iWowwe: Broken promises, unpaid commissions & failed IPO?

That paid video email is all but redundant in this day and age should go without saying, yet it’s the service iWowwe continue to base their MLM opportunity around.

2014 was a bit of a quiet year for the company, at least externally. According to a report from former top iWowwe income-earner Attila Juhasz however, much has been going on inside the company.

Juhasz’s end of year report comes by way of a eighteen and a half minute video, uploaded to YouTube on December 29th.

A number of revelations are made throughout the video, which is primarily aimed at Juhasz’s iWowwe downline.

[1:36] Things change a huge turn in this company.

It started a while ago… I’d like to go into details for you, I’d like to give you some facts. A little history run down on the company.

Because we could see signs of bad management from the very beginning. Bad leadership, you could see signs of from the very beginning.

Much of the video is focused on key people leaving iWowwe, including top earner Rick Everts.

[2:05] When we go back, most of the leaders you could remember… Rick Everts. Rick Everts was the number one, he was way before me.

He left.

When he left we were all shocked. “Why is Rick Everts leaving? He is on top of the organization.”

And he left, because he didn’t get paid.

He worked hard, he put a team together and he didn’t get paid. His commission never been paid out to him.

What did we expect from him?

We didn’t… I didn’t know that at the time. But I know that now. That was the reason.

And that was the reason other hundreds and other thousands of American leaders who started building iWowwe with Rick – they all left, for the same reason.

For the broken promises, for the unpaid commissions, for the unpaid promotions, for the constantly changing compensation plan.

Citing payment problems of his own (“I didn’t get paid either”), Juhasz states in the video that he “quit iWowwe three weeks ago” (approximately early December).

[12:03] This entire year I worked? I get just small portion of that paid out to me.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars are owed to me.

And when I asked for it? He (Bill Starkey) said “I’m broke. I don’t have the money. I cannot pay you.”

That’s what he told me.

Juhasz leaving iWowwe brings an end to four years with the company.

Curiously, both Juhasz and Everts still appear on the “symbols of success” area of the iWowwe website:

Juhasz and Everts, notable for their Global Field Chairman status, are however just the tip of the iceberg:

[3:45] All these leaders, I just wanna name a few who you guys might know.

Scott Johnson, Scott Nelson. Scott Johnson was my sponsor. Jim Goodenough was my sponsor but he left for another reason… but Scott Johnson was a loyal iWowwe warrior.

He left, because he couldn’t take these unbroken promises. He couldn’t take it. Y’know, it’s hard.

Cason Miller, a very successful network marketer who earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in another company… he left too – because of the same reason.

Steve Little, you guys remember Steve Little? He was a big guy, a huge network marketer veteran. He knew everything in his little finger.

He left.

Buck Steffans, another veteran of network marketing – he came and left. Andamo left with him too.

Paul Pagett, he’s also in network marketing for twenty-five years – he moved from California with his wife, he gave up… he sold his house, he lost money on it. And he moved to Houston because of the promises that had been given to him was strong enough for him to sell everything and move there.

And he only worked there for three months and he left. He left iWowwe.

You guys think these people are all stupid? Or somebody took their brain out?

No, they’ve been promised many, many, many, many things. And they never got it.

And once that happens, you have to come up with something and you have to do your thing. You have to survive, you have to live, you have to produce money.

That’s what happened.

iWowwe’s apparent exodus of leaders isn’t restricted to the affiliate side of the business either, with Juhasz rattling off another long list of corporate staff who have also left.

[5:38] What happened on the corporate side?

You guys all know Casey Mishew. He’s been working with Bill Starkey for eleven plus years.

He left.

Casey knew everything. Casey knew more than you could think. He knew the whole thing, he ran the show.

You think he leaves because he’s stupid? Because iWowwe doing so good and up on a hill and things are great?

No.

I don’t know why he left but I assume one thing: He’s a very smart and sharp young man, he leaves because things are stinky. That’s why.

So was (undecipherable), the customer support tech guy. He was such a genius guy he helped me all the time. He left.

Then we have Brandon Bartlett, who’s supposed to be, actually who was the corporate representative for what’s supposed to be two thousand clients of iWowwe.

He’s gone. So who’s taking care of the two thousand corporate clients now?

Are they there? Or maybe they’re not there… I don’t know. What do you think? Two thousand, that’s a big number.

Miranda Harris, the financial person who supported all the numbers? She took off. She left.

There is another few, two three people I don’t remember their names. I met with them but the last time I visited the corporate office, they weren’t there. They’re all gone.

It really hit me in the heart when Shannon Smoke left. Shannon was Bill’s right hand man after Casey was gone. And she knew everything.

I could go with any problem I had to Shannon and she took care of it. And somewhere around September … she said “Attila, sorry. I like you very much but I have to say goodbye to you because I just have to leave. I cannot tell you why, but I have to leave.”

So she didn’t tell me why but I felt, (from) the tone of her voice, something was really troubling her. Troubling her conscience. So she left.

[8:12] And the customer support? There was six or seven people who were working all the time.

