Stop The Amway Tool Scam Scott Johnson and Peter Mingils catch up on MLM News

0:00Welcome to Building Fortunes Radio. Make sure you check us out at BuildingFortunesRadio.com. Along with Kisk, our keep it simple circle marketing partners, we are here to help our UMungus AM and UMungus FM radio customers build their businesses and make the world a better place. At Building Fortunes Radio, we know how much your business means to you and the people important to you, so join us to make the world a better place. Spread the word, tell a friend, and go make a difference in your world. Now onto our show with your host, Peter Mingles. Take it away, Peter. Hello everyone. Peter Mingles here. You are listening to us on Building Fortunes Radio. It's www.buildingfortunesradio.com. This is a Saturday, 9.30pm Eastern 7.30 on the central side and we are here at the beginning of February. I can't believe it already. Scott Johnson and Scott and I have been doing this radio show for well over 10 years. It started as a result of a radio show that I did with Roger Van Blistingen and he brought

1:07along E. Robert Smith and a few other people as well throughout the several radio shows that we did. You'll be able to find those on Building Fortunes Radio, but we were talking about some of the stuff that was going on in MLM and Roger was somebody who wrote constructively but negatively about MLM on the publicly traded or the website that talks about publicly traded company called Seeking Alpha. And as a result of the radio show that we did there, he was talking about Herbalife and even though Vima wasn't publicly traded, he was talking about stuff related to Vima and the FTC. Scott called me up and he said, you know there's something that a lot of people are missing and I said, what's that Scott? He said, the tools scam associated with MLM and I had been associated with M-way meaning like I joined three separate times and I quit three separate times and when I quit it wasn't because the products weren't any good and although I could probably justify the overpriced

2:09products to some extent with maybe better quality and some instances or maybe just to support a comp plan which I wasn't worried about that much because I was part of the comp plan as well so when Scott said something about the tool scam, I said, I wonder if he's talking about MLM stuff because MLM seemed to really focus on me bringing more people to the business which let's call it the group and the group would buy these tools which was books, tapes and eventually go to all these functions and I said there's more money if I do what they're asking me to do I'm going to be generating more money in the system than I would in the product sales and I only get paid on the product sales so why in the world would I be pushing their system and I'm from New York so whatever that means to you but you know we're used to kind of like you know stuff and I'm like what do they

3:11think we're schmucks or something I mean they want me to bring my people in so they could sell my people or am I a schmuck and I just looked at it that way and I just said this is crazy like how can people not see this and there's a little expression you know if you see it right away no explanation is necessary if you don't see it right away no explanation is possible so I just said you know I'm done with this MLM stuff so when Scott said something about Toolscan I said to myself I'm wondering if he's thinking what he's and wonder if what I'm thinking is what he's talking about and when he said his website stop the MLM toolscan.wordpress.com that's what I knew that we're on the same page so yeah you know what's got your right a lot of people don't know about the importance of retail sales a lot of people don't know the toolscan that you're referencing and a lot of people are being taken advantage of so let's do this radio show series and I don't know how many will do but you know because you can't talk about Toolscan forever but the reality or only you can tell a matter forever just can't talk about him only forever I think that'd be pretty boring so one of the things that we did was we said let's do some radio shows

4:13and that's when I learned that Scott knew a lot more about the MLM industry and he was into it and at that same time like I said Herbalife was going through what they were going through VeeMu was going through what they were going through other companies started then to go through some stuff as well so we had some lively conversations about what's good about the industry and what's bad about the industry and those conversations continue tonight so if you're here you're listening in to Scott Johnson this is Scott Johnson's radio show if you go to buildingforgerradio.com you can find Scott's shows there but also Scott's got a great website that he integrates these radio shows into as well so you can find them when you go to the website he's going to reference as well so Scott thanks for being here on your own radio show hey Peter thanks for having me and I guess I'm a schmuck because I didn't see the tool scam right away but I'm not alone I mean over the years there's been you know millions and tons of millions of people who didn't who didn't see it and I think probably there's two things that I would identify that were different from your experience

5:19in my experience a number one you own your own business and you knew how much you were paying for you know motivational type training and and so you kind of knew some of the numbers you know when it comes to you know the profitability and so forth and I did not have any business experience and any time that the the tools came up in any kind of a discussion the standard answer was we don't make any money from tools you know they just kind of shut down the conversation and and the second and these are kind of interrelated the second thing I think that that was different is I got involved with a friend of mine and so there was some sort of pre-existing trust there and his his sponsor was his brother-in-law who was a medical doctor and and then there was another medical doctor above him that he practiced with and then there

6:19was two major airline pilots and so I thought I was getting involved in a pretty good group of people not knowing that they were all lying and then of course the the the dials anytime anything came up as far as profitability from the tools so you know I think those are the two main differences that we had that made me a schmuck so I don't mind being a schmuck when there's tens of millions of us by the way it's you know I always say and I still say they do a really good job of lying they are truly talented liars and it's not just the upline the distributors it's also the company you know the company is just really good at downplaying the tools cam even though interestingly one of the two co-founders Rich DeVos made a recording in 1983 where he said yeah

7:20we know you're making a bunch of money on tools and you better knock it off he said my lawyers think if you're making more than 10th percent from tools versus what you're making for manway we could get trouble with the government but I'm such a nice guy these are my words you know Rich DeVos speaking I'm such a nice guy I'm willing to go to 20% and he said that on the recording and you can find that by the way that recording if you go to my Facebook page it's facebook.com slash stop the amway tool scam and when you go there you'll see a series of links if you're on a computer it's like in the left hand part of the page if you're on your phone you'll have to expand you know a list but that link is there for my youtube channel so you can go to my youtube channel and actually listen to Rich DeVos say these things in 1983 right

8:20over 40 years ago so for at least that long and probably several years before that amway corporate new about the tools cam and they really weren't too excited about it and then eventually Rich DeVos spoke up against it but nothing happened you know he threatened you know serious consequences and of course those things never occurred and until this day there's a tool scam you know if anyone is under any misapprehension there's still a tool scam and if you go to my website that you mentioned earlier which is also linked on my Facebook page you'll see the stop the amway tool scam.wordpress.com and if you go there you can see there's a section I have these this website has different sections and one of them is the tool prices I think that's very important because you know people think well D my uplines out ripping me off like they ripped you

9:22off well I put the tool prices in there now this is aged information of course it's been inflated over the years but you can see what they were actually charging and it's it's people from this time period and even before this time period that talk about the massive amounts of money they're making from tools you mentioned that earlier but I've also identified several people who were kicked out of amway over the years right over the decades and they just start talking and usually they're bragging about this new MLM that they joined and and how the compensation plan is so much better and and again these are my words but they basically say I don't have to scam like that online anymore because this new MLM pays so much better on their compensation plan and then they talk about and my poster trial for this is a guy by name of break heart because he has the biggest multiplier that I've heard from any of these guys and he gave a an interview I guess a

