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?
Orrin Woodward recently tweeted this nugget:
Success never goes on sale so determine now to pay the full price.
While success never goes on sale, Orrin’s expensive tools trunks have gotten cheaper. Revised in August, 2009, the Media Warrior 2000 and Media Warrior 1000 Trunks have both seen their prices reduced since my blog post about them several months ago1. While the two trunks originally sold for $2000 and $1000, they are now selling for $1690.72 and $871.76 respectively.
TEAM has also rearranged the deck chairs in terms of what you get in the trunks. It’s still, however, basically a bunch of paper and CDs, items that can easily be distributed and updated if they were in PDF or MP3 format. Then again, Orrin wants you to pay the full price for success, so I don’t think you’ll be getting many freebies from him in the future. Don’t say he didn’t warn you!
It goes without saying that you still don’t get a physical trunk with either purchase. I bet if I looked hard enough, I could find a box big enough to hold all of your tools for sale on the TEAM web site!
1 I read about the trunks originally from Candace on Lazy Man’s extensive blog post on MonaVie.
Orrin’s recent tweets had me doing several double-takes:
Ask yourself this question with everyone you meet, “What do I admire about this person?” – then share your praise with them.
Of course, after sharing your praise with them, the next set of questions will be to prospect them into the MonaVie and TEAM business.
If the only tool you have is a hammer, then everyone looks like a nail.
A prospecting CD is often in the possession of a MonaVie TEAM member. Watch out, because to them, you’re just another prospect waiting to be nailed onto the “unholy cross” of MonaVie and TEAM.
Reposting this entry from August 2009. Our your goals really your own or are they just using Orrin’s goals?
Orrin has a new video up on his site where he explains the importance of goal setting. The only goals that I see being achieved, however are that of being a good, obedient TEAM member. Here are some choice quotes from the video:
The only goal that I see which has the possibility of bringing in money for the MonaVie TEAM distributor is how many of the distributor’s people who are on autoship. All of the other “goals” are clearly TEAM goals meant to fill the coffers of the Team kingpins.
Sadly, clearly many people have bought into the goals of Orrin Woodward and his TEAM kingpins. I wouldn’t have so much of a problem with his leadership training business if it resulted in more people having success. Yet that’s exactly the problem with most MLMs and most Systems; neither provides the level of financial benefit to the vast majority of people who are involved. Sure, there are a handful of people who benefit tremendously, but most people are left footing the bill.
Orrin closes the video by saying that there is going to be only one team that will be the fastest growing team in TEAM for 2009. He asks the viewer if it’s going to be his or her team. The answer is no; the only team that will grow is Orrin’s team.
Didn’t qualify as a Bronze and get the “privilege” of attending the TEAM Go Diamond event last weekend in Cleveland, Ohio?
Well, don’t worry, as here’s your chance this weekend to give more money to the Supreme TEAM Leader, Orrin Woodward. TEAM is holding their monthly seminars in locations all across the country. No doubt there will be many copies of Orrin and Chris’ new book, “Leadership and Liberty” for sale at the monthly seminar. Remember, not only do you need to have one as part of your TEAM Book of the Month, but you need to buy several for your prospects and downline! Stock up, because we all know if you don’t, America will quickly become a fascist, totalitarian country!
Here’s the description of a monthly seminar:
It has been said, “The key to success is to get the information from the correct source.” And Team leaders understand that in order to be successful, you must first learn from those who have attained desirable results in a specific area.
Monthly seminars are Saturday afternoon and evening events in which Team’s top leaders take the stage. These seminars are designed to teach, motivate, and recognize individual achievements. This is also a great opportunity for a guest to get better acquainted with Team. A ticket is required for admission and is available in advance at a discounted price.
The Keynote Speaker and Ticket Holder Speaker (whatever that means) for the Sacramento meeting are Dan and Lisa Hawkins. I’m not familiar with them, but I am familiar with the STEP 250 Leadership Speaker; it’s none other than former Amway and INA Diamond, Roger Sitcler. I sure hope that STEP 250 doesn’t mean there are now 250 steps to success in TEAM! No wonder no one is moving up in the business and the same speakers are being jetted off across the country each week to speak to the TEAM downline. It’s too bad that these leaders can’t make use of the MonaVie Jet Credits — sorry, they’ll have to pay for their own fare until they become Black Diamonds.
