A Lawyer's Case for Network Marketing

By Pamela Barnum

In this groundbreaking new book, former federal prosecutor Pamela Barnum investigates the often-criticized and misunderstood profession of network marketing. She combines insight learned from twenty years in the criminal justice system with observations made as a professional network marketer. The information is delivered with the wit and humor you would expect from someone who transitioned from a career of Breaking Bad to a profession focused on Breaking Busy, and will provide you with a path to the freedom to build your own career.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543916676

Book preview

Notes

This very thought might have passed through my mind that day in 2001—had I not been busy jumping out of a speeding car driven by a drug dealer. What did pass through my mind was that I was making a horrible mistake, and it only took me seconds to realize this. My right shoulder, elbow, and thigh told me very clearly within an instant that jumping out of a fast-moving car onto a paved road was not one of my better ideas.

It was the middle of May and the undercover project I was working on was wrapping up. The next day was takedown day— the day our undercover unit rounded up and arrested all the drug dealers we’d been buying from. It was my job to coordinate one of the rips we had planned. A rip is pretty much what it sounds like: you rip off the drug dealer by ordering up a large quantity of drugs and then taking it without paying. On this particular day, I was going to rip a couple of drug dealers off for $250,000 worth of Ecstasy.

For the previous eight months, I had cultivated a relationship with a drug dealer named Joe. He’d sold cocaine to my partner, Kevin Barnum, and me on several occasions. (Yes. Barnum. As you can probably tell, I ended up marrying my partner when the project ended. That’s a story that deserves it’s own book!)

The plan was supposed to play out like this: Joe and his ‘backend’ (the dealer’s dealer) were both supposed to get into my undercover Jeep Wrangler. Then, I was supposed to drive them and the drugs to meet my ‘backend’: another undercover police officer at a local hotel. There would be a half dozen cover officers in the area ready to arrest all of us when the deal went down. The police would get the drugs, the drug dealers would be arrested and I would be crowned a superhero. OK, not really a superhero, but I would get to continue ripping off drug dealers for another twenty-four hours until everyone was rounded up.

Notice that jumping out of a moving car was not in the plan. Trust me, when you fall, jump, roll, or whatever from a moving car, it looks nothing like it does on TV; at least, not from the perspective of the person jumping. My uncontrollable skidding along the pavement turned out to be a metaphor for so much more than the undercover project I was working on. My jumping was symbolic of what my professional life had become: micro-management, politics, assumptions, and power struggles. As I’m sure you know, these are all things we deal with in every part of our lives, both personally and professionally. Perhaps you’re skidding along life’s road and you don’t like the direction you’re headed in ... but you’re also not too keen on the idea of jumping out.

Maybe the road you’re on leads to a cubicle for fifty or sixty hours a week. You don’t really remember which off-ramp you took that led to your current situation; but here you are, stuck in traffic listening to the Top 40 to pass the time. It’s not so bad, you have air conditioning and a cup holder, what more could you ask for? You’re so used to the path you’re on that the very idea of change terrifies you. Better to stay on cruise control for forty years rather than risk making another wrong turn.

Maybe you are just starting on your journey. You’ve just finished college and you’re excited about the opportunities ahead. The problem is you’re looking around and you can’t see any exit ramps, no fun stops, just a long straight road that never seems to end. On top of all of that, you have student loans to pay. You can’t think of anything else right now.

Or maybe your road is exciting! It already has lots of turns and interesting scenery. I hope it is. I’m doubtful though, because if you were on a joy ride with two tickets to paradise you likely wouldn’t be reading this book looking for an alternate route to your goals.

It’s more likely that your vehicle is pretty comfortable. It may not be the vehicle of your dreams but it gets you from A to B. It’s the same one most of your friends are driving. It’s probably the same one you’re all complaining about. You’ve settled for a safe vehicle that gets you to your destination safely every day. Your adrenaline rarely, if ever, pumps, and you’re terrified to admit that this is not the vehicle you want to keep for forty years. You’re driving a minivan but you fantasize that, one day you’ll be sporting a Lamborghini.

Every once in awhile you head over to the Lamborghini showroom and you slide in behind the wheel, you take a selfie and fantasize about one day. And then you get out and you settle. You settle for less than you want, less than I deserved. You settle for average.

