Direct Sales and Direct Faith in Latin America (Contemporary Anthropology of Religion)

CONTEMPOR ARY A NTHROPOLOGY OF R ELIGION A series published with the Society for the Anthropology of Religion Laurel Ke...

Author: Peter S. Cahn

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CONTEMPOR ARY A NTHROPOLOGY OF R ELIGION A series published with the Society for the Anthropology of Religion Laurel Kendall, Series Editor Curator, Division of Anthropology, America Museum of Natural History Published by Palgrave Macmillan: Body / Meaning / Healing By Thomas J. Csordas The Weight of the Past: Living with History in Mahajanga, Madagascar By Michael Lambek After the Rescue: Jewish Identity and Community in Contemporary Denmark By Andrew Buckser Empowering the Past, Confronting the Future By Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart Islam Obscured: The Rhetoric of Anthropological Representation By Daniel Martin Varisco Islam, Memory, and Morality in Yemen: Ruling Families in Transition By Gabrielle Vom Bruck A Peaceful Jihad: Negotiating Identity and Modernity in Muslim Java By Ronald Lukens-Bull The Road to Clarity: Seventh-Day Adventism in Madagascar By Eva Keller Yoruba in Diaspora: An African Church in London By Hermione Harris Islamic Narrative and Authority in Southeast Asia: From the 16th to the 21st Century By Thomas Gibson Evangelicalism and Conflict in Northern Ireland By Gladys Ganiel Christianity in the Local Context: Southern Baptists in the Philippines By Brian M. Howell

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Missions and Conversions: Creating the Montagnard-Dega Refugee Community By Thomas Pearson Gender, Catholicism, and Morality in Brazil: Virtuous Husbands, Powerful Wives By Maya Mayblin Direct Sales and Direct Faith in Latin America By Peter S. Cahn

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Direct Sales and Direct Faith in Latin America Peter S. Cahn

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DIRECT SALES AND DIRECT FAITH IN LATIN AMERICA

Copyright © Peter S. Cahn, 2011. All rights reserved. First published in 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–11249–0 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cahn, Peter S., 1975– Direct sales and direct faith in Latin America / Peter S. Cahn. p. cm.—(Contemporary anthropology of religion) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 978–0–230–11249–0 1. Business—Religious aspects—Catholic Church. 2. Direct selling— South America. I. Title. HF5388.C34 2011 658.8972—dc22

2010041067

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: May 2011 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

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Previous Publications All Religions Are Good in Tzintzuntzan: Evangelicals in Catholic Mexico. 2003.

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Contents

List of Illustrations

ix

Names Mentioned

xi

Acknowledgments

xiii

1 Making Work a Commission

1

2 Helping Others Help Themselves

19

3 Thinking Anew about the History of Direct Sales

39

4 Healing the Body through the Mind

59

5 Selling without Selling

81

6 Motivating Rituals

103

7 Planning the Departure

123

8 Bringing Transformation to South America

137

9 Moving Forward, Looking Back

161

Bibliography

175

Index

187

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Illustrations

Figures 1.1

4.1 5.1 8.1

9.1

The interior of the Omnilife distribution center in Morelia displays some of the nearly 100 products the company offers its members When Jorge Vergara came to Morelia, he modeled his trademark look of shoes without socks Irma Ruiz explained the “Map of Success” to the audience in Morelia The sparse Nutriline office in Santiago contained Omnilife products and a copy of Sunday’s newspaper classifieds Cases of Omnilife carbonated drinks peek out from the table of gifts at the party for Pamela’s first communion

7 69 87

142

165

Tables 2.1 3.1 5.1 5.2 5.3

Simplified chart of Luisa’s Omnilife organization Prominent direct selling companies based in the United States A hypothetical downline for a two-week period A bimonthly paycheck for Luisa from June 2005 with gross income in bold Omnilife’s hierarchy of commissions

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27 44 92 93 94

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Names Mentioned

In Morelia Luisa: A single mother and silver distributor of Omnilife products Victor and Amalia: Luisa’s parents, who are gold distributors of Omnilife products Marco: Luisa’s brother and a bronze Omnilife distributor Pamela: Luisa’s daughter Diego: Luisa’s uncle, who joins Omnilife Roberto: Luisa’s boyfriend Nanda Vergara: first Omnilife distributor in Morelia, who recruited Victor and Amalia Esteban and Carla: diamond-level Omnilife distributors recruited by Victor and Amalia In Santiago, Chile Daniel: Luisa’s cousin from Mexico City Sara: a young Chilean woman Luisa recruits to join Omnilife Felipe: a Chilean recruit to Omnilife Omnilife leaders Jorge Vergara: founder of Omnilife Manuel: facilitator of Omnilife basic school for men Ana: facilitator of graduation for Omnilife basic school Antonio Ramírez and Irma Ruiz: diamond-level Omnilife distributors from Cuernavaca, Mexico

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Acknowledgments

F

inancial support from the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the University of Oklahoma College of Arts and Sciences made my travel to Mexico possible. The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study provided the ideal space for completing the manuscript. Several academic colleagues offered suggestions for improving drafts, including Anath Ariel de Vidas, Wendy Cadge, Alex Dent, Marla Frederick, Virginia Garrard-Burnett, Cristina Gutiérrez Zúñiga, Tassie Hirschfeld, Laurel Kendall, Misha Klein, Roger Magazine, Andrea Maldonado, Victoria Malkin, Alexis McCrossen, Keith McNeal, Amanda Minks, Diane Nelson, Marion Nestle, Sean O’Neill, Theresa Preston, Fran Rothstein, David Stoll, Circe Sturm, Robert Van Kemper, Ara Wilson, and the graduate students of my writing seminar. One of the disadvantages of organizing the book around a central character is that many consultants who contributed to my comprehensive view of Omnilife go unmentioned. In Morelia, I am grateful for the insights provided by Yolanda Ambriz, Alirio Aranguren, Ana Arciga, Rafael Barriga, Bernardo Bastide, Blanca Castañeda, Silvia Castañeda, the Cedeño Cisneros family, Mago Contreras, Sergio Corona, David Cuevas, Martín del Campo, Judit del Río, the Díaz Arellano family, Lilia Domínguez, Martín Domínguez, Mario Duran, Carmen Espinosa, Arnold García, David García, Luis Henrique García, Silvia Goméz, Enrique Ibarra, Oliver and Esperanza Kozlarek, María de Jesús López, Martin Medina, Oscar Mendoza, María Virginia Miranda, Gaby Pérez, the Razo Villagomez family, Develmira Moreno, Fernando Moreno, Patricia Moreno, Alejandra Motilla, Lupe Ovando, Juvenal Pérez, Ignacio Piñón, Laura Ramírez, Victor Mucio Ramírez, Remigio Ramírez, the Raygadas family, María Eugenia Razo, the Rentería Tinoco family, the Rodríguez Zalapa family, Nicolas Rojas, Maria Amparo Rosales, Zenon Santoyo, Louis Sass, Judith Shaw, Dinora Torres, Alma Valencia, Francisco Vargas, Costanza Viale, Nanda Vergara, Fernando Vieyra, and Bernabé Villa.

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xiv

ACK NOW LEDGMENT S

In Chile, I benefited from the generosity of Pablo Carrasco, Marcela Fritz, and Alejandro Tello. I owe the greatest debt to Luisa and her extended family. The names I use for them are pseudonyms even though they were anxious to make their enthusiasm for Omnilife known. So thoroughly did they embody the principles of positive thinking that they treated their personal friendships with the same warm affection they gave their professional recruits. Among Omnilife members in Morelia, Luisa’s family was famous, so trying to mask their identities may seem pointless. Still, because they shared as many failures as celebrations with me, I would like to offer them some protection from exploitation by Omnilife’s detractors. When I asked Luisa to pick her pseudonym, she did not hesitate. She wanted to be named after her favorite singer and celebrity crush, the Mexican crooner Luis Miguel. As fitting her namesake, an artist whose hits include, “Amor, Amor, Amor,” and “Misterios de Amor,” Luisa showed an unlimited capacity to love those around her without irony. If positive thinking did not always deliver the intended results for her, it was not due to lack of effort.

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Chapter 1

Making Work a Commission

L

uisa had been teasing me all morning about my reluctance to go parasailing. Every summer she and her family drove three hours from their home in the central Mexican city of Morelia to the Pacific resort town of Ixtapa. They stayed at an all-inclusive hotel on the ocean and spent several days swimming, shopping, and trying adventure sports. On this visit in August 2005, Luisa, who was then 34, invited me to join her brother, my age-mate at 30, her seven-year-old daughter, and her teenaged cousin at the beach. The first morning there, I noticed that several vacationers had strapped themselves to a parachute tethered to a speedboat. When the boat took off across the bay, the passengers were lifted into the air behind it like human kites. Luisa challenged me to try the sport. I looked dubiously at the operators’ casual style and frayed equipment, but Luisa insisted that there was nothing to fear. Finally, I agreed on the condition that she ride with me. While the boat captain revved his engine, another man helped us into our harnesses. He instructed me that when we circled back to the original spot on the beach, I would have to slow our descent by pulling on one of the ropes above my head. All I had to do was listen for his signal—a whistle. While the rest of the group stayed at the pool to watch, the boat took off, skipping over the calm waters and lifting us into the air. From our position, Luisa and I could see the entire curve of the bay and the string of hotels lining its edge. Neither the sounds of the waves nor the squeals of the children reached us suspended high above the boat. Instead of feeling terror, as I had anticipated, I felt a pervasive calm. I told Luisa how embarrassed I was that I had been too scared to try the parachute. She nodded and said, “It’s all here,” pointing to her head. “You are what you think.” My fear had paralyzed me,

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D I R E C T S A L E S I N L AT I N A M E R I C A

but once I decided that I would try the ride, I helped shape a positive outcome. We completed our circle of the bay in a few minutes, and the boat positioned us over the sand where we were to land. I listened carefully for the signal to pull on the parachute, but as we got closer to the beach, I heard a cacophony of whistles from several volleyball games and yanked the rope too soon. My earlier fear returned briefly, but the man on the ground expertly wrangled the rope so we overshot the goal by only a few feet. By the time he came to help us out of our harnesses, Luisa was laughing at my mistake, never once letting a shadow of fear cross her face. “You are what you think” is more than a slogan Luisa uses to comfort jittery friends. Belief in the power of internal states to shape the external world guides her approach to family, career, and relationships. It also informs her understanding of God’s role in the universe. Because a part of God resides within her own mind, she can access divine power simply by thinking. Despite its spiritual impact, she did not learn this philosophy while attending Mass on Sundays or from reading the Bible in parochial school. She became a devotee of positive thinking by joining a secular, for-profit nutritional supplement company called Omnilife. How Luisa came to cultivate her mind, which I tell in these pages, is an example of how faith is lived in contemporary Latin America. Luisa and her fellow Omnilife representatives illustrate the rise of a particular kind of intimate relationship with the divine, unmediated by clergy, saints, or sin. Their “mind over matter” approach exemplifies the phenomenon I am calling “direct faith.” Luisa considers herself a committed Roman Catholic and follows its sacraments, but no Church teaching orients her worldview as profoundly as her experience selling Omnilife vitamins. Scholars have recognized that religious work, in the sense of “negotiating what it means to be a human person in relation to transcendence,” occurs both inside and outside traditional ecclesiastical institutions (Chidester 2005: vii). Often, when social scientists document this increasing fluidity in religious expression, they depict rootless seekers combing the modern spiritual landscape for personally satisfying experiences of the sacred (Roof 1999; Wolfe 2003; Wuthnow 1998). The image that emerges is one of a religious free market in which each believer freely samples from whatever the available purveyors offer. Luisa’s case illustrates a different trend. While she draws inspiration for her worldview from an eclectic range of sources, she situates her everyday practice of religion within a particular church. Like thousands of other Omnilife members, Luisa self-identifies as a Roman Catholic and at the same time pursues a strategy of eliminating the

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MAKING WORK A COMMISSION

3

bureaucratic and psychic barriers between her and God. She does not abandon the faith of her family; she makes it more direct. Participating in Omnilife provides the tools to streamline her faith. The company embodies directness for Luisa through both its business plan and its motivational rhetoric. It is part of a worldwide explosion of companies modeled on Avon and Amway that eliminate retailing middlemen in favor of face-to-face contact between commission-based sellers and buyers. Members of the World Federation of Direct Selling Associations report that their global sales forces climbed from 33 million enrolled members in 1998 to over 62 million in 2007. Over 2 million of those come from Mexico, placing the country tenth out of 52 countries. Companies operating in Mexico accounted for $3 billion in annual sales, the sixth-most profitable country for direct selling (WFDSA 2009). Beyond the functions of designing and manufacturing products, all direct selling companies share an emphasis on generating positive thoughts. They sponsor glossy publications and rousing meetings designed to teach representatives how they can achieve their goals simply by training their minds. While the consumers benefit from purchasing goods directly from sellers, the sellers learn that by bypassing outside institutions they can improve their lives. If direct selling’s global rise seems unusual to consumers in the developed world, where Avon and Amway connote a bygone era, it represents just one facet of a widespread trend. Luisa’s discovery that her outlook shapes her destiny exemplifies how people everywhere are adopting directness. They come to see that they need only to rework their minds to gain access to the cosmic powers that determine success. The same principle that Omnilife promotes—each person possesses the innate ability to affect the material world through one’s mind—underlies the success of 12-step support groups, self-help literature, and New Age spirituality. Indeed, those very movements have also gained popularity in Mexico alongside Omnilife’s growth (see Brandes 2002; Friedland 2000; Gutiérrez Zúñiga 1996). Like joining Alcoholics Anonymous or reading Chicken Soup for the Soul, participating in Omnilife triggers a total life reevaluation for Luisa. Far more than simply selling vitamin packets, becoming an Omnilife distributor starts her on a path to spiritual enlightenment. She dedicates herself to banishing the limiting beliefs that portray her as a victim of circumstances and developing the positive thoughts that allow her to assume command over the future. The commissions she receives from the company measure not just her prowess in pitching vitamins but also the progress of her larger commission to transform her life.

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A positive-thinking approach to the world empowers the person doing the thinking, but inevitably he or she must confront the limits of the mind to affect material reality. Luisa’s confidence in sailing behind the boat masks a deeper struggle to sustain an overly optimistic worldview. Adopting a prosperous attitude has helped her attain initial success in the company and inspire hundreds of other recruits to follow her. Yet, for as much as she trains her mind to think successful thoughts, Luisa remains stuck on an earnings plateau. She sees other Omnilife distributors with less time in the company rocket past her to the top rung of earners while her income stagnates. In the logic of direct faith, the only explanations for failure are internal to the believer. Luisa cannot blame external hurdles for the difficulty in achieving her goals, so she redoubles her efforts to think positively. In subsequent chapters, I will describe how she works ceaselessly to improve her attitude by adopting Omnilife’s philosophy of nutrition, following its business model, attending its motivational exercises, and finally facing the drastic decision whether to leave Mexico. That she never abandons her commitment to positive thinking demonstrates the durable appeal of direct faith. In framing this book around a single person’s experience, I follow an established anthropological convention (Langness and Frank 1981). Often these protagonists have extraordinary qualities; by allowing an outsider to shadow their lives, they demonstrate unusual self-awareness. At the same time, they tend to be at the center of a wide social nexus, providing insight into phenomena that affect a larger circle of people. Religion, in particular, seems to lend itself to analysis through an individual’s experiences (see Brown 2001; Gossen 1989; Kendall 1988; Lewis 1964; Mintz 1960). This approach stints on broad statistical observations, but helps capture the ineffable and often contradictory nature of lived faith. In the case of Omnilife, which does not recognize itself as performing a religious function, focusing on one representative of its 3 million distributors opens a window onto how deeply the company instills a particular worldview. Luisa was by no means the only Omnilife seller I befriended, but she was the only one to invite me to join her family at the beach. The access she granted me to her professional and personal lives helped me form a more complete picture of how belief in the power of the mind operates in one devotee’s life. Signing Up as a Distributor I first noticed the presence of direct selling in Mexico while I was studying Protestant churches in the central-western state of Michoacán in 1999. Since the 1980s, Latin America has witnessed an explosion

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in religious conversions, with former Roman Catholics joining charismatic evangelical churches by the millions. Numerically, Protestants make up a tiny part of the rural community where I lived, but I found that their beliefs in clean living and studying Scripture exert an outsized influence. The prospect of remaking themselves as more effective professionally and spiritually—whether or not they officially switch churches—appeals to many Mexicans. The desire for a new life takes many forms, not all of them obviously religious. As soon as they can borrow the money to pay a guide, young men and women commonly migrate to work in the United States. Other families invest resources in sending their children to a university so they can train to become professionals. And, although I did not make the connection between direct sales and life transformations at first, at least a dozen women in the community of 3,000 people supported themselves as representatives for Avon cosmetics. I treated this simply as a curiosity of globalization until May 2000 when one Avon lady invited me to attend a meeting of direct sellers with their regional director. Instead of the dry business seminar I expected, I witnessed a ritual more akin to the evangelical services I had been attending. The group leader taped the names of the twenty women present to a wall. Then, she handed everyone a stack of Post-It notes and asked them to write a one-word description of their colleagues and attach it under their name. When they finished, each woman collected a list of flattering adjectives about herself: “friendly,” “honest,” “hardworking,” for example. With the glow of compliments still fresh, the coordinator asked the women, “What would you do if you knew you had 24 hours to live?” One woman stood up to say that she used to worry about what people said about her, but now she felt confident to pursue her dreams. Another expressed tearfully how she would stop being so harsh with her family and tell them how much she loved them. The session ended with administrative tasks and the distribution of the next month’s catalog of items. What I took away was that for the customers, direct selling means simply a more personal mode of distributing products, but to the sellers, it is about transformation. Most people encounter direct selling only from the perspective of a potential client. The high-pressure sales tactics usually associated with direct selling will be familiar to anyone who has felt the obligation to make a purchase at a friend’s Tupperware party or to sit through a relative’s pitch for Amway. In that setting, it is difficult to see direct sellers as interested in anything other than making a buck. As independent contractors, representatives certainly feel strongly motivated to turn every encounter into a potential sale. They receive no base pay,

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sick leave, or retirement benefits and depend solely on commissions for their income. Yet, devoted direct sellers almost never understand their charge in strictly financial terms. For them, a primary component of their work is to promote internal change through a reshaping of mental states. Through participating in the company’s trainings and motivational exercises, they find a map for realizing their true potential. The emotional paycheck they receive often outweighs the monetary one. To document how direct selling organizations create changes in their members’ lives, I relocated in 2003 to Morelia, the capital of Michoacán. About 700,000 people live in Morelia, but I knew only one resident, a young doctor who fulfilled her community service near where I had conducted my earlier fieldwork. When I contacted her, I asked if she knew anyone who participated in direct selling. She introduced me to a friend of her mother’s who sold Avon products in the neighborhood. With her approval, I attended Avon meetings and heard more testimonials from housewives of life transformations. Avon claimed the largest sales force of any direct seller in Morelia, and I frequently saw women perusing its glossy catalogs around the city. While I had permission to observe meetings of Avon ladies, the gender barrier made interactions awkward because I was usually the only adult male in a room of 100 women. Another obstacle that led me to investigate different firms was that Avon operates as a single-level marketer. That is, it compensates its representatives primarily through profits on individual sales. The great majority of all direct selling companies fall under the category of multilevel marketer. In addition to pocketing the markup from each sale, distributors earn money by recruiting others to join the company under them, forming large networks known as “downlines.” I decided to investigate the range of direct selling companies with operations in Morelia. I asked some of the Avon ladies for leads and kept my eyes open for promising flyers and office signs. Direct sellers typically do not advertise, preferring to gain clients by word of mouth; so the best source of information was asking my neighbors for leads. Soon, I had identified 15 separate direct selling companies within a 30-minute walk of the middle-class residential neighborhood where I lived. Most of the companies had headquarters in the United States. For instance, Golden Neo-Life Diamite International, a multilevel marketer of vitamins known as GNLD and based in California, maintained a large office on a busy retail boulevard. Arizona-based nutritional supplement firm Forever Living held meetings just a block away. Cosmetic giants like Mary Kay delivered products to distributors’ homes, but they still sponsored a meeting room where sales teams gathered weekly for

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motivational sessions. Household accessory firms like Stanhome (formerly Stanley Home Products) and Tupperware also had offices in my neighborhood where distributors attended trainings and sought help with ordering goods. Three companies I visited were based in Mexico. One sold costume jewelry, and two marketed nutritional supplements. One of the three Mexican direct sellers had a more visible presence in Morelia than any of the other companies. The Omnilife distribution center in Morelia happened to be located on one of the major avenues in my neighborhood (see Figure 1.1). I had encountered the company’s vitamin supplements during my earlier stay in Michoacán when a new distributor, who was friendly with my landlady, invited me to a demonstration at her house. I did not buy any of the powders then, but the miraculous health claims the speaker made for the products stuck with me. A few years later in Morelia, I recognized the company’s logo on a sign outside the store, entered, and approached the counter where cashiers processed orders. I identified myself as an anthropologist and asked if anyone could tell me about the company. One employee agreed to talk to me, but it became clear that he did not have sufficient knowledge to answer my questions. He referred me across the street to an independent support center run

Figure 1.1 The interior of the Omnilife distribution center in Morelia displays some of the nearly 100 products the company offers its members.

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by an Omnilife distributor. Unlike the Omnilife store with its oversized logo and bright purple façade, this unassuming office had only a small stenciled sign on the glass door indicating its connection with Omnilife. In fact, I had passed by it several times over the summer without ever realizing its connection to direct selling. For the second time that day, I introduced myself and asked if someone could give me more information about Omnilife. Two women were talking casually in the office, but when I came in, they both turned to greet me. The older one, who introduced herself as Luisa, sat behind the desk. Frosted blond hair framed her round, welcoming face. In the summer heat, she looked fresh in a pink T-shirt, jeans, and sandals that showed her pink toenails. She invited me to sit down across from her and asked if I was familiar with Omnilife’s products. I mentioned the one meeting I had attended where the hostess had given me a cup of the company’s coffee to try. Upon hearing this single reference, Luisa launched into an enthusiastic litany of anecdotes about the products’ healing properties. The coffee, she told me, helps prevent diabetes. Another drink called Magnus “injects you” with eight to ten hours of energy. The brain supplement Optimus treats epilepsy and has given her five-year-old daughter an advantage over her kindergarten classmates. Tequilife weans alcoholics from their addiction, Ego Frutas protects the liver, Ego Mandarina promotes weight loss, Super Mix provides calcium, PowerMaker improves muscle tone, One Per Meal eliminates free radicals, Fem removes cysts, Ego Life maintains hydration when exercising, OmniPlus boosts the defenses of AIDS patients, and Magic Siluet delivers fiber to diets. Luisa spoke these idiosyncratic names so swiftly and with such passion that I could only nod and scribble hurriedly in my notebook. When I finally found an opening in the conversation, I asked Luisa who formulated these miraculous supplements. She did not hesitate: “They’ve been designed by scientists from NASA, the same ones who patented the laser ray and made food for the astronauts.” This claim raised my suspicions. First, I doubted that the development of the laser came out of space research. Second, it seemed unlikely that products formulated by the U.S. government—especially such miraculous ones—would reach the Mexican market before they appeared in the United States. I remember thinking that if even one of Luisa’s claims for the product were true, then the Nobel Prize committee would have recognized the company by now. Still, I continued to listen as Luisa explained the exclusive technology that allowed the products to deliver nutrients directly to the

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body’s cells in seven to ten minutes. She reassured me that whatever vitamins or minerals the cell does not require, it expels as waste, making Omnilife products harmless for consumers of all ages and health conditions. After two hours of conversation, I paid the $20 enrollment fee to become Omnilife distributor number 1,715,296, with Luisa as my sponsor. I left the office clutching a purple canvas bag with a company magazine, a bottle of the company water, and a container of the orange powder called Magnus. By the end of the summer, I had visited nearly a dozen other direct sellers and paid the registration fee to join a few of them. Their product lines ranged from nutritional supplements to cosmetics, plastic storage boxes, and costume jewelry. I realized that rather than conduct a broad survey of several direct sellers, I should focus on developing a thick description of one. Aside from specific product names and details of the compensation plans, the companies differed little, so I chose to concentrate on Omnilife, the one with the largest and most active base of distributors in Morelia. As I showed up more frequently at Luisa’s support center for the regular training sessions, I met more of her family. Her parents, Victor and Amalia, are also Omnilife distributors and share responsibility for staffing the support center with Luisa. Her brother Marco, uncle Diego, and several cousins all devote themselves full-time to working as Omnilife distributors. They gather frequently to commemorate birthdays, baptisms, weddings, or just to drink rounds of tequila at home. I first ventured to Luisa’s parents’ house when Victor asked me to help him with a computer program, and I ended up staying for a meal. After returning in 2004 and 2005 for ten more months of fieldwork, I had become so friendly with Luisa that she invited me to join her for a vacation in Ixtapa. Throughout my fieldwork, I visited direct sellers affiliated with other companies to gather a more critical perspective on Omnilife than the one Luisa gave me. While these firms were not the focus of my fieldwork, they provided important background and context. The testimonials I heard gave me confidence that my analysis of Omnilife applies to all the direct selling companies operating in Morelia. In total, I spoke with 60 Omnilife distributors at varying levels of experience and attended company meetings with audiences that ranged from four distributors sitting on plastic chairs in a garage to 20,000 distributors arrayed on stadium bleachers. Though I consumed Omnilife’s nutritional supplements, I never sold the products or recruited others to form a sales organization. Thankfully, that entrepreneurial passivity did not make me stand out

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among Omnilife representatives in Morelia. Fewer than a dozen members of Luisa’s downline rely on direct selling for their sole source of income the way she does. The majority occasionally sells products to earn extra cash or take advantage of the member discounts to purchase vitamins for their families. The low barriers to entry guarantee a low-risk investment. While few Morelianos match her time commitment, Luisa is typical in the goals that motivate her to join Omnilife and accept its particular message of personal empowerment. Over 15 years, Luisa has constructed an organization that has close to 1,000 people and generates gross income of about $9,000 a month. So extensive are the layers of her downline that she has never met most of the members. I discovered this on our second day in Ixtapa when Luisa, her daughter Pamela, and I went on a shopping trip to an open-air mall across the street from the hotel. After browsing the stores, we stopped at an ice-cream shop and ordered a scoop for Pamela. Sitting in the shade as the girl ate her cone, I recognized a small cache of Omnilife products lined up on the shelf behind the ice-cream counter. I pointed them out to Luisa. When we stood up to leave, Luisa approached the cashier and asked if she was an Omnilife distributor. The woman told us that she had enrolled five years earlier to treat problems of gastritis and colitis. By taking the vitamins, she had regained her health and had started encouraging others to join the company. She remembered crying the first time she received a $100 commission check, a windfall in a country where the minimum wage is about $5 a day. Luisa asked who sponsored her in the company, and when the cashier answered, Luisa smiled. This woman we had encountered by chance on the other side of the state belonged to the fourth generation of Luisa’s organization. Encounters like these exemplify the satisfaction that Luisa derives from her involvement with Omnilife. The company slogan, “People helping people,” inspires her to endure the hard work of recruiting new members. Seeing people experience improvement—whether in their physical or financial health—provides the most valuable payoff for all her efforts. Through her participation in Omnilife, Luisa learns that the most effective way to help others achieve their goals is to serve as a role model for a transformed life. Many recruits enter the company with a narrow focus on earning small amounts of quick cash. Luisa understands why these women and men from the working and middle classes expect to earn only a few extra dollars a day because she was once in their position. Lacking professional degrees or personal connections, they limit their vision of running a business to mere subsistence. She models for them an

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entirely different approach in which much greater possibilities are available. “How many packets of vitamins would I have to sell to earn what I do?” she asked me rhetorically. “I am an entrepreneur.” As an entrepreneur, she does not expend energy peddling vitamins door to door. Rather, direct selling forms the basis for a lucrative career. All it takes to adopt this new mentality is “changing the cassette tape” in her head from playing negative thoughts to positive ones. It requires several years of work to retrain a mind, but if Luisa can do it, anyone can. Responding to Neoliberalism To understand Luisa’s and millions of other distributors’ commitment to direct sales, it is helpful to situate her involvement with Omnilife in the larger context of the region. From the 1930s to the 1970s, Mexico and other Latin American governments actively managed their economies to nurture domestic industries. When Mexico defaulted on its loans in 1982, the United States and global financial institutions seized on the opportunity to remove state involvement from the economy and implement market reforms. As a result, “Mexico was one of the first states drawn into what was going to become a growing column of neoliberal state apparatuses worldwide” (Harvey 2005: 29). Sociologist Sarah Babb shows that factors internal to Mexican political administration also fostered the acceptance of structural adjustment policies. Starting in the 1980s, an elite class of U.S.-trained technocrats assumed power of economic decision making in Mexico and sought to internationalize the country’s economy (Babb 2001: 21). However it originated, the shift to free trade and outside investment was so entrenched by the 1990s that not even signs of failure could dislodge the model. When the country faced a crippling devaluation of its currency and a depletion of reserves in 1994, the then president Zedillo, supported by international lenders, redoubled on the austerity measures (Green 1995: 86). The enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that year sealed Mexico’s commitment to dismantling the last vestiges of state interference with free markets. For many Mexicans, the effects of NAFTA and the privatization of the economy were devastating. While income inequality worsened, consumer prices rose and public spending decreased (Hellman 1999). Public-sector employment, the traditional route to socioeconomic mobility in Mexico after World War II, dried up, and no new source of jobs took its place (Loaeza 1995). To meet the need for additional sources of income, more men crossed the border to the United States

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in search of work (Martínez 2001). Youth and women who chose not to migrate could not afford to continue their studies. Anthropologist Frances Rothstein has studied one community in central Mexico for several decades and has documented how the economic crisis of the 1980s led to an increase in teenagers leaving school to engage in petty commerce and to women seeking jobs in garment workshops. Consistent with the egalitarian ideals of neoliberal reforms, the rural Mexicans Rothstein interviewed came to view entrepreneurship, not education, as the favored path to an improved life (Rothstein 1996: 362). With discrimination rampant in hiring and access to credit restricted, the only option for 20 million people, about half of working Mexican adults, was to sell their products or services in the informal economy (Lyons 2007). The lack of secure sources of income may have left working-class Mexicans anxious, but it made the direct selling industry optimistic. In the year of NAFTA’s enactment, a direct selling executive wrote, “There are many positive implications for direct sellers in the expanding Mexican economy” (Bartlett 1994: 217). Direct selling in Mexico predates neoliberal reforms, but the push for private entrepreneurship accelerated direct selling’s reach. Avon was the first direct selling firm to operate in Mexico, setting up shop in 1957 and quickly integrating into the culture. While doing research in Ciudad Juárez in the 1980s, anthropologist María Patricia Fernández-Kelly discovered that Avon sales had become part of the web of reciprocity in proletarian neighborhoods along the border (Fernández-Kelly 1983: 159). Individual Tupperware dealers also started selling in Mexico in the 1950s. The plastic food containers had penetrated so deeply into the country by the 2000s that Nahua Indians in rural Veracruz incorporated the blue plastic cups the company called “Maxivasos” into their ritual offerings to the spirits of the earth (Ariel de Vidas 2008: 268). In 1966, Avon and Tupperware formed the Mexican Association of Direct Selling (AMVD by its initials in Spanish) to represent their business interests in the country. At first the companies limited their presence to the cities, but as more members joined, direct sales spread outside urban areas. One ethnographer, investigating race and nationalism in rural Mexico, stumbled on a cluster of Amway distributors (Frye 1996: 33). While economic policies encouraging foreign investment help explain the expansion of direct selling companies from the United States to developing countries, it is unclear why millions of people around the world have signed on as distributors. For the most part, anthropologists who have examined direct selling suggest that

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commission-based selling appeals to workers in neoliberal climates because it offers ready-made scripts for getting ahead according to the rules of unfettered capitalism. In theory, neoliberal governments step back from interfering with economic activities, leaving individuals free to behave in their own interests. Direct selling, a private industry that shuns state interference and heralds the cumulative potential of individual decision making, fits this mindset snugly. Anthropologist Ara Wilson found that direct selling boomed in Thailand in the 1990s just as the country privatized industries and sought to stimulate entrepreneurship. For urban Thai Avon and Amway distributors, direct selling offered a “learnable system for working independently” that enabled distributors to align themselves with the new regime of unfettered capitalism (Wilson 2004: 174). Additional anthropological perspectives demonstrate how affiliating with direct selling organizations allows workers on the periphery of global capitalism to adopt a more cosmopolitan identity in keeping with the demands of a free enterprise system. Ida Fadzillah conducted fieldwork in a village in Northern Thailand where many young girls have become Avon and Amway representatives. For them, she argues, direct selling presents an avenue to “disassociate themselves economically, socially, and even geographically from their rural backgrounds and align themselves instead to a more global world” (Fadzillah 2005: 86). Unlike their mothers, whose selling confines them to the village market, adolescent girls travel to urban centers for conferences and apply cosmetics to emulate an international standard of beauty. Similarly, in China, laid-off urban workers, educated civil servants, and manufacturing employees fill the ranks of direct sellers in search of a way to reposition themselves away from the margins of a deindustrialized landscape (Jeffery 2001: 72). Without the need for bank loans, a business plan, or previous work experience, direct selling provides a ready entry to the modern, neoliberal economy. These explanations of direct selling’s popularity emphasize one meaning of the term “commission.” They frame the appeal of commission-based sales as an accessible, transparent way to participate successfully in the free market. Distributors earn income only when they reach a sale, in effect becoming their own self-sufficient, private corporations. Yet, these interpretations define neoliberalism in its ideal form and miss how it has been implemented around the turn of the millennium. Instead of embracing openness and rational calculation, free actors are choosing to participate in what observers have called “occult economies” (Comaroff and Comaroff 1999). Anthropologist Rosalind Morris describes how, amidst the economic

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disclosures imposed on Thailand by international lending institutions in the 1990s, a prominent spirit medium denounced his career and exposed the secrets he once employed to deceive his audiences into believing he possessed special powers. This dramatic rejection of a mystical practice would seem to comply with the openness that free market capitalism demands. Following this decision, however, the former medium announced that he was becoming an Amway distributor. His former assistants became members of his downline while his former clients became targets for recruitment. He merely replaced one “occult network” with another (Morris 2000: 473). Pyramid schemes, the criminal cousin of direct selling, also proliferated during the neoliberal era. They too represent the opposite of transparency because as long as they are operating, it is never clear how they manage to produce profits. Like direct selling, they rely on constant infusions of new recruits, but no products circulate through the network and no selling takes place. Money seems to beget money magically. Soon after the introduction of capitalism in the 1990s, citizens in former Soviet-bloc countries succumbed to numerous pyramid schemes that promised high returns but soon collapsed (Andrews 1997). One such scheme in Romania—Caritas—eventually ensnared one-fifth of the country’s population before failing. Anthropologist Katherine Verdery notes how for these capitalist neophytes, “the process of learning forms of economic or market rationality—a process to which Caritas was central—has been occurring in part through the irrational means of faith and hope” (Verdery 1995: 656). “Irrational” faith continues to ensnare eager participants in the modern economy. In 2008, the Chinese government shut down nearly 4,000 pyramid schemes (Lim 2009). The same year, 4 million Colombians lost a total of $1 billion in a pyramid scheme involving prepaid debit cards (Forero 2008). College students and working-class investors, eager to see their money multiply, were the most likely to fall prey to the scams. To understand how faith and hope play a role in fueling the spread of direct selling, I turn to another definition of the term “commission.” As the tears of the ice-cream cashier in Ixtapa upon receiving a relatively modest check indicate, commissions stand for more than the optimal allocation of resources. They resemble what scholars of the New Testament call the “Great Commission.” In the Book of Matthew, Jesus gives a charge to his followers: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28: 19–20). Direct sellers accept a similar charge to convert and then share their renewal

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with others. They may not formally change their religious affiliations as early Christians preached, but they nonetheless adopt a new worldview that they spread alongside the sale of vitamins. The worldview espoused by Omnilife and other direct sellers looks backward to a time when prosperity came naturally. In a typical industrialized society, the companies contend, citizens do not control their own destinies. The demands of wage labor leave parents too sapped to spend time with their families, environmental pollutants compromise health, and meddlesome governments stifle freedom. These burdens go against the innate powers of the human mind to shape the physical world. Because they have yet to capitulate to the capitalist system, children still exhibit the hallmarks of our primordial state. While adults have become timid and lethargic, children remain brave and energetic. Direct selling companies promise to restore the balance between work, human relationships, and wealth (Bromley 1995: 143). In becoming a direct seller, distributors unlearn the cynicism of adulthood and replace it with an expansive vision of unlimited success. If direct selling resembles proselytizing faith as much as it does an entrepreneurial opportunity, then its growth in Mexico and around the world represents more than savvy accommodation to changing economic realities. The popularity of commission-based selling manifests the strong desire among millions of people to undergo a kind of spiritual conversion. It resembles what anthropologists Liliana Goldin and Brent Metz call an “invisible conversion” (Goldin and Metz 1991). When they surveyed Roman Catholics in highland Guatemala, Goldin and Metz found that many nonconverts appreciated the Protestant prohibition on drinking and emphasis on hard work, but did not seek to affiliate with a new church. In the same way, converts to Omnilife’s brand of direct faith must cast off ideas of original sin and mediators to God without leaving the Catholic Church. Alongside the cosmopolitan, entrepreneurial qualities encouraged by neoliberalism, direct sellers seek to return to a primordial past when humans understood how to control their own destinies without relying on anyone else. The spread of direct selling signals not only the advent of modern economic subjects, but also nostalgia for something lost. Seeking Life Transformations The ballooning ranks of direct sellers across the world, like other transformational movements, draw predominantly from the working and middle classes. For strivers like Luisa and her family, the pursuit of new, powerful selves never ceases. They started their careers with few

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advantages other than a knack for commerce. Through diligence and discipline, they gained entrance to the middle class. Achieving socioeconomic stability, however, is no barrier against the need to constantly adjust their attitudes and monitor their thoughts. Social critic Barbara Ehrenreich explains why the middle classes in the United States display a persistent anxiety about their status. Because their hold on respectability is not secure enough to pass on to the next generation, “in this class, no one escapes the requirements of self-discipline and self-directed labor” (Ehrenreich 1989: 15). She likens this unending struggle to the plight of chronic dieters. Even when they achieve their desired condition, dieters must be vigilant against the slightest slipup, which could undo the most hard-earned weight loss. Indeed, during the time I spent in Morelia, Luisa was trying to lose weight through a fitful combination of Omnilife supplements, exercise, and nutrition. Her attempts at physical transformation mirror her ongoing mental exercises. No matter how much she tries, though, she can reach neither her desired body nor her ideal mindset. Dieting, as historian Hillel Schwartz explains, represents nostalgia for a simpler past when one could be satisfied with less (Schwartz 1986: 307). Of course, such a time never existed, so the dieter is consigned to regulate her consumption and avoid backsliding indefinitely. The near impossibility of achieving her goals does not deter Luisa. It merely reinforces her conversion to direct faith. Undoing the toxic effects of societal, environmental, and political influences to reclaim power over the course of her own life is never supposed to be easy. If it were easy, then everyone would enjoy success. As Luisa likes to say, success may not be easy, but it is simple. Thinking positively costs nothing and requires no specialized training. Her charge is simply to maintain an optimistic outlook in the face of an onslaught of challenges. On this interior level, Luisa exemplifies the “Protestant Ethic” that Max Weber (2001[1904–5]) famously theorized as facilitating the emergence of capitalism. Weber proposed that with the doctrine of predestination came the imperative for Protestants to live as if God had chosen them for salvation. Calvinists, in particular, demonstrated confidence in their election by bringing the concept of the “calling” from the monastery to the mundane world of work. They denied themselves luxuries so that they could exalt God in the rational pursuit of economic gain. Indeed, the growth of Protestant congregations has coincided with the adoption of open market policies in Latin America since the 1990s (Dow 2005: 831). Anthropologist Sheldon Annis has noted the resemblance of these new capitalist subjects to Calvinist

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ascetics. Unlike their Roman Catholic neighbors, converts abstain from smoking, drinking, gambling, and other vices and turn weaving into a purely decorative craft to maximize sales. So extreme is their self-denial that Annis likens Protestants in Guatemala to “anorexics” (Annis 1987: 142). In a country buffeted by natural disasters and civil war, their obsessive attempts to impose order hearkens back to a time before the chaos. The price for a return to a calmer, more predictable era is the imposition of a new, unforgiving discipline of personal behavior. Weber concluded that capitalism had become so entrenched in modern life that it had lost its religious roots. On the surface, Luisa’s involvement in Omnilife seems to support that. Her lifestyle and appearance could not be more different from the Reformation Calvinists or the anorexics that Annis described. She wears designer clothes, drives a late-model imported car, and indulges in regular manicures. She rejects the idea of predestination. Yet, participation in Omnilife for her is not strictly an economic decision. A calling to rewrite her life’s story and to help others do the same motivates her to stick with the company. Public displays of wealth are part of the recruitment tactics she employs to entice new members to her downline. The asceticism marking her work as divine occurs out of sight. To guarantee her transformation, she maintains strict mental discipline and guards against extraneous thoughts. Transformation for Luisa excludes joining a Protestant church. Like all the direct sellers I met in Mexico, she identifies as Roman Catholic. She begins her days by reciting the rosary and closes each night with a bedside prayer. Attendance at Mass punctuates her weeks while church rituals mark her rites of passage. At the same time, she openly criticizes clerical positions on women and families. She also prefers a stripped-down style of worship free of saints and icons more commonly associated with Protestants. Becoming a member of one of the several Protestant churches in Morelia, however, would have required her to starve herself of the Catholic practices that nourish the connection to her family and her ancestors. She wants to wrest control over her life without curbing her appetite for fiestas and fun. Instead of switching denominations, Luisa goes on a spiritual diet. Her participation in Omnilife shows her how, within the framework of traditional Roman Catholicism, she can adopt a new worldview. Omnilife’s leaders never explicitly criticize the traditional Roman Catholic Church nor do they attempt to impose a religious requirement on members. But if a recruit participates fully in the company’s curriculum of personal development, she would inevitably be exposed

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to direct faith. In other parts of Latin America, a fast-growing movement within the Church known as Catholic Charismatic Renewal addresses the wishes of parishioners to access divine grace directly (Peterson and Vásquez 1998). With some exceptions, however, the spirit-centered version of Catholicism has yet to take hold in Mexico (Juárez Cerdi 1997). Instead, Mexicans commingle an outward Catholic affiliation with unorthodox beliefs. In one survey conducted among urban Mexicans about their religious beliefs, nearly all respondents identified themselves as Roman Catholics, yet a sizeable portion expressed theological views more in line with New Age metaphysics than with Vatican pronouncements (de la Torre Castellanos 1999). Like many Catholics before her, Luisa finds a way to accommodate her pursuit of direct faith without a formal conversion (Dillon 1999). If religion refers broadly to how humans relate their existence to the transcendent, Luisa calls on much more than the Roman Catholic Church to perform her religious work. Ethnographers have shown how health food devotees (Dubisch 1981) and back-to-the-land agriculturalists (Brinkerhoff and Jacob 1987) internalize values from seemingly secular movements that they use to order their religious worldviews. Luisa’s experience with Omnilife demonstrates how the practice of human spirituality respects no artificial boundary between the sacred and the profane. What her adventure in positive thinking further contributes is an indication that the blurring favors one particular outcome: directness. She retains the elements of her childhood faith that support the image of a generous God while supplementing with ideas from the metaphysical tradition of positive thinking. Together, these influences shape a model of the universe as a repository of divine abundance available to anyone who sends out prosperous thoughts. The image of God as an intimate, benevolent presence in her life contrasts sharply with the distant, punitive God Luisa learned from her Roman Catholic upbringing. Although historians have demonstrated how the colonial Mexican Catholic Church allowed for displays of interior piety (Voekel 2002), growing up during the twentieth century, Luisa received a more impersonal religious education. When she joins Omnilife, she receives a second catechism.

