Now that members of its private FaceBook group have been onboarded above everyone, Awakend has opened its prelaunch to the public.

Awakend seeks to be the first product-based MLM company with an NFT gimmick.

And while more products are planned, Awakend’s flagship is a fat burner supplement first sold over a decade ago.

Heading up Awakend’s marketing efforts are Danelle Meoli and Chip Macgill.

There are other Awakend co-founders but they’ve yet to show themselves on corporate webinars, at least the public ones.

For reference, the eight admins of Awakend’s corporate FaceBook group are

  1. David R. Teodosio
  2. John Forston III
  3. Danielle Meoli
  4. Emily Basham Jackson
  5. Kelly Duncan Smith
  6. Ashlee Headlee James
  7. Jodi Gordon Hoogenhoff and
  8. Brian Meara

I’m not claiming all of them are co-founders but I’d wager Awakend’s other co-founders are on that list.

The common thread with Awakend corporate and its co-founders is Exp Realty. Meoli claims she left the company because she was “burning out”.

Beyond Exp Realty, Meoli, Macgill and presumably Awakend’s other co-founders, have a long history in MLM.

Meoli, Macgill, John Forston, Emily Jackson, Ashlee James, Jodi Hoogenhoff and Brian Meara were all in NewULife. So there seems to be some downline continuation happening over the years.

There are three components to Awakend; AwakendHealth, AwakendSelf and AwakendWealth.

AwakendHealth pertains to the company’s nutritional supplements.

Awakend’s flagship launch product is Zenith, a leptin weight loss supplement.

As per Awakend’s marketing, overweight people suffer from leptin resistance.

Leptin resistance sabotages all dieting efforts, causing you to feel hungry and eat more even though your body has enough fat stores.

This ignites a vicious cycle.

The idea is you take a leptin supplement like Zenith to balance this out. You in turn feel full and cue weight loss.

I’m not going to pretend like I’m an expert in this field but I did do some research.

Specifically with respect to MLM, an interesting article on Evolv Health’s leptin offering came up from the Supplement Police;

Doctors argue that the effect of taking leptin orally to curb obesity and weight gain is non-existent. This, according to Dr. Robert H. Lustig, pediatrics professor at the University of California, is because:

Leptin is a protein. As a protein, it is therefore fully digestible in the digestive system. So taking it orally is probably a waste of time as the protein will just be broken down.

When it is broken down in the digestive system it does not reach the bloodstream. This means it does not reach the brain so no effect should occur as a result of taking it orally.

The doctor claims that most of these leptin supplements that are advertised do not contain leptin as they know there is no way it reaches the bloodstream.

Instead, they contain ingredients that have been tested and tried and have been known to create a feeling of fullness. So this means that the Reboot product could amount only to false advertisement.

This is from the Cleveland Clinic;

How do I raise my leptin levels?

Unfortunately, there’s not much you can do to raise your leptin levels to decrease hunger and appetite, since your leptin levels are directly related to how much adipose tissue your body has.

Since leptin is a hormone your body makes and not a nutrient (like vitamin C or protein), no foods contain leptin.

Since leptin is a relatively new discovery, scientists are still working to learn more about it, including how it affects obesity and weight loss.

And this from Healthline;

Can Leptin Resistance Be Reversed?

The best way to know if you are leptin resistant is to look in the mirror.

If you have a lot of body fat, especially in the belly area, then you are almost certainly leptin resistant.

It is not entirely clear how leptin resistance can be reversed, though theories abound.

Some researchers believe that reducing diet-induced inflammation may help reverse leptin resistance. Focusing on an overall healthy lifestyle is also likely to be an effective strategy.

Though there is no simple way to eliminate leptin resistance, you can make long-term lifestyle changes that may improve your quality of life.

 

Update 22nd September 2022 – Just to clarify some of my own misunderstandings on leptin, which readers have brought up in the comments, Zenith doesn’t actually contain leptin.

Rather, the idea behind the ingredients in Zenith is to reduce leptin. Reducing leptin levels is believed to correlate with appetite suppression. /end update

 

Awakend are not naming the product Zenith is a relabel of but do acknowledge it was sold by another MLM company in the past.

They got that product, they were doing well. They stopped ordering from the manufacturer, excuse me the formulator, and they decided to make their own; reverse engineer it. And they got slammed with a lawsuit.

