MLM - Network Marketing Blog

Xango Leader Bob Schmidt Dies In Tragic Accident

Bob Schmidt, a former Amway Double Diamond, former top earner in New Vision and current leader in Xango died Monday from an apparent drowning.

I did not know Bob personally, but from what I hear, he was a true leader and an inspiration to thousands.

I had a reader send me an email that included some thoughts about Mr. Schmidt.  Here is a paragraph that stood out to me:

He loved those he took under his wing, he loved this industry.  Bob was one of those rare individuals who didn't need to jump on a stage under the spotlight to validate himself, instead he stood back and let those he taught take the limelight, he was enormously proud of the honest achievements of others.  Bob was forever the student, observing, learning, honing his skills, and he was a voracious reader, a book always nearby waiting for him to ferret out the good lessons contained therein.  He was the hardest teacher.  He was the best teacher.  He was the teacher that will always be remembered with love, admiration and respect.

Bob Schmidt was 63 years old.

Quixtar - Amway Non-Compete News

Here is a taste of what is being said around the net about a recent ruling...

On Friday, May 23, 2008, the Federal Court for the Eastern District of Texas ruled that the Quixtar Rules of Conduct are unenforceable because they are on their face illusory. Simmons et. al. v. Quixtar. Citing the fact that Rule 1 of the Rules of Conduct reserve in the Corporation the right to change or amend the rules at any time, the court held that on their face the Rules are but an illusion that cannot be enforced.

- Orrin Woodward's Blog quoting Attorney, Mike McCormick

Quixtar has suffered a legal setback in their dispute with TEAM. A Texas district court judge has declared that earlier Fifth Circuit reasoning in Morrison et al vs Amway et al that Amway's contract was "illusory and unenforceable" also applies to current Quixtar contracts.

- "A Win For Team" by IBOFightback at The Truth About Amway

This ruling, and a couple of other recent ones, will likely have an impact (how significant remains to be seen) on several recent TEAM cases and Quixtar’s arbitration agreement.  On February 8, 2008, on the Alticor Media Blog, the blog’s moderator, in speaking to the dismissal of the Nitro case stated:

“And another important point: Contrary to some of the spinners out there, the ruling hinges on the fact that the dispute is so very old—beginning before 1998, before we even had an arbitration program. Therefore, the effect of this ruling on our current arbitration program and current cases (a shrinking list, given the Nitro dismissal) is virtually zero. If someone’s telling you otherwise, don’t buy the hype.”

Well, it’s obvious the judge in this case clearly disagrees with the blog moderator’s assessment of the matter.  Apparently “virtually zero” isn’t “absolute zero.”  However, this is not a final ruling on the merits of the case itself, so we will have to wait to hear how the specific case itself plays out.

- Chuck Lia, Speaking of Amway

Chuck's site also includes the entire ruling for your viewing pleasure.

In my search for information about the case, I also found a new site called Amway Watch that you might want to have a look at.  I suspect that the site is run by IBOFightback, but in my quick look, I did not see any authorship.

Guest Blogger: Tamal Anwar on Developing Leadership Skills

This article is a guest post by Tamal Anwar who is a networker and a motivator from The blog about success.

Being a leader is what many people want, no matter you are in business or in any sector  with a team, you want to be the leader. Being a leader is not a big deal but dealing with your duties and your team mates is the toughest part of leadership. In MLM, you are the leader of your team but sometimes we have a hard time to spend being the leader. There are many skills which you can develop to become the perfect leader. Being a leader is very much hard task because you have to manage people from different ages and from different places with separate mentality. if you want to become a great leader in MLM, adopting these skills will help you achieve your goals,

1. Never behave bad with your team mates: Please never ever behave bad or roughly with your fellow team mates/ distributors. Because your distributors are not your employees. They have the same status what you have. People doesn't follows the leader if they don't like him or his attitude. It is not worthy for you if your distributors doesn't follows you no matter how much you earn from your business. If your distributors quit this business, they will have not much to loss. So they are not bound to this business this is why they have no such reasons to follow you if they don't like you. If you want to grow your business
then you shouldn't behave bad with them because it will effect on your own business.

2. Learn from your nearest upline: Your nearest upline, may be the person who enrolled you in this business, will support you the most. If you went to your more superior upline leader, he may not put much focus on you. I know many Diamond leaders and they will talk with my new distributors if I request, but that counseling would not be very much worthy for a new distributor. If you went straight to your upline leader without going to your nearest upline, the chances are that you will not get the better support. Your nearest upline will always there for you and who knows, he might have the answer you are looking for.

