It was the last day of June, which meant it was also the last day of my company’s fiscal year. I put my ten-month-old son to bed a little early that night, because I had some serious work to do. I only had until midnight to reach my goal, a goal I had been working so hard for during the past eleven months.
I sat on my couch, staring at the brand-new laptop I had just purchased for my “business,” my fingers flying over the keyboard. As the seconds passed and the clock ticked closer to midnight, my adrenaline pumped faster. I’ve always wanted to be successful and didn’t care what it cost. I loved the recognition that my company offered me; it gave me a rush.
My mouth started watering as if I was about to bite into the best chocolate cake of my life. My blood was pumping… I couldn’t fail this time, I had worked too hard for this. Was I really this close to success? I only needed fifteen more people to sign up and buy $200 worth of products, so I started making phone calls. I called multiple family members and friends, and the conversation went like this: “I am so close to my goal, would you mind signing up under me so I can place a $200 order for you? It won’t cost you anything; I just really need to get to this goal tonight by midnight. It would mean the world to me.” If they placed a $200 order, they were considered a new active team member, and I needed a certain number of active team members in order to qualify for my free car. I wanted to make it easy for them to join, so I covered the cost of their first order. I was helping them, and they were helping me. Every time they said yes, I took out my shiny new credit card and ran a $200 charge, plus an additional $30 for taxes and fees.
Most people would feel as if they were ruining their life, one charge at a time. I felt as though with every completed transaction my life was just beginning. I was exhilarated and excited about what was to come.
I ran my fingers across the numbers on the card and dreamt about what would happen when I told my team members that we had done it! We had become a top unit in the company. I couldn’t let them down; we had all worked so hard to get to where we were today. It had been only ten months from the time I joined the MLM (multilevel marketing) home-based business to when I became a sales director, at the age of twenty-five. Only one month after that I had won a prestigious company car. We were setting records—or should I say they were helping me set records. Those records would propel me to the next level in my business and my life. Would I finally be able to live the life I always wanted? A life of luxury, where I could buy whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted it. The luxury I’d dreamt about since I was a little girl.
Growing up, my sisters and I loved to play MASH, a game popular among teens and tweens that “predicts” their future. You and a friend each take out a piece of paper and write the word MASH at the top of the paper, in big capital letters. MASH represents your home in the future. M means you’ll live in a mansion, A means you’ll live in an apartment, S means you’ll live in a shack, and H means you’ll live in a house. Then you both write a list of categories below your title, and three or four items under each category.
Our first category was always, “Who are you going to marry?” We typically chose two people we liked, and one who made us sick to our stomachs. It was always a good sign when you landed on a person you actually liked, not so good when you landed on the person you didn’t like. My sisters and I would always scream when this happened, as if it really was predicting our future!
There was always a category about what car you would drive. I always listed the same four cars: a minivan, a limo, a Lamborghini, and a BMW. I guess I had expensive tastes from an early age. I don’t think I even knew what a Lamborghini was, I just knew it was a luxury car, and I liked nice things.
The third category we typically chose was, “How many kids will you have?” I always chose low numbers for this category: 0, 1, 2, and 3 were favorites.
To get to the predictions, you start by choosing a number between 1 and 10 to use as a counter. Then you start counting through your choices, and when you reach your number, you cross the item off the one your pencil is on. You do this over and over again until there is only one item left in each category. The remaining items are considered to be your future.
I would play that game over and over again, and wish and pray that I would land on a mansion. I always wanted to live a life of luxury, hence the selection of cars I always placed in my car category. I have no idea where that desire for luxury came from, though, because my family wasn’t one that put much value on it growing up.
But back to my big night building my business. I felt as if that dream of landing on the M in MASH was finally coming true.
My hands started to sweat. I repeated that conversation twenty times that night. Ten people said yes and signed up to help me. I had people underneath me who were signing their family members up too. And every time, I said, “Of course I’ll cover the bill!”
Everyone was on board and it felt like a true family, all of us working together toward a common goal. I was on the phone with a superior team member, and we had calculators and notepads going, making sure that I was able to hit the goal I needed to hit to win the prize. Ten people left to go, ten more $200 orders left to charge. It was 11:30 p.m. I only had thirty more minutes to go. Orders were rushing in—five more to go, three more to go, last one in! Done, we did it! We made our goal with only minutes to spare! I had just won a prestigious car from my company and set a record for the person who won it the fastest in my region.
My good friend and coworker Sarah sat faithfully next to me the entire night, cheering me on. As soon as midnight hit and the deed was done, we rejoiced, popped open a bottle of champagne, and toasted my achievement! The bubbles of the champagne tasted like success. My face hurt from smiling so much. I had done it! I’d accomplished the seemingly impossible feat of winning a car after only being in the company for eleven months. This must be what success felt like.
My husband, Mark, sat on the side and watched all the commotion going on, happy that I was happy. He was a huge fan of mine, but he will tell you that despite his belief in me, he sat in the dining room that night with a sick feeling in his stomach, because he knew the damage I had just caused on that brand-new credit card. He was proud of me, but he could also see the future consequences of my actions. I saw nothing but success.
You would think that I would have noticed his worry. Looking back on it now, I think I was just too blinded by my excitement and the possibility of more success just ahead.
I paused a moment to dream of all of the praise that I would be getting the next month at our company seminar. The claps, the hugs, the questions of “How did you do it?” I knew this would be my year!
