How Lia Sophia, Tastefully Simple and Pampered Chef are Taking Over Women’s Social Lives

If, say, Jenn brought on three advisors, she could be promoted to “unit manager.” As long as her team hit certain numbers, she’d earn 40 percent on her own sales, plus 10 percent on her recruits’ sales. If those recruits, in turn, recruited advisors of their own, Jenn would make five percent on their sales, and so on, through six “levels” in her “downline.” The more people Jenn (and Jenn’s people) brought on, the higher she could climb—to “regional manager” or “zone manager,” with thousands in her “organization,” like the millionairess and the 70 or so other Lia ladies making hundreds of thousands a year.

“You sell yourself before you sell the product,” explains Lia Sophia’s Davis, describing the best strategy for an advisor to move up.

“The more personal you make it, the more people will relate and reach out,” echoes Jenn’s division manager, Christine. “Maybe you’re saving up for a trip to Disney. Maybe your husband’s unemployed. Maybe your child is going though a therapy program that’s not covered by insurance and any little bit can help.”

Christine, who left a marketing job at Tyco International to stay home with her kids, became an advisor because, she says, “I needed to do something to save my sanity.” If that’s the personal story Christine told at parties, I’m not surprised Jenn had been swayed; it sounds like every conversation about motherhood she and I have ever had.

“The more they focus on how the consumer can help the hostess, the higher the guilt factor,” notes psychologist Abrams. In fact, when she counsels patients on assertiveness and asks for examples of things they want to say no to but can’t, home parties often come up. “We work on saying ‘No, I’m not going to come’ or ‘I’m going to go, but not buy anything,’” Abrams says.

Last month, I went to a party hosted by my next-door neighbor (even though she didn’t come to mine). She’d promised lunch boxes, which I needed and which were sold, and personally monogrammed, by the company Thirty-One Gifts.

Unfortunately, I didn’t like the lunch boxes. I considered sneaking out the back door. Instead, as I left, I confessed assertively, “I ate half of your buffalo chicken dip, and I didn’t buy anything.”

I SPENT $218.04 for Jenn’s jewelry party. It was way too much, but I just had to make the champagne-and-pear cocktail I’d seen in Martha Stewart Living … and have my house cleaned. I even made a special dessert, which I planned to serve warm after Jenn’s presentation. Because there would be a presentation. And a game (I relented).