Roger Langille buries Sozo termination hatchet
Prior to launching DS Domination, Roger Langille’s primary MLM focus was his affiliate membership with Sozo.
So the story goes, Langille met with Mark Adams (co-founder and CEO of Sozo) in April. During a wine and dine, Langille claims Sozo promised him lead generation, the opening of the business in Brazil, that Sozo would be “best in class”, a check match bonus that “equated to the binary”, a “3 for free” recruitment incentive, the “full opening” of Sozo in Canada, a 401k retention program, a weight-loss coffee range and a new compensation plan.
Langille claims none of the “promises that were made were delivered on” by the company.
Despite this, Langille still managed to become the highest ranked affiliate in Sozo (Sapphire) shortly after signing up, claiming to be a “top recruiter” and responsible for ‘70-80% of the growth across the entire company‘.
Langille states he was able to maintain via his online marketing, but once the ‘online started to be cancelled and we started moving in a different direction… the numbers completely, drastically went down‘.
In mid 2013 Sozo held an affiliate conference in Chicago, shortly prior to the event Langille claims he was on the verge of hitting the Emerald affiliate membership rank within the company.
Due to a Sozo backoffice availability problems however, Langille says that he initially missed the deadline to qualify as a Sozo Sapphire affiliate before the Chicago event.
After flying in to talk with Sozo corporate however, they agreed to backdate Langille’s volume enough so that he would then qualify as an Emerald affiliate by the Chicago event date.
After confirming the backdating of “3 applications” with corporate, Langille contacted his upline, Terry McEwen to give him the news.
I thought Terry would laugh and celebrate with me but he spent about twenty minutes asking me questions. Like “how did that happen?”, “who authorised that?”
And being my upline it was kinda shocking when he finally got around to congratulating me – he’ll tell you – I burst out laughing and said “that’s the worst congratulations in history”.
Believing he was to be presented with recognition as an Emerald affiliate, Langille rocked up to the Chicago event only to be told by McEwen (as retold by Roger Langille) that
Listen, Mark (Evans) doesn’t want to honor you as an Emerald. He doesn’t want to count it.
I said, “what do you mean?”
He said, “well he doesn’t think it’s fair to backdate like that”.
I said, “well that’s policy Terry. That’s what I was told, it’s policy. And it was just a systems error and we countered it three different times”.
“No, he doesn’t want to backdate it”.
Langille accepted Adams’ decision “in the gut”. Suspicious though, Langille states he
started wondering if it was really him (Adams) that didn’t want to backdate it and, what’s the real story here? Why didn’t we break Emerald?
Looking for answers, Langille claims he then tried to “get a hold of Mark for twenty-eight straight days”.
On the twenty-fourth day Langille sent the following email to Sozo corporate:
I’m sorry, but I can think of no circumstance where I would ever try and get a hold of a man for 24 days, receive no response and bother continuing down that path.
Langille goes on to explain that after conducting his own research, he uncovered several instanced of Adams liaising with other Sozo affiliates, eventually arriving at the conclusion he was purposefully being ignored.
Langille reveals that while he was trying to get in contact Mark Adams, he received a cryptic Facebook message from his upline, Terry McEwen:
F*#K brother… I don’t believe you can stop it as I suspected. I will do my very best to protect you and only you my brother… no worries… I will deal with it.
not mad… just sad… LOL. horrific day with several assholes… I need peace…
Langille claims at the time he had no idea what McEwen was going to protect him from.
I have another company and the policies and procedures say you can have multiple companies, you can be in multiple companies. So I don’t understand what I’m being protected against.
A third significant event also took place during the month of August for Langille, and that was the launch of DS Domination.
Attempting to stave off the inevitably suspicions of cross recruiting and plundering of Sozo downlines, Langille provides several instances where he categorically knocks back Sozo affiliates looking to be sponsored by him.
Meanwhile Langille continued his efforts to get in contact with Adams, eventually catching him on his cell phone.
During the call Adams informed Langille that
he was geting these reports from Terry, from Steve, from everybody else about DS Domination and all this cross-recruiting.
During this phonecall Langille also discovered the alleged real reason behind his denial of an Emerald affiliate rank promotion at Sozo’s Chicago event.
Mark said Terry (McEwen) and Yvonne (McEwen’s wife) had called them into their hotel room and talked to them about me not going Emerald.
And Mark, well he ultimately made the decision and said he knew nothing about the backdating. And then Mark made the decision that there’s no such thing as backdating.
So imagine the owner of the company and your upline trying to stop you from being promoted. Little bit frustrating.
