Juice Plus terminate affiliate… for selling a non-MLM product?
When you do network marketing, you’re run by a corporation. They have you by the balls.
You’re at their mercy and for no reason, no reason whatsoever, they can terminate you.
That’s not really freedom. You’re not really your own boss.
-Dina Lynn, Facebook (Dec 23rd, 2016)
Juice Plus is a Tennessee based MLM company that market supplements they claim are the ‘next best thing to fruits and vegetables‘.
Dina Lynn joined Juice Plus three years ago after she was introduced to it by a friend.
I was skeptical but thought I had nothing to lose. I worked my business, followed the path taken by others who were successful, worked a daily DMO, built relationships, attended conferences and grew into leadership.
As part of her Juice Plus business strategy, Lynn (right) used Facebook to manage a large group.
I started a group on Facebook and my group grew to five thousand people overnight.
From like twenty people to five thousand people it grew, cause people wanted what I had.
And the thing is I would spent nights researching and nights trying to find resources and like answer the right questions and be a goldmine for people.
I started this group and it grew. But then I was told my (Juice Plus) leadership saying, “Dina, don’t water anybody else’s lawn before you water your own lawn”. Meaning don’t help other people until you help your own people.
I want to help everybody, that was my intention.
When they told me that I go “Ok, so I guess I’m going to close it”.
Lynn rose to the rank of Senior Sales Coordinator and claims she was earning enough to cover her rent, utilities and care for her dogs.
Don’t be fooled though. Even at a leadership position the income is not enough to sustain a small family little lone a single person.
I relied on this income but it could not sustain me. I decided to add an additional steam of income sharing a spice.
Dina Lynn owns Timeless Turmeric and is in the process of setting up product distribution throughout the US.
Timeless Turmeric is not an MLM company and, to the best of my knowledge, Juice Plus do not sell any turmeric specific products (although several of their products do contain turmeric among other things).
Lynn began promoting Timeless Turmeric through her defunct Juice Plus Facebook group.
It was not competitive and it was not a network marketing company. I even shared with my network that both of these products worked hand in hand to improve my health.
I never made disparaging remarks about the company, the product and in fact I was committed to the company and knew this was a win win for me.
I used my personal pages and groups that I created and built to share my message about food and healthy living.
These pages were my pages. Not the company pages, not groups or personal pages of others.
This purportedly attracted the attention of other Juice Plus leadership affiliates, some of whom were members of Lynn’s Facebook group.
On December 16, 2016 I received a call from Tom Mathis, Internal Affairs at Juice Plus.
He was curt, callous and mean spirited questioning my spice business and informed me that he was getting complaints from other leaders in the company about me.
Lynn claims prior to receiving Mathis’ call, she was never personally contacted by any Juice Plus leaders about Timeless Turmeric.
Mr. Mathis’s behavior to me was in such a manner of bullying that I enlisted my Sponsor to do a three way call with me.
He stated that there was a problem with my non-competitive and non-mlm product.
As with most MLM companies, Juice Plus’ affiliate agreement only prohibits direct competition with the company.
Again, Juice Plus doesn’t have a turmeric centric product, nor was Lynn marketing Timeless Turmeric in competition with Juice Plus.
Mr. Mathis had complete disregard to me as a human in the way he spoke to me.
Complete cruel disregard to me, even for someone who spent three yrs of their life building a team, qualifying my business monthly and being an example to others as a leader.
Following the phonecall Lynn reached out to her upline, only to find nobody was available (or willing) to assist her.
They were all sick or had someone who was sick (so good for a company who promotes healthy immune systems by taking their products).
On December 21st Lynn received another call from Mathis.
Mr. Mathis reached out back to me in the same manner that he treated me on the first call.
I asked who his boss was and he said the “board of directors” and to not even think of going to them or that would be an immediate grounds for termination. I was appalled and hung up.
I knew that the CEO, Jay Martin should know about this man.
On December 22, 2016 in the morning I called Mr Martin’s office and spoke to his secretary to leave a message. Mr. Martin was traveling.
10 minutes after leaving a message with his secretary I was terminated by email.
