Haley O’Bryan, today’s guest, is a recent graduate school graduate from California State University, Fullerton’s Master of Counseling program. As she searches for her perfect post-grad therapy job, she is filling her time with research, art, and finding a rescue kitty to love. She lives in Encinitas, California. In our conversation with Haley we explore the risk and impact on those who participate in MLMs, and Haley’s intention of doing so with compassion. Some of what we discussed was related to relationships, identity enmeshment & authenticity, financial stressors, our own experiences with MLMs, the relationship between diet culture and much more. Haley also shares a message to those considering joining an MLM.

As we found in Haley’s thesis, MLMs (Multi-Level Marketing Companies) are defined as: direct selling or network marketing. According to Groß and Vriens (2019), rather than being traditional employees, participants in MLMs are self-employed distributors who sell the MLMs’ products directly to others. These distributors are generally required to directly invest in inventory from the organization to begin selling.

You can find Haley at

@counselorhaley

@counselorzorgnax

To access her Thesis and read more on this topic, head to her Instagram @counselorhaley (click on linktr.ee in her bio)