Tool of the Day: P492 Business Traveler Package

A new feature on this site wherein we take a look at a questionably priced, dubious value tool from an Amway or MonaVie Teaching and Training System. Since we’ve been on a MonaVie-roll these days, we’ll select R3Global’s P492 Business Traveler Package to review first. For $148 (original price is $185), you receive:

• 1 Padfolio: $20 (P449
• 1 Mouse Pad: $1.50 (P447)
• 1 Business Card Holder: $10 (P601)
• 1 Black Diamond Pen: ???
• 1 Trolley Bag: ???

Pay close attention to the individual prices for each item. I could not find a separate listing for either the Black Diamond Pen nor the Trolley Bag. In all fairness, unless the pen is diamond-encrusted, it can’t cost more than $5, right?

For People Who Just Share, They Do A Good Job Selling

Drink It. Feel It. Share It.

That’s the mantra doled out by the MonaVie faithful. Diamonds on stage proclaim, “All I did was drink the juice, feel its benefits, and shared it with everyone that I met! The product sells itself! You can do it too!”

If the product sold itself, why then do these same Diamonds turn around and work so hard on selling you you to purchase their tools?

When Diamonds Meet

When I read about MLM leaders breaking away and forming their own Systems, I wonder what happens when they meet up with their former mentors and friends at company-sponsored events like Diamond Club or Black Diamond Celebration. Are hugs and kisses shared between all parties or do they avoid each other like the plague? System and tools profits accounts for a substantial part of a MLM leader’s income, so I can easily see why someone might want to leave to form their own organization. On the flip side, I can see how there could be some animosity from the original group directed towards those in the breakaway group.

The most recent example of this is with Mark and Tami Crawford, Randy and Val Haugen, Don Wilson, Chuck Goetschel, and Lance Smith. They left Orrin Woodward’s TEAM to form Legacy Professional Development System. Within the R3Global System, I heard rumblings of a falling out between Brig Hart and Kelly Bangert. Is this a new development, and does anyone have any more information regarding this?

TEAM Tweet: Buy More Tools

Another nugget of wisdom from the TEAM tweetstream:

Do not wait;the time will never be “just right”. Work with whatever tools you may have at your command & better tools wil be found as you go

Translation: Buy our tools today and buy our tools tomorrow. They might suck now, but they are all you’re going to get until we revise them for the umpteenth time!

Where Did Robert Addie Go?

On the MonaVie Media Center’s Field Leaders page, there’s a listing for Royal Black Diamond Distributor Onyx Coale. On the Black Diamonds Documentary page, the video shows Onyx along with her husband Robert Addie. Yet, the listing for the video just shows Onyx. Where did he go?

Who wants to place a bet that a new Black Diamond Documentary video will be filmed soon that only shows Onyx in it?

MonaVie and New FTC Guidelines

LazyMan has an excellent post explaining how the new FTC Guidelines affect companies like MonaVie and Amway. Will this prevent people from making outlandish claims? Who knows, but it’s good to see the FTC taking some action in this arena.

I Am Immune to MonaVie’s New Product: (M)mūn

RC3Global spilled the acai berries on a new product coming out from MonaVie called (M)mūn. Pronounced like “immune,” this yellow-bottled wonder will no doubt “prevent” or “cure” even more illnesses and ailments than regular MonaVie, MonaVie Pulse, or even MonaVie E^MV! I wonder what would happen if you drank all four products at once? Would you glow purple to show everyone how you’re jacked on the juice?

All kidding aside, I see a problem that MonaVie, sooner or later, is going to have to deal with. It’s not the fact that the products are getting harder and harder to pronounce — first E^mv and now (M)mūn?!? No, the lack of real product diversification in its lineup is a bit troubling. All of the wine-bottle products, MonaVie, MonaVie Active, MonaVie Pulse, MonaVie Kosher, and now MonaVie (M)mūn, are all pretty much the same thing. Sure, they might throw in an extra ingredient here and there, but come on — let’s be real here — it’s still mostly juice from concentrate.

What are distributors supposed to buy? A case of each every month? They are certainly going to be encouraged to buy at least one case to “see how it works for them.” Will they have to start stocking up on product for those customers that need (1) joint help, (2) kosher products, (3) immunity boost? While this might lead to a momentary surge in sales, it has the possibility of backfiring on MonaVie once distributors get wise to the fact that the only real change happening is in the color of the bottle.

Inspire or Expire?

Last week, TEAM Leader Orrin Woodward tweeted this nugget of wisdom on which I would like to comment:

A leader must inspire or their team will expire. #leadership

In general, I do agree with his statement. I’ve seen many companies wither away due to the lack of a strong CEO, management team, or vision. Let’s analyze his quote through the prism of a multi-level marketing business. What happens if the upline Diamond, Double Diamond, Black Diamond, etc. stops inspiring his or her team?