Mr. Mathis said I would not get my last paycheck.
The official reason for Lynn’s termination was her refusal to stop promoting Timeless Turmeric products. Juice Plus also claimed Lynn had brought their brand into disrepute.
I’ve done everything ethically, I’ve done everything morally, I’ve done everything legally, I’ve not done anything weird.
I don’t spam. You can talk to every single one of my customers and ask them, did I reach out to them?
No, they reached out to me.
I did not disrupt any sales force, I did not bring bad name to the company but the company decided to let a few other leaders who I had no relationship with determine my fate.
Essentially, the company is a scam when they can take what you built away in a minute when you did nothing wrong and when you did not break any rule or covenant.
Lynn didn’t take the news of her termination well, and took to Facebook to express her frustration at the company’s decision.
Tom Mathis … you don’t know who I am, you don’t know what I’ve done.
You’re sitting there in your corporate office with your fucking fancy car and looking out of whatever floor you’re on.
Collecting millions of dollars and picking on someone who’s paying their fucking rent and their utilities and you took it away from me you asshole.
This attracted the attention of Elton DuBose, Vice-President of Juice Plus.
DuBose personally offered Lynn an undisclosed amount of money to delete her social media posts about her termination.
Elton said he didn’t want to talk about what happened but rather offer me some money to remove the video and move on.
With this action, he was standing by Mr. Mathis’s behavior and stating that it was acceptable.
No amount of money can silence me especially when its the truth.
As far as I can tell, Dina Lynn was running a successful and growing Juice Plus business.
She was passionate about the products and had a healthy base of retail customers. The sort of affiliate most MLM companies would love to have out there promoting and selling their products.
There’s no question that had Timeless Turmeric taken off, Lynn’s Juice Plus business would have most likely faltered.
But in the absence of a Juice Plus turmeric specific product and Timeless Turmeric not being an MLM opportunity, how exactly is that grounds for termination?
If Lynn’s efforts at marketing turmeric were successful enough to attract the ire of other Juice Plus leadership affiliates, surely a smart company would approach her about possibility adding the product to their own range?
I don’t want to get bogged down with the specifics of such a business partnership, but sounds to me like Lynn was onto something.
Bring her on as a consultant, buy the business idea outright… the Timeless Turmeric products are complimentary to Juice Plus’ existing range.
If there’s a market, do what you need to do give Juice Plus customers what they’re after.
But no. Instead we have a company terminating someone who got into MLM as a first-timer, worked their ass off and was was seeing results.
This is my first time doing it and guess what people?
This is my last time doing it. I will never do network marketing again.
Three days before Christmas no less.
I get the need for non-competitive clauses, as there’s all manner of dodgy crap going on in the MLM industry (only a small percentage of which is publicly covered here).
When people inside the industry are doing it right though, that is providing greater value to their customers of their own initiative, in a manner that’s completely in alignment with the spirit of their affiliate agreement, you don’t go and terminate them.
It’s not over yet. I am a fighter and a survivor. I am not a victim.
At the time of publication Dina Lynn’s Facebook video has been viewed nearly five thousand times.
I was unable to find any public response from Juice Plus regarding the matter.
Update 11th January 2017 – Dina Lynn has since removed most of the content regarding her Juice Plus termination from her Facebook feed. Not sure what the story is there.
The rule she broke was offering something to other Juice Plus people – most MLMs have that in their clauses.
If she had simply offered to non Juice Plus people there would not have been an issue.
It is not whether it is MLM or competing – it is about distraction.
So whilst I do not approve of the Mr Mathis approach, I do understand why it arose.
Her colourful language and video following the event, surely proves that Juice Plus were correct to terminate her position?
It is about respecting what you have.
Sorry, but distraction? The hell kind of clause is that?
You can’t terminate someone’s business for “distraction”.
And what distraction? Turmeric is a widely-available non-proprietary spice. There’s no business opportunity attached to Timeless Turmeric so how is Lynn marketing it a distraction?
Yeah, you can’t terminate someone for using foul language after the fact either.
As I understand it Lynn wasn’t marketing turmeric as an alternative, it was complimentary. And Juice Plus has no competing product.
