When Molly Mae-Hague shocked her eight million Instagram followers by announcing her split from Tommy Fury, just a handful of close confidantes were invited into her inner circle.
As the 25-year-old holed up inside her £4million Cheshire mansion with her two-year-old daughter Bambi, she allowed only her close family, manager and two friends past the wrought iron gates.
One of those friends was Tayla Blue, 30, described by Molly-Mae as a ‘soulmate of a friend’, whom she treated to a birthday skiing trip to Courchevel, France via private jet last year, alongside 11 other friends including Tayla’s sister India and their friend Perrie Sian.
But behind the glamourous snaps shared on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram of the luxurious trip was one secret they didn’t reveal to their millions of followers.
Tayla, India and Perri Sian are all associates of the controversial US multi-level marketing (MLM) company Nu Skin Enterprises, which has been sued for being an illegal pyramid scheme, and are understood to still be working with the business.
Pyramid schemes refer to businesses that make money from recruiting new distributors rather than by sales to actual customers.
Molly Mae-Hague shocked her eight million Instagram followers by announcing her split from Tommy Fury
Nu Skin members promote and sell their products, which include creams and nutritional supplements, and are encouraged to recruit and train others to become distributors.
Members are then paid the price they are able to flog the product for ‘as well as a performance bonus based on the sales of the distributors they have recruited’.
In 2016, Nu Skin paid $47 million (£37.2 million) to settle a lawsuit that alleged it operated a pyramid scheme in China and made false and misleading statements about its operations in the country, allegations the firm denied.
Tayla, who regularly appears in Molly-Mae’s YouTube vlogs and was even in her Amazon Prime documentary, Molly-Mae: Behind It All, has been working for the company since 2018, reaching ‘Blue Diamond’ status – a top seller award – in an impressive five months.
In a 2019 BBC documentary, Secrets of the Multi-Level Millionaires, Tayla was caught on camera by an undercover reporter addressing a conference of people interested in joining Nu Skin.
In the tape she says: ‘A lot of people get confused with this business – because it is a beauty business they think they’ve got to sell products but actually this is a recruitment business.
‘The actual bones are in recruiting, so that’s bringing people into the business and that’s where the big money comes from.
‘I build predominantly on Instagram and always have a fresh contact list of people I can contact every single day, it’s called ‘Nu Skin Hit List’ on my Instagram.’
The blurry but distinctive footage caught the then 24-year-old explaining: ‘It’s all about finding people’s weak points.
‘And that sounds horrible but finding them, if someone has said they can’t afford a coat, for example, that’s a clue and a weak point to know that person’s not got enough money.
Tayla Blue, 30, described by Molly Mae as a ‘soulmate of a friend’
Perri Sian has 1.7million followers on Instagram
‘Or if someone’s talking about them not having enough time to spend with their children, that’s like, ‘Ooh, I can give you a bit more time because I can give you this business opportunity.’
On her blog, Taayblue, the businesswoman wrote in 2022: ‘From 23 up until the last few months I focused a lot of my efforts on building that [Nu Skin] as a business and would like to say I made a great success of it.
‘It’s a business that you can eventually leverage and kind of take a step back from – and that is after 4.5 years…’
Today, Tayla still promotes beauty products for other companies and uploads pictures of herself and her daughter, 22-month-old Storie, to her 287,000 Instagram followers.
Once a prolific poster, Tayla now has only 19 pictures on her Instagram page.
She now hosts a podcast with husband Jack Watt – with whom Molly Mae is also close – called SayWatts, and has set up a luxury fragrance company called Memree, which sells two-wick candles for £65.
Part of Nu Skin’s ethos is to recruit friends and family into the business and, following her success with the brand, Tayla enlisted the help of her friend Perrie Sian, who boasts 1.7million followers on Instagram.
She became their youngest ‘Blue Diamond’ in Europe in 2016 and told a Nu Skin conference: ‘The 1st of June 2015, my life changed for ever. I was offered this opportunity by my best friend and we both said yes. I’d never heard of Nu Skin, I hadn’t seen any of the products in the shops, and I first told my best friend not to do it.’
She later said during an interview in 2020: ‘I came from a family with not much money, we went through hard times, and I never thought you could earn this type of money but also have the time to spend with your family.’
Perrie founded a company called Team Make an Impact which, according to Companies House, is worth £153,000 and promotes Nu Skin to its 87,000 Instagram followers.
On the page there is a video of Perrie saying: ‘Hi guys I am going to Switzerland, all expenses paid, me and my partner Ricci, all paid by Nu Skin because I qualified for an all-expenses trip.
‘I’m just in Louis Vuitton picking up gifts for you guys who won an incentive.’
Showing an impressive chalet in the Alps, the next story said: ‘All of this to say well done for my hard work which is essentially helping others to succeed in their business! How crazy! Will be forever grateful for this business.’
Videos have seen been circulating on social media showing alleged screenshots of Perrie cold-messaging people on Instagram with the same recruitment drive message: ‘Hey hun, just thought I’d message you to let you know that I’m hosting another Zoom call about Nu Skin on Thursday, I’d love you to tune in.
‘I’ll be talking about what I do and how you can start working for such an amazing brand.’
Tayla’s siter India Mitchell-Jarvis, who was also on Molly-Mae’s French ski holiday, is also an active member of the company.
India reached the prestigious rank of Blue Diamond Director in just four years of joining and has mentored more than ten team members ‘building a ripple effect of success’.
But social media users have slammed the girls for ‘ruining people’s lives’.
One person wrote: ‘I have also done Nu Skin, it’s hard work and disheartening to be honest.
‘I bet they [Tayla and Perrie] have tens of thousands ‘under’ them. As they’re at the top, you imagine how many people Tayla recruited! She’ll be raking it in through that. You get paid from Nu Skin too, not just the products.’
Another added: ‘I was part of Nu skin too and so glad I got out. It’s so cult, honestly. And then if you struggle you’re treated like rubbish and told you don’t work hard enough. I got myself in massive debt buying products because they tell you to, so you can sell them. It’s awful.’
When approached by the Mail, Tayla and Perri provided no comment and refused to confirm or deny whether they were still working for the company.
Meanwhile, what Molly Mae makes of her friends’ business ventures, we can only wonder.
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