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Chapter 2

Helping Others Help Themselves

L

uisa inherited her durable connection to Roman Catholicism from her parents. Even as she received her religious education, Luisa refused to submit uncritically to religious authority. Her first example of rebellion came in kindergarten. Victor and Amalia, themselves regulars at the 7:00 a.m. Mass, insisted that Luisa attend parochial school. Soon after she started at a Morelia school run by nuns, Luisa bristled against the arbitrary rules and dour environment. Rather than argue with the teachers, which she knew would provoke her parents’ anger, Luisa decided to sidestep them. One day when her mother came to pick her up from kindergarten, the teacher informed Doña Amalia that Luisa had not come to school that day. Alarmed, Amalia cried, “But I dropped her off here this morning!” The staff immediately began searching the premises and eventually found Luisa alone and content in the laundry shed. After her mother had left her in the morning, she went straight there and entertained herself all day by washing her stockings, hanging them to dry, and then taking them down to wash again. The episode in the laundry shed encapsulates Luisa’s relationship with the Catholic Church. She stays within the official confines, but follows her own rules. If a doctrine does not make sense to her, she disregards it while still respecting the institution. She moves from the demonstrative Catholicism of her mother and grandmother, replete with altars and candles to a more private devotion where she can engage God directly. Later in life, when she finds herself stressed about finances or stuck in traffic delivering product to a customer, Luisa returns to the memory of that blissful day when she created her own happiness. She feels free and fulfilled. She does not need anyone else to tell her how to act or what to think. Although Luisa avoids the bitterness of an

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adult Citizen Kane, the kindergarten escapade serves as her Rosebud, a reminder of a more carefree time when success was within easy reach. The theme of self-reliance accompanies Luisa’s trajectory from schoolgirl to direct seller. Growing up with parents as loving and domineering as Victor and Amalia, Luisa struggles to find a balance between accepting their protection and asserting her independence. Whenever she tries to venture out on her own, her parents yank her back into the nest. Over time, Luisa loses the sensation of freedom she experienced in kindergarten and becomes afraid of taking risks. Just when her goal of self-sufficiency seems farthest away, a businessman named Jorge Vergara appears with the promise of determining her own future. In Vergara’s life history, Luisa sees someone who has followed his passions without fear of failure. He designs his company, Omnilife, to enable people like her to turn their dreams into reality. The key to success, according to Vergara, is disavowing the naysayers, casting aside doubt, and adopting direct faith. Finding Her Way Luisa’s mother Amalia was born in a rural Michoacán community about an hour’s drive from Morelia. As the fifth of 11 children, she took on household responsibilities almost as soon as she could walk. When she was still a toddler, the family moved to Morelia, where she accrued her first sales experience by peddling firewood and used clothing in the neighborhood. At seven years, after completing the third grade, Amalia left school for good to work in a store. She turned over her earnings to her mother to help care for her younger siblings and never stopped working. Over the years, she sold perfume, bird feed, fuel for water boilers, and prepared food. As an adult, she moved to Mexico City, where she found work as an administrative employee at a hospital and met Victor. Victor was the brother of her manicurist, who introduced them. His family came from a rural community in the Mexican state of Hidalgo, but he moved to Mexico City after high school and a year in the military. He grew up with more opportunities than Amalia, but he too found his calling in sales. As a bachelor, he worked in a textile factory, a tire factory, and the offices of Excelsior, a Mexico City newspaper. He learned quickly that such monotonous wage work bored him because he did not like being cooped up inside. When he switched to selling subscriptions for Excelsior, Victor experienced a satisfying “freedom.” From there, he became a traveling book salesman specializing in art volumes. This work took him to the studios

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H E L P I N G O T H E R S H E L P T H E M S E LV E S

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of Televisa, the Mexican television giant, where he developed social contacts that would prove useful as his family grew. Their first child, Luisa, was born in 1971. When their son, Marco, was born in 1974, the family barely fit in the cramped Mexico City apartment they rented. Looking back on their early challenges, Amalia detects a divine plan. As she comes to see it, the “hand of God” directed them to Morelia, a city where Amalia and Victor had married and where many of her relatives still lived. The first sign came when a friend in Mexico City told them about an affordable house in Morelia. The next sign she identified came in a sample of facial cream that one of Amalia’s hospital coworkers offered her. Amalia noticed how smooth the cream made her skin feel and sensed a business opportunity. The coworker agreed to sell the formula to Amalia. Then, she and Victor decided to market it. To seal their decision, a friend of Victor’s at Televisa offered to pay for their move to Morelia in exchange for appearing on a television show about families leaving Mexico City. When they arrived in Morelia, they had a house waiting for them, no debt from the move, and a plan to go into business for themselves. Amalia and Victor decided to manufacture the facial creams under their own label and sell them in the temporary open-air markets where many Morelianos did their shopping. As word of their products grew, they supplied clients from as far away as the United States. Though they boasted neither a famous name nor political connections, Amalia and Victor capitalized on their advantages. They used Amalia’s extensive kin network to reach more clients while Victor used his experience selling books to manage the accounting and strategic side. Also, their personalities combined well for business. Amalia, with her regal bearing and stern expression, inspired respect. Her passionate defense of her convictions and serious stare made it impossible to disagree with her. Victor affected an avuncular, pedagogical style in conversation, infusing a jocular rapport with clients. Nearly everyone addressed them by the honorific titles Don and Doña. Despite their growing clientele, Amalia and Victor realized that their facial creams would never leave a lasting patrimony for their children. If neither Luisa nor Marco showed interest in taking over the business, all their work would end with them. Initially, Luisa did not seem destined for an entrepreneurial career. From her first days as a student, she earned the label of troublemaker. After kindergarten, Luisa passed through two more Roman Catholic schools before landing at a high school run by stereotypically stern nuns. Reflecting on these years, Luisa joked, “I’ve been kicked out of the best schools in Morelia.” Perhaps knowing Luisa’s reputation, the nuns considered her a failure from the moment she arrived. Their

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disapproval did little to dampen Luisa’s impatience with those she deemed undeserving of her respect. One teacher consistently came to class unprepared and prattled on without a point, so Luisa refused to pay attention. When the teacher confronted Luisa for talking to a neighbor during class, Luisa announced that if the teacher was not sharing anything of interest she preferred to talk to her friend, whose opinions did interest her. This outburst earned Luisa two weeks’ suspension and lasting contempt for the nuns. As Luisa saw it, rather than being called for a vocation, the sisters all seemed bitter, frustrated women. “Not a single Mother Theresa,” Luisa quipped. The God she learned about from the nuns spread fear, not love. One episode from when she was in high school stands out for Luisa in shaping her values as an adult. She learned that the local orphanage allowed citizens to adopt a child for a day. Curious, she went to investigate and found a one-year-old boy by himself in a corner. She picked him up, and he immediately hugged her, cementing a bond between them. Luisa returned home to begin soliciting clothes and baby items from her friends and neighbors. When she had collected sufficient equipment to receive the young boy, Luisa brought him home. He won the hearts of her entire family so quickly that what started as a one-day experiment stretched into a year-and-a-half guardianship. Eventually, the boy’s biological mother returned to claim him, forcing the social workers to remove him from Luisa’s care. She understood that the mother had the right to raise her own son, but she hoped that she would be permitted to continue seeing him. The mother refused, leaving Luisa and her family heartbroken. This experience left Luisa with two indelible lessons. She discovered her passion for helping children. More painfully, she learned that she should not count on mediators to work in her interest. In her family life as well as her career, she would have to be independent of the government, a boss, or a husband. Years later, in her twenties, when she was working full-time as an Omnilife distributor, Luisa gave an in-home demonstration of the vitamin products and recognized her former adopted son among the extended family of the host. As soon as the meeting ended, Luisa took the boy out to buy him clothes, but when she returned him to his mother, the woman repeated her desire that Luisa not have contact with him. Subsequently, Luisa heard that the mother moved with him to Puerto Vallarta, and she never saw them again. When she graduated from high school, Luisa wanted to study psychology, a field that she believed would help her work with children. At the time, the closest university that offered a psychology degree was in Guadalajara, some three hours from Morelia.

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Her tradition-minded parents immediately rejected the idea of an unmarried woman living alone in a city away from her family. Luisa could not support herself financially nor did she wish to upset her parents, so she stayed in Morelia. The same nuns that ran her high school offered a teacher training program. After receiving her teaching certification, Luisa prepared to teach kindergarten, but to secure a slot in a public school she would first have to accept a year’s service in a rural community. Neither Luisa nor her family wanted her to be so far from home, so she sought work in a private school in Morelia. Reflecting on her time with the nuns, Luisa mused that many of her so-called well-behaved classmates ended up pregnant soon after high school. By contrast, she, the troublemaker, settled in a respectable job and stayed single for several more years. Luisa quickly realized that though she liked working with children, it would not allow her to fulfill her dreams of independence. For four years, Luisa worked in a preschool in the same neighborhood as her parents’ house. Living at home exposed Luisa to her parents’ facial cream business. The idea of becoming her own boss appealed to her. When the school where she worked moved to a larger building. Luisa and three colleagues took this as a chance to start their own daycare facility. They rented space, bought supplies, and recruited students. For the first time, Luisa felt that she could control her future. Yet, as she pursued dreams of financial independence, she found herself increasingly tied to the school. Parents would pick up children as late as 9:00 p.m., forcing the teachers to work long hours. Nor did Luisa earn much. At that point, her goal was to have a car, but with her income from the school, it would take years to save enough money. Six months into the venture, in October 1991, a new opportunity to pursue her goals “presented itself,” and she left her partners to run the school without her. Starting a Company While still a student, Luisa sold Avon cosmetics to her classmates. The sporadic sales provided extra cash, but she never seriously considered making it a career. During her stint running the daycare, Luisa thought again about direct selling as a way to supplement her income. In 1990 she briefly joined Amway, a direct seller based in Michigan that made an aggressive push into Mexico after the country adopted neoliberal economic reforms. The allure of working when she wanted to and earning according to her efforts appealed to Luisa. As she attended more of the Amway training sessions, though, she objected to the leadership’s insistence on making a large initial investment. Luisa’s sponsors

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encouraged her to buy expensive clothes simply to look affluent. She also felt pressured to buy Amway’s exclusive line of household products even though she could find cheaper equivalents in the store. This frustrated her because she joined Amway to make money, not to spend it. In the neighboring state of Jalisco, another ambitious businessperson experienced similar disappointment with a direct selling company. Jorge Vergara Madrigal was born in 1955, the third of five children of a middle-class Guadalajara family. He inherited a passion for selfimprovement from his father, Jorge Vergara Cabrera, an accountant who credited positive thinking for his rise to director of a prosperous valve company (Zepeda Patterson 2007: 276). From the age of ten, the younger Vergara embarked on a career in sales, peddling books and puppies during vacations. He opted to work selling cars rather than attend university as his siblings had. He explained to a reporter later, “I always had in mind starting my own business but I never could because there wasn’t sufficient capital to make myself economically independent” (Rodríguez 2006). When he was 22 years old, Vergara accepted a position in Monterrey, Mexico, as assistant sales director for a construction firm that was part of a large industrial conglomerate. He brokered real estate deals and earned sizeable commissions, but in 1984 the company dismissed him as part of a mass layoff sparked by a financial crisis (McCosh 2001). Returning to Guadalajara, Vergara pursued his dream of founding his own business. He started selling pork meat wholesale and invested in an Italian restaurant. The first project lost money, while he sold his share in the second. In the end, all he had to show for his effort was weight gain from consuming so much food. Around this time, an ex-colleague from the construction firm told Vergara about a line of nutritional supplements marketed by a California company. Herbalife gained notoriety in the United States for its ubiquitous slogan: “Lose weight now. Ask me how.” Under the charismatic leadership of Mark Hughes, who founded the company in 1980 when he was only 24, Herbalife boasted $488 million in annual sales and 700,000 distributors when it entered the Mexican market (Paris 1985: 46). At first, Herbalife enjoyed a spike of interest in Mexico. The supplements appealed to Vergara, but more tempting was the nearly unlimited compensation that direct selling promised. Vergara became an avid Herbalife distributor, consuming up to 100 of the company’s pills a day. In the process, he lost weight, built an organization of over 1,000 distributors, and befriended Mark Hughes (Davis 2005). Mexican health officials, however, soon tussled with Herbalife leaders over whether to classify the weight loss pills as drugs or food (Hinsberg

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1988). A designation as drugs would threaten to dismantle the direct selling system by requiring Herbalife to distribute its products in pharmacies rather than through independent resellers. To avoid compromising its business model, Herbalife decided to pull out of Mexico and concentrate on other markets until it could engineer a return. Vergara had already accumulated two failed careers, and now he was about to lose another. Company executives decided to tap Vergara’s enthusiasm and offered to relocate him from Guadalajara to El Paso, Texas, where he could recruit distributors from the Mexican side of the border. Later the company sent Vergara to establish markets in France and Spain, but his efforts yielded few results compared to his original success. Vergara became convinced that Herbalife should attempt a return to Mexico. The Mexican tradition of herbal remedies and relative inaccessibility of Western medicine, he reasoned, made the company’s nutritional supplements a good fit. So, in 1990, Vergara helped Hughes untangle the government bureaucracy and led Herbalife’s return to Mexico (Stok 2001). Once Herbalife had returned to Mexico, Vergara had another idea. Herbalife should develop products in powder or liquid form to suit the Mexican palate better than pills. When he suggested this change to Hughes, the mercurial leader rejected it and practically mocked Vergara. The unsympathetic response made Vergara consider founding his own direct selling firm with powder-based vitamins. As Vergara later recalled to a Wall Street Journal reporter, “What made me decide to really take the plunge was a phone call from Mark Hughes telling me I’d fail miserably” (Friedland 1999). Vergara’s bravado did not match his capital, so he teamed with Jim Fobair and Roger Daley, two other ex-Herbalife distributors who already ran a direct selling company of vitamin supplements based in Texas called Omnitrition. Their sole product, called Omni IV, cost $34.95 for a 96-ounce bottle and boasted the complete recommended dose of a dozen vitamins (Smith 1990). His partners took charge of Omnitrition U.S.A. and Vergara led Omnitrition de México. According to the September/October 1991 issue of OmniNews, the company’s in-house newsletter, the grand opening of Omnitrition de México took place in Guadalajara on September 11, 1991. As a sign of how effectively Vergara had patched up relations with federal authorities, the Food Regulation Director of Mexico’s Department of Health cut the ribbon. A mariachi band played for guests, who could enjoy a tour of the office and hear a speech from Jorge Vergara, Vice President for Marketing. By then, Omnitrition already sold $38 million of vitamin drinks a year in the United States through the efforts of 80,000 distributors (Files 1992).

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Building Her Network Vergara recruited six friends and relatives to serve as the founding Omnitrition distributors in Mexico. One of the six was his first cousin. The cousin, in turn, told his sister, Nanda, about the business opportunity selling nutritional supplements. Nanda had moved to Morelia after marrying a Morelia native who managed his family’s furniture store. Nanda had never held a paying job and devoted herself to raising their three children. The opportunity to earn extra income in her free time without neglecting her maternal duties appealed to her. She asked her husband’s advice. He told her to sign up for the company, secretly predicting that it would not matter because the company would quickly go under. A year later, a slowdown in Morelia’s economic climate forced the furniture store to declare bankruptcy while Omnilife kept growing. He joined his wife, who had already built a thriving network of distributors, in opening an office in the vacant building that had housed the preschool where Luisa once worked. At the end of 1991, Nanda began her recruitment campaign at a marriage retreat sponsored by their parish church. She and her husband attended the weekend workshop along with several other couples, including Amalia and Victor. By then, Amalia had decided to look for alternatives to the facial creams. While Amalia immediately seized on Omnilife as a way to build a patrimony for her children, Victor still harbored skepticism from Luisa’s negative experience with Amway. Amalia encouraged Luisa to enroll first, figuring that Victor would not get upset with his daughter. Then, should she succeed in the business, Luisa could enroll her parents. Luisa left the preschool and signed on to Nanda’s organization as Omnilife distributor number 6,052 (see Table 2.1). She dedicated herself to speaking to as many people as possible about the products. After just a month and a half, she received a commission check for about $700, a sum that would have taken her four months to earn as a teacher. Amalia and Victor promptly closed their facial cream business to join Omnilife full-time under Luisa. Now it was Luisa’s turn to see divine intervention in her family’s trajectory. When she reflected back on their introduction to Omnilife (or “Omni,” as they affectionately called the company), she realized that the grind of marketing facial creams had left her mother physically drained and emotionally depressed. In that moment of despair, Jorge Vergara came “like an angel on Earth” with an opportunity to save the family. Luisa joined the company just as it began to gain legitimacy. Omnitrition received notice in the United States early on thanks to a high-profile distributor: one-time antiwar protestor and Chicago Seven defendant Jerry Rubin. The business opportunity appealed to

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Table 2.1 Simpliﬁed chart of Luisa’s Omnilife organization Nanda Vergara (first distributor in Morelia) | Luisa | /\ Victor = Amalia Diego (Amalia’s brother) | /\ Esteban = Carla Marco (Luisa’s brother) (diamond-level distributors in Morelia)

him because after his acquittal, he spent the 1970s reinventing himself through self-improvement exercises and writing. By the 1980s, he had reconciled his critique of materialism with an appreciation for the good that free enterprise could promote. In direct selling, he found both a more democratic way to share in the profits of capitalism and a means for individuals to establish independence from corrupt corporations. In a way, Omnitrition fulfilled his vision of eliminating inequalities in wealth because the opportunity to earn a living by marketing the vitamins is available to anyone. Rubin said that through involvement in Omnitrition, “You make a commission on people by teaching them to build their business organization. It’s entrepreneurs teaching entrepreneurs to be entrepreneurs . . . It’s almost socialistic capitalism” (quoted in Chepesiuk 1995: 185). From his base in New York City, Rubin recruited about 400 distributors in his first year as an Omnitrition distributor, including Black Panther founder Bobby Seale (Kim 1990). In 1992, Rubin moved his office to southern California, where he managed a network of 10,000 distributors and received an annual income of $600,000 (Akst 1992). Around the same time, Jorge Vergara moved to make the Mexican part of the company independent. The way Vergara explains it, when he entered into a partnership with Fobair and Daley, they agreed that if Vergara reached a certain sales volume in the first year, the Texans would have to sell him their share of the business, and if he did not reach it, Vergara would have to sell his part. As Vergara triumphantly recounted to a magazine reporter, “To their chagrin, I arrived at the goal very quickly, and I remained alone with the company, nobody else. They separated” (Mora Tavares 2003: 38). To further indicate his independence from the U.S. branch of the company, Vergara changed the name of the business to Omnilife. As Omnilife established itself as a viable business and the memory of Omnitrition faded for Mexican consumers, Vergara would usually retell the company’s

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origin story as a solo venture from the start. In some versions, I heard him leave out Mark Hughes and Herbalife altogether as if to suggest that he alone invented not only the nutritional products but also the concept of direct selling. Almost as soon as Omnilife launched in Mexico, Vergara expanded the brand overseas. In the company’s first year of operation, when it had only eight distribution centers in Mexico and a handful of vitamin products, Omnilife entered the Spanish market. In 1994, Omnilife began recruiting distributors in Colombia and Costa Rica. Over the following six years, Omnilife established a presence in Argentina, Peru, Guatemala, Venezuela, Bolivia, El Salvador, and the United States (Delaunay 2002: 62). In the twenty-first century, Vergara set his sights on countries without a significant Spanish-speaking presence, including Russia, China, and India. The September 2007 issue of the company magazine listed 81 Omnilife distribution centers throughout all of Mexico’s states and offices in 18 additional countries. Making a Family Being part of such a fast-growing company bolstered Luisa’s confidence. Soon recruiting new Omnilife distributors occupied most of her week. With her commission checks, she bought a car so she could cross Morelia tracking down leads and delivering products. As quickly as she added members to her downline, her parents expanded their network even faster. Although her position in the company placed her nominally above Victor and Amalia, the real power dynamic worked in the opposite direction. She still lived and home and started to chafe under her parents’ traditional values. Victor and Amalia expected her to jump out of bed to make her younger brother dinner when he would come home late from a party even though she had spent the day working. Finally, she mustered the courage to refuse: “He has hands. I’m not getting up for him,” she told them. Working with her parents and living in their house made Luisa yearn for more independence. In 1997, she married a man she knew from the neighborhood and moved into his family’s house. She entered the marriage with a clear understanding of the conventions of Mexican machismo. Her grandmother used to tell her that it was the man’s role to provide and the wife’s duty to serve him. Luisa would disagree, silently saying to herself, “Me first.” She never showed any interest in cooking or cleaning, and her burgeoning business required more and more of her time away from home. Even so, she agreed to marry her boyfriend. Perhaps the desire to start her own family overwhelmed her instinct that she

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would not respond well to the authority of a husband and blinded her to some of his faults. Since her high school experiment with adoption, Luisa had felt a strong call to be a mother. In a provincial city like Morelia where conservative mores still reigned, she knew that having children outside of marriage would cause a scandal. That she was 26 years old helped convince her to accept marriage, because if she waited any longer she might not have another chance at motherhood. Single Mexican women over 30 tend to stay single. Roman Catholic Mexicans like Luisa usually celebrate a civil wedding first and then follow it with a religious ritual when they have saved enough money. The religious event carries more significance partly because it solemnizes the bond between the couple and because it involves more elaborate public recognition. Luisa never considered a formal church wedding, nor did she consent to a civil ceremony in Morelia because it would require the couple to attend a series of marriage talks. “I already knew what a wife has to do: wash and iron clothes,” Luisa deadpanned. So, she and her husband registered their civil marriage in a small town a half hour drive from Morelia that did not require any marriage talks. As soon as she signed the contract, she felt constrained, as if she were “part of someone.” Even as a newlywed, something told her that the relationship would not last. Three months later, Luisa ended the marriage. Her husband had shown signs of drug and alcohol abuse and would disappear for two weeks at a time. When it became clear that he could not heal his addictions, Luisa left him. After moving back to her parents’ house, Luisa discovered she was pregnant. She never considered aborting, though not out of deference to Roman Catholic doctrine. On the contrary, she defended the use of contraception and accused the priesthood of hypocrisy. “The Church wants to respect all life, then why don’t they care for the children after they’re born?” she wondered. This would be the child she always wanted, and she would have her extended family as caretakers. Working in Omnilife and facing frequent rejection had taught her not to worry about other people’s opinions. Stigma or not, she resolved to raise the child alone and not to remarry. This would be her chance to offer a childhood an upbringing free of fear and restrictive traditions. Her daughter, Pamela, was born in 1998. By then, the family’s fortunes had grown alongside the company’s. Amalia and Victor showered their grandchild with gifts. Luisa’s brother Marco, who had left a desultory career as a language student at the state university to join Omnilife, served as godparent at the baptism. When Luisa had to leave Morelia to give training sessions to her network, she never had to search

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to find someone to provide childcare. Despite their affection, Luisa’s parents still imposed some limits on her and Pamela. When Pamela reached kindergarten age, Luisa wanted to enroll her in an experimental elementary school sponsored by Omnilife in Guadalajara. In an echo of the earlier attempt to study in Guadalajara, her parents immediately objected: “You don’t know anyone. What if the girl gets sick? Who will take care of her when you’re busy?” Luisa lost her resolve. “I hadn’t even left yet, and they were already making me scared,” she told me later. She put Pamela in a local kindergarten while continuing to live with her parents, but remained determined to move out of her parents’ house. Pamela had grown canny enough to undermine Luisa’s authority. When Luisa denied her something, Pamela would simply ask her grandmother, who happily indulged her. When Pamela was five, the year I first met her, she and Luisa moved into an apartment on the opposite edge of the city from her parents’ house. Luisa decorated it with framed studio portraits of her and Pamela and stocked the cupboards with Omnilife products. To help take care of Pamela after school when Luisa visited clients, she contracted a young nanny to live with them. Victor and Amalia disapproved and even stopped speaking to Luisa at first, but they softened when they saw Luisa’s determination. “I have to fly,” Luisa explained. “What example am I giving to my daughter?” In her own parenting, Luisa tried to be less protective than her own parents had been so that she would be prepared for the day when Pamela, too, flew from the nest. After a year in the apartment, Luisa decided to move to a different condo closer to both her support center and her parents’ house. Pamela had only limited contact with her father, who remained legally married to Luisa. One day around Pamela’s birthday when I visited Luisa in her office, I spotted several balloons tied to a chair. I asked who had brought them. She replied sardonically, “The girl’s father. He doesn’t support her, and he thinks this will help. She can’t live on helium.” A combination of bureaucracy and treachery prevented Luisa from seeking an official divorce. Her ex-husband refused to give his consent to the divorce, Luisa believed, because he could use the daughter as a lever to extract money from Luisa. When she wanted to take Pamela on an Omnilife-sponsored trip to Walt Disney World, the father demanded the equivalent of $2,500 for his signature to allow the girl to leave the country. This infuriated Luisa, but she had little choice because until Pamela turned 18, she needed the permission of both parents to travel abroad. Luisa’s experience with him only strengthened her determination not to marry again, especially if it meant subjecting her own wishes to someone else’s approval.

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When Pamela finished kindergarten in 2003, Amalia urged Luisa to enroll her in one of Morelia’s parochial elementary schools. Despite her own unpleasant memories of the nuns, Luisa inquired about openings at an elite Catholic school in Morelia. The head nun flatly refused to consider Pamela for the school when she learned that the girl lived with her single mother. This galled Luisa, who was acutely sensitive to hypocrisy. She wondered whether the school leaders would prefer that she had stayed in an abusive relationship simply because they consider the nuclear family the foundation of a righteous society. Besides, she vented to me, though married, many of the high-society parents of the enrolled students earned their hefty incomes by trafficking in drugs or running the impious sex clubs on the periphery of the city. Catholicism supposedly teaches humility, but at that privileged school, she said with some exaggeration, students looked down on classmates who did not take their first communion in Rome. Luisa did not want her daughter associating with those children, no matter how prestigious the school. When she had studied education, Luisa had liked the Montessori method for the flexibility it grants students to pursue their own interests. She decided to enroll Pamela in a Montessori elementary school that provided an experience the polar opposite from her own education. The school director was a single mother, too, so no one judged Pamela’s family situation. The curriculum was self-paced and included English lessons. Luisa also liked that the school was coeducational and would expose Pamela to real-life interactions. It did not include any religious instruction, but that also suited Luisa. “I’d rather have my daughter study than pray in school. I’ll take care of the religious formation.” At the elite Catholic school, it troubled Luisa that the students had memorized the Bible and bowed their heads when walking past portraits of the pope, but did not know who President Vicente Fox was. By her seventh birthday, Pamela had grown into a free-spirited, strong-willed girl with a passion for Barbie. Gaining Legitimacy Beyond Vitamins The Omnilife that I came to know in 2005, the year of Pamela’s seventh birthday party, was more professional, more diversified, and more prosperous than the company that Luisa first signed up for. Steady growth in the core business enabled Vergara to pursue ventures far afield from vitamins. Omnilife’s 28 subdivisions envelop distributors in a totally branded environment. When Luisa drove her late model minivan, she benefited from a car loan program, which

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automatically deducted monthly lease payments from her commission check. When she visited the wholesale store, she saw employees emptying trucks from the company-owned fleet and stocking the shelves with products manufactured at company-owned plants and transported in company-made plastic bottles. Luisa cosigned loans for distributors seeking microcredits from Omnilife’s in-house bank. She listened to the Omnilife radio show on the Internet and kept copies of the company’s quarterly glossy magazine on her desk. I even spotted Luisa’s photo in one issue of the magazine, showing her on a trip to New York sponsored by the company’s incentive rewards division. Event planners staged the rally and the extravaganza—multimedia spectaculars that attracted Luisa and tens of thousands of participants to Guadalajara twice a year. Jorge Vergara invited Victor and Amalia to fly with him on one of the corporate jets en route to a meeting with distributors in South America. Other subsidiaries reflected Vergara’s personal priorities: an organic lettuce farm, an experimental elementary school, and a yoga institute. Although Vergara built a constellation of services to support the direct selling of nutritional supplements, those investments remained in fringe industries far from the media attention that would establish Omnilife as a reputable player in world business. When, in 1999, Vergara announced bold plans for a 750-acre cultural and business center in Guadalajara designed by ten of the world’s most prominent architects, he attracted waves of positive press. As he told Architectural Record, Vergara drew inspiration from Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. “They do this beautiful museum and they attract half-a-million people in one year. And they changed the city. With one building they did that. So I ask, what if we do ten?” (Pearson 1999). And not just any ten. The finished complex would include a university campus designed by Daniel Libeskind, a hotel by Zaha Hadid, and a museum by Philip Johnson in addition to the Omnilife corporate headquarters. Landing any one of these “starchitects” would bring Guadalajara the attention afforded to Bilbao, but to secure cooperation from ten signaled not only Vergara’s ambition, but also his deep pockets. The first phase of the complex, to be called JVC Center (after the initials of Vergara’s father), was slated to cost $200 million and open in 2003. Vergara’s next move drew even more public notice. Surprising the business world, in 2001 Omnilife made a $423 million takeover bid for the established British retail chain the Body Shop. On the surface, the deal seemed unlikely. Omnilife marketed its vitamin powders through person-to-person transactions while the Body Shop sold its beauty

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products through franchised stores often in malls. Moreover, the price seemed disproportionately high because the Body Shop reported annual profits in 2000 of only $13.7 million, down 20 percent from the year before (Ismail 2001). But on the level of values, the merger made sense. Anita Roddick, the Body Shop’s charismatic founder, pioneered the concept of an environmentally friendly corporation, championing conservation efforts and cruelty-free product testing. Like Vergara, she believed that fostering a direct relationship between producers and consumers empowered both. To emphasize this commitment to eliminating intermediaries, Roddick appeared in publicity photos purchasing raw ingredients directly from indigenous communities (Kaplan 1995: 59). As Vergara explained to the Observer of London, “I believe we share a common philosophy. Only they look after people on the outside and we look after them on the inside” (Tuckman 2001). Almost as soon as newspapers reported it, the deal fell through. Analysts speculated that Omnilife could not secure the financing it would need to complete the acquisition (Cope 2001), but Vergara denied that money problems scuttled the merger. “I don’t make decisions based on numbers,” he later told the New York Times (Malkin 2003). Vergara may have failed to gain access to the Body Shop’s middle-class customers and progressive reputation, but he strengthened his image as a maverick businessman motivated by a moral compass, not unalloyed greed. He emerged looking like a full-fledged player on the world stage of retail sales. Even absent an alliance with Omnilife, the Body Shop learned from Vergara and started a home party division in 2001 (Le 2005). By the time the Body Shop sold itself in 2006, Vergara’s acumen seemed even more astute. While his suggested price of $423 million raised skepticism from analysts, just a few years later, French cosmetics giant L’Oreal paid $1.1 billion for the chain of stores (Wendlandt and Jones 2006). Vergara solidified his standing as a mainstream magnate in 2002 when he wrestled control of the Chivas, Guadalajara’s storied professional soccer team, from a fractious group of shareholders. The hostile takeover cost him $100 million (Malkin 2003). As one Morelia distributor put it to me, buying the Chivas was tantamount to buying the Dallas Cowboys, a once championship team that had fallen in quality but not in brand recognition. A Mexican anthropologist went further, calling Chivas “a tangible symbol of national brotherhood” for the team’s policy of fielding only Mexican players (Fábregas Puig 2001: 69). In taking control of Chivas, Vergara indicated that he approached the club as a business investment. Adding professionalism and administrative order to a “chaotic” franchise would not only

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allow the team to win championships but also restore it to profitability (Ramos Villagrana 2002). For Omnilife distributors, becoming associated with a famous sports franchise instantly raised their credibility when talking to potential customers. The Chivas logo soon showed up on the labels of all Omnilife products. After taking control of the team, Vergara at first limited his involvement to the back office but did order some significant cosmetic changes. He banned Coca-Cola from the stadium, and substituted Chiva Cola, the company’s own soft drink, at the concession stands. He cracked down on contraband merchandise featuring the team’s trademark red and white stripes and goat mascot. The Chivas players lent their athletic image and endorsement clout to the products, too. Omnilife’s publications regularly ran profiles of the players and described their results from consuming the supplements. Over time, Vergara became more active in hiring and firing coaches and devising strategy on the field. To extend the brand and to identify promising young players, Chivas opened children’s soccer schools around Mexico. In Morelia, the coaches visited Luisa’s support center and appeared at motivational events to pitch the school to distributors. The link between sports and Omnilife also helped toughen the company’s feminine tinge, framing the drinks not so much as maternal home remedies but as Gatoradelike performance enhancers. Even Luisa, not a sports fan, owns shares in the team and avidly follows their games. The legacy of toughness extends to Vergara’s entrepreneurial style. Though the Guadalajara elite opposed his acquisition of the Chivas and predicted its failure, Vergara disregarded their criticism. Much like the defiance he showed when Mark Hughes predicted his venture would fail, Vergara’s underdog mentality serves as an example for distributors like Luisa to follow. He never listens to so-called experts or concerns himself with observing traditions. Nor does he depend on others for help. Jorge Vergara enthusiastically endorses the kind of self-reliance embodied in neoliberalism. “Paternalism is an illness that has infected Mexico for many years,” he writes in an article he wrote for Time magazine and adds, “The idea that the government will provide what we need and keep out what we don’t is what is holding Mexico back” (Vergara 2001). A successful economy, he argued, hinges on individual actors pursuing their passions free from outside interference. Cultivating Directness Vergara almost never mentions his faith in public. Maintaining an ecumenical image is important in helping Omnilife appeal to recruits

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of all backgrounds. Still, he imbues the business of direct sales with spiritual importance. The company slogan, “People helping people” reflects the transcendent power of individuals working free from middlemen or regulators. The more Luisa comes to adopt the Omnilife viewpoint as her own, the more mistrusting she grows of institutional authorities like Roman Catholic priests. When she moved with Pamela into their own apartment, she stopped attending Mass at the parish church her parents frequented because the services in their upscale neighborhood seemed too much like a fashion show. Instead, she drives half an hour away to a spare monastery on the outskirts of Morelia. Only the Stations of the Cross adorn the interior of the church, and the priest there delivers straightforward, realistic sermons that keep her and Pamela awake. Her private worship reflects the same pragmatic, minimalist approach that brings her in direct contact with the divine. The only religious icon in her house is a slender crucifix over the headboard of her bed. Instead of praying with the rosary as her grandmother did, she tunes the television to a broadcast version of the prayer while she gets dressed in the morning. Not only does this make efficient use of her time, but it also allows her to hold an unscripted conversation with God rather than merely reciting phrases by rote as the nuns had taught her to do. I saw an example of how important an intimate connection to God was for her at a Mass given for Pamela’s graduation from first grade. When the teacher asked Luisa if she would read one of the biblical passages during the service, she declined. Her stated reason was that public speaking made her nervous. This seemed odd to me. We were a small audience of children and their parents, and Luisa regularly gives speeches to rooms full of strangers. More likely, she prefers to express her faith one on one with God. I asked Luisa if more traditional Mexican Catholics would find it difficult to accept Omnilife’s emphasis on directness. She said they would not and mentioned a pair of nuns who once were active in her organization. Omnilife, she said, welcomed distributors of any faith: “The common denominator is that we all believe in the products and know where we want to go.” Whether they aimed for improved physical health or increased financial wealth, all distributors could benefit from participation in the company if they truly wanted to succeed. But, I persisted, Was attaining riches as simple as deciding not to be poor? She conceded that other people’s actions influence us. Still, early on we all face a choice between the path of good and the path of evil. She forked her index and middle fingers to illustrate the diverging paths. Her life’s story, like Vergara’s, demonstrates

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that God presents the right opportunities, but you have to choose to take them. The choices Luisa makes—to give up teaching, to end her marriage, to live independently with her daughter—contribute to her success as an Omnilife distributor. Yet, for all her achievements after 15 years with Omnilife, her status still feels precarious. She has developed a downline that extends over four countries and earns her a silver ranking in the company, the third highest recognition. But maintaining that level requires her to monitor the activity in her organization constantly. The threat of backsliding becomes particularly intense at the middle and end of the month when Omnilife tallies each distributors’ activity and calculates earnings. Luisa knows that she cannot assume her recruits will automatically remember to purchase sufficient product. As the biweekly deadline draws closer, she checks her account information on the Omnilife website and makes phone calls and visits to the laggards. At times, her goal of qualifying for diamond, the highest distributor rank, seems unattainable. When doubts creep into her mind, Luisa focuses on replacing them with positive thoughts. She and Pamela will sit and imagine what their future house will look like—the shape of the swimming pool, the flowers in the garden. They talk about moving to San Diego, California, so that Pamela can learn English. Luisa remains confident that the only obstacle between her and her dream is her mind. As Jorge Vergara enlarges his business empire, his example fuels Luisa’s conviction that anything is possible when she focuses her mind. Like Luisa, Vergara targets countries outside Mexico for growth. Soccer’s international reach offers a natural platform for spreading the Chivas brand and Omnilife products along with it. Vergara brought Saprissa, a winning Costa Rican soccer team, under the Omnilife umbrella. In 2005, he purchased a Major League Soccer franchise in Los Angeles, dubbing his entry “Chivas USA.” In addition to the usual $10 million franchise fee, Vergara and another investor paid $15 million to the existing MLS team in Los Angeles for the right to use their stadium (Zeigler 2004). A large, untapped base of Hispanic supporters justified the expense, Vergara believed. Thirty percent of Mexican American soccer fans named Chivas as their favorite team, and Vergara planned to add Chivas soccer academies across the United States (Wahl 2004: 71). Most conspicuously, Vergara extends his renown by patronizing film. His first producer’s credit, Y Tu Mamá También, about the sexual awakening of two best friends, screened in Mexico and the United States in 2002. Both a critical and a box office hit, the film garnered

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an Oscar nomination and propelled Vergara to back other edgy productions (Tegel 2002). The R-rated subject matter of Y Tu Mamá También may seem to undermine the image of respectability Vergara aimed to cultivate. Indeed, Luisa’s parents, who participated as extras in a wedding scene where Vergara played the Mexican president, recalled with laughter their embarrassment when they took a group of distributors to see the movie’s premiere in Morelia. They had no idea how racy some of the other scenes were and waited nervously for the reaction of the older women in the audience. Producing independent films, however, fits with Vergara’s image of taking risks and defying the experts. Like the Chivas, Vergara keeps his film investments administratively separate from the nutritional supplement business, but they remind vitamin distributors to trust in themselves. Both Omnitrition and Herbalife continue to exist, though they have been eclipsed by Omnilife’s vertiginous growth. In 1985, the U.S. Senate, in response to complaints about its products’ harmful side effects, called two days of hearings about Herbalife. Mark Hughes refused to concede any doubts about Herbalife’s pills, powders, and liquids. During his testimony, he dismissed the scientists who had appeared earlier. “If they’re such experts in weight loss, why were they so fat?” he asked the members of the committee (Heller 2001). Despite Hughes’s defiance, the hearing revealed that an internal Herbalife study found that 40 percent of product users experienced negative side effects and that the company’s research laboratory was little more than a library with volumes about herbs. The following year, Herbalife settled a case with the California attorney general for violating consumer protection laws by making unsubstantiated claims about its products (Barrett and Herbert 1994: 207–208). The negative attention eroded public confidence in Herbalife, causing annual sales in 1991 to drop 92 percent from its peak six years earlier (Linden and Stern 1993). Herbalife suffered another crushing public relations blow when founder Mark Hughes died in 2000 of an accidental overdose of alcohol and antidepressants. In the wake of the resulting embarrassment, many of Herbalife’s distributors left the company. Subsequently, the company underwent significant restructuring. With new leaders and an infusion of capital, the company has revived its international expansion. By 2006, Mexico had eclipsed the United States as Herbalife’s top market with $373.2 million in sales (Dickerson and Yi 2007). Legal problems also weakened Omnitrition’s public image. In October 1992, a former Omnitrition distributor filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against Jerry Rubin and Omnitrition owners Jim

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Fobair and Roger Daley alleging that the company operated an illegal pyramid scheme (Richards 1992). A 1979 Federal Trade Commission case established that direct sales companies did not violate laws against pyramid schemes if they enacted rules requiring the distribution of physical products (Garmisa 1996). In 1994, Rubin died from injuries sustained in a car accident and Jim Fobair left Omnitrition to establish a rival company, but the case against the company continued. Omnitrition’s lawyers argued that the company’s business plan required the purchase of consumer products for distributors to earn income. The District Court agreed with Omnitrition’s argument, but on appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court in 1996, the judges found that, although Omnitrition established rules linking compensation to actual retail sales, they provided no evidence for their enforcement (Barkacs 1997). The ruling declared Omnitrition’s business plan an illegal pyramid scheme. The U.S. Supreme Court let the decision stand. Roger Daley, the sole remaining founder, moved the company to Nevada and attempted to restructure its rules. According to the Orbis database of company information, Omnitrition generated operating revenue of only $7.8 million in 2002, the latest figures available. By contrast, Vergara claims that Omnilife, a private company under his sole control, tallies over $1.2 billion in annual sales (González Ulloa 2007). Even when Vergara’s plans falter, he serves as a role model for the power of self-confidence. Instead of preparing for its opening, the JVC Center was still an empty lot in 2003. Vergara had envisioned a design process unfettered by government bureaucracy or financial limitations, but conflicts conspired to slow construction. Frank Gehry abandoned the project after disagreements with Vergara, and Philip Johnson died before completing his design. The budget ballooned to $400 million, and the opening date was delayed until 2005 (Ouroussoff 2001). The year 2005 came, and the site was still not ready. Interviewed by a Mexican magazine that year, Vergara admitted that he erred in announcing plans for JVC before he had secured all the necessary permissions. Still, he remained defiant, “Millions of tourists will come to see the JVC when it’s finished” (Fernández 2005: 30). Luisa blames the bureaucrats who pestered Vergara with regulations and requests for bribes. She expresses confidence that Vergara’s vision would ultimately become reality. The delay merely confirms her belief that the best way to guarantee success is not to rely on others. Whether in faith or business, she aims for directness.

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Chapter 3

Thinking Anew about the History of Direct Sales

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or as much as Omnilife bears Jorge Vergara’s distinctive stamp, it fits squarely in a century-long tradition of direct selling companies. The industry has long welcomed women and minorities, and its products have ranged from encyclopedias to cosmetics. The diversity of membership and commerce masks a common spiritual thread that connects the earliest direct sellers to the most recent recruits. All the companies emphasize the dual meaning of “commission,” compensating distributors through transformational as well as financial rewards. In particular, they carry the legacy of a nineteenth-century metaphysical movement that started in New England known as New Thought. As popularized by prominent religious figures like Mary Baker Eddy and Norman Vincent Peale, New Thought celebrates the power of thoughts to shape physical reality (Fuller 1982). It heralds a return to an idyllic past before fears, doubts, and negativity clouded human minds. Practicing mental exercises can retrain the mind to produce success through thoughts alone. Nothing matters except the individual’s direct relationship with God. Both New Thought and direct sales emerged from the tumultuous nineteenth-century United States. While itinerant salespeople boast a long tradition, it was not until after the Civil War that they organized into companies with commission-based income. During the Gilded Age, industrialization ushered in a movement of people to urban centers, particularly in the Northeast. The concentration of affluence and increased ease of transporting goods heralded the rise of glamorous, well-stocked department stores (Zukin 2004: 18–19). Some manufacturers, however, wanted to keep their goods off crowded shelves so customers could benefit from personalized demonstrations.

