 if you guys have not tried your vimates, those that know me know that they are my favorite thing ever no joke obviously not sponsored i'm nobody but uh definitely recommend them i don't do well with coffee i'm already a crazy energetic person and these hit just right so highly recommend them yeah anyways hey guys it's madison harnish back in my blue kitchen for another crazy video and today i wanted to touch on a topic that's very close to my heart if you guys didn't know i am a military spouse i guess my husband's he's in the army um and today i wanted to talk about how mlm's target military spouses and why mlm's are such a huge thing in the military spouse community those who are military spouses probably know this mlm's are rampant in military spouse communities and lots of military bases they're just everywhere and i wanted to touch on why that is and maybe what we can do to help prevent that from happening if you enjoy deep dives into businesses and unethical business practices definitely subscribe and give this video a thumbs up and if you have a story to share on a time that you've dealt with a scam or an unethical business practice definitely click my website down below and click on share your story to share your story and well let's get into the video according to data from the white house and the department of defense there are nearly 690 000 spouses of active duty military members the unemployment rate for military spouses over the past decade has hovered around 20 to 25 percent which is four times the amount of the average adult woman that means 138 000 to 175 000 military spouses are currently unemployed according to the department of defense more than half of military spouses have moved more than three times throughout their spouses military career and military bases are usually placed more than 50 miles from any major cities which means that there's usually slim pickings for jobs available in that area i currently can relate to that i'm in upstate new york right now where there is not a lot going on the closest city is a good hour and a half away and because there's so many military spouses there's a lot of job competition for jobs that normally would not be seen as that valuable or that highly sought after to read off a quote a military spouse and former pharmaceutical rep says it's really challenging to run a career when you don't know how long you're going to be in one area or you're discriminated against if you're not there long and i can totally relate to this i've definitely dealt with a challenging job market in the area that we currently live and it's this bizarre feeling of knowing that this place that you're in right now isn't really your home you're going to move pretty soon we're planning to move to colorado springs very soon here and when you go to apply to jobs since they know that your military a lot of times they'll ask do you know if you're moving soon how long are you going to be here things like that because they don't want to hire you if you're going to leave sometime soon so a lot of times it's very challenging for military spouses to find a job not only that they like but that gives them the income that they deserve luckily i was able to find a job that i really really loved working at a military surplus store and a lot of my co-workers though it was kind of a base level paid job were college graduates and they were all military spouses and i found that so odd over here they're supporting their husband in their military career but they're just not able to find a job that supports them and their education and their true abilities there's just so much job competition it can also be really challenging to make friends and form relationships because people are constantly leaving and moving around since a lot of people in the military are moving from place to place if you know that you're leaving soon it can be hard to stick your roots in somewhere knowing that you're just gonna leave and have to start over again in you know a few months on top of this if you have kids military daycare centers can get filled really quickly or you still have to pay a pretty hefty amount for daycare services so not only is it challenging to find a job that matches your qualifications but it's also very challenging to find child care so these two together makes it really really tough for military spouses especially those who have children to justify working a job and paying for child care when they're probably saving more by not having to put their child in child care in the first place all of this combined with the feeling of wanting to make new friends and new connections leads to the perfect mlm breeding ground literally every mlm has a giant foot in the military spouse community and it's upsetting to me as a military spouse and something that definitely needs to be talked about more and the awareness needs to be spread throughout military spouse communities my personal opinion too is a lot of military spouse members are younger than the average married woman i would say personally that might just be my personal opinion but something i've noticed is a lot of military spouse members are younger they're kind of just starting their lives just figuring stuff out which as we know younger people are the perfect target for mlms as well because they're a little bit more naive and well-assuming and are just more likely to get excited about the potential of an mlm without being skeptical about it i've heard so many stories of younger military spouses who look up to the older military spouses in their community as these like very wise leader type of women and a lot of those older women are in these mlms and will kind of pray on the younger military spouses who don't know any better and who want to trust them and get them into their mlm other than that since a lot of military spouses will be new to an area or wanting to make friends these mlm distributors within the military spouse community will throw parties or create these fake groups or participate in groups making these spouses feel welcome and a part of something that they wouldn't necessarily normally feel since they're in a new area and they're kind of out of their element struggling to find a job struggling to make friends and don't really know many people they promise a certain level of income and community that military spouses find it very hard to find on their own so mlms are exploiting all of the vulnerabilities in the military spouse community i personally feel like government agencies who are aware of all these issues as you saw the department of defense has clearly stated the unemployment rates of military spouses a lot of these government agencies aren't doing much to change that or help that even i when i couldn't find a job for a little while got so desperate to find a job that i ended up going to a military spouse employment center on base i personally felt like this military spouse employment center was not helpful at all they