Claiming to want to “work with Mark”, Langille then sent an email to Adams in which he detailed six offers he believed would smooth things over:
1. Removing myself as admin from my Facebook room that I created with 77% of the room being my true group.
2. My offering my incredibly valuable list of 1000s of people to corporate so they could scrub all Sozo email addresses
3. My refraining from posting in my own group, and on my own wall, and stepping into the darkness in regards to Sozo
4. My offering to give up the YouTube channel name Sozo
5. My offering full administrative rights to the Facebook group to Terry and Yvonne McEwen
6. My speaking with leaders about not advertising DS on their walls
Adams and Langille continued to discuss the situation, with Adams eventually informing Langille that he expected Langille to resign from the company.
Wishing to retain his affiliate position in Sozo, Langille declined to resign and told Adams he’d do “whatever it takes” to retain his position.
Mark Adams responded by continuing to demand Langille’s resignation:
Hi Roger,
A couple of points
1. I have received your “important” emails… thank you!
2. I haven’t seen your resignation letter yet. Again, please send it with your effective date of resignation so I can formalize. I will respond to that email with a note to you extending the things I promised to you.
3. Please make sure Rodney, Jeremy, etc. understand that they need to avoid DS Domination recruiting of Sozo distributors at all costs and certainly avoid any cross recruiting!
4. Once your resignation is effective… should you make a formal announcement of it, please consider the following language in your resignation announcement:
“I’ve had a project in motion for many years and I really did not think it would have come together this fast, but it did and I had to make a decision, so after struggling for many days, I decided it was time to go ahead and pursue long time dream I’ve had for almost a decade.
I wholeheartedly believe in Mark Adams and the vision of where he is taking Sozo and know this will be a legacy company that will be around for decades to come!
I feel fortunate to have had a very positive relationship with Mark as well as having a close working relationship with my upline Terry and Yvonne, Jim and Paul over the last 5 months.
These are good people to be in business with and I will miss working with them all.
I want to apologise if I hurt anyone’s business in anyway. I never had any intention of harming anyone at Sozo whatsoever, and I will work hard to make sure that anyone I work with will respect Sozo and all TOPP family members, as, I know I will receive the same from Terry, Yvonne, Jim, Paul and their TOPP teammates.
I wish everyone at Sozo great health, wealth and happiness for you and your families.”
5. Have you spoken to Merle yet about transferring the you tube channel name “Sozo”?
6. I understand you have turned over the full administrative rights to Terry and Yvonne… is that correct? Thank you!
I appreciate you my friend!
Mark
Langille responded to Adams email with the following:
Mark, I have to put some thought into the letter you are asking me to craft. As an individual I am completely willing to bend over backwards but there are 3 main components to protect, my team, my reputation and my core beliefs.
The first thing that jumps out at me is that I have zero confidence in the Terry (sic) and others to grow this team with home parties. Every statistic bears this out except for one from 20 years ago that it was done in a different time with zero competition.
Making a statement supporting them, while proper in my mind would be something like this:
“I believe in and am grateful for the leadership of Terry, Jim and Paul, and note to self I am lying to accommodate myself, and letting all team members know it is ok to spend their hard earned money on autoship in a system that cannot create success.”
I mean if all things were fair and just we would all get on a call with my personals and make a statements pf our beliefs (sic), they would all side with me. Then get a call with all of my personals personals (sic) and so forth, and in the end probably 90% would leave.
Part of Langille’s lack of faith in Terry McEwen no doubt stems from comments made by McEwen around the time of Adams and Langille’s exchanges:
As you can see above, McEwen appears to have already distanced himself from Langille, despite him being in his immediate Sozo downline at the time.
Adams’ response to Langille’s email above was an affiliate termination letter.
Dear Roger and Angie,
Sozo Global has received credible information which clearly supports its decision to Terminate your distributor position effective with this notification.
Documents at our disposal indicate that you have started your own network marketing company, DS Domination, and have been actively engaged in crossline recruiting of Sozo Global distributors.
As you are aware according to item 2.3.1 of the Sozo Global Policies and Procedures, Distributors may engage in the products and services of other network marketing companies but they may introduce those products and services to distributors whom they have personally sponsored into Sozo Global.
Your actions are therefore in clear violation.
To support our decision we also have information that you have been making disparaging statements about other Sozo Global distributors. With reference to this please note Section 2, Operating your Independent Business, Code of Ethics, Item 2.1.5:
I will not make discouraging, negative or disparaging claims about Sozo, its management, officers or other Sozo Global distributors.
This too, is in clear violation of the Policies and Procedures to which you agreed when you accepted the responsibility of becoming a Sozo Global independent distributor.
Our records also indicate that you have intentionally violated the terms of your contingent Performance Based Compensation Agreement, dated 03/20/2013. Note the non-solicitation clause in the agreement:
1. Nonsolicitation
During your service as an independent contractor to Sozo, you will have access to certain proprietary and non-public information maintained by Sozo, including its trade secrets.