I know a bit about settling. Not only from living in a drug culture for so many years, but also from my own mistakes. The fact is that even though I was a successful undercover investigator, and later a respected prosecutor, I settled for less than I wanted, less than what I deserved. Until recently, I thought success was a good career that ended with a lifetime benefits package and a good pension. Instead of building an income around the lifestyle I wanted, I made a lifestyle around my income and the fragments of time not eaten up by my career.

Experience tells me I’m not alone. Ask yourself the following question: Is the life I’m living worth the price I’m paying? In 2009 my resounding answer was no. At the time, I was working more than sixty hours a week as a prosecutor in Canada, specializing in prosecuting drug dealers. I had given up my life as an undercover officer to get married and start a family. Apparently buying drugs for a living is not a family-friendly/mom kind of job. I thought going to work in an office as a prosecutor for sixty-plus hours a week was. Turns out I was wrong about that, too. Working twelve hour days doesn’t leave a lot of time for family, or anything else for that matter. I went from Breaking Bad to Breaking Busy.

Don’t get me wrong, having a career is great. This isn’t a book about leaving your job behind so you can become a network marketer. Becoming a network marketer has its share of challenges, too. This book is about looking at options and weighing them against what works best for you, based on the facts, not hype.

Here’s the thing; it wasn’t what I was doing that made the cost outweigh the benefit. It was what I had to give up in exchange for my career that eventually cost more than I was willing to pay. I gave up the best hours of the best days of my life for my job. Every day I would argue why another drug dealer should go to prison. But I felt like I was the one in prison. I was serving a life-sentence, twelve hours a day, five days a week, and sometimes on weekends. And my sentence had no end in sight. The average North American spends forty of their adult years working. People convicted of murder often serve less time than that.

The truth is, I choose my sentence. I made a conscious decision to work as hard as I did. My husband Kevin and I both chose demanding careers. We both consciously put our careers ahead of our family life. Of course, these armchair quarterback reflections are much easier to reflect on as I write this overlooking the Rocky Mountains from my comfortable home office. Reality was much too painful for us to admit at the time.

It’s only been since we traded in our fill-time jobs for full-time lives that we’ve been able to admit the sorts of things that once seemed normal to us now seem crazy, like hiring a nanny to raise our son, or to accept paying almost half of our income in tax. We were willing to put our lives on hold for forty years until retirement, because that’s what everyone else was doing. I’m not saying this is wrong, I’m just saying it wasn’t for us. It’s not what we wanted.

Even worse, we have had to admit that we’d embraced a life of mediocrity. We had always seen ourselves as risk-taking mavericks who blazed a trail. We jumped out of cars and hung out with drug dealers. Kevin still had a pretty cool job as a canine handler for the police and my job had it’s moments, but we’d still settled for less than we wanted. We punched a clock, kept track of overtime hours, and had to wait our turn in the seniority line for summer holidays. We’d become what we had once mocked: people who were at the mercy of decisions made by others. Control was in the hands of our bosses, colleagues, and the system we were a part of. We decided it was time to take back control and that’s how we ended up as network marketers.

When Kevin and I entered the world of network marketing, completely by chance, we saw the veil of mediocrity begin to lift. We started to meet people who wanted more, not only for themselves, but for everyone around them. Network marketing may or may not be for you—it’s certainly not for everyone. I wrote this book to help you make an informed decision about it. In my eight years as a professional network marketer I have spoken to thousands of people who charted a course based on misinformation, hype, and lies. I want to help change that with the facts. No Johnny Cochran spin-doctor stuff here, just the facts. By the end of this book you’ll know if the glove fits or not.

As a lawyer I learned that getting to the truth isn’t about asking for answers, it’s about asking the right questions. A Lawyer’s Case for Network Marketing will take you on a journey that puts common misbeliefs about network marketing on trial. You get to be the judge and jury. I invite you to weigh the facts against opinion and come to a verdict that serves you.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, let’s get started.

"P yramid Pam, you’re wanted in courtroom six," Mark said, snickering as he walked past me in the hallway. Mark was a shining example of the stereotypical defense lawyer: slick, opinionated, and poorly dressed. Most of his shine came from his suit and his gel-shellacked hair.

