Rodan+Fields — Not worth it!

When I was first approached by a Rodan+Fields consultant, I did do my research. I read nearly everything available and went with a scientific approach: it has been collaborated on by all of these different people, and peer review is vital in any scientific decision, so it was important to me.

Unfortunately, I didn’t find a single article, video, not even a personal post, with any type of warning or founded argument on why it was a bad idea to join R+F.

So I did.

That is why I’m writing this. I can only hope that somebody else out there will be able to see it before they hit the “place order” button, and electronically sign away their soul.

I’ll go back a ways and offer context and background. I’m pretty unabashed about who I am and where I’ve been, so I have no problem sharing with you that I am a recovering heroin/meth addict.

In 2015, I was spiraling through an emotionally and mentally abusive relationship and slowly getting worse and worse into my addiction. Over the next couple of years I would try time and again to get clean, relapse, try again. Finally I made it out and broke those chains. I was then left with a wiped slate; I won’t say clean slate, because I still had some chalky emotional residue left on my board. I was better, but horribly vulnerable and still naive.

To make a long story short, I moved in with a friend, found a job as a dishwasher/cook in a restaurant, and started to slowly move into my future.

My peace didn’t last long. The manager in the kitchen had a problem with his anger and acting childish, he was married to the other manager so I couldn’t do much about it, and the owner of the whole place had money and gave precisely zero hecks about a lowly dishwasher like myself.

I was stuck in a pickle. I hated my job, I was still reeling from the turmoil of the past few years, I suspect at the time I was suffering some PTSD so I was regularly having panic attacks, and those tentacles of addiction started to worm their way back into my thoughts. I got scared.

Enter Melinda (name changed). I got the message sitting on break at work, in the middle of some real emotional turmoil. Knowing little to nothing about MLMs, naturally I was interested. I went to look through Melinda’s profile, seeing that we went to the same high school. She was a little older than me, she’s a nurse, a former cheerleader, absolutely beautiful in every way, strutting fashion that I’ve only ever dreamt of being able to afford, going out to clubs in the city, parties, friends, confidence… Oh man, she had it ALL.

Of course I wanted some of whatever she was having! All it took was a phone call with Melinda and her upline Joanie (name changed) and a follow-up lunch with Melinda in person to seal the deal.

Both of them, and everyone else I would meet, had an emotionally wrenching story about where they had come from, and how different it was from where they were going now. Melinda was going to retire from her nursing job in 3–5 years. Joanie had JUST retired from taking care of other people’s kids, being poor as shite, living in a tiny apartment, etc, and now had been able to move to her dream home in California and stay home with her own daughters, not to mention the influx of ‘husband retirements’ from every angle.

I was honestly mesmerized by the overload of group adding, friend requests, etc. I thought I was somehow special with all of the “Welcome girl!”, “You’re gonna kill it babe!”, “So excited to see you soar!”. God, I felt loved.

Image from Pinterest

Well, I wasn’t special. I didn’t go through any of the petty bullying that I’ve read about, but I can’t say I had a good experience. A few months in, I was getting exasperated. I was being coachable, cold-messaging everyone, being pushy to family and friends, hosting and attending parties, putting my own money into making samples and keeping myself active because I couldn’t make enough actual sales to advance.

After calling one girl the wrong name, getting backlash from people who were sick of hearing about R+F, and having a few family members charged accidentally for products, I was getting exasperated and wondered if it would ever actually be worth it. I was also getting a little tired of being pushed to use my drug addiction story and my pregnancy to convince people R+F had somehow saved me, when I saved my damn self.

It wasn’t worth it, and it won’t ever be. Nobody was mean to me when I left. Nobody slandered me or bullied me. They let me go gracefully. But now I’m just sad. My Facebook is so much quieter. I thought they were my friends, but they were only my friends when I was useful to them, when I wasn’t skeptical, when I was sipping the same Kool-aid as them.

I came out nearly a year later with a couple thousand dollars in the negative, and a couple hundred friends in the negative as well, quite the opposite of what I was guaranteed. It wasn’t worth it.

Thanks for reading, and I really hope somebody will see this and realize, even if Rodan+Fields seems more professional than the others, with their doctors and lawyers and teachers and bankers being involved, with their claim to creating ProActiv… They are the same MLM as any other, with a differently painted mask.

Image from Pinterest

IT IS NOT WORTH IT

 

Main photo by Isaiah Rustad on Unsplash

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