This lawsuit lasted fourteen years. It just ended, and we and another network marketing company were jockeying for it (the product).

And because one of the other founders of our company was good friends with the forumulator, he was able to negotiate the deal. We have the global rights to this incredible product.

Zenith is a relabel of Max International’s MaxWLX.

Max International was sued by Tripharma LLC back in February 2010. Max International had the case stayed pending arbitration, which commenced in September 2010.

The case was messy and spanned multiple related cases against other defendants. Tripharma’s Max International case docket ends with the case still in arbitration as of January 2015, then nothing happening till a trademark filing in February 2020.

I’m not really seeing any clear resolution or definitive order from the court. Given Tripharma appear to have moved on with Awakend, I’d assume a settlement with Max International was eventually reached. This could also be a judicial resolution that for reason isn’t reflected on the case docket.

In any event, that’s the story behind Awakend’s Zenith.

Is rebranding a supplement from a decade ago a bad thing?

Not if it works.

To the right we have nutritional supplement information for MaxWLX.

The same for Zenith hasn’t been made public but one would assume it’s the same or similar.

The quote from Dr. Robert H. Lustig above stands out to me;

Leptin is a protein. As a protein, it is therefore fully digestible in the digestive system. So taking it orally is probably a waste of time as the protein will just be broken down.

MaxWLX and Zenith might very well work as appetite suppressants, but not because of leptin.

In any event leptin supplements are readily available, as are of course appetite suppressants. I’m still unclear as to what makes Zenith any different to existing offerings.

Retail pricing hasn’t been released but on a recent corporate webinar, Chip Macgill stated distributors would pay $135 a month on autoship.

Awakend Self is a personal development component of the MLM opportunity that

teaches you how to rewire your brain and manifest the incredible life you are more than capable of designing and living.

Rewiring brains huh? One might say Awakend Mind seeks to clean people’s brains to be more compatible with the MLM opportunity?

Awakend Self also has a free workout platform they’re calling AwakendBody:

Although they keep telling people it’s OK if they don’t understand it, Awakend’s other marketing drawcard is its NFTs.

This is part of Awakend Wealth, the MLM opportunity.

Let’s address the cartoon elephant JPG in the room: While MLM and cryptocurrency are synonymous with securities fraud, I haven’t seen anything in Awakend’s NFT offering that I’d identify as securities fraud.

But that’s not to say it isn’t a pointless scummy cash grab.

Here’s Danelle Meoli introducing Awakend’s NFT offering;

Whoever opens a company in network marketing and direct sales, and marries web 3 technology, NFTs … whoever does that first, it’s gonna go viral. It’s gonna rock the industry.

Our backoffice is the first in the history of direct sales to actually have the technology in our backoffice, all integrated. It took months and it is now ours. We can take crypto if we want. We can sell NFTs if we want.

Other companies are going to take this concept and run with it. You are in a company that is literally, it’s uh historic what we’re doing.

Having listened to Awakend’s NFT spiel, I’m left asking “why?” Why does this need to exist? We’ll get to that in a bit but first I want to bring you up to speed.

Again, this from Meoli;

You don’t really need to know what an NFT is. You don’t need to know metaverse, we’re not that company.

What we’re doing is every time we open a new country, we’ll have a new set of 22,222 of these amazing pieces of art.

They’re digital. They’ll show up in your backoffice. You’ll be able to wear it on a shirt at a convention. You’ll have swag that has your piece of artwork. You can share it with the world, let people know you own one.

But what it really is, it’s a digital badge or aka a digital pass.

So, like a regular distributorship from any other MLM company? I mean if you really wanted to there’s nothing stopping you printing your favorite JPG onto a t shirt and wearing it around.

Hell you can right-click someone else’s NFT and get it printed, granted this would be copyright infringement (assuming the NFT artwork itself isn’t stolen, which they commonly are).

You can also let people “around the world” know you’re an Awakend distributor… without the NFT.

So again, why does this exist?

Awakend are selling NFTs through three-tiered Founder’s Packs (click to enlarge):

As I understand it the NFTs across the $1295, $2495 and $3495 tiers are the same. It’s also important to note that Awakend’s NFTs cannot be sold on the open market, they are locked within the company.

