or the person who recruited them wouldn't be nice to them. And then they wouldn't be a part of the social aspect of the community, which is why they really weren't there. Exactly. Exactly. But you know, paying for community is not a bad thing.

You pay to go to SoulCycle. Okay, okay, okay. I did it during the pandemic, relax. I should pay for some kind of community so I don't feel so fucking lonely all the time. I pay to do stand-up sometimes. Oh. Like when you first starting out in LA, you have to like pay $5 for five minutes and that's how you get your stage time at first.

See, there's your little pyramid scheme. That's what I'm telling you. Stand-up comedy is an MLM in LA. And you're another vulnerable population. You're a aspiring artist, you know? Okay, okay, but I'm like way better now. I have a weekly show at Formosa Cafe. Yes, go to Issa Show by my book.

No, what I was going to say is that like I really did it for the community. That's why I got into stand-up comedy because when I moved to LA, I didn't know many people and that's how I met like all of my friends. Of course, paying for community is valid and encouraged, but Lula Rowe was not pitching itself as a community that you pay to be a part of. It was pitching itself as an entrepreneurial opportunity to make money and then when the system inevitably failed you would then turn around and say, well, that's on you. So I don't even think I answered your question.

Moral of the story, I think it is a get the fuck out. We already said MLMs were get the fuck out and Lula Rowe is an MLM. Yeah, 100%. I think obviously Lula Rowe is a get the fuck out for multiple reasons. I think even if you strip away the financial exploitation and evaluate the rest, the us-them dichotomies, the conformity, the leader worship, it's a get the fuck out level cult. Well, that's our show. Thanks for listening.

We'll be back with a new cult sometime very soon. But in the meantime, stay culty, but not too culty. Sounds like a cult was created, produced and edited by Amanda Montell and Issa Medina. Our theme music is by Casey Cull. And if you liked this episode, feel free to give us a rating and review on Apple podcasts.