Leaving Team and Orrin Woodward

Why would leaders so praised by the Supreme TEAM Leader ever decide to leave the organization? How could you leave Team if this things like were said about you?

Laurie and I had the blessing to spend a couple of days with Mark and Tami Crawford. We are so impressed by their hunger to improve and grow. The Crawford’s have built large communities and have done so with character, integrity, and teamwork. They are both incredible leaders and how they work together creates synergy. Thank you Mark and Tami for your incredible example of Together Everyone Achieves More. This is a couple to watch as the Team moves on to its goal of 1 million leaders!

I received an email the other day from a reader who said that there has been some turmoil lately amongst the leadership of Team. Several high-level pins have purportedly left Team — the aforementioned Mark and Tami Crawford, Randy and Val Haugen, Don Wilson, Chuck Goetschel, and Lance Smith? — to form their own tools business¹. If this is true, Orrin needs to reset his goal of a million members from a lower starting point! I have often compared “building the biz” to building sandcastles; after awhile, the surf comes in and reduces your lovely castle to a pile of sand, forcing you to rebuild it once again. This is something to strongly consider if you decide to join an MLM; the reality of “success” — lifetime, will-able, residual income — may not match the rhetoric heard on stage.

What Is He Doing To Earn $3,246,026 A Year?

I looked up the Mid-Year 2008 MonaVie Income Disclosure Statement, and I saw how much money a Presidential Black Diamond like the Supreme TEAM Leader Orrin Woodward was making last year from the great purple juice company.

$3,246,026

What is Orrin Woodward really doing to earn himself $3,246,026/year from the MonaVie opportunity? Let’s see:

• He writes on his website a few time a week about how this country is turning into the USSR right before his very own “Black Diamond” eyes.
• He cuts a new tape to sell to his TEAM disciples.
• He flies around the country to meetings in the MonaVie Corporate Jet Program.

Did I miss anything?

What percentage of your $40/bottle of juice concentrate is going to fund his (or your upline Black Diamond) lifestyle? One morning shot of MonaVie? Two shots? A week’s worth of shots? Think about it, a percentage of every dollar you spend on MonaVie — and you’re spending $40/week, $120/month — is going straight into this man’s bank account.

Store for More, Now with Less

Saw this from a forum post on AmwayTalk. Article originally from WZZM13:

“Amway Global, Amway Corporation’s North American affiliate, will stop selling name-brand fashion, footwear, and home merchandise through its Store for More Catalog effective August 2009. The company will eliminate these categories to focus its resources on its strategy to build its Nutrilite health and nutrition and Artistry skin care and cosmetics brands and other product categories.”

This is a good idea for the corporation in a number of ways. IBOs probably weren’t buying name-brand products from the Store for More because of higher prices, shipping costs, and low PV/BV ratio. Cutting ties to these products allows Amway to focus its marketing and development on the things it manufacturers in-house: Nutrilite, Artisty, home-care products.

Supporters of the Amway business have always touted how you could buy name-brand products through the biz. With the Store for More now having less, what can they say now?

Happy Friday: The Time Has Come

The Quixtar name is less than two months away from going away. The final step of the three-phase transition from Quixtar to Amway Global is almost complete. Tonight, many IBOs are getting ready for their weekly team meetings. How are they communicating what business they are in? How many are still clinging to the Quixtar name? How many are representing themselves as Amway Global IBOs? How do they respond to questions from prospects about the different names?

Ten years ago, a similar transition occurred. There was excitement in IBO circles when the name Quixtar was announced. 9/1/99 was going to change everything! The corporation had licensed the song, “The Time Has Come” from the Chambers Brothers as part of the marketing rollout of Quixtar. Even my System, INA, got into the act by hiring the band to sing at one of its Major Functions. To this day, whenever I hear “The Time Has Come” I think back on my time as an Amway and Quixtar IBO. INA taught us being in Quixtar meant we were no longer in Amway. Diamonds on stage were saying how glad they were of the name change; Amway had so much baggage and Quixtar was like a breath of fresh air. It didn’t matter that Quixtar sold exactly the same products as Amway and the same compensation plan as Amway. “Amway? That door-to-door business? This is Quixtar! This is e-commerce!”

Ah, the youthful naivete of the early Internet days! At the end of the day and ten years later, the name change meant nothing. Quixtar was just Amway with a different name. Come May, 2009, the time will have come for the Quixtar name to go away, replaced by Amway Global. And one day, will the “Global” disappear in favor of simply Amway?

8 months later…

It’s been eight months since I started this blog. How time flies!

Unless they stop and think about it, IBOs can easily lose track of time in their business. For me in the end, I came to the realization that (1) it was not working and (2) I was basically wasting my time. But, why did it take two and a half years to reach that tipping point?

Chalk it up to those pesky Major Functions every three to four months. I figure it took that long for an IBO to start getting discouraged in the business. They begin to doubt their ability to recruit new IBOs or to maintain their PV levels. Just as the System-haze is starting to wear off, here comes another Major Function: Free Enterprise Day, Family Reunion, or Summer Conference. At these functions, the IBO is showered with love bombs, rock music, and stories of triumph over impossible odds. All this serves to pump up the IBO with the belief that he or she can triumph too, fueling the IBOs efforts for the next several months, at which point the cycle would repeat ad infinitum.

Of course, interspersed between the major functions are various opens and team meetings, which reinforce the System’s teachings upon the IBO. I feel this is why IBOs lose track of time so easily. They are in an endless loop of function after function, meeting after meeting. Life as an IBO becomes regimented and like clockwork.

This is why it’s very important to take a hard look at the balance sheet every month, every quarter, and every year. If profits are exceeding expenses and the profit/time ratio is good, feel free to continue. On the other hand, if expenses are outstripping your profits or if the profit/time ratio is not good, I would recommend making a go or no-go decision on your business.

WWDB Triple Diamond Greg Duncan Bankrupt?

Is this true?

Triple Diamond Greg Duncan has been in bankruptcy court since the end of 2007???

Hope and False Marketing Claims

I saw this recently on WSJ.com (bold emphasis added):

Mannatech Inc., a maker of dietary supplements, agreed to pay $6 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the Texas attorney general. The state alleged that the Coppell, Texas company made false claims about its health benefits and marketed products as cures and treatments for diseases.

Possibly the most unusual aspect of the agreement was that the Sam Caster, the company’s founder, former chairman, former CEO and biggest shareholder, agreed to pay a $1 million civil penalty. The lawsuit, filed in 2007, alleged numerous instances in which freelance sales associates falsely claimed that the products helped cure or prevented diseases such as cancer, autism and Down syndrome. Caster, the suit alleged, failed to effectively stop these tactics.

False claims are common in multi-level marketing businesses. The most egregious ones that I’ve been seeing lately concern MonaVie and Perfect Water. While the company likes to categorize its purple juice concentrate as just food, its distributors are quick with wild claims of miracle cures for many physical ailments.

Check out this video with Orrin and Laurie Woodward from a recent MonaVie Regional in Anaheim, California:

I truly believe that MonaVie is hope. Hope is when we help people excel… We are here to offer hope.

– Laurie Woodward

Laurie describes MonaVie not as food, but as hope. Hope? Excuse me? This type of hope is what drives people to buy cases of products, boatloads of tapes, CDs, and conference tickets each and every month. Then again, if people are excelling at buying MonaVie by the case and tons of tools, I guess what she’s saying is true!

Hope is a tricky, fleeting thing. I would bet a case of MonaVie that Laurie or Orrin would have–at least once–said on stage that Amway/Quixtar was hope, that they were not selling soap, but hope. I wonder what they would call it today?