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Registered dietitian Kat Garcia-Benson joins us to discuss the multilevel marketing (MLM) industry and its connection to diet and wellness culture, her experience of getting recruited to an MLM as a new dietitian, how she eventually got out, why she shifted to an anti-diet approach in her work, and more. Behind the paywall, we get into how MLMs affect people’s relationships with food and their bodies, how to make peace with food after an MLM, what to do if you know someone who’s involved with a wellness MLM, what makes people vulnerable to recruitment, how the MLM experience affected her sense of self, and how she’s found healing.
Kat is a registered dietitian nutritionist and board-certified sports dietitian with a unique background in Multi-level Marketing (MLM), now dedicated to helping individuals break free from nutrition MLMs and the constraints of diet culture and nutrition misinformation. Specializing in digestive health and sports nutrition, she creates empowering content designed to cultivate a healthy relationship with food and body.
Resources and References
Contains affiliate links to Bookshop.org, where I earn a small commission for any purchases made.
Christy’s second book, The Wellness Trap: Break Free from Diet Culture, Disinformation, and Dubious Diagnoses and Find Your True Well-Being
Subscribe on Substack for extended interviews and more
Kat’s YouTube channel
Kat’s website
Kat’s social media handles: @unlockednutrition
Christy’s online course, Intuitive Eating Fundamentals
Transcript
Disclaimer: The below transcription is primarily rendered by AI, so errors may have occurred. The original audio file is available above.
Christy Harrison: Kat, welcome to Rethinking Wellness. I'm so excited to talk with you today.
Kat Garcia-Benson: Thank you so much. Anytime that I can talk about multi-level marketing, I am here. I'm ready to go.
Christy Harrison: Yes. So can you tell us how you came to do the work that you do?
Kat Garcia-Benson: Absolutely. I am a registered dietitian, and I was in the very beginning part of my registered dietitian journey. So I was invited to learn about this opportunity, and that's often something that we hear about whenever someone is prospecting. When you're getting invited to maybe join an MLM, it's typically referred to as an opportunity. One of my former classmates had actually reached out to me with this opportunity. Around that same time, I had a PhD level registered dietitian reaching out to me on LinkedIn, who was also inviting me to learn about this opportunity. It was so interesting because what we later found out was that that registered dietitian was working with that former classmate of mine, but they didn't know that they were both reaching out to me. So that was kind of wild.
That former classmate, that was her downline. And so she ended up letting her continue to prospect me. So anyway, I was invited to learn more about the company that I was a part of. And there were multiple calls, multiple Zoom meetings, and in some of those, there were several other health professionals. And this was right as I was becoming a dietitian. And so in school, we're often taught to say yes, right. And then ask questions later. And especially if a seasoned dietitian is reaching out to you and providing opportunities, then just take a look and kind of see from there.
I remember one of the meetings that I went to, it was a virtual one, but there were several health professionals there. There were medical doctors, registered nurses, mental health professionals. There were other pharmacists and dietitians as well. And so me being a brand new, baby dietician there were a couple of things, some red flags, but at that same time, I felt like, who was I at that point, that baby dietitian, to question these people who have been in this company, in this field for years, way longer than I've been even studying nutrition at that point. And so took a little while, several months, for me to say yes and to join the one that I joined. And it was a garden. The garden, ultimately, is the idea of growing things is what got me on board, ultimately.
Christy Harrison: Wait, so this was a multilevel marketing garden?
Kat Garcia-Benson: Well, that was part of it. So there was a supplement side, but then they also have a brand where you can buy aeroponic gardens. And this was before aeroponic gardens really started to become more popular.
Christy Harrison: Let's back up for a second here, just for anyone who's new to the multi-level marketing universe and all the language and stuff, because it's so specific. And I did a deep dive into it for my book The Wellness Trap and was just immersed in this for months. And you have clearly, lived it and been so much more immersed than I have. And I feel like these terms, for anyone who hasn't really done a deep dive into this, might be confusing. So can you first just tell us sort of the basics of what an MLM or multi-level marketing company is?