I had joined that home-based business company with a dream, a dream to live an independent life and bring home extra cash to help pay down debt. When I joined we were in credit card debt for the third time. I just couldn’t seem to get my spending under control. We would get out of debt, then something would come up and we would fall right back into it again.
The truth is that by the time I received that “free” car, two months after I earned it, I was already in over $20,000 worth of debt—$12,000 from that last night of the month and another $8,000 in credit card debt. I was stuck in a vicious cycle, without the self-control to stop.
It was ironic that the same company I dreamed would help me get my spending under control and pay down debt actually made it worse. It was not the company’s fault that I got into this mess. However, I do believe it plays a role in encouraging people to spend money they do not have on inventory to grow their businesses. I was a spending addict, and my addiction continued to get me into more and more trouble.
According to my calculations, I wouldn’t get in too much more financial trouble and was safe for the month of June. After figuring all of my commissions, I had made more than $10,000 that month alone from the orders people under me had placed. That was a huge number, and I would be able to add that to my accolades whenever I was introduced at events. Life was good.
But I had one dirty little secret. During the month of June, I charged more than $12,000 to my brand-new credit card, much of it on the night of June 30 from signing people up to win my “free” car. In addition to covering the costs of people signing up, I had spent even more attending conferences, getting my nails done, buying new clothing for events, and many more frivolous purchases—everything that I thought made me look the part of a successful twenty-five-year-old businesswoman.
I told myself that everything would be all right because I had made $10,000. Paying $2,000 for this kind of success was what everyone does, right?
I had a few conversations with other people in my company, and they all agreed that this was what everyone did. People covered the costs in order to sign other people up under them all the time. It was considered an investment in their business and in their unit. Many people were encouraged to do this with the excuse that they pay themselves back with the commission bonuses that they received from hitting certain company milestones. The people encouraging them also got bonuses when they reached a new milestone, so they benefited as well.
After buying approximately $100,000 in product from the company for my customers, I was promoted to director. I was flown to new-director training in a fancy hotel in Dallas, where I was wined and dined and instructed in the art of making the sale.
Most of the women I spoke with at new director training were in the same boat as me, but in even more debt. My roommate at the training was in over $30,000 worth of debt from ordering products; her friend who was also there was in $45,000 worth of debt. The emphasis was always on achieving goals and success, not on how you actually got there. Dream big, they said, and you will achieve your goals.
The reality is that spending that much money in one night didn’t faze me a bit. I wish I could say it had, but I did not care about putting us another $10,000 in debt. I already had a spending problem, proven time and time again by my uninhibited spending. Buying recognition made me feel good, and I was willing to spend thousands on it. I wanted it and never thought twice about the consequences. I was unfulfilled and empty and I needed recognition. The combination of those two things was a disaster for me.
I was definitely no stranger to dreaming big. I was always a dreamer and it was evident in everything I did. I grew up as a ballerina and was always a very hard worker. I would practice at home in my basement to perfection. My ballet studio, Ballet Regent, in my hometown of Saratoga Springs, New York, was the summer school for the New York City Ballet. My teachers were retired principal dancers from that company, so when the New York City Ballet came for its summer tour at Saratoga Performing Arts Center, they would dance with us at our studio. I danced with some of the best ballerinas in the world every summer until I was fifteen years old. I always loved being onstage and the center of attention. For some ballerinas, a solo onstage was terrifying, but to me it was my comfort zone. Looking back on old family VHS videos, I could see that this played out at home too. As the old images flicker by, you can often see me pushing my sisters aside to regain the spotlight.
I quit ballet at the age of fifteen because my teachers wanted me to move to New York City and study at the School of American Ballet. I knew that I would have to sacrifice so much to attend the school, and I was just starting to get to be a part of the “cool” group in junior high, which meant football games on Friday nights and much more social activity. I didn’t want to miss out on life, so I eventually quit dancing and left it all behind.
I always had big plans for my life, and knew it would involve lots of money and “stuff.” The problem was that I rarely thought my plans through, acting mostly on impulse based on what felt good at the time. No one could say that I failed in the “dream big” department; I just failed at thinking through what that would mean to everyone around me and my future.
It felt so good to be noticed for my success that not for one second did I stop and think I was a fraud and a fake. I assumed everyone did what I did, so no one needed to know that I had bought my way to the top. I eventually found comfort in that and ignored the nagging feeling of guilt inside. My guilt would bubble up a lot during my life of spending, but I’d gotten good at ignoring it and moving on.
I had been spending with abandon for years, often hiding my purchases in the trunk of the car so Mark wouldn’t see them. I remember one time after I “won” my car when I had a shopping party at a local store with some consultants in my unit. The deal was that if I got six friends to go shopping with me at this store, we would all get 30 percent off our purchases that night.
I took full advantage of the 30 percent discount. After three hours of shopping, trying on every item of clothing in the store and staying until closing, I charged $600 to that same credit card, which now had more than $30,000 on it. When Mark asked what I had bought at the store that night, I told him I didn’t buy much. What he didn’t know was that I had more than $600 worth of clothing in the trunk of our car, which would stay there until he left for work the next day. I felt guilty, but that didn’t keep me from doing the same thing over and over again.
That guilt had been there from the very start, when we got married at the young age of twenty-one. I was getting so used to the feeling that I didn’t pay much attention anymore. The desire to spend became greater than the guilt I felt after. These spending habits started at a very early age and continued to haunt me for the rest of my teen and young adult life.