wrote down my email asked what type of jobs i'm looking for and then provided me basically indeed ads that i could find easily on my own of certain jobs that are available in the area it was not helpful at all i didn't feel like i was being supported by them and i kind of felt alone on my quest to find a job and find the right fit in this very strange place that i was still learning about the fault in those systems and the flaws in those systems have allowed mlms to flourish within military spouse communities with military spouses left out to dry with no help from their community they're made more vulnerable to these predatory mlms to highlight this i wanted to read a story sent to me by a subscriber they created their own blog post about this issue as well so i'll be linking that down below if you want to read the full story and check that out so she starts the article by saying when your spouse is in the military your abode is where the military posts you this can be a very exciting and interesting life but can also be very difficult for a spouse trying to have a non-military career when my husband was full-time in the navy most of the spouses complained about the inability to use their college education to create a career the spouses could usually find a job but moving every few years meant a career with promotions and salary increases was all that was possible i want to be very clear this article about mlm in the military is from the perspective of an officer's wife too often i hear that people fall for mlm scams are dumb and uneducated the military wives i met in officers housing all had college degrees a few even had advanced degrees these women were anything but dumb but why would they fall for an mlm where few even make a profit and many lose money and this is something that i completely can relate to because i've noticed there's so many military spouses who have college degrees who struggle to find a legitimate job on these small towns near military bases mlm and military life go hand in hand the mlm company an example would be tupperware or lula roe offer a job that moves with the spouse these companies now sell online facebook was at one time overrun with lula roe groups but also do direct sales via parties the promise of be your own boss and your success depends on how hard you work can appeal to a military spouse looking for a way to financially be successful this woman is a navy wife so she her husband is in the navy she describes her experience with tupperware which is you know the traditional experience with tupperware but the main thing that i want to touch on was when she goes into more about the connection between the different military wives and how that all works and that's something that i really want to share the navy knew without the family supporting each other keeping families in the navy was going to be more difficult and that's one thing i do have to say from my personal experience seems like the military really values family and supports it a lot and you know there's definitely a lot of great things about being involved with the military or having a spouse in the military um so i don't want to make this a complete hate video on military spouses this is just spreading awareness about mlm's within the military spouse community instead of friendships and support the navy housing became one big mlm party after party i would attend as frankly it was lonely with my husband gone for months at a time and often purchased just the smallest item it was taboo to attend a party and not purchase anything it seems like it's like a social code where if you attend a party you have to purchase something and if you're invited to a party you have to attend it it's the polite thing to do since these communities aren't like a big town it's a very small knit community where everyone kind of knows everyone so there's a lot more social pressure and combined with that oftentimes women are kind of by themselves that's something i forgot to mention earlier but when she says that her husband was gone for months at a time i've seen a lot of women who have children whose husband goes out on deployment and they're retrospectively a single mom for nine months and they have to provide for their kids which of course their husband is helping with but they also have to single parent their kids while their spouse is gone that can lead to a very lonely and isolating experience so being invited to a party if you're so lonely even if it isn't mlm party you're almost so desperate for that social interaction that you'll attend anything and that's another way that these predatory mlms prey on the vulnerabilities of military spouses when i was first married navy spouses had movie nights and going out for pizza night we had bowling parties and children's birthday parties we did fundraisers for navy relief and held each other's hands when the deployments seemed too long once mlm companies found the navy spouses it became one long party and bring your credit card or checkbook those that did not sell anything were caught with not making any money and just paying it out to simply have a social life friendships became based on hosting a party and there was a constant pressure to be recruited by people i hadn't considered close friends i truly admired these incredible intelligent women so i just assumed they knew what they were doing my own fear of trying to make anyone buy anything kept me from joining up i felt like i was a failure i just could not reconcile my moral upbringing with high pressure sales pitches which i'm exactly the same way i've always struggled with sales it's just makes me feel uncomfortable unless i just authentically believe in something i don't want to just hammer away at people to buy something so i can relate you know i talk about mean girls a lot this also it just feels like this social pressure to contribute to this mlm network and it just makes me so sad because it's like even the people who are actively participating in all of this they're not gaining anything positive from it it's not a positive aspect in one's life and so it all just feels like a waste of social worries and stresses for no reason the recruitment meetings i did attend were psychological masterpieces you were convinced you were dumb if you did not jump at this amazing opportunity there was one marike event where i was the only person that did not sign up i did not sign up as the makeup made me break out i really couldn't sell a product that i didn't use myself and she provided this like whiteboard that just looks insane it looks absolutely insane just utterly stupid and the caption says i thought i was just too dumb to understand how mlm worked which we know mlm companies make their structure purposefully confusing and vague so that you can't understand it so that you just assume that you can climb up the ladder easily or oh it's just like these few steps and then you ring up to this thing and then you get this prize which translates