10:29article was written in a Salt Lake City media outlet so if you if you google or you can go to my website but if you google break heart and it's b-r-i-g-h-a-r-t four letters in each name and then the words Salt Lake City you'll see this article where he says explicitly you know without being prompted he was making almost a million dollars a year from amway and he was making eight to ten million dollars a year from the tools and says that in black and white and there's several other examples on my website as well that talk about different things like Warren Woodward said my emeralds and above make four to five times from the tools compared to amway my own personal upline diamond guy by name of Bruce Anderson on his own blog which has been taken down and unfortunately I don't have a copy of that but he did say he made at least twice as much from tools versus amway and there's others too there's probably the best video example of

11:38this is also on my youtube channel and it's a guy by name of Andy Andrews and he was part of a group of I guess 15 or 18 diamonds and above back in the early 2000s who tried to form sort of a different tool system and and their intent was to have the brand new person by like two or three hundred dollars worth of tools but instead of all that money going just to the top 1% they would be shared with everybody up and down the chain right everybody at every level and and buying a large quantity of tools allowed them to do that and amway was originally on board in fact I purchased on eBay when I was finding a bunch of tools on eBay that they had some tools that were actually manufactured in Ada Michigan where amway is centered okay so so these were amway produced

12:40tools for this breakaway group but then something happened I don't know what happened you know amway they're eternally changed their mind there may be you know the dexterie eggers and billbrits got wind of this going on and said hey if you do that you know we're out of year or something and and and so it doesn't really matter what happened it just matters that amway changed their mind and this video that's on my youtube channel it's him and the Andrews and the major function if you've ever been an amway and then do a major function or pretty much any other MLM that have these conventions and we call them functions that you'll see the environment you'll see that he's in a big crowd there's all these lights and you know there's all these props in the background and all that it was like the nights of the round table theme so you'll see these you know I don't think there's people in them but there's there's these

13:40you know uniforms of armored you know the people anyway he's he's up there and he's explaining how at and at this point he was still an amway this him and this group they were still an amway and they didn't realize within a month or two they were going to be kicked out but he was explaining how they make several times more from the tools and they do from amway this big crowd and and and they were trying to bring amway back around you know to changing amway's mind back to the original position of supporting them and and of course they didn't do that they eventually got kicked out soon after actually this function and and you can see that on video now I think video is so powerful you know when you see somebody saying something it's more than when you see it in print or you can hear a recording you know audio recording seeing the video it just gives

14:41you just a bigger sense of things but what he said was exactly in line with people going all the way back into the 1970s that I've you know found and I've even talked to some of these people that we're making almost money on tools and and so you know that's the basis of me saying that they're making most of their money from tools it's all of them saying yet after they get kicked out and it's amway saying things like they said to Andy Andrews again this is in his video where they basically told him and sent him a letter saying that only the top two percent can be making money from tools and the other 98 percent should not even be aware that there's an opportunity to make money from tools so so you know it's not just the upline it's it's corporate amway that's in on this as well I know some people say amway's great but these uplines are terrible

15:42but no they're they're in it together they're you know join the hips or speak and and so you know that's what you'll find and I always tell people you know don't believe anybody just what they claim you know go check them out and I'm that's why I encourage people to check me out it check out my sources check out my references you know check out the based documents don't just believe anything I say you know and that's where you get your credibility is when you say something and then you can back it up I think Mohamed Ali was pretty famous for saying it's not bragging if you can back it up so so anyway that's that's the tool scam and just for the new people that mean I understand what tools are in the old days when we were involved it was books tapes and functions and so the upline sells books it's full price even though they can buy them for probably a fourth or a third of the cover price and the rest of that is pure profits for them um in our day it was it was cassette tapes it sort of transitioned to CDs now it's just

16:48electronic right empty three empty four downloads on your phone app that you again buy from am from the the upline um and then there's functions or meetings and there's all kinds of meetings you know small medium and large size meetings and all these things they're making money on they also have things like voicemail websites to access so you can check out you know when and where the meetings are and that sort of thing and and the voicemail isn't just voicemail some groups expect people to sort of give a daily update you know I did this this and this and you know I had this experience and you know good bad the ugly and all that and and so there's a lot of pretty tight oversight in some of the groups as far as you know the expectations of you reporting back exactly what your activities were on every given day you know and and so it's it's really interesting to see some of the differences which are slightly different from group-to-group but the base idea

17:54is that they're making multiple times from the tools more than they're making from am way and and these people obviously don't want to talk about it because everybody would leave and then they would be left with nothing and same with am way and we doesn't want these groups to leave because then they're not going to be selling their am way products and so it's just a big uh you know sort of a I call it Rico Fraud I think it's you know Rico RICO you can look that up it was a law written in the 1970s by the federal government the US federal government and it was intended to cover the mafia because the heads of the mafia would tell one of their underlings you know go knock off my competitor and they would do that and of course if they you know were caught they would get in trouble but the person that told them to knock them off there was no law and so they wrote this racketeering influence and corruption organization act

18:55I think that's what it stands for might be off on one of those words um but it's been used for lots of various white collar crimes over the years and I think that the tools game was a perfect fit for that you know why the FBI and uh FTC haven't picked up on that I have no idea I've informed both of them and have gotten zero action out of that um and that's why we do this show one of the reasons we do this show is um it's still alive and well now I would say alive but I wouldn't say well we can get into that a little bit later um but anyway that's the tool scam um and if it's not Rico Fraud to me it's at least business fraud because if you grossly misrepresent the business model to somebody that you're essentially saying hey get businesses with me business with me and let me describe to you how it works um and that's business fraud I mean it's it's again to me it's pretty obvious not even a lawyer um and maybe that's why maybe there's some kind of out here that I

19:59don't understand but it doesn't make any comments on so let's put it that way uh now the other big problem that that you also alluded to briefly is the lack of retail sales and when I say retail sales I'm talking about selling the products to people who are not distributors right they're not they're not eligible for the MLM compensation pay um they're just customers and and there's nothing in it for them other than you know treating their money for a product or a service and just like any other retail environment you might go to you know brick and mortar or online and uh and so the problem here is that most MLMs the products are really overpriced and it's really hard to get a customer to buy them it's not real hard to get a distributor to buy them because for various reasons both um legitimate and not legitimate there are reasons for a distributor to buy the products um you know you want to experience them yourself you want to be

21:03able to back them up to somebody whether it's a future distributor or a future customer um you want to please your upload right you want to be part of the team and fit in and all those good things um and and so you know there's there's lots of reasons uh to buy the products if you're a distributor there's really not very many good reasons if you're a customer if you can go somewhere else and buy a pretty similar product from much less money um you know i mean my mom when she was alive bought skincare from me i really didn't push it on her but you know she loved her son she wanted to support her son and support his business and so she bought the skincare and and she liked it but i don't think she ever used skincare before uh that maybe maybe some not seem or some you know you know generic brand something or other but certainly not high-end skincare type products um but she was my mom so you know mom's genuinely