Being an MLM affiliate doesn’t automatically rule out doing anything else in your life business related.
Least of all marketing a non-MLM product on a non-corporate Facebook group you own that people have voluntarily joined.
I agree, but it was because she marketed to other Juice plus people.
She was causing a distraction, which Leaders complained about, hence the termination.
In the business, I work with in the UK we have the same clauses.
You can market whatever you like to anyone, as long as they are not within our business.
It is specifically banned.
Also Oz, we have no idea, what she said by email or on the phone.
We only have one side of the story.
Why not ask Mr Mathis for his side too?
Even if the people you are marketing to are part of a facebook group you own which has no legal bindings to Juice Plus?
How is it even possible to market something on FB without marketing it to others in the same business? Its not like you can decline someone joining a group based on whether they were Juice Plus affiliates as well.
If this Turmeric promotion was done on the official Juice Plus facebook group then by all means the termination is justified but from what I read she started her own group and people who are perfectly in their right to join joined. Then she sidelined her product on her own group.
This is why i don’t do MLM. Too many hoops to jump through to earn squat with no actual income security.
Which is a problem, if you’re marketing a competing product. It’s called a non-competitive clause for a reason.
Turmeric is an entirerly complimentary product, which can even be taken with Juice Plus products (one way I believe in which Lynn was marketing it).
Outside of a directly competing product or any product that’s attached to an MLM business opportunity, terminating affiliates for adding more value their existing business is baloney.
Nobody could profit from Timeless Turmeric other than Lynn, and it wasn’t being marketed outside of her own Facebook group and personal profile page.
With almost 5000 views clocked and hundreds of comments on Dina Lynn’s Facebook page, you’d think the company would have issued a statement.
If one is provided I’ll go from there but in the meantime, IMO this particular termination wasn’t warranted.
Example:
I work for an MLM company (lets say ItWorks for this example)
I have a group that teaches leadership and other opportunities and it grows to 25,000 members including many ItWorks affiliates.
I post about one of my own products that ItWorks does not sell and it falls in the same category of dietary supplements.
Is that grounds for termination with ItWorks on the basis on a ridiculous ‘Distraction’ clause when I own and manage the Group and it has absolutely nothing to do with ItWorks but it just happened to be that some of the members of my group also promoted ItWorks?
This was nothing more than the “we are big now and have no need for you” element to business but Juice Plus forget that the only reason the they have CEOs and people like Mr Mathis is because they couldn’t market or even get shelf space for the product themselves and its the affiliates that make the business.
MLM only exists because of the competitive and extremely restrictive nature of public consumer production and distribution with major chains but when they reach a point where they no longer need the affiliate to do the work for them then like all MLMs you are thrown on the scrapheap.
So as long as Juice Plus could see they were getting a slice of money for all of her efforts they had no problem with it.
Her group her rules does not apply.
So her mistake was not cutting Juice Plus in on the deal before she started selling this stuff.
I guess she needed another group just to sell another product.
Yet even then the members of Juice Plus that joined it would do nothing more than tell on her for doing that.
MLM seems to be a dirty business of greed that comes from the top.
Or she just has initiative, being busy building her network, something her own company told her to STOP DOING. What sort of company does that? Think about it.
MLM companies are like that… Join or die. There is no between. This is not even cross-recruiting or double-timing.
This is plain old douchebaggery, that an affiliate should not spend ANYTHING on anything else. That’s an f***ing cult, not a business.
so the ‘you have your own business’ is debunked once again in the mlm community? shocking.
I can sell whatever I want at my legitimate business. Other manufacturers may not like it but they can’t do anything about it.
And let’s not forget she did it because of this even though “working” her butt off for Juice Plus.
You go girl. Spread the word.
As typical in mlm their products are over priced with layers of commissions added.
Imagine if she has that selling a decent product she could profit from in all the 3 years she was building Juice Plus.
Right, that’s really the company’s facebook group, not hers! She didn’t build that, the company did.
The group was started by her, NOT the company.
I know Ms. Lynn and her upline. And they ALL market their other products to their Juice Plus people.