3. Help your cross line: Cross line/ help line are the people who are in this business but not in your team. You will not get any direct benefits if you help them but it is required if you want to be a leader. Help them with the things you can. Talk with them and help their distributors to learn the business and may be they will return the favor too. Let others from other teams know you. One of the goals of MLM is to make you popular among people. Talk with them and help them. Build a nice relationship and they will talk about you too and they will sure help your team mates which will support your business.

4. Build leadership: Don't just be a leader, make new leaders from your team. Let others build their own team and leaders. Duplicate the leadership to spread your business. Be patient because the result will take some time to come. MLM is a team work and a single person can't do 100% work. If we work together, 100 people can do at least 1% of work. Do you want yourself to do the business forever? Off course not, thats why you need more leaders to support your business. Learn from your distributors and how they work. Help them to learn more and be their leader, not their boss.

I know you can do it, you have too. Because we all love success.

Memorial Day - 2008

Words are even more feeble on this Memorial Day, for the sight before us is that of a strong and good nation that stands in silence and remembers those who were loved and who, in return, loved their countrymen enough to die for them.

Yet, we must try to honor them -- not for their sakes alone, but for our own. And if words cannot repay the debt we owe these men, surely with our actions we must strive to keep faith with them and with the vision that led them to battle and to final sacrifice.

- Ronald Reagan

Imagenetix vs MonaVie Case Settled?

I hear that the $2.75 Billion lawsuit against MonaVie has been settled, but I have not seen any official press release or documents stating such.

Case closed? Maybe.

You would think that there would be a joint press release or something.

MLM Pho - Network - Internet Marketing Meet Up In Seattle

Inspired by John Chow's Dot Com Pho, where a group of bloggers and Internet Marketers get together to network over lunch at a Vietnamese Pho Noodle house, I give you MLM Pho.

The idea is to get together as Network and Internet Marketers to share ideas, network and socialize.

The first MLM Pho will take place in Seattle, Washington at Pho Cyclo (on Broadway) on Saturday June 14th at Noon.

More information coming soon...special guests and all that.

Guest Blogger: Anders Gustavsson On Accelerated Learning - Part 2

Network Marketing and all that is involved can be a challenge to understand and learn.

There are several stages of learning that one must go through to fully grasp any concept. This is especially true in MLM because the last stage involves teaching, and if any concept is not fully understood it will not be able to be taught to others correctly.

Here are the 5 stages of learning:

1) Unconscious Incompetent - You don't know, you don't know
2) Conscious Incompetent - You are aware that you don't know
3) Unconscious Competent - You are unaware that you know
4) Conscious Competent - You are aware that you know, and make conscious decisions to further your education in specific areas
5) Mastery - You have a firm grasp of the subject, and can teach others with efficiency

The simple learning method of listening and memorizing may work; however it is not the most effective. This method works for some people, but is not the best way to teach groups of people that individually have different learning preferences.

Accelerated learning processes use a mixture of techniques to teach a particular subject. When multiple teaching techniques are used it creates more interest and causes you to move your audience through the 5 stages of learning faster.  The more engaged they are in the learning process, the more likely they are to retain the information, and the easier it becomes for them to teach it.

“Each one, reach one. Each one, teach one. Until all are taught. " - Mark Victor Hansen

In part 3 we will wrap up with some ideas for you to utilize and test when training your people.

Anders Gustavsson
President Infinite Synergy,
Creators of MLM The Game

Ty Tribble and The Internet Marketing Moms

In honor of Mother’s Day, I made a special one-time offer to the Moms that read my Success Newsletter (sign up for free and get and I will give you a free copy of Think and Grow Rich). I limited the special to three Moms, but a fourth Mom sneaked in at this last minute and I decided to honor her with the special as well.

So here is what we are doing…

First, I sent them all a care package that included the “It’s Called Success” program and Mike Dillard’s Building On A Budget. That alone is over $350 worth of incredible content related to building a profitable Network Marketing business on and off the Internet.

Next, I am giving each Mom 5 hours of personal coaching ($1,000 worth) to help them set up a template for success on the Internet.  We are actually going to build a lead capture page and set up a Google Adwords campaign to drive traffic and begin to create her own laser targeted leads.

Lastly as another bonus I haven’t even told them about yet, I am going to set them up with a blog, host it and and optimize it. (another $250 value).

I have asked the Moms to allow me to document some of the results we get so stay tuned.