22:04love their sons and want to support them and then that's what she did so you know those kinds of things do exist and certainly if you have a close friend or relative you know they might buy some things for you at least temporarily i know we had one guest on this show a few years ago who said yeah my family was really supportive of me you know they really wanted me to succeed in this they bought products from me uh maybe for a month or two and then they said this is pretty expensive that's you know we're not going to support you indefinitely so and i think that occurs pretty often when there is support um from you know friends and family and so if you want to have ongoing retail sales now you got to go find new customers and generally those new customers are not going to be as close to you you know friendship or relation wise and they're going to be harder to get and they're going to be even harder to keep so um that's you know really what happens and that's really the definition of an illegal pyramid i know that the ftc sort of has on their

23:08website all these different phrases and words and explanations and it sort of wanders around and you know it doesn't really make much sense they just have words on paper or on the screen and it just wanders around without really coming to any concrete conclusions but interestingly the ftc you mentioned vehement herbal life earlier in 2016 about a year after we were doing this show they settled with vehement and herbal life and in both cases and i'm going to generalize or just but just a little bit because it's a little bit more complicated than what i'm saying but basically both vehement and herbal life as well as the ftc agreed in a settlement right this is where both sides agree to things when you do a settlement before a trial and what they agreed to was if you have at least half of your products being sold

24:13to customers as a minimum then you're a legitimate mlm and i use that as sort of my guideline if you will for an mlm to be legitimate you have to have at least 50% of the products or services being sold to customers versus distributors people who are eligible for the mlm compensation plan so and i don't think there's very many if any i do think there are some by the way and i would love to talk to these mlm's to go over their numbers but i know even though it was not an mlm at the time when you were involved in electrolux which was a direct selling company and there's other direct selling companies out there too i i think i think rainbo is one of them and also curvy backing was i believe both of those are direct selling

25:14companies versus mlm's and by the way a lot of people use those two terms interchangeably and they're not they're not in any way equal to each other because in a direct selling company there's there's only one level of compensation now you might you might also have some bonus for somebody that's teaching them or managing them and those kinds of things like you did with electrolux but it's not like you know a vacuum salesperson is going to go out there and try to recruit a bunch of other vacuum salespersons that's not how their business model works now they might find somebody along the way you know randomly not very often but but it does happen that are also interested in selling vacuums or they're also interested in selling insurance and those kinds of things but those are generally big ticket items and those are not things that most people want to do to be a you know insurance salesperson or a vacuum cleaner salesperson those

26:20are not things that people are generally interested in however you know if you have like an mlm that does shampoo for example then you know pretty much everybody uses that and and it's not a hard thing to relate to other people about and and so and so you know that's where I come down on is this is this mlm a legitimate mlm from the perspective of an illegal pyramid because there can be other things that's going on besides retail sales you know an mlm or even a direct selling company might be exaggerating the capabilities of whatever they're selling and they might be you know saying things like you know this will cure your cancer or your you know your diseases whatever and various mlm's have gotten the trouble over that over the years or they might be

27:23making income claims you know that are not typical and those are the two big things that the FTC is focused on is income claims and product claims and rightly so but I think if they first sort of screened every mlm through the 50 percent minimum retail requirement that they could basically filter out most mlm's you know most mlm's wouldn't exist they would either have to go out of business transition to direct selling where you're not paying out multiple levels which would allow you to reduce the prices and then maybe the prices would come down enough to actually have retail sales that's possible or they might reduce the compensation plan again to reduce the product prices and all those things by the way it happened over the past couple years with I think at least a couple dozen or I should say at least one dozen mlm's and so

28:24you know those are the two biggies is the lack of retail sales and tool scams and not all mlm's have tool scams I should point that out as well but amway does herbal life does I haven't found one that's nearly as profitable as amway it might be out there I just haven't found it but anyway I'll stop there and we can get on to the rest of the show okay perfect you know just as a refresher for those people on tools scams when herbal life was going through what they were going through Bill Ackman did that movie if you will or that presentation actually I think I guess it was the presentation that he did with Robert Fitzpatrick kind of jumped in to moderate it I think Bill Ackman was going to have somebody else do it and they backed out at the last minute but that's what they really talked about the tool scam that herbal life had which was different than the tool scam that amway had amway had one with the books tapes and functions it was all about

29:28you know buying the books and buying the tapes and buying the functions and herbal life had a lead generation I'm going to call a tool scam where they were selling they were basically running television commercials and then selling the leads back to the organization and the lead had to buy the CD and the lead and a whole bunch of other things like that and came out to be something Scott I think if a memory is correct something like 135 dollars per lead and and the people that were selling the leads obviously with part of that tool scam so it was a little bit different but I was always wondering when people would say they lost tens of thousands of dollars with herbal life people would say how in the world could you possibly have lost that much money you know thinking that they were just buying the product they weren't they were buying the leads and the tool system and that's where they were losing their money so I figured this is just a good time to kind of just remind people about the different types of tool scams that were out there

30:30herbal life had their own and then amway certainly still has their version of whatever it might be don't back to you yeah good point Peter and yeah I know Bill Akman did like a I think it was a 342 page in about a three-hour presentation back in December of 2012 where he shorted herbal life for around a billion dollars and eventually losing that because Carl Icon came in and bought up the stock because they had a few going back years before that but then you're right um um uh rova Fitzpatrick came in and did some interviews with four different former herbal life distributors and I think it was like 120 or 130 dollars per name right and and these were supposed to be hot leads that were you know found and you know go call these people and they'll you know they'll be very open to your pitch and all this kind of thing and

31:32what the people said was um a lot of times they never picked up what if they did they said don't thank you you know right out of the gate and it was really a bus complete a complete bus you know they could have more easily um and I'm going to use a term here that maybe some of the youngsters don't understand they could have just as easily gone to the phone book um and thrown a dart at it you know and called the name that was in the phone book and gotten similar results you know for just the price of of a dart because you don't have to pay for phone books that leads to give them to you um yeah so yeah that was definitely a different spin on a toll scam but um and it was a there was a guy by the way now you can you can google this too his name was john Peterson um so if you google john Peterson herbal life and you might want to also put in the word um suicide you'll see news articles uh where because what happened was

32:32herbal life told you know they're distributors um you need to phase out your lead generation businesses within the next six months they gave them a six month you know window to shut down and uh in towards the end of the six months I believe is when john Peterson uh was in you know the driveway of his uh and he was in Colorado at the time he had multiple homes and helicopters and all kinds of toys right like these guys do um showing off their uh lifestyles and how great herbal life is but yeah he he put a bolt through his head and his uh driveway said in his truck so um that's what you'll see in the news articles and and of course um you know that was a non-story in herbal life they didn't want to talk about it you don't have to go to the news articles to get any kind of you know information um and that's about the last I could find of it there was no other follow-up or anything like that he's just

33:35gone like he never existed um which which is typically what happens when somebody leaves you know an MLM is they they it was it's as if they never existed in the first place they're never mentioned again uh and experience that myself I won't go into those details but um only for time-sake um yeah it's just amazing how when something like that happens that history is just disappeared um and that name is disappeared as if they never existed in the first place so it's quite remarkable um but you can find things now particularly with the internet um and especially if you have these keywords right when you when you just start searching on the internet you may not find john Peterson herbal life suicide um because you you know you're just looking and there's a lot of stuff out there and and so just the volume of things on the internet makes it difficult to find