Kidding aside, I do have a thought exercise for TEAM members. I know that you’re probably sick of my “negative” ranting and raving about TEAM, MonaVie, and Orrin Woodward, but stop and ask yourself the following questions:
For the vast majority of people attending these seminars, I think I know the answers to these questions. Yet, I ask them not to make TEAM members feel bad about their lack of progress, but to open their eyes to the fact that they don’t have to be stuck in the hamster wheel. If you aren’t progressing in the MonaVie business, leave. Take whatever you’ve learned from your experience and apply it to something different. Variety is often called the spice of life… why not try something different?
While I’m talking about TEAM and MonaVie, the same questions and answers can apply to Amway IBOs as well.
It seems like only yesterday I was writing about the BWW Spring Leadership in San Jose. I just found out that I completely missed out on the BWW Summer Conference, which was again held at the San Jose Civic Auditorium, July 18-19, 2009. I had a good excuse; I was attending a wedding that weekend!
I’m fortunate that I never had an important date or anniversary conflict with a Major Function when I was in the business. I’ve read stories of people who had to choose between attending a wedding, party, children’s graduations, etc. or going to a Spring Leadership, Summer Conference, or Family Reunion. It’s my opinion that these Major Functions are all the same: heavy on the rah-rah and light on actual substance. With all due respect to those who disagree, if you’ve been to one, you’ve been to them all!
But, if people want to spend $100-200 a ticket to stand in line on a hot San Francisco Bay Area day and listen to people talk all day and night long, fine by me. I’m not stopping you.
Update: Looks like the TEAM Media Tool Trunks have been reduced in price. The Media Warrior 2000 is now selling for $1,684.90 and the Media Warrior 1000 now goes for $859.70.
I came across this great comment from Candace on Lazy Man’s blog post about MonaVie.
She writes about two “incredible” tool trunks available from the TEAM web site, the TL147 – Tool Media Warrior Trunk 2000 and the TL146 – Tool Media Trunk 1000. The prices on these ultimate TEAM Tools are $2000 and $1000 respectively. Seeing that old Amway tools sell for pennies on the dollar on eBay, I was compelled to do a price comparison of these tool chests. The numbers in the spreadsheet below are calculated using the TEAM member prices, not the retail prices. Click the image below to see the spreadsheet full-size1:
Now, usually, if I were to buy a compilation of tools, I would expect the compilation to be cheaper not more expensive. Orrin Woodward and his TEAM Leaders have once again succeeded at showing greed has no limits. Buy the tools individually2 over the trunks, and you will SAVE $109.90 and $23.70 respectively!
But wait, don’t you get to keep the wonderful trunks so prominently displayed on the TEAM shopping site? No, read the fine print:
* Trunk not included
I bet Woodward is using the trunks to hold all the money he’s taking from distributors who don’t take the time to calculate the cost of purchasing the tools individually.
What do you get for purchasing this “powerful” tool set? Purchasers will “receive a free decal for their car and a matching tee shirt to be worn with pride.” Yup, buying this set means all of your fellow MonaVie Teammates will know you were the fool for buying an overpriced tool trunk.
Here are links to screenshots of the tools trunks from TEAM’s web site, as of May 24, 2009:
1 I could not find the price of the Success Magazine (Team Version) product, so estimated the cost as $2.25. Prices are effective according to TEAM’s web site as of May 23, 2009.
2 I omitted the fact that a large percentage of these tools are brochures or audio files, items that can be easily converted into lower-cost (or even freely) downloadable MP3s or PDFs.
In the nearly ten years since I quit, I have yet to be prospected by an Amway IBO. This weekend, however, I knew exactly where they were going to be! I was in San Jose on Friday evening when I saw “BWW Spring Leadership April 18-19″ adorning a sign next to the San Jose Civic Auditorium. My former System, INA, frequently held opens at the Civic Auditorium. I could not pass up this opportunity to do some more investigation.
BWW planned four Spring Leaderships in the month of April: Richmond, VA, London, Canada, San Jose, CA, and Dallas, TX. I wonder how the economic downturn in the United States is affecting attendance at these Spring Leaderships. Tickets for Leadership started at $100 ($105 at the door) per person1. Looking at the line, there were a sizable number of people in attendance, but I don’t think they filled the Civic Auditorium (max 3,000) to capacity. I would estimate an attendance of about 1000 people over the weekend.