For instance, her local leader works for Tony Robbins, so not only does she use Tony Robbins to find people for Juice Plus, she uses her pages and groups to sell Juice Plus to Tony Robbins people.
Same woman sold energy bracelets to her Juice Plus people.
How is that different?
A top Juice Plus leader had her niece market an Juice Plus app to all the Juice Plus reps and make money from them.
How is this different?
Not one person asked her about her Turmeric biz, nor did they have a discussion with her.
Tom Mathis took executive direction over a few NMD’s who were jealous of Dina, and he alone made the decision not only to terminate her immediately, but without her being able to defend herself, without evidence, and using the most vague term imaginable…”disruptive”?
How so? How was she disruptive and what the hell does disruptive even mean? I’m a Juice Plus rep and I didn’t find her disruptive at all. She is selling Turmeric direct from a far. No MLM.
This is like telling someone they can’t have a 2nd source of income while being in your MLM.
I hope Juice Plus pays for this and tons of others whom Tom did the same thing came out to contact Dina and share their stories only they don’t have the balls she does for speaking the truth.
If she is doing well on The Tumeric biz – she can go all out selling it now.
Or even take the cash Juice plus offered here to build it out even faster.
Money is money just use it productively.
Just because Dina had a bad experience with one MLM company (Juice Plus), does not mean every MLM is bad.
Most network marketers such as myself promote various products & services from multiple business opportunities so if one fails, I still have 9 other companies to promote.
I see this all the time and when people get terminated they seem to sing the same tune.
From what I am reading here is what I see happened. She started a group for her followers and customers. She was a Leader in JP and that brings followers.
She opened her group up (To help everyone) and that means she opened her group to other DT’s in the company NOT on her team. She was warned by her upline to water her own grass.
She should have removed all DT’s in JP from her private group immediately. This is what happens when building on Social Media. She deleted her group and started a new one (From what I am hearing on her video.)
She say’s “I wanted to help people not making money to make money” so it sounds as if there was an opportunity involved.
She then hit’s those people with another product/opportunity to DT’s not in her JP business and this is cross promoting. She states, “It is MY FB page and I can promote what I wan’t” Well then you have to accept the consequences of those actions.
You can even here the “Pitch” at the end of the video but each his own. These “Leaders” get a name, this causes them to get followers on FB and in there groups, and soon as they start promoting something else to those people they cross the line.
Then when they get terminated they cry for mercy. As a leader in my business I have 1000’s of followers. I can go on FB and promote something else but its at my own risk. She seemingly was warned numerous times.
P.S. I am NOT in JP plus.
I’ve categorically clarified with Lynn that there is no business opportunity attached to Timeless Turmeric.
Live your dream. Create your life. Live with intention. It breaks my heart watching what Dina has had to go through.
The video brought back a lot of memories for me. When I shared it on Facebook, I got some hate mail suggesting I need to remove it.
Dina didn’t take the money they offered her to take the video down and I didn’t remove it because I wish I had known years ago what I know now.
People need to know the facts so they can make a more informed decision. I’m grateful to Dina for having the guts to speak up.
For nearly 15 years, I have constructed a life of purpose and freedom. Rich in relationships, travel and even residual income. I was up for a promotion, breaking records, my business was actually booming in 7 different countries with hundreds of personal customers and I didn’t even see it coming. You never know why things happen at the time, but I believe there must be a reason.
I ended up losing everything when I was terminated from the same company. I felt like my purpose had been taken away. I thought I was the ONLY ONE and I was in pure shock and went through a serious depression.
The good news is that when thousands of Facebook friends and 10,000+ followers started reached out to me to find out if I was ok, and why I was no longer posting on Social Media, I learned I was not the only one!
Many other leaders at the top experienced a very similar situation and have now come forward thank God.
Reps should know this could happen to them. Many of them lost even more than I had, and I had no idea! Since many of the National Marketing Directors signed a contract and accepted a buyout, they can no longer sue the company.
(Ozedit: Offtopic marketing spam removed)
Dina DID indeed try to leverage her network of Juice Plus+ colleagues to sell her turmeric.