34:35things um and that's that's the value of my website by the way is the fact that it's all on there and you could find all these different things you know without trying to figure out you know what's the key word to find this kind of information because it's not easy um you know especially when it's after the fact and when it's news then you can find it um but when it's history it's it's much more difficult so so yeah thanks for bringing that up that's a that's a good point that that amway doesn't does not have a uh a corner of the market as they say as far as the techniques of toolscams um and of course the herbal life people never talked about this before you know before all this kerfuffle with black men and uh in the ftc and so forth um you know they they were in on it too and they were okay with it because you know they were making money from their herbal life products so you know everybody's in in the game together until somebody gets in trouble and then and then uh you know somebody's thrown into the bus or in the case of amway usually

35:43what happens if amway doesn't kick them out what they'll also do and there's a couple of examples of this um there was a lawsuit a number of years ago which included my upline where they made um recordings uh you know audio recordings of how proctor and gamble is the work of a devil and proctor and gamble used to have this symbol which they dropped um it was like a moon you know not the full moon but a partial moon with some stars and they said that symbolizes Satan and this went around on the voicemail you know thousands of people were aware of it made the news and then proctor and gamble sued amway and the descriptors um including my upline Andy Hagen and uh basically um amway took over and um you know uh just settled with and paid off i think it was nine million dollars it paid to uh to to proctor and gamble to make

36:43them go away um uh and and so they covered up another example of that is in the UK back in 2006 the equivalent of the FTC the regulator took amway to court they actually took him in the trial and they went after a couple of the uh tools cam companies as well uh network 21 and uh the britt bww britt world wide um and and amway kind of you know took over the lawsuit um i know that britt world wide actually pulled out of the uk they said hey we're out of here um and and network 21 just kind of became subservient to amway and amway you know went to trial and and i actually have a separate website on my facebook page you can find out there's a separate dedicated website just for the uk and you can see all the details i won't go into him here again just for time-sake um but those are a couple of cases where you know amway stepped in and just sort of

37:45took over now they also also um kicked out a couple of of the uk diamonds um because they were sort of breaking the rules you know that amway agreed to and and when they did that and we said you're gone you know we we we can't continue uh to make these major changes and then you don't follow the new rules so so those guys were gone too you know but only after they violated the agreement so uh you know the agreement between amway and the uk you know in the court basically because they went to trial so yeah that's how these companies operate they everything's fine in and dandy until you know the shit hits you know what and then something happens either they're dropped or they they take over for them you know and and basically suppress the information and um just don't talk about it you know and why would you read it's not it's not like that's unique to mlm's by the way any corporation that gets into trouble you know tries to suppress it

38:49tries to keep it as quiet as they can they try to sell it out of court they try to minimize the publicity and they try to move on and you know just put it behind them because they don't want it to just keep um you know nodding away at their reputation that that's why they do these things and it's not just mlm's it's any company it's really any individual you know you won't see Bill Clinton walking around talking about Monica Lewinsky for example um now maybe you will when he gets interviewed later this month and by the way it's been what almost almost three decades now and I hope that Bill Clinton has figured out what the definition of the word is is by his point that's what he was that's what he was infamous four years ago um when he was asked about the Lewinsky um I think the question was something in the nature of you know are you still having an affair with Monica Lewinsky you know he's under oath here right and his answer was

39:55you know it depends with the definition of is is you know in other words it's gender the table right now giving me a Lewinsky um no so and I mean she's actually known now as a verb you know of the Lewinsky for for a BJ so yeah so it's just it's amazing and it also reminds me of you know Hillary is going to be interviewed too and I wonder if they ask her you know because just this past week one of the participants I don't know if he was a leader or what but one of the participants in the Benghazi attack was captured and deported into our country and he's going to be in some big trouble too and years ago I think it was like one year after the Benghazi attack she was very famous for being killed in Congress and saying at this point what difference does it make

40:59because these four people were killed you know and it was just so countless you know and and so just I don't know I don't know what you call it I just call it you know just a lack of humanity to say you know maybe these guys were out for a walk and decided to kill some people maybe it was planned you know but at this point what difference does it make well it makes all the difference you know if if they were out there as a terrorist organization it makes a huge difference and it's just it's just lack of humanity in both of them really and so I'm looking forward I hope they bring up some of these things I think they're going to stick to the you know to the Epstein which is plenty but I would love to be asking these other kinds of questions as well so anyway we kind of veered into politics there or I did oh there you go I'll let you make any other comments and get the ambulance down I don't have any yeah I don't have any hope for the Clinton

42:01investigation because it just doesn't seem like anything ever gets some I do want to double back to one thing with relic back to Herbalife Herbalife used to have a website work from home I'm sorry I misspoke the distributors from Herbalife used to have a website call work from home and they did a lot of commercial advertising in big places and that's why they were so effective they were like on Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh all those types of places you know the conservative radio shows so when you have a conservative radio show that's talking about you know hey this is a home-based business opportunity blah blah blah that by itself adds a lot of credibility so they are in part actors into this bureaucracy of this crime anyway but work from home was the domain name that they used when John Peterson passed away Sue Peterson took over and Scott I just went to go see it and guess what it's not there anymore so workfromhome.com is no longer there as far as the regular

43:04website now I don't know what the reason might be but I went into the archives on the internet and some people know where this is and some people don't but archive.org is the wayback machine and if you type in a website to wayback.org yeah I'm sorry the archive.org and look for work from home you'll see that it was around since 1997 and that might be the last time it was the recordings of it that of it were but it went dark it went silent in 2026 and even parts of 2025 so workfromhome.com is no longer up there and running which is suspicious because if Sue Peterson still owns it and I'm sure she still does unless something happened with her this is all speculation at this point but something must have happened because that is a killer domain name workfromhome.com is a killer domain name and right now we're getting an error message so either she's having technical problems something happened with her something with

44:08her boyfriend said to shut it down maybe some regulators started putting some heat on it we I don't know there's probably half a dozen possible solutions but the reality is it is not there anymore so that's kind of a curiosity nostalgia thing yeah well that's interesting it realized it was still up as recently as last year that's that's really something now also just to remind people John and Sue actually got divorced I think a few years before he killed himself and they both kept part of the business so they were both in herbal life but operating separately I don't know what the sharing mechanism was if they were just friends and had the same downline or if they split off the downline between them but they were divorced you know way before he committed suicide but that's really interesting and maybe that I know that you have a

45:09number of website domain names theater maybe you can rob that one when it becomes available because you're right it's a killer it's a killer name as far as you know a website name for sure interesting yeah very interesting so I figured I was just mentioning that I haven't looked at that website for a while I looked at it a long oh not a long time ago but probably within the last year we do a radio show with a gentleman who had mentioned that again he knows her so I went to go look and super as soon as one of those original she's one of the founders of herbal life that's a very interesting story and once since we're on the stagia because it's not a lot of news news there was a gentleman named Mark C4th who I knew I guess I still know him I just haven't spoken for a long time but Mark C4th actually was the shake maker for herbal life with Mark use early on like way early on so Mark C4th he's got a company right now forget what it's called it doesn't