Go in there and see how many there are there.

Twenty? Thirty? Because it’s a growing company…?

Maybe you’re gunna be surprised, maybe you’re only gunna see two. I won’t be surprised if you’re just gunna see two. I won’t be surprised at all.

Bart Dangerfield, we all loved him. Bart was an awesome guy, we all loved his meetings and presentations.

He’s gone too. Maybe he’s gone because money issues, I don’t know… i don’t wanna say too much.

But definitely he liked it there and he was excited to work in there. Something happened, something made him leave too.

[9:02] Then there’s another, if you guys remember Doctor Watkinsra, who was supposed to change the marketing idea? Who was supposed to write us a CD?

He was gone so fast. He came and he left. That was so quick.

Then Patricia from… we don’t have nobody know, I mean there’s nobody at iWowwe at graphics.

She was the one who designed the templates and the backgrounds and all the graphics stuff. She’s gone, nice young lady.

Everybody’s gone.

[10:56] And what’s really going on at IT? You think that our IT team is improving and growing?

Where is Jake Stevensson? Where is Richard Bateman? Where is Jack Long?

All these guys who were the backbone of the technology, where are they?

Mike Nolan can do everything alone? Is that what it is? Or he’s got ten hands at once suddenly? And five heads?

Well, I don’t know.

But one thing for sure: This is not a sign of… this list what I just gave you… is not a sign of a growing company. It’s not a sign of a successful company.

One particular sore point between iWowwe and Juhasz is frequent changes to the company’s compensation plan:

[3:00] How can I screw you to make more money for myself as the company owner, and give you less.

Since I’m on board with iWowwe the compensation plan has changed eleven times. And Bill Starkey promised me at the beginning of my first meeting, when I first went to Houston…

“Bill, please promise me something – don’t change the compensation plan.” And he shook my hands and he promised.

Sure he changed it two months later… and has been changing it all the time.

In the last three months, since Summer, he changed the comp plan three times.

[9:32] Then I received a phonecall two weeks ago. The guy’s name is Brian Gibbs, he was an affiliate.

Everybody was gone so nobody was working at iWowwe’s office because they’ve all been gone, or whatever – they’re not there. They finished, they quit.

And (so) Bill called in a few guys from the field. One of them was Brian Gibbs and the other one was Will Fjetland. They were the ones working with Bill.

And Brian Gibbs calls me up and says “Attila, you wanna talk to me.”

I said, “Really? Ok sure.”

And he said, “You know I just wanna tell you we were working all the time on the compensation plan changes with Bill. And Bill says “I have to change the compensation plan because you guys are making too much money.”

Hmmmmm.

Bill always told me he wants to change the compensation plan because he wanna give us more money. But he was actually working another way around. He thought we are making too much money.

So all the promises, “Attila, you gunna make a million dollars… I’m gunna fix the company.” That wasn’t true.

And this is coming from somebody he was working together with on the whiteboard. That’s sad.

It’s killed my heart because I really thought that he was working on improving the compensation plan – and actually he’s not.

News to me in Juhasz’s video was that apparently sometime over the last year iWowwe announced plans to take the company public.

[13:15] The public offering and an IPO? Don’t even bring that up.

The company’s not going public anymore.

And we ran the whole year based on that: “We gunna have lots of shares and go and sponsor people and you’re gunna get shares left and right and you’re gunna be rich.”

Yeah, sure. We will be rich, from what?

What shares? Those shares, what you have in your back office, it’s not even good for your bathroom my friend.

It’s good for nothing. It’s good to aggravate yourself. You’ve been fooled, big time.

It’s nothing gunna happen with none of them. It’s impossible.

This company, with twenty-five million dollars in the bank? And how many times did we ask, “Just show us the deposit of the twenty-five million dollars”?

Did anybody saw it? I never saw it. I asked for it many times…

And I live in America. When you have money in a bank, it’s very easy to show a deposit. It’s the easiest thing on planet Earth to show a deposit which you have in the bank.

[14:40] Guarantee for shares? Please.

Unfortunately from the fifteen minute mark Juhasz then begins promoting “a second boat” opportunity he’s now involved in. The name of his new company is not disclosed in the video.

Juhasz spends most of the end of the video indirectly urging his downline to leave iWowwe.

Regardless of the motivation behind Juhasz’s revelations, if true,  the current state of iWowwe is obviously cause for concern.

Especially comments regarding changes to the compensation plan, affiliates not getting paid and a continuous stream of promises broken by iWowwe management.

The quiet offering of shares to affiliates, on the implication that they will be worth something in the future, also begs the question of whether or not iWowwe have registered themselves with the SEC.

If not, then there certainly might be unregistered securities issues at play too.

Meanwhile on their website, iWowwe advise that they are a member of the Direct Selling Association (US).

If only even half of what Juhasz shares in his video is to be believed, what the DSA have been doing while all this has been taking place is a complete mystery.

Will iWowwe pull through in 2015, or is Juhasz just a bitter ex-affiliate lashing out at his former company?

Stay tuned…