She called me personally and I called her out on it – that’s not right.
She was in a senior leadership position and you have a contract, a covenant of sorts where you promise to represent The Juice Plus Company honorably and exclusively.
She broke this. The company gave her several opportunities to rectify her choices and losing her temper she posted on Facebook, fuck you Tom Mathis who is her senior VP.
That right there deserves termination! The Juice Plus Company is way to classy to tolerate that kind of shit.
Cool, as I said above I assumed based on her words. Being a opportunity does not matter. She simply should have removed al DT’s from her groups.
If I went on my Facebook wall and posted a nutritional product that has nothing to do with my company nor a pay plan and these people start ordering from me I have crossed the line.
Right or Wrong is not the issue. It’s that I have broken the rules. I am not saying this as she has a right to be upset but I see these “Marketers do it all the time.”
The start pitching stuff after building relationships from the company.
To say, “I Built this” is not true as the people joined and followed her because she was exposed as a “Leader” in JP and people outside her organization followed her. She would not have those people without the exposure from JP. IJS
@Steve
How can you sell her turmeric if there’s no business opportunity attached to it?
After she was terminated, correct?
@Tim
How so? It’s your Facebook wall and so long as you’re not violating your affiliate agreement, who cares?
Show me an affiliate agreement that bans affiliates from marketing anything outside of the company and I’ll show you an MLM company that needs a right royal kick up the arse.
When you sign up as an MLM affiliate you don’t sign over your entire life to the company. What a number these companies have done on some of you.
I wouldn’t trust any company that would grab a woman by the balls either.
She should feed the remaining Juice+ caps to her dogs and move on to the next best NM company quickly.
Or just become a top affilliate for turmeric. There are plenty of affiliate distributors out there.
That’ll teach Tim and his ball grabbing self not to pick on a decent woman.
Shame on you!
I enjoyed reading and hearing her story and I think JP needs to suffer the consequences.
I’ve never been a very successfull networkmarketer but I’ve been around it a long time and I’ve written a lot about it and I know that those people in the home office are not the gods they like to portray themselves to be.
As for the justice and fairness she did NOT get….
1. Her language is a non-issue.
2. Whether the termination was justified or not (which I don’t think it was), that ass-hole in Corporate surely didn’t use good judgement. I think something could have been worked out.
3. It was clearly a case of jealousy and possesiveness (from whoeve complained about her) that cost her her business.
4. I hope someday the FTC comes down really hard on these restrictions in MLM distributor agreements. If the company isn’t guaranteeing a distributor anything… and if they’re telling people they can ‘own your own business’… you ought to be able to sell whatever you want to whomever you want. Period. Any business person would expect that freedom.
I know for a fact that lots of people in MLM sell other, non-competitive products…. e.g. the thousands of people in MLSP and those other training deals is just one example.
Unfortunately, MLM companies sell ‘hopes, dreams, and bullshit’. For some it works but for most it doesn’t.
Art
I have no problem with any of the comments here but I take issue with Steve’s comment because I have never called anyone.
Remember I have no turmeric to sell.. the company did not give me any opportunity to rectify either unless one phone call is counted.
I have phone records, emails and proof of the events that unfolded. So Steve unless you can show face and cough up proof your comment is null. Just a troll wanting to throw in your opinion.
I personally am not convinced about the product, but I don’t doubt others who feel better on them.
Dina expressed that she couldn’t afford to take JP anymore.
There are options for her to continue to take and better AFFORD this type of supplement if she so desires. In fact, former Juice Plus users reviewed these products and one had this to say:
Natures Way Garden Veggies and/or Orchard Fruits for only $7.68 a bottle 60 ct. swansonvitamins.com/natures-way-garden-veggies-60-caps
This might be a way to really help her customers and save them some money – if good nutrition was at the heart of focus here.
why in America will not open an investigation into this company that sells a ridiculous weight loss product, it does not work and costs a lot.
in more there are few sales of the product in my opinion is an illegal scheme based solely on recruiting, stops this society.
rita write the century, this company sells a few such products in Italy and only recruit people.
it is an illegal scheme in which a few get rich on the losses of the other. the products are useless, they are worse than the economic supplements, complained to the SEC.
