“I’m a professional thief” – How not to market MLM
Undeservedly or not, MLM has a “reputation”. You know what I’m talking about…
Pyramid schemes, money shuffling from new recruits to the top, MLM company reps effectively stealing from unsuspecting victims, “locked door” hotel room seminars, annoying flyers, being pitched something you’ve got absolutely no interest in by a desperate sounding person, stories of people paying way too much for things they wouldn’t normally buy, garage fulls of inventory etc. etc.
Mention MLM to the general populace and chances are you’re going to get a negative reaction, regardless of the opportunity in question.
Here at BehindMLM we’re no stranger to this and hope that in our own way, via information, analysis and an open constructive dialogue, we put a dent in the efforts of those who seek to trash the legitimacy of the MLM industry.
Sometimes however, the industry itself is its own worst enemy.
Recorded footage shot on March 2nd, 2013 features Ken Dunn (co-founder of Ocean Avenue) giving a presentation at what appears to be a company event;
There really are five steps to building this business and you can see them on the board.
But the business is simple so I don’t need to go over this in detail. Instead I can tell you the biggest secret, as to how I made all this money.
Would you like to know the secret? People love to know secrets.
Here’s the secret: I’m a professional thief. I steal from people and I’m giving you permission to steal from people too.
Taken out of context (as the footage above clearly demonstrates), Dunn’s choice of words naturally sets off alarm bells.
Quick to respond to the publishing of the footage on YouTube, Dunn writes in the video comments,
This video is a scam. I did a compelling 1 hour speach in Jakarta Indonesia where first I was talking about my policing career, then I mentioned duplication and then i made a playful analogy about how stealing was like duplicating success. You can do what other people do.
Putting aside the question of how a video can be a “scam”, I’m punting that Dunn’s marketing strategy was to draw a (playful) comparison between using a succesful person’s MLM marketing and sales strategy as your own via duplication and “stealing”.
The problem?
Well that should be self-evident in the publishing of the footage above. A point definitely not lost on Dunn himself:
The creator of this account is trying to hurt my business and this is called tourturous interference and slander. I demand that youtube shut it down immediately.
I have now made an official complaint to YouTube and will be launching an entire investigation to determine who created this site.
I promise you that whoever username “Ben Dover” is will be determine and we will be launching legal actions. As well, we will include any companies or individuals that this user is associated with.
A somewhat heavy-handed approach in my opinion, given that the footage only shows Dunn’s own words.
Inherently obvious is the lack of context of Dunn’s statements which the footage alone fails to provide. Based entirely on my review of Ocean Avenue I don’t for a second believe Ken Dunn is a thief, professional or not. Nor do I believe that the affiliates of Ocean Avenue are engaging in any type of thievery (at least not in direct relation to their involvement in the company).
As I mentioned earlier, MLM has a “reputation” to consider and there are certain sales pitches which are just inevitably going to backfire. Any comparison with an MLM business (whether it be duplication of success, how to market the opportunity, products or anything in direct relation to the company) and thievery is not the smartest of ideas.
Looking forward what’s said is said and now what would be far more constructive than making legal threats on YouTube to the owner of the “Ben Dover” account, would be a review of how management are marketing Ocean Avenue in public.
Perhaps focusing on those “five steps” to building a succesful Ocean Avenue business would be a good place to start.
Chalk it up to lesson learnt Ken and rewrite your business presentation to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Ditto anyone else thinking of drawing analogies between being succesful in an MLM business and thievery.
How the heck do you take “I am a thief” out of context? If he was smirking and *wink wink* when he was saying it, then sure. If not, then his analogy is WAY off into orbit of
Pluto.
It’d be even worse verbal gaffe than Obama is referring to Karmala Harris (AG California) as the “prettiest AG in the country”.
He said it with a straight face. Not a wink even!
And then claims that it was out of context!
Surely he needs to find a better speech writer or some one gotta teach him the art of winking 😉
Ummn, no, it’s not.
There’s one easy way to tell when a fraudster is sing the old baffle ’em with B/S approach to being caught out, and that’s when he/she starts throwing around incorrect legal terms.
FYI, Mr “Dunn” the correct term is TORTIOUS interference
as in: Tortious interference, also known as intentional interference with contractual relations
One looks forward with glee to the day “Mr Dunn” faces the discovery period in any court action resulting from his threats being carried out.
REALLY ???
Fortunately,(or UNfortunately) courts don’t possess the same mind reading capabilities as Mr Dunn appears to have.
Personally, I would have guessed “this person” was having fun at Mr Dunns’ expense and NOT trying to hurt his business.
Well, not hurt it any more than Mr Dunn did himself by making the remark in a public place where video recording was possible, that is.
I googled “tortoise interference”, and I can clearly see why he’s so upset. Some of them can be up to nearly 2 meters in size. 🙂
The video had only 135 views when I watched it now on Youtube. Ken Dunn is probably trying to draw more attention towards the video, using the “Streisand effect”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
Most people would probably have seen it as a joke, if it hadn’t been for Ken Dunn’s reactions to it. Now they will be focusing on him rather than the joke.
