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At age 29 I had everything in life except a career. I have had jobs, but nothing that would make me say "I can see myself here five, ten or even twenty years from now." When I got a job in event marketing I was elated. The promise was that in no more than two years I could run my own business. At first I wondered how this was possible, so I took the bait. Now, look in hindsight, if I would have known then what the truth was, I would have saved myself much time and aggravation.

The story is sad, because I am an educated person and have above average people skills. The marketing job that I applied for was for MadTown promotions. I went in looking for a career. Instead, my duties were to take a bin of over-priced cheap items that can be bought at the dollar store and sell them for premium prices. Not only was I selling them for a marketing company, but I was also helping a non-profit (which I was told was receiving a whopping 5% of the sales). As a distributor I would stand in front of stores or gas stations and bark like a circus worker to "Come on over and check it out!". I would hope to sell my whole bin because at that point I made $100.00 that day. This was only true if I was not training a new victim or on a team day (in which case I would have to split my big bucks). On the suface that $100 per day may sound acceptable. But here is the catch, you drive to your events and you are not paid gas money, you do not get to claim mileage, and you make thirty-five percent of what we sold. If we sold $20.00 of merchandise in a day, we made $7.00 for the day (if we didn't have to split it, otherwise it was $3.50). Did I mention the work day is from 7:30 am to 6:30 pm at night, Monday through Friday, and Saturday 9 am - 5 pm, plus "Team Nights". Another surprise is that business could kick us out of their stores or might not know who we are or why we were there. This typically happened at least two days per week. We were told that the events were set up by our banquets coordinator. The typical day was to show up at a location and hope for the best.
That leads me to my story. As I said I worked for a MadTown Promotions which is in Madison WI. I was born and raised there and had no intention of re-locating. However, the company promotes people out. They do this by levels. You start as a distributor, then move up to team leader. When you fast talk some more unsuspecting souls into the sham you build a team. When you get enough people on your

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