Kat Garcia-Benson: Yes, absolutely. So multi-level marketing is sometimes referred to as network marketing or referral marketing. Direct sales, social selling, has a couple of different names. Not all direct selling is multi-level marketing, but multi-level marketing is direct selling. And multi-level marketing is in the structure of a pyramid. So we can't legally say that they are pyramid schemes.
Christy Harrison: But it has the shape of a pyramid, the way that it is structured.
Kat Garcia-Benson: Yes, yes. And in the US Securities and Exchange Commission, so the SEC, they do say that in a classic pyramid scheme, participants attempt to make money by recruiting new participants, and that's usually where the promoter will promise this kind of high return in a short period of time. In a true kind of pyramid scheme, there's no genuine product or service actually being sold.
However, there was in, I believe it was 2019, Advocare had to pay 150 million to settle FTC charges as it operated as an illegal pyramid scheme. And they had products and services. So it's not that kind of black or white. Sometimes there can be genuine product or services that are sold, but the primary emphasis is on that recruitment of new participants. And typically those participants are going to be the largest group of those using the products or the services.
Christy Harrison: Right. And so in an MLM, the people at the top are the ones making all the money, in my understanding. And then they recruit new participants in what's called a downline. Can you talk about what a downline is and sort of how that works?
Kat Garcia-Benson: Yeah. So when you are recruited into multi-level marketing, where you're typically encouraged by the people who brought you in and their upline, the people who brought them in to then go out and share this product and this opportunity to other people, and typically the recommendation is to sell or to recruit from people who are, were, or are in similar situations that you were at when you joined. It kind of builds that commonality, that familiarity, and is one of the main foundations of building a team, going after people who are similar to what you were experiencing.
A lot of the MLM recruitment is about selling a dream, a dream of how your life will be similar to what you talk about all the time. But in addition to that wellness dream, there's also that financial dream right alongside of it. And so recruiting rather than sales alone, it's typically mandatory to reach the top levels. I have not found a multi-level marketing company that allows you to get to the highest level just on sales alone. There's that recruitment side where you're building a team and you're teaching that team how to sell that product and sell that dream.
Christy Harrison: So that similarity thing you mentioned maybe has to do with why the MLM that you got recruited into was a bunch of dietitians and doctors and therapists and stuff. So they were kind of going after people in the healthcare space.
Kat Garcia-Benson: Yes, absolutely. And I typically spend my time focusing on the health and nutrition supplement related MLMs. There's an MLM for everything.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, yeah. I looked into it from my book also on wellness, because I was seeing a lot of supplement and nutrition related ones. And I did find a statistic that wellness related MLMs are by far the largest category of the market, but is by no means the only category. So, yeah, there's MLMs for all different kinds of things, household products and vacations and whatever, you name it. When my husband was looking for a job, he stumbled into a job interview with one that he was like, "Oh, I quickly realized this was an MLM."
Kat Garcia-Benson: Yeah. And they have been around for so long, I did kind of a dive into the history of multi-level marketing. And it's been going on for a while.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, yeah. For a very long time. Amway, right, was the first one, I believe.
Kat Garcia-Benson: Yeah. So in 1915, there was a chiropractor. His name was Forrest C. Shaklee, and he created Shaklee’s vitalized minerals. And so that was considered to be one of the first multivitamins. He founded Shaklee Corporation, which is still a nutrition MLM, but that was later. So that is sometimes considered one of the starting people. But there was a man named Carl Renberg in the 1930s, and he sold vitamins under what was called the California Vitamin Company, and he renamed that into Nutrilite. And the two men, Lee Mittenger and William Castleberry, they became distributors for Nutrilite. And so that's considered to be by some the start of MLM in 1945.
Christy Harrison: That's fascinating. So the MLM industry and the supplement industry, they're really intertwined from the get go.
Kat Garcia-Benson: Absolutely, absolutely. And you had mentioned Amway. There was actually a split from there. And that's what created that American Way.