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Minority and rural entrepreneurs had no choice but to bypass department stores to reach their clients. They, too, turned to direct selling (Biggart 1989: 22). The same demographic shifts that ushered in new retail options for direct selling also created unprecedented opportunities for middleclass leisure. Though it liberated the middle and upper classes from physical labor, a dizzying array of new technologies and the rise of industrial capitalism combined to make urban living more impersonal and draining. Urban elite at the end of the nineteenth century suffered from an outbreak of “nervous exhaustion” that manifested itself in psychosomatic illness (Tumber 2002: 25). Often the depleted victims turned their efforts inward, making a major project of reenergizing their bodies and minds. New standards of thinness, achieved by dieting, became codified. New Thought emerged as a way to overcome the vertigo of modernization by connecting directly to timeless flows of divine energy. Early New Thought proponents focused their efforts on using the mind for physical healing, though it is easy to see how direct sales pioneers applied the same principles to professional outcomes. Neither Luisa nor Jorge Vergara evinces any familiarity with the New Thought movement even though they wholeheartedly embrace its teachings. To them, the idea that humans can access divine power through their thoughts does not belong to any particular religion. It is just an innate gift, albeit one that few people know how to take advantage of. It is not surprising that Omnilife does not acknowledge its debt to New Thought. Very few churches in Mexico or elsewhere exist under that name. Still, the legacy of New Thought suffuses the direct selling industry. The two movements have grown in parallel and have become intertwined. Understanding the origins and evolution of New Thought will shed light on how a company like Omnilife inculcates in its members an appreciation for direct faith. Curing with the Mind Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalists first advanced a philosophy of self-reliance in the mid-nineteenth century. Turning against his Harvard education and Unitarian training, Emerson came to believe that God resides inside each person. He taught that to know God, one has to achieve self-awareness. A psychologist predicted that “Were he living today, Ralph Waldo Emerson might be running workshops on personal growth and fulfillment” (McAdams 2006: 126). Emerson found inspiration for exploring the connection

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THINKING ANEW ABOUT DIRECT SALES

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between the self and the divine in texts of Eastern mysticism and the exercise of yoga (Albanese 2007: 348). By introducing Hindu concepts to the United States, Emerson influenced a growing interest in mind cure in the second half of the nineteenth century (Judah 1967: 32). These groups adopted the metaphysical principle that all religions teach variations of a single truth: God not only created humans in His image but also endowed them with divine power. When he was not repairing clocks, Phineas Quimby traveled through New England attending lectures on mesmerism, hypnotism, and Spiritualism. Back in Maine in the 1860s, he gained a reputation as an effective healer (Meyer 1980: 34). Quimby realized that his patients responded similarly to both cheap and expensive medicines. He suspected that the key to curing exists in the person’s mind, not in the physical remedy, so he began prescribing “new thoughts” rather than medicines. Twelve thousand patients made the trip to consult with Quimby, including Mary Baker Eddy, whose tireless organizing helped turn Quimby’s teaching into a broad, decentralized mind cure movement called New Thought. Eddy would go on to found the Christian Science Church in 1879 and distance herself from New Thought, but her disciples shared the belief in mind over matter. New Thought continued to establish publishing outlets and loosely structured organizations. Two prominent nineteenth-century authors shaped the message of mind cure into a form that the nascent direct sales industry could adopt. Like his namesake, Emerson, Ralph Waldo Trine celebrated the power of individuals to connect with the divine through their thoughts. He expanded mind cure’s ideas beyond physical health by couching his writings in a mystical yet nondenominational spirituality. Trine emphasized an antinomian position, calling for humans to enter an unmediated relationship with a higher power (Weiss 1969: 144). He named this higher power the “Infinite Intelligence” and posited that it makes divine rewards available directly to those who envisioned them. Thoughts vibrate on certain frequencies, sending out signals that return outcomes of similar frequency, so Trine recommended practicing auto-suggestion to induce positive thoughts (Trine 1897: 39). His most famous book, In Tune with the Infinite, sold more than 1.5 million copies (Braden 1963: 165). In the first decades of the twentieth century, metaphysical writers would expand on Trine’s ideas, linking them explicitly with the pursuit of wealth and providing a link to the developing field of salesmanship (Lears 1994: 180). Horatio Alger, a Unitarian minister in Massachusetts, also helped popularize the ideal of self-fashioning in his “rags to riches” stories

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(Wyllie 1954: 60). Unfavorable structural conditions and entrenched societal discrimination present no obstacle to the confident strivers who protagonize his widely read novels. Over time, champions of the “mind over matter” school have forgotten that Horatio Alger’s characters often benefit from random luck and generous patrons as much as a strong work ethic. The Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans regularly honors modern-day examples of self-made leaders in business, politics, and the arts. Direct selling titans have been among the figures they have recognized. By World War I, 400 New Thought centers operated in the United States and Canada servicing one million people (Huber 1971: 125). Even more influential were the authors who promoted New Thought ideas. William James spoke favorably of New Thought in his famous lectures on The Varieties of Religious Experience (James 1997 [1902]: 93). The authors of Pollyanna, The Little Engine that Could, and The Wonderful World of Oz were also sympathetic to New Thought (Leach 1993: 225). As in the direct selling industry, women played prominent roles in popularizing New Thought. Florence Scovel Shinn presented key mind cure ideas in a series of books first appearing in 1925. Shinn came from a patrician family and early in her life worked as an illustrator of popular fiction. She married a fellow artist and moved to New York City, where she became involved in the Greenwich Village theater scene and learned visualization techniques. Following a divorce, Shinn became a noted metaphysical teacher and lecturer (New York Times 1940; Exoo and Tweed 1995). Shinn’s most famous book, The Game of Life and How to Play It, starts from the assumption that an unspecified creator designed humans perfectly. Any deviation from that natural harmonious state—be it illness, poverty, or anger— represents the effect of negative thoughts and embittered emotions (Shinn 2004a: 91). Shinn names the process by which thoughts manifest themselves in physical reality the “law of attraction.” According to this law, thoughts vibrate on particular frequencies, radiate into the universe, and draw back to the thinker outcomes on the same wavelength. So, in Shinn’s example, holding resentment can redound to the bitter person in the form of hardened arteries. The concept of a law of attraction predates Shinn, but she presented it in an accessible way with memorable anecdotes (Horowitz 2007). Shinn wrote during the era of New Thought’s apogee. By the early twentieth century, many New Thought promoters had shifted from a strict focus on mental healing to a broader understanding of well-being that included material prosperity (Satter 1999: 14). In her

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books, Shinn unabashedly quotes scripture to justify the acquisition of wealth. The Game of Life and How to Play It describes the plight of a woman in desperate need of $3,000. Shinn counsels her to assume the mindset of someone without debt rather than obsess over what she owes. When she truly believes that God will supply her with what she needs at the time she needs it, the exact amount arrives. Such crass manipulation of spiritual laws earned New Thought a reputation as a get-rich-quick scheme (Griswold 1934). In the popular novel Babbitt from 1922, the main character objects when his wife invites him to attend a New Thought lecture. He replies derisively that a better name for the movement would be “ ‘hashed thought with a poached egg!’ ” (Lewis 1922: 355). Putting New Thought into Business As New Thought lost legitimacy as a free-standing movement, it found refuge in institutions like Alcoholics Anonymous, success literature like Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich (1966 [1937]), and direct sales. From the start, direct sales employed the language of direct faith. Company founders believed that the only barriers to a successful career were internal, so they exhorted their representatives to think positively. By imbuing the mundane work of selling with cosmic significance, leaders both helped their independent contractors overcome the sting of frequent rejection and ensured greater loyalty to the company. In the first decade of the twentieth century, hair product evangelist and direct seller Madam C. J. Walker echoed Booker T. Washington’s self-help message to her African American audiences (Bundles 2001: 133). Social uplift for minorities, in her mind, depends on confidence and diligence, not eliminating discrimination. To motivate her agents, she showered them with luxurious gifts and public recognition (Peiss 1998: 77). Similarly, the founder of Avon Products suffused his communications with positive thinking maxims. In a newsletter from 1910, he exhorted agents to “Give no place to ‘I can’t’ but plenty of room to ‘I CAN.’ Think it, be it, live it, and you not only can but WILL succeed” (quoted in Manko 1997: 16). In place of offering training in sales techniques, the first direct sellers emphasized to their distributors the importance of disciplining the mind. Many of direct selling’s pioneers indeed came from humble beginnings and faced limited choices for implementing their entrepreneurial visions (see Table 3.1 for timeline). Like the stereotypical Alger hero, they turned these liabilities into assets. One influential

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Table 3.1 Prominent direct selling companies based in the United States Founder

Company

David Hall McConnell Arthur C. Fuller Madam C. J. Walker Frank Stanley Beveridge Carl Rehnborg Earl Silas Tupper Mary C. Crowley Richard DeVos, Jay Van Andel Mary Kay Ash Mark Hughes Jim Fobair, Roger Daley

Avon Products Fuller Brush Hair Culturists Union of America Stanley Home Products Nutrilite Vitamins Tupperware Home Interiors and Gifts Amway Mary Kay Cosmetics Herbalife Omnitrition

Founding date 1886 1906 1910 1931 1934 1942 1957 1959 1963 1980 1989

innovator of door-to-door peddling helped cement the association between mind cure and direct sales. Alfred C. Fuller founded the Fuller Brush Company in 1906 in Hartford, Connecticut. A Christian Scientist, Fuller infused the company with his belief in mind over matter. He instructed salesmen always to act upbeat and to answer the question, “How are you?” with a grinning, “Fine and dandy” (Friedman 2004: 207). Customers came to trust the brush salesmen and appreciated their positive attitude. One woman remembered, “I always bought something from the Fuller Brush man even if I didn’t need it” (Bernstein 1984: 8). Fuller recognized that a successful sales encounter depends more on the appeal of the salesman than on the product being peddled. Fueled by “Dad” Fuller’s charisma and a reputation for honesty, Fuller Brush became synonymous with hardworking, ethical salesmanship. Billy Graham and Dick Clark, both famous for their affability and dependability, once sold Fuller brushes (Ho 1999). Fuller’s success spawned competitors that employed the same positive thinking philosophy. Frank Stanley Beveridge, a Fuller vice president, started his own company of household cleaners, Stanley Home Products, in 1931 in Massachusetts (Harris 1992: 221). For the first few years, however, sales lagged. New Deal programs like Social Security and minimum wage requirements forced Stanley Home Products to loosen controls over salesmen, defining them as independent contractors and thus exempt from regulation (Biggart 1989: 40). At the same time, some communities resented the onslaught of salesmen. In 1933 the town of Green River, Wyoming, initiated a trend by passing an ordinance forbidding door-to-door selling without a prior

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invitation (Buzzell et al. 1972: 239). Twenty years later, the number of companies in the United States employing the door-to-door method plummeted from 4,500 to just over 3,000 (Buell 1954: 115). Stanley Home Products stopped the slide and reinvigorated the entire industry with the adoption of the home party plan in 1937. To sidestep rules against uninvited selling, Beveridge experimented with asking dealers to gather several customers in a private home for a group demonstration of the products, a technique already in use by Aluminum Cooking Utensil Company for its rural clients. The direct seller recruited a host, who, in turn, invited friends and neighbors to attend. The seller pocketed a commission and often met new potential distributors while the host qualified for a prize based on the sales total of the party. In the first two years of the home party plan, Stanley’s sales leaped 169 percent (Brown 1955: 67). By making economic transactions public, home parties exploit preexisting ties of reciprocity between hosts and guests. One observer calls home parties “concentrated, condensed nodes of sociability” in which connections between participants become visible through their purchases (Davis 1973: 170). In a setting that fuses social networks with retail sales, refusing to buy becomes tantamount to rejecting the relationship with the host. Consequently, a study of 45 home parties concludes that 97 percent of those attending bought an item from the direct seller (Frenzen and Davis 1990: 8). Another study finds it possible to quantify the closeness of the guest to the host by the amount of money spent. Guests related by kinship to the host purchase the most, followed by friends, and finally neighbors (Taylor 1978: 590). The social aspect of a home party reinforces buying decisions, and the need to manage public impressions encourages participants to take risks on products they might not normally consider (Baumann 1991; Prus and Frisby 1990). Overall, an ethos of fun created through humor, games, and casual conversation mitigates the solitude and uncertainty of direct selling (Storr 2003: 26). The shift from door-to-door selling to home parties increased companies’ fervor for positive-thinking messages. As part of the compromise exempting distributors’ wages from government regulation, direct sales firms agreed to allow distributors to set their own prices, offer customers products from competing brands, and defect to other firms without penalty. Lacking formal employer–employee controls, companies ramped up their motivational rhetoric to keep distributors loyal. Even with the high rate of purchases, party plans did not eliminate the persistent hurdle to selling: seeking new customers. The same rules of reciprocity that encourage guests to buy also prevent

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a distributor from imposing too frequently on friends to host sales events. So, he or she must constantly scout for prospects willing to sponsor the next party. Advice books for direct sellers brim with strategies for pinning down reluctant hosts (see Ross 1998). To reassure discouraged distributors that their cause merited hard work, companies built on the self-improvement rhetoric of Fuller Brush. Stanley Home Products, for instance, automatically enrolled its representatives in the BCH (Bright, Cheerful, and Happy) Club and invited dealers to make a pilgrimage to headquarters to recite the “Stanley Prayer” and collect vials of “blessed” water (Clarke 1999: 91). Focusing on Females The advent of home parties under Stanley Home Products heralded the feminization of direct sales in the United States. Instead of the self-reliant Fuller Brush man, the typical Stanley Home Products dealer was a married woman. From the safety of private homes, she introduced other housewives to the tools to relieve the drudgery of their domestic duties. Just as direct selling granted access to business for African American entrepreneurs in the nineteenth century, it provided economic outlets for women in the mid-twentieth century. Moreover, by appealing to housewives, Stanley Home Products could justify distributors’ low average earnings since presumably they were not the primary family providers (Cohen 2003: 287). In reality, however, the most dynamic and innovative Stanley Home Products alumnae were breadwinning single mothers. They offered a feminist critique of society, but instead of challenging the male-dominated structure, these female leaders preached a positive-thinking solution. To be successful, women should not attempt to change men’s attitudes, but rather their own. A commitment to self-reliance motivated Brownie Wise on her journey from divorced single mother in Detroit to the first woman pictured on the cover of Business Week. When Wise attended a Stanley Home Products demonstration in 1947, she recognized in the party plan a chance to earn a living without having to neglect her child. She also discovered that direct selling suited her optimistic personality, which she used to recruit other women and energize them with a newsletter called Go-Getter (Kahn-Leavitt 2004). After a year as a dealer for Stanley Home Products, Wise switched to Tupperware, employing the same party method to increase sales. New Englander Earl Tupper had been marketing his plastic food storage containers since 1942 both in department stores and through independent

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dealers. Wise’s exceptional sales caught his attention and convinced him that the plastic containers required more demonstration than stores could offer. In 1951, Tupper removed his products from retail outlets and appointed Wise vice president of a new division dedicated to home parties (Kealing 2008: 75). In appointing Brownie Wise, Tupper divested himself of responsibility for training the sales force to focus on design and production. Wise took to her job as motivator-in-chief with evangelical zeal. She understood that success in direct selling depended more on bolstering the confidence of agents than on tinkering with the wares. A reader and friend of Norman Vincent Peale, the minister who wrote the bestselling New Thought book The Power of Positive Thinking (Peale 1952), Wise suffused her speeches and writings to distributors with appeals for women to make the most of themselves. When mind cure author Napoleon Hill visited Tupperware headquarters, he declared the company “the most perfect practical application of my Master Mind Principle” (Clarke 1999: 136). Wise’s insistence that thoughts lead to action elevated selling to a transformative event. One Tupperware executive explained the change that takes place in a woman when leading a house party: “A homemaker gets up in front of people and hears her voice above the silence in the room. She realizes she can do things she never could before” (quoted in Wedemeyer 1975: 74). Far from being dependent on a supervisor or a husband, women in Tupperware empower themselves to fulfill their true potential. Wise gave this magical process of self-realization appropriate spiritual trappings. At a new company headquarters in Florida, she inaugurated a monument to the “Tupperware Gospel” and a lake where pilgrims could be baptized in “Tupper Magic” (Clarke 1999: 137). Lavish rallies featured sermons by Protestant pastors on believing in yourself accompanied by songs, prayers, and prizes glorifying Tupperware. The revival-style meetings unified sellers into a community of women with a common mission while singling out individual dealers for recognition. At a Tupperware rally in the 1960s, a speaker told the hundreds of women gathered, “You are lucky to be one of us because, when you are one of us, you are saved. Now go forth and carry the word” (Peven 1968: 105). A devoted participant at one Tupperware Jubilee explained the attraction: “No one ever notices what I cook for dinner, but at these assemblies I feel really important” (Rapping 1980: 45). Wise presided over the ecstatic displays until 1958 when Tupper, upset at how the home party division’s activities overshadowed the product itself, fired her (Clarke 1999: 180).

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Two other Stanley Home Products veterans founded their own direct selling companies in which the idea that everyone possessed the ability to succeed became even more explicit. Following Wise, they helped move direct selling’s corporate center of gravity away from New England and toward the U.S.–Mexico border. Their business innovations also helped steer direct selling further away from the instructional demonstration of innovative products and toward the reworking of individual mental states. Cosmetics and home decoration, the items they peddled, guarantee an attractive outward appearance to signal an internal makeover. In the end, the products matter less than the distributor’s realization that she is capable of establishing a satisfying career and helping other women achieve the same. More than merely selling, distributors engage in a mission of societal uplift through collective self-improvement. Mary Kay Rogers was raising three children in Houston while her husband fought in World War II. The enterprising Mary Kay, who prepared dinner for her family when she was just seven years old, recognized in home parties an opportunity to earn cash without abandoning her children (Ash 1981: 15). As a fledgling Stanley Home Products dealer, she borrowed money for a train ticket to a convention in Dallas. After seeing Frank Stanley Beveridge crown the top seller for the region, she approached the company founder and announced, “I’m Mary Kay Rogers, and next year I’m going to be Queen of Sales.” Impressed by her pluck, he replied, “Somehow I think you will” (Rosenfield 1981: 61). The following year, Mary Kay delivered on her vow. Before he even returned from the war, her husband asked for a divorce, so Mary Kay redoubled her efforts in Stanley Home Products, moving to Dallas to spearhead the company’s expansion there. In 1953 she joined another direct seller, World Gift, as head of sales training, but her success there triggered the same uneasiness in her male superiors as Brownie Wise’s had at Tupperware. Ten years later, rather than accept a demotion, Mary Kay retired. She intended to write an advice book about her experiences in direct selling, but as she sketched out her experiences, she realized that she had devised a promising plan for a new business where women would feel welcome (Farnham 1993). Since her days in Stanley Home Products, she had used a skin care product formulated by the tanner father of a woman who had attended a home party she organized. As Victor and Amalia later did with their venture into facial creams, Mary Kay bought the patent from her former client, and, in 1963, launched Mary Kay Cosmetics

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in Dallas, Texas (Nemy 2001). Learning from her previous employers, Mary Kay retained the motivational songs and recognition prizes while adding an emphasis on boosting women’s confidence. As her son, who became the company president, put it, “We are more of a teaching than a selling organization” (Rudnitsky 1981: 105). One favorite lesson Mary Kay told her beauty consultants described how, according to physics, the bumblebee should not be able to fly, but it did not know that, so it continued to buzz around. To inspire the same rejection of negative thoughts, Mary Kay awarded top consultants a bumblebee brooch. Most feminists would consider Mary Kay’s approach to female empowerment a step backwards. Both Mary Kay Cosmetics and Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique appeared in the same year and targeted the same population of isolated, disaffected housewives (Banks and Zimmerman 1987: 85). Yet, Mary Kay took a decidedly traditional stance on gender roles. Rather than critique the structures of subordination in the family, Mary Kay encouraged women to serve their husbands and to achieve upward mobility through optimistic faith. Even the ostentatious prizes Mary Kay offered—Cadillacs, mink coats, diamond jewelry—recall a less conflicted time in the gender battles (Grumke 2001: 180). The only radical change Mary Kay advocated in her sales force was in their self-confidence. Not surprisingly, Mary Kay drew inspiration from Norman Vincent Peale, whom she invited to address meetings of consultants. In publications and speeches, Mary Kay emphasized how thoughts turn into actions. “The only difference between a Consultant who never holds that first show and the Director who builds a million-dollar unit is BELIEF!” she told women gathered at the annual Mary Kay Seminar in 1985 (quoted in Kreydatus 2005: 13). Another proponent of the power of belief left Stanley Home Products to found her own direct selling company. Mary Crowley was a divorced mother in Dallas in the 1940s when a friend from her church invited her to attend a party sponsored by a Stanley Home Products dealer named Mary Kay. The two Marys hit it off instantly, finding common ground in their appreciation for direct selling and in their Baptist faith. “We agreed about God’s being a God of abundance who wanted us to have lots of good things, both material and spiritual,” Crowley later wrote (Crowley 1976: 48). Crowley rose to the top ranks of Stanley Home Products dealers before switching to World Gift, where she returned Mary Kay’s invitation by recruiting her to join the company. In 1957 Crowley left World Gift after objecting to a cocktail party planned to recognize the top sellers.

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Both her Christian principles and business sense told her that alcohol had no role in motivating people (Crowley 1976: 51). As Mary Kay would experience a few years later, Crowley found herself without work; so she prayed, adopted an optimistic attitude, and started her own company. Home Interiors and Gifts opened in Dallas in 1957 with the mission of “insuring that no home in America is ever dull or unattractive” (Bagamery 1983: 88). Enhancing the aesthetic qualities of people’s external environment, however, serves as a vehicle for effecting a more radical internal change in the women who join the company. Crowley covered her Bible in a mink-lined book jacket to stress how women should aim for the highest quality, most luxurious goals. In the 1970s, the company paid her $1.6 million in annual salary, which she used to build a 12-bedroom mansion on over 1,000 acres north of Dallas. Far from the Calvinist ascetic approach to Christianity, Crowley embraced a faith inspired by metaphysical teachings that treat wealth as a sign of God’s favor. Since God’s abundance is limitless, she preached that all women can enrich themselves without neglecting their familial obligations. The overtly spiritual tone of companies like Mary Kay and Home Interiors and Gifts endow the work of selling with the sanctity of helping others without excluding representatives of any particular denomination. The conspicuous examples of the leaders’ gilded lives attest to how, by fusing faith and work, individuals can restore control to their unbalanced lives. Direct sales companies in the contemporary United States have lost much of the nobility of purpose expressed by the industry founders, but they have retained their empowering mission. The companies offer women a chance to preserve traditional femininity while engaging in business—even when the women themselves are not so traditional. For many years Los Angeles’s top Tupperware dealer has been Pam Teflon, the drag alter ego of actor Jeff Sumner. Teflon, outfitted in a gingham apron and horn-rimmed eyeglasses, parodies the suburban domesticity embodied by 1950s housewives. As Sumner explained, his performance offers more than just satire: “People don’t just sit there and buy. They buy into Pam Teflon’s world. Her enthusiasm for Tupperware is contagious. She’s hysterical, and they like my legs” (quoted in Cruger 1996). Teflon’s persona and passion for plastic effectively recreates for the audience a former time where work and gender roles were less complicated. Competition for Teflon in the Los Angeles Tupperware market includes Phranc, a self-described “all-American Jewish lesbian folk singer.” Phranc also extols the oldfashioned values of community that Tupperware enacts: “At the rally

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I went to, there were about 200 housewives, a drag queen, and me. I was so excited. I couldn’t sleep. Tupperware is really all about family” (quoted in Aubry 1999). Though a minority of Tupperware dealers, these performance artists illustrate the transformative potential of direct sales to recreate a happier, more fulfilling time. Adding a Level Amway, a direct seller of home and personal care products, makes Home Interior and Gifts and Mary Kay’s positive thinking available to both men and women. By multiplying the product line into the thousands, Amway refuses to identify itself with a gendered consumer. Instead of promoting specific products, Amway rallies its distributors to peddle career opportunities. This celebration of free enterprise turns the focus away from home parties and toward business meetings, capitalizing on the perceived strengths of men. As an Amway distributor once remarked to a researcher, “The beauty of this system is that you could run hickory nuts through it and it would still work” (Lester 1974: 13). In fact, the specific product rarely makes any difference because the attraction for both the distributor and the consumer is the promise of an improved life. Working with Omnilife, I got the same sense that the physical products are secondary to the possibility of maximizing human potential that they promise. Luisa understands this, too, because she spends relatively little time on marketing and much more time developing testimonials of transformation. This model grew out of a forerunner to Amway called Nutrilite. American Carl Rehnborg worked as an agent for Colgate in Shanghai in the 1920s when Chiang Kai-Shek’s forces targeted communists in the city by restricting the food supply. During a year of confinement, Rehnborg experimented with drinking broth made from boiled herbs he collected. Seeing that he avoided sickness, when he was released and returned to California, he formulated a capsule containing a concentrated dose of plant nutrients, which he sold under the label Nutrilite (Michaud 1994). Vitamin supplements were still a novelty in the 1940s, so, to educate customers, Rehnborg initiated his own sales force, rewarding them both for their sales and for the recruitment of new sellers (Pilzer 2003: 105). A new kind of direct sales called multilevel marketing was born. Unknowingly, Luisa retained a symbolic link to the pioneering Nutrilite by incorporating her Omnilife organization into an entity named “Nutrilight.” Two enterprising best friends in their twenties from Michigan heard about the new business of multilevel marketing. In 1949 Jay

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Van Andel and Rich DeVos joined Nutrilite and quickly built a thriving network of distributors. Their success soon outstripped Nutrilite’s ability to manufacture and deliver products, prompting the partners to sever ties with Nutrilite in 1959. They obtained the rights to a biodegradable household cleaner and began marketing it using the same system, but under the name “American Way Association” (Robinson 1997: 11). All the members of their existing network defected with them, forming the basis for what would become Amway. The two men shared a belief that a positive mental attitude guarantees success. DeVos advised distributors to put themselves on a “new thought diet” if they failed to realize their business goals (DeVos 1993: 171). Just as fatty foods block blood flow in arteries, so do negative thoughts impede the development of a winning attitude. Amway’s optimistic message combined with the incentive to recruit new distributors pushed the company’s sales volume from $500,000 in 1960 to $300 million in 1976. The phenomenal growth allowed the company to purchase Nutrilite and roll its vitamins into Amway’s expanding catalog of products (Conn 1977: 37). Gradually, nearly all direct sales companies came to mimic Amway’s emphasis on building downlines. As recently as 1990, single-level direct sellers like Avon comprised 75 percent of members in the Direct Selling Association, the trade group representing direct sellers in the United States. By 2000, the ratios had reversed, with 78 percent of the members operating under a multilevel model and less than a quarter following the single-level format (Brodie, Stanworth, and Wotruba 2002). Multilevel compensation allows for much larger paychecks as sales organizations balloon to thousands of members. The lavish consumption of company heads illustrates the potential for outsized wealth. Rich DeVos of Amway appeared in a magazine profile posing next to his Rolls Royce (Forbes 1975). In addition to his Rolls Royce, Mark Hughes of Herbalife lived in a $25 million Malibu mansion with a succession of beauty-queen wives before he died (Heller 2001). Multilevel marketers also regularly invest in professional sports teams. Amway’s founders purchased the basketball franchise Orlando Magic (Robinson 1997: 169) while the president of Home Interiors and Gifts owned the Dallas Mavericks (Cox 1994). Like many distributors, the company leaders start out with few advantages beyond their own confidence. Their glittering success demonstrates that unlimited prosperity awaits anyone who thinks positively. Like New Thought in the 1920s, multilevel marketing in the 1970s came to be dominated by get-rich-quick themes. That decade, state attorneys general, the U.S. Postal Service, and the Federal Trade

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Commission all investigated Amway for making deceptive business claims (Eisenberg 1987). Although the government ultimately found no illegality, it ordered Amway to disclose the average distributor’s monthly earnings to prospects (Streiker 1984:128). Company representatives hailed the ruling as vindication for their marketing plan, and then quietly revealed that only 40 percent of its distributors registered any activity during a given month, and, of those, the average reached gross sales of only $454 a month (Juth-Gavasso 1985:168). As legal troubles subsided in the United States, Canada began investigating Amway for customs fraud. In 1985, the company paid a $58 million to close the case. The same year, one of the first of many firstperson Amway exposes appeared, alleging that the company exaggerated the promises of riches while pressuring distributors to buy more and more training tools (Butterfield 1985). It is no coincidence that the push to expand direct sales overseas coincided with the heightened regulatory environment in North America (Stone and Steiner 1984). By the 1990s, Avon’s sales in developing countries accounted for 49 percent of its pretax profit (Economist 1996:57). Similarly, Tupperware relied on 100 foreign countries for four-fifths of its revenue and all of its growth (Hilsenrath 1996). Amway’s foreign branches contributed 70 percent of its $6.8 billion in annual sales (Ono 1997). As this diffusion occurred, journalists noted with wry humor the appearance of direct selling in unexpected settings. The image of Avon ladies searching for doorbells in remote parts of the Amazon where doorbells did not exist captured their imagination. One Los Angeles Times article carried the headline “Avon is Calling, and It’s a Jungle Out There” (Harris 1994). The New York Times followed with a piece called “Who Braves Piranha Waters? Your Avon Lady!” (Brooke 1995). When Luisa first joined Omnilife, Morelia, Mexico, may have seemed like a marginal city in the global economy, but it formed part of the central front in the expansion of direct sales at the cusp of the twenty-first century. Playing the Game of Life In its push beyond the United States, direct sales exported New Thought ideas alongside cosmetics and vitamins. The most visible sign of New Thought’s influence appear in the motivational books that Mexican direct sellers keep on their shelves. Translations of Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich and Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking remain popular guides to success. These tracts

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help bolster distributors’ confidence during low periods by reminding them that external conditions do not matter in the pursuit of their goals—only their thoughts do. In 2004, Luisa was looking for inspiration. After more than a dozen years working in Omnilife, she was starting to feel stalled in her ascent to the top of the company hierarchy. If she was not growing her business, it meant she was not helping as many people as she could. “I’m not happy standing still,” she explained. At an Omnilife event in Guadalajara, she mentioned her frustration to a diamondlevel distributor, and he recommended a book to her called El Juego de la vida y cómo jugarlo [The Game of Life and How to Play It] by Florence Scovel Shinn (Shinn 2004a [1925]). Luisa had never heard of Shinn, but the slender paperback was easy to find in her local bookstore and cost just $5. When she finished the book, Luisa was so taken by its message that she bought another four dozen copies to give to her family and colleagues. To see what impressed Luisa so much, I bought The Game of Life and How to Play It and read it in a single sitting. Shinn organizes the chapter around certain themes like love, health, and money. In each chapter, she describes how clients of hers achieved success in that area by training their thoughts to imagine the desired outcome or failed because they let negative thoughts linger. This concept of a “law of attraction” resonates with Luisa. She told me a passage early in the book particularly moved her. Shinn describes a young woman who always pictured herself as a widow. As a child, she would dress in black mourning garb and play the role of grieving wife. When she grew up she fell in love and married a man, but shortly after, he died. Unwittingly, she found herself living out the game she had played out mentally earlier in her life. In Luisa’s case, she had always seen herself as a single mother, and it came true. Luisa bought the two sequels to Shinn’s book, Your Word Is Your Wand (Shinn 2004b [1928]) and The Secret Door to Success (Shinn 2002 [1940]), and carried them in her purse. Your Word Is Your Wand consists of positive affirmations arranged by topic. By repeating the uplifting messages, Luisa aims to train her mind to send out the proper thought vibrations. I noticed a sheet of these phrases, typed and highlighted, on the desk in Luisa’s support center. One saying states, “I am at peace with myself and with the whole world. I love everyone, and everyone loves me.” Another one invokes the “Infinite Intelligence” to guide her to abundance. She often recites these mantras in the morning after listening to the rosary on the Catholic television channel. Unlike the religious service, the sayings never

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mention God, but instead refer to a generic “Infinite Intelligence” or “Divine Mind.” I asked Luisa how she differentiated between God and “Infinite Intelligence.” She replied that God gives to all of us equally, but Infinite Intelligence determines what each of us makes of our portion. Rich people, for example, do not enjoy more of God’s favor; they just know how to maximize what God gives them. Because God’s giving power is unlimited, anyone who nurtures the proper state of mind can access wealth. Shinn’s book encourages Luisa to graft the law of attraction onto her existing Christian beliefs. One summer afternoon in 2005, Luisa, Pamela, and I drove to a community outside Morelia to attend the civil wedding of Pamela’s former nanny. While we waited for the judge who would conduct the ceremony, Luisa walked with Pamela and me to the colonial-era church next to the town hall. Saints’ images surrounded us, votive candles flickering at their feet. Luisa walked to the altar, made the sign of the cross, and knelt in a pew to pray. When she finished, she sat on the wooden pew and contemplated silently. She nodded to us when it was time to leave. I waited until we stepped out into the churchyard before asking her what the Catholic Church meant to her. She answered thoughtfully, “I am raising Pamela in the sacraments of the Church. The Church shows me that God loves me, that He’s not a punishing God, but a generous one. It doesn’t matter if you’re very devout or not.” I followed up by asking if she talked to God. She replied, “Yes, but since I read the book The Game of Life, I no longer ask God for things. I just thank Him.” By cultivating confidence that she enjoys God’s favor, Luisa guarantees that she will reap heavenly rewards. Following the Leader Shinn’s books do not appear on any official Omnilife reading list, but their message is consistent with the tenets of New Thought that link Jorge Vergara to his direct sales predecessors. New Thought’s brand of direct faith helps imbue the tedious work of selling with a nobler purpose. Instead of enriching themselves, distributors who recruit large organizations are teaching others how to access the divinely granted power of thoughts. Alfred Fuller, whose brush business solidified direct selling in the public imaginary, instilled in his sales force the transcendent importance of their work. “I never hesitated to interrupt anyone, being convinced that my mission was to lessen the drudgery of domestic life” (quoted in Friedman 2004: 206). Decades later, Amway’s founder Rich DeVos credited his company’s success

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with multilevel marketing to a vision beyond profits. “No business will prosper unless it has a mission larger than itself,” he explained (quoted in Conn 1982: 52). Jorge Vergara continues this legacy with Omnilife. He explicitly prohibits distributors from using the word “selling.” Their work consists of using the products to spur personal transformations and then sharing them so that others may benefit from the same opportunity. The magnanimous message also shields direct sales leaders from charges of ostentatious behavior. What looks like indulgence to an outsider reads as inspiration to a distributor. As Shinn put it, signs of wealth are merely the outward expressions of a right-thinking mind. Their display should not provoke envy, but instead motivate others to achieve the same rewards through positive thoughts. Jorge Vergara does not shy from flaunting his wealth. He purchased a Boeing 737, the first such jet designed for private use in Latin America (Aguirre 2002). He makes high-profile appearances at elite gatherings like the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and on the red carpet of the Cannes Film Festival in France. Like Mark Hughes, Vergara’s penchant for novelty extends to his romantic life. As his fortunes grew, Vergara divorced the woman who had helped him found Omnilife. He fathered a daughter with the head of Omnilife’s charitable arm before ending that relationship and marrying a second time. His new bride, Angélica Fuentes, scion of a prominent family in northern Mexico’s natural gas industry, became the director of Omnilife’s dayto-day operations. Their 2008 wedding, a five-day Hindu ceremony in Udaipur, India, covered by a glossy Mexican celebrity magazine, coincided with the opening of the first Omnilife wholesale store in that country (Sáenz Arelle 2008). Omnilife distributors do not fault him for these excesses. Rather, they interpret Vergara’s actions through the teachings of New Thought. One top distributor recalled that when he first saw Vergara arrive at an event in his private jet, he reflected on the hypocrisy of the company’s motto, “So much for people helping people!” Then, he realized that Vergara was not thumbing his nose at the crowd, who had traveled by bus. The distributor saw that Vergara’s example demonstrated that “When I wanted to, I too could travel by plane.” When Amalia had traveled to Argentina on the 737 with Vergara, she reached the same conclusion about his character. She remembered how she watched him as they settled in for a long return flight to Mexico. He was just sitting quietly looking out the window, but she could see in him “a profound desire to help change his country.” In both these situations, Vergara’s self-indulgence actually conveys his

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care for others. He helps others by showing them how they, too, can achieve their goals. A veteran Omnilife distributor in Morelia told me about another example of how Vergara led by example. The man and his wife once traveled to California to attend a leadership training with Vergara. At the end of the visit, Vergara invited the group of a dozen distributors to dine at the upscale restaurant Spago in Beverly Hills. The guests ordered caviar and tenderloin and enjoyed glasses of wine. When the bill arrived, it totaled $1,800. The man from Morelia looked around for Vergara, but he had already left, sticking the distributors with the bill. Hearing this turn in the anecdote, I shook my head and remarked at how stingy Vergara was. The distributor, chuckling at the memory, corrected me. The way he saw it, Vergara was teaching them a lesson in leadership. To be a head of a business, they could not think frugally. As Shinn advises, if they live richly, actual riches will follow. Members of their downlines will learn that they, too, can create wealth through a changed mindset. Some analysts have seen in this unwillingness to criticize company founders evidence of cult-like activity (Bhattacharya and Mehta 2000). Indeed, several iconic leaders allow cults of personality to develop around them. Tupperware dealers used to compete for the chance to wear Brownie Wise’s cast-off clothing. Mary Kay beauty consultants still visit the company’s headquarters outside Dallas, Texas, where the deceased founder’s office is maintained as a shrine, and try on her pink Gucci eyeglasses. Luisa seems incapable of finding fault with the man she calls respectfully, “my boss.” Yet, when considered in the context of New Thought’s influence on direct sales, the admiration for corporate executives is less sinister. According to the tenets of New Thought, prosperity knows no limits and is available to all. Vergara does not achieve his fortune by exploiting millions of gullible recruits. He alone is responsible for how his life turns out. Through every obstacle, he remains optimistic that his company will succeed. By living luxuriously, he provides an example of the power of positive thinking for Luisa and others who want to turn their dreams into reality.

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Chapter 4

Healing the Body through the Mind

E

ven though Jorge Vergara’s business approach fits neatly in the lineage of New Thought–inspired direct sales companies, his idiosyncrasies distinguish him as an original thinker. On a trip to Mexico City shortly after meeting Luisa, I mentioned to friends that I had begun studying a curious company in Morelia. One of my friends, a reporter for Newsweek, was familiar with Omnilife from an interview he had conducted with Vergara (Zarembo 2001). What he remembered most from the encounter was that Vergara refused to wear socks. When I returned to Morelia and saw Luisa again, I asked her about this quirk. She laughed and admitted it was true. She thumbed through a stack of company magazines to find a photograph of the sockless leader. She explained that because the foot is one of the body’s thermostats, Vergara believes that covering it leads to sickness. According to Vergara, most illness result from exposure to man-made toxins or poor self-care, which inhibit the natural smooth functioning of the human organism. Luckily, because we inflict the damage ourselves, we can also undo the harmful effects. Luisa added that, following Vergara’s example, she never wears socks, closed toe shoes, or panty hose. Of course, by this logic, it would be wrong to wear shoes, too, but if Vergara advocated going barefoot it would provoke a whole new set of health problems. The amateur theory of sock temperature regulation epitomizes Vergara’s commonsense, direct approach to health. He proudly presents himself as someone with no more than a high school education who has never entered a laboratory. That lack of scientific credentials serves him in generating practical ideas for products that people would consume. For instance, he reasoned that many Mexicans liked to drink coffee, so why not invent a coffee drink that also stimulated

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weight loss? Similarly, he noticed that children liked to chew gum more than they liked to eat fruits and vegetables, so he developed a gum that also delivered vitamin C. In Vergara’s retelling, he keeps the path from inspiration to manufacture short. He comes up with an idea, informs some unnamed technicians, and the finished product appears on the shelves of Omnilife wholesale stores around the world. Where company promotional materials describe the genesis of the products, they confine themselves to showcasing images of gleaming, high-tech assembly plants, never microscope-wielding researchers. This silence around who turns Vergara’s commonsense ideas into ingestible products does not bother any of the distributors I knew. More than once, I heard a distributor declare blithely, “I don’t know what’s in them; I just know they work.” For all the specialized formulations in the Omnilife repertoire, it does not really matter which product a distributor takes for a particular ailment. All the products perform the same function: to detect the source of the problem and eliminate it. Continued vitamin consumption helps to prevent future problems from developing. By claiming such astounding curative properties for simple sugary drinks, it is clear that Omnilife vitamins work primarily on the psychological level. Physiological changes follow from a changed mindset. Calling Omnilife’s vitamins placebos does not discredit them. On the contrary, it underscores the company’s emphasis on the power of the mind to create reality. Although Vergara and Luisa still offer some vague biochemical explanation for the products’ abilities, they do so mostly to reassure customers that the vitamins have been tested for safety. In the tradition of religious testimonials, they prefer to measure efficacy with personal anecdotes, not double-blind studies. In Vergara’s formulation, Omnilife’s supplements represent a tangible analogue to mind cure’s metaphysical tenets. Just as a diet of positive thoughts dislodges the self-imposed limiting beliefs that stymie success, so does a diet of vitamin drinks purge the body of accumulated debris. Both regimens deepen the commitment to directness by unblocking psychic and physical channels to allow the inflow of a universal healing power. Megadosing Vitamins against Doctors’ Orders In the weeks after I received my distributor kit with its bottle of energy-boosting Magnus, I dutifully prepared one 600-milliliter bottle of the drink a day. The orange-colored powder did not come with a measuring spoon, so I had to guess the appropriate quantity

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to add to the Omnilife-brand water. Also, until I bought a funnel, it took some experimenting to master the technique of pouring the fine powder through the neck of the water bottle without spilling. To my palate, the resulting drink tasted overly sweet and turned chalky as the unmixed powder sedimented on the bottom of the bottle. When I examined the product label, I saw that fructose comes first in the list of ingredients, which would explain the saccharine, citrus flavor. It also boasts an impressive range of vitamins, including A, B1, B2, B6 B12, C, niacin, calcium, chrome, copper, folic acid, and zinc. Though, as a nutritional novice, I had no idea if the quantities were appropriate. Everything on the label could appear in a standard, overthe-counter multivitamin. The only clue that Magnus boosts energy is the 60 milligrams of caffeine contained in each portion. The most significant physical change I noticed since I started taking the supplement regularly was a more frequent desire to urinate. As with all her new recruits, Luisa followed up with me to make sure I was enjoying the maximum benefit from Magnus. “How have you felt with the product?” she asked when I visited her in her office a week after our first meeting. “Fine. No change really,” I answered honestly. Luisa pushed ahead without acknowledging my response. “It helps us from feeling so exhausted. Don’t you find that being with people robs you of energy? When I give a meeting with sick people, I feel spent.” She asked the secretary to bring her purse, from which she removed a small bottle of pink pills called Dolce Vita. She put one in her mouth and continued, “These prevent diabetes. I can get a fright, and my sugar level spikes. Or it can be low; this helps regulate it. It also helps you lose weight.” What kind of vitamin could both raise and lower blood sugar? And was there not serious ongoing research about treatment for diabetes? From her practiced delivery, I had the sense that she was not giving this information for the first time. Yet her comments seem to defy scientific rationality. I had taken vitamins ever since I was a child when my parents gave me candy-colored pills in the shape of Flintstones characters. As an adult, I take a daily overthe-counter multivitamin pill and an occasional protein shake. So, I am disposed to believe in the efficacy of vitamins, but I truly had not experienced any dramatic changes with Magnus. It seems that if I need a burst of energy, I can just as easily (and more cheaply) take a nap or drink a cup of coffee. Luisa encouraged me to adopt a more rigorous routine of vitamin consumption like hers. The first Omnilife supplement she tried was OmniPlus, the original antioxidant in the product line. Ever since she was a young girl, she had suffered from chronic bronchitis

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and asthma. Soon after she began taking the supplement in regular doses, the respiratory problems that had puzzled medical doctors and plagued her for most of her life disappeared. The results convinced her to exercise even more control over her health by making vitamins part of her daily routine. She drinks a cup of Thermogen Coffee first thing each morning. Throughout the day, she sips from two oneand-a-half-liter bottles of the company’s branded water, drawn from a special volcanic source in Mexico, to which she adds the products Dolce Vita (in powder form), Fiber’n Plus, Starbien, Thermogen Tea, and OmniPlus. During meals, she drinks the carbonated beverages Ego Frutas and Ego Cola. On days she leads training meetings, she takes Magnus mixed with Ego Life for energy and eats Thermogen Cookies for a snack. Finally, she drinks the coffee again before bed for a restful sleep. Every time Omnilife introduces a new product, which it does about once a year, she cycles it into her regimen long enough to experience its curative properties. As the catalog of Omnilife supplements multiplies, novice consumers become easily intimidated by the nearly 100 different vitamin formulations. The antioxidant OmniPlus alone comes in three different forms: a concentrate in a 940-milliliter bottle, a powder in a box of 30 packets, and a carbonated beverage in a 200-milliliter flask. Within each form, a consumer chooses between lemon, orange, pineapple, and grape flavors. Retail prices range from about $2 for one of the small premixed drinks to about $30 for a container with several servings of powder. Several products target specific parts of the body like the stomach, the liver, and the brain. Others promise to treat specific conditions like high cholesterol, muscle fatigue, and hormonal imbalance. Despite this cornucopia of options, Omnilife does not recommend any particular dosage or schedule for taking the products. To add to the confusion, many of the product flavors clash when combined. Veteran distributors like Luisa often play the role of pharmacist for their recruits. They suggest appropriate quantities to meet each consumer’s needs and offer smoothie-like recipes to meet every taste. Occasionally, Amalia’s brother, a doctor turned Omnilife distributor, leads informational sessions at the support center. He always makes clear that he speaks as a businessman, not a physician. In fact, he often disparages medical professionals for knowing little about nutrition. Unlike medicines, he says, vitamin supplements function in every body at every age and in every condition. He likens the products to an oil change for a motor, flushing out the dirty buildup that prevented it from running optimally. Just like a car, human bodies

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require regular maintenance. For patients who take Omnilife’s fiber supplement, he promises a literal purging in the form of several fetid bowel movements. With the offending toxins removed, the digestive system begins operating properly. Audience members ask the doctor to prescribe Omnilife products for their maladies. In response to each question, he rattles off five or six products, which they hurriedly write in their notebooks. In my experience, no correspondence exists between a product and its intended function. For example, in one session, the doctor recommended OmniPlus for conditions as varied as insomnia, a broken arm, menstrual problems, cough, and asthma. I suspect that which product a person takes matters less than how much. The doctor confirmed this when he explained the three possible reactions to the vitamins. Someone could feel worse, in which case the product has identified a blockage and is working to dislodge it. Someone could feel better, meaning that treatment has begun. Or someone could feel nothing, indicating that the problem is deeply rooted. In all three instances, the answer is to consume more vitamin supplements. In the history of vitamins, the belief that greater quantities yield better results is well established. It first emerged in the United States with the commercialization of vitamins in the 1920s and came to characterize Mexico in the twenty-first century as well. The thinking goes that most diets, no matter how carefully chosen, fail to provide the necessary nutrients to maintain optimum health, so individuals should cover the gap with vitamin supplements. Medical evidence does not confirm the “nutritional insurance” approach, though vitamin consumers have rarely let scientific conclusions temper their enthusiasm for self-prescribing. Rima Apple’s comprehensive Vitamania documents how from the beginning of vitamin sales, their intended customer was not the sick patient, but the middle-class mother concerned for her health and the health of her family (Apple 1996: 55). Even though the American Medical Association issued a warning that vitamins should be obtained from food and not pills, vitamin sales grew almost 700 percent during the 1930s (Apple 1996: 11). The appeal of defying doctors to take control of one’s health fueled the demand for vitamins during the twentieth century. In 1970, when Nobel Prize–winning chemist Linus Pauling advocated consuming megadoses of vitamin C to combat colds, the medical community protested vociferously. Apart from wanting to protect their professional territory, the doctors knew that no consensus vouched for the benefits of vitamin C. Still, the public embraced Pauling’s advice and drove up purchases of vitamin C supplements.