46:13matter he said lots of companies and so I know a little bit about Mark super smart guy hard sometimes hard worker sometimes sometimes not a super smart guy pretty well connected but there's a little bit about herbal life in there as well and a lot of people since we're throwing the stagia out aren't familiar you might be familiar with Jim Rowan ROHN who's the probably one of the best I'm going to call himself the development motivational speakers of all times he was very influential with herbal life as but he never mentioned it most of the times unless it was in a herbal life meeting but Jim Rowan was with herbal life and he did a fantastic job so some of the some of the good things and bad things and one last herbal life story I I'm going to be somewhat vague only to protect them from the trolls but there's a guy in my hometown who fixes our cars and he has a mobile thing and these are two big boys big boys like these

47:16are big boys I'm telling probably 300 pounds plus and they weren't bodybuilders they were a big boys so one of the brothers and I might interview them eventually for this wound up finding a friend with herbal life who ran a or wanted to run a nutrition club so they partnered together in a nutrition club an herbal life nutrition club where they make the shakes and it's not just making shakes it's the culture behind it and they walked the bridge that means nothing to you except if you're over here where I am there's a bridge that goes over the intercostal waterway and it's pretty long and it's a in Flagler County well him and his buddy friend with herbal life who is his like fitness coach would walk the bridge and the first brother wound up losing like a hundred pounds as a result of the exercise and the routine and all the other education as so

48:20much so that he quit his brother's job with the mobile stuff which was both a really classy story hey I love my brother he said I hated to lose him as a business partner but I lost him to better health and then that kind of carried over and the other brother wound up taking better care of himself based on the stuff and he lost a hundred pounds so the big brothers are no longer big brothers and I'm not sure what one of the guys one of them is marked the other one is Mike I don't know what Mike is doing now but he was the herb life store owner I don't know if they still have the store or not but there's there is some positive aspects of herbal life that a lot of people just don't talk about but some of the negative ones are certainly shining and Bill a Bill Ackman rather really showed the negative aspects of herbal life by spending over fifty million dollars in research and slapping it on the FTCs and probably even the SCC's desks

49:23and nothing was done with that so it's kind of interesting just there was an interesting story you know it's a way back story but I figured I just mentioned it because we were talking about it's kind of like a snow a slow if you will newsweek relative to MLM company so there's a little bit of trivia for you yeah it is now when you say your original shake maker you mean the formulator of the shakes or what was the meaning of that well he made he made the shakes so the shakes had to be made somewhere so he actually made the shakes that was Mark C4 that's what he was based that's what he said and I have a tendency to believe that it's true so herb life makes shakes and they need to be made somewhere so he actually made the shakes made hundreds of millions of shakes you know the powder for herb life so he was the manufacturer of so he was the manufacturer of the powder huh interesting correct interesting yep yep interesting and the interesting story Mark C4 is he's a likable guy and he did a whole bunch of stuff that I know about just as a little

50:33by note there was a company that used to have a gas additive product there was a whole bunch of them a while back and that gas additive product was from a company called oh gosh I forget it I forget the name but one of my smart networker partners so a lot of people don't know this this is a little bit more trivia but when nutrition for life was around Dr. Tom Klezmit and some others were top leaders with the nutrition for life and they joined with Kevin Lehman over at pro step was a lead generation company and had its own compensation plan so when when nutrition for life changed their compensation plan around went from a thousand dollar buy into a three hundred dollar buy in they basically reduce the commissions that were earned when people bonded people into the thousand dollars so the commission went from 300 bucks to 100 bucks and Dr. Tom says we can't

51:37make money with this we need the thousand dollar or more level now remember these were hieropractors that he was selling to a hieropractor can easily afford thousands of dollars of product because they have ways to be able to distribute them so for those people that say there's no retail sales that's not true if you have the right mechanism they have the retail sales but anyway the nutrition for life went from a thousand dollar buy into a three hundred dollar buy in for whatever reason and Dr. Tom said we need to be able to supplement our income so we're going to go to pro step which is a lead generation company Troy duly for those people that are unfamiliar with Troy is one of their inside guys Kevin Lehman owned that company and we joined pro step even though I was in the lead generation business because Dr. Tom said and you do what Kevin Lehman does and I said not now Kevin Lehman had been one of the first MLM companies and lead generation that also had an auto responder so with technology that was just being developed

52:38he said can you do it I said not now he says well we're going to join this do you have a problem with it I'm like listen I don't like to do it but if I have to join pro step to get the income from my downline because we're mixing and matching we're combining pro steps income with my income with nutrition for life and I want to be part of that whole chain I sure I'll join pro step do I join pro step I join my competitive believe it not never used any of his leads of course but the reality was is that's kind of like how that got started and Dr. Tom was a major chiropractor super duper good guy he's passed away but Dr. Mike was one of our partners with five partners Dr. Mike the board D E B O R D he's still actively involved in network marketing somewhere I believe I've spoken of Dr. Mike in a million years but Dr. Mike wound up finding a guy named Dr. Wall and Dr. Wall worked with Mark C4th and Dr. Mike

53:42and we built a company called I forgot gosh it was an environment tech I forgot the name of the company but we did the customer service for the meaning we did the customer service for them so it is gas product so that's how I met Mark C4th so Mark C4th was part of that whole thing and the problem I'm going to speak out of terms here but the problem with Mark and Mike is they were young swing and dudes and they went down to South America and they spent more time hanging out with chicks from Colombia and Brazil and really hot chicks so they went and did what young single men sometimes do and even though I think Dr. Mike was married at the time so they went off and they did their own thing but that's how I learned about Mark C4th and that's how we got a divorce from Mark C4th because you basically try to rip Dr. Wall's company apart and I had to get involved in that so Mark may not have some kind words to say about Peter Mingles and because

54:45we chose the Dr. Wall side instead of his side but there's a little bit of the drama that happens sometimes associated with all these things and by the way I was not sued by Kevin Lehman but we wound up suing Kevin Lehman because he fired all of us because Dr. Tom hired his main programmer away from him so this is where it gets kind of convoluted and that's how I know Troy because I was on the opposite side of the arbitration table with Troy Dooley, Kevin Lehman some of the other people from Pro Step I was on the Dr. Tom side and I sued Kevin Lehman and Pro Step and one but I didn't win damages because I didn't want to prove damages because my business was booming I couldn't prove damages that it hurt me so I won and I still have the check from Jerry Nira for a dollar so the judge says you win but I'm not going to give you any damages

55:48I just want to Kevin Lehman to stop saying that I'm using his leads in my company so I had assumed for that so we sued him for wrongful termination and I sued him for that and we won and I got the check I put in a frame because who cashes a one dollar check so you know so so for Marco yeah Marco it causes a shit ton of money to go through arbitration and we won anyway and I don't remember if Dr. Tom ever got paid back because he was earning like 20 or 30 grand a month I think would pro step I don't know if he ever got paid back I didn't care I just wanted to shut them up and because they were talking trash about me and all that sort of stuff so there's a little bit more of the nostalgia for people that don't understand anything about network marketing like all the anti-immolammers that have no clue they probably don't even know who pro step is and they wouldn't know who Mark use would be and any of the other stories that I just referenced or who Jerry Nira was or any of the other people that I referenced coming down this as well so there you go Scott there's a little bit of nostalgia inside our you know radio show yeah just just to allow others