Christy Harrison: Interesting. And that's kind of like the first big one, it seems like.
Kat Garcia-Benson: So in 1949, Jay Van Andel and Richard DeVos, they began as distributors for Nutrilite, which was that company I was just talking about. And around that same time, Mittenger and Castleberry, which were those distributors for Nutrilite, they were involved in a dispute with the FDA which accused them of false advertising. But later on, concerned about that FDA dispute with the Nutrilite, those two other men, Van Andel and DeVos, launched a new company, and that was called the American Way, or Amway, using the MLM model. So it was connected in that way.
Christy Harrison: So going back to your story then, you sort of stumbled into this whole industry with this long checkered history, and we can talk about all of the issues with it, and especially sort of the intertwinement with supplement industry and the problematic nature of that. What did you think of it when you first sort of came into that role?
Kat Garcia-Benson: I had goals from the very start of wanting to become a dietitian, of having a private practice. And because of one of the first dietitians who I ever met and seeing her practice and looking at her and being like, "I want to do that. I want to do what she's doing." And so when I was just talking to that PhD level dietitian that had reached out to me with LinkedIn, I had spoken about my goals. And one of the kind of ways that I was invited to join and one of the reasons why I did was that she was mentioning how I can use this as a way to make extra money on the side because I really didn't want to stay as a clinical dietitian in a hospital forever. And that I can use my extra time focusing on building within this opportunity, building my business, quote, business. And then I can go on my own and leave this kind of clinical job and start my private practice.
And so I was starting to work kind of on the side and starting my private practice. And there was this encouragement to blend the multi-level marketing company with the private practice and have the sales of the products be part of that packaging. And that did not make me feel the best, because as a dietitian, we look at the individual and not everybody needs the same thing. I felt very uncomfortable with that. But that was just one of the signs that I kind of pushed aside and probably should have listened to sooner.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, it's so easy to see red flags in hindsight and sometimes so hard to see them in the moment, especially when economics and sort of career goals are tied up with that, too. It sounds like they held out a promise for you, as they do to so many people for supposed wealth and financial independence and building a business on your own terms and all of that stuff. And that's incredibly appealing. So I understand.
Kat Garcia-Benson: And I had just moved to a new state. I was a brand new military spouse as well, and so kind of in the middle of nowhere. So I hit a lot of the boxes for who multi-level marketing distributors go after as far as for recruitment goes. And I'd never heard about multi-level marketing. I had heard of different companies, but I didn't understand just the business model, ultimately.
Christy Harrison: I'm curious how that experience unfolded for you and how you ended up getting out.
Kat Garcia-Benson: There was multiple steps, and this is one of the, I guess, ideas that I believe is so important on the anti-MLM activism side and really encouraging and helping people to kind of see the light, just to see those red flags and to leave. It is, in my experience and many of the people who I have spoken with and am friends with now, it is challenging to leave. Sometimes people refer to multi-level marketing as the commercial cult. It becomes so much more than just kind of a side business that you're doing. You're encouraged to be on calls, on training calls, to go to the events and at the conferences. And those are really opportunities for them to sell the dream and to just get everyone excited about sticking it out.
It is challenging to reach the top levels. The company that I was part of, and I believe this was done kind of intentionally. And I know a lot of other companies do kind of similar, but it was challenging but it was doable to make it halfway up the ranking. And I was able to do that within the first, like six months or so.
Christy Harrison: What did that look like in terms of financial earnings? Because from the statistics, it seems like only 1% of people or so end up making a profit from MLMs.
Kat Garcia-Benson: Right, right. So I don't know if I can exactly say the amounts, but can say the range around. I was able to consecutive or consistently get under $1,000, but a little bit lower than there pretty consistently.
Christy Harrison: So not enough for a full time income, but like a side hustle type of thing.
Kat Garcia-Benson: Yeah, yeah. And it would be spent on the product, going back to the product itself. And then if I went to any of the conferences. There are virtual ones, but then also in person ones.
