Cami Strella is one of OnlyFans’ biggest stars, making six figures a month and donating a portion to PTSD clinical research.
Cami Strella
But nearly five years ago, Strella was $25,000 in debt and barely surviving under the tutelage of a bizarre multilevel marketing (MLM) scheme that she describes as a strictly religious cult.
At one point, Strella was forced to become celibate, was labeled a sex addict, and was encouraged to see a trauma counselor to heal her.
Strella opened up about her harrowing experience in an exclusive interview with entrepreneur hoping to help others avoid their missteps.
“It wasn’t like a Mary Kay lady,” she says. “There was a much deeper immersion in experiences that many people in multilevel marketing companies never had. It was deeply personal. It was about restructuring and reshaping you as an individual.”
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This is how recruitment worked
Strella was just finishing college when her brother approached her about making some extra cash on the side and recruiting people to sell products for Amway, which makes health and beauty products.
She agreed, partly because she needed the money, but also because she saw it as a way to reconnect with her estranged brother. But what she (and her brother) couldn’t know was that she was about to sacrifice her life to a manipulative MLM scheme.
MLM or Network Marketing is a sometimes controversial but legal way to sell products or services directly to consumers through independent sales representatives. In this case, Strella would be trained by an outside consulting firm in what they called “the process” to recruit other salespeople.
“Every day I’d approach five people and do what’s called ‘drop the message,’ which is basically checking someone out to see if they’re happy with their life or work,” says Strella. “I was trained to seek out the most desperate and vulnerable with the goal of retiring early by recruiting enough people to support me financially.”
If one of her targets was unhappy with their life, she would contact them a few days later to set up a coffee date. There she explains: “I would give them a very well written story about my life that is easy to sympathize with or relate to. Everyone was depressed, so if I revealed my past trauma, people would be like, ‘Wow, she’s so vulnerable, I have to trust her.’
Eventually their recruits were encouraged to go to a meeting where they would meet another impressive salesman who would arrive in a fancy car and promise them that they too could be rich and independent.
Leaving the deep end
Soon, Strella began dating other successful MLM trainers. She was so impressed that she dropped out of school to recruit full-time.
“Being with entrepreneurs who have so much money really blinded me,” she says. “I gave up absolutely everything to pursue this as I was inspired by all the cars, private jets and trips my mentors have been on.”
She was encouraged to set up an online store and dropped $25,000 of her own money to get it started.
Her education took her to Seattle, where she lived with a deeply religious couple who preached that yoga was demonic and unmarried sex was sinful.
“I was forced to be celibate,” Strella recalls. “I just went for it because I think these people are rich and they know people who are very rich, so I think that’s the way to go.”
After eight months, she started dating a guy and told her mentors, who accused her of being a sex addict. They asked her to go to a Christian sexual trauma counselor, which Strella calls “slut conversion therapy.”
She was given a prescribed list of books to read and CDs to listen to, all of which told the same rags-to-riches stories of other adherents of the MLM philosophy.
Escape from MLM
Strella gradually became aware that she was being brainwashed. “It took me a year to really admit and gain confidence that this was actually a cult,” she says.
She moved to the East Coast and re-enrolled at school to pursue a neuroscientist degree. In 2020, Strella created her OnlyFans channel to pay for her college tuition. The channel became so popular that she pursued it full-time and applied some of the sales techniques she learned in MLM – just this time forever.
Strella now donates 10% of their monthly income to raise awareness and funds for causes around mental health, PTSD and traumatic brain injuries (TBIs), especially for military veterans.
“My whole goal in getting into sex work was to support myself while pursuing something to help other people. Now I can help hundreds a day by funding research,” she says.
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