They can be sold to someone else within Awakend, just like a regular distributorship.

So again, why does this exist?

That question brings us to the scummy side of Awakend, which is entirely contained within their integration of crypto (this shouldn’t come as a surprise).

Awakend hope to flog 22,222 NFTs. This provides an instant cashflow range of $28.7 million to $77.6 million. Thrive products are bundled with Founder’s Packs, so we can knock a bit off – but we’re still talking tens of millions of dollars in profit.

Awakend could just as easily scrap the NFTs and price their Founder’s Packs accordingly but dId YoU hEaR? eVeRyOnE’s DoInG wEb3!

If making tens of millions on the sale of cartoon jpgs wasn’t scummy enough – the primary benefit of owning an Awakend founder NFT is “first access for future NFT launches”.

That’s right, the ten of millions Awakend hopes to generate in its prelaunch is for North America and Canada only. The company seeks to monetize each country it launches into, with a new set of NFTs

And by paying thousands now, Awakend’s founder distributors get the privilege of paying more money for more NFTs in each country Awakend migrates to.

Whether you sign up as a founder or later as a regular distributor, you’re already a distributor. So why do you need to buy anything when Awakend opens to a new country?

Tens of millions of dollars in instant company profit. That’s why.

And due to the nature of NFTs, presumably once an internal marketplace is set up and distributors can list their NFTs for sale, Awakend gets a cut of each sale.

Why just run a regular MLM company when you can milk your distributors when they sign up, when you open a new country and when your distributors sell their position?

If it wasn’t obvious, anything Awakend is promising distributors through NFTs already exists in non-crypto MLM companies. The NFT side of the business is just a cash grab – like every corporate NFT offering is.

Rather than be honest and acknowledge that, Chip Macgill insists

whatever you invest in these founder packs, you will get an exponential return throughout your organization.

Look even if this is all new to you and you’ve never heard of NFTs or crypto before, the bare minimum you need to know is they were a brief fad between late 2020 and early 2021.

If you didn’t create NFTs and flog them to gullible investors during that brief six-month period, you missed out on the scam. If you’re just getting into NFTs in mid 2022, you’re lapping up the last dregs of a toxic cash grab cocktail.

Whatever other plans, if any, Awakend has for cryptocurrency outside of MLM, nothing good for distributors will come of it

The last thing I want to touch on is Founder’s Packs coming with rank promotion:

  • the $1295 Essential Founder’s Pack provides one year of Sapphire rank commission rates;
  • the $2495 Premier Founder’s Pack provides three years of Ruby rank commission rates; and
  • the $3495 Elite Founder’s Pack provides five years of Diamond rank commission rates.

Granted Awakend’s compensation plan hasn’t been made public yet, but “pay to play” in MLM is one of the identifiable foundations of a pyramid scheme.

Other red flags are Awakend tracking and paying commissions on Founder’s Pack recruitment, behind a $50 paywall.

Awakend are hoping to flog 22,222 Founder’s Pack NFTs by October. Prelaunch distributors are being charged $50 to reserve a Founder’s Pack spot now, with the balance due in October.

Awakend are also not letting distributors sign up for cheaper options until all 22,222 Founder’s Pack NFTs are sold.

Customer orders are expected to open in October too (that’s right, Awakend’s six-week pre-launch is all about recruitment and flogging NFTs).

Pending the release of compensation details, BehindMLM will be publishing a complete Awakend review.

 

Update 1st September 2022 – Uncertainty, surrounding Awakend’s claims that Zenith is an exclusively licensed formula, has prompted formulator Vietal Nutrition to issue a statement.

That has unfortunately only raised even more questions as to Zenith’s exclusivity.

 

Update 14th September 2022 – TriPharma (dba Vietal Nutrition) has secured appointment of a Receiver.

The Receiver will be put in charge of First Fruits Business Ministry (FFBM). Generated revenue will be put towards satisfying TriPharma’s 2013 judgment against FFBM.

The legitimacy of Zenith’s exclusivity is also tied to the outcome of TriPharma’s October 2013 case against FFBM (discussed in further detail in the update link above).

 

Update 5th October 2022 – Awakend is still in prelaunch but BehindMLM has published an (almost) complete review.

Despite purportedly making “record breaking sales”, retail pricing for Zenith has still not been publicly disclosed.