Christy Harrison: So in practice, the actual profit probably wasn't there because you were putting it back into the business, quote unquote, business.
Kat Garcia-Benson: And I'll just kind of mention this now, but the work, putting quotes again, the work that I did to build up to that halfway point, it was a lot of reaching out, talking to a cold market, just kind of sharing. I keep saying opportunity, but that word is often used in that area. But just talking about it.
Christy Harrison: Was this on social media and your networks?
Kat Garcia-Benson: Yes. One of the most embarrassing things was when I had sent so many messages that Facebook told me to slow down and I had to take a break. I don't know if I've ever mentioned that. I've shared my story on my YouTube channel before, but I don't think I mentioned that part. But part of going through that and leaving left me with so much guilt and shame. And it really took a hit to my confidence as a practitioner. One, for joining in the first place, but two for also playing a role in that recruitment side.
And I sent so many messages to the people who I invited and I told them when I was leaving all of my concerns and explaining what I learned and how I could not continue. And I got a lot of positive response from that. Some people didn't respond, which is totally understandable, but that was helpful. But that still did not take away the guilt and the shame of my experience in multi-level marketing.
Christy Harrison: Yeah, absolutely. What made you ultimately decide to leave?
Kat Garcia-Benson: Yeah, so there were lots of different red flags throughout that kept on building. One of the concerns that I had was whenever I did have question or issue with the business model itself, I was told any information I should get from inside the business structure, if I were to seek out or kind of listen to people outside of multi-level marketing, they were negative about it because they either tried it themselves and failed or they weren't in it and so they didn't know what they were talking about. And so that was definitely a red flag.
One of the biggest ones that kind of led me to leave, there were a couple of different ones, but I was on a training call with that PhD level dietitian going back to her, and she had us do an exercise of writing down how we kind of envisioned this was a dream building exercise, but how we envisioned what we wanted in our life, how we wanted to feel what we wanted to do. And as I was writing down that list, I realized that everything that was required to be successful in this business was absolutely not what I wanted to do and absolutely not what I wanted to live my life like.
At the top level that she was at, she was still recruiting people. She was still selling that lifestyle, that kind of vision. And I did not want my life to look like that. And so I know that wasn't the intention of the exercise, but it definitely got me to think, like, I see this is what it looks like at the top, and I don't want that for myself. I also, at the same time, one of the YouTube creators that I was watching for years before. And she is kind of the largest video creator on YouTube. That was at the very start of what is considered anti-MLM YouTube. And she did completely different kind of content, but she did a video, and it was about Beachbody, but she made a video about how what this thing is, this multi-level marketing thing is, because she was having people reach out to her and she immediately saw it for a scam. So grateful for that.
But she created a video and was talking, voicing all of her concerns. And I was kind of taken back by that because I was part of that structure. But she made really good points and points that just stuck with me. And she continued to make anti-MLM YouTube videos. There were other creators who were starting to pop up and I was just listening to these, and they were primarily from former distributors of various companies, but there were several ones from Beachbody, actually. And I just started watching their videos and I could not stop because they were sharing about their experience, about how they got recruited and how they stayed and why they stayed and what opened their eyes and some of the red flags that they saw. And I just saw so much of myself in their story.
Ultimately, I mean, that's one of the reasons why I decided to even go to YouTube to talk about from an anti-MLM stance. It's for others, but it was also for myself to process all of that kind of experience and those emotions through it and work through a lot of that kind of guilt and shame for being part of that. And there's such a wide variety. But even outside of MLM, there is a scam for everyone to fall into. And just bringing awareness to this specific kind of business structure and the issues surrounding it was something that was and continues to be important for me because of how sneaky they are.
Christy Harrison: I'm curious what you came to discover about why MLMs are problematic, both in the financial sense and in the nutrition sense, the false health claims that they're making.