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Marion Nestle, a prominent voice in the United States on health eating, notes that, in the absence of empirical evidence for its efficacy, vitamin C functions mainly as a placebo. She describes a double-blind, placebo-controlled study that the National Institutes of Health initiated in the 1970s to measure the effect of vitamin C on colds. As the experiment progressed, the researchers observed an unusually high rate of subjects withdrawing. It turned out that many participants, worried that they had been assigned a sugar pill, preferred to drop out rather than forsake the imagined benefits of vitamin C. Although the original research design had to be scuttled, the investigators reanalyzed the data to produce a different conclusion. They found that subjects who believed they were taking vitamin C—whether they really were or not—reported fewer colds and milder symptoms (Nestle 2002: 382–383). One critic of the multibillion-dollar vitamin industry calls this effect “illusory correlation” (Hurley 2006: 221). Most colds will go away on their own, but if patients take a vitamin, they tend to credit any improvement to the pill. Since the 1970s, additional studies of vitamin C have yielded little evidence that supplementation reduces either the severity or duration of cold symptoms (Hemilä et al. 2007). I consulted the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews to gauge the scientific consensus on vitamin supplementation. The database publishes meta-analyses of all the clinical trials of a particular medical intervention and summarizes the outcomes on the health of patients. It is designed to guide the choices that doctors and patients make about treatments. Researchers have tested the effect of individual vitamins on specific conditions, but I focused on the most comprehensive reviews. One paper analyzed the findings of 67 randomized trials involving over 230,000 participants that targeted the relationship between antioxidant supplementation (the family of nutrients that includes beta-carotene, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, and selenium) and mortality. The authors found no link between supplementation and longer life. In fact, excess consumption of beta-carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E increases the risk of mortality (Bjelakovic et al. 2008). Another analysis of previously published studies about vitamins as treatment for chronic disease concluded that excessive supplementation, particularly of fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, and K), can be harmful (Fairfield and Fletcher 2002). I did not conduct an independent laboratory analysis of Omnilife’s products to determine whether they contained either harmful ingredients or unhealthful doses of fat-soluble vitamins. One distributor for a rival nutritional supplement multilevel marketer pointed me to

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a comparative guide of vitamins written by Lyle MacWilliam (2003). MacWilliam, a biochemist and former member of the Canadian Parliament, consulted with medical doctors and nutritionists to devise the ideal vitamin profile. He then compared commercially available supplements with that standard. He did not test Omnlife’s most popular multivitamin, OmniPlus, but he did examine its twin Omni IV, manufactured by Omnitrition U.S.A. In a ranking of over 500 vitamin supplements, Omni IV came in last with a rating of zero and a warning that it contained dangerously high levels of vitamin A. MacWilliam served as a consultant for some of the highest-ranked vitamin companies, so it is likely that financial interest clouded his judgment. Still, it is noteworthy that even he opposes consuming megadoses of vitamins indiscriminately. When I spoke with doctors in Mexico about Omnilife’s products, they admitted encouraging patients to take supplements if it makes them feel more in control of their recovery, but they do not credit the vitamins with any empirically verifiable healing. Scientists agree that a balanced diet provides all the vitamins and minerals that most bodies need and many other valuable substances not found in pills, but this sensible solution has not persuaded the over 100 million adults in the United States who take some form of vitamin or mineral supplement (Brody 1997). Mindful of the potential harm of taking over-the-counter vitamins, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) attempted to impose controls on dietary supplements. In the early 1970s, regulators proposed treating products containing over 150 percent of the recommended daily allowance of a vitamin as drugs. The public, accustomed to self-prescribing megadoses of vitamins, overwhelmed Congress with protest. Senator Edward Kennedy reported that his office received more mail on the vitamin issue than on Watergate (Apple 1996: 164). By 1976, Congress enacted legislation stripping the FDA of the power to regulate vitamins, the first time in history it had curtailed that agency’s power (Apple 1996: 172). In subsequent decades, under lobbying from the supplementation industry, Congress further freed vitamin manufacturers from scientific scrutiny. A similar lack of legislation prevents federal authorities in Mexico from regulating dietary supplements sold there. In keeping with the neoliberal reforms of the 1990s, the Ministry of Health has relaxed restrictions on pharmaceutical products (Hayden 2007). All the government requires of vitamin manufacturers is a standard warning label reminding the consumer that “This product is not medicine. Its consumption is the responsibility of who recommends it and who

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consumes it.” Without the enforcement of medical models of nutrition, the vitamin-consuming public is free to follow their own theories of supplementation. In his presentations of Omnilife products, Jorge Vergara proposes a potent metaphor for how individuals can improve health. He advocates viewing vitamins as natural cleansers wiping away the toxic by-products of modern industrial life. Once the products perform their cures, Omnilife distributors should continue drinking them to prevent a return of the affliction. Consumers can control their own health directly without mediation from doctors or scientists. Advancing a Holistic Theory of Nutrition The metaphor of cleansing the body originated with the first supplement product that Vergara pitched when he joined Omnitrition. Omni IV based its health claims on the free-radical theory of aging. In 1955 University of Nebraska chemist Denham Harman proposed a mechanism by which environmental factors triggered illness. Free radicals—molecules that have lost an electron—form naturally in the body during the process of converting food to energy. They also abound under exposure to radiation, an observation that concerned cold war–era scientists. These oxidized molecules seek a mate for their unpaired electron by stealing one from other compounds. The instability of free radicals causes cells to age by inflicting damage to their structures that the body can only partially repair. Short of halting the constant barrage of free radicals, Harman reasoned that an infusion of antioxidants would eliminate the damaging elements and thereby forestall senescence. Harman conducted laboratory experiments showing that a diet rich in antioxidants like vitamins C and E and beta-carotene extended average life span in mice, rats, fruit flies, and worms (Lardner 1983). Further research has lent scientific credibility to the free-radical theory of aging, but whether consuming antioxidants prolongs human life remains controversial. With the U.S. market open for unregulated vitamin consumption after the 1970s, proponents of megadosing with antioxidants to flush out free radicals gained in popularity. Two prominent advocates of antioxidants, Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw, wrote a 1982 bestseller, Life Extension: A Practical Scientific Approach, which they dedicated to Denham Harman. The couple, who have undergraduate degrees in physics and chemistry, blend legitimate scientific credentials with a populist appeal for halting the aging process. Like Harman, they base their approach to health on arresting the development of free

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radicals, which they link to cancer, emphysema, arthritis, and circulation problems (Pearson and Shaw 1982: 102). Antioxidants, they believe, act as a shield against the “internal radiation” that free radicals inflict. To demonstrate how consuming dietary supplements prolongs lives, Pearson and Shaw describe the regimen of supplements that they devised for themselves. Photos of the authors in bathing suits flexing in bodybuilding poses demonstrates the rejuvenating effects they experience even without exercising. They include testimonials of how consuming antioxidants allow them to defy doctors’ predictions about their recovery time from sickness and injury. Life Extension sold 1.7 million copies, spawned two sequels, and sparked a craze for antioxidants. The authors touted their selfexperimentation with vitamins in public lectures and an appearance on the Merv Griffin Show. Eventually, they developed commercial versions of their vitamin powders so that the public could duplicate their age-defying efforts. When I started taking Omnilife’s vitamins, Pearson and Shaw still conducted serious research from their base in rural Nevada and earned money from royalties on their line of “designer foods” (Heard 1997). Like Linus Pauling before them, the couple’s popular reception antagonized university scientists, who resented the intrusion on their authority. One gerontologist commented, “What they’re doing is like taking every possible cure for the common cold at once” (Andrew 1983). Another physician accused them of extrapolating inappropriately from animal experiments (Barrett and Herbert 1994: 156). Jerry Rubin, not one to be impressed by the establishment, befriended Pearson and Shaw and encouraged them to license their products through Omnitrition U.S.A. (Rubin 1992). When Jorge Vergara established the Mexican version of Omnitrition, his first product was an antioxidant designed by Pearson and Shaw that borrowed their kitchen-sink approach to supplementation. Knowledgeable distributors still mention Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw as the originators of Omnilife products. They are the so-called NASA scientists who Luisa refers to as the brains behind the products. Her brother, Marco, showed me early company newsletters that carried a question and answer column authored by the couple translated into Spanish. The queries center on technical discussions of the effects of certain nutrients in the body. Marco also pointed out that the original names for many Omnilife products like Be Your Best, Focus, and Wow! all come from Pearson and Shaw’s line of designer foods. Although Pearson and Shaw do not maintain any relationship with Omnilife, the duo did establish the right for Omnilife and all

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nutritional supplement firms operating in the United States to distribute their products without regulatory oversight. Even after the weakening of the FDA’s authority to regulate vitamins, it retained the power to approve all health claims printed on vitamin bottles. When Pearson and Shaw applied for permission to print on the label of their designer food that antioxidant consumption may reduce the risk of cancer, the FDA denied the request. In 1999 the couple sued the federal government. The Appeals Court decision sided with the plaintiffs (Pearson v Shalala 2001). The ruling held that by requiring scientific substantiation for health claims on labels, the FDA illegally infringed on free speech. As long as its labels carry a disclaimer, a supplement manufacturer may make claims for the benefits of vitamins unsubstantiated by scientific consensus. Meeting the Sockless Leader In public presentations, Jorge Vergara establishes the symbolic framework in which Omnilife’s products produce their healing. He eschews scientific discourse in favor of the language of direct faith. To hear him describe it, no disease comes from genetic flaws or invasive viruses. Vergara traces every condition, be it breast cancer or diabetes, to human choices. Some choices occur at a societal level— like pollution—while others occur within each individual at the dinner table. Because humans cause the gamut of health problems, they alone can find cures. At best, doctors offer only temporary solutions. Their medicines relieve pain without treating the underlying mental root of illness. Consistent with New Thought principles, Vergara argues that everyone with the right mindset can access physical health. On an October afternoon in 2005, Luisa parked her minivan next to a caravan of rented buses, and we walked hurriedly toward the rented meeting hall. We passed a house with a sign announcing the sale of Omnilife products within, and Luisa joked that if we had more time, she would report the distributor for violating the company’s ban on advertising. We arrived late, but the guest speaker was even later. I estimated about 1,000 people in the audience, including those sitting in an overflow room watching the event on giant television screens. They had come from all over Michoacán and neighboring states to see Jorge Vergara. Luisa’s parents had saved us seats in the front row of the main hall. While we waited, a woman warmed up the crowd with a testimonial of how the vitamins had healed her problems with gastritis and colitis.

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I did not need to check the monitors on either side of the stage to know when Vergara arrived. A murmur from the back of the hall began to build, heads turned, flash bulbs sparked, and finally the audience stood and clapped enthusiastically. I made out the outline of a man in a dark suit moving forward, clasping hands, and kissing infants. He ascended the stage, accepted the microphone from the emcee, and sat on a stool perched next to a small table. For a nutrition empresario, he was not particularly thin. In fact, he had a noticeable double chin. Still, he was dressed nattily in a dark suit, pink shirt, and blue tie and had close cropped dark hair flecked with gray. I looked carefully to see if I could make out exposed ankles below the raised hems of his suit pants (see Figure 4.1). I glanced quickly at Luisa’s father to see if he too had given up socks. When I noticed that he did wear them, I did not feel so self-conscious about my own pair. The story Vergara began to relate had become standardized to the point of myth in Omnilife. “When I started 14 years ago, I was fat, sick, and bankrupt,” he said. He sketched his early work history selling real estate and then getting laid off. Turning to his foray into the

Figure 4.1 When Jorge Vergara came to Morelia, he modeled his trademark look of shoes without socks.

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food business in Guadalajara, he recalled how he could not control his eating and ballooned to 220 pounds. In this version of the autobiography, he left out his involvement with Herbalife and presented his ideas about nutrition as original to him. He remarked that he conducted some research and concluded that his obesity violated the body’s natural condition. “The human body is designed perfectly. Whoever designed it—call Him what you want—designed it perfectly. So, why was I sick?” Part of the answer lies in the noxious additives that contaminate the food supply. Meat producers pump animals full of growth hormones and chemicals. “Why do you think they call it ‘Pollo Loco?’ ” he asked, making a pun on “Crazy Chicken,” the name of a popular fast-food franchise. Nor should vegetarians feel safe from ingesting harmful pollutants. Vergara asserted that farmers routinely spray their crops with pesticides and preservatives. Factory farming and industrial agriculture have transformed the food supply from the nutritious Eden that God intended into a dangerous purveyor of poison. Exacerbating the prevalence of health problems, Vergara claimed, was most people’s decision to pollute their own bodies with poor dietary choices. “Why don’t the Chinese have diabetes?” Vergara asked rhetorically. “Because they don’t use refined sugars. They don’t eat food that’s out of season.” Mexicans also used to adhere to a more unadulterated diet, but few people nowadays resist the temptation to overindulge in sweets. Because per capita Coca-Cola consumption in Mexico is more than in any other country (Luhnow and Terhune 2003), soda is a potent symbol among Omnilife distributors of what is wrong with the Mexican diet. Not only do soft drinks compete with sales of Omnilife’s beverages, but they also contribute to increasing rates of obesity and diabetes. Vergara continued, “Diabetes didn’t exist in the last century. Before, people didn’t die of breast or uterine cancer. Now young girls have to check for lumps in their breasts. If they get caught fondling their girlfriends’ breasts, men can just say they’re checking for tumors.” The audience laughed. Western medicine, he went on, fails to treat most illnesses because doctors receive little training in nutrition and merely prescribe medicines to relieve pain. When Vergara called on members of the audience to stand and give testimonials about the healing effects of the products, the defiance of doctors was a common theme. A middleaged man stood to share the story of how the doctors said he would never walk again after fracturing his knee. He took Power Maker five to ten times a day, and was walking again in eight months. A woman described how doctors predicted only a 1 percent chance of survival

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from her liver cancer. “Thanks to God and the products, I am in that 1 percent. I have been healthy for six years.” Vergara agreed that doctors underestimate the healing power of the human mind. Just as the mind requires regular maintenance to purge it of negative thoughts, so does the body benefit from frequent cleanings of the toxic residues that prevent it from operating optimally. The Omnilife line of vitamins gives average consumers all the tools they need to care for their own health. The image of vitamins as cleansing the body impressed Luisa, and she uses it in her conversations with distributors and new recruits. Shortly after Vergara’s visit to Morelia, Luisa received an invitation to give a product demonstration in Ciudad Hidalgo, a city in the western part of the state. Her brother, Marco, and I went along to help with the driving and the running of the digital projector for her PowerPoint presentation. The meeting room filled a long, rectangular space running the length of the second floor of a commercial building. The organizers, a local couple, arranged plastic chairs in rows facing an elaborate display of empty product bottles and boxes. Posters on the walls depicted more Omnilife products and photos from Omnilife events. A table in the far corner of the room served as a kitchen with bottles of water, cartons of products, and a blender. As the guests arrived, Marco and I set up the laptop. He finished a bottle of premixed Omnilife product, which left a white film on the plastic container. I watched him open another bottle of company water, pour a small amount in the drink he had just finished, and swish it gingerly around the edges of the bottle to pick up any residue of vitamin powder. His reverence for the product reminded me of the care a priest takes to rinse any crumbs from the cup of wafers after giving communion. Luisa nursed a bottle of liquid vitamins while she delivered her speech to about 50 people. She followed the order of the slide show, taking each product in turn, describing its benefits, offering a personal testimonial, and soliciting experiences with the product from the audience. Gone was the giggly, sarcastic tone she usually adopted with me. In its place, Luisa sounded more like Vergara—serious, authoritative, and sometimes combative. The amount of information she gave about so many different powders overwhelmed even my note-taking skills, so I imagined that the audience captured more of a general picture about the efficacy of the vitamins than any specific examples. The consistent idea was that the products purge sick bodies of the toxins that provoke illness. There is no wrong time or way to consume the vitamins. As long as distributors take them regularly,

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they will begin to reclaim their bodies from the poisons that crippled it. The array of vitamins facilitate the transformation that so appeals to people in Omnilife. Purified, their bodies would regain the power they enjoyed during an earlier time when people lived in closer connection to their divine origin. OmniPlus was the first product she highlighted. As a poster on the wall indicated, OmniPlus was the “mother” of all the vitamins. It earned this status not only because it was the first supplement in the product line, but also because it offered basic protection from all kinds of afflictions. One woman in the audience volunteered that she diluted OmniPlus and injected the solution intravenously. The first time she did it, she recalled, her body expelled a passel of “stagnant trash,” leaving her feeling much better. When we shifted to talking about Thermogen Coffee, Marco offered a story from one of his clients who expelled a piece of flesh in her urine after drinking it. Luisa clarified, “The coffee didn’t produce the ball of flesh; she already had it. People have expelled tapeworms after drinking the products. Tapeworms are many meters long—they can’t fit in the boxes. They’re already in people’s bodies. Don’t be scared—you’ll see earthworms, amoebas come out. There’s no danger. It’s good for you.” Marco added soberly the story of another client who drank the coffee and expelled a worm through her nose. These testimonials make tangible the noxious waste that our bodies have accumulated by living in a polluted world. They also made a few women in the audience uneasy. One remarked that when she tried drinking the coffee to alleviate a migraine, the pain got worse. Luisa answered that the discomfort was a sign that the product had detected a problem and was working to clean it out of her system. Another woman asked if the products contained harmful chemicals. Luisa turned defensive: “We eat so many things in bread and tortillas that we don’t notice. Who’s drunk beer? Have you read what it contains? No? Then, why are you so delicate when it comes to drinking something that’s healthy?” When she moved on to introducing other products, Luisa encountered more resistance. A woman interrupted her to say that she had tried many times to drink the products, but she just could not stomach them. Luisa did not flinch: “I started taking the products when I was 19 years old, and the first time, they put me to sleep for the whole day. I had to take it in small doses until I learned to tolerate more. Other people have taken the products and felt good, so the problem is you. You have to take the product. Whatever reaction you feel is good.” Her response makes clear the underside of direct

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faith; when an individual accepts control of her life, she must also accept blame for failure. The veterans in the audience quickly sided with Luisa. One woman turned to address the detractor directly: “When I gave the product to my daughter, she started vomiting and said, ‘You’re killing me.’ But I kept giving it to her, and she’s gone 11 years without an epileptic fit.” Another woman sniped, “You take what the doctor gives you without questioning, so why do you question these products? You must not want to get better.” Luisa finished her inventory of the products without further challenge. Once, in a discussion of a fiber product, she called on me to give my testimonial about how taking it had helped me acclimate to Mexican cuisine. She ended with the story of one of her distributors in Morelia. When she joined Omnilife, the woman suffered from depression so profound that she took 18 prescription pills a day. For the first three months consuming Omnilife vitamins, she vomited and suffered headaches, but she wanted to get better, so she persevered. Her body, Luisa explained, was intoxicated by so much medicine. Gradually, the supplements began cleansing her insides and restored her to health. “Our body gives us an invoice,” Luisa concluded, “but many times we don’t want to pay the price.” Some initial pain is the cost of ridding the body of entrenched toxins. The examples of purging the body of toxins that I heard so graphically in Luisa’s presentation permeate the testimonials in most Omnilife meetings. Some distributors liken the stomach to a clogged drain and the products to a natural form of Drano. Other times, I heard the products described as “brooms,” sweeping away harmful residue. When the cause of a disease appears in such a concentrated form, it is easy to justify taking megadoses of vitamins to wash it out. For Luisa’s mother this strategy worked to correct a problem of excessive saliva. She described how she coughed up a bloody chunk of flesh that looked like garlic after drinking an entire bottle’s worth of an Omnilife vitamin powder. Another chunk followed. Since then, her saliva production had normalized. When she told this story at a support meeting, it inspired others to recount their own episodes of cancerous tumors expelled from eye sockets, vaginas, and suppurating sores. Metaphors of cleansing recall the shamanic technique of removing offensive substances from the body to facilitate recovery (Chagnon 1968: 52). Unlike narrowly targeted biomedical treatments, purges attack not just the symptoms of an illness, but rather its underlying cause. Luisa accepts and repeats Vergara’s explanation for how vitamins work because the symbolism of removing debris from the body matches her own cultural understanding of disease.

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Moreover, the image of cleansing fits with the tenets of direct faith, becoming the physical manifestation of her commitment to unblock the mental channels through which divine power flows. That Omnilife consumers base their confidence in vitamins on folk theories rather than scientific validation does not negate the efficacy of taking dietary supplements. Untested ideas like removing socks or flushing the body of toxins still produce beneficial effects for the people who hold them. As advanced as they are technologically, standard scientific treatments fail to answer the existential question of why sickness affects a particular patient. People have long employed narratives of the relationship between the mind and the body to make sense of suffering (Harrington 2008: 17). One ethnography of Spiritualist healing in Mexico makes the case that alternative treatments can have greater success than biomedical approaches because they deploy symbols that fit the patients’ understanding of the sacred world (Finkler 1985: 193). Similarly, Omnilife’s metaphor of vitamins as cleansers provides a culturally appropriate frame for understanding how the substances work in the body. These mental models can be so seductive that even members of the medical elite find them more convincing than the scientific standard. The advisory board of the American Council of Science and Health concluded that “the prevailing scientific viewpoint is that the best way to prevent nutritional deficiencies is to eat a varied, balanced diet” (Kava 1995: 6). Yet, when asked whether they took supplements themselves, over half the professional advisers indicated that they did. If experts, who read the health claims on supplement labels with skepticism, still take vitamin pills, then health-conscious Omnilife consumers can hardly be blamed for taking sugary powders. Making Exceptions to the Rule From her presentations to distributors, it would be logical to assume that Luisa’s exhaustive vitamin regimen left no room for other beverages. In daily practice, however, she recognized when it was impractical to avoid unapproved drinks. On our trip to Ixtapa, she packed a blender so she and her family could prepare Omnilife drinks in their hotel room. At the same time, Luisa took full advantage of the poolside bar when she was sunbathing. Similarly, as a guest at a friend’s wedding, she did not bring any Omnilife products into the party and gladly accepted the soda and alcohol served at the table. About once a month, she and her family drive to a favorite rustic fish restaurant on a lake about 45 minutes from Morelia. When I accompanied them,

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they usually brought along some of Omnilife’s carbonated beverages that came in aluminum cans, but they also drank the flavored water that came with the meal. On Christmas Eve, Luisa, her parents, her brother, and her cousins gather to eat a late dinner and toast with Fresca soda spiked with Bailey’s rum. By observing Luisa and her family, I saw that their extreme rhetoric helps to establish a totalizing metaphor about the vitamin drinks even if they know in practice that most people’s consumption will be less than absolute. My experience consuming the products exemplifies the gap between ideal and practical behavior. Once I mastered a way to dispense the powders into the narrow-necked water bottles without spilling, I aimed to drink a 600-milliliter bottle’s worth of product a day. When the company introduced 200-milliliter bottles of premixed vitamin drinks, I tried to remember to keep a few chilled in the refrigerator and grab one to put in my satchel when I left the house in the morning. Admittedly, I was most conscientious about drinking the bottles when in the company of other Omnilife distributors. The family in Morelia with whom I took my meals was not enrolled in Omnilife and served me freshly squeezed juices and herbal teas, not vitamin supplements, alongside my food. For all my reluctance to replace homemade Mexican cuisine with synthetically enhanced drinks, I felt compelled to consume the products regularly to see if I could experience a health transformation. At dinners, the woman who cooked for me usually served my meal with a glass of ChocoMilk, a fortified supplement blended into a milkshake that Mexican mothers favored for their children. I bought a container of Omnilife’s Super Mix in chocolate flavor and asked the cook to prepare it as a drink to go with my dinners. In this way, I consumed at least two Omnilife products a day for the majority of my fieldwork in Morelia. Taking the vitamin products consistently never caused me pain, nor did it improve my health, for that matter. It is true that I could stomach spicier foods more easily than before, but that might have been the case even without the benefit of Omnilife’s elixirs. Luisa accepts the absence of illness as evidence that the products have served me, but she also urges me to be more disciplined in consuming the vitamins. When I returned to the United States, my experiment in consuming Omnilife drinks ended. I lived too far from an Omnilife wholesale store to make regular purchases, and ordering by phone and paying for home delivery seemed too cumbersome. Of course, if I had developed a healing narrative around the vitamins, no obstacle would have been too daunting to halt my continued consumption. What testimonial I could muster about the products had to do with

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illness prevention, which is never as sensational as a miraculous cure. Medical explanations for sickness hold the most sway with me. If vitamin treatments owe their efficacy to matching a consumer’s mental model of disease, then their cleansing abilities matter little to my pursuit of health. My Omnilife purchases fell to nil. Each year as my low point totals threatened to disqualify my Omnilife membership, Luisa sent me e-mails encouraging me to stay active in the company. Even so, her reminders to increase my consumption were ineffective without the surveillance she and her family exercised over me in Mexico. For instance, on the drive back to Morelia from Ciudad Hidalgo, we stopped at a roadside restaurant to eat, and Marco asked me where my bottle of product was. I had remembered to bring a bottle I had prepared the night before, so I took it out to show Marco. He looked at the color of the water and suggested I add more vitamins. Because the more scoops of vitamin powder in the bottle, the stronger the hue of the water, Omnilife builds in an effective check against buying one product and diluting it to last longer. Marco does not benefit monetarily when I consume more products. His concern comes from a greater sense of commission to help me live up to my full potential. Scrimping on vitamins is tantamount to scrimping on my commitment to self-transformation. Their absolute faith in the vitamins leads Luisa and her family to downplay other health promoting activities. Supplements alone have the power to transform their bodies. The megadoses of antioxidants work so effectively that they need no other bodily practice to enhance the benefits of supplementation. While Luisa does not intentionally eat fatty foods, she pays relatively little attention to her diet. She often indulges her sweet tooth and once drove an hour to a remote Michoacán community to buy loaves of bread baked in an earthen oven. Amalia prides herself on preparing elaborate Mexican dishes like enchiladas and mole. After Jorge Vergara became a vegetarian, Amalia added more soy products to the family meals, but she does not eliminate meat entirely. Nor is aerobic exercise part of their regular routine. Although I walked between the support center and Victor and Amalia’s house in a brisk ten minutes, they move exclusively by private car or taxi. Partly, displaying their BMW SUV helps cement their elite status. In addition, for them, transforming the body does not involve adopting a set of physical practices. Direct faith celebrates the power of the mind to shape the material world, so to change their bodies, they first have to discipline their minds. In truth, Luisa sees ample evidence that belies Omnilife’s claims of dramatic health improvements for its vitamins, but she explains them

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away. As we heard during his visit to Morelia, Jorge Vergara roots the origin of Omnilife in the story of his own weight loss. One of his habitual techniques in speeches is to circulate through the crowd and ask the audience to shout out the number of kilograms they have shed by taking Omnilife’s weight loss products. Hearing the litany of kilograms shed leaves a dramatic impression of the vitamins’ power. Presumably, Vergara can afford an unlimited supply of vitamins, and yet he remains conspicuously overweight. Luisa readily acknowledges Vergara’s double chin, but she does not take this as evidence of a flaw in the slimming power of the vitamins. When I mentioned Vergara’s physique, she made several arguments at once to justify this seeming hypocrisy. At first, she pointed to his gradual improvement by comparing photos of Vergara from the early years of the company with the Vergara of today. She also claimed that some bodies simply store fat more readily than others, rendering even Omnilife’s advanced products ineffective. Besides, she finally told me, his face would not look good without the jowls. Privately, Luisa admits that the incongruity of an overweight pitchman for diet products worries her. For all their conscientious consumption of Thermogen Coffee, Luisa and her mother, Amalia, still have not reached their ideal weights. They become skilled at hiding their girth with flattering clothes and eye-catching accessories. Amalia practices yoga with a private instructor, and Luisa sporadically incorporates sit-ups into her morning routine though neither achieve any weight loss. Luisa remarked that the only Omnilife product capable of reducing fat was discontinued because it contained ephedra, a dangerous herb linked to deaths in the United States and banned by the U.S. and Mexican governments in 2004. Finally, after menopause made her permanently bloated, Amalia decided to undergo liposuction. Luisa defends her mother’s decision and has considered the procedure herself. I asked how she could justify telling others to consume the products when her actions tacitly concede that they do not accomplish the promised weight loss. Luisa sees no contradiction in Amalia’s turn to external help. Rather, she feels that it makes her mother an even more exemplary role model. Her liposuction sends the message to distributors that if they work hard in the company and earn money, then they too may afford expensive elective surgery. I usually refrained from challenging Luisa and her family about seemingly contradictory claims because it was clear that nothing I or anyone else said would diminish their faith in Omnilife’s vitamins. Once, on a car ride back from Guadalajara with Victor and Amalia, I could not resist turning their words back on them. Amalia asked me

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about other direct selling companies I had visited in Morelia. I mentioned that I had attended a meeting at Forever Living, a rival vitamin marketer. Amalia admitted that she once tried their signature aloe drink, but she did not finish it because it had burned her stomach. I immediately remembered her brother’s reassuring words to visitors at the support center who complained about feeling bad after sampling Omnilife’s products. The pain indicates that the product has identified a problem and is working to correct it, he would say. When I asked her whether this was also true with the aloe drink, her husband turned the question around before she could answer. “Do you know the difference between Omni and other companies? The quality of the products,” he said. Only in Omnilife, he asserted, do you hear testimonials about vitamins curing conditions like cancer and AIDS. I thought back to the times Victor had complained of back pain, flu, and stomach problems, seemingly simple maladies to treat compared to cancer. It was difficult to find vocal skeptics of Omnilife’s products in Morelia. Customers who stop buying the vitamins are not eager to depict themselves as having been duped into buying worthless powders. The detractors I spoke to had tried the products only once, experienced discomfort or no change, and then abandoned them. In a few cases, I followed up with distributors who used to frequent meetings at Luisa’s support center. When I spoke to them, their reasons for no longer remaining active in Omnilife tended to confirm the company’s underlying message. They blamed a lack of money, lack of consistency, or lack of time for their disappointing results, not the vitamins themselves. Typical was one woman, a retired teacher, who used to be an enthusiastic member of Luisa’s downline, but then lost interest. Treatment for chronic arthritis first attracted her to the products, and she consumed them avidly for about a year. She noticed improvement and grew enthusiastic about pursuing Omnilife as a business. She even held a few product demonstrations in her home. Over time, however, her arthritis grew worse, and she stopped peddling the vitamins so she could seek medical treatment in Mexico City. Two years after we first met, she was on a regimen of injections prescribed by her doctor for arthritis, but still consumes Omnilife products daily. She does not blame the vitamins for failing to heal her. On the contrary, she continues to believe that they will facilitate her recovery. Even Omnilife distributors who defect to competing companies continue to believe in the efficacy of the products. When I asked them about their decision to leave Omnilife, invariably they cite the benefits of the rival’s compensation structure, not the quality of its

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products. Luisa reports that she still sees some of her recruits who left to join competitors returning to the Omnilife store to buy vitamins. Within Omnilife, the choreographed, leader-dominated trainings and moving testimonials from the audience leave very little space for critiquing the products. Besides, all the other vitamin supplement direct sellers rely on the same principle of nutritional insurance that Vergara advocates. Some companies even give their products names similar to Omnilife’s line of antioxidants. Stalwart supplements like OmniPlus occupy such a hallowed place in the product pantheon that consumers tend to concentrate on taking megadoses of a few vitamins rather than trying every item in the catalog. Frequently, their experiments lead to creative off-label uses. Distributors unselfconsciously describe filling a syringe with vitamins and injecting them intravenously. Other Omnilife consumers mix powders and water into a paste for a facial mask, rub them topically on wounds, or apply them as eye drops. When Luisa’s newborn daughter did not take to breast milk, she filled her bottles with Omnilife vitamins. She explained this decision pragmatically. The newborn would not drink warm beverages, “and I couldn’t put myself in the refrigerator!” At an event with Jorge Vergara, I heard him describe how some male distributors apply one of the products topically on their genitals as a kind of over-the-counter Viagra. Admittedly, I found that the unquestioning faith in nutritional supplements could verge on mania. So thoroughly have their curative properties pervaded the distributors’ psyches that the product names serve as punch lines for inside jokes. If Luisa temporarily forgot a word while leading a training session, she would remark casually that she needed to take more Optimus, the vitamin dedicated to brain function. In the context of the history of vitamins, though, Luisa’s embrace of supplementation is not so unusual. Independent contractors in Mexico do not have access to the national health system and must pay for their medical care through private providers. Even so, Luisa does not put much stock in doctors, whom she believes often place their financial gain over patients’ outcomes. Scientists are no more trustworthy; their nutritional recommendations constantly change. With the Omnilife pharmacopeia, Luisa can take control of her own health by managing the variety and dosage of vitamin drinks to meet each need. Their purifying power gives physical form to the transformation she seeks for herself. They hasten the return to a time when humans could access divine power directly.

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Chapter 5

Selling without Selling

L

uisa was driving Pamela and me to Mass one Sunday in June 2005. Although we were running late, Luisa pulled over to the shoulder of the road near a busy intersection. We got out of the car and walked to where a man stood under a palm-lined shelter selling fresh coconut milk. Luisa explained that she used to buy coconuts from the man’s father when she was a girl. One day, after he had taken over the business from his father and Luisa had just joined Omnilife, she saw him by the stand unloading a truckload of coconuts. She imagined that he must be tired, but she was nervous about approaching him to talk about the products. Before she approached him, she prepared a bottle of Omnilife water filled with eight packets of the energy booster Magnus. She offered it to him for free and said that she would return the next day to find out how it made him feel. The next day, he told Luisa that the vitamins had given him so much energy that he had not been able to sleep. He began to buy the vitamin products from her, calling when he needed a new supply. On this visit, Luisa simply said hello and bought a coconut for Pamela and me to share. She commented to the vendor how taking the products seemed to have trimmed his beer belly. He smiled in agreement. During all the months I shadowed Luisa, this was one of a handful of times I saw her interact one on one with a client. She devotes the bulk of her time to seeking new recruits for her network of distributors and motivating them to continue purchasing products and building their own downlines. She frequently emphasizes how the potential earnings from recruiting members into an organization exceed the profits from selling products retail. Maintaining such a self-perpetuating network requires less energy than selling to dozens of different individual customers each month. As we drove away,

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I asked Luisa why she had not tried to sign up the coconut man as a distributor. In the case of this man, Luisa explained, his commitment to the coconut stand prevented him from going to the Omnilife distribution center to purchase the product. Signing him up as a distributor would mean losing him as both a client and a consumer. Luisa prefers that he keep drinking the vitamin supplements and benefiting from improvements in health. She does not mind visiting him periodically to replenish his supply of products. The satisfaction of contributing to his life transformation rewards her as much as a bump in her commission check does. Mastering the details of Omnilife’s multilevel plan demands at least as much technical knowledge as understanding the biology of vitamin absorption. When I first enrolled and purchased a start-up kit, I signed a contract giving my personal information and acknowledging that I was an independent contractor, not an employee, of Omnilife. Along with the start-up kit came a 60-page manual that explains the rules that distributors must follow in both marketing the products and receiving income. In one typically legalistic section, the bilingual manual defines commissions as “[r]eimbursement granted to the Wholesale Distributor (bronze, silver, gold, diamond) that varies between one (1) and four (4) percent of the amount bought/sold by up to three generations in the downline. (These figures are calculated according to the Official Price List.)” Comprehensive as it is, the manual does little to answer distributors’ questions about how to increase the amount of their commission checks. In all the officially sanctioned meetings and events I attended, I never saw a distributor bring or reference the manual when talking about how to succeed in the business of multilevel marketing. Just as Omnilife frames the function of its products in an easy-tograsp metaphor, so does the company reduce the business plan to an accessible strategy. In presentations, Jorge Vergara summarizes the entire manual in a pithy phrase: “Using and sharing.” Like the image of cleansing antioxidants, the simple formula of taking the products and letting others know about them reinforce distributors’ commitment to directness. Omnilife banishes talk of selling, with its layers of profit taking at each stage from manufacture to delivery and retail transaction. In the company’s eyes, the distributor’s task is not to convince or cajole but to consume copious amounts of vitamin supplements as a way to return the body to its God-given, pristine state. With such a visible transformation, the distributor’s friends and family will naturally notice and want to know how they too can achieve similar results. All a distributor has to do is demonstrate the

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possibility of taking control of his or her own health and then show others how to do the same. Mapping the Route to Success From its headquarters outside Guadalajara, Omnilife coordinates a multimedia campaign that replaces the legalese of the manual with more inspiring rhetoric. Official literature never mentions God, but in his public speeches, Jorge Vergara speaks of restoring humans to their original settings as envisioned by a nondenominational creator. As Vergara’s message radiates across Mexico, carried by a coterie of celebrity distributors who make guest appearances in many cities, it becomes more explicitly spiritual. Speakers at regional meetings make clear that they attribute their success to an unshakable faith in divine blessings. They convey to their audiences that all distributors can duplicate their achievements if they too nurture a direct relationship with God. Finally, local leaders like Luisa and her family amplify the message of a generous God to small gatherings in weekly meetings at local support centers. The repetition helps to clarify the counterintuitive concept that by spending money to buy Omnilife products, distributors generate money. One of the speakers who illustrates the emphasis on channeling divine power directly came to Morelia in June 2005. Irma Ruiz joined Omnilife when she was living in Mexico City, but did not propel herself to the top echelon of distributors until she moved to Lima, Peru, when the company opened operations there. She was already a devoted distributor when she married a member of the company’s original cohort of distributors that Jorge Vergara recruited in 1991. Because both had already developed extensive downlines—rumors placed her network at 350,000 recruits—the couple decided to work together but not to merge their separate organizations. Victor and Amalia knew Irma from meetings of leading distributors in Guadalajara and helped promote her visit to the attendees at their support center. At the end of one Thursday session where Victor was selling tickets for the event, he asked the audience what they knew about Irma. “She’s exciting. She left Mexico to build her business in Peru,” said one woman. “I saw her in Puerto Vallarta. She’s very supportive,” said another. A man commented that Irma had “hit bottom” before turning her business into a success. Victor agreed that all distributors could benefit from hearing Ruiz’s story, if not imitating her trajectory: “We don’t have to go to another country. Here there are wonderful things. All it takes is the burning desire to have a better life.”

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I bought a ticket to the event for the equivalent of $3. Luisa told me that she and the veteran distributors who organize the monthly citywide lectures do not make money on ticket sales. For them, the payoff comes in energizing existing distributors and motivating new ones to register. To accommodate the 200 guests for Irma Ruiz’s talk, they rented a large conference room in the Fiesta Inn, a hotel for business travelers adjacent to the Morelia Convention Center. Outside the hotel, I saw an older woman carrying an Omnilife satchel with its distinctive purple logo. I asked her if she were going to the talk, and she said yes. She had enrolled in the company only a month ago and did not know much about the speaker, so I shared with her what I knew about Ruiz’s biography. She replied that she was eager to hear such an impressive woman. As we approached the lobby, I saw a dozen men and women hovering around the entrance, extra tickets in hand, scanning the parking lot for relatives and neighbors they had invited. Ambitious distributors commonly buy several tickets and offer them to prospects. More than a support group session, which could have as few as ten people present, the monthly events promise a potent display of Omnilife’s popularity and professionalism. Speakers vary in the details of their stories, but the format always include a chance for guests to sign up as distributors under the friends who had invited them. Irma Ruiz conformed to the typical Omnilife speaking style. Dressed in an all-white pantsuit, she effortlessly juggled a microphone in one hand, a bottle of Omnilife’s vitamin drink in the other, and a PowerPoint presentation projected behind her. Her words flowed without pauses, yet she avoided sounding rehearsed. Like Vergara, she combined slightly ribald humor with a serious expression of care for the welfare of her audience. And like Vergara, Ruiz divided her lecture into a discussion of the products and an explanation of the business plan. She started by asking for confirmation of the power of Omnilife’s vitamins. “Everyone who has had results in their health and their finances with Omni, please stand.” She then asked for volunteers to come to the stage and share their stories of a changed life. “If someone next to you was standing and then sat down, give him a nudge with your elbow,” she added with a raspy laugh. About 20 men and women from the audience lined up on stage and spoke while Irma held the microphone. Victor kept his comment brief: “I give thanks to God for improving our health and our finances. Your life will change.” Amalia followed him, addressing the skeptics in the audience: “Many of us didn’t believe. I saw health in this company, and I still do. I entered Omnilife for 50 pesos extra a day. Everyday

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we work, and we work as a family.” Luisa stayed in her seat and listened. When the volunteers had left the stage, Ruiz offered her own story of life transformation. “I worked in the administration of an auto insurance company in Mexico City. It was a monotonous routine, and I earned only $600 a month. I also had problems with gastritis and exhaustion.” A friend of her brother had given him an Omnilife magazine with information about the products. He told Ruiz about the vitamins and encouraged her to contact the distributor to buy some for her stomach problems. Interested in trying the products, she arranged to meet the distributor near her office, but he stood her up. When she reached him, he apologized and offered to reschedule the appointment. Ruiz was so eager to try the products that she agreed. He stood her up a second time. The third time, she went directly to the Omnilife store in Mexico City, but the staff said she needed to enroll before she could purchase the products. So, she approached a man who happened to be standing in the lobby and asked him to sponsor her. He did, and, Ruiz revealed with a flourish, he now collects $36,000 a month in commissions simply from her leg of his organization. Ruiz herself earned $65,000 a month and was aiming to reach the $100,000 mark. She did not share her income to boast. Anyone can match or even exceed her earnings if they take advantage of the opportunity Omnilife presents to them. Ruiz began her trajectory from unhappy salaried employee to successful entrepreneur with few advantages other than faith. Once she started to consume the products, she improved her health and told others about them. As much as she felt unfulfilled in her job, it still took courage to quit and replace the steady income with an uncertain possibility for earnings. Yet, Ruiz believed in the curative properties of the vitamins and the unlimited promise of the business plan. “You can earn as much as you want. All the abundance that God put out there, we can have.” She reassured the audience that the rewards of free enterprise are not reserved for the elite. If a working-class, unhealthy single woman from Mexico City could rise to the top of an international marketing organization, so could a new distributor from Morelia. Certainly, she must contend with many obstacles along the way. “Omnilife taught me to dream and to work for goals,” she said. “I love challenges, and this is an opportunity to have challenges everyday.” She did not want to emulate the distributor who had such little confidence in her abilities that he stood her up twice. Her optimism turned challenges into successes, even when others did not believe in her.

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After an hour, Ruiz challenged the first-timers in the audience to demonstrate that they believed in themselves. “You know you deserve this opportunity. Today’s meeting is for you.” She repeated the invitation for anyone not yet enrolled to come to the stage and become a distributor. She held up the familiar purple shoulder bag that all new recruits received when they signed up. “Do you have 220 pesos? Give them to me!” she said with mock seriousness. Three women and one man stepped onto the stage and handed Ruiz their money in exchange for the start-up kit. I could not tell what proportion of the novices in the audience this represented. A majority of the people in attendance already belonged to the company, and many of their invited guests had not shown up. When she was sure that no one else would come forward, Ruiz directed us to applaud the people on stage for having the courage to accept the project of improving themselves. “The most important thing is not the kit but that you just bought the greatest opportunity of your life,” she told them. After the emotion reached its climax, she gave us a ten-minute break to stretch and for the four new members of the Omnilife family to fill out the contracts with their sponsors. When we returned to our seats, the PowerPoint presentation displayed a slide announcing the “Map of Success” (see Figure 5.1). She devoted this half of the talk to more concrete strategies for achieving our financial goals in the company. But instead of offering specific selling techniques or explanations of company rules, she focused entirely on inspiring positive thinking. “If after three months, I am not content and I am not having results, I have to change my attitude. It’s that simple. I have to change.” According to Ruiz, duplicating her example is as simple as mimicking her unwavering optimism. The map of success works only for believers who are confident in their ability to reach the top level of the company hierarchy. “Who is committed to becoming diamond [the highest level of distributor] by the end of the year? Raise your hands.” She joked that she was recording their identities with a hidden camera to hold them accountable for their pledge. In her telling, the size of commission checks depends entirely on factors under a distributor’s control. Primary among those factors is an upbeat attitude. “You have to commit to your check or your check doesn’t commit to you,” she advised. Lagging commission checks, by contrast, symbolize a distributor’s flagging enthusiasm for the business. Committing to a check also means waiting patiently for results. Irma never said explicitly why she left Mexico for Peru, but she portrayed the move as a concrete sign of her devotion to increasing her commission check. She started saving money to move to Lima

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Figure 5.1 Irma Ruiz explained the “Map of Success” to the audience in Morelia.

in advance of Omnilife’s entry into the Peruvian market. She convinced her mother and brother to join her in the move so they could pursue their dreams of financial independence. The three of them rented a small apartment in Lima that served as dormitory, office, and training center for new Peruvian distributors. To make her sacrifice worthwhile, Irma knew that they would have to do more than peddle vitamins. “I didn’t go to Peru to sell retail. Retail selling is a tool, but it’s not the goal.” She moved to Peru to identify entrepreneurs and to train them to view the products as vehicles for building a business. They would consume the supplements, and, in turn, persuade others to do the same. At first recruiting went briskly, fueled by word of mouth and newspaper advertisements. Quickly, though, many freshly enrolled distributors lost enthusiasm. Irma realized that she was sacrificing quality for quantity, so she began to impose order on her organization. She established meetings strictly for enrolled members where the price of admission was carrying a bottle of Omnilife drink. She instructed members of her downline to dress professionally and to leave negative thoughts at the door. She realized that her exacting standards might alienate some Peruvians, but those who accepted her advice began to see results.