56:56to understand that we know what we're talking about because it goes back to ways in that lots of various experiences down about it down about it well thanks for all that Peter that's really good Scott really interested yeah yeah absolutely there was a little bit of news this past week there was a change in as far as at the top so to speak with a couple of companies there's a woman by name of Deborah Heiss and she's called her last name H E I S V so I'm not exactly sure how she pronounces it but she was I believe she was co CEO at Niora you know in Niora as well known they used to be called Niora but when the FTC sued them a few years ago they changed their name to protect the innocent as they say and eventually they actually won the lawsuit the FTC sued

58:01them and the judge said you don't have anything FTC you just don't you know you didn't do your homework you don't you don't understand the law so get out of here and they sued them over five different things and all five of them they lost so it was a clean sweep for Niora now this is not to say I support Niora because I think if if the FTC had gone after them correctly they could have won but they don't apparently you know coddle to my opinions they rather go out there and lose lawsuits so so be it but anyway this Deborah Heiss moved interestingly from Niora and this is just last week to a company called Rex Air which I didn't recognize that company name but when I googled it it's the rainbow vacuum cleaner company and so now she's the CEO of of rainbow which

59:05is an interesting change right because I think rainbow is direct selling instead of MLM like Niora is that you may know more about that being in the electoral looks business but I do know a little bit about rainbow what do you know about rainbow go right ahead so the old electoral looks that I was with was owned by Sarah Lee and they were more corporate own stores filter queen Kirby rainbow there's another company called Viking they are kind of more like independent distributors where they buy the product from the company and then they determine their own price and they determine their own compensation plan and they determine their own rules kind of and rainbow is that company so Kirby you know is that big heavy big heavy upright it's got that

1:00:05bag and you know it just doesn't work as well filter queen was a canister rainbow had a I'm going to call it a marketing pitch that it filtered the dirt through water so it had a basically when you're vacuuming you're going to get a lot of dirty water which makes for a really great presentation it's floppy vacuum but it makes for a really great presentation and they are very much like Kirby and filter queen when it comes to the way they run their sales companies now there's two interesting things number one I dated a gal when I was in college who said she sold rainbows and I thought that was really interesting because every time I asked her you sell rainbows what the hell is that and she would tell me nothing she'd just do a word salad together but she was really pretty and she's making a lot of money and I never really knew what it was until I went to their Christmas party and that's when I found that where rainbows were so that's when everybody

1:01:10was talking about vacuum cleaners was a really great direct sales convention Christmas party slash slash whatever and the other little bit of trivia is when I was running my electrolux divisions in Illinois I had a branch manager and Joliette who lived in Wisconsin he came down from Wisconsin and when he was at the airport he said something about something to whoever he spoke to because there's something called the three-foot rule you talked to anybody within three feet of you and alfoistal is the guy and he did what he was told so we talked to some guy named Ali Tonga and Ali happened to be from Turkey the country which has now spelt a different way but let's go for the old style and we were selling pure lux at the time pure lux was a counter top device that you used to filter water it had carbon and UV light and it worked great and we were telling pure light pure lux

1:02:10rather pure lux was the name of it and Ali Tonga used to sell rainbows actually he did sell rainbows and he was coming into the US to visit the factory but when you spoke to Al Al said something about vacuums and they started a conversation and they started about pure luck pure lux and Al said I want to learn I want to bring that back to Turkey so he asked me to train him on how to sell again this is the Turkish guy and I said okay I'm not really sure why I should do this he worked with a competitor in another country and okay because he begged me I said okay I'll show you how to do it he I don't want to brag but he wound up becoming the number one rainbow stale organization in the world so that's Ali Tonga but Ali wound up interested in pure lux and here's one of the times they almost got fired we made a million dollar

1:03:16sale to Turkey with these pure lux and I did it for the sake of just being the area vice president at the time and helping the company with the sale and I almost got fired from making a one million dollar sale and you'd say how the hell could you almost get fired by selling a one million dollar sale it's like real simple people in the home office are fucked up so Ed Schwartz will leave you alone but he was the CEO or no CEO at the time I guess he's the main accountant well they never transferred the money in from whatever Turkish dollars into US dollars and the currency fluctuated so much that it wasn't worth a million dollars anymore and when I called Ed and they said Ed you know what's going on with that sale he's like well we're going to back out of it I'm like fuck you are you are not fucking back and out of that sale we made that sale and if you fuckers can handle the and this is how I hate to say it it was not necessarily smart but if you fucking guys

1:04:19can't figure out how to do something with the money that's not outfall tuck it up and consider a lesson and I almost got fired by making a one million dollar sale to Turkey the rainbow guys for this Scott you little combination I don't have that many more connections by the way so this is just a lucky combination of connections for me but I know a lot about rainbow and I could even show you if I took a picture of it Holly Tonga made me a rug a Turkish rug I'll make a picture I'll send your picture to Peter Mingles right on it I got right over there so I'll show you but that's my little combination but one more little trivia Ollie called me on a cell phone one day and he said hey Peter this is Ollie I said I know you're a freaking terrorist and he said I said that playfully because he was a skinny guy you know he looked like your average terrorist there was a skinny guy and he called me up he says I said Ali where you call me from you so it's like my cell phone by the way this is when cell phones were like brick phones I'm like Ali you can't be calling me from your cell phone from Turkey what the hell get to a

1:05:23landline but that's gonna cost you a million bucks and he said doesn't matter Peter I'm the number one sales office in the in the world and I make so much money right now I want to fly you and your family to Turkey I want you to work for me because if it wasn't for your training I would have never gotten where I was and I want you to work for me I said Ali I am not moving my family to a terrorist organization worker for a terrorist company with a less less than better the no fucking way but it was it was kind of an interesting conversation of and how did it all start from somebody like Al Foystal who was sitting next to somebody the three-foot rule which all you assholes and anti MLM make fun of I just showed you how I developed the whole entire thing because one guy I trained did what we said and he spoke to somebody who was sitting next to him about what he was doing and that's the three-foot rule so for those people that don't

1:06:23understand how to do it the right way I'm sorry you're gonna stay where you are but we you know we we build businesses from you know talking to people so we talked a lot of different people so anyway so having said that's got I don't have anything else to say except for I wish Deborah or whatever her name is great luck in the profession that she's in whether she's going to make them that I'm not sure she's a sharp cookie let me tell you back out when she did her presentation with Jeff Olson of Neorah they were sharp cookies I would not want to go against her or him both of them are really great speakers they know the profession they are super sharp and they put Stacey Bosley in her place she's the FTC witness or FTC prosecutor kind of expert witness who got her ass handed to her by the people over there at the Neorah Corporation yeah and she has a reputation for not being very bright so yeah Stacey Bosley