Good one. I replied in my most dignified lawyer voice. I’d always tolerated good-natured jibes from defense counsel. That’s what you do as a prosecutor, it’s practically in the job description. As a police officer and lawyer; defending myself was not a new experience: police headlines and lawyer jokes. Of course, before I was Pyramid Pam I had a few other nicknames: Narc (undercover drug officer), Whammer (my driving technique while working undercover), Blondie (you’ve seen the cover of the book), and a plethora of other nicknames not appropriate for print. In the courtroom, I was referred to as Madam Federal Crown. Today, I’m simply Pamela, Pam, or mom. I’ll admit, the nickname Pyramid Pam really irritated me at first. It gave me that feeling you have when you walk out of the restroom with toilet paper stuck to your shoe, not that that’s ever happened to me. Over time, however, the nickname grew on me. Honestly, as my income increased, my concern over what others thought lessened. Funny how that works.

Network marketing, put simply, is a legitimate business model that pays distributors a percentage of their organization’s sales; the sales organization is known as a distributor’s downline. Some people confuse network marketing with pyramid schemes, but you will soon see they have nothing of importance in common. The first time I remember hearing the term network marketing was on a Sunday afternoon in my driveway. Kevin and I were working outside, trying to fit a months’ worth of maintenance into a few hours. Our neighbors rode by on their bikes and stopped to say hi. I noticed that my neighbor Janey was looking amazing. As a woman in my forties, I was starting to notice women who looked like they weren’t ageing, and Janey was becoming one of those women. Wow, you look great. What have you been up to? I asked her. She told me about some products she was using and looking at her results it made me want to give them a try.

The words I’d like to give them a try were hardly out of my mouth when she leaned into me and said: By the way, it’s network marketing. She said it was like she was offering bootleg liquor or some other contraband. Very much on the down low. I didn’t want to ask her what network marketing was because I didn’t want to look like an idiot, and frankly I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. After all, I had a Master’s degree and a law degree; I should know what this network marketing thing was all about.

As we were walking up the driveway I asked Kevin as nonchalantly as I could, What’s network marketing?

"Oh it’s one of those things. We don’t want anything to do with it. They bring flip charts into your house, fill your garage with stuff, and we’ll lose all our friends. It’s like a pyramid scheme." I didn’t know what a pyramid scheme was but I knew it was bad because he reacted like I had just asked him to streak naked through the neighborhood on Easter Sunday.

Wow. Janey didn’t mention any of that, I said. I decided to order the products anyway, because Janey looked great. I vowed to myself not to fill the garage or join a pyramid scheme.

Fast forward and Kevin decides he wants to try some too; maybe he was considering streaking after all. Of course, I wouldn’t be writing this book if we hadn’t had great results from using the products Janey recommended. People started to notice that we looked and felt better, just like we had noticed that about Janey. Because of that people started to ask what we were doing, just like I asked Janey. Thousands of people and thousands of stories later and here I am presenting you with the case for network marketing.

So, is it one of those things that fills your garage, puts flip charts in your living room, and eliminates your friends? No. Okay, no need to read any further. Case closed. I wish it were that simple. The very term network marketing provokes a strong response from people on both sides of the fence. Some network marketers are almost evangelical in their praise for the business model. Shouting from the rooftops, living rooms, and social media pages that network marketing is the only answer to financial freedom. You know, the kind of hype that scares the hell out of people — constant lifestyle posts featuring big checks, expensive cars, and designer handbags. It can be kind of creepy.

Then there are the people on the other side of the fence, the critics. Most have little or no experience with network marketing yet they toss out labels like pyramid, scam, and cult. One network marketing critic who has a blog (and allegedly a PhD), reports that network marketing is responsible for many suicides, divorces, and natural disasters in the United States. No folks, I’m not making this stuff up. Others simply use the word pyramid as a catchall term for their ignorance.

Clearly there are crazies on both sides of the fence. But just because you feel strongly about something doesn’t make you right. A belief that is not based on facts, experience, common sense, and the law is just an unfounded opinion. I like to base my beliefs on