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Even with her willingness to work and open her apartment to strangers, Irma still needed an additional push to reach her goal. “I asked God to put in front of me people who wanted to share this opportunity. God does things for a reason.” God responded to her request, Irma said, by taking an active role in helping her organization grow. Soon she had earned enough money to rent a larger office. She needed the extra space because each of the thrice-weekly gatherings drew over 500 people. Aside from God and Irma’s gregarious personality, Peruvians have responded enthusiastically to direct selling since the 1970s when military leaders restricted imported goods like cosmetics. The relative scarcity of supermarkets and shopping malls in contemporary Peru has also opened space for the personalized marketing of direct sales (Vega Jarque 2007). With the overflowing crowds at Irma’s support center came another worry: Peruvian distributors had become dependent on her leadership and were not forming their own downlines. For all the recruits she was attracting, no one else had shown the initiative to open a support center in Lima. Again, she decided to turn this challenge into an opportunity. One day, without warning, she announced to her organization that she was closing her office and that distributors had to take responsibility for their own training. A month later, 40 new Omnilife support centers had opened in Lima. To illustrate that success is available to everyone with the right attitude, Irma closed the meeting by asking a man in the audience his name and how many kids he had. Salvador answered that he had one son. She imagined Salvador’s future as a prosperous Omnilife distributor: His son will look at the company magazine and see his father’s photo from when they went to Europe. He’ll be studying in the best school in Morelia and will show the photo to a friend from the old public school where he used to go to. She will take the magazine home to her mother and ask why they don’t have enough money to send her to a better school. The mother will look at the magazine and say, “Ten years ago I had a chance to sign up for Omnilife, but I didn’t believe.” Who could look in the eyes of their children and say, “I had the best opportunity, but I threw it away?” When I think of this, I know I’ll give 100 percent and God will compensate me. Let’s give thanks to God. Stand and clap for God—not just for the business opportunity, but for life.

The applause from the audience lasted over a minute and filled the ballroom.

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Three and a half hours after the event started, two of the sponsors walked on stage to thank Ruiz and announce the date for next month’s speaker. Suddenly, Salvador jumped on stage nearly in tears and took the microphone. “Thanks to God for bringing us this wise, successful woman. I wasn’t going to come today because I didn’t have money for the ticket. But I’m going to be an example for my son and give him what he deserves.” He would not allow himself to be the shortsighted parent who squandered the chance to provide the best for his children. He would not be the uncommitted distributor who valued the products so little that he twice stood up a potential client. Irma Ruiz’s coming to Morelia, he realized, was not an accident, but a wakeup call sent from God. He declared himself ready to remake himself by adopting a new, confident manner and obeying the rules for success. Constructing a Paycheck The most straightforward way to make money with Omnilife’s vitamins is to buy them at a discount and then resell them at a markup. Each item at the Omnilife store carries both a price and a point value. Every new distributor begins with the right to purchase product at a 20 percent discount. As she earns more points, her discount level increases in 5 percent increments until it reaches 40 percent. The company reserves the right to alter prices and point values of products at any time, but the discounts stay the same. The official Omnilife order sheet includes a suggested retail price for each product. By keeping on hand an inventory of vitamins purchased at the wholesale price, a distributor can pocket a small profit on each sale to the public. Judging by the boxes of Magnus and OmniPlus that I saw nestled on the food carts in Morelia’s markets, many distributors take a passive approach to selling. They count on existing customers recognizing the boxes and asking for a packet of powdered vitamins. The company has no way of tracking these transactions or even regulating the prices distributors set for their products. It struck me that Irma Ruiz dismissed this kind of retail selling in her discussion of building a business through Omnilife. When I asked Luisa about it, she replied that “the strength of Omnilife is inviting, not selling.” While she might drive out of her way to check up on the man at the coconut stand, she does not knock on doors to drum up new customers. As long as she makes sure that her clients who drink the products see improvement in their health, she is doing her job. For example, she said, she could persuade 100 people to buy

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1,000 points worth of product from her every two weeks, but she would be exhausted. By recruiting 100 distributors into her network and teaching each of them to consume 1,000 points of vitamins, she would achieve the same outcome without the fatigue. Recruiting has the additional advantage of generating income even when she is not actively selling the products. If she relies on retail sales for her earnings, the day she gets sick she will fail to bring in money. In contrast, even while sitting and answering my questions, Luisa earns income from her network of recruits. I still did not quite grasp how she turned recruiting into commissions. One morning when I stopped by the support center, I saw the stock boy outside washing Luisa’s minivan. Inside, Luisa was sitting at the desk going over a list of product inventory, which her secretary was checking against the supply in the refrigerator. Since this seemed like a slow time, I decided to ask Luisa how someone like me could generate a commission check. She took a piece of notebook paper and patiently drew a theoretical organization of sellers, which resembled a kinship chart from an introductory anthropology textbook. She pointed to the box at the top of the lineage that represented me and the boxes directly beneath me. They represented distributors I recruited personally, known as my “frontline” or “first generation.” I can recruit a frontline as soon as I join, but I will not earn income from their purchases until I reach at least the 25 percent discount level. As long as my recruit remains at a lower discount level than I, Omnilife pays me a percentage of the recruit’s purchases equal to the difference between our discount levels. That is to say, if I reach the 25 percent discount and my new recruit remains at 20 percent, I receive 5 percent of the value of the recruit’s total purchases. The greater the difference between our levels, the greater the percentage of purchases I collect, up to a maximum of 20 percent. This sounds like a large share of commissions, but Luisa cautioned me that for any distributor below the 40 percent discount level, I do not have the right to earn a portion of any of the purchase totals that may occur in the generations below my recruit. I would be better off building a commission check based on the volume of several layers in my downline. To claim a percentage of the earnings below my first-generation recruit, both of us need to reach the 40 percent discount level. In Omnilife parlance, a distributor at the 40 percent discount level is called a “wholesaler.” To qualify as a wholesaler, a distributor must purchase 1,000 points’ worth of product every two weeks for two months. Omnilife does not adhere to a fixed rate of conversion between points and currency, but Luisa calculates her costs based

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on the shorthand of 40 cents per point. Therefore, qualifying as a wholesaler requires investing roughly $1,600 in vitamin supplements ($400 a fortnight for two months) in addition to the $800 or so it takes to pass the first four discount levels. Luisa places special emphasis on becoming a wholesaler because achieving that status teaches members of her downline to get in the habit of buying 1,000 points every two weeks. One thousand points every two weeks are the minimum necessary to claim the full 4 percent commission on the value of the purchases made by the wholesalers in their first generation and the generations of distributors they have recruited below them. For someone like Luisa, who depends on Omnilife as her full-time job, spending $400 every two weeks is the price of participating in the commission game. Despite all the vitamin drinks I downed, I plateaued at the 35 percent discount level and therefore never earned a commission check. This lack of monetary success characterizes most Omnilife distributors. We want access to the products and perhaps some occasional extra cash, not a full-fledged business. I did not understand this system completely when Luisa first explained it to me. In fact, I still have questions about the rules on commissions after attending training sessions at the support center for a year. It is not that the facilitators conceal the rules of earning commissions. Luisa and her parents always answer my questions forthrightly and even show me the company-produced printouts that they use to monitor the monthly activity in their organizations. Yet, like Irma Ruiz, in their public presentations, they consciously choose to describe the process of constructing a paycheck in less technical terms. I include the byzantine rules for generating commissions in Omnilife to suggest how confusing they must have appeared to the Morelia housewives and petty merchants who join the organization. If the system of paying money to earn money challenges even my attempts of comprehension, it must confound the average distributor interested in making some extra income. Nor will they find greater clarity in another company because all multilevel marketers operate with the same welter of legalistic rules for compensation. The effect is to shift distributors’ attention from trying to look for loopholes toward accepting the alchemy of “using and sharing.” Simply in showing others how to improve their health, Omnilife distributors come to believe, they will enrich themselves. With a casualness that defies Mexican (and North American) conventions of propriety, Luisa discloses the amount of her monthly commission check at information sessions for potential recruits. She claims to gross about $9,000 a month, easily surpassing my salary

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as an assistant professor. To grasp how she generates such a hefty income, I wanted to understand the commission-making process. In the simplified hypothetical case of one two-week pay period presented in the figure, the distributor on top has reached the wholesale level and completed her 1,000 points, entitling her to a 4 percent commission (see Table 5.1). From recruit number one, who is not yet a wholesaler, she earns 15 percent of his purchase volume (the difference between the 40 percent and 25 percent discount levels). On total purchases of $500, her share comes to $75. Since recruit number two is also at the wholesaler level, she takes a commission on the entire amount of purchases she and everyone under her made: $1,700. She earns 4 percent of that, or $68. At the end of this two-week period, she will receive a check from Omnilife for $143. When Luisa reports her commission totals to audiences, she leaves out the amount of her expenses. In the hypothetical example of Table 5.2, which I base on a diagram from a company publication, Luisa’s net income reflects a loss of $257 while Omnilife reaps a profit on sales of $2,600 worth of product. Beyond the cost of buying a minimum volume of vitamins, Luisa incurs the regular business expenses Table 5.1

A hypothetical downline for a two-week period

Wholesale distributor 40 percent discount buys $400 of product First generation

Recruit #1 25 percent discount buys $500

Recruit #2 wholesaler 40 percent discount buys $200

Second generation Recruit #3 buys $300

Recruit #4 buys $280

Recruit #5 buys $600

Third generation Recruit #6 buys $250

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Recruit #7 buys $70

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Table 5.2 A bimonthly paycheck for Luisa from June 2005 with gross income in bold Generation First Second Third Fourth Total

Total product purchased $ 3,367.04 $13,856.57 $39,930.73 $56,337.70 $113,492.04

Four percent commission $134.68 $554.26 $1,597.23 $2,253.31 $4,539.68

of renting an office, employing two staff members, servicing her car loan, maintaining and fueling the van, and paying telephone bills. For a time, she rented out a second office just to store the large quantities of vitamins she buys by the palletfull. Clearly, she cannot meet all her obligations with an organization similar to the one in the diagram. Luisa’s actual chart contains nearly 1,000 boxes in the four generations below her. Whereas in the example, she earns more income from Recruit #1, who is not a wholesaler, than from Recruit #2 and the five distributors in that branch of the business family, at larger scales, having wholesalers in her first generation becomes more lucrative for her. I realized this principle when Luisa showed me a summary of one bimonthly commission check she received (see Table 5.2). Even converted into U.S. dollars, the escalating numbers demonstrate how the volume of product purchased increases dramatically with each successive generation. Only by making the members of her frontline wholesalers will Luisa gain access to a percentage of those totals. The way the mathematics of Omnilife commissions works, Luisa must build an organization that generates at least $10,000 of total purchases each pay period to offset her minimum cost of $400, or 1,000 points worth of vitamins. If she falters in buying $400 worth of products for her personal use or resale every two weeks, she cannot claim the full 4 percent commission. Every two weeks, when the clock resets, she has to make sure that both she and her downline maintain an active regimen of vitamin purchases. The omnipresent imperative to keep up point totals leads Luisa to motivate members of her downline to boost their purchases. The same pressure causes many distributors to lose interest in direct selling. Omnilife does not divulge its turnover rate, but the industry average exceeds 100 percent a year (Wotruba, Brodie, and Stanworth 2005: 92). Consequently, Luisa devotes significant time to seeking new, enthusiastic recruits to replace those who become inactive. When she started in the company, she concentrated on

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recruiting distributors through kinship networks. Even with a large family, she eventually had to seek recruits from her larger social circle. As a result of her contagious recruiting, almost every person she has interacted with have become members of her downline: the woman who sells her tortillas, her daughter’s teachers, and her butcher. By building an extensive downline, Luisa has achieved silver status, meaning the company caps her commissions at the fourth generation. When a distributor becomes a wholesaler and gains the right to collect commissions, the company limits her earnings to 4 percent of the purchases of the first three generations in the downline. In company terms, that distributor has reached the bronze level. To ascend from bronze to silver, she needs three wholesalers in her frontline who earn at least $100 every two weeks in commission checks. If she develops three more wholesalers in her frontline who generate $100 commission checks, she graduates to gold distributor and captures a percentage of the volume purchased by her fifth generation. Since purchase totals expand with each generation, becoming a gold distributor would significantly increase Luisa’s earnings (see Table 5.3). Indeed, her paycheck shows an additional $4,481 in phantom income, the commissions she could have earned if she qualified to capture a portion of the sales from her fifth and sixth generations. Again, she does not approach her work with the goal of maximizing these rules. I include them precisely to show how esoteric they are, and therefore unsuitable as a basis for motivating aspiring entrepreneurs. When I asked Luisa how the system could support paying ever-growing commissions both to her and to the person who sponsored her, she answered, “Don’t worry about money or those above you. Just thank them for inviting you to join Omnilife.” Luisa focuses her attention on helping others and trusts that the payback will follow. Her parents also take advantage of social contacts to build their organization to the gold level. Soon after they became Omnilife Table 5.3

Omnilife’s hierarchy of commissions Distributors in first generation Generations whose sales volume earning at least $100 count toward commissions

Diamond Gold Silver Bronze

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9 6 3 2 or fewer

6 5 4 3

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distributors, they noticed another couple at daily morning Mass who seemed unusually amorous. Amalia figured that they were too old to be boyfriend and girlfriend, yet they both took communion, so they could not be illicit lovers. When she found out that they were indeed a married couple, Amalia decided that their warm personalities would help them in the business and persuaded them to sign up under her. That couple, Esteban, a former vice-mayor of Morelia, and his wife Carla, excelled at recommending the product, and rocketed to become diamond distributors, the top of the Omnilife hierarchy. Victor cites their rise as evidence of the fairness of Omnilife’s compensation system. Each bimonthly pay period, his and Amalia’s income fluctuates depending on the activity in their network, but they average $6,000 in gross earnings. That a diamond couple is enrolled below him (and two generations below Luisa, a silver distributor) demonstrates that Omnilife’s business is not a pyramid scheme. In a pyramid, only those at the top profit. By contrast, Victor argues, in Omnilife, working harder reaps greater rewards. The decentralized practice of consuming vitamins heightens the need for distributors to develop tools for monitoring the activity in their downlines. Both Luisa and Victor scrutinize their networks’ purchase activity. Printouts explaining their commission checks resemble dense lines of computer code. Victor’s statement regularly runs to over 50 pages of single-spaced type for the roughly 7,000 distributors in his downline. He receives commission checks based on purchases by distributors in Mexico as well as the United States, Panama, and Spain. Of course, he does not know and will likely never meet most of the people whose purchases generate his income, but he takes comfort in knowing that they can seek guidance at any Omnilife support center in the world. For those distributors he does know, watching for dips in their consumption alerts Victor to possible cases of waning commitment. He follows up with a phone call or visit. Conversely, seeing spikes in purchases allows Victor to concentrate his mentoring efforts on the most eager recruits. Fielding Complaints For the motivated distributors who attempt to build a business around the vitamins, the gap between expectations and reality often proves insurmountable. Listening to Irma Ruiz energized the audience because she suggested that all it takes is passion to duplicate her success. Yet, the excitement dissipates quickly when exposed to the quotidian challenges of trying to make a living. At the Thursday

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evening meetings that Luisa, Victor, and Amalia reserved for veteran distributors, the frustrations often emerge. Unlike the Tuesday and Saturday sessions, only experienced sellers come to the support center on Thursdays, so they do not feel the obligation to impress newcomers with relentlessly upbeat accounts of their experiences with the company. Victor, who usually facilitates these meetings, devotes the two hours to explaining how to expand the business. Sometimes he prepares transparencies with hypothetical downlines like the one that Luisa had drawn for me. Other times, he helps the members of the audience rehearse testimonials of the products to share with their friends. Frequently, distributors complain about the difficulties they face in trying to leverage the multilevel marketing system to earn sizeable commissions. In their minds, they are following the map of success that spokespeople like Irma Ruiz present, but not coming close to matching her monthly income. Victor and Amalia, who often contributes to these meetings from her seat in the audience, deflect these complaints. By concentrating so heavily on the importance of belief in business, all they can offer these discouraged distributors is more motivation. Whenever a distributor offers an external cause for her lack of success, the couple steers the conversation back to internal states. Many of the distributors who earn money from the products travel to neighborhood markets, selling vitamins by the individual serving. If a box of 30 packets costs $30 at retail, they charge $1 for each packet of powder, making the purchase more affordable. The official product list establishes the recommended retail price for each product, but as independent contractors, resellers set their own prices. So, some distributors offer their customers a discount, eating into their own profits but effectively stripping clientele from those who sold at the suggested price. Other unscrupulous distributors violate the prohibition on displaying Omnilife products in public by setting up stands with the vitamins at weekly markets. Every time a distributor cites these practices on the part of another distributor as hampering her access to customers, Victor and Amalia counsel her to change her attitude, not blame the offending behavior. At one typical Thursday training session with 25 distributors, Victor broached the theme, “Forming a productive network.” This addressed a common concern affecting many in his organization: the inability to establish and maintain a profitable downline. Victor illustrated this problem with an image of a downline on the overhead projector. “Some people have enrolled members in their first generation, but no one beneath them. This is a static network.

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If we motivate each of them to recruit one or two people in the second generation, we grow.” He picked me out of the audience to use as a hypothetical example of an underperforming distributor in the first generation of his downline. “If I went to Pedro and said, ‘Get people together. I’m going to work for you,’ would he say no? What’s the excuse? If Pedro doesn’t want to, maybe his relatives need extra money. Look around. By helping others, we automatically help ourselves.” To jolt a stagnant network, all I have to do is dedicate myself to helping others. Amalia continued this theme that each distributor must examine his or her motivations. “Sometimes we’re blocked. But we never feel blocked when we have to ask a relative for a loan. There’s just a lot of laziness. We don’t have the excitement we need. With excitement, I can change the world.” “I hope you don’t get excited and change husbands!” Victor quipped, eliciting laughter from the audience. He turned serious again as he continued the call to reform our internal states to achieve our goals. Like Amalia, he avoided recommending specific techniques for maximizing the business. Rather, he advised that improving one’s attitude naturally and effortlessly led to financial success. “Look for the why and the how follows. You need a burning desire. We stay put because we don’t have a desire to overcome, something to motivate us to work tomorrow.” He singled out a man in the audience, “Do you have a burning desire?” The question caught the man by surprise and left him silent trying to come up with an answer. Victor took the pause as confirmation of his point that many of us lack a motivating wish. He turned to a woman and asked her the same question. “To have enough money to nourish my children,” she replied. That answer did not please Victor either. The burning desire, he said, must be for something in the future. He asked another man for his desire. His answer, “to have a commission check,” also displeased Victor. It must be something concrete, a specific amount, a dream that keeps us awake at night. This inspiring rhetoric tends to mollify the frustrated attendees at the support center, but it cannot compensate for the crushing improbability of attaining wealth through multilevel marketing. Promises of wealth limited only by distributors’ imaginations do not stand up to mathematical scrutiny. One multilevel marketing company in the United States admits that although it is theoretically possible to earn the $100,000 in commissions it advertises, a salesperson would have to recruit 29,523 active distributors to do so (Eisenberg 1987). A journalist investigated the claims of another nutritional supplement firm that counseled its members to start by recruiting one person

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and then double the number each day. If carried out, the writer concludes, “You would surpass the population of the earth in less than five weeks. This is not a business for the fainthearted” (Owen 1987). To profit from Omnilife’s business model, distributors need to pay attention to numbers, exactly what the trainings discourage. Some distributors manage to build remunerative downlines, but they represent a tiny minority of the more than 60 million direct sellers across the world. The industry’s own lobbying organization reports that less than six-tenths of 1 percent of all distributors reach the $100,000 annual income level (Johnson 1999). More than 90 percent of all distributors gross less than $5,000 a year (Hyde 2005). Of course, most distributors devote only a few hours a week to direct selling and are content with earning any amount of supplemental income. Disappointment emerges when a distributor works full-time as a direct seller and still does not see the potential for financial success (Wotruba and Tyagi 1991). The gap between distributors’ expectations and results widens over time, causing many direct selling organizations to experience cycles of boom and bust. At the outset, they attract motivated recruits with promises of unlimited income or physical improvements. If the potential benefits do not materialize or the pool of interested distributors has been exhausted, the companies either go out of business or shift attention to new markets where the cycle repeats. There is no definitive pattern for how long it takes a company’s fortunes to peak, and some sustain their growth for decades, but Luisa started noticing signs of stagnation after about a dozen years in Omnilife. She motioned downward with her hand and remarked that product sales citywide had seemed to decline starting in the early 2000s. A cashier from the wholesale store confirmed this trend. She remembered that when she first started working at the store in 2001, the lines snaked out of the door. The crowds would still be waiting when the store closed at 6:00 p.m., and she would have to cut off the line so the staff could go home by 8:00 p.m. Demand peaked at the end of every twoweek period when distributors would scramble to make sure they had met their required point totals to qualify for a commission check. By 2005, the wait to make purchases at the store rarely exceeded a few minutes. Luisa noticed a corresponding decline in attendance at her training sessions. Sometimes only five or six people would show up when she had regularly hosted 50 people a few years before. Often the same core group came week after week, and no one invited guests. She moved the Tuesday night meetings from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. and shortened

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them from two hours to one in hopes of attracting a larger and more motivated audience, but the changes had little effect. She also recalled that Morelia’s distributors used to host multiple large events a month unlike the current situation where all the leaders pooled resources to host one lecture a month. At the events they did sponsor, Morelia’s leaders bemoaned the lack of enthusiasm. Guest speakers like Irma Ruiz who once drew 600 audience members now draw only 200. Esteban, part of the diamond-level couple, told me that distributors in Morelia had “lost their excitement.” Amidst signs of stagnation, the showcase success stories start to look less impressive. One day when I was helping Victor access his account statement from the Omnilife website, I asked him why, after all his experience, he still had not reached the diamond level. He responded to me candidly, “It’s not easy. You have to look for the appropriate people.” To reach the diamond level and capture up to six generations’ worth of commissions, he and Amalia would need at least nine distributors in their first line who earned more than $100 monthly from the company. They had solidified six of them, but the remaining three eluded them. His son, Marco, usually qualifies, but is inconsistent. One woman seemed on her way to a stable check, but she got married and dropped out of Omnilife. Particularly when the majority of his recruits are interested only in personal consumption, building an organization of business-minded distributors is a challenge. He confided that not even the top-level distributors in Morelia sustain their status. The two diamond couples in Morelia—Jorge Vergara’s cousin and her husband and Estebal and Carla—are really “false diamonds.” They rose quickly through the ranks, recruited the requisite nine active distributors in their first generations, but then failed to keep them motivated. They still retain the title of diamond, but qualify to receive commissions only at the level of silver. In fact, he and Amalia as gold-level distributors earn more each month than the so-called diamonds. Still, he believes in the potential of Omnilife’s multilevel marketing model to reward hard work. He estimates that only 1,000 of the nearly 2 million Omnilife distributors in Mexico earn income greater than $10,000 a month. Because the onus rests on each distributor to generate large commission checks, he blames the Mexican people, not the company, for the scarcity of diamond distributors. “They all have the opportunity, so there should be two million big checks.” He knew his big check will arrive if he keeps up the painstaking work of recruiting and motivating people. “It’s simple, but it’s not easy,” he repeats. The task does not require specialized training or

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innate talent, just optimism to remain persistent. I asked Victor and Amalia if they thought moving to another country as Irma Ruiz did might accelerate their rise to diamond. Amalia responded that they already live a blessed life. “We have the best yoga teacher in Morelia come to our house every morning for a personal class. Then we go to Mass.” Victor added, “We’ve been to five continents through Omnilife, and the only place we want to live is Mexico. There’s still room to expand the business here. We haven’t finished our work in Morelia yet.” Luisa does not share her parent’s patient approach to growing a commission check. She becomes increasingly uncomfortable with the contradiction between making public promises of unlimited wealth and seeing her own income stagnate. Signs of “apathy” among the distributors in Morelia surround her and make it difficult to ignore external influences on her business. She bemoans the large number of distributors who leave the special events energized to consume the vitamins and to recommend them to others, but then quickly settle back into their lackadaisical ways. Frequently, if someone invites a guest to attend a training session, the distributor counts on Luisa or her parents to explain everything to the novices. She recalls cases where the sponsor does not even show up at the meeting and expects the facilitators to sign them up. This lack of attention for recruits’ well-being bothers Luisa because it undermines the ethic of care that makes Omnilife’s business worth investing in. Things became so dire that she called Jorge Vergara for advice. All he told her was that distributors like Irma Ruiz speak to packed auditoriums, so the problem must be with Luisa. We talked about her frustrations as she drove me home from Irma Ruiz’s talk. Unexpectedly, I found myself in the position of motivating Luisa. I mentioned that Ruiz said she drew large crowds in Peru by charging a small fee for attending training sessions. Luisa acknowledged that the idea had merits, but said that she should have imposed it from the beginning before Morelianos had grown accustomed to free admission. I suggested that she adopt Ruiz’s tactic of emphasizing that her distributors purchase 1,000 points of product every two weeks. Luisa acknowledged that such a goal is feasible for Ruiz because the expense of the vitamins is minimal compared to her income and she can even deduct the cost from her taxes as a business expense. For the majority of distributors, however, maintaining such high point totals is unrealistic. I remarked that Ruiz parlayed her enthusiasm and diligence into thousands of new recruits. Luisa cautioned me, “You can’t believe everything you hear.” She explained

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that Ruiz was just “a regular distributor like you” before she married Antonio Ramírez. As one of the original six Omnilife distributors Jorge Vergara recruited from the ranks of his former Herbalife colleagues, Ramírez had the advantage of building a business with little competition. He also benefited from a charismatic, hardworking first wife, who joined him in reaching diamond status. When Ramírez met Irma Ruiz at an Omnilife event, he divorced his wife and remarried her. Without that push, Luisa concluded, Ruiz never would have achieved such meteoric success. I know how Luisa feels about women who rely on their husbands to get ahead. Marrying a diamond distributor might catapult her to the next level, but she wants to take sole responsibility for achieving her dreams. Running out of ideas, I gently suggested that she might have reached the limits of Omnilife’s commission system. After all, there are only so many people to recruit in Morelia. She rejected my argument: “There’s no end to the number of people. There are no limits. The people below me push me. When I work harder, my next check goes up. What other company gives you that?” As frustrated as she gets about her inability to rise to the level of gold or diamond distributor, Luisa refuses to fault Omnilife’s compensation structure. Instead, she looks to identify ways to stoke her own burning desire. She takes the vitamins conscientiously, shares them with others enthusiastically, and envisions her goals concretely. Luisa is beginning to confront the one lesson of Irma Ruiz’s story that I did not bring up: leaving Mexico. Accepting the possibility of moving to another country challenges her core belief that individuals, not the environment, determine their own destinies. More pragmatically, she would have to convince her parents, who are so comfortable in Morelia, to allow her to move away. It would take some time for Luisa to reconcile the idea of emigrating with the principles of positive thinking. Meanwhile, she tucks the plan away in the back of her mind and continues to participate in Omnilife’s motivational exercises.

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Chapter 6

Motivating Rituals

I

n September 2005, three months after Irma Ruiz came to Morelia, Luisa organized a bus trip for 50 distributors to attend the Omnilife rally. The bus left from her support center in Morelia at 12:30 a.m. Saturday morning and arrived in Guadalajara at dawn. She, Pamela, and Marco had driven up on Friday and spent the night in a hotel, so she left her uncle Diego in charge of checking in the passengers, distributing tickets, and securing seats to the event. Because construction crews were preparing the usual site of Omnilife’s rally for the future home of the Chivas soccer stadium, the bus dropped us off in a vast field across from an amphitheater on the University of Guadalajara campus. Even at that early hour, scores of buses had begun to fill the parking lot, several decorated with banners indicating their home states. I entered the tented lobby and saw dozens of booths representing Omnilife’s constellation of companies. As if at a convention, thousands of distributors crowded a table giving away free samples of hydroponically grown lettuce, perused stacks of past issues of the corporate magazine, and posed for photographs with a BMW at the auto loan booth. The Chivas soccer team dominated an entire section of the lobby with a trophy display and games for children. At the table devoted to Omnilife’s yoga school, I spotted Carla, the diamond distributor from Morelia, buying two instructional DVDs. The frenzied energy outside carried over to the crowd inside the theater. Hundreds of rows of folding chairs and bleachers fanned around the stage. Oversized purple and yellow banners with the names of Omnilife products hung from the ceiling and cameras projected images of the vitamin bottles onto gigantic screens at the front of the room. Earsplitting dance music roused the audience to dance the Macarena while they waited for Jorge Vergara to appear.

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Everyone toted a bag full of nutritional supplements to fortify them for the nearly five-hour event. Some had painted their faces with the Omnilife logo. When Vergara strode onto the stage accompanied by a jaunty song by the popular Colombian musician Juanes, the audience stood to cheer. He reached to shake hands with the enthusiastic distributors in the front row. Twice a year Vergara throws a party to celebrate Omnilife’s success. Coming at traditionally slow times for vitamin sellers, the winter extravaganza and summer rally draw 20,000 people to the Guadalajara headquarters. All multilevel marketers feature this kind of workplace ritual. Mary Kay’s annual seminar gathers 35,000 distributors in Dallas for an Academy Awards–style presentation of prizes. These spectacles serve as “rites of enhancement” to reinforce loyalty to the company (Trice and Beyer 1984: 660). At the Omnilife rallies, flashy displays in the lobby impress visitors with the company’s reach and professionalism. On stage, Vergara singles out high-achieving distributors for congratulations and implies that anyone can duplicate their accomplishments. When Luisa senses that her goals are out of reach, the company-sponsored rituals help rekindle her passion. At the rally in 2005, Vergara gave Luisa another jolt of inspiration. He mentioned that in January 2006 the company would expand to one of the last countries in Latin America without an Omnilife presence: Chile. The opening of a new market presented an opportunity to tell more people about Omnilife’s vitamins and build a bigger downline. “You can begin to change your life,” he said. “Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t. We were designed by the same creator to be happy and healthy.” Luisa seizes on this opportunity to revive her stagnant business. Moving to Chile will serve as an example of risk taking for the apathetic distributors in Morelia. Moreover, it will allow Luisa to experience the true independence that God intends for her. The only thing holding her back is fear: fear of confronting her parents, of courting failure, of removing her daughter from a supportive community. With the rallies and a series of personal empowerment workshops, Omnilife provides Luisa with the tools to overcome her self-imposed limitations and pursue her business outside of Mexico. Rallying against Fear Omnilife organizes each rally around a theme. In 2005, it was “Attitude.” In 2004, it had been “The Yes Tour.” Before that, the 2003 rally carried the slogan “Cut the Fear.” The theme appears on ticket stubs, T-shirts, stage decorations, and seat cushions. Aside

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from the event logos, very little differentiates one Omnilife rally from another. In 2003 I joined another chartered bus that ferried distributors from Luisa’s support center to Guadalajara and back. To illustrate the theme “Cut the Fear,” the ubiquitous purple and white logo featured a scissors slicing the Spanish word for “fear” in two. Vergara addressed the idea of fear as soon as he emerged on stage. He launched into a story about how fear had affected his own business life: “Today we’re going to talk about the famous fear—something we all have when we start.” Fear abounded when he started the company, he explained. He was afraid of speaking in public. His cousin, who would become a member of the original cohort of distributors, was afraid to leave his steady job to take a chance on vitamin powders. Even after the company took off, critics feared that it was growing too quickly or that Vergara’s extracurricular investments were too risky. Fear, not external obstacles, is responsible for keeping us mired in conformity. Only by learning to ignore the nagging voice can an entrepreneur take the risks necessary for success. Next, Vergara offered his theory for the origin of fear. It is not innate; children are not born with fear, he said. Rather, restrictive society and smothering parents inculcate the insecurity that prevents us from making bold business moves. He explained: Fear, fear, fear. It’s not just in Mexico but all Western countries. We’ve been educated this way. Our upbringing is based on prizes and punishments. Who went to school? [Audience members raised their hands.] Who didn’t? [The rest of the audience members raised their hands.] You’re the smart ones. [Laughter.] When you go to school, they assume you’re a failure. They punish you if you talk. There are constant threats, which lead to fear. Your mother tells you that if you don’t eat your food, you’ll . . . and wags her finger. Mothers are so thickheaded. They don’t understand that if a child doesn’t eat it’s because he’s not hungry. You don’t want to go to sleep, so Mom puts the fear into you. She holds her child’s hand so tightly when they’re walking that many children begin to get arthritis.

Vergara’s vitriolic condemnation of overprotective mothers sounds unduly harsh to me, particularly given the affectionate parenting I saw throughout Mexico. Yet, I do not think he offers his criticism in a spirit of misogyny. What interests him is promoting the natural insouciance of children. Without the negative acculturation of modern life, children remain free of fear and retain a direct link to their divine origin. To return to our original states of fearlessness, Vergara prescribes a favorite remedy: self-confidence. If parents avoid passing along doubt

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and anxiety to their children, then they will grow up to be more daring adults. Instead of forbidding children to climb up and jump from trees, parents should show children how to jump safely and then allow them to discover their physical powers. Vergara draws an unbroken line from the playground to the working world. When authority figures teach us as children to suppress our natural instincts to take risks, they make us afraid later to take the steps necessary to succeed in business. “We want the government to give to us, someone to give to us,” Vergara complained. The expectation of handouts undermines independent, entrepreneurial spirit. During the climax of the rally, Vergara delivered a new Nissan to a man from Guadalajara who had reached high point totals. The only reason the other distributors present did not earn a car, Vergara intoned, was that they were afraid. The audience at the rally readily absorbs the lesson that they alone are responsible for confronting the internal fears that determine success or failure. The Tuesday following the Saturday rally, I attended a training session run by Esteban and Carla, the amorous couple Amalia had recruited to join Omnilife. Esteban once served as Morelia’s vice mayor, and most people still addressed him with the honorific “Licenciado.” His wife, Carla, retired after working for 20 years at the Mexican telephone company. Together with their son and daughter-in-law, they devote themselves full-time to multilevel marketing. They turned the third story of their home into an Omnilife support center complete with office, kitchen, and meeting room. Perhaps because their house is a few blocks more distant from the wholesale store than Luisa’s, their support center tends to draw smaller audiences. Still, they too sponsored a bus to take distributors to the rally in Guadalajara. Like Luisa and her parents, they hold meetings for members of their downline three times a week. At the meeting following the rally, Esteban made fear the focus. He asked each of the dozen people present for our reactions to the rally, starting with me. I said that the importance of fear impressed me: where it came from, how it hindered us, and how to overcome it. The woman next to me added that, “I feel motivated. Fear had stopped me. I discovered that’s my problem.” Another woman at the meeting had been profiled in the latest issue of the company magazine. She recalled that when she saw Vergara on stage with that issue in his hand, “I was afraid he’d turn to my page and ask me to come on stage. I started drinking lots of product, and then felt relieved when he put down the magazine. Now, I proudly point to the magazine and say, ‘Here I am.’ On Sunday, I signed up two new people.” A man repeated the rally’s theme: “We have to cut the fear.” A woman

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referred to the winners of a car and other prizes awarded at the end of the rally: “What do they have that I don’t?” Carla added the she was initially nervous about renting a bus to the rally. She worried that she would not sell enough tickets to recoup her costs, but she took a risk and nearly filled the bus. When Esteban and Carla decided to expand their network to Michoacán’s hot country, a six-hour trip toward the Pacific coast, they confronted many fears. They were wary about driving at night on the highways, investing money in gas and hotels for an uncertain return, and leaving their family in Morelia for several days at a stretch. Still, they risked the trip and have been rewarded. Esteban admits that their rewards are not entirely financial. Compared to other diamond distributors, they were merely “cubic zirconium.” Yet, he concluded, “success isn’t money; it’s feeling good about what you do.” Carla agreed, “Even if we didn’t recruit new people in the hot country, it went well because we talked to people and planted the seed.” Carla said that she feels most fulfilled when helping others. She keeps that in mind when fear of rejection stops her from sharing the business opportunity of Omnilife with potential recruits. With each successive rally, Vergara returns to the importance of overcoming the negative thoughts that might prevent distributors from working effectively. To keep the theme fresh, in 2005, Vergara unveiled a novel medium for conveying his core message. The screens flanking the stage displayed a short video called “The Secret Messages of Water.” A narrator described the experiments of Dr. Emoto, a Japanese scientist, who exposed samples of water to different influences. In one case, he spoke affirming words to certain vials and reproachful words to others. In other trials, he exposed water to different combinations of sounds: either classical music or heavy metal, Buddhist prayer or television shows. The doctor then froze the affected samples, sliced them, and viewed them through an electron microscope. Water exposed to positive words, pleasant music, and prayer showed a symmetrical, crystalline pattern. The negative influences turned the water molecules into deformed, disfigured designs. The video ended with a woman viewing enlarged photos of the water crystals while a guide explains that “ninety percent of our body is water. If thoughts can transform the water in these samples, imagine what they can do to our bodies.” The experiment provides tangible evidence for Vergara’s claim that our thoughts affect material reality. Normally, Omnilife values personal testimonials over laboratory studies, but it features Dr. Emoto’s work because it bridges the scientific with the spiritual. The video excerpt, I later learned, comes from

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a feature length film called “What the #$*! Do We Know?!” commonly pronounced as “What the Bleep?” (Vicente, Chasse, and Arntz 2004). In it, the example of the water crystals illustrates a larger point about how the lessons of quantum physics apply to daily life. The filmmakers combine talking-head interviews with a narrative plot and computer-generated animation to assert an equivalency between human consciousness and the physical world. Vergara edits out this larger argument about the indeterminacy of our perceptions, but he borrows the film’s emphasis on the power of the mind. Scientists have lambasted “What the Bleep” for making a false analogy between subatomic principles and macro-level behavior (Rushkoff 2007; Shermer 2005). Still, the independently produced film earned over $11 million in the United States and spawned a sequel, a website, and branded merchandise (Carr 2006). Mexican bookstores sell Spanish translations of Emoto’s book complete with photographs of water crystal patterns (Emoto 2004). When I read it, I saw how the theory of water merges Vergara’s philosophy about nutrition with his philosophy of business success. Emoto states that water transports energy through the body, but may become dirty or encounter clogs. Changing thoughts from negative to positive cleans out the system and facilitates the smooth flow of life-giving water. Eliminating fear, therefore, improves both health and wealth. At the rally, Vergara offered his own coda to the video. “All the things we do to ourselves and to others every day . . . when you imagine you’re a failure or tell your child he’ll be a failure. It’s scientifically demonstrated. To transform your life, you need attitude. People ask, ‘Why don’t I grow?’ The only difference is you.” Aesthetically and instinctively, the delicate snowflakes seem healthier than the messy blobs. Indeed, the contrast mirrors well the testimonies of satisfied distributors who turn chaotic lives before Omnilife into ordered existences with the product. The water experiment illustrates the power distributors possess to determine the pattern of their lives. For Vergara, the transformation to an ordered state represents not a progression, but a return to an original life uncorrupted by harmful influences. Luisa imagines that by relocating to Chile, she might shake off the layers of constraining thoughts that years of punitive teachers and overprotective parents have instilled in her. Going Back to School Rallies identify what holds distributors back from reaching their goals, but replacing those negative thoughts with positive ones takes more

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concerted work. As Dr. Emoto demonstrates, the effects of unhealthy attitudes reshape humans at a cellular level. Unlearning harmful habits and adopting a more expansive attitude involve a deeply personal, sometimes emotional, encounter with their upbringing. Wellintentioned or not, parents scar their children with negativity that informs their outlook on the world. Taking this as his premise, Jorge Vergara instituted a series of schools to guide distributors in the therapeutic work of banishing self-limiting fears. The schools occupy a small share of most distributors’ lives, but fill a significant psychic role. Their role as a catalyst for transformation routinely appears in distributors’ testimonials of improved lives. Their focus on esteem boosting demonstrates the company’s commitment to caring for people. For many distributors, the dividends of these self-help sessions compensate for the lack of any substantial monetary gain in Omnilife. On one visit to Luisa’s support center, I noticed a poster on the front door advertising a “Basic School for Women.” I asked her what a basic school was. She explained that Omnilife offered personal development workshops for men and women. The basic school consists of six modules, held over five weekends about a month apart. The sixth and final session takes place at a beach resort, where the participants celebrate a graduation party. After the basic school, graduates may continue to the advanced school, which follows the same format but with a graduation in an international destination. Mexican women in particular, Luisa told me, benefit from the workshops because “[i]n this country we tell women not to educate themselves too much. If you don’t have a husband, we tell you you’re not worth much. If you get a divorce, we tell you you’ll have a hard time supporting yourself.” Women hear these stereotypes from an early age and internalize fears of independence. Luisa said that women commonly drop out of the company as soon as they start earning more money than their husbands. Their preconceived ideas about proper femininity prevent them from rising in the Omnilife ranks. The schools reprogram women and men to take a more equitable approach to gender roles. Luisa calls it changing the “chip” in your brain. “In Omni, we tell women that they have the same capacity as men. He beat you before; now you don’t let him. We tell the men to let their wives work. It’s bad to be macho. This tradition comes from years ago. We’re ending it.” Luisa blames machismo as the cause of failed marriages like hers, but faults the wives as much as the husbands. Men have been taught that they should not cry and that they should work to provide for their families. So, if a man’s wife works outside the home, it reflects poorly on his ability as a breadwinner. For their

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part, women believe that they are born to serve others. When Luisa thought about leaving her husband, female relatives told her that if Patricia’s father did not want her, then no man would. The schools confront these prejudices directly in both men and women. At the basic level, instructors devote each weekend session to a theme designed to dismantle the limiting stereotypes of machismo: (1) As a woman (or man), how do I want to be?, (2) The power of beliefs: you become what you think, (3) Forgiveness: freeing yourself of the burdens of the past to live the life you want to live, (4) Abundance part one: how to be abundant to create the life that you want to have, (5) Abundance part two: creating an abundant life, (6) Graduation: projecting your interior image. Jorge Vergara’s sister runs a division of human resources at the Omnilife headquarters dedicated to developing the curriculum and training psychologists as facilitators. The courses incorporate elements from the theories of Carl Jung, Carl Rogers, and neurolinguistic programming. They take care not to advance either a narrow concept of God or a rigid definition of success, preferring to allow each participant to connect with what Vergara’s sister calls the “inner divinity” (Gutiérrez Zúñiga 205: 234). Luisa remembered in the first session of the first school she attended the instructor asked, “What does it mean to be a woman?” Over 100 women were in the rented hotel conference room, and several stood to give their answers. “To be the pillar of the house.” “To pick up the kids from school.” “To sweep and clean.” “To be everything,” they said. Luisa’s own answer revealed someone who had already shaken off some stereotypes: “To be of the feminine sex.” The facilitator wrote the range of responses on the board, and then gave the correct answer: “To be a human being.” The first lesson of the schools is that women have all the rights and potential of every member of society. Chauvinism exists, but women do not have to allow it to thwart their professional success. Luisa credits the schools for emboldening her to defy convention, but she recognizes that six sessions are insufficient to correct everything that restricts her development as a human being. Not all the students who begin the sequence reach the graduation exercises because it requires fortitude to admit mistakes. The lessons of the schools can be so difficult to accept that only repeated attendance helps some students absorb them. By the third time Luisa enrolled in the basic school, she anticipated the difficulty she would have absorbing the session on forgiveness. Before that class started, she went outside and cried to release her anger and to build the strength to forgive her exhusband. After the schools, she no longer resents him. By loosening

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his grip on her mind, Luisa opens herself to feel fulfilled as a single woman and unmarried mother. Since the schools seemed integral to the Omnilife philosophy of eliminating fear to recover a more powerful state, I wanted to enroll in one. Distributors in good standing are eligible to attend the schools with a payment of $13 per two-day session. However, the entire sequence spans at least six months of meetings. When I moved to Morelia in June 2005, I hoped a school would open soon so I could complete it before I was scheduled to leave in January. Unfortunately, Morelia could not muster enough interested distributors—male or female—to justify scheduling a school. Nor did any community within a few hours’ drive host a basic school for men while I lived in Morelia. Luisa helped me devise an itinerary that would have me attend the school in compressed form, traveling to a different city each time, but the company representatives in the wholesale store rejected it, saying that Omnilife preferred that students advance through the schools with the same cohort. In November 2005, I had a trip to the Mexican state of Veracruz on the Caribbean coast planned. Checking the Omnilife schools’ web page, I noticed that a basic school for men would be held in Xalapa, Veracruz’s capital, on the weekend I arrived. The employees at the wholesale store in Morelia said they could not authorize me to attend officially, but since I had paid already to hold my place at a future school in Morelia, I would not violate any ethics by showing up in Xalapa. They gave me the name and address of the hotel where it would be held and the name of the coordinator from the Omnilife store in Veracruz, should I have any problems. Luisa thought it amusing that I intended to parachute into a session where I knew no one, though not as amusing as her original idea of dressing me in drag to attend a women’s school that had started near Morelia. In Veracruz, the women’s and men’s schools met simultaneously in adjacent function rooms at an upscale hotel. A young man at a table near the entrance checked names to keep track of attendance. I claimed a seat on the aisle and noticed several Omnilife tote bags bulging with bottles lining the wall. At the front, I saw a table set up with a laptop computer and digital projector and next to it a stool and screen. Two large speakers stood on either side of the computer with cords leading to a side table where a young man controlled the sound. Ninety men, mostly in their forties and fifties, arrayed themselves in black plastic chairs and chatted while waiting for the session to begin. Manuel, the weekend’s facilitator, strode to the front of the room. He was tall, light-skinned, and balding. He wore a yellow guayabera

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shirt, cream-colored pants, and loafers with no socks. He spoke into a microphone he held beneath his chin like an ice-cream cone he was about to lick. After earning a doctorate in clinical psychology, he told us, he worked as a corporate trainer, but did not like wearing a tie and having to “brainwash” employees. When a friend invited him to join Omnilife’s team, the casual atmosphere appealed to him. From his base in Cabo San Lucas, Baja California, Manuel travels to all the countries where Omnilife holds schools. His speaking style reminded me of Vergara’s—fluid and authoritative yet playful and a tad vulgar. The all-male environment encouraged a mild undercurrent of sexual humor. He reminded us to turn our cellular phones to vibrate, then to “put them where it feels best.” The men bantered back, taking advantage of a cordless microphone resting on the front table. Manuel’s instructional style relied on parables to address the theme of beliefs, the second session in the basic school series. He began with a story from the Popol Vuh, the Maya creation text, describing how the gods sat around admiring their latest creation, human beings. One god started to worry, “If humans are so great, what if they take our place?” So, the gods decided to cripple humans by putting ash in their eyes. According to Manuel, the schools aim to remove some of the ash so we can see more clearly. The ash, he told us, represents the foolish beliefs we carry with us from childhood that limit our performance. Removing it will return us to our original, pristine states, and, presumably, empower us to overcome the obstacles to success in our lives. To start the process, he grouped us in threes to discuss what changes we had noticed in ourselves in the month since the first session. My two companions, neighbors in a small Veracruz town three hours north, did not follow the instructions strictly. Rather, they recounted to me their introduction to Omnilife and the remarkable health improvements they had experienced with the products. This was their first basic school, and already the positive message impressed them. One man suggested that the government should sponsor similar workshops for troubled youth. The other man, already exhibiting signs of decreased machismo, admitted that we all had a masculine and a feminine side. While the groups discussed, Manuel turned on the PowerPoint presentation. When we turned our chairs back to the front, a slide saying “Welcome to the course about how you become what you think” greeted us. Manuel segued into another story: A young man climbs to the top of the Pico de Orizaba [Veracruz’s and Mexico’s tallest point] and calls out to God, “God, give me a signal

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and I’ll change the world.” A lightning bolt shoots down, so for three years the man goes around to the UN, the idiot [President George W.] Bush, and [President Vicente] Fox, but has no success, so he goes to a mountain. “Okay, that’s hard. God, give me a sign and I’ll change my country.” Down comes another lightning bolt. He goes around to all the Mexican states, but no luck. So he goes to a hill and asks, “God, give me a sign and I’ll change my family.” Once again, lightning. But no one in his family paid attention to him. Many years passed before he stood on a mound and asked, “God, give me a sign and I’ll change myself.” A booming voice answered him, “You should have started there, asshole!”