To protect against disclosure and misappropriation of such information, and potential unfair competition, you agree that during your term as an independent contractor with Sozo and for a period of twenty-four (24) months thereafter, without Sozo’s express written permission, you shall not, directly or indirectly, for yourself or on behalf of any other individual or entity, employ, solicit for employment, or recommend for employment or retain, solicit for retention or recommend for retention as an independent contractor or otherwise any person who is, at that time, or hadbeen, within one year prior to that time, employed or retained by Sozo (or any affiliate of Sozo) in any capacity.
You acknowledge that damages resulting from a breach of the foregoing provisions and the confidentiality provisions of Section 5 would be immediate and irrepairable and would not be subject to compensation via monetary damages, and therefore Sozo may seek preliminary and other injunctive relief, specific performance, or other equitable relief with respect to any alleged breach of this Section 4 or Section 5, without neccesity of posting bond or other security therefor.
As indicted above, Sozo Global has no alternative but to Terminate your independent distributor position without any opportunity to appeal now or at any time in the future.
Bear in mind that according to the Rules and regulations governing your now terminated relationship with Sozo Item 2.3.2. Nonsolicitation after termination, for a period of twelve (12) calendar months following, cancellation, non-renewal, or termination of your agreement for any reason, you may not Recruit or attempt to Recruit any Distributor of Customer for another Network Marketing Business.
Based upon all the documentation at our disposal our decision to Terminate is final and not subject to further communication.
Langille claims Sozo terminated him because he ‘recruited around a hundred people‘ and that if he talked to them about DS Domination ‘it’d be so damaging to Sozo that they just threw me out‘.
There’s gunna be no communications, no documentations of me soliciting into DS Domination that was not a personal of mine, prior to this letter, okay?
Langille goes on to accuse Sozo of planning to “go around Canadian law”:
To get approved up in Canada you wrote a barebones compensation plan. You took out the $1299 and $499 pack and then once that’s approved the goal is to put those $499 and $1299 packs in there.
Kind of hinted at with Langille’s measuring of his Sozo success by affiliate recruitment numbers, the mention of flying out Canadian affiliates 40 at a time to “break even” on their recruitment and his talking down of “home parties” (which tend to be product focused), I believe the core problem between Langille and Sozo is Langille’s obvious recruitment-focused approach to the business.
When I personally reviewed Sozo back in June I identified a clear red-flag in the
Typically when a company offers monthly autoship to their affiliates there’s a conscious effort to ensure that it’s entirely optional (usually via a comparative sales volume qualification).
The reason for this is to discourage affiliates simply going out and recruiting new affiliates, whacking them on monthly autoship and then having them do the same.
This is of course problematic in that it shifts focus away from retail sales, and also because it means the business pretty much operates as a defacto pyramid scheme – moreso when affiliates must be on monthly autoship to earn commissions.
Autoship red flags arise in Sozo from the moment they join the company, with the amount of autoship an affiliate opts in for dictating what percentage of a commission they earn in the binary.
The more an affiliate pays, the more they earn.
From Langille’s own description of his business (shipping Canadian affiliates into the US to sign up for higher autoships etc), this appears to be exactly what Langille focused on to grow his Sozo business. At no point in Langille’s video does he mention sales to retail customers or retail volume.
Whether Mark Adams was aware this was going to happen when he signed a Performance Based Compensation Agreement with Langille I can’t say, however it is plausible that he realised things were fast spiralling out of control on the affiliate recruitment side of the business.
Faced with reworking the compensation plan to address the evident autoship issues in it, he instead appears to have chosen to terminate Langille.
Langille by that stage had built himself a sizeable affiliate autoship-focused business with his downline no doubt doing most of the recruiting, hence the offer to step back from the business and continue to collect his monthly autoship commissions.
In that sense I totally get why he didn’t want to give up his Sozo affiliateship, but I do think if Adams was truly going to launch a new compensation plan then he might just have let nature run its course so to speak.
Unless he was worried about Langille picking up his downline and jumping ship to DS Domination if a new “not so reliant on affiliate recruitment and autoship” Sozo compensation plan was introduced.
In that case I totally get why Langille was terminated. I don’t agree with it but I get why they did it.
I don’t agree with Langille’s termination on these grounds because trouble is, if you swoon over an affiliate with a proven track record of recruitment focus, it’s hardly fair to punish them when they do exactly what you signed them up to do.
I think Adams might have Langille on the issue of cross-recruitment and promotion though, as the personalised Performance Based Compensation agreement looks to clearly demonstrate a breach on Langille’s behalf.
Langille does repeatedly go on about having not personally been involved in cross-recruitment and poaching of affiliates, however it’s clear it was going on and, as the apparent owner of DS Domination, I do believe there’s some