Anatomy of the TEAM LIFE Business Presentation

Mesha, a reader and contributor on this site provides a great overview of what you may hear if you go to a TEAM LIFE business presentation. In the second part of this document, she outlines the questions you should ask of TEAM LIFE members.

I am a very positive person, and I believe that people can and should reach for their dreams. Do not label me as “negative person, a lazy critic, sore loser, or a dream stealer.” In fact, I just hope that those screwed by TEAM don’t write off their dreams in the end.

I am sickened with the deception in TEAM and want to get the word out. After all, don’t they say that “Evil flourishes when good people do nothing?” That’s why I’m writing this post.

Introduction to the Meeting and Dream Building

In a TEAM LIFE presentation, a TEAM LIFE member will ask you the following questions:

• How would you like to be Financially Free?
• How would you like to stay at home with your kids?
• Get rid of that JOB?
• Pay off those student loans?
• What are your dreams?
• How would you like to live out your dreams?

Next, they will say something to the effect of:

• Well, we have news for you! In just 3-5 years you can have more money than you will know how to manage.
• Money will be coming out of your ears.
• In fact, with all that money you can have the freedom to bless others financially, if you so choose.
• And you will never, ever, ever have to have a JOB again!!
• Unless, of course, financial freedom and wealth building is not your thing.
• This amazing opportunity is not for everyone.
• No, it’s not network marketing. It’s a Leadership Development Service Provider.

Lecture On How Money is Made

From here, they will proceed into a Robert Kiyosaki-influenced lecture on how to make money:

• In this country there are four legal ways to make money.
• They are divided up into quadrants. “ESBI”. In the “E” quadrant you are trading time for money at your job. If you are trading time for money you are never going to be able to have both — the criteria for true wealth. Changing jobs won’t save you either. You must change quadrants.
• In the “S” quadrant a person owns their own small business, but is still trading time for money. They need to be present in order for that business to function. Even if employees are hired there is still no guarantee the job will get done. And when it doesn’t, who has to clean up the mess? You do!
• In contrast, on the right side of the chart a system is leveraged for making money.
• In the I quadrant money is made through investments, usually requiring a large sum of money to start with.
• BUT, in the “B” quadrant, a passive, residual income is created. A system has been set in place, allowing you to do the work once, and then profit from it long after you have stopped working. This is where 95 percent of the money in the United States is at. Remember, a person is only truly wealthy if they have both time and money. A “B” type income will give you that.
• Bet you didn’t learn this is school. That’s why you need to stick around the Association where you can gain access to the Right kind of Information.

More Dream Building

Following this lecture, the TEAM LIFE presenter will ask you some more questions to get you thinking about an improved financial life.

• How would you like to determine when you get a raise?
• What if you were compensated in direct proportion to the amount of work you did?
• What if you got to determine your work hours?
• I’m here to tell you that all this and more is possible. Sadly, though, as people move up in their careers, their income tends to cap off at a certain point even though they are doing the same work.
• It slowly sinks until retirement age where the majority of Americans are now either dead, disabled or broke.
• After they spend years making someone else rich they have come to the sunset of their lives with nothing to show for, living lives of quiet desperation.
• They were lulled into mediocrity, vicariously living their lives out through the blue hue, and one day hoping and praying their children would do something more.
• Isn’t it kind of funny how we could have done everything right in life and still end up at this point?
• Ya know they told us to go to school, graduate, and get a good job, and yet the majority of Americans are in debt. Look at the economy.
• It’s hard isn’t it? We know.
• We understand. We also have a solution.

Introducing TEAM and LIFE

After all this set-up, the TEAM LIFE presenter finally gets to talking about the business opportunity (LIFE) and the system (TEAM). At the same time, there’s scant concrete information given on exactly one is going to be selling.

• In school we are taught to learn a trade, do, it, and then that defines our lifestyle. But what if it was the other way around?
• What if we defined the kind of lifestyle we wanted learned from others who had the results we wanted in life, and then did them?
• Through a Leadership Development Service provider called TEAM you can learn how to create a passive, residual, type B income by owning your own LIFE business.
• We have a proven system to help you grow your business as well.
• Orrin Woodward, IAB award winner and chairman of the TEAM, as well as the rest of the PC have already forged the terrain in this industry and have created a system.
• The hard work has already been done. All you have to do is follow their path. Once you do, those who made it will be waiting to embrace you at the finish line.
• We are all in this together as a team.

Someone who’s seeing this TEAM LIFE business for the first-time will be no doubt confused by the terminology. What’s TEAM? What’s LIFE? What’s the PC? Who’s Orrin Woodward? These are great questions to ask at the end of the presentation. But, there’s no time for questions, as the presenter continues to spin the dream of what you’ll be doing:

• Through the system you will learn how to create communities of people.
• You want to know how money is made in this? People push products, products don’t push people.
• In networking a company with a product will pay communities of people to market their products instead of paying for advertising. That means more money goes back into your pocket.
• In this business you are creating communities of people which serve as the pipeline through which goods and residual income flow.
• It is kind of like Facebook, except that you get paid for every person you get to join your network.
• When you join your upline will have a vested interest in your success. They don’t make money until you do.
• All the stars are aligned in your favor. The only way you lose is if you QUIT.

At last, the presenter describes what LIFE really is, or does he?

• You, my friend, have come at the right time.
• TEAM has just launched its own MLM — the LIFE business — a few months ago and it is exploding!
• LIFE stands for Living Intentionally for Excellence.
• It’s a subscription service of world class leadership materials that will help you live a better life in all of the eight F’s — your family, faith, fitness, friendship, fun, following, finances, and freedom.
• This business is great because it is at the intersection between four booming industries- networking, community building, the life coaching industry, and the self-help industry.
• This business sells itself!

The presenter omits the fact that TEAM has been around since the 90′s, and has been aligned with several MLM businesses in the past: Amway, Quixtar, and MonaVie.

Some Details… But Not All

The presenter now talks about the capital investment needed to get started in LIFE. He also tries to (poorly) address the pyramid scheme complaints about this business by changing the subject:

• For only xxx amount of dollars, you too can have access to a multi- billion dollar business.
• Plus, as soon as you hit power player your business will pay for itself.
• No, this is not a pyramid scheme.
• Your job is a pyramid scheme and a cult.
• In a pyramid scheme you can’t make more money than the person who recruited you… but remember to save your spot before someone gets in ahead of you!
• You wonder if only the people at the top make money — well most traditional businesses have a 90 percent failure rate in the first few years of startup too, and remember those at the top had to start at the bottom at one point!
• And remember it’s not about the money — this is a social movement wrapped around a business.
• Orrin Woodward and the PC are Godly Individuals who are working to bring mom’s home and fight the media war.

The Final Pitch

The end of the presentation is near, but the TEAM LIFE rep has one final pitch to make:

• Can’t afford the startup fee? Then you must really need the system!
• Everything costs money at first.
• But really we are not about the money.
• In fact the producers of the LIFE subscriptions have decided to not take any royalties from their products so more money can flow back to those who are creating the communities.
• Let’s schedule a follow up appointment in a few days.
• Here’s some information to look over — feel free to ask any questions but remember, you wouldn’t go to McDonald’s Hamburger University and question their system would you?
• We are doing this with or without you!
• Are you fired up yet????

Since they said we could ask questions, let’s go ahead and start asking. The questions prospects should pose to TEAM LIFE members is covered in Part Two here.