Manuel drew out the moral of his joke: “Change comes from the inside out. You can’t change others.” Without mentioning Omnilife or its products, he underscored the company philosophy that societal reform follows from each individual making internal changes. For the rest of the morning, Manuel engaged us in visualization exercises, small group work, and more bawdy jokes. He used an evocative metaphor to clarify the goal of the session. He likened us to a third-generation potato farmer who decided to switch to growing strawberries. Yet, when harvest time came, he pulled out potatoes again. Another farmer explained that potato roots burrowed down so deeply that it was not sufficient just to plant a new kind of crop. “This is what happens to us,” Manuel concluded. “I want to change, and I harvest potatoes again. This session is to teach a technique to cut out the potatoes from the roots.” He suggested that our inability to create meaningful change in our lives stems from restrictive upbringings. “When we’re born, we’re put into a language, a religion, institutionalized laws. From childhood, they tell us, ‘You should, you should, you should.’ ” The Ten Commandments his parents drilled into him, for instance, emphasize the negative. Psychologists know that saying not to do something only gives people the idea to try it. If the rule states, “Don’t covet your neighbor’s wife,” a typical man reacts by thinking, “Hey, she doesn’t look so bad.” Held to such rigid rules, men disobey the commandment or feel guilty just for wanting to. In either case, we see ourselves as imperfect. Men in the audience sporadically jumped up to share anecdotes that illustrated a point Manuel made, but no one questioned his underlying assumption that we have been raised with a negative self-image and need coaching to eliminate its harmful effects. Every man copied the information on the slides diligently into a notebook. Some of the assignments nudged us into agreeing that our current state prevented us from reaching our full potential. Manuel instructed us to draw a

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pie chart with eight equal-sized wedges where each wedge represented a part of our lives: physical appearance, work, family, finances, and so on. He asked us to shade in the wedge to the proportion we felt satisfied with that aspect of our lives. I took the task seriously. Because I recognized my privileged status, I drew the wedges from 60 to 90 percent full. When I compared my chart with the two men in my group, I noticed that one had shaded in percentages from 25 to 60, the other from 30 to 70. Not one of us claimed total satisfaction in any single area. Perhaps we wanted to avoid appearing boastful in front of our less happy peers, but it meant that we all had to confront Manuel’s question, “Why do I think I haven’t reached 100 percent?” Whether or not we agreed with Manuel’s theory of how our negative self-image originated, we had to concede that our lives could use a boost. The most dramatic example of how negative thinking burdens us came before we broke for lunch. Manuel had us move the chairs to the edges of the room then cluster in our groups of three. He demonstrated the role-play with one trio. One man took the part of a baby, crawling on the floor. The other two played fearful parents, berating the child with harsh statements like “You’re going to get dirty” or “You’re just as dumb as your father.” This part continued for several minutes with the “baby” acting mischievously and the “parents” shouting at him. Then, they broke character and asked the person playing the part of the baby how he felt. One of the parents wrote down the man’s answers. “Frustrated,” “afraid,” “impotent,” and “squashed” were typical responses. In the next segment, the man playing the baby assumed his own identity and chose a contemporary problem he would like to address with someone. In this case, the man selected his mother. One partner stood in for the mother while the scribe stood by the man’s ear and whispered back his litany of pain while he tried to communicate with his mother. Inevitably, we heard, the adult man ended up incorporating the negative words he had felt as a make-believe child into his adult discussion with his mother. All the groups tried out the exercise, rotating so that every man had a chance to play the baby. During my turn, I felt my partners’ hands on my back restraining me and heard them shouting at me not to touch things. The cacophony in the room added to the sense of emotional turbulence. One group had four members in it, so when all the other groups finished, we circled them to watch the last man take his turn as the baby. Perhaps the pressure of an audience inspired the parents to special cruelty because they slapped and kicked the baby. Returning to his adult identity, the baby chose to confront his mother, whom he criticized for being uninterested in his life. As his

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partner whispered negative ideas into the young man’s ear, he began to cry. Manuel stepped in to give him a hug and to deliver the lesson of the game: “In just one minute of being babies, you get so much rancor. These limiting beliefs are deeply rooted.” In an unusual challenge, another man told Manuel that he did not mind the abusive treatment he received when playing the part of the baby. Such harsh discipline was necessary for a child, the man maintained. Manuel dismissed this perspective, telling him to sit out this exercise. “It won’t help you because you’re so accustomed to the pain.” Participation was voluntary, but accepting dissatisfaction with our lives was not. At the end of Saturday’s session, he gave us an assignment to detect the specific limiting thoughts that blocked us from fulfilling our potential. Instilling Self-Esteem The next morning’s session started shortly after 9:00 a.m. in the same meeting room. Manuel, wearing a colorful aloha shirt, turned on his microphone and welcomed us back. The Chivas had won a match the previous night, so he mused on Jorge Vergara’s foresight to invest in a soccer team. Then, he turned serious and asked the men gathered, “What happened from yesterday to today?” Volunteers summarized the previous day’s lesson. One man said, “My thinking is damaging me physically and mentally.” Another said, “I learned that I get angry easily. I beat myself up for not having studied. I thought I’d be more chingón [roughly, “bad ass”] if I had studied. I envied others.” This last comment prompted Manuel to share another anecdote about a frog who lived in a well and met a frog who lived in the sea: The first frog asked, “What’s the sea?” The second frog said it was a big body of water. “You mean like half the size of my well?” asked the first frog. “Bigger.” “Two-thirds the size of my well?” “Bigger.” “As big as my well?” “Bigger!” “Impossible,” said the first frog.

For Manuel, the lesson of the frog in the well is that when we live in narrow worlds defined by our limiting beliefs, we cannot imagine any other way of living. Until we remove the self-fulfilling blinders of negative thought, we do not realize we are capable of swimming in much vaster bodies of water.

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New Thought writer Ralph Waldo Trine included the same anecdote about the frogs, which he attributed to “Eastern literature,” in his bestselling book In Tune with the Infinite (1897: 113). For Trine, the arrogance of the first frog illustrates the danger of clinging to intellectual pride. Wisdom comes not from learning facts, which so often get refuted, but from being open-minded and intuitive like a child. Both Trine and Manuel want us to revert to an earlier, purer state before society imposed its inflexible rules for behavior. Trine’s Eastern source might have been the fourth-century BCE Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi. In his telling of the story, a frog living in a well was incredulous when a turtle told him about the ocean (Zhuangzi 2003: 108–109). For Daoism, the story provides a similar warning against unwarranted confidence in knowledge. Like the frog’s well, human minds are finite, so trying to fathom an infinite universe is foolish. Manuel added a further layer of meaning to the story. The well, he said, represents “religion” and the sea, “spirituality.” Codified doctrine and practices make up the walls of religion’s well. Its inhabitants believe that by following the code, they are acting correctly and that their worldview is the only legitimate one. The problem with such confidence, Manuel implied, is that it denies the inherent perfection of human beings. By constantly holding themselves to a narrow ideal, religious followers merely compound the inadequacies that hold them back. The only way to avoid finding yourself lacking, as the first frog did upon discovering a larger world, is to practice spirituality. Spirituality, in contrast to religion, allows each believer to establish direct communication with God. Religious people judge themselves against the Ten Commandments, but spiritual people never have to measure up to any outside authority. It occurred to me that many of my Roman Catholic classmates had failed to uphold the sacrament of Mass simply by attending the all-day school on a Sunday. Yet, as Manuel made clear, the only standards that matter are the ones the men set for themselves. The second day of the basic school focused on providing tools for casting off limiting beliefs so that we could swim in the open ocean. Manuel referred to developing these internal measures of success as building “self-esteem.” The first PowerPoint slide defined self-esteem as “the self evaluation that we do and maintain in respect to ourselves,” which all the men scribbled down in their notebooks. To illustrate, Manuel offered another parable, this one taken from an unnamed African tribe. The villagers found a baby eagle, which they took back and raised with the chickens. Sure enough, it soon learned to behave like a chicken. “We’re eagles that have been put in chicken coops. Now

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that we’ve detected our limiting beliefs, we have to recover that capacity as eagles.” The previous day’s exercises put us in touch with the harmful self-conceptions that we have carried since childhood. Today, we learned to cast them off and soar. In doing so, we closed the separation between God and humans that religion maintains. As eagles, we control our own destinies and reclaim our kinship with God. To stimulate discussion and to prevent the same men from monopolizing the microphone, Manuel introduced his “secretary,” Rosita—a pink plastic ball. Each man who caught her shared with the group his limiting belief that kept him locked in a chicken coop. Their answers revealed how completely they had assimilated Manuel’s message. “I am mediocre.” “I’ve never done anything.” “I’m afraid I’m not going to be successful in what I propose.” “I’m indecisive.” Manuel explained that we had to discover the root of the belief, what he called the “second why.” That is, if I believed that I lacked success in my work life because I never finished elementary school, why did I not finish school? When Manuel probed, most men automatically blamed their parents for instilling these negative beliefs. He encouraged this by drawing out descriptions of alcoholic, abusive family members. Even if we could blame our parents for inculcating feelings of inadequacy in us, we bear complete responsibility for replacing our “chip,” as Luisa would say. Manuel even corrected one man who praised Omnilife for pulling him out of distress. “The company didn’t. You did,” he said. To strengthen our will, Manuel demonstrated how powerful life can be without the nagging drone of negative self-perception. He had us repeat the previous day’s role-play, but rather than berating the curious baby, the parents encouraged and affirmed him. This time, when the person playing the baby returned to his adult identity and confronted a relative with a contemporary problem, his partner whispered positive thoughts into his ear. With this undercurrent of support, he easily communicated his feelings and resolved the problem. Buoyed by this success, we were ready to turn the limiting belief into an expansive one. Manuel repeated his conviction that like eagles, we are born powerful, capable of flight, but we have been told we cannot, so we never try. This prompted a man in the audience to share the story of the bumblebee. He did not state if he knew that Mary Kay Ash had introduced the metaphor to inspire her direct sellers, but he drew the same lesson she did. The insect’s bulbous body dwarves its tiny wings and therefore should not be able to fly. But no one told the bumblebee, so it takes to the air and flies. Whereas the oppressive force of the old limiting belief keeps us on the ground, an infusion of self-esteem gives lift to our wings. Manuel

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asked us to fill the gap left by the departed negative thoughts with an empowering, expansive belief. Choosing an expansive belief, it turns out, simply means inverting our preexisting thoughts. So, if the limiting belief were “I do things half way,” then the expansive belief would be “I finish what I propose.” Manuel solicited volunteers to share their expansive beliefs, and although many men eagerly stood, it was clear that not all had grasped the concept. One man announced, “I want to have health,” while another said, “People don’t trust me.” Their responses reminded me that many of the students at the workshop were unaccustomed to taking instruction from a teacher. It also illustrated how novel the idea of embracing Godlike qualities must have seemed for many in the audience. Gradually, Manuel guided them to a proper answer, and others shared the new beliefs they had come up with: “I am abundant.” “I am successful.” “I am handsome.” “I am important.” Just when we started to feel restless in our seats, Manuel led a visualization exercise to cement the expansive ideas in our minds. He dimmed the room lights while the sound engineer turned up a soundtrack of soft music. We sat upright, relaxed our arms, and breathed deeply. Mentally, we entered a room full of garbage and cleaned it, burning the trash. In the newly empty space, we invited in the expansive belief, reached out for it, and hugged it close. After lunch, we rehearsed more tangible ways to embrace the expansive belief and to anchor it to our lives. In small groups, we brainstormed ways to remind ourselves of the new mantra. My group took to the assignment avidly, envisioning a house plastered with the uplifting statement on the refrigerator, the bathroom mirror, telephones, and the bedroom ceiling. The meeting room’s lights went down again and a familiar video appeared on the screen. Two months after I had first seen the “Secret Messages of Water” at the Guadalajara rally, Dr. Emoto returned. Until this point, little about the basic school seemed peculiar to Omnilife. Manuel occasionally sipped from a company water bottle, but he rarely invoked product names or specifics of the business plan. Seeing the video of the water experiments again indicated that the schools coordinate their message with the company executives. At the end of the screening, Manuel amended the video to say that humans are 70 percent and not 90 percent water. Still, “Imagine what our thoughts can do to us. Our thoughts are our destiny.” Like the potato farmer, we harvest what we plant; so, negative thoughts breed negative behavior. The expansive idea, still a seed, must be planted with care and nurtured to grow. For homework, he left us the

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task of repeating the visualization, training ourselves to banish old thoughts, and to welcome positive ones. The last slide gave citations for two books that would help reinforce this weekend’s message. One was the text version of Emoto’s study; the other was called The Four Agreements by Miguel Ruiz (1998). Manuel also listed his e-mail address to encourage future communication. He asked if anyone had any lingering questions. This prompted an older man to stand and testify that yesterday a cloth had blocked his eyes, but today he could see. I thought back to Manuel’s opening story of the Mayan gods sprinkling ash in the first humans’ eyes to keep them from challenging divine authority. The Omnilife basic school restored his vision and brought him closer to the God within all of us. Making Over the Outside The session I attended in Xalapa covered just one of six themes in the basic school, but its lessons matched the experiences of distributors who completed the entire sequence. Almost all the graduates I spoke to in Morelia credited the courses with helping them improve their relationships with themselves and others. A 30-year-old man summarized the main lesson of the workshops as, “You can change if you have the desire.” He applied this lesson to practicing patience with his family. A young woman told me that she repaired her relationship with her mother after participating in the basic school for teens. When her parents separated, she went to live with her father in Mexico City. But her mother needed help running the family restaurant in Morelia, so she asked her to return to Morelia. The young woman did so, but felt resentful. Through the exercises in forgiveness, she reconciled with her mother and came to consider her like a sister. A middleaged woman who had taken the basic school curriculum four times explained that repetition was necessary because undoing 40 years of parental influence took a lot of work. For example, she still felt the effects of her parents’ stinginess. Even though she and her husband enjoyed a steady income, she scrimped by buying clothes in market stalls and denying herself luxuries. The schools helped to teach her that she was worth spending money on. Echoing what I heard from other graduates, she said, “You can’t change if you don’t want to.” The schools showed her that the only obstacles to improving her life are her own limiting thoughts. In June 2004 I traveled with Luisa and the participants in the basic school from Morelia to the beach resort of Puerto Vallarta, where 1,000 students from across western Mexico converged for a

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graduation session. Although I had not been present for the earlier workshops, I figured I could learn more about how Omnilife presented its philosophy of self-transformation. At minimum, I could enjoy a weekend at the beach. The graduation took place over a Friday and Saturday at the Sheraton Hotel. A banner in the hotel’s open-air corridor welcomed Omnilife distributors. Inside the cavernous ballroom crests of Omnilife’s Mexican and Costa Rican soccer teams hung above the stage. In contrast to the session I would take in Xalapa, this workshop mingled men and women and adhered more rigidly to the PowerPoint presentation. With audience members packed tightly into rows of chairs facing the stage, the space allowed little room for group activities. On Friday afternoon, the facilitator, a charismatic psychologist named Ana, lectured us about the history of self-presentation. She showed slides of body decoration among tribal societies to impress on us the importance of conforming to societal rules of appearance. If we expected to become leaders, she explained, we should provide attractive examples for our recruits to follow. Saturday’s program zeroed in on physical appearance as the outward manifestation of internal change. Ana illustrated this by inviting men and women on stage and critiquing their looks. With a wink, she mocked men who claimed that their mustaches betokened masculinity, lambasted women with leg hair, and chastised young people with baggy clothing. The criticisms drew laughter from the audience while illustrating her point that an internal makeover without an external one is incomplete. Ana gave us some basic rules about fashion: those with big midsections should avoid horizontal stripes, no one should wear socks with sandals, shoes and belts should be the same color, and plaid shirts should have the same pattern on all sides. After pointing out our flaws, she steered us to a positive resolution. She instructed us to write five things that we like about our bodies and invited several men and women to the stage to read their lists. Ana asked the volunteers how they felt about themselves. One woman said confidently, “I see the most beautiful woman in the world when I look in the mirror.” A man declared, “I am a champion, a great man” while another man said, “I look handsome and ready to achieve success.” She then had us compliment our neighbors about a pleasing aspect of their appearance. Saturday afternoon climaxed with the reintroduction of eight women and six men who had been chosen the day before for makeovers. The women, all outfitted in bright, solid colors, lined up on stage. Ana escorted each woman to a position where she had her back to the audience and faced a tall mirror covered with a cloth. When Ana

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removed the cloth, the audience could watch the woman’s reaction upon seeing her new look. We applauded enthusiastically. Taking the microphone to express their feelings, the women gushed about their expertly made-up faces, coiffed dos, and tailored clothes. They all linked their physical transformations to a more systemic life shift that started when they joined Omnilife. One woman said, “I’m another person. God put me in this path.” One tearful woman said that she had doubted the company would deliver on its promises, but now she believed. “I needed a total change: face, hair, thoughts. Before the schools I was repressed, but now I’m content.” The men tended to be more reserved, though they still praised the makeover team for making them feel younger and more attractive. Ana reassured them that they would encounter “fewer obstacles in their paths” with their new looks. With the Cinderella transformations complete, the students graduated to a dinner dance on the beach. At one level, the attention to outward appearance serves Omnilife’s commercial interests by producing a physically attractive sales force. Multilevel marketers like Mary Kay and Amway also encourage their members to adhere to modest dress codes as a way to make a positive impression on customers. Irma Ruiz, during her talk in Morelia, gave examples of how she turned humble Peruvian recruits into goldlevel distributors by having them adopt more professional attire. Yet, the basic school curriculum suggests that external makeovers in Omnilife signify something more profound than an advantage in retail sales. The company places importance on dressing nicely, but as the last step of a total life transformation. By reforming their inner states, Omnilife distributors create a new foundation for the outward expression of their optimistic self-confidence. Luisa indulges in $100 haircuts, frequent manicures, and designer outfits, but those luxuries reflect the strengthened sense of self-worth she develops through participating in the Omnilife schools. Luisa treats the schools as continuing education in the project of an enduring life transformation. Even though she has already completed multiple series of the basic and advance courses, she signed up for another round when it returned to Morelia. The physical improvements she experiences from taking the vitamins are easy to sustain by maintaining her regular consumption habits. Sustaining the emotional changes, however, takes more effort. She understands intuitively that she can access God’s vital energy directly, but obstacles always appear that make her doubt. Through the guided visualizations, role-plays, and partner sharing in the schools, she replenishes her reserves of power. With a decision as

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radical as deciding to emigrate, Luisa needs as much strength as she can muster. Despite my exposure to the basic school sessions, I did not experience the same invigorating effects of personal transformation. During my turn to crawl on the floor as a henpecked baby, I detected the difference on my psyche from hearing negative reinforcement. Still, I struggled to accept the idea that simply flipping my limiting belief into an expansive one would be enough to unblock the path to success. My upbringing more closely resembles the baby’s who heard soothing words. My parents contributed more than simple encouragement to allow me to achieve my goals. Just as importantly, they provided the structural advantages of a safe environment, access to education, and social contacts to support my professional aspirations. To guarantee everyone the same results, society would need to make similar nurturing conditions available to all children. Luisa sees it differently. When I asked her about the impact of external conditions on our futures, she conceded that they play a role but not a determining one. What matters most is what we choose to do with the circumstances life gives us. Some people might have to work harder to overcome the barriers to success, but many children born wealthy never become productive citizens, she said. Anyone could achieve a rewarding and enriching life through careful cultivation of the right frame of mind. Part of my difficulty in accepting Luisa’s perspective lies in her own example. If attitude trumps all, why is Luisa stuck at the level of silver distributor? If physical surroundings do not determine success, why would Luisa consider leaving Mexico to grow her business? When I returned from Xalapa in November, Luisa explained to me how relocating to Chile would be consistent with the message of the schools. One limiting belief she could not eradicate is the fear of being independent. This seems at odds with her defiance of religious leaders and intolerance for macho husbands, but in all her self-reliance, she has—like me—always known that her family would provide a comfortable safety net. Because she wants her daughter to grow up and take control of her own life someday she feels obligated to provide a positive example to show Pamela that anything is possible. Moving far from Mexico would vanquish Luisa’s lingering fear and compel her to fulfill the commission of direct faith. She realizes that as scary as living away from her family would be, she would not be alone because she always has God close by.

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Chapter 7

Planning the Departure

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uisa had never visited Chile and knew no one who lived there. Nor did she know anything about Omnilife’s planned entry into the Chilean market other than that Jorge Vergara had scheduled the opening of the wholesale store in Santiago for January 2006. After the rally in September 2005, Luisa began telling her employees and long-time distributors about her plan to move to Chile. The more people she told, the more natural the idea became for her. She entered chat rooms where Chileans congregated online to learn more about living in Chile. Her secretary called travel agents to find out about airfare and work visas. Luisa knew that preparing seven-year-old Pamela to leave her comfortable routine would take some persuasion. To stimulate her sense of adventure, Luisa allowed Pamela to attend a sleepover camp run by her Montessori school. When Pamela returned five days later, she realized that she could enjoy herself despite being away from home and her grandparents. The only people Luisa did not inform of her plans were Victor and Amalia. Partly, she was waiting until she had more concrete details to give them, though another part of her wanted to avoid having to hear their disapproval. On the basis of past experiences, Luisa knew that Victor and Amalia would react with their usual display of overprotection. If they objected to her moving to Guadalajara, then she knew they would balk at her moving to Chile. Luisa intended to break the news to her parents right before she left. She figured that with the trip details already set, her parents would not be able to dissuade her. As much as she loved her parents, she chafed at their grip on her. In a way, she had welcomed their control because it gave her an excuse to postpone the challenge of becoming truly independent. With her business stagnating and her dreams of moving to San Diego looking more remote, Luisa resolved to take a risk.

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Luisa decided to schedule her departure for mid-December 2005. That would give her a few weeks to set up a home, find a school for Pamela, and begin to generate excitement for Omnilife before the wholesale store opened. She knew from a distributor who helped Omnilife open the Russian market that initial company operations do not always go smoothly. In Russia, Omnilife had won government approval for only a few of the vitamin supplements, so the distributor smuggled in several boxes of product in his personal luggage. Luisa also knew at least one other distributor from Guadalajara who had made a reconnaissance trip to Santiago, though she did not know what the woman had discovered. With so much uncertainty, securing a work visa would be too difficult, so Luisa opted to enter Chile on a tourist visa. She would leave and reenter the country every three months. A mid-December departure also gave Luisa time to attend a conference in Cuernavaca, Mexico, hosted by Irma Ruiz and her husband Antonio Ramírez. Luisa reasoned that, with her experience in Peru, Ruiz could provide valuable advice. Despite her careful planning during the fall of 2005, Luisa could not foresee the events that would complicate her hopes for a smooth departure. Family members including her uncle, her brother, and a cousin all asked to join her and Pamela in moving to Chile. One of Luisa’s employees at her office started saving money for the flight. After remaining single for so long, Luisa found herself entering a serious romantic relationship. Her boyfriend soon became interested in Omnilife as a career and the adventure of building a network in a new country. What had started as a personal challenge to take a risk was turning into a sailing of the Mayflower. Juggling the demands of the growing crew frustrated Luisa. After their initial enthusiasm, some members of the team lost interest as they weighed the sacrifices required against their commitment to Omnilife. To overcome the obstacles to success in Chile, distributors needed a greater motivation than simply making money. They had to imbue direct sales with a larger sense of commission. Climbing the Mountain Luisa had always been close to her uncle Diego, Amalia’s youngest brother. When she told him about her idea to move to Chile, he began to consider how leaving Mexico might also help him accelerate his Omnilife business. Since joining the company, he had devoted himself full-time to building a downline. Even with his gregarious personality and Luisa’s mentorship, he had yet to generate regular commission checks. Like Luisa, he consistently attended the Omnilife-sponsored

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trainings to renew his motivation and drew inspiration from reading New Thought tracts on his own. The repetition helped bolster his confidence that he could become a successful distributor, but did not help him match the earnings of his previous career. For ten years he worked throughout the state of Michoacán as a representative for the Mexican juice company Jumex. Though he had built up a loyal clientele selling to supermarkets and corner stores, he became disillusioned with the work. He saw taxes claim half of all the bonuses he earned and watched less qualified employees win promotions because they ingratiated themselves with the boss. The disappointment fueled a growing problem with alcoholism. In 2001, he separated from his wife and accepted a sales job in Aguascalientes, a northern Mexican state. Estranged from his family and without friends in an unfamiliar city, Diego had reached a nadir. “My head was a chaos of problems. I was separated, alone. Something inside me wouldn’t let me be in peace. I couldn’t find myself.” His boss noticed how often Diego lost his temper and how frequently he was drinking. He invited Diego to attend a retreat sponsored by his church. Like Luisa, Diego was raised Roman Catholic, but he recognized he needed additional support to restore order to his life. He knew his boss was a cristiano, or Protestant, though he did not know which denomination he belonged to or what the retreat was officially called. He just remembered it as “The Mountain.” One Friday night, a coed group filled two school buses and drove to a wilderness area two hours outside the city. The leaders used lanterns to guide the participants to a large cabin, where they held hands and prayed. Fueled by coffee, the group stayed up all night watching skits about drug addicts and abusive husbands. The instructors distributed notebooks and told the students to write down their reactions, releasing all their emotions on the page. As soon as Diego began recording his thoughts in the notebook, dissatisfaction with his life spilled across several pages. At dawn, students paired up with a leader, who walked them to a different part of the mountain to watch the sun rise. Diego remembered experiencing a feeling of serenity and thinking, “I want to stay here.” As he was looking out over the canyon, a dove swooped into view, leaving him agape and convinced that the bird’s appearance was not a coincidence. On the first full day, the group read from the Bible and shared some of the pages from their notebooks. For Diego, this meant confessing many of his self-destructive behaviors. Everyone seemed stirred by the exercise, but a “spiritual peace” descended when they finished and burned the pages. Before dinner, the instructors led them to an outdoor chapel, where, amidst much applause, they baptized each of

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the participants and gave them a new “birth certificate.” They celebrated with a festive meal and soft drinks—no alcohol. On the second night, the participants could finally sleep, arranging their sleeping bags outdoors for what Diego remembered as a “delicious night.” In the morning, they ate breakfast and performed a final role-play where the initiates modeled asking forgiveness from a loved one. When his turn came, Diego knew he had to practice how he would repair relations with his family and asked a young woman to stand in for one of his daughters. Diego had bonded with several of the participants, and they walked jovially back down to the waiting bus. Suddenly, a rain shower drenched them. This too was a significant act. “God was cleansing us,” Diego interpreted. “It felt good.” His boss was waiting at the church when Diego returned from the retreat. He celebrated Diego’s and the other participants’ completion with cake and more soft drinks. That night, sleeping on a mat on his boss’s floor, Diego felt a profound peace, as refreshed as a “newborn baby.” In a sense, he had been reborn. He curtailed his drinking and reestablished contact with his daughters. “I’ve changed so much, people wouldn’t recognize me,” he remarked. Still, the process of transformation needed to be continuously reinforced. After the retreat, he began attending Mass every week. He saw no contradiction between his baptism in a Protestant ceremony and loyalty to the Catholic Church. As he explained it to me, “It’s the same God.” However he developed the connection, intensifying his communication with God is what mattered. In 2003, Diego learned that his elderly mother, Luisa’s grandmother, could no longer live alone. Amalia and his other siblings did not have the time to care for her, so he moved to Morelia with the agreement that he could live rent free in exchange for helping his mother. This transition signified more than a change in location. Diego went from driving a company car and carousing with friends to changing an elderly woman’s diapers. For his own self-esteem and to help support his daughters, Diego looked for a source of income. “I don’t want to ask for help. I had to suffer, but now I want to reap.” Joining Omnilife required no interview and would allow him to work flexible hours. He decided to enroll as a distributor under Luisa. At first Diego predicted that with his experience in sales, recommending vitamins would not pose much of a challenge. Yet, after six months in the company, he was ready to admit defeat. Unlike before when he had an established set of clients, in Morelia, he had to seek out new customers. But because Diego lived for so many years outside the capital, he knew few people in Morelia. The ones he did talk to expressed little interest in trying expensive vitamin powders. Mexicans in general, he believed, had not developed a culture of

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health. Moreover, as the primary caretaker for his ailing mother, he had to arrange for someone to watch her when he left the house. This restriction limited his ability to respond to clients’ requests for products on short notice. He asked Luisa for advice. Luisa recommended that instead of focusing on retail sales, he jump directly to the 40 percent discount level and become a wholesaler. That way he could concentrate on recruiting members to his downline and claim a portion of their sales volume. Diego agreed. He invested much of his savings to purchase 4,000 points worth of product (about $1,600) at one time, which allowed him to qualify immediately to collect commission checks. With few recruits, however, he could not recoup his costs. The same obstacles to winning clients applied to his efforts to recruit new distributors. In the middle of 2004, I asked him about his progress in the company. He replied grimly, “In six months, my wallet has grown thinner.” Facing a personal and professional nadir, Diego attended one of Omnilife’s basic schools. One of the facilitators recommended a book that seemed to speak directly to Diego’s dilemma. The Knight in Rusty Armor (Fisher 1989), which he read in Spanish, narrates the story of a gallant knight always rushing to battle dragons and rescue damsels. To save time, he decides to keep his armor on permanently. Soon, he becomes so busy as a knight that he neglects to spend time with his own family and the armor rusts shut. To help him remove the permanent armor, he visits the wizard Merlin, who subjects him to a series of tests. For the first time, the knight reflects on his relationship with his own family. Realizing that his escapades serve more to impress others than to fulfill his role as husband and father, the knight begins to cry, and the falling tears disintegrate the armor. Diego identified with the knight because, for many years, he too ignored the consequences of his actions. Instead of spending time with his family, he repressed his emotions and spent time drinking with friends. The parable of the knight made Diego aware that he had let concern for how others perceived him dictate his actions. Like the knight, by neglecting his true feelings, he cut himself off from the world. Diego continued working in Omnilife, following Luisa’s model of talking about the products with everyone he met. He capitalized on his prior networks of shopkeepers and drove a pickup truck across the state to hold demonstrations of the vitamin drinks. Slowly, his downline grew. Some months he earned enough in commission checks to send a gift to his daughters. Other times, he had to spend all his earnings on more Omnilife products just to stay eligible for commission checks. It particularly pained him when his daughters would ask him for money to buy clothes and he had to tell them no. Attending

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the rallies in Guadalajara and talking to Luisa helped buoy his confidence. Besides, he had no other options for remunerative work. Diego had to persevere with using and sharing. By the time Luisa floated the idea of moving to Chile, Diego had become increasingly aware that he would never become a prosperous distributor under the status quo. Morelia, he declared, was “saturated.” Everyone who might be interested in trying the products already had. Those people who joined Diego’s network merely wanted to purchase the vitamins at a discount, not build their own businesses. They refused to go to the wholesale store to buy the product, so Diego filled out the order forms for them, and delivered the boxes of product to their houses. While he followed the company guidelines scrupulously, he complained that the local Omnilife staff did not police the rules faithfully. He frequently saw merchants displaying the Omnilife products in a store window, violating the terms of the distributor contract. He was concerned that selling the vitamins like any other retail product undermined the exclusivity of Omnilife’s powders and weakened the person-to-person attention at the heart of the direct sales model. When he reported one offender to the Omnilife wholesale store, the manager asked Diego to bring in photographic evidence. Rather than waste more time, Diego dropped the case. Still, he refused to blame external factors for his disappointing business results. “We provoke the crisis ourselves,” Diego said. If he alone were responsible for the crisis, then he could also create its solution. When Luisa told Diego that she was thinking of moving to Chile, he spied the perfect opportunity to solve his problem of lackluster earnings. He hesitated to ask Luisa if he could join her out of concern that his siblings would consider him selfish and criticize him for abandoning their fragile mother. On the other hand, he reasoned, he had put off pursuing his own dreams long enough. “It was either my mother or I. I thought, ‘She’s already lived her life, now I need to live mine.’ ” He wrote his daughters a letter explaining his decision, then applied for a passport. He sold his pickup truck for money to buy his plane ticket. In November, he paid a final visit to the members of his small organization of distributors in one of the cities where he once worked selling juice. He said good-bye to his friends there and entrusted one woman with a crate of Omnilife display bottles too cumbersome to pack. He envisioned spending three years in Chile working with Omnilife and perhaps setting up a taco stand for extra income. Diego even thought about bringing CDs of Mexican music that he could peddle in the Chilean markets should he need extra cash. While he was grateful for Luisa’s support, he did not want to “eat her scraps.” With the survival

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instinct pushing him to work, Diego planned on returning from Chile with the fat wallet that he had yet to achieve in Morelia. Falling in Love As Diego began divesting himself of attachments to Morelia, Luisa unexpectedly deepened hers. One morning in July, she sent her secretary to deposit a check at the local branch of HSBC, the bank where Luisa kept the account for her business. When the teller rejected the check because the endorsement did not match the account holder’s signature, the secretary called Luisa to have her stop by the branch to confirm her signature. Luisa arrived, dismayed at the inconvenience, and stopped at a manager’s desk to demand service. Later, the manager, Roberto, remembered thinking that whoever this surly person was, she would have to wait, but when he looked up and saw Luisa, he said, “Please sit down.” He immediately went over to the teller to clear up the misunderstanding. Luisa thanked him and left. She was attracted to him, too, so she relieved her secretary of further bank duties. For the next month, they would chat and flirt whenever Luisa came to HSBC. In August, he gave Luisa his cell phone number. They had their first date that month and immediately clicked. Like Luisa, Roberto was in his early thirties and separated from his spouse, who had custody of their three-year-old son. He grew up in Morelia and graduated from the state university with a degree in law. It turned out that he and Luisa shared friends in common and had crossed paths before but never formally met until 2005. One of those “small world” moments occurred early in his tenure at the bank. His supervisor sent him out to survey local businesses. He remembered canvassing the boulevard where Luisa had her support center, but he did not go in because he thought it was a Protestant church. When Luisa heard this, she laughed and added that others have confused the office with a church or a meeting place for Alcoholics Anonymous. Even though he did not know about Luisa’s support center when they met, Roberto was familiar with Omnilife because several distributors maintained their accounts at HSBC. They periodically gave him samples of the vitamin packets, but he simply thanked them and tossed them in his desk drawer. When he began dating Luisa, he became curious about the Omnilife powders and fished the old packets out of his desk. He did not realize that the products expire after a while, so when he tried them, the foul taste turned him off. Roberto stayed away from the vitamins at first, but did involve himself in giving Luisa financial advice. He recommended that instead of

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renting a condo, she should buy a house to increase her assets. She had yet to hatch the plan to move to Chile, so she kept watch for houses for sale during her rounds of the city to visit distributors. The house she and Pamela had imagined for themselves featured modernist architecture with sleek, clean lines and large windows. In August, she saw a new development of five houses in a gated cul-de-sac near her parents’ neighborhood. Only one house in the development was unsold, so almost without thinking, Luisa paid a deposit to reserve the $160,000 property. Quickly, her exhilaration turned to worry. Aside from some shares of the Chivas that she had invested when Vergara bought the soccer team, she had no long-term savings program. Her monthly earnings far outstripped the Mexican average, but she also shouldered considerable monthly expenses. She paid nearly $1,000 a month in rent for two offices, one to house her support center and another nearby to store her inventory of product. Another $1,000 went to rent her condo. Her lease there didn’t expire until the end of 2005, so she would have to find a way to continue paying the landlord while she bought the new house. Omnilife automatically deducted $700 a month for leasing her minivan, which she upgraded each year. She paid monthly tuition for Pamela’s Montessori school and monthly salaries to two employees. Of course, she maintained a constant purchase of $800 of Omnilife product every month. She turned to Roberto for guidance. He first helped her find a tenant to occupy the new house so she would not have to pay for two residences. Then, he took her mortgage shopping. They visited several banks to compare interest rates. The one with the most affordable rates also required that Luisa be enrolled in the federal Social Security system, which was open only to salaried employees of private firms. Jorge Vergara had waged a long campaign against the Mexican government’s attempts to classify Omnilife distributors as employees and require the company to contribute to the national health care program. In 2005, he finally won an exemption (González 2005). To secure the loan, however, the bank wanted assurance that Luisa’s ability to pay would not be affected by a health emergency. So, she devised a plan where she would nominally go to work for a friend, who would make the Social Security payments in her name for a few months until the mortgage was approved. This implied more expense and hassle and Luisa began to lose sleep. To compound her stress, the deal coincided with the Omnilife rally, requiring further outlays for transportation and hotel in Guadalajara. One morning a week before the rally, after a visit to the bank, Luisa came to the support center in tears. Her father, who had been talking

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to me, consoled her and took her outside before I could say anything. Later that day, she sent me a text message admitting that all the financial transactions had made her “tense.” Eventually, Roberto steered her to another bank that did not require Social Security affiliation, where she took out a 15-year mortgage. As soon as she resolved the bank problem, the renter she had found for the new house demanded that the place come furnished. On top of all her obligations, she did not have the resources to furnish a three-bedroom house. With Roberto’s help, she decided to move the couches, tables, and beds from her rented condo to the new house. They spent one entire night hauling items between the two houses in her minivan. It left her condo nearly bare, but she reasoned that she did not need a kitchen table because she rarely ate at home anyway. For the months before she could occupy the new house, she would sleep on a cot. Maybe this sacrifice would provide the jolt to boost her business in Morelia. When she attended the rally in September 2005 and heard about the opening of Omnilife’s store in Chile, Luisa began to think how an even larger sacrifice would help increase her commissions. Roberto’s dissatisfaction with his commissions was also peaking. The bank paid him a base salary, but he earned the bulk of his income from commissions on the car loans, mortgages, and credit card accounts he opened for customers. Although he outperformed his colleagues, the bank rarely recognized his achievements. Women, especially, succumbed to his flattery when he told them that they needed a car to match their beauty or a credit card to buy clothes that complemented their lovely faces. He boasted that he often exceeded his sales targets by 100 percent. Commissions above the monthly goals were to be distributed every six months as bonuses, yet the bank postponed awarding him his bonus, and then finally cancelled the program without paying him anything extra. They would also deduct expenses for telephone lines and other office utilities from his regular paycheck. On top of that, Roberto arrived at the bank at 7:30 a.m. and stayed until 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. six days a week, rarely finding time for a lunch break. As a nonunionized employee, he received no medical or retirement benefits, either. At one point, he checked into a hospital for stress-related pain. When he met Luisa, he had already started circulating applications to change jobs. He ruled out joining his cousins working at a Mexican restaurant in California. Even though the earnings as an undocumented worker would handily beat his income from the bank, Roberto no longer wanted to be an employee. He calculated that HSBC owed him about $6,000 in undelivered compensation, which he never planned to see. What would

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stop a boss in the United States from cheating him as well? Moreover, he had never mastered English despite studying it since elementary school. He looked, instead, to capitalize on his strengths: self-confidence and charm. In college, one professor had asked all the students to write down the grade they thought they deserved. Modestly, most students assigned themselves Bs or Cs. Even the class brain put down A minus. Roberto, a fair student, scored himself an A plus. When the professor reviewed the self-grades, he asked Roberto why he deserved such a high grade. Roberto replied that he had studied and mastered the course material and would happily prove it on a test. The professor accepted this explanation and then announced that the marks the students gave themselves would be their overall semester grades. Roberto honed his salesmanship in bars. He always appeared well groomed, but did not consider himself handsome. His friends would promise him a bottle of brandy if he could approach an attractive woman in a bar and persuade her to reveal her phone number. He nearly always won the bottle. One favorite strategy was to buy a candy bar, then walk up to the woman and say, “You just won this prize. I got it in a raffle, and they told me to give it to the most beautiful woman in the room.” Invariably, the woman’s aloof exterior would melt away. This appeal to women’s vanity served Roberto in his banking work, so it frustrated him that his bosses did not reward his performance. Luisa saw how Roberto squandered his skills working at the bank. She worried that were he to require serious medical care for stress or a heart attack, HSBC would quickly replace him. His charisma drew in clients only to divert the benefits to his employer. No matter how many loans he signed, in her mind, he would remain a subjugated employee. The more time he spent with Luisa, the more he learned about Omnilife. He would meet Luisa after work at the support center and stand in the back to listen to a training session. On his own, he started probing about the business side of the company. “How many boxes do I have to sell to earn $1,000?” he would ask Luisa. She worked to disabuse him of the idea of moving quantities of product for a profit. The business, she explained, grew when he invited people to join the company and taught them to consume 1,000 points worth of product every two weeks. Overcoming his memories of the stale powders, Roberto asked Luisa if he could try some of the products. His fervor in consuming the vitamins did not match hers, but at least he came to replace his regular cans of Coca-Cola with company soda. Without any pressure from Luisa, he began to consider quitting his job at HSBC and joining Omnilife. He figured that his experience at the bank could transfer easily to working in Omnilife as well. “Both

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jobs try to convince people to buy things,” he rationalized. Risk of rejection had never bothered him: “The worst thing that can happen to you is that you stay as screwed as you already are.” So, in November 2005, he submitted his resignation to the bank. Increasingly, Roberto intertwined his life with Luisa’s. They would take spontaneous road trips to hamlets outside Morelia. He accompanied her and Pamela to Mass on Sundays and joined in meals with her parents. Toward the end of 2005, he moved into Luisa’s condo. The next step for him was to join her downline. When Roberto decided to enroll under Luisa as an Omnilife distributor, they thought carefully about where in her organization to place him. The company allowed for couples to be codistributors, yet this seemed inappropriate to Roberto. Not only was Luisa still officially married to her daughter’s father, but Roberto also felt he could not claim ownership of an organization he had no part in building. They decided that he would enroll under Victor and Amalia, making him Luisa’s second generation. This strategy promised to maximize future benefits because, if he constructed a strong organization, it would help boost Victor and Amalia toward diamond level while still providing commissions for Luisa. In December 2005, Roberto began working full-time as an Omnilife distributor. As a novice, he did not have to worry about abandoning an existing downline, so he eagerly signed on to Luisa’s plan to move to Santiago and helped draw up a business plan. They would leave at the end of the year after Irma Ruiz’s conference and before the wholesale store opened in Santiago. Their vision called for a minimum stint of two years to establish a strong network of distributors in South America before returning to Mexico. Once the infrastructure was in place, they would need to visit Chile only a couple of times each year to motivate the organization. The problem with Morelia, Luisa believed was that “[e]veryone here wants success, but no one wants to take risks.” Breaking out of the rut required a bold, risky move that would serve as both an example for other distributors and a catalyst to eliminate their own fears. Getting Ready to Leave As the departure date neared, the travel party expanded. In addition to Diego and Roberto, the young man Luisa employed to clean her Morelia office also warmed to the idea of joining the group. He had completed high school, but had few career options beyond mopping floors. In Chile, his experience with Omnilife in Mexico would be an asset in training new distributors. He could build a self-sustaining business that ideally would allow him to return

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to Mexico and still receive income. Luisa welcomed anyone bold enough to take a risk with her. Certainly, she could use an experienced team to help with the daunting assignment of explaining Omnilife’s products and business plan to millions of Chileans. She mentioned the move to a cousin of hers who lived in Mexico City. After eight years as a full-time Omnilife distributor, Daniel had not surpassed the bronze level. Although he would have to leave behind his wife and children, he agreed with Luisa that in Chile he would enjoy an opportunity to share the benefits of the vitamins with a fresh audience. Like Diego and Daniel, Luisa’s brother Marco had yet to fulfill his vision of a prosperous entrepreneur. Unlike them, Marco did not feel an urgency to boost his commission checks because no one depended on his income. At 31 years, he lived with his parents. His girlfriend, also an Omnilife distributor, attended university several states away. He socialized with friends, bore no household responsibilities, and drove his parents’ secondhand BMW. In Marco’s case, excessive comfort became a motivator to seek a change in venue. He had joined Omnilife under his parents’ sponsorship and had built a business based primarily on marketing Omnilife’s secondary line of cosmetics. He rented a storefront not far from Luisa’s office where he instructed women how to fashion homemade facial masks by mixing the vitamin powders with water. Pursuing this niche had earned Marco a regular commission check but not the outsized success he imagined. He too read New Thought books. They convinced him that even greater rewards were available to him if he set his mind to them. When the lease on his office ran out at the end of February 2006, he planned to join his sister in Chile. In his long-term vision, he saw himself shuttling between Chile, Uruguay, and Brazil, introducing more people to Omnilife’s products. Diego led the regular information session at the Morelia support center the Saturday morning in December 2005 when Luisa, Marco, and their parents traveled to attend Irma Ruiz’s seminar. About 500 Omnilife distributors from all over Mexico and Peru filled a ballroom at a hotel in Cuernavaca, an affluent community outside Mexico City. Luisa and her family arrived the night before so they would make the 10:00 a.m. start, and then drove home after it ended at 7:00 p.m. They all agreed that, though exhausting, the trip had been worthwhile. The conference with Ruiz inspired Marco to envision a grander plan for his business. He heard a distributor from Ecuador describe how he reached the diamond level by requiring all the visitors to his support center to dress professionally. The requirement instilled in the members of the organization that Omnilife was a company for

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millionaires. By contrast, Marco lamented, the Morelia distributors arrived at the meetings in sweatpants. Such informality indicated a lack of respect for the seriousness of the business opportunity. Christmas was approaching, and the travelers had yet to book their flights. Luisa called Jorge Vergara to find out where in Santiago the store would be located. He told her that he had pushed back the opening to February or March, so it did not make much sense for them to arrive until later in January. Luisa started calling travel agents when her employee backed out of the trip. He had not saved enough money for the plane ticket. Then, Luisa’s uncle Diego changed his mind and decided to stay in Morelia. He disliked the ambiguity surrounding the departure date and feared that so many distributors living and working together would cannibalize each other’s efforts. He had heard of Omnilife distributors from other parts of Mexico who were also planning to move to Santiago. He used the money he had set aside for plane tickets to buy a used car to continue his Omnilife work in and around Morelia. It is telling that the two members of the group who abandoned the plan were the two motivated primarily by money. Diego’s defection illustrates the mirror image of Luisa’s involvement in Omnilife. Family, geography, and temperament closely linked their direct selling careers, but as challenges mounted, Luisa deepened her commitment to Omnilife while Diego withdrew his. The main difference in their approaches is the element of commission. Luisa values both the material and the spiritual senses of the term. Diego desires only cash. Unlike Luisa, he has already undergone a conversion to direct faith before coming to Morelia, making the company’s motivational campaign less transformative for him. His affinity for mind cure eases his initial transition to direct selling, but reinforcing those beliefs is insufficient compensation for his investment. When his participation in Omnilife does not deliver the monetary paycheck, he has no interest in waiting for the emotional rewards. Luisa and Diego are moving in opposite directions. In her conversion to direct faith, Luisa seeks to shift backward. The basic schools and New Thought books teach her to peel back layers of negative socialization and topple irrational fears. They usher her back to a time when humans, living in close connection with their divine creator, exercised complete control over their lives. The move to Chile signifies an attempt to recapture the insouciance of that earlier, blessed age. Diego, by contrast, has reached the point in his life when he declares himself ready to look ahead. He has already experienced a life without fears, and he sees nothing in his profligate days as an alcoholic to invoke nostalgia. Transformation for him means avoiding risks and

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assuming responsibility for his actions. He joined Luisa’s downline to generate a ready flow of cash, not a steady flow of divine energy. The distributors who make arrangements to travel to Chile share Luisa’s dedication to spreading the benefits of Omnilife to as many people as possible. In January, Luisa, Pamela, and Roberto would travel to Mexico City, where Daniel would join them for the trip to Santiago. Marco would follow in March. With the plans in place, it was time to tell her parents. One night in December, after Luisa had been using the computer to chat with Chileans, she received a call from her mother. Amalia asked her why her telephone line had been busy. Luisa decided to be honest. She explained that she had been online talking to Chileans because she was preparing to move to Santiago. To Luisa’s relief, Amalia reacted calmly. Victor, when he found out, was also tentatively supportive. Unable to reach the next level in the distributor hierarchy themselves, they understood why Luisa would take such a risk to grow her business. By the time I left Morelia in January 2006 Luisa and her troop had yet to purchase their plane tickets for Santiago but remained zealous about their mission. For these committed yet underperforming advocates of Omnilife, moving to Chile provides an escape from unprofitability without leveling a critique against the multilevel marketing system itself. They frame their decision to leave Mexico not as an indictment of unfavorable external conditions, but as an opportunity to develop leadership skills and to extract themselves from negative environments, goals consistent with Omnilife’s self-help philosophy. That they plan to continue working as Omnilife distributors neutralizes any hint of dissatisfaction with the company itself. On my last day in Morelia, Luisa, Roberto, and Pamela invited me for a farewell lunch. As I was coming out of the restaurant bathroom, I saw Luisa in the doorway of the women’s restroom covering her face with a scarf. When we all returned to the table, I asked if she was feeling sick. She said that she and Roberto had an announcement. She was three months’ pregnant. The baby was due in July, but that would not prevent her from traveling. I congratulated them and wondered if it made them nervous to leave a strong support system just as they needed it most. Luisa answered confidently. Ever since Vergara announced that Omnilife would expand to Chile, it had been her “burning desire” to move there. “This is my dream. I won’t let anyone take that away from me.” In Chile, she would fulfill her true commission by transforming herself into a fearless, independent businesswoman.