Kat Garcia-Benson: Yeah. So the lack of evidence for the income being in alignment with a lot of the dream that is being sold. On the flip side, the evidence from the income disclosure statements from the companies themselves, where we can actually see the percentage of their distributors who are making that kind of income. So on that side, and the stories of so many people, I saw people in the company that I was part of put everything into it, put their time and their energy and their resources, who fully, truly believed in the business model and the company and the products and themselves to make it to the top, who didn't make it to the top.
And so I saw firsthand how it wasn't just that they weren't trying. And one of the conferences that I went to, actually, they would bring up people who made it to the top level, and they would just share for a few minutes about their experience and kind of have it as an encouraging or kind of vision casting kind of for the audience. And I remember there was a woman who made it to the top, and she was sharing her story about how she had previously almost made it to the top, but one of her strong, what is called legs in her downline had quit. And so she had to restart from pretty much a very beginning and build all these points and these levels, bring in new people.
And she then made it to the top and a lot of people who were sitting around me, they were in awe and they were inspired by that and her hard work. And to me that told me how this was very much dependent on so many other people and can so easily crumble. And there have been so many other companies who have overnight taken away the MLM structure, maybe not dissolved the company or anything, but taken away that MLM structure. And you really realize that this is not your company. You don't have any say over the products, over the marketing, over the ingredient acquisition or the blend or anything like that. And so the more that I had concern, and I am a private practitioner, I have a private practice for a reason. There's a need in there for me to have that kind of flexibility or that kind of way of doing things how I want to with my businesses.
And when I kept hearing about the MLM structure and how they sell it as your own business, really taking a step back and saying like, this is not your business. You are ultimately a salesperson for a large company, and you're putting so much effort into something that is truly not yours and can be taken away so quickly. On the health side of things, it can be scary. It is scary. The fact that MLM distributorship qualifications are, you have to be 18 years or older, have a Social Security number in the US, and then pay the either starter kit fee or entrance fee, and that's it. After that, you share your experience. So much about what we were taught in training was that stories sell, facts tell. That was another red flag for me.
The stories don't sell for me, even while I was in the company. It's nice to hear stories, but just the way my brain works—and I think a lot of dietitians would agree—we need more than stories, we need to know the facts. And so that was one of the things that when I was looking at leaving and what I wanted to do, I knew that I could not continue on to make it to the top. We were also taught that in order to make it to the top, we needed four core beliefs. We needed a belief in the business model, the structure of it, belief in the product itself, belief in the company, and then belief in yourself. And I realized that I could not have full belief in the business model, the company or the product, and that it was just nothing ethical for me to continue on. There was too many red flags and I could not continue.
Christy Harrison: Well, that makes a lot of sense, and I'm glad you listened to those red flags and recognized that. But it's scary to think how even dietitians, even medical doctors, even other health professionals can be sort of swayed and pulled into these kinds of schemes. Let's talk a little bit about the product itself. I mean, I don't know how much you can say about it, I don't want you to name the company or anything, but just sort of in general, what are the sort of wellness products these MLMs are selling and what is their track record of safety and efficacy?
Kat Garcia-Benson: Yeah, so most of the times for the nutrition supplement ones, they're going to be around and this was the company that I was part of did not have this, but they'll even call them, like, It Works. Just toxic, diety kind of sounding products, even. Fat Fighter, Carb Balance, different things like that, that I absolutely want zero ties to. Cleanses, they'll sell things about doing intentional weight changes, very weight focused. The company that I was part of, they had that garden, and so part of my thought process was, what's so harmful about growing your own fruits and vegetables? There was that side. Which you can do outside of MLM, if you are interested in gardening, aeroponic gardening.
One of the concerns that I had when that top up line was encouraging me to implement this into my private practice clients, because this was something that not everybody needed. Nobody needs it, but I had a concern of building this into it because it did not make sense for everyone. I come from a food neutral kind of place, and so I am food first. Sometimes supplements are depending, on the case and the situation. They might be part of that person's plan of care. And so this was a powdered kind of vegetable and fruit that if somebody had accessibility concerns or with their time availability or even flavor preferences, if they weren't getting an amount of produce that they maybe wanted, this was a way that I saw that they could kind of add that to a smoothie or add that to something to kind of get in some more fruits and vegetables.