The biggest surprise was the racial demographic of the crowd. The vast majority of IBOs — at least 80% — were of Southeast Asian descent. While I know that that BWW group in the Bay Area has several Indian Diamonds, I was still unprepared to see such a large percentage of Southeast Asians in the crowd. This was not the case with INA ten years ago, where Caucasians made up the majority of IBOs. Finally, by my estimate, most of the IBOs were also in their twenties or early thirties. Young and impressionable, just like I was!
This weekend was very hot in the Bay Area, and I bet it was uncomfortable to be in those suits and business dresses. I know it’s called “business attire,” but here in the Bay Area, it’s a bit overkill.
I did speak to one IBO. He never mentioned the Amway or Quixtar name to me. He just said that this was the annual Spring Leadership for people who run their own businesses. What struck me as odd, however, was that he emphasized that everyone attending the meeting was management level and up! I wanted to ask him more questions, but decided against doing so. He exuded the typical excited IBO air, and I didn’t want to poo-poo his attitude and “steal his dream.”
Click on the images to see the larger versions. Click again to see the original photo.
1 I don’t know if prospects got into the conference for free or if they had to pay $100 to attend.
In Star Wars, there is a Rule of Two governing the number of Sith Lords. There are only two Sith Lords operating at any one point in time, a master and an apprentice. At first, the master teaches the apprentice the ways of the Dark Side of the Force, until one day, the apprentice’s ego and ambition rise to such a point where s/he will try to overthrow the master. Sometimes the apprentice fails, and the master finds a new apprentice. Sometimes, the apprentice succeeds and becomes the master.
I see this same cycle happening within Amway/Quixtar/MonaVie Motivational Organizations. Leaders underneath the kingpins decide they want to be the kingpin of their own systems and subsequently break away. We’ve seen this happen time and time again with InterNet, BWW, INA, LTD, TOD, N21 and who knows how many more organizations (and acronyms). Now, we’re witnessing this unfold with Orrin Woodward’s very own TEAM. The Haugens, Smiths, Crawfords, and Wilsons have all decided that they do not want to play second fiddle to Master Woodward and have struck out on their own with the Legacy Business Group Professional Development Program.
Give them a few years and we’ll see what happens to those leaders and those that come up after them. Will Legacy’s up and coming leaders grow big enough and decide to leave for their own share of the System pie? We shall see!
What goes around, comes around. Orrin Woodward is experiencing that for himself right now. How’s that for Karma?
Is this true?
Triple Diamond Greg Duncan has been in bankruptcy court since the end of 2007???
There’s a new thread on AmwayTalk from a brand-new IBO called Beans:
I’m a new IBO. I just joined about three weeks ago, and every time I get with my upline and everything I get totally pumped about the business, but then I come home and google it and read all the negative stuff all over and it’s a real downer. I get to wondering if I made the right decision. I see how I can make money, but then I wonder if by I’m causing other people to lose money by bringing them into the business. It’s just difficult. I have noticed though that most negative blogs and things aren’t very recent, so that helps a bit. I’m not totally sure where I’m going with this but basically I’m just looking for some encouragement as I start out. Also, could I get some slight clarification on the whole “Diamonds make most of their money on selling books and tapes” :confused: ordeal because that seems to be one of the most popular arguments. Thank you very much.
Who should Beans listen to? Critics or supporters? I found myself in this exact same situation the day after I signed up. I went onto the Internet and found a few sites critical of the Amway business. Distraught over this information, I spoke with my uplines, and they convinced me not to believe everything that I read about the corporation on the Internet. And so I stuck it out, rarely going back to anti-Amway web sites until after I had quit.
This was a clearly a mistake on my part. Looking back, I should have listened to what I was reading and left the business immediately. It would have saved me two and a half productive years of my life.
When people quit the business, there’s a period of time where they want to have absolutely, positively, nothing to do with the business. They don’t want to hear about the name Amway/Quixtar, they don’t want to see any product (i.e. they throw everything away) and they more certainly don’t want to listen to any tape or CD (which they also throw away). This is why many critics seem to be from 5-10 years ago. It takes time for many critics to recover and be able to speak about their experiences.
