I Tried Three MLMs as a Broke Stay-at-Home Parent. Here's the Scorecard.

Before this blog, before the exam-prep apps, before any of it, I was a stay-at-home parent who felt financially trapped and needed to make money from the house.

That is the exact person multi-level marketing is built to find.

I joined three. Here's the scorecard — what I spent, what I earned, how far I climbed, and why I quit each one. Net result across all of it: −$530.

The scorecard

Combined net: −$530.

Why I said yes (it wasn't the pitch)

I want to correct something about how these stories usually get told. People imagine a slick pitch and a gullible mark.

There was no pitch. A friend was doing Young Living, I was already interested in essential oils, and I was a stay-at-home parent with no income and a real need for some. The model looked duplicatable — that's the word for it. It looked like a system where effort in produced money out, and I was ready to work for it.

That's the actual hook. Not a con. A person who needs income, looking at something that appears to convert work into money.

Young Living: I never even got the kit

This one barely got started.

I signed up, paid, and then… nothing arrived. No starter kit. I called customer service more times than I can count. I emailed. Months of attempts, no resolution.

I finally filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. They responded after I filed — not before. Countless calls and emails got me nowhere; a formal complaint got me a reply.

That's the whole Young Living chapter. I never sold a thing, never recruited anyone, and my clearest memory of the company is that the only channel that worked was the one that goes on their public record.

Younique: two ranks up, still not much money

Same friend, different company. This time I actually did the work — and it worked, structurally. I recruited enough people to advance two ranks.

And I still didn't make much money.

That's the sentence I'd underline for anyone considering this. I hit the milestones the comp plan sets. I went up. The money did not follow in any proportion to the climb. If advancing two ranks doesn't produce meaningful income, the ranks aren't measuring what you think they're measuring.

I quit for two reasons, both honest. I realized I didn't like makeup enough to build a long-term business on it. And my outlets dried up — meaning I'd run through the people I could reasonably sell to and recruit from.

That second one is the structural problem nobody mentions at the recruiting meeting. Your warm market is finite. When it's gone, so is your business.

doTERRA: the one I actually got good at

By the time I signed up under my sister, I knew what I was doing. And I went all in — not vibes, actual work. I researched marketing. I made videos. I studied social media SEO. I read the books, attended the webinars, followed the format exactly.

I advanced about three ranks, made some money, and earned products I genuinely liked.

I also signed up seven people — and here's the detail that taught me the most about how these companies actually work. All seven were essentially retail customers. They bought products they wanted for themselves. Not one of them went on to sell anything.

By any normal business standard, that's a success. Seven real customers buying a product they like, repeatedly, because they want it. That's what a healthy small business looks like.

But it barely moved me in the comp plan. Because the plan isn't built to reward finding customers — it's built to reward recruiting sellers who recruit more sellers. My seven happy buyers were, structurally, worth very little to my rank.

That's the whole thing in one data point. The most legitimate version of the business — actual customers buying actual product — is the version the compensation plan cares about least.

Then I burned out, and my outlets dried up again. Same wall, better preparation.

Here's the part where I have to be honest in a way that complicates the story: I still buy from doTERRA. Not as a distributor — as a customer. After I quit, I tried several non-MLM essential oil companies and the quality wasn't there. Their lavender is the only one I've found that actually smells like real lavender.

If that sounds like I drank the kool-aid, fair. But I'd argue it's a different thing. People stay loyal to all kinds of brands that never paid them a cent or sent them free product. Liking a company's product and thinking its business model works for the average participant are two completely separate claims. I hold the first one and not the second.

What the numbers actually say

Three companies. One never delivered a product I paid for. One promoted me twice without paying me proportionally. One I got genuinely good at, made some money and product from — and still walked away from, exhausted, out of people to sell to.

Combined: −$530. Not a catastrophe. Not a scam story with a dramatic ending. Just a quiet, unremarkable loss, which is statistically the normal MLM outcome and the least Instagrammable one.

And the pattern across all three is the same, whether I half-tried or fully committed: you run out of people. The model needs your personal network as raw material, and networks are finite. That's not a failure of hustle. It's arithmetic.

The stubbornness question

I've wondered whether the doTERRA run says something bad about me — that I was too stubborn to see it.

I've landed somewhere else. I did the research, the videos, the SEO, the books, the webinars, the format. I executed the plan correctly and the plan still didn't produce the outcome. That's not a personal failing; that's information about the model.

Stubbornness would be staying after the evidence came in. I left all three. What I kept was the part that actually holds up — a product I like, bought at retail, like a normal customer.

(For transparency: here's my doTERRA link. I still buy from them personally. If you use it, I may earn something — which is exactly why I'm telling you it's there. Read everything above before you decide.)

If you're where I was

If you're a stay-at-home parent doing the math at midnight, feeling trapped and looking at something that looks duplicatable — I'm not going to tell you you're stupid for considering it. I was you.

I'd just tell you the three things I didn't know. Advancing in rank is not the same as making money. Your network is finite, so any model that requires burning through it has a built-in expiration date, no matter how hard you work. And selling to happy customers — the honest version of the job — is the part the pay plan values least.

I spent about $530 learning that. Now you can have it for free.

Been in one? What's your real number — after kits, minimums, and inventory? Hit reply and tell me. The honest numbers are hard to find, and that's not an accident.