Christy Harrison: One of those greens powders that's always talked about on podcasts these days.
Kat Garcia-Benson: Yes. One of the things that sold me was that it still is third party tested by the NSF certified sport as well. And so that was honestly one of the, on more of the dietician mind side of things, knowing that what was on the label was in the product and that it was just the produce. It didn't have like other kind of supplement or other kind of things thrown in there, that it was the produce itself, that was one of the selling points for me. And so I think that while I am supporter of third party testing, on having that on supplements, that was one of the reasons why I did join, so I kind of wish I didn't have.
Christy Harrison: Well, and those third party testing things, first of all, they vary in quality, I think, but also even the really good ones, the one I think I have vouched for, and I've seen a lot of doctors and legit sort of science communicators vouch for, is the USP Verified seal on vitamins and supplements. But even that, it doesn't test for the efficacy or safety for a particular person or in general, it really is just about does it contain what it says it contains? Are there any contaminants? Okay, cool. It's very minimal in terms of what it actually tells you. It's not going to tell you if this is effective for what you're taking it for. Is it safe for you in particular, with whatever medications you might be taking or other health issues you have going on? It's not going to tell you any of that.
Kat Garcia-Benson: Right. And that was one of the big reasons why I did not want to encourage everybody to use it. It was just like in this case, and I knew what was in there. So it helped me feel a little bit more comfortable with that. But it was not for recommendation treatment or of anything kind of thing. I just keep thinking of the red flags as I'm talking, but there was a library of sorts, a virtual library, wherever a registered nurse kind of compiled or was often the source for a lot of the little clips, but there were different kind of conditions and little statements from this registered nurse, and there were other health professionals on there, but about the effectiveness or the support that produce can have on a specific condition.
And there were just so many listed conditions. There was encouragement to whenever anybody on the team would reach out to someone with a condition to go into that library, pull that little clip and send that over to them. So hugely problematic. Also something that I was not comfortable with.
Christy Harrison: So you mentioned that you were not comfortable with a sort of weight loss side. Were you anti-diet before you started doing the MLM? Because you are also an anti-diet dietitian, and I'm curious where that developed for you.
Kat Garcia-Benson: Yeah, so I was a fence sitter for quite a while. I had read the book Intuitive Eating a couple times. I had listened to it while I was still in undergrad. And I ultimately got into nutrition because of my own kind of views of nutrition and not having the healthiest relationship with food. And so I guess the best way to describe it was fence sitter. But the company that I was a part of, they weren't promoting weight loss. They started to have a ten day nutrition challenge.
And in that challenge, they did start promoting that weight loss. Not the company so much itself, but distributors. And that was one of also the big reasons why I left. I did not like the name of the challenge. It was The Ten Day Shred. And the spin on it was shredding unhelpful behaviors. But the part of, and I don't remember the exact kind of recommendations, but it was like removing gluten and removing caffeine and added sugars and just things that as a dietitian, even though I was a fencer, I was not okay with. And it was just not unnecessary. And to do anything for ten days and expect that to be beneficial for someone's relationship with food and body was hugely problematic. And so I was not okay with that.
Christy Harrison: I'm curious to talk more about how you see MLMs affecting people's relationships with food and their bodies, because so many of them do have this weight loss component or using supplements for supposed optimization or to replace medication. Even if the recruiters or the MLM distributors are not supposed to say that explicitly, there's still often this real implication that the supplements can replace medication or can treat a disease or things like that. And so, yeah, I'm curious how you've seen that affect people in their relationships with food and their bodies.
Kat Garcia-Benson: Absolutely. And actually unintentionally, through the work that I do on YouTube specifically, I have gotten a lot of people who I work with virtually with nutrition have former experience with one of these kind of companies, whether that's coming from Plexus or Beachbody, which is now called BODi. They changed their name to kind of be more sneaky. But there are so many.