Speaking for North American IBOs, there’s a reason why critics exists, and it’s to provide a cautionary tale for those who find themselves being prospected for or in the Amway/Quixtar business. My advice to Beans is to read up all you can about the positive and negative about the business and make your own decision. Start with the goal in mind and determine if Amway… or some other business opportunity… will help you achieve your goal.
Orrin has a new post hawking his latest tools:
Newly revised (to reflect TEAM’s transition from Amway to MonaVie), these tools are designed to supercharge your team to levels unheard of in the MLM industry! All for only $108. Buy it now, because in a year’s time, these tools will be revised with even more cutting-edge information… for another $108!
I know Orrin’s gotta put food on the table, but what about distributing this information in PDF form or via MP3s on the TEAM web site? Seeing how often some of these tools get revised, isn’t it smart business to make them available electronically? By now, everyone has a computer or MP3 player (an excuse used by the leaders back in my day), right?
Orrin talks about the success that he has through his leadership program:
We studied networking, studied leadership, studied patterns and built and organization from 200 people attending meetings to over 20,000 in attendance in 7 years.
I thought he was aiming for a million-person IBO/TEAM army a few years back? Looks like he still has a ways to go.
Update April 15, 2009: Article updated with a response this response from Kevin T., former legal counsel to TEAM. Also updated Robert Dickie’s position at AGO; a previous version of this article implied that he left AGO in September 2008.
Supreme TEAM Leader Orrin Woodward proudly proclaims on his site that all proceeds from his book Launching A Leadership Revolution will be donated to All Grace Outreach, a 501c3 charitable organization. From its web site, the organization:
is committed to providing assistance to those in need. Our main focuses include helping abused, abandoned, and distressed children, supporting U.S. military families that have lost loved ones in war, and spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the world.
In its newsroom section, All Grace Outreach lists a number of donations its made in the past two years:
There’s nothing wrong with donating money to charity, and I’m sure that the organizations listed above are worthy causes.
Here’s what I’m seeing as suspicious, however. Look at the leadership of All Grace Outreach: Robert Dickie III, Chief Executive Officer of TEAM, Robert Cassidy, Chief Information Officer of TEAM, and Kevin T., Chief Legal Counsel of TEAM1. Board members of AGO include Tim and Amy Marks. Who else is on the board of All Grace Outreach? I would wager that Orrin along with his other high-ranking TEAMmates are on the board.
Where is this idle speculation leading to? My main question is primarily financial. How much money is being “donated” to their organization that isn’t going to charity? Is All Grace Outreach being used as a tax-sheltering organization for Orrin and other members (Chris Brady? Randy Haugen?) of TEAM?
Orrin has a new post on his site today where he mentions December’s Book of the Month, The Go-Giver (which is available for just $13.57 on Amazon.com). Orrin comments on the Law of Value:
I have taught for years to give more than you receive. The goal should be to deposit more into each relationship that you have than can possibly be given back. This becomes harder the more relationships that you have and the more servant leaders that you have on your team. With that said, the goal is still to give more than you receive. When you add true value into people’s lives, people will want to add value into your life. Are you giving more in value than you require in payment?
How much is he giving to All Grace Outreach and then funneling back to himself?
Thoughts? Opinions?
The purpose of this post is not to accuse Orrin so much as it is to start a dialogue on the structure and organization of TEAM. In my opinion, there’s something that doesn’t quite add up when you watch, listen and read Orrin’s posts. Past and present TEAM members are encouraged to participate in the comments below!
Update April 15, 2009: I received an email response from Kevin T., the former legal counsel of TEAM, who wanted to respond to the question of whether or not AGO funds were ever misappropriated:
However, your article about AGO serving as a tax shelter has missed the mark entirely. First, it’s completely unfair to assume (without any factual basis) that someone is using a nonprofit organization as a “tax shelter.” The fact that Team officers are board members of AGO is not evidence of any wrongdoing. I value my integrity and I can assure you that funds from AGO were never used for any other purposes other than to promote its mission (spreading the gospel and helping disadvantaged kids). None of the board members were ever compensated, myself included.
1Kevin T. left his position from TEAM and AGO at the beginning of 2009 to work on his startup law ventures and private practice.