I will never offer the special Mom price ever again, but I might consider another special offer once I wrap up with the Moms.

MonaVie CEO Dallin Larsen On Imagenetix Lawsuit

If this is true, then the question really becomes:

Sloppy Management or Questionable Ethics?

Are we really to believe that Dallin Larsen either...

A. Didn't realize that MonaVie no longer contained Celadrin?

B. Didn't realize that over 16,000 entries about MonaVie/Celadrin can be found on Google?

Dear Diamonds and Above,

A few days ago in San Diego, California, a company by the name of Imagenetix filed a lawsuit against MonaVie and named many of our top distributors in the suit.  This was in breach of an agreement we had reached with Imagenetix earlier in the week.  We expect this issue to go away over the next few days.

To give you some perspective and to calm any concerns you may have, when MonaVie first launched in 2005, we included in our product a trademark ingredient called Celadrin®.  Because we weren’t able to reach terms of use back in 2005, we stopped using this ingredient.  However, Imagenetix has claimed that some of our distributors continued to refer to Celadrin® as an ingredient found in MonaVie Active and as such, Imagenetix believes that MonaVie has violated their intellectual property rights in the ridiculous amount of $2.5 billion!!!   

As a show of good faith, we’ve reached an agreement to once again include Celadrin® in MonaVie Active.  However, we are also very disappointed that Imagenetix chose to breach our agreement through the filing of their lawsuit.  We’ve obviously been in contact with them and their attorney called us as early as yesterday apologizing for the filing of the lawsuit, stating that he was uninformed that MonaVie and Imagenetix had already reached an agreement.  He was obviously embarrassed and we were less than amused.

Imagenetix has assured us that they will retract the filing and make a statement of such over the next few days and we fully expect them to keep their word.  If for whatever reason, they remain in breach of our agreement, rest assured that MonaVie is well prepared as always, to protect the interests of all our distributors.  Feel free to share this information with anyone in your respective groups who may have inquired as we’ve fielded approximately a dozen calls over the last few days at the company.  However, I would caution you not to overly concern anyone by spreading discussion on this topic, as again, we fully expect it to go away over the next few days.

I guess this means we’re no longer under the radar!  Keep up the good work!!!  And let this serve as a reminder, MonaVie DOES NOT contain Viagra!

Dallin

MonaVie: The Culture Of Claims?

I first heard about MonaVie before it launched, over four years ago. Because I write about the Network Marketing industry for two media outlets in addition to this site, I try to keep up with what's happening in the industry.  I subscribe to hundreds of news feeds and follow companies as closely as possible.

MonaVie jumped back on my radar in 2006 when former Nascar driver Geoff Bodine claimed:

“It’s (Monavie) got rid of the majority of my arthritic pains,”

I wrote about it, but didn't really think about it much further until a MonaVie distributor posted another  comment on one of my blogs:

I'm looking for people who are suffering from asthma, high blood pressure, diabetes, Monavie drink, has the #1 anti-oxidant to help peaple who suffers from these diseases...

God bless her, she is simply trying to grow her business and she mentioned that her upline told her about blogs that could get her leads.

I began to see a pattern of behavior on behalf of MonaVie distributors.  About that time, I also got reports from people going to live MonaVie meetings where all kinds of crazy things were being said. "The lame can walk and the blind can see with MonaVie", wrote the reader. The reader was obviously joking, using an exaggeration about the lame and blind, but his point was that the meetings centered around miraculous claims.

Then a few months later, I was on YouTube and found dozens of MonaVie distributors talking about the product and diseases such as Lyme Disease and Arthritis. I wrote about and posted one of the videos on this blog. A day later, I found a comment on the YouTube video saying the following:

"who said there is no cure for Cancer Logon to the monavie,com and use ID # 580838 from the Enroll to get ur health better,Cancer no more"

At this point, it was obvious that the culture in MonaVie was to make claims. Culture does not travel up from the newest distributor. Culture filters down from the leadership.

Because most of the time these MonaVie claims were made face to face, the FTC and FDA can not come down on the company without a complete and costly investigation. However in the age of YouTube and Blogging, the evidence of these claims was overwhelming and it forced MonaVie to react.

Rather than reel in the leadership and educating the distributors, MonaVie reacted by banning web sites produced by anyone below the level of Black Diamond, a move that might prove devastating to the Black Diamonds and above since they are now being sued over the Celadrin claims.

When you build your business on a culture of questionable (or untrue) claims, it will eventually catch up with you.