Is Juice Plus that restrictive that they cannot handle someone purchasing something they don’t produce at pennies on the dollar?
So its all for one and all for one in Juice Plus? Very interesting.
Dina should get her financial house in order first. The bills, rent, and food expenses are reoccurring. They will require an income source which pays daily or weekly.
After she is financially stable, she can consult with an attorney but not before going over the T & C’s and P & P’s.
One doesn’t want to invest emotional energy on a legal case which may not yield positive results.
I don’t know the products but if they are both nutritional supplements then i do see the conflict of interest that others in the company would not want dragged into their business.
Just because its turmeric is less important than the fact that it’s all pills or powders aimed at wellness as nd health.
Update: Dina Lynn has since removed most of the content regarding her Juice Plus termination from her Facebook feed.
Not sure what the story is there.
It’s like… Someone buying health supplements doesn’t have a vitamin c budget and a turmeric budget, they just have an overall supplements budget.
They all are going to fight for the same dollars. If they spend it on turmeric now then they might have less or none for the juice.
@John
That’d be a fair point if Lynn was pitching Timeless Turmeric on Juice Plus properties (website, social media profiles etc.)
If you’re in an MLM company what you do on your own personal Facebook page/groups, provided you don’t breach your affiliate agreement, is your own business.
An MLM company cannot stop you selling products not in direct competition with their own offering. Juice Plus doesn’t sell a turmeric product and that’s a key issue here.
If they did I’d be in whole agreement with Lynn breaching the non-compete clause.
You can’t market something as an alternative if there’s nothing to compare it to.
A complimentary product is another matter, as there’s no restriction on selling complimentary products.
OMG Steve you are such a liar!!! LOL
I would like to point out that in Italy, for example, there are the brothers orru ‘, Lorenzo Cicetti, and other leaders that oblige the new distributors to spend € 500 to enter juicy plus (totally illegal) as the minimum and $60, in more selling few products and the group does is to recruit other people.
if 50 people signaled this to the authorities, would end this lousy illegal system, which survives more on recruitment and the sale of the product.
so we report these individuals to the SEC, if it were a juicy plus serious company would not allow such lawlessness and bannerebbe these individuals in Italy.
the only means we have and denounce everything to the local authorities, and the same juicy plus that distributors instead of selling the products they create chains of people earning from above, an illegal scheme.
10-20-50 if people complain to the authorities these illegalities will see that the authorities will intervene
Antonio, you need to complain to the FTC (Federal Trade Commission), not the SEC (Securities & Exchange Commission). The FTC has jurisdiction of MLM companies.
Want to know what typically happens to MLM product purchasers after the income opportunity is removed?
They stop buying.
In this case, it doesn’t even appear Dina will be buying the much cheaper non-MLM alternative. Wow, after “three years of consuming the product everyday” [for health benefits], it’s been dropped like a hot potato.
This is NOT a criticism of Dina. IMO, she is just another real world example of why people use MLM products – the income opportunity. That person might not realize it at the time because they get sucked in by the cult like atmosphere.
For what it’s worth I reached out to Lynn about her removed Facebook posts. Never heard back so not sure what happened there.
My take on the removal of her video:
I watched it twice and heard a lot of contradictions in it. One that stuck out to me was, (paraphrasing) “MLM is good, but I’m never doing it again.”
She was in a highly emotional grief state during the recording – shock and denial. After devoting three years of her life, I don’t blame her for wanting to justify all her hard work – defending the product and MLM in that video.
We can already see how her opinion has changed about the product in my previous post. For example, in the video, she was upset about no longer being able to afford JP. Now she’s using the real thing.
After calming down, I would’ve removed it too. Still to this day, I am mortified that I fell for the Quixtar spiel and that was only for a few months of my life. I wish it never happened.
Another early justification often heard, “My time in MLM taught me a lot about marketing.”
I don’t expect Dina to agree with me and this post – not yet.
For me, and almost twenty years later and much reading on the subject, it simply taught me what a scam MLM really is!!!