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Chapter 8

Bringing Transformation to South America

A

young man dressed in a blazer and carrying a briefcase and a newspaper classified section knocked on the door of the office. Felipe, a newly enrolled Chilean distributor, welcomed the guest and escorted him to a row of molded plastic chairs. From the fourteenth floor, the men could see Santiago’s La Providencia neighborhood and an arc of snow-topped mountains at the edge of the city, but they focused their attention on a screen at the front of the meeting room. Daniel stood by the opposite wall and operated a PowerPoint slideshow from his laptop computer and digital projector. Felipe asked the young man his name and found out he was unemployed with a newborn daughter. Gripping a bottle of Omnilife product in his hand, he explained that he would teach him to be an entrepreneur, not an employee. Chilean employers, he claimed, fired their workers before payday and, if a worker died, gave nothing to the surviving family. The first slide appeared with an image of Mexican currency. “Here there is financial security. You’re your own boss and grow as you want to,” Felipe said. Unlike salaried jobs, the income generated in this business continued to accrue to the family even after the worker’s death. The next slide showed a cruise ship and the company’s name for the first time. Felipe continued his presentation with Daniel advancing the slides in a practiced rhythm. He told the young man, who was listening quietly, that Omnilife was celebrating its fifteenth year in business. He asked him if he remembered the name of the Mexican soccer team that came to play in Chile recently. The man replied tentatively, “Las Chivas?” Felipe smiled. “The Chivas are ours. We’re the only company with three professional sports teams. We have our own fleet of planes. We’re in 18 countries and opened here in Chile on March 17.

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Already we have 4,800 distributors.” Joining Omnilife offered him the opportunity to buy nutritional products at a discount and then resell them for a profit. By inviting as few as ten people to join his organization, he could begin to construct a limitless network. Those ten would invite ten more each and so on until in just the sixth generation, he would oversee a force of one million distributors. The next slide showed a facsimile of Daniel’s account statement from a recent month. The list of enrolled distributors and their purchases covered seven pages of single-spaced print. Felipe pointed out that of all those members, only seven occupied Daniel’s first generation. Starting with just a few recruits, Daniel had built a sprawling, profitable business. “The only limits are those you put on yourself,” Felipe advised. Felipe then asked the guest, “How much money do you need to start a restaurant?” “Four or five million Chilean pesos,” he answered, giving the equivalent of $6,500 to $8,200. Felipe said that starting a business with Omnilife cost only 14,000 Chilean pesos (about $23) and came with all the necessary tools: sample product, magazine, and a DVD with testimonials from successful distributors. Daniel turned off the PowerPoint and switched to the DVD. After we watched a few interviews with prosperous Omnilife veterans, Felipe asked the young man for his reaction. “They seemed content with the results,” he remarked neutrally. Felipe expanded on his answer: “One of the women in the video does not know how to read or write but makes $12,000 a month. This is for everyone. The business is real. The product is spectacular. When do you want to start?” The man hesitated and then said that he’d like to talk to a friend about going into business together. Felipe, undeterred, said to bring the friend to the office tomorrow so they could both attend a 10:00 a.m. meeting for new distributors. They shook hands and parted. The next day at 10:00 a.m. Felipe waited in the office while Daniel played solitaire on the computer. No one knocked on the door. During my visit to Santiago in May 2006, I spent several quiet hours in the office with the Mexican distributors waiting for job seekers to appear. In Mexico, Luisa and her family could expect that most people they encounter will recognize the name Omnilife. In Chile, by contrast, Jorge Vergara is not a celebrity and the company’s products are unfamiliar. To jumpstart their recruiting in Chile, the Mexicans shift their strategy away from emphasizing the health benefits of the vitamins to promoting the economic potential of the business plan. The promise of financial independence translates easily into any culture. Building a base of entrepreneurial-minded distributors rather than consumers also ensures that their organizations multiply rapidly

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as new members seek to generate their own commission checks. With Felipe’s notable exception, their plan does not produce many results. Still, no one voices any regrets. If anything, the experience of steady rejection in Chile convinces Luisa and her gang even more that manipulating their minds leads to success. Without the reward of dependable profits, they could envision their work as part of a noble commission to bring transformation to South America. Settling into a New Country Luisa, Roberto, and Pamela connected with Daniel in Mexico City on January 22, 2006, and arrived in Santiago the next day. Between them, their luggage totaled 23 suitcases. Luisa’s shoes alone filled an entire suitcase and Pamela’s dolls another. Several more contained nothing but Omnilife products. At the Santiago airport, the customs official looked curiously at the boxes and bottles of brightly colored powders with inscrutable labels. Sensing his suspicion, Luisa quickly interjected that they were vitamins for her personal consumption. “All of them?” the official asked. Yes, she replied, all of them. Judging the containers harmless, he let them pass. They headed out of the airport without a definite destination. None of them had been to Chile before, and they knew no one. They decided to take a taxi to a hotel and use it as a base to scout an apartment to rent. They settled at the Holiday Inn in La Providencia, a commercial neighborhood home to tall office buildings and the soon-to-open Omnilife store. The one-bedroom suite cost over $100 a night, so they were eager to find more affordable and spacious accommodations. The search took longer than they expected. Chilean landlords require that foreign residents obtain the guarantee of a citizen who will assume financial responsibility for the lease should the tenants leave the country. They did not know any Chilean willing to vouch for them, so they kept searching. Meanwhile, Luisa located a Montessori school for Pamela to attend, but had not realized that schools closed for the Chilean summer, meaning Pamela could not enroll until March. Chile presented cultural differences, too. People in the capital were less hospitable and gregarious than Mexicans. Luisa, Roberto, and Daniel detected resentment toward foreigners, particularly Peruvian migrants, who occupied the lowest rungs of employment in much the way Mexicans did in the United States. Cuisine, so varied and spicy in Mexico, tasted bland to them in Chile. Luisa savored good food so much that she regularly drove to lakeside restaurants an hour outside

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Morelia for a lunch of fresh fish. By contrast, the Chilean national dish, the empanada, resembled a Hot Pocket served unadorned on a plate after a minute in the microwave. When Luisa eventually hired a Peruvian cook, she asked her to make a typical Mexican dish with tomatoes called colored rice. This stumped the young woman, who asked, “With what shall I paint it?” Even the language, the one area of supposed continuity with Mexico, betrayed them. When visiting apartments, they learned that their word for kitchen, cocina, in Chile refers only to the stove. Instead of sala for living room, Chileans say livin. Frustrated by the obstacles to renting an apartment, Luisa finally called Jorge Vergara. Like the time when she talked to him from Morelia about the location of the Santiago store, Luisa found Vergara curt. He recommended that she contact the manager of the wholesale store to vouch for her on a lease. When she did so, the manager said he could not help. Finally, they found a three-bedroom furnished apartment in a high-rise tower in the tony neighborhood of Las Condes, close to Pamela’s school. In lieu of a cosigner, the landlord agreed to accept six months’ rent up front at $1,000 a month. They leveraged the apartment lease to persuade another landlord to rent them a small two-room office in a high-rise near the wholesale store. Luisa christened this branch of her business “Nutriline” to distinguish it from Nutrilight in Mexico. Getting settled in an apartment and office had left them with hardly any time to begin recruiting distributors. Luckily, the income from Luisa’s network in Mexico cushioned the expensive start-up costs. With the living and working arrangements made, they could establish an effective work rhythm. By March 17, when the Omnilife store opened, Luisa had enrolled four new distributors. Initially the store offered only nine of the company’s products that the Department of Health had approved. Standby vitamins like OmniPlus and Magnus were available, but the company water was not. When their supply of imported Omnilife water ran out, the Mexicans had to resort to rinsing out the bottles and refilling them with tap water. Although this violated the advice they gave their organizations in Morelia, the visitors felt it was important to maintain the visibility of the Omnilife logo. Every three months they had to leave the country to renew their tourist visas. In April, they took the opportunity to rent a car to visit a better-stocked Omnilife store in Argentina. They replenished their supply of product, renewed their visas, and returned to Chile the same day to save money on a hotel. Their goals seemed to be within reach. At the end of the South American summer, Pamela started

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attending elementary school. Despite her increasingly conspicuous belly, Luisa liked to explore Santiago by getting on a bus and riding it to the end of its line. They celebrated her birthday in April with tacos at a Mexican restaurant. Their good fortune did not last. One night shortly after Luisa’s birthday, Roberto complained of a fever. Soon, he felt chills and throbbing pain. Luisa rushed to administer him two one-liter bottles of Omnilife’s defense boosters, OmniPlus and AloeBeta. In the morning, he still felt sick, so Luisa took him to the emergency room at a private clinic. The doctor diagnosed him with a virus and prescribed painkillers and antibiotics. They helped restore his health, but left him with a bill of $400. Similarly, Pamela’s school tuition greatly exceeded what Luisa had paid in Mexico. The required school supplies alone cost over $100. Worse, Pamela did not like the new school and missed her extended family. Her uncle, Marco, had postponed his arrival in Chile. As colder weather approached, Pamela started getting sick more often. Luisa experienced no complications with her pregnancy, a fact she attributed to her steady consumption of Omnilife products. Yet, when Luisa discovered that giving birth in Chile would cost nearly ten times as much as it did in Mexico, she reevaluated her initial plan of staying in Santiago for the delivery. She and Pamela returned to Mexico on May 13, less than five months after they had arrived in Chile and three months before her baby was due. Since she had terminated the lease on her condo in Morelia and had rented out the house she bought, Luisa opted to move back with her parents, sharing the same bedroom with Pamela that she had occupied when her daughter was born. Roberto would travel to Morelia for two weeks in July to accompany her at the birth, but then he would return to Chile alone for at least two years to nurture their growing business. It pained Roberto knowing he would not be a regular part of his child’s early life, but he believed his work in Chile contributed to the patrimony the child would inherit. He was also homesick for flavorful Mexican cuisine. When he and Daniel went to the supermarket in Santiago, they asked the produce manager for more chilies and cleaned out the shelf of bottled salsas. After Luisa left, Roberto communicated with her daily via e-mail, telephone, or web camera. In one of the first images she transmitted from Morelia, she taunted Roberto by asking if he could see the rivulet of grease on her chin. That came from a delicious taco of authentic carnitas, a Mexican pork specialty, she joked. I visited Santiago in May 2006, just missing Luisa and Pamela by a few days. Though I was sorry not to see them, I was able to stay in

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Pamela’s former room and shadow Roberto and Daniel in their work routine. They showered and dressed by 9:00 a.m. Daniel prepared breakfast, they ate, Roberto washed the dishes, and then they scurried downstairs to catch a taxi to their office. The office, on a busy intersection near a metro stop, was plainer than the support center in Morelia. The front room held a small wooden desk, two chairs, and a closet-sized bathroom. On the floor behind the desk, the men stored bottles of product and company publications. A door led to a slightly larger room with a panoramic view of the city sprawling to the base of the Andes. Here the men conducted group sessions with rows of stackable plastic chairs angled toward a screen against the front wall. Along the back wall, a table holding a DVD player, laptop computer, and digital projector faced the screen. Posters ripped from issues of the Omnilife magazine were the only wall decorations. Luisa had placed potted plants in one corner and a plug-in water fountain on the desk (see Figure 8.1). Every Sunday, they placed an advertisement in the classified section of El Mercurio newspaper. The ad, enclosed in a black box, appeared in the help wanted column devoted to salespeople and promoters.

Figure 8.1 The sparse Nutriline office in Santiago contained Omnilife products and a copy of Sunday’s newspaper classifieds.

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“International Mexican company opening in Santiago looks for you, who wants to change your life earning from $1,000 to $3,000 in three months. Interviews from Monday to Saturday.” It gave the address of the office, the hours of operation, and Roberto’s name. When they first posted the advertisement in March, it attracted standing room– only crowds. By my visit in May, they averaged five people a day, almost entirely men dressed in business suits and carrying briefcases. Luisa, back in Morelia, stayed in regular e-mail contact with Roberto and the classifieds manager at El Mercurio. She used her credit card to pay the $300 fee each week for running the ad. Concerned that the initial wave of interested recruits had subsided, she reworked the text to read: “Worldwide company initiating operations looks for people with desire to improve. Income from $2,000 a month, bonuses, and international trips.” Roberto added the office address and hours for interviews along with the admonition, “Formal dress.” “Interview” did not accurately convey the interactions between Daniel, Roberto, and their visitors. In these interviews, there was no possibility that the company would reject the applicant. Daniel and Roberto rarely even posed anything but rhetorical questions to their audience. They took turns welcoming the visitors and describing the business opportunity. Once Felipe became adept at explaining the products and business opportunity, he joined the Mexicans at the office and helped lead the presentations. Felipe fit the profile of Chileans who were most receptive to Omnilife’s pitch in the first half of 2006. As a young man, he left Santiago to find work in Los Angeles, California. He met his wife, a migrant from Colombia, there, and they moved to her home country to start a family. In 2000 Felipe led them back to Santiago for better job prospects. Entering a new market in his forties, Felipe had trouble finding permanent employment and accrued sizeable debts trying to provide for his family. The debts compounded the problem of locating work, he lamented, because many Chilean managers run a credit check on prospective employees. When he answered Roberto and Daniel’s ad, he immediately appreciated the opportunity to start over. Omnilife asked no questions about prior work history nor required a minimum level of assets. His naturally gregarious personality fit with the requirements of recruiting. He struck up conversations with the other parents when he dropped his children off at school. Once, he saw a woman sitting on a park bench and used that as an opening to ask if she had a stressful job and would like to try some energizing vitamins. His efforts paid off. In his first month, he rose from the 20 percent to the 25 percent

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discount level. In a few more months, he had reached the bronze level and amassed an organization of 15 distributors. When the next issue of the Omnilife in-house magazine appeared, it featured Felipe’s testimonial as evidence of the successful start of Omnilife in Chile. Not every new Chilean distributor followed Felipe’s profitable path, but they all shared a clear-eyed vision of what Omnilife could offer. Roberto enrolled Sara, a 21-year-old woman who responded to the newspaper ad. She had graduated from a culinary academy in Santiago but, when she did not find work in her field, accepted a job at a warehouse scanning and organizing boxes. The bending gave her back pains, and the remote location required a two-hour commute. For all her trouble, she earned only $400 a month. Sara took a sabbatical from the job to rest and to identify other work opportunities. In addition to Omnilife, she attended an information session about Herbalife, but decided that Omnilife’s lower start-up costs suited her better. She quit her job at the warehouse to devote herself full time to building her Omnilife business. In her first month, she enrolled three distributors in her frontline. She grew especially close to Luisa and paid attention to how she interacted with potential recruits. In particular, Sara learned not to waste time with reluctant clients, but rather to focus on those who appreciated Omnilife’s business opportunity. One day in the Nutriline office, I observed her greeting a man who responded to the newspaper ad. The visitor inquired about a job. Sara corrected him, “This is not a job. It’s a business. There’s no base salary. We market 100 percent natural nutritional products. Are you interested?” The man hesitated, “I thought it was a job.” Sara pulled out the newspaper and pointed to the ad. “Nowhere does it say ‘job.’ ” The man apologized and left. Sara was unfazed by the encounter. Jorge Vergara designed Omnilife for people like her, who never wanted a job. A job implied a boss and lack of freedom. Being an Omnilife distributor put her in control of her time and promised unlimited earnings. Still, she was realistic about the challenges an independent contractor faced. When I met her, she had just returned from an overnight bus trip to a southern Chilean city. A friend in Santiago had suggested that her father might want to sign up as a distributor, so Sara traveled to see him. The man seemed interested in the opportunity, but claimed not to have the money to pay for the start-up kit. So, Sara returned to Santiago with nothing to show for her investment of time and travel. Because she demanded cash up front for the products, some weeks she sold many products, other weeks none. Although she learned how to recommend the different vitamins, she still did not match

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her previous earnings at the warehouse. Her best customer was her mother, who credited the vitamins with improving her eyesight, but Sara paid for her mother’s supply. The rest of her family ridiculed Sara and told her she would fail. Even she was beginning to see that she would need a second source of income to supplement her sporadic earnings from Omnilife. Another recruit who frequented the Nutriline office experienced acutely the difficulty of earning commissions in Omnilife. He migrated to Chile from Ecuador, where he was an obstetrician. He and his wife left their three-year-old son with his grandparents to seek more remunerative work in Chile. They had been in Santiago for six months, and the doctor still had no work prospects. His wife, a nurse, secured only a short-term contract at a hospital. He responded to Daniel and Roberto’s ad. He decided that his medical background gave him some credibility to market vitamins and he could do it during the times he was not looking for more permanent work. Moreover, Omnilife accepted members of any citizenship. When I met him, about three weeks after he joined the company, he had come to the office to complain that very few people wanted to try the vitamins. Daniel immediately turned the conversation away from reluctant Chileans toward the doctor’s attitude. “How many people do you talk to a day?” “Ten.” “How many are interested?” Daniel asked. “One.” “Then talk to 20 or 30. It’s your attitude. Do you believe you can earn $100,000? Do you? Then act as if you already do. It’s not easy, but it’s simple.” I heard hints of Florence Scovel Shinn’s metaphysical tract in Daniel’s advice. The key to attaining wealth is not mastering complex skills or gaining entree to elite circles. Rather, the formula for success contains a few easily accessible ingredients. If the doctor imagines himself as a wealthy man, then actual riches will follow. After Daniel’s pep talk, a man came to the office to inquire about an interview. Daniel let the newly emboldened Ecuadorian doctor take him into the meeting room to explain the business opportunity. He could not have covered many of the PowerPoint slides before the visitor abruptly opened the door to the meeting room and walked past the desk announcing he was not interested. The doctor emerged from the meeting room humiliated. Daniel saw that he needed additional encouragement, so he repeated, “Attitude is everything.” He recommended that he read the financial self-help book Rich Dad’s Cashflow Quadrant (2000) by Robert Kiyosaki. In it, Kiyosaki writes

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that we have been raised to train for a profession and seek a steady job. “But that’s a small vision,” Daniel told the doctor. Instead of aiming to find a position as an obstetrician, he should think about opening his own clinic that generated income even when he was on vacation. Daniel understood that few Chileans thought about work this way. He noticed that when he and Roberto placed an ad suggesting potential earnings of $30,000 a month, they received fewer responses than when they wrote an ad promising $1,000 a month. If Chileans did not believe themselves worthy of abundance, then they would consider the larger amount impossible. The doctor accepted this advice stoically and rose from his chair to leave. He slung his purple Omnilife satchel over one shoulder, looking glumly at his shoes. Daniel intercepted him before he reached the door. He told him that it looked more professional to carry his bag in his hand like a briefcase. In addition, hunching prevents the proper flow of energy, so he should stand up straight and consider taking yoga lessons. To have success in the external world, he first needs to work on overcoming internal obstacles. Pursuing Financial Independence Daniel recommended that I read Robert Kiyosaki, too. His advice applies to any worker, even an academic. In the book, Kiyosaki, a Hawaiian entrepreneur, divides strategies for making money into four categories: salaried employee, self-employed professional, business owner, and investor. Most people aim for one of the first two categories, coming to rely on a paycheck or payment from clients for their income. Kiyosaki advocates that readers initiate a total life change, shifting their efforts to the latter two categories. Ideally, income should flow from passive sources like commission checks or rent from real estate. He specifically recommends multilevel marketing as a viable way to enter the ranks of business owners without having to develop a business plan from scratch. Daniel knew that I did not pursue Omnilife as a business opportunity, but he encouraged me to think of my intellectual work in the context of Kiyosaki’s principles. Writing a bestselling book would generate sufficient royalty checks to give me freedom to pursue the things that mattered to me. To that end, he recommended that I arrange for Spanish and Russian translations of my book so that Omnilife distributors across the world could buy a copy. What The Game of Life inspires in Luisa in Morelia, The Cashflow Quadrant does for Daniel in Santiago. He keeps a highlighted copy on the nightstand in his bedroom and often refers to its lessons. Like

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Vergara, Kiyosaki argues that in trying to protect their children, worrisome parents inflict more damage than they prevent. Specifically, children taught to seek security and avoid risk end up limiting their earnings potential by working for someone else. At the same time, they become so enslaved to a paycheck that they must sacrifice time with the very loved ones the money goes to support. Shifting to another part of the moneymaking quadrant involves not just a change in work style, but an entirely new mentality. Kiyosaki draws on Napoleon Hill’s New Thought classic Think and Grow Rich (1966 [1937]) to demonstrate how the first step in creating a transformed life is adopting a more optimistic attitude (Kiyosaki 2000: 138). The book provides a map for Daniel’s life. He criticizes what he sees as a “culture of begging” in Mexico that instilled in him and many others the expectation that someone else would provide for them. Throughout his young adulthood, he toiled through a series of salaried jobs that promised security yet left him unfulfilled. He wanted to emulate the Rich Dad of the book’s title, a prosperous man who earns income from investments while he spends time with his family and enjoys respect from those around him. Omnilife becomes his vehicle for shifting from worker to entrepreneur. He knows he lacks the traditional advantages of the investing class, but comes to believe that access to resources matters less than his commitment to a new mentality. Daniel grew up in a working-class neighborhood of Mexico City in the 1970s. He dropped out of high school to take jobs as a day laborer. At 20 years, he married and became a father. He realized that his sporadic work would not be sufficient to support a family. He made his way without documents to Anaheim, California, where he found work as a gardener. Although he was earning more money, he worked long hours exposed to all kinds of weather. He also faced discrimination and uncertainty. Some of his fellow migrants became involved in gangs and ended up in prison. Several times the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended Daniel and sent him back over the border. Each time, though, he returned to Anaheim, often as soon as the next day. While he recalled fondly the gringo friends he made in California, he resented having to skirt the law. He missed his wife and infant son. Their welfare motivated his arduous work, but he developed chronic back pain and could no longer perform the gardening tasks comfortably. Before he decided to move back to Mexico City, he vowed to return to the United States as a legitimate visitor. Returning to Mexico City in 1998, Daniel visited medical doctors, who recommended expensive surgery for his back. He did not have the

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money for an operation, so he went to see his aunt Amalia. She gave him the Omnilife products to try. “What do you have to lose?” she asked. “The worst thing that can happen is you’ll be as screwed as you are now.” Daniel accepted this logic, took the vitamins, and healed his back without surgery. The results impressed him and inspired him to become an Omnilife distributor so he could share his experience with others. Along the way, Daniel realized that the company offered more than a mere business opportunity. Omnilife’s emphasis on conquering fears forced him to confront his tense relationship with his wife. He loved her, but his actions did not reflect that. As a newlywed, he acted like a “drunk” and a “macho” who spent more time with his buddies than his family. When he was at home, he would lounge on the couch and expect his wife to serve him. In those days, his idea of affection was to have his wife’s name tattooed on his hand. Through the Omnilife schools, Daniel realized that he was afraid that his wife deserved to be with someone else who could provide her the luxuries she deserved. He learned that he could be that person. Without this limiting belief, Daniel became a more effective husband, father, and direct seller. He qualified as a bronze distributor and began winning prizes. When his retail sales earned the family a new car, seeing his wife’s approving look confirmed to him that he could treat her as the queen she was. Daniel stopped drinking alcohol. He spent more time at home doting on their three children. One of his happiest memories was qualifying to take the entire family on an Omnilife-sponsored Caribbean cruise. Seeing the kids running exuberantly on the ship’s desk filled his heart with joy. A few years later, he made good on the vow he made as a migrant. Jorge Vergara invited Daniel and his wife to join him and other Mexican distributors on a trip to Vancouver, Canada. En route, the private plane stopped at a hangar in San Diego for refueling. Instead of having to line up with the passengers from the commercial flights, the Omnilife guests sat while the customs agents came to them. Irma Ruiz, who was also on the trip, noticed that Daniel was trembling and near tears. She asked why he was so emotional. He answered that he felt proud that this time he did not have to sneak across the border to enter the United States. They flew on to spend a week at the Four Seasons hotel. The only photo Daniel displayed in his spare bedroom in Chile was of him and his wife, Omnilife bottles in hand, standing in a park in Vancouver. For all of his success in Omnilife, Daniel still struggled to reach the heights of Irma Ruiz’s commission checks. He wanted his children to experience the euphoria of the cruise all the time. When

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his elder son turned 14, he enrolled him in Omnilife. The teen was not yet active in the business, but Daniel registered some of his recruits under the son’s number so that when he became an adult, he would inherit a thriving network. Daniel planned to do the same with his other children to build an economic cushion for his entire family. Unfortunately, he saw his organization stagnating in Mexico. By moving to Chile with his cousin Luisa, he could expand the pool of potential recruits and boost his commission checks. Daniel admitted that money isn’t everything, then added impishly, “But it solves everything.” He repeats Jorge Vergara’s adage that people need money, health, and personal growth to be happy. Money is the most difficult of these to accept since many people carry negative associations with money from childhood. He recalled hearing sayings like “Money is the root of all evil” and “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than to enter heaven” when he was young. He does not want his children to grow up afraid to make money. He aims to provide them with a model of risk taking of the kind Kiyosaki advocates. “They will say, ‘My father was the first [distributor] to open Omnilife in Chile.’ ” With this example, he believes, his children will have no excuses for why they cannot achieve their goals. Through his interactions with Chileans, Daniel tried to identify prospective distributors who shared his goal of making money. He began a talk to three women and two men who had responded to the classified ad by contrasting traditional job insecurity with the promise of lifelong earnings with Omnilife. Daniel: This gives you a chance to own your own business. Man: What if we don’t sell anything? Daniel: Nothing. You’re not obligated. We’re used to working a lot and earning a little. How many years have you been working? Man: Fifteen. Daniel: And what did it get you? Unemployment. You’re fired, and the company retains the benefits of your work. Omnilife is the opposite. You earn today for your work. It’s like an artist who receives royalties. Do you know who Pedro Infante [a popular Mexican movie star of the black and white era] was? Woman: Yes. Daniel: He died 40 years ago, but his family keeps earning. Woman: He was in Omnilife? [All laugh.] Daniel: No, but it works the same way. You keep earning royalties and commissions for life. You can pass them on to your children.

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All guests to the office receive a sample of Omnilife’s energy drink, but concerns about physical health come second to treating economic maladies. Daniel devotes almost no time in Santiago to discussing how the vitamin-packed beverages work in the body. Instead, he emphasizes how each bottle sold would deliver immediate profit to the distributor’s wallet. When one of the three women present complained that she didn’t like the drink’s taste, Daniel silenced her with his retort: “For $3,000 a month would you like it?” She registered for Omnilife, and another agreed to host Daniel at an informational meeting in her apartment building. After the guests left, Daniel and Roberto locked up the office. We walked out with Felipe strategizing about how to reach potential recruits in the provinces outside Santiago. On reaching the subway stop, we said good-bye to Felipe and took a taxi to the apartment. I sat in the back with Roberto while Daniel, in the front seat, struck up a conversation with the driver. He asked him how business was going. Then he followed up by asking if he would like to earn an extra $1,000 a month. “Our company is opening in Santiago,” he told the driver, passing him his business card. “I’ll recommend you for an interview.” The driver wanted to know what kind of company Daniel represented. He said that they marketed nutritional supplements, which prompted the driver to ask if he would have to sell anything. Daniel said no. He would show the man how to build a network of partners. When we arrived at the apartment, Daniel parted with a reminder to call him and a friendly “God bless you.” Daniel often treated taxi drivers as potential recruits. On another ride back to the apartment, the driver turned off course onto a street with a similar sounding name as ours. Daniel corrected him, adding, “You seem to have problems with memory. I represent a company that markets products that help improve memory.” He handed the driver his card. The driver protested slightly that he knew where he was going, but accepted the card. As the newspaper ad’s effectiveness waned, Daniel realized he would have to bring the opportunity of Omnilife to the streets of Santiago. One day he took Sara and me to a downtown neighborhood with a concentration of print shops. He planned to order 4,000 fliers with the Omnilife logo and his contact information. Then, he and Sara would stand in the bustling pedestrian mall across from the University of Santiago and hand out the fliers. He compared prices of the different printers and then chose the cheapest quote. He designed the flier with the phrase “Final week!” above the text. Daniel admitted that he planned to hold informational meetings for many more

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years, but figured that the urgent headline would spur people to respond. While he settled the logistics with the shop owner, a serious man with a beer belly, Daniel sipped from his Omnilife bottle. After they agreed on the details and shook hands, Daniel walked away, leaving his half-finished bottle behind. Whether this too was a sales gimmick, I could not tell, but the owner called Daniel back to hand him his bottle. As he did so, he asked Daniel what he was drinking. Minutes later, he had agreed to buy a container of Omnilife’s weight loss tea when Daniel returned to collect the printed cards. Facing the Competition By May 2006, five months after his arrival, Daniel discovered that many of the same obstacles he faced in Mexico had followed him to Chile. Originally, he and Luisa targeted Chile because the introduction of a new company with new products would require experienced members to guide interested recruits. What they did not calculate was that several other veteran distributors would come to the same conclusion. Metropolitan Santiago seemed saturated with Omnilife, so aggressively had the Mexican pioneers spread the word. Taking another taxi home late one night from the supermarket, Daniel tried to pitch the driver. He remarked that driving all day must get tiring. When the driver agreed, Daniel mentioned that he worked for a company that promoted energy products and handed him his card. The driver glanced down at the Omnilife logo and then reached to his visor and pulled out another card with the same design. He asked if Daniel’s business was connected to this one, left by a previous passenger. From the backseat, I felt a surge of sympathy for the city’s taxi drivers, captive audiences to scores of shameless multilevel marketers. Daniel, though, recovered and pointed out that the owner of the other business card did not list an office address while he and his colleagues received clients at a legitimate office tower. Wherever they received visitors, 15 other Omnilife distributors from Mexico had established themselves in Santiago. The onslaught of Mexicans was most apparent on the pages of El Mercurio’s Sunday classifieds. One Sunday in May 2006, I counted six announcements placed by Omnilife distributors in the newspaper’s help wanted section. The advertisements never mentioned Omnilife by name, but with Roberto and Daniel’s help, I picked up the identifying characteristics. “Attention professionals!” began one. “This announcement will change your life. Imagine . . . car: one year, house: two years, financial freedom: forever. Earn $1,000–$4,000 a month.

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If you don’t believe, others will!” Thought bubbles enclosed the words “car,” “house,” and “financial freedom,” giving the text visual flair. It ended with a phone number to call for “interviews.” Another announcement read like a more typical help wanted ad, assuring readers they would not have to move from their hometowns to find work: “International Mexican company begins operations in Santiago, Viña del Mar and Concepción. Looking for dynamic and visionary people with excellent self-presentation who want to earn $1,200 to $5,000 a month.” An office address and schedule of interviews followed. The ad copy emphasized the business opportunity with no mention of improving health or the vitamin products. In fact, the ads left entirely opaque the process by which respondents could generate income. Instead, they appealed to dissatisfied employees’ desire for greater compensation, always giving specific dollar amounts. I recognized one of the names on a newspaper ad: Irma Ruiz. At first, I was puzzled why she would come to Chile. She commuted regularly between Mexico and Peru to oversee a network of thousands. She and her husband already occupied the top tier of Omnilife distributors. According to Daniel, Irma’s monthly commission check averaged $65,000. I looked back to my notes of Ruiz’s visit to Morelia and found where she said that her goal was to earn $100,000 a month. Apparently, she decided that reaching that dream would be easier outside of Mexico, an option she never recommended to her audience in Morelia. To learn more about her story, I noted the address of her support center in Santiago and showed up on Saturday morning for an “interview.” I took the Metro to the “El Golf” station, a sign of the neighborhood’s country club atmosphere. The Ritz-Carlton Hotel anchored one street corner and overlooked a classically designed art museum and park. Irma’s building was two blocks away in a gleaming glassfronted office tower. A guard greeted me at the front desk and asked for my destination. I did not know the room number, but when I said “Irma Ruiz,” he punched some numbers on a keypad and directed me to a bank of elevators. One slid open automatically, and I stepped in. Without touching any buttons, I was whisked to the appropriate floor under the watchful glare of a surveillance camera. I found the office easily by following the sound of an amplified voice to an open door where another guard greeted me. This young man, wearing a dark suit and a Secret Service agent’s earpiece, asked who invited me. Uncertain of the proper password, I answered again, “Irma Ruiz.” I was relieved when he reached for her business card on a table, handed it to me, and ushered me in.

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The security measures were not intended to keep people out, but rather to impress visitors with the seriousness of the business operation. The same sleek professionalism pervaded the meeting room. Like Roberto’s and Daniel’s, it was divided between a smaller half with a desk and a larger half with rows of chairs facing a screen. The similarities ended there. The floor-to-ceiling windows at Ruiz’s office offered treetop views of a bucolic neighborhood. All the furniture looked to have come from an upscale Ikea-like store. I saw slender, transparent flower bud vases, Aeron desk chairs, and amoeba-shaped black plastic chairs neatly arranged in rows for the audience. An usher escorted me to a seat and gave me a cup of an orange-hued vitamin drink. At least 60 people sat around me, sipping their beverages and listening to Antonio Ramírez, Ruiz’s husband. Men made up the majority of the audience, I noticed, and many wore suits. Ramírez, known as Ram, stood by the screen at the front of the room wearing a white shirt open at the collar under a velvety navy blazer, dark slacks, and black loafers sans socks. I spotted his wife in the audience clutching a Louis Vuitton handbag and a bottle of Omnilife product. Her black wraparound wool coat covered a dark knee-length dress. Closed toe high-heeled shoes, a bejeweled necklace, and a French manicure completed her luxurious look. Although Ram must have delivered this speech hundreds of times over the past 15 years, he spoke energetically into a cordless microphone, leavening his pitch with jokes and rhetorical questions. Another man operated a laptop and digital projector in tandem with his talk. As more guests arrived, ushers added rows of chairs and passed out cups of sample drinks. I gathered that many different distributors had sponsored today’s meeting, which Ram and Ruiz would lead. At the end, interested audience members could enroll with the host who had invited them. Ram called for volunteers to share their stories of success with the Omnilife business plan. Instantly, ten men and one woman lined up to take their turns at the microphone. Their brief, rehearsed narratives adhered to a standardized formula. Like the advertisements that drew the audience to today’s meeting, they never mentioned selling but instead slipped seamlessly from consuming vitamins to generating a steady income. One man’s testimonial was typical: “I used to work for a publicity company when I saw the ad. I’ve cured my headaches and lost five kilograms without dieting. I’m starting my international business.” After the new members filed back to their seats, Ram gave his testimonial. He studied civil engineering at a university in Mexico City, but the devaluation of the Mexican peso

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wiped out his scholarship. He managed to land a job with a stable salary, though that too eroded as his expenses increased. When his office closed amidst a nationwide financial crisis, Ram decided not to be an employee anymore. Just then, he learned about the opportunity to market a new line of nutritional supplements. Encountering Omnilife was no accident, he stressed. “God gives you what you ask for.” By the end of his first month as a distributor, he had earned $600. In six months, he had amassed $20,000. “It was the first time in my life that I worked hard. Everything depended on me.” Ram entered Omnilife looking for financial independence, not improvements in health. Along the way, he discovered he was not as healthy as he thought. The more vitamins he consumed, the better he felt. His narrative reversed the usual order of Omnilife recruits in Mexico, who tended to enroll for a health benefit and then later realized the earning potentials. The approach, however, fit the goals of starting a new downline in Chile with business-minded distributors. Turning to a PowerPoint slide show, Ram explained how to construct a business in Omnilife. He breezed through this section without pausing for questions. Presumably, confused audience members could later consult their hosts for clarification. He discouraged the audience from overanalyzing the opportunity Omnilife presented. “Check your heart, not your head—that’s full of trash,” he advised. To heighten the emotional effect, Ram asked the newcomers if they had felt any physical effect from the sample drink. Their answers sometimes contradicted each other: “It cleared my mind.” “It gave me more energy.” “I feel more tranquility.” “More heat.” As long as they conceded that the vitamins produced some change, Ram had succeeded in converting them to his way of thinking. With the sensations of the drink still fresh, Ram teased, “If you feel something strange, don’t worry. It’s called the desire to work. Who’d like to start now?” With some prodding, two men and a woman came forward to pay for a starter kit. If the first part of the meeting had been a campaign for converts, the second resembled a Bible study for training enrolled distributors. After about half the audience left, the ushers scurried to remove the excess chairs and passed out sheets of paper for taking notes. As the computer technician closed one PowerPoint presentation and opened another, I saw that the desktop image was a BMW car. Ruiz took the microphone. Where Ram’s delivery style was guileless and measured, hers was sassy and fast-paced. By way of introduction, Ruiz explained that Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw designed the products, the same scientists who formulated nutrition for NASA astronauts. They

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employed a technology that allowed the body to absorb the vitamins in three to eight minutes. She added with a smile, “And they’re delicious.” Echoing Jorge Vergara, she asserted that God made our bodies perfectly, yet we exposed ourselves to illness by eating greasy fast food like Kentucky Fried Chicken. “Have you noticed that they now call themselves ‘KFC?’ ” she asked. They had to change their name, she claimed, because the restaurant replaced chicken with an animal derived from chicken but bred to have no feet or head. Having established the importance of proper eating, she instructed us to label our notebooks with four columns: name, function, improvement, and dosage. Quickly, she reviewed the nine products available in Chile. Magnus, for instance, functioned by giving us energy, improved depression, and should be taken five times a day. She sprinkled her information with anecdotes from her own family. Her father threw out his medicines and took up racquetball. Her mother lost weight. Her three children have never needed medicine. The audience did not require much persuasion to favor natural supplementation over prescription drugs. A man who previously had worked for a pharmaceutical company interjected, “Medicines just relieve pain, but they don’t heal you.” Ruiz quipped, “Why do you think they call them ‘patients?’ ” Unlike medicines, consumers could take Omnilife’s vitamins in any combination, at any frequency, on an empty stomach, while pregnant, and with meals. Even contained in grid form, the quantity of information swirled in the distributors’ heads. Ruiz gave them a pep talk to dispel any doubts that the session might have raised. She came originally, she said, to support her distributors from Peru who had enrolled people in Chile. What started as a short visit had turned into a long-term commitment. She and Ram planned to buy a house in Santiago and stay for a minimum of one year working with Chilean distributors. They liked that Chileans were more consistent with the business than Mexicans. The upcoming teleconference particularly excited her. At the end of May, Jorge Vergara would conduct an informational session in Guadalajara that would be telecast across the 18 countries where Omnilife operated. In Santiago, Fox Sports would air the twohour special on the following Saturday afternoon. Once the country had heard about the products’ astounding benefits, Chileans would seek out someone to provision them. “The history of Omnilife in Chile will change that day,” she predicted. Distributors in the audience had one week to launch their businesses and reach as many people as possible in anticipation of the surge in demand. As the men and women walked out of the office energized by the nearly three-hour

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talk, they clustered in small groups strategizing the next step in their changed lives. I took the subway two stops to Daniel and Roberto’s support center, where I found them chatting with Felipe. Their meeting that morning, Daniel boasted, drew eight people, two of whom paid the enrollment fee and received their kits. Betraying a competitive side, Daniel asked me what I thought of the meeting I had attended. Because Ram’s presentation contained nothing novel for veterans, I shared some of Ruiz’s insights on nutrition. Her interpretation of Kentucky Fried Chicken’s name change struck me as an urban legend, but when I relayed it to Daniel, he took it seriously. He respected her knowledge because he knew that she stayed current on the latest scientific research. Turning to Felipe, Daniel advised him to use the evidence of Kentucky’s quasipoultry in his discussions with people. Later that night, Roberto called three distributors who had said they planned to attend training that morning at the Nutriline office but did not show up. One woman expressed concern about the safety of the products. The official government label warned that children and pregnant women should not consume the vitamins. Roberto responded that the products were the equivalent of food and that Luisa consumed them throughout her pregnancy in Chile. He went on to describe how hormones and pesticides contaminate much of the food supply, making nutritional supplements all the more important. He asked her if she knew why Kentucky Fried Chicken now went by “KFC” alone and told her about their adulterated chickens. Like Ruiz, Roberto counted on the teleconference to jumpstart his Chilean business. Even when bank management in Morelia withheld bonuses, he used to earn $3,000 a month. Moving to Chile reduced his income to zero. Starting from scratch did not upset him, but he expected that his efforts would yield results relatively soon. He rose to the bronze level of distributor in one day by buying 4,000 points’ worth of product for his own consumption. He treated that $1,600 investment as start-up capital that would enable him to receive commission checks. Since starting his business in Chile, however, none of his recruits had followed him in attaining the bronze level. In addition to his living expenses in Chile, he still paid tuition for his son, who lived with his ex-wife in Morelia. Roberto took comfort knowing that Luisa and her family would provide for him, but he hoped to be financially independent. “I don’t want to have to ask them for a razor every time I need a new one.” He saw staying in Chile for the next two years as the best way to build his own source of income. The teleconference would both raise awareness of Omnilife across

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the country and motivate the distributors already in his downline. He and Daniel planned to rent a ballroom in a hotel for all their recruits to watch the show on a big screen. Televising the Revolution The turnout for watching the teleconference did not match Roberto’s enthusiasm. Instead of in a rented hotel ballroom, we watched the broadcast on a Saturday afternoon from the living room of his and Daniel’s apartment with just one Chilean recruit. I had attended the taping of a teleconference in Guadalajara in November 2005 and remembered the sleek production values. Staff members gave everyone in the audience purple and white flags bearing the event logo to wave. Thumping dance music had us standing and swaying despite the early morning hour. I saw from the large screens on either side of the stage that the cameras took care not to show the rows of empty seats at the back of the hall. Promotional posters at the wholesale store advertised the start time for the May 2006 teleconference at 1:00 p.m. Chilean time, yet when we tuned to Fox Sports at the appointed hour, we saw highlights of Indy car racing. Daniel made some calls on his cell phone, including to his aunt Amalia, who had seen the event live in Guadalajara. He announced that because of some scheduling adjustments, the show would not start for another hour. The new distributor, dressed formally in a navy suit and sitting on the couch, seemed unfazed. He told me that he worked for the telephone company signing up clients for broadband service. Though he maintained his salaried job, he responded to the Omnilife advertisement in search of more fulfilling work. Daniel and Roberto served us lunch while we waited for the conference to start. Omnilife’s logo appeared on screen punctually at 2:00 p.m. Next, we saw a prerecorded scene of Jorge Vergara sitting at an office desk answering the phone in Chinese. He spoke several untranslated sentences before the scene ended and the lights came up on a makeshift stage in the gymnasium of the company’s experimental elementary school. Vergara reappeared, this time holding a bottle of orangecolored drink and wearing a dark, pinstriped suit, starched white shirt, and sky blue tie. A large photo collage formed the backdrop to the stage while a table to one side displayed the range of nutritional products. Those of us watching on television saw a sign language interpreter enclosed in a box in the upper right corner of the screen. Vergara greeted his cheering audience and explained that the opening skit previewed Omnilife’s imminent introduction to China.