Whose Dream Are You Celebrating at an R3Global Dream Day?

Saw this very detailed comment about the recent R3Global Dream Days events on the Purple Horror web site this morning:

Hawking Tools on Twitter

Saw this a few days ago on Brig Hart’s R3Global’s Twitter Stream
:

# Have you bought your tools today? www.brighart.com
2:54 PM Oct 23rd from Twitterrific

It’s bad enough that the tools kingpins are incessantly hawking tools at Major Functions, at weekly meetings, at monthly seminars, on CDs and in person. Now they are using Twitter to remind people to buy tools?

Profit Per Employee = Profit Per Downline???

Orrin Woodward, leader of TEAM, tweeted this nugget a few hours ago:

Profit per employee is the most important metric in a company today. – Hamel Live #WBF09

Admittedly, Orrin is repeating a quote from someone else at a conference, but he liked it enough to post it to his 60,000+ followers. I’m calling Woodward out on this, however, because he himself said that it’s not that important if you’re not profiting economically from MonaVie when you’re profiting in so many different ways. Orrin, dude, what’s the average and median profit per distributor in TEAM? The MonaVie IDS has pretty sad numbers showing the lack of profit for the vast majority of people selling MonaVie. Is TEAM any different?

Greg Duncan Bankruptcy Auction

Scott Larsen over at Amquix.info has just posted details of the recent bankruptcy auction held on the Duncan estate. Readers will note that Duncan has been in bankruptcy proceedings for nearly two years now. One of the more interesting documents that Larsen has on his site is a proposed loan to the amount of $1,00,000 from Amway Global to Duncan’s various companies, including Sarshela, Inc., XS Energy, LLC, Seife, Inc. and World Wide Trust Company. As some of you will know, Duncan is part-owner of the company that produces the popular (among IBOs) XS Energy drink; he’s also one of the kingpins or Worldwide Dream Builders, one of the more prominent Lines of Sponsorship within Amway.

Upline leaders are supposed to be setting examples for their downline, and this certainly is not a good one to follow. Then again, when I think about it… perhaps they are setting an example for the vast majority of people who join Amway and a Amway Motivational Organization (AMO) like WWDB for the purpose of making big money. Most people eventually quit. Some people lose significant amounts of money. Some even get divorced.

But I Thought We Were In MonaVie TEAM to Make Money?

I thought the slogan for TEAM was to “Have Fun, Make Money, and Make a Difference!” After watching a portion of a recent video Orrin Woodward gave to TEAM, I’m not so certain. In Total Success, Woodward compares how a job, conventional business and a TEAM/MonaVie business contribute (or not) to these five components of human happiness:

1. Spiritual
2. Social
3. Economic
4. Political
5. Mental

He also throws Physical Success as a sixth parameter, since MonaVie proponents claim that it brings better health by daily consumption.

In the video, Orrin goes on to show how a typical job or conventional business does not improves one’s spiritual, social, political and mental lives. It might bring in money (economic), but without those other critical components, “you’re not human.” TEAM MonaVie, on the other hand, he claims, brings benefits to all these components.

Why Is MonaVie So Expensive?

I found this post on another blog (that is using the same theme as this blog). In The Value of MonaVie, the writer attempts to answer the question of why MonaVie is so expensive.

MonaVie uses only the most quality ingredients within it’s products. We also have to maintain enough staff to help keep quality standards high and at a specific level. When you buy MonaVie, you are only getting the best of the best. Quality is never sacrificed when making our product. It takes time and money to give you the best in health products.

Don’t forget that MonaVie is involved in a lot of charity products. A lot of the money goes to help out other causes.

If you feel that MonaVie is a little expensive, don’t let that stop you from obtaining it’s great benefits. There are discount all over the place. It will continue to get more competitive as more and more distributors and websites get a hold of the product.

The writer neglects to include one important ingredient to the high price of MonaVie. The 50% GV payout from the binary compensation plan is factored into the price of every bottle of MonaVie. If you’re a distributor paying MonaVie for $32/bottle, half of that money is going straight upline. Point blank, that’s why MonaVie is so expensive.

MonaVie Tries To Silence Lazy Man

MonaVie Legal has been busy sending requests to Lazy Man to stop using the MonaVie name in his meta tags. They claim that using the term “MonaVie” in these tags is a violation of their trademark. I wonder if they have sent similar letters to all of the other sites critical of MonaVie that can be easily found on the Internet.

This is just another attempt by MonaVie to game search engines from having critical assessments of the product, business opportunity, and unscrupulous distributors from being easily searchable on the Internet. We’ve seen examples in the past from other MLM corporations and distributors trying to game Google. That didn’t work then, and I doubt it’s going to work for MonaVie to. My take is that this legal cyber-bullying is going to backfire on MonaVie.