All I saw was “Ken Dunn talking about his favorite topic = himself (all what he admires and cares about, the one and only topic that makes his heart beat faster)”.
Oz,
Great editorial on the issue of reputation, and what we face in network marketing. I just invested a few days last week with some of the top 500 executives from the top 100 companies across the globe and the main focus was “Raising The Bar.”
As an industry and profession, we are focused in 2013 on customer acquisition, by providing products backed by real science and in providing clarity as to what a legitimate MLM looks like .vs a ponzi or pyramid disguised as an MLM.
Please don’t get me wrong, we have a long up hill road ahead of us, and this is not something we are denying!
Ocean Avenue is a client (My wife and I not building Ocean Avenue or any other.), and I have worked with the founders from before they opened their doors.
I have found Ken Dunn to be one of the most aggressive network marketers I have ever run across. And at times, like all aggressive sales people, they create close friendships as well as enemies aka people they have offended.
I personally have friends at the highest levels in Network Marketing who love Ken Dunn and I also have close friends who despise Ken Dunn, and feel he is a thief. There are no middle ground folks. Something Ken and I have in common.
I do not try and defend Ken’s actions or words, but I sure know what it is like to wish, you could take back what you have said, written or done at times. 🙂
When aggressive people fight over the same pool of prospects and someone loses while the other wins, there are bound to be some form of fallout. Aggressive people look for opportunities to continue to grow their business or take advantage of weaknesses in an opponents business.
When someone believes they have been lied too, manipulated, or had a promise broken, they take it personally and will attack. I have seen this over and over where aggressive people are concerned. They are best friends when they are on the same team, and sworn enemies when they are not!
I will not even try to defend the words “I am a thief” without a doubt a bad choice of words.
But like politics, another industry which also carries negative connotation with many in the general populous, and where sound bites are used to cut-down an opponent, I think we can see that this situation carries the same intent.
No matter why the video was published, those of us who are advocates of ethical and legal MLM, should use this as a teaching moment as to what the world’s view of this situations looks like.
MLM, Network Marketing, Direct Sales, whatever we want to call it is built on reputation. As you and your community know, I fully understand better than most how what we say and write can harm our reputation.
I learned so valuable personal lessons though my coverage of Zeek. And daily strive to make sure that I do not make the same mistakes twice. In knowing Ken Dunn, and his partners, I am confident, they will also use this as a learning moment.
I count Ken as a friend, and when this video came out we talked about it. Sadly, we can’t take our words back in the modern age, all we can do is change our actions, listen to wisdom and move forward to prove to others we are not the person their perceive us to be.
Communication is the key… Oz, you have always communicated with me, both publicly and privately, and I think our continued communication through a situation where for a while we did not see eye-to-eye goes to show that even when people have diabolical opposing world views, if they continue to communication, and both parties (well me in this case) are willing to listen and review the facts, they can continue to be friendly. I hope the same happens for Ken Dunn and those he has pissed off.
When a person does not change their ways, and a track record starts to take shape, then we can pretty much know the type of person we are dealing with.
If folks continue to study Ocean Avenue, they will find a culture of high business ethics, and a group of folks with great product, solid comp plan, and a mission to change the general opinion of MLM.
To Oz and this community, thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak on this subject.
Living An Epic Adventure,
Troy
That reminds me of a friend who would was married to an abuser, liar and thief. He would beat the sh@t out of her for something like accidentally dropping something.
We would say, aha, now she will SEE THE LGHT, see the TRUTH about what this person TRULY is. But he was so good. At lying.
He would be so convincing, that when I witnessed it for myself, I became clinically interested in it, started studying it, and learned what a pathological liar looks and sounds like,.
What a psychopath looks and sounds like.
The scam account’s name is Bend Over? That’s a laugh.
Can anyone imagine the judge addressing Mr. Over? “State your first name for the record.” lol
Benjamin Dover is world renown. So are his buddies Jack Mehoff and Phil Durt.
@Troy
Unwanted videos or other unwanted material can be used as “necessary training”. I don’t think Ken Dunn should change the content of his presentations, but he should probably change his own reactions when people are making jokes about it.
“I’m a professional thief” can very well be used as an analogy for duplicating other people’s ideas. But people can also make jokes about it, like someone did in this case.
If he’s vulnerable to jokes, e.g. “not armed with a proper defense weapon”, then he probably will need to make changes to something. Trying to make changes to Youtube itself or Youtube accounts will probably cause more jokes to be released.
Here’s his defense weapons:
“The video is a scam” is exaggerated. People probably KNOW the video is compiled material, so the statement is unnecessary.
The rest of his defense there is FACTUAL and should work quite OK. He’s actually using a relatively good strategy there, focusing on the case itself rather than on his own reactions.