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He listed the 18 countries where the company already did business as a toll-free number for each one scrolled across the bottom of the screen. When he mentioned Chile, we let out a whoop in the living room. The next countries to welcome Omnilife, he said, included China, India, Romania, and Brazil. He launched into the familiar origin story of the company. “Fifteen years ago, I was fat, sick, and broke,” he began. I thought of Daniel’s comment earlier to the new distributor as we waited for the event to begin. He told him that in every speech Vergara repeated the same message, but every time you learned something new. This time, Vergara emphasized the damage our food supply inflicted on our bodies. “Our body needs vitamins and nutrients to strengthen our cells. He who designed us made us perfectly. There’s some controversy about the designer. He goes by different names, but they’re all the same.” Lately, many people had drifted from the divine plan by ingesting harmful chemicals and hormones with our meals. The Chinese, for example, never suffered from obesity until they adopted a Western diet. In Chinese, Vergara told us, the words for nutritional supplement translate to “improved foods.” As mention of China trailed off, the standard script returned. Vergara highlighted a few of the products and their scientifically designed purposes. Lest a skeptical audience believe that he exaggerated the health effects of his vitamins, Vergara invited distributors in the Guadalajara audience to give testimonials. He also conducted a weight loss survey, where he asked audience members to shout the amount of kilograms they had lost after taking Omnilife products. He returned to the theme of China in the presentation’s second hour, during which he focused on the business aspect of being a distributor. “In China, they asked if I had done a market study. I don’t look for markets; I look for people.” This assertion established Vergara as an instinctual entrepreneur, unburdened by management consultants and business school rules. It also signaled to the audience that they too can succeed without benefit of specialized studies. The statement clearly had the intended effect on the new distributor watching with me, who remarked, “What a visionary!” As evidence of Omnilife’s profit-making potential, Vergara delivered bonus checks to top retail sellers from across Mexico. The prizes ranged from $2,000 to $50,000, and all the winners looked excited and near tears when they joined Vergara on stage. Vergara pointed to the lineup and summarized his philosophy: They were housewives, accountants—the same as you. Your job doesn’t matter, just your desire to change your lives. One word: attitude.

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Believe in yourselves. We’ve had many obstacles, and there’ll be many more. We have problems with tariffs in Venezuela. It took three years to open Costa Rica. There’s a lot of bureaucracy in China. In Mexico we beat the Social Security system. But we believe in the product. It’s all based on attitude.

To illustrate his point, Vergara ended the telecast by screening the documentary of Dr. Emoto’s experiment with water crystals. I had seen it twice before, at the rally in September 2005 and at the basic school in November. Still, I appreciated its straightforward, profound moral. If positive thoughts directed at vials of water produce such beautiful formations, what impact do they have on our bodies, which are predominantly water? “Use your thoughts to change your life,” Vergara concluded. The music swelled as Vergara hugged the people on stage. The camera panned to show the audience waving balloons and rattling noisemakers. The toll-free numbers for all 18 countries scrolled across the bottom of the screen. Without prompting, the new Chilean distributor announced that he found the teleconference “convincing” and that the video about Dr. Emoto impressed him the most. Daniel, sitting at the dining room table opposite the couch, reinforced the video’s central argument: “Positive mental attitude is the path to success. If you think that people will want it, I guarantee that they will. The message of the water is that you become what you think.” As Daniel continued, he shifted from second person to first. “Your dream is in play. Don’t let anyone get in your way. Omnilife is made of the brave, those who are disposed to give the best of themselves. I don’t care if I have to talk to 50 people. That’s the price.” I had the sense that he spoke as much to bolster his own confidence as to motivate the new recruit. That night, when Daniel connected the web camera to talk to his wife in Mexico City, she told him that the stress of being a single parent wearied her. All he could respond was that she should endure a little longer to give him time to build their network in Chile. So committed was Daniel to changing his life and bringing transformation to others that no amount of failure would deter him from sharing the opportunity of Omnilife. On Monday, he stationed himself downtown to pass out 4,000 newly printed pamphlets. At the beginning of June 2006, Luisa’s brother Marco arrived in Santiago, and it was time to change the wording of the newspaper ad.

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Chapter 9

Moving Forward, Looking Back

I

n December 2006, the Chivas of Guadalajara won their first national title in the Mexican professional soccer league in a decade. To celebrate the victory, Jorge Vergara purchased half an hour of prime time television on a domestic broadcast channel the day before Christmas Eve. The program opened with scenes of crowds cheering at an Omnilife rally and then cut to interviews with individual distributors. The smiling subjects carried bottles of colored water and spoke directly into the camera. A woman exclaimed, “I began to realize my value. I have all the capacity. I am a great woman.” A man said, “I can discover the abundance in my life.” Another woman, near tears, added, “No one will give you this capacity to dream again.” Lights went up on a studio. Jorge Vergara appeared in a dark suit holding a bottle of orange-hued beverage and leaning against a stool to reveal sockless ankles. The camera panned to a display of company products arrayed on a table behind him and a large soccer trophy on the floor next to it. Vergara had no new product to launch or initiative to introduce. He merely wanted to recognize the soccer team’s triumph and link their glory to the continued growth of the nutritional supplement firm. When it was founded in 1991, Omnilife’s survival was precarious. Direct selling in Mexico was limited mostly to housewives looking to make extra cash by circulating Avon and Tupperware catalogs. Both Herbalife and Amway encountered difficulties introducing the business-oriented multilevel marketing model to the Mexican market. Along came a failed taco vendor with a passel of sugary powders. Starting with six recruits, Omnilife grew to encompass 3.8 million distributors across 18 countries. The company diversified beyond vitamins and earned headlines for forays into professional sports,

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filmmaking, and architecture. Despite setbacks, Omnilife reached its fifteenth anniversary as one of the most visible symbols of the ascendancy of direct selling in the developing world. To account for the exploding popularity of direct sales in countries like Mexico, anthropologists have turned to economic explanations. Direct selling’s rise to prominence since the 1990s has coincided with the solidification of neoliberalism as the dominant global economic model (Harvey 2005, Klein 2007). As implemented in Mexico, neoliberalism assumes that, free from government interference, producers and consumers will make rational choices that lead to the most efficient distribution of resources (Gledhill 1995; McDonald 1999). The reforms aim to reduce dependence on the state and spark entrepreneurial innovation, goals that fit well with direct selling companies’ operating philosophy. Luisa’s search for financial independence certainly conforms to the theory that neoliberal policies have fueled Omnilife’s recruitment efforts. In this neat cause-and-effect scenario, the adoption of new macroeconomic policies creates the conditions for the swelling ranks of direct selling distributors. While a necessary component, the neoliberal turn alone is not sufficient to capture the full appeal of direct selling companies in the developing world. As Diego discovered, direct selling rarely lives up to the entrepreneurial ideal of a self-sustaining business. Industry insiders and critics alike acknowledge that precious few direct sellers earn back their initial investments, so the attraction does not lie merely in the amassing of commission checks. Instead, Luisa and the distributors in Morelia who stay loyal to Omnilife are responding to a different kind of commission. They view their involvement in direct selling as fulfilling a charge to transform their lives. By joining Omnilife, dedicated distributors locate a map for returning to their original, perfect state. Their journey takes them back through the layers of accumulated doubt, negativity, and self-denial to an earlier time when they enjoyed a closer connection to the divine creator. Omnilife sparks a religious conversion in Luisa. Within the orthodox forms of Catholicism, she finds a space to establish a new, more intimate relationship with God that I have dubbed direct faith. Believers in direct faith are heirs to a 150-year-old legacy of mind cure ideas that have diffused from New England Transcendentalists to positive-thinking advocates worldwide (Carpenter 1999; Fassihi 2008). While official, established centers of direct faith have nearly disappeared, since its inception the direct sales industry has nurtured and popularized the tenets of direct faith. Viewing Omnilife from the perspective of advancing a tradition of direct faith suggests a

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different relationship between direct sales and neoliberalism. Rather than a Marxist interpretation in which material conditions shape ideological beliefs, a Weberian explanation makes more sense. Perhaps the spread of ideas inspired by New Thought over the course of the twentieth century established a framework of self-reliance that gave legitimacy to neoliberal reforms. Unlike the Protestant ethic that Weber analyzed, direct faith is carried not by ecclesiastical institutions but by supposedly secular companies. Luisa and her family illustrate how—though it requires no formal change of religious affiliation—an invisible conversion profoundly shapes how they view the world. Celebrating Christmas 2006 Vergara’s televised appearance coincided with different milestones in the lives of Luisa and the members of her extended family. Her parents, Victor and Amalia, watched the program alone at home in Morelia. Although Christmas was approaching, that evening everything was quiet. For the first time since shortly after they were married, they had no children or grandchildren living with them. When the tenants vacated the house she bought in 2005, Luisa moved out of her parents’ house and reunited with her furniture. Six months after arriving in Santiago, Chile, Marco was still living in South America attempting to develop his Omnilife downline. The morning of December 23, he called his parents from Buenos Aires, where he had traveled to renew his tourist visa and replenish his supply of Omnilife products. Seeing Jorge Vergara on television so moved Amalia that she called him after the telecast to express her gratitude for being part of the company. Vergara prided himself on being available to every distributor, and he published his private cell phone number in every issue of the company magazine. By one account, Vergara received over 30,000 calls a year (González Ulloa 2007). This evening, Amalia wanted no more than to praise Vergara. She reminisced with him about the early days when Vergara would send her and Victor to conduct meetings in Chihuahua or Los Angeles. They would not even bother unpacking their suitcases when they came home because they knew Vergara would soon call on them for another trip. Victor and Amalia refrained from such hectic traveling now, but they still led meetings at the support center three times a week and traveled two or three times a year to Guadalajara for meetings with Vergara and other leading distributors.

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Daniel, Luisa’s cousin, watched the program with his family in Mexico City. When Roberto returned to Mexico in July 2006 for the birth of his child, Daniel decided to join him. They left the office to Marco’s care and never returned. The separation from his family proved too painful for Daniel. He could justify the sacrifice as long as he was building a large network of distributors in Chile, but the intense competition for recruits made it difficult for him even to cover his expenses. Despite the setback, he remained as committed as before to spreading the opportunity of Omnilife to as many people as possible. He teamed up occasionally with Victor to tour remote towns in central Mexico, giving presentations about the health benefits and business possibilities in Omnilife. Every Sunday he attended Mass at a Catholic church near his home. No matter how well or poorly his week had gone, he always gave thanks and reaffirmed his trust that God would take care of him. When I asked Daniel how far he could rise in Omnilife, he replied, “As far as God wants me to.” Diego, Amalia’s brother, did not see Vergara’s Christmas address in 2006. A year before, he had planned to be spending this December with Luisa in Chile. Although he ultimately decided not to join her, he knew that his self-improvement project would not end in Morelia caring for his elderly mother. If Chile would not be the next step, then maybe the United States would be. In January 2006, shortly after Luisa left for Chile, her grandmother—Diego’s mother—died. Freed from this obligation and seizing on what he saw as a Godgiven opportunity, Diego set out to cross the U.S.–Mexico border. He traveled without legal documents, but arrived safely at the house of a brother in southern California. Soon he found a job in home construction. He intended to work long enough to recoup his debts from when he started his Omnilife business. As the months passed, he felt increasingly isolated in the United States. By the start of 2007, he decided to return to Mexico, though not to Omnilife. Through a friend, he arranged a salaried job with a company in the northern state of Zacatecas. He moved there with hopes of finally turning his reformed self into a successful businessman. Like her uncle, Luisa did not see Vergara on television that night in December 2006. The day before, she had baptized her five-month-old son in the Roman Catholic Church and overseen a joint party marking her daughter’s first communion. Luisa asked me, a nonpracticing Jew, to serve as her son’s godparent, an honor I shared with Roberto’s mother. Before the ceremony, we attended a two-hour session at the parish detailing the theological and practical reasons for baptism. The lay leader who delivered the lecture emphasized the sacrament of

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marriage as a holy union binding humans to God. But Luisa treated this directive with the same flexibility as other church doctrines and defiantly admitted to me that she had no intention of making Roberto her legal husband. Her disastrous first marriage taught her to stay unattached. Still, her commitment to the church remained firm, and on the morning of the baptism, she stood before the priest as an unmarried mother. In a lament over Roman Catholics’ preference for consuming pop culture to attending Mass, the priest joked that many children spoke the word “Coke” before they said, “Mom.” Luisa interrupted the sermon to correct the priest. Her child would not learn to say, “Coke,” but rather, “Chiva Cola” (see Figure 9.1). Although she lasted only five months in Chile, Luisa still maintained contact with a few of the distributors she had recruited in Santiago. Sara, the former chef, e-mailed Luisa regularly for advice and gossip. Despite encouragement from Roberto and Daniel and messages from Luisa, she struggled in Omnilife. Luisa found out by e-mail in the fall of 2006 that the young woman had joined a fastgrowing Brazilian multilevel marketer of perfumes called Natura. She assured Luisa that she planned to remain in Omnilife and qualify for

Figure 9.1 Cases of Omnilife carbonated drinks peek out from the table of gifts at the party for Pamela’s first communion.

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the bronze level, but the perfumes were less expensive and thus easier to sell to her friends. The potential loss of a Chilean distributor did not upset Luisa. Since returning to Morelia and having her son, Luisa had changed her work strategy. Before, she divided her time between the office, attending to paperwork, and driving around Morelia, counseling distributors. With the infant in tow, she could no longer work interrupted, so she shifted her focus away from Omnilife’s catalog of nutritional supplements to promoting its secondary line of cosmetics. She hired a young woman to roam the streets of Morelia. She gave her a clipboard and instructed her to approach women about taking a “beauty survey.” The survey Luisa devised asked the subjects questions about how their skin looked and whether they would like a free facial. The employee delivered 50 completed surveys a week to Luisa, who then contacted the interested women about scheduling an in-home demonstration of the products. With this method, she spent most of her time in the car, a place that lulled the baby to sleep. In just the first month of giving facials using Omnilife’s brand of cosmetics, she had signed up several new distributors. Roberto missed the program because he was helping Luisa prepare for Christmas dinner. He and Daniel had intended to remain in Santiago for two years to build up a self-sustaining network. In retrospect, Roberto realized that he did not fully grasp how the business of Omnilife worked. “I went for the adventure,” he recalled. He was not prepared for the constant work of attracting and motivating recruits. Between rent on the apartment and the office, the adventure ended up costing more money than it yielded. Since he and Daniel eschewed selling vitamins in favor of enlisting new distributors, they did not enjoy any immediate profit from their efforts. When he returned to Morelia for the birth of his son, Roberto decided to stay to assist Luisa with her business and to help raise the children. He did not regret having left his job at the bank, though he did miss receiving a regular paycheck. As the father of two biological children and father figure to Pamela, Roberto recognized the need to generate more income for the household. Through a family member who worked at the state Secretary of Public Education, he had been offered a coveted teaching position. He had no training in education, so he tried to “rent” the post to a qualified teacher, splitting the government-provided salary two ways. The ethical implications of such a move did not bother Roberto nor did the reliance on personal connections corrode his faith in the power of the mind. Rather, the plan seemed to square nicely with the lessons he learned from reading Kiyosaki’s book, Rich

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Dad, Poor Dad. For lasting income, the book recommends, astute business people seek self-replicating earnings like the kind created from rents, royalties, or commissions. Nor had Roberto given up on his dreams of success in Omnilife. Morelia, he now saw, was “virgin territory.” Fifteen years of teleconferences, self-help workshops, motivational meetings, and soccer promotions notwithstanding, many Mexicans still had not heard of Omnilife, Roberto commented. If he and Luisa had not attained the level of payout in the company that they desired, then something must be wrong with their approach. He predicted that the new strategy of offering free facials would draw in many new recruits. He also pitched another idea to Luisa and her parents: including a DVD of the self-help documentary The Secret in the start-up kit of every newly enrolled distributor. He had recently seen the film version of the bestselling mind cure book published that year in the United States and found its message inspiring (Byrne 2006). The anecdotes about visualizations and positive thinking, he suspected, would apply easily to motivating members of their downline. The Secret even includes a reference to Dr. Emoto’s experiment with the water crystals, tying it explicitly to Omnilife. At Christmas dinner, Roberto joked with Luisa that the mind is so powerful that if he directs positive thoughts to the alcohol he was drinking, he would wake up without a hangover. Going on a Mental Diet It seemed that no matter what the obstacle, Luisa and her family respond by going on a mental diet. They regulate their thoughts as carefully as a dieter rations food. Luisa’s first attempt to discipline her mind begins with the Omnilife family of vitamins. Consuming the sweet powders helped heal her long-standing problem of asthma. Once she saw results with the products she continued to take them in copious amounts. She takes them to lose weight, to defeat colds, to relax, and to nourish her children. Her kitchen cabinets brim over with dozens of Omnilife bottles stacked high on every shelf. A halfliter bottle of a prepared drink always accompanies her in the car or on the desk in her office. As far as I could determine, these vitamins contain no curative properties that medical science recognizes. With their claims of halting diabetes and restoring fertility, they fit in the category of too good to be true. They work not by targeting the afflicted body part, but by stimulating the mind. Jorge Vergara embeds the line of supplements in a “fall from grace” narrative that

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allows consumers to reassert control over a chaotic environment by returning to a more balanced past in which humans lived in closer contact with their divine creator. To maintain access to the universal healing power, however, distributors must constantly ward against new modern contaminants through daily vitamin consumption. Omnilife’s business plan offers distributors another tool for using their minds to return to an idealized past when work and prosperity were more directly connected. Omnilife makes the compensation plan so complicated that Luisa does not dwell on the multilayered process by which sales turn into company profits that return as commission checks. Instead, she frames the construction of a commission in mystical terms. If God makes financial success available to everyone, then the elite have not been specially chosen to achieve their status. Anyone can acquire wealth. When Luisa attended a lecture by Irma Ruiz, Luisa saw someone just like her. Ruiz’s income may have far exceeded hers, but the same opportunities Ruiz enjoys are available to Luisa, and she feels confident that she too will rise to the diamond level. As far as I could see, structural conditions like the number of competing vitamin firms, the financial climate, and federal regulations and chance factors like a large social network and few family obligations determine which distributors become superstars. Luisa does not see it this way. Rather than blaming outside forces, she believes that the key to fulfilling her financial goals lies inside her. My kind of thinking reflects a profound disconnect from the original source of creation. Through the cultivation of her thoughts, she returns to an earlier, uncorrupted economic environment in which the channels for God’s abundance remain unclogged. The basic schools and rallies Omnilife operates further assist Luisa’s attempt to restore the original state of connection with the divine. Her access to the source has become frayed since childhood through negative socialization and self-critique. The education in Omnilife consists of unlearning the false limiting beliefs that prevent distributors from fulfilling their true potential. As I witnessed in the session I attended in Xalapa, Veracruz, the schools explicitly seek to roll back the clock to infancy, stripping away the harmful baggage of adulthood. In Luisa’s case, she has to wrestle with the residue of destructive interpersonal relationships. Some of these tensions, like the unresolved anger with her ex-husband, linger at the surface of her consciousness. Others, like the resentment over her parents’ stifling love, are more submerged. No matter what the origin of the fear, she works ceaselessly to identify the cause and eliminate it. Shorn of doubt, students reemerge with their original courage and passion intact.

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When Omnilife’s motivational apparatus proves insufficient to restore Luisa’s childhood, she searches for support from other purveyors of direct faith. The writings of Florence Scovel Shinn reduce New Thought teaching to its essence: you are what you think. Shinn quotes Matthew 18:3 “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven” to emphasize how everyone should recapture a long-lost confidence. Luisa reads and rereads all of Shinn’s books with the same avidity with which she drinks the Omnilife vitamins. The megadoses of inspiration, she believes, will finally return her to an unworried, upbeat past. Whenever she finds herself getting stressed, she practices affirming her proximity to the peaceful power of the natural world. Stuck in Morelia’s traffic and running late, she focuses on feeling the warmth of the sun and seeing the light dappling the trees. Other times, Luisa’s mind travels to the day in kindergarten when she bypassed class and spent the day blissfully washing her stockings. She also draws on Shinn’s message to justify her decision to move to Chile in a way consistent with direct faith. By leaving Mexico, she is not conceding the influence of external forces on her success. Instead, she is asserting her ability to conquer her fears. Cultivating direct faith for Luisa means going back in time to an idyllic, imagined past when she had unfettered access to God. That Luisa’s conversion to direct faith requires so many layers of reinforcement suggests that acting with the bravado of a child might be incompatible with the grown-up demands of modern living. A transformation so fragile that it must be constantly shored up might not be a transformation at all. Are her attempts to deny the impact of social structures and macroeconomic conditions on her life a form of delusional magical thinking? When I brought this up to her, Luisa rejected the interpretation. She did not deny that some people are born with certain advantages, but she defended the idea that everyone possesses the ability to realize their dreams. She saw proof of the tangible dividends of direct faith in the life stories of leaders like Jorge Vergara and Irma Ruiz. They suffer setbacks on the way to accomplishing greatness yet never waver in their self-confidence. She, too, is prepared to make multiple attempts to structure her own success. It takes concerted effort because she has to undo over 30 years of indoctrination from punitive nuns, overprotective relatives, and intolerant Morelia society. It is worth the work, though, because the payoff promises unadulterated joy, abundance, and health. The work of emotional time travel will last all of Luisa’s life and still not be complete. In this way, too, her resolve resembles the

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permanent obsession of the dieter. Even when she successfully transforms her body, the dieter must still be on guard against future temptations to indulge. Hillel Schwartz, in his cultural history of dieting, refers to dieters as “antiquarians” longing for a “return to a time when one could be satisfied . . . when the range of choices in the world neither bewildered nor intimidated” (Schwartz 1986: 307). Omnilife provides Luisa with a vehicle for simplifying her life by losing both excess weight and excess thoughts. Slimming down, she hopes, will satisfy her nostalgia for the period in her life in which her world consisted only of what she could imagine. A lack of consistent results does not deter Luisa from pursuing her backward-looking project any more than the failure to shed pounds eliminates the desire to diet. She measures success not only in the monetary terms of commission checks, but also in the spiritual sense of a great commission. Without ever leaving the Roman Catholic Church, Luisa converts to the spirituality of success. Her new, secular theology places her in close communication with God by stripping away all the trappings of a church, clergy, and rituals. She goes on a faith diet. By all accounts, Luisa’s life before the diet was enriched by strong friendships and material comforts. Yet, a gap has opened up between the expectations for herself and the reality. At first it appeared in the tangible form of wanting a car and then a house, but they were just manifestations of her deeper desire for independence. The 1,000 other distributors in Luisa’s organization likely are pursuing 1,000 different, seemingly unattainable goals. As consumer culture intensifies and international financial networks become more interdependent, neoliberalism will no longer rely on a foundation of direct faith to establish its legitimacy. In Max Weber’s words, it will become an “iron cage” that citizens come to accept without question. People will continue to seek sources of inspiration to guide them to a position of greater control over their destinies, though their “conversions” may not always come through participation in direct selling or other purveyors of direct faith. Those who resist the appeal of returning to a more empowering time have no claims to a superior or more satisfied life. They simply believe that the means for determining the course of their lives— whether it be through exploring the numinous or political organizing—lie in the future. Resisting Transformation I watched Vergara’s televised presentation on a return visit to Morelia. A year had passed since I completed the bulk of the fieldwork in

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Mexico and six months since I had traveled to Chile. As moving as I found the success stories that Vergara described in the program, I never came to view Omnilife as a vehicle for my personal transformation. Drinking the products became routine for me even if I could not pinpoint a specific physical result to share with others. Attending training sessions motivated me, but as a spur to share my “data” with fellow academics, not to share the business opportunity with friends. I crawled on the floor of a hotel ballroom in hopes of being reborn without limiting beliefs, but I left the self-improvement workshop feeling the same as I did when I entered. When I heard emotional narratives from grateful Omnilife distributors, I asked myself how— despite my intimate exposure to the company—I resisted the allure of direct faith. Who would not enjoy wielding the power to shape reality through thoughts alone? Luisa and her family often suggested ways I could apply Omnilife’s principles of positive thinking to the university setting. Distributors like Daniel even told me how I could leverage the lessons of Omnilife to improve this book. Still, I was immune to the promise of life transformation. I realized that being fundamentally satisfied with modern life is incompatible with adopting Omnilife’s sense of commission. Theoretically, Omnilife offers benefits for everyone, including me. If I were already healthy, the vitamins guard against future sickness. If I earned sufficient income, the business plan expands my fortune to its full potential. But when it comes to recasting my life in terms of before Omnilife and after Omnilife, I failed. As much as I value the friendships I nurtured with Luisa and her family, going back to an earlier, simpler state does not interest me. I do not dwell on the idealized past because I put faith in the future. As a student, I endured doubts and sacrificed comforts with the assurance that an academic degree would increase my chances of landing a rewarding job. When I became a university professor, my focus remained on the signposts ahead that would guarantee my lasting satisfaction. Gaining tenure, contributing to retirement accounts, and building strong social networks all promise continued stability and the freedom to pursue my passions. This is not to say that I will ever achieve an ideal state. No matter how many times I teach a class, I always find ways to tweak it for the next time. As I age, I find I have to devote increasing effort to staying healthy. My self-improvement, however, assumes that I build on each experience, learning from past mistakes to create a better future. When I participated in Omnilife’s meetings and seminars, I tried to subject myself to a mental diet, stripping away the knowledge I had accumulated over time. But in my past, all I saw was an

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immature student and an insecure teacher. A diet holds no appeal if you think you look better now than you did before. That Christmas in 2006, I could see how few people in Morelia enjoy my position of privileged optimism. With the university students at home and government offices closing early, Morelia’s tenuous economic condition became especially visible. I wondered, if not through Omnilife, how else could distributors like Luisa earn the kind of income necessary to support their dreams? My Mexican friends who do not engage in direct selling tell stories of bosses who sexually harass them and employers who do not meet payroll. Even graduates from professional schools face obstacles to making a living. One friend with a medical degree failed the national qualifying exam to pursue training in a specialty twice. She studied diligently both times, going so far as to enroll in a test preparation course. Yet, the number of young doctors far exceeds the number of residency slots, and she contends that a certain number are reserved for those students who pay large bribes to government officials. Without passing the exam, she can still practice medicine, though it will be difficult to obtain a permanent position in a hospital in Morelia. By chance, she had watched Vergara’s telecast after the Chivas players’ victory. His optimism reminded her of a woman she had met during a year of community service in a rural Michoacán community. The woman lived in a house sided with cardboard, but displayed a box of Omnilife coffee on her table. The doctor saw how the combination of vitamins and upbeat stories truly made people feel better. Omnilife distributors most clearly demonstrate the popularity of direct faith among the struggling middle classes in Morelia, but its influence has spread across the city. Through books, courses, and other media, Morelianos absorb some of the same lessons about the power of their thoughts that Omnilife teaches. The optician who fitted me for new eyeglass frames kept a copy of the self-help book The Knight in Rusty Armor behind the counter of his shop to read during slow periods. At a crowded weekend market, I spotted a Spanish translation of the New Thought tract In Tune with the Infinite on a rack of books. A woman I met who ran a restaurant out of her home attended a seminar each Saturday devoted to the mind cure–inspired book A Course in Miracles. She showed me the tome, pockmarked with scribbled Post-It notes. “Before I was wandering around the path. Now I feel I’ve found the door,” she said. I knew other people who watched a Deepak Chopra special on television. Chopra, a prominent New Age guru, also excerpted his columns in the Omnilife quarterly magazine. What these Morelianos all share is a desire to

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transform themselves. They aim to move forward in their personal development by moving back to a time when they felt God more vividly in their lives. Significantly, they all pursue this stronger relationship with God outside traditional church settings. In fact, the spiritual transformations make little impact on their existing religious participation. When I asked full-time Omnilife distributors if their involvement in the company influences their religious beliefs at all, they uniformly denied it. Amalia said about Omnilife, “This has nothing to do with religion. The church is my spiritual nourishment. I go to Mass in the morning, and then I go about my activities.” Nanda Vergara’s husband said flatly, “It has nothing to do with religion or politics. We respect all beliefs. It is purely work.” In similar language, diamond distributor Esteban explained, “No one speaks of religion or politics here. I don’t even know what religion Jorge Vergara is.” Their insistence on Omnilife’s secular orientation only highlights how firmly they separate the philosophy of direct selling from the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. So, when they went on to describe how participating in Omnilife has transformed their lives, it is clear that that this invisible conversion occurs outside the category of religion. By embracing direct faith, Luisa joins millions of others across the world who have responded to direct sales with the enthusiasm of religious converts. In highland Guatemala, some Maya activists rebuilding their communities after the brutal civil war have traded their political organizing for distributing vitamin supplements. Thrilled by the chance to win cars and travel internationally one former schoolteacher proclaimed, “I am 100 percent Omnilife” (Nelson 2010). One Chinese man left an accounting job to join Amway. He carried with him a list of Abraham Lincoln’s failures to remind himself to persevere and maintain a positive attitude through difficult times. He explained, “My belief in communism ended with the Cultural Revolution, and I found my belief in Buddhism too passive. Now my religion is success” (quoted in Forney and Fang 1998). For Luisa, success is also something she can achieve through a disciplined mind. Despite the constant string of obstacles blocking the path to her dreams, she clings to the religion of direct faith. It symbolizes for her more than access to luxury cars and homes. It stands for a commission to transform her life and, through her example, the lives of as many people as possible. When I last saw Luisa in January 2008, she was no closer to reaching her goals than when I met her in 2003. At one point I asked if she ever considered the possibility that success might be beyond her

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control. Success in Omnilife, she answered, rests on constantly meeting new people and sharing with them the possibility of life transformation. She is sanguine that God will provide an endless stream of potential distributors for her to invite into the company. What if Omnilife had already saturated Morelia, I countered. Where would she find a new supply of recruits? She sounded unworried. Take my arrival in her support center, she said. When I found my way to her office in Morelia and introduced myself as a professor of anthropology, she had no idea what that was, but she figured that she had been a teacher once, so we must have something in common. She took my presence as an opportunity not just to enroll another distributor, but as a chance to learn something new. She devoted her time to answering my questions and offering me friendship without knowing what I could give in return. But she had faith that the God she gives thanks to gives blessings back to her, and, by the end of my time in Morelia, she knew why I had entered her office that summer day. Those distributors in other companies who missed the chance to befriend me did not have a book being written about them.

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Index

Alcoholics Anonymous, 3, 43, 129 alcoholism, 125 Alger, Horatio (1832–1899), 41–2 American Medical Association, 63 Amway in China, 173 deceptive practices in, 53 founding of, 51 Luisa’s involvement with, 23–4 in Mexico, 12 positive thinking in, 51–2 sales figures, 53 in Thailand, 13–14 Annis, Sheldon, 16 anthropology, 4, 174 antioxidants, see vitamins Avon founding of, 43 Luisa’s involvement with, 23 in Mexico, 5, 6, 12 sales figures, 53 in Thailand, 13 Babbitt (1922), 43 Bible, 14, 169 Body Shop, 32–3 Catholicism, see Roman Catholicism China, 13, 14, 51, 157–8, 173 Chivas, 103, 137, 161 Chivas USA, 36 purchase by Omnilife, 33–4 Chopra, Deepak, 172

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Christian Science, 41, 44 Coca-Cola, 70, 132, 165 commissions checks, 10, 86, 90–3, 95 levels in Omnilife, 94 as life transformation, 3, 14, 76, 135, 162, 168, 171, 173 A Course in Miracles, 172 Crowley, Mary, 49–50 Daley, Roger, 25, 38 Daniel, 134, 141–3, 145–51, 156–7, 159, 164 DeVos, Rich (1926–), 52, 55 diamond-level distributor, 89, 95, 99 Diego, 124–9, 135–6, 164 dieting, 16, 40, 167, 170 direct faith, 2–3, 135, 162, 169–71, 173 explanations for failure, 4 and healing, 60, 76 vs. Roman Catholicism, 18 direct selling compensation in, 97–8, 162 as cults, 57 gender roles, 6, 46, 49–50 history, 39 international expansion, 53 in Mexico, 3, 12 and New Thought, 43, 53, 163 party plan, 45 sales techniques, 5

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188

INDEX

direct selling—Continued single-level vs. multilevel, 6, 52 turnover, 93 doctors, 62, 70–1 downlines building, 90, 96 defined, 6 Luisa’s, 10, 93, 133 Eddy, Mary Baker (1821–1910), 39, 41 Ehrenreich, Barbara, 16 Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803–1882), 40 Emoto, Masaru, 107–8, 118, 159, 167 entrepreneurship, 11, 27, 137, 147 Fadzillah, Ida, 13 fear, 105–7, 168 Felipe, 137–8, 143–4 The Feminine Mystique (1963), 49 Fobair, Jim, 25, 38 Food and Drug Administration, 65, 68 Forever Living, 6, 78 The Four Agreements (1998), 119 Fuentes, Angélica, 56 Fuller, Alfred C. (1885–1973), 44, 55 Fuller Brush Company, 44 The Game of Life and How to Play It (1925), 42–3, 54–5 GNLD, 6 Great Commission, 14, 170 Guatemala, 15, 173 Harman, Denham, 66 Herbalife in Chile, 144 in Mexico, 24–5, 37 Hill, Napoleon (1883–1970), 43, 47 Hinduism, 41, 56

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Home Interiors and Gifts, 50, 52 home parties, 45–6 Hughes, Mark (1956–2000), 24, 37, 52 Infinite Intelligence, 41, 54–5 In Tune with the Infinite (1897), 41, 172 invisible conversion, 15, 163, 173 Ixtapa, 1, 10 James, William (1842–1910), 42 JVC Center, 32, 38 Kentucky Fried Chicken, 155, 156 Kiyosaki, Robert, 145–7 The Knight in Rusty Armor (1989), 127, 172 law of attraction, 42, 54–5 Life Extension: A Practical Scientific Approach (1982), 66–7 Luisa childhood, 19, 21 in Chile, 139–41 consumption of vitamins, 61, 72, 74–5, 167 downline, 10, 93, 133 expenses, 93, 130 family, 9, 19–23 health philosophy of, 71–3, 76, 79 homebuying, 130–1 income, 10, 91 independence, 23, 30, 122–3, 136, 170 joins Omnilife, 26 and Jorge Vergara, 100, 135, 140 marriage, 28–9, 110, 165 parasailing, 1–2 positive thinking, 36, 54, 101, 121–2 preparing for Chile, 108, 123, 133, 136

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INDEX

relation to God, 35, 55, 122, 170, 174 religious practice, 17, 19, 35, 54 and Roman Catholic Church, 22, 31, 162, 164–5 work habits, 81, 93–4, 166 machismo, 28, 109–10, 148 Marco childhood, 21 in Chile, 159, 163 joins Omnilife, 29 Mary Kay Cosmetics Founding of, 48 in Morelia, 6 positive thinking in, 49 seminar, 104 Mexican Association of Direct Selling, 12 Mexico border region, 12 economic policy, 11, 162 informal economy, 12 middle class, 16, 40 migration to United States, 5, 11, 143, 147, 164 mind cure, see New Thought Morelia, 6, 172 arrival of Omnilife, 26 Luisa moves to, 21 Morris, Rosalind, 13–14 NAFTA, 11 Natura, 165 neoliberalism, 11–12, 170 as motivator for direct selling, 13, 162 and Omnilife, 34 Nestle, Marion, 64 New Age, 18 New Thought books, 125, 134, 135, 167, 169 centers, 42 definition, 39 in literature, 42

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189

material prosperity in, 43 and modernization, 40 origin of, 40–1, 162 nostalgia, 15–16 Nutrilite, 51–2 nutritional supplements, see vitamins occult economies, 13–14 Omnilife basic schools, 109–21, 168 business plan, 82, 85, 89–94, 137–8, 168 complaints about, 78, 96 enrollment in, 9 founding of, 25, 27 international expansion, 28, 32, 36, 124, 158 and New Thought, 55–7, 60, 113, 116, 145 products, 8, 59–63, 65, 79, 96, 155 rally, 103–5, 168 and Roman Catholic Church, 17, 116, 173 sales figures, 38 slogan, 10, 35 stagnation, 98–100, 128 subsidiary companies, 32 Teleconference, 155–7 testimonials, 68, 72–3, 75, 153, 158, 161 wholesale store, 7 worldview, 15, 35, 136 Omnitrition, 25, 37, 67 Pamela, 29–31, 141 Pauling, Linus (1901–1994), 63 Peale, Norman Vincent (1898–1993), 39, 47, 49 Pearson, Durk (1943–), 66–8, 154 Peru, 83, 87–8 Phranc, 50 placebos, 60, 64

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190

INDEX

positive thinking, 16, 167 in business, 86, 96, 159 changing the cassette tape, 11, 117 limits of, 4 and New Thought, 41 in the Omnilife schools, 114–19 The Power of Positive Thinking (1952), 47, 53 Protestant Ethic, 16–17, 163 Protestantism, 5, 15, 17, 125–6 pyramid schemes, 14 vs. direct sales, 38 Quimby, Phineas (1802–1866), 41 Ramírez, Antonio, 101, 153–4 Rehnborg, Carl, 51 religious free market, 2 Rich Dad’s Cashflow Quadrant (2000), 145–6, 167 Roberto in Chile, 141–3, 156 consumes vitamins, 132 income strategies of, 166 joins Omnilife, 131–3 meets Luisa, 129 Roddick, Anita, 33 Rogers (Ash), Mary Kay (1918–2001), 48, 57 Roman Catholicism, 17, 164, 170, 173 Charismatic Renewal, 18 vs. direct faith, 18 Rothstein, Frances, 12 Rubin, Jerry (1938–1994), 26–7, 38, 67 Ruiz, Irma, 100–1, 134, 148, 168 in Chile, 152–6 in Morelia, 83–9 Sara, 144–5, 150, 165 Schwartz, Hillel, 16, 170 Seale, Bobby (1936–), 27 The Secret (2006), 167

9780230112490_12_ind.indd 190

“The Secret Messages of Water,” 107, 118, 159 self-help, 3, 43, 109, 136 Shaw, Sandy (1943–), 66–8, 154 Shinn, Florence Scovel (1871–1940), 42, 54, 145, 169 silver-level distributor, 94 Spiritualism, 74 spirituality, vs. religion, 116, 173 Stanley Home Products alumna, 48 founding, 44 positive thinking in, 46 Stanhome, 7 Supreme Court, 38 Teflon, Pam, 50 Thailand, 13–14 Think and Grow Rich (1937), 43, 53, 147 Trine, Ralph Waldo (1866–1958), 41 Tupperware drag queens in, 50–1 founding of, 46 in Mexico, 7, 12 positive thinking in, 47 sales figures, 53 Van Andel, Jay (1924–2004), 52 Verdery, Katherine, 14 Vergara, Jorge as businessman, 33, 70, 158 early life, 24 health philosophy of, 59–60, 68, 70, 158, 167–8 in Herbalife, 24 as leader, 57, 69, 104, 163 neoliberalism advocate, 34 positive thinking, 105, 107–8, 158–9 religion, 83 romantic life, 56 socks, 59

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INDEX

191

on television, 157, 161 weight, 77 vitamins antioxidants, 64, 66–7 as cleansers, 63, 66, 71–3 history of, 63, 65 in Omnilife products, 61–2 as placebos, 64, 74 regulation of, 65, 68

Weber, Max (1864–1920), 16 “What the #$*! Do We Know?!” (2004), 108 Wilson, Ara, 13 Wise, Brownie (1913–1992), 46–7, 57 World Federation of Direct Selling Associations, 3 World Gift, 47, 48

Walker, Madam C. J. (1867–1919), 43

yoga, 41, 77, 103 Y Tu Mamá También (2001), 36–7

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9780230112490_12_ind.indd 192

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Developments in Direct Payments

Direct Perception

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Direct Democracy in Switzerland

Direct Descent

Direct Perception

Direct Connect

Direct Compositionality

U.S. Direct Investment in China

Contemporary Latin America (Contemporary States and Societies)

Meanings of Violence in Contemporary Latin America

Direct Nuclear Reactions

Pediatric imaging ( DX-Direct )

Direct Action in British Environmentalism

Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing

Local Direct Democracy in Europe

Direct Nuclear Reactions

Spinal Imaging ( DX-Direct )

Musculoskeletal Imaging ( DX- Direct )

Direct Democracy and the Courts

Direct and Large-Eddy Simulation

Direct Action: An Ethnography

Gastrointestinal imaging ( DX- Direct )

Direct Democracy Worldwide

Direct methods in the calculus of variations

Social Work and Direct Payments

Risk and Foreign Direct Investment

Mastering Direct Access Fundamentals

Direct Sales and Direct Faith in Latin America (Contemporary Anthropology of Religion)

Developments in Direct Payments

Direct Perception

Angiogenesis and Direct Myocardial Revascularization (Contemporary Cardiology)

Direct Democracy in Switzerland

Direct Descent

Direct Perception

Direct Connect

Direct Compositionality

U.S. Direct Investment in China

Contemporary Latin America (Contemporary States and Societies)

Meanings of Violence in Contemporary Latin America

Direct Nuclear Reactions

Pediatric imaging ( DX-Direct )

Direct Action in British Environmentalism

Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing

Local Direct Democracy in Europe

Direct Nuclear Reactions

Spinal Imaging ( DX-Direct )

Musculoskeletal Imaging ( DX- Direct )

Direct Democracy and the Courts

Direct and Large-Eddy Simulation

Direct Action: An Ethnography

Gastrointestinal imaging ( DX- Direct )

Direct Democracy Worldwide

Direct methods in the calculus of variations

Social Work and Direct Payments

Risk and Foreign Direct Investment

Mastering Direct Access Fundamentals

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