1:07:28Stacey Bosley yeah that's par for the course for her yeah yeah she's done a lot of things over the years like different studies and stuff and and basically what she does is she says yeah we have this artificial study where we you know we're at a state fair and we bring people in and we give them some you know different things to think about you know would you do this would you sell that and then that the Angie admits it's not very realistic and so it's like a big waste of time okay see now you're doing something that you admit it is artificial and you admit it's it's probably not accurate in a real world and but you're a academic and that's what academics do and and they also go into you know court and lose because they don't know what they're talking about so that's that's a par for the course there's no doubt about that yeah that's that's that's the way she has been Stacey Bosley for years and years and years and I doubt she's going to change

1:08:32so I guess we'll see I wonder if she's going to get a job anymore relative to help in the FTC because Lena Conn is in there anymore and I don't know if any Republican is going to see Conn leave her and I think she's with Hamline University which I think is in Minnesota Scott I'm not sure if it was one of those northern cities Minnesota I think you're right yeah and you Minnesota has been in the news too right so yep I guess she fits in with that crew too so there you go good old bill keep bill keeps got a great choice of uh uh beakers and she was not at this last one which could have been a scheduling conflict but uh there you go just some people so yeah good could be could be could be easily replaced by the girl who wrote that book uh Little Bosses Everywhere had a similar attitude yeah kind of a know it all I've never I've never been in an MLM I really don't want to talk to people who have a different opinion

1:09:36other than what the the standard anti-MLM Huns are or spouting off you know so I can kind of fit in you know because that's a what I think a lot of this is is people don't want to you know go against the green they want to jump in and be part of the anti-MLN group even though they're totally wrong on lots of things um but it's it's so much safer in numbers right it's one of those things where um it's it's this human social need to fit in and that's what the whole anti-MLM movement is unfortunately um there's very few thinkers there's very few people who um you know challenge sort of the dogma that that goes around and uh like you say the three foot rule you know that's salesmanship 101 that's not just the MLM that's any salesmanship um that you you do that um and and of course particularly I think the millennials you know not the youngest people now

1:10:40but the people that are getting towards middle age I guess um that they really don't like to talk on the phone that that whole generation uh texts you know our own sons do that they would much prefer to text than to talk and I think that's you know just part of a generational thing I think the younger people are more open to talking um you know as we as older guys are um but yeah that middle group in there it's all texting and it's it's very little sort of human interaction so of course there's exceptions to that you know it's not monolithic um but it is definitely a thing you know that's been written about extensively um not not just me or you it's you know lots of people have observed that over the years so there you go um I guess another story because we're coming up towards the end here um that I kind of came across within the last

1:11:44week or two is the country of India and in in some countries because of the requirements of that particular country Malaysia is another one the MLM is required to report certain things as if they were I think in Malaysia they are a publicly traded company I don't know I don't think that's true in India but India does have rules that they have to report certain things publicly and what they reported for this past year in 2025 and we have yet to get the international numbers um but in India they're down about 10 percent last year which is a pretty steep drop um and I've been saying this for you know two or three years now at least that I kind of expect the end way to bottom out at one point because when they peaked in 2013 at 11.8 billion and every year since they've gone down and a couple of those years they went up slightly

1:12:47but when you factor in inflation they actually went down every single year and there's a couple things going on there that um I think influences that one is they're pretty much in every country they're going to be in at this point right they're not in some countries in Africa um although I came across a very interesting story about that this past week as well Peter um it involves herbal life too um but you know there's there's poor countries in Canada or in Africa and there's also a lot of the Muslim countries most Muslims don't leave in MLM because they equate it to you know betting and you know that sort of uh you know risk taking it's kind of against their religion and so I don't think you're going to see too many Muslim nations or African nations where MLM's expand to because they just don't have the income or they don't have the social

1:13:51support to do something like that um and so you know by probably 25 or 2010 is when Amway pretty much expanded into every country that they're going to expand into and then generally what happens in any given country it goes up for a while and then it goes down and since by 2013 they had gone into every country they're ever going to go into um that's what started the downward trend as well as the internet was coming of age and so more and more people find it much easier to find out about Amway and other MLMs and decide not to join or decide to quit after they've joined um and so that explains a lot I think of why Amway did peak out so if the international numbers which generally do come out in February sometimes it's not till March or even April but the last two or three years I think they've been coming out in February

1:14:54which will be later this month um if they go down internationally by a similar amount that's about $700 million decrease because they were at $7.4 billion last year last year being 2024 and they're going to be reporting the 2025 numbers sometime in the next month or two so if that goes down by you know 700 million which would be 10% of the previous year international volume then they'll be less than six billion or less than seven billion dollars you know they'll be in the 6.8 6.9 maybe billion which is kind of a major deal because there's other companies nipping at their bud and also you know I've always said when you account for inflation Amway is about half of what they were in 2013 even though they were 7.4 billion last year but now you can if it does go down by that much you can

1:16:04say literally without even accounting for inflation Amway is half the size and if you do account for inflation it's maybe a third of the size as things move along here so you know it's definitely going in the right direction as far as I'm concerned because of lack of retail sales and toolscams that Amway has now it's not quick enough for me but it's going in the right direction so we'll see I mean it's going to be interesting because I know they've been putting a lot of effort into India to grow their business there they've had a kid that a lot of country specific products you know things that Indians consume in their country and coming up with their Amway branded version of those things you know different different spices and medicines and you know traditional things and apparently haven't got any traction so it's really an interesting sort of side story and I'll let you make any comments on that but then I'll also go into this herbal I think if we

1:17:09have time. Sure so one thing about the India thing is I don't know if it if it was part of the contributing factors when those numbers were run I doubt it but it's going to get worse because of the tariffs I order some products from India I have I drop said I order from India and the last time I ordered them I did not have to worry about a tariff but this time there's stuff so if you're buying anything on I buy some I drops on eBay and they come from India but now there's a little thing there that says you're going to have to pay the customs or the tariffs based on the delivery and I don't know what that what it's going to mean but the reality is that's got to add some headway for I'm guessing their relationship between India and the US and I don't know how it would work but it's got it's it's got to not make it easier it's certainly going to make it harder for India. Yeah for sure now I think they I think they do make some products in India I don't know

1:18:10which ones but I think they do make some of them there just like they do in China there's a manufacturer that was something that China insisted on when Amway expanded there as they said you have to make the stuff here and Amway said okay now just this past week I believe India agreed to buy a whole bunch of gas and oil from us instead of Russia and I believe Trump said well that's really good and I'm gonna I'm gonna reduce the tariffs for India so if you can hold off on those I dropped a little bit longer you might you might save some money there. Make sure it's go up let's go down so yeah so so this thing with herbal life which was really I accidentally came across it I was I was channel flipping through I like to watch the news on on TV particularly the conservative streaming channels and I was just just randomly you know checking out different

1:19:10channels because like when one goes to commercial I go to a different channel see what they're talking about and I caught just the very end of this this conversation this reporter was talking about herbal life and how an organization it really wasn't about herbal life specifically but there was an organization and it was one of these NGOs right non-governmental organizations and it was focused on Africa and one of the heads of the organization pled guilty to I don't know exactly what it was it's some some kind of you know some kind of lying or some kind of you know cheating or whatever it was anyway he pled guilty and and the the guy that was reporting this said yeah it involved herbal life and they were they were they were basically paying people in Africa

