White robes, orgies, and red Kool-Aid. I'll even pay you cash to join!
Want in?
could be you...
JK.
I'm not starting a cult.
(My lawyer advised me not to.)
But what I AM doing is taking a little survey. I need your help to make Dollarwise the best money app on the planet.
And I'm willing to PAY for it.
When you CLICK HERE and take the survey, you'll automatically be entered to win $250.
That's money you could use to pay off debt, start an emergency fund, or just buy a tank of gas (how 'bout those prices, amiright?).
But the deadline to enter is tonight, May 20th.
So hurry up and click that link to help me, help you get your financial shit together.
Okay...
Speaking of cults: lets talk about the biggest one in history.
Not Scientology. Not NXIVM. Not some guy with a compound and a newsletter.
honestly, this guy's newsletter probably slaps
(Don't worry, I don't have a compound.)
I'm talking about the most financially successful cult in American history, one that's been operating in plain sight since 1959. The one that your coworker's wife is probably involved in, and that generates $7.4 billion dollars a year by convincing ordinary people that they're one "good" month away from financial freedom.
I'm talking about Amway.
See, most people hear "Amway" and immediately picture a bad pitch at a Applebee's.
And they're not wrong.
Yet they continue to bring in BILLIONS of dollars every year.
Here's how it works:
Someone invites you to a "business opportunity" meeting, it's vague as hell, you show up and the room is weirdly energetic, everyone's just a little too friendly.
Within twenty minutes you're looking at a diagram of circles on a whiteboard and someone is telling you that if you just get five people who get five people who get five people, you'll be making passive income while you sleep.
It sounds like easy math.
It isn't.
Check this shit out: according to Amway's own income disclosure statement, the average annual earnings for an Independent Business Owner (that's what they call their product prisoners) in 2024 were $723 before expenses.
Before expenses!
Meaning before you buy the products you're supposed to be selling, before you pay to attend the trainings they strongly encourage you to attend, before gas, before the starter kit, before all of it.
Only seven hundred and twenty-three dollars a year.
That's not a side hustle, that a rigged system designed to keep people buying more product than they sell.
And here's the thing that really gets me, the part that makes this a cult and not just a bad job.
A bad job pays you. Amway charges you to keep going.
The trainings cost money, the events cost money, and the motivational materials cost money. The entire apparatus is designed so that when you're losing, you feel like you're investing, and if you just try a little harder, talk to a few more people, stay a little more positive, the breakthrough is right around the corner.
It FUCKING isn't.
So why do smart people fall for it? Because most of the people getting pitched are desperate. Not stupid. Desperate.
They've got debt or a job they hate or a spouse who's stressed and a savings account that looks like mine did at 22.
And someone walks up and offers them a way out, one that fits around their schedule and doesn't require a degree and promises that the only limit is their own effort.
That last part is the hook.
Because if it doesn't work, it's your fault. You didn't try hard enough. You weren't positive enough. You quit too soon.
The structure is genius, actually, in the darkest possible way.
It turns financial failure into a personal character flaw, and then sells you more training to fix the character flaw.
(That's a cult.)
Here's the exit. If someone is pitching you a business where the primary product is the act of recruiting other people into the business, it's not a business.
If the income disclosure says the average person makes $723 a year before expenses, it's not an opportunity. And if the only people getting rich are the ones at the very top of the diagram, it's not a level playing field.
It's a pyramid.
And you already knew that.
The real version of financial freedom is boring as hell.
Budget. Pay off debt. Invest in things that don't require you to sell to your family.
It doesn't fit neatly on a whiteboard and nobody's going to cheer for you at a hotel conference room about it.
But it actually works.
So why am I warning you about cults in the first place?
Well, it's not just because I don't want you to end up sacrificing chickens to Cthulhu...
It's because there are so many hucksters out there taking advantage of scared desperate people.
And I want you to be on the lookout for phrases like:
Get rich without trying
Make passive income
30 days to a million-dollar drop-shipping business
Definitely not drugged Kool-Aide
(Especially that last one...)
When I try to help people on the show, I'm honest with them.
I tell people every day:
It's going to be hard
Your goals will take YEARS to achieve
There are no "easy" ways to build wealth
Don't drink anything Brandon pours...
But more than anything, I want you to know it IS possible.
It's just gonna take some work.
Taquitos,
Caleb "Not a Business Opportunity" Hammer
P.S. I'm never going to ask you to buy a pallet of tupperware and sell it to your friends.
That just ain't me.
But what I WILL ask, is that you take a good, hard look at your finances.
Most of you can turn the ship around in about 18 months of dedicated effort.
(Less, if you're willing to sacrifice pretty much all the "fun" in your lives.)
And here's the part where I tell you if your financial situation is particularly scary, I want to hear about it.
Like, if your parents raised you in an actual cult and stole your identity to max out cards in your name, so now you can't get a loan to go to college...
I want to hear from you.
The messier the better.
If you think your money issues are wild enough to come on the show, CLICK HERE to get in touch with casting.
After we air out your dirty laundry, I'll do everything in my power to get you on track.
And in case you didn't know, the majority of people who come on DO fix their lives.