Here he starts to become emotional rather than rational, focusing on his own hurt feelings and how he will try to “solve” that using all available weapons, from stealth bombers to complaint letters to “white phosphorus” to missiles (I can use analogies too).
It will be very difficult for him to follow up his own ideas with actions, without hurting himself in the process.
“The professional thief” have probably stole that defense strategy from someone else, but when posted on the internet it sounds like a “drama queen” strategy rather than a rational one.
If the definition of “thief” is as good as this one, everybody would love to have it as their profession.
@Suzzie
You forgot to read the last paragraph in my post, where I questioned where he had stole the “Drama Queen” strategy from, and WHY he had bothered to steal a strategy like that.
I’m pretty sure it FELT like the right thing to do, but it also made him look emotional unstable, the type of guy we’ll normally prefer to keep at a distance (if we have a choice).
“Steal other people’s ideas” might be a good strategy and it might be a bad one. I’m normally not very impressed when that is the ONLY strategy people are able to use, and often they would have managed a situation better without a strategy like that.
Stealing other people’s ideas is something we all do, so his message wasn’t exactly rocket science or “God’s Gift to Mankind”.
He has even stole that idea, too. The same idea has been used in several other programs, probably in MOST other programs.
24 hours later, the number of views have gone up to 231 = 96 views per day. The interest will probably die out within a week = around 900 views or less.
That calculation is based on “normal conditions” for Youtube videos, they will normally not draw attention from a huge audience.
How can it be slander when they’re just showing a clip of what he said? Slander is saying something false about someone else in order to hurt their reputation. You can’t slander yourself.
Now if they’d spiced together some video or audio to make it sound like he’s admitting to being a thief, then that’s one thing, but they used his very own words and it doesn’t appear that video was altered, though they may have taken his comment out of context.
Next time, don’t give them the opportunity.
And additionally 72 hours later the number of views has increased to 329 = 33 views per day. I wouldn’t have been too eager to steal Barbra Streisand’s ideas here.
“I’m a professional thief” can very well be used as an analogy for duplicating ideas, but it might require some factual explanations if people make jokes about it (normally that shouldn’t be necessary).
The over reaction is the worst problem here, but people will normally ignore that too after the first impression.
Troy I am actually surprised about your response, seems to me that you are trying to defend what can be defended. Like the old proverb, “fish dye by its own mouth” and it looks like this is exactly what is happening here.
You mentioned that aggressive people are always attacked, that reminds me that right after the video Mr. Dunn wrote in his Facebook wall something like comparing himself with Gandhi or Mother Teresa who apparently according to Mr .Dunn were also “victims” of haters.
Troy there are many big leaders out there that have earned millions in MLM but you don’t see them being point as dishonest and liars. We are seeing a pattern here, is everybody seeing it but you, please I want to believe that you are being neutral here.
John,
You might want to read what I wrote again. The majority of my post had to do with what Oz, wrote, reputation, and raising the bar in network marketing. I was clear I would not defend what Ken said, but do count him as a friend.
I was also very clear, most of us have said or written something we wish we could retract. 🙂
By the way, I did NOT mention that “aggressive people are ALWAYS attacked.” I did however write the following…
So, I am not sure what you think I am not seeing… Especially when I have not defended anything Ken said.
Living An Epic Adventure,
Troy
Update here, it appears his comments were prophetic. He is a thief.
Recently bankrupt and having lost his home and being chased by the Canadian Revenue for taxes (much of which he scammed onto former business partners).
This guy has left a trail of unpaid debts, broken commitments and failed business from GoRead, Icon Printing, New Centruy Publishing, a number of MLM’s and most recently the ‘Authority Factory’ which is still trying to scam people while Dunn tries to be an online hero AND hide online from all his creditors and those he scammed – tough spot.
What he is good at is the sales pitch. Check GoRead reviews over at Glassdoor.
I am one thousands of other authors and individuals in the publishing business that became involved with Ken Dunn a few years ago.
There’s a strong debate that the word “thief“ could be applied, but there’s no debate that this man has ruthlessly, and with no sense of moral respectability, scammed untold thousands if not millions from good folks over the years.
It doesn’t take too deep of a search to find the multiple layers of bogus offshore companies which he has hid behind, the numerous bankruptcies, and the disillusioned investors.
Out of context or not, the term “thief,“ is an apt one and his history and track record stands as proof.
The problem with MLL is they appear and can be a get rich quick scheme and therefore attract some morally corrupt and ruthless individuals. And Ken Dunn is case in point.
It is now December 2023. He is now doing Cottage Dream Vacations. He is conducting webinars guaranteeing things for lending money to strangers. If only we can post his stuff here.
And he is doing all this within Canada? What the hell is the Canadian government doing? Why are they allowing him to continue all these shady stuff?
Had a quick look into Cottage Dream Vacations, didn’t see anything MLM?