1:20:16five thousand dollars and providing them products you know to make it look like they had a legitimate business I'm like whoa and so I started researching it and I can't I can't pronounce this guy's name but he was the he was with herbal life from like 2018 as a medical consultant but then he became the CEO from I think it was like 2020 until 2022 he's got a big long African sounding name but he's also on the board of directors of this NGO where this other guy pled guilty and according to another article that I read this former herbal life CEO was the one that was promoting this whole deal with Africa and getting herbal life into Africa where it really had no business I mean you know there's there's a few people in Africa in a few countries that are doing fine

1:21:19but in general you know Africa's poor that's just the way it is and and there's very little opportunity there you know for a legitimate MLM business maybe you can go to South Africa you know maybe you can go to Nigeria but that's pretty much it but these guys I can't remember which country it was but I'm pretty sure it was not one of those I'm pretty sure it was one of these really poor countries it was just interesting how all these different things you know like the stories you were telling earlier this little chain of events and I didn't have any personal experience like you did with all these other folks and all these other companies but just reading about this and all these little things that were connected together and then all connected back to this former herbal life CEO and how he was promoting through this African NGO you know pushing the herbal life products out there just to set up you know what I would I would think would be just a phony business it has no legitimate you know

1:22:25business purpose other than you know moving money around and and you know all the stuff that we know about with Doge with all these NGOs and and all the stuff that we're hearing about now in Minnesota you know with all the money going back to Somalia you know all these empty they care you know that's it they have all their windows blocked out and nobody can get in and all this stuff it's just so crazy all the stuff and now there's all this stuff going on I don't know if you heard about the where they call them the end of life type institution they made oh oh oh do you mean like you know not made itself yeah the end of life yeah not not made but yeah it's palliative care there's another term too but it's basically where you go

1:23:28you know you know you're gonna die posthus so apparently this is like Russian and what was the other country and trying to remember it was it was like an Eastern European country with Russia and apparently they've got these these hospices all over the place and they're getting all this federal money you know just like the day cares but there's nobody there and all they're doing it's just a big it's just a big siphoning off of our money this is our tax dollars right and it's all going to these these scams these international scams and it's just amazing what's going on and it's been going on for years this is nothing new but now it's you know more and more of it's coming to light so it's just an amazing world we live and I guess well I'll I'm gonna also I'm planning on emailing this reporter and saying hey you know you oh another comment

1:24:29which was really interesting and he made this on the on the television story he said and the FTC found that Herbalife was a pyramid and it reminded me of the interview that Ian Ramirez who was the then chairperson of the FTC and they were having their press conference after the settlement with Herbalife and you know they were announcing you know Herbalife is paid 200 million dollars to compensate the net losers and they're going to change their business practices and yada yada and and all these reporters if it wasn't all of them it was all of them except one in different ways they kept asking her well Edith they didn't say Edith they said you know Mrs. Ramirez or chairman FTC chairman whatever they're using the formal titles they were saying Edith you know this is a pyramid right you know you never used the word pyramid in this in this settlement

1:25:33you know why not you know why didn't you find that Herbalife was a pyramid and finally she she spoke up because she kept deflecting and changing the subject never answering the question really but finally she said well we never said that it wasn't a pyramid which went over like a leg balloon of course and people still talk about that you know that was probably your most infamous quote ever we never said it wasn't a pyramid but again that just shows the confusion amongst the FTC of what is a pyramid and and I would say that particularly back then Herbalife was a pyramid you know we have about 50 to 75 million dollars I've heard figures you know in that range the Bill Atman spent researching and and one of the things that he did was he sent you know somebody into these these Herbalife shops what do they call them again they call them nutrition

1:26:34club nutrition clubs yeah so they went into these nutrition clubs and what they found was that they would bus other distributors in from other nutrition clubs to come in and consume the drinks to make it look like they had customers but one of the rules was if you came in and you were another Herbalife distributor from another club or I guess even from the same club you weren't allowed to talk to anybody because they didn't want other people to find out that you were actually a distributor and you were just there as a showpiece to make it look like there were a lot of customers so if you happen to be there as a customer then you would get the impression there were other customers there you know and that you were part again you were part of the of society right you fit in you were you were part of the group and and and what you were doing made sense you know you know you weren't alone you weren't this outlier you were actually amongst many

1:27:36others that were also customers when in actuality you weren't so and I do think there are some nutrition clubs that have customers but I also know that a lot of these nutrition clubs they spend a lot of money and we had a guest here a month or two ago who said yeah even though the Herbalife rules state the new rules state that you can't have a club until you've been in Herbalife for a year what they do is they they come in and then multiple people by the club you know in less than a year and so there's these partial ownerships apparently you're not allowed to fully own a club but you can partially own a club and get around the rules that way but they lose a lot of money they spend a lot of money marketing and they just don't have the sales you know they just don't make any money that's worth the time that they're spending in it you know it's it's less than minimum wage and most of these clubs you have to pay for

1:28:40you know rent or at least utilities the insurance you know all of those overhead things in a brick and mortar business that have to be paid for distributors paid for that it's not the company it's not Herbalife and you're you're out all that money and if you don't get the results you know you lose money so it's you know it's still a thing it's still a problem in area as far as I'm concerned and and so anyway that's that's the new Herbalife story that I just accidentally trip across I mean if I tuned in probably 20 seconds later I never would have heard of all this but but I did and that's sort of the Herbalife news of the week I guess so back to you yep still a big company still a big company well there was that one gentleman that Marco interviewed who was one of the founders I think he is with Herbalife he really held his own

1:29:41and the eight and basically sent Marco straight on a lot of the things that are going on and was doing it the right way he's got you know besides the product sales he's got his coaching and his education and his exercise programs and he's got a real community going on he does a whole bunch of things besides just selling shakes so when done right when done right it could be good when done right just like everything else okay yeah that's all that's good yeah I was going to say I haven't watched that whole video yet but the part I did see Marco was definitely flut next he was really confused he was he was forced off of balance you know every time the guy brought up sales he was just flipping out like this does not compute right the life you'll lost lost the space show this does not compute right so yeah good show Peter and we'll do this again next Saturday yep so for those people listening in go to buildingforgerradio.com look for Scott Johnson

1:30:45Scott why don't you give out your website one more time yes go to Facebook again you know my Facebook is is pretty static you know most people say well I don't want to go to your Facebook I don't want to search for everything but what I've done is I pinned the story at the very top which is my feedback to the FTC in 2022 regarding their request for comments on income claims and product claims which was their hot buttons which which is not my hot buttons as you know it's really retail sales and toolscams but also there's there's links that go to my other websites in this radio show and my YouTube my emails there my phone numbers there anyone's welcome to contact me except for one individual my name is Marco and you know I'm open I'm looking for people who agree and people who disagree so that we can have a conversation

1:31:46but if you go to facebook.com slash stop the Emily tool scam that's what all that information is at so thanks Peter and we'll see you next week perfect thanks everyone we'll see you next time check out the building fortunes radio dot com website to listen to your favorite shows you can also hear us on humongous radio and wherever you find your favorite podcasts it's been our privilege to have you listen in a building fortunes radio we wish you the success you deserve and are willing to work for