to this new rank and it just it's all confusing for reasons that people never fully understand how much of a scheme it is when she talks about how she was the only one to sign up it's you can see how that would be such a social pressure you're feeling lonely and isolated this is the only community that really understands your experience and what you're going through and everyone is jumping into this and doing it so you feel like you're less than or you're isolated or you're singled out if you're not actively participating in this too the breaking point came when the military spouses finally complained they were beginning to notice that a lot of income was being spent buying mlm items the constant parties were a real drain on the limited finances of junior officers the senior officer spouses were most often not involved in mlm companies but the change from friendship support and bonding to a mlm-based relationship among the spouses was a very dire thing indeed the navy base where we lived worked as a safety net for military families our husbands had no way to return home once they were out to sea if a family member became ill they had a crisis the crew member of the submarine was often not allowed to even know the family was in trouble the crew members of the submarines relied on the other families to take care of any situation that might arise while not officially members of the navy most navy spouses took this role very seriously we were especially aware of our role and watching out for those that our husbands outranked as a young officer's spouses it was our job to help out any enlisted wife the captain's wife of the submarine on which my husband served had a very difficult unpaid job making sure the families survived the deployments my captain's wife saw that though i were all in this together had become you can't come to my movie night as i'm going to be selling Tupperware and you didn't purchase any last party which is so frustrating imagine your husband's away you need some support of support system a network of people who understand what you're going through and you are told that you can't go to an event or a gathering because you didn't purchase someone's mlm product it's so cruel the constant you will make more than your spouse the you will receive a pink Cadillac the you will retire rich from selling essential oils but you have to recruit more members began to erode what the navy family stood for in the captain's wife's opinion she lectured the spouses at a party at her house where nothing was sold now she had no real power but the implication was clear you had parties where everyone was invited from the crew you checked on your fellow spouses you offered to help them whenever possible if you did not follow her suggestion her husband might make a note of the behavior of the family and the next fitness report about the navy officer sadly the enlisted wives while also selling mlm seemed to keep a balance it was the officer's wives with their gung ho and together lives that were the ones that forgot they had an obligation to just be nice i think you know the military has certain ranks there's enlisted there's officers etc and sometimes it has been known that certain military spouses will let that get to their head that their husband has a specific ranking and therefore they feel like they have that specific ranking as well among the other military spouses and that can be very dangerous when it comes to mlms as well i've kept in touch with many of the navy wives over the years none of them retired to some beautiful ranch in montana with private planes and millions most of the families have done very well financially despite the loss of the mlm dream these spouses were great salespeople and worked very hard but the cards are stacked against you in an mlm company a very small percentage make any money at all few i imagine become millionaires and that is correct failure is treated as the fall of the person that joined the mlm hard work though is not enough the reality is when you are selling an mlm item and so is every other spouse there is a limit to the market throw in everyone is trying to recruit each other and you have an endless cycle of everyone buying each other's goods it's really not a lot of fun when friendship is based on sales everyone loses on a military base where family support and friendship can meet the difference between a family collapsing or thriving which is very true mlm can become a danger to all while i'm sure mlm companies will claim they can help make friends those friends are often pressuring you to buy or join those that opt out are left out and that's a huge problem i think one of the best points made in that article is that the military spouse community is a very small community so when mlm spread they eat up much of that community very fast you can only recruit so many people until the entire military spouse community is filled up and then you're competing with literally every single person in that community you know who's all selling the same thing and there's no way to succeed in that it's literally impossible and the fact that a lot of these women go through intense extreme hardships with their husbands being gone away with lack of communication for long periods of time having to single parent deal with family struggles on their own and then they're dealing with this community that is not there to support them that is instead trying to exploit them exploit their pain and suffering for their own profit and gain and the mlm's that they're in is just so sad and disappointing and it needs to change all fellow military spouses who are watching this i encourage you to just talk about this more whether it's sharing this video or just talking about this topic with military spouses you know i'm kind of an antisocial person but i think a big thing that i can do is make more of an effort to talk to more military spouses and spread this message myself i think that there's so much that can change within the systems within the military spouse community within the network within the support so that we can prevent this from happening so that we can prevent women from falling for this for being cruel to each other because it's just not necessary at this time and that's really all i have to say on this topic this is once again a topic really close to my heart as i can relate to so many of these issues and understand them and i just hope that some positive change happens with all of this soon if you guys enjoyed this video definitely give a thumbs up and subscribe and comment below what you think of maybe some ideas you have of how there can be more positive change within military spouse communities if you are a military spouse yourself i'd love to hear your stories with your interactions within mlm's and the experiences you've had in the comments down below let's have a great you know discussion about all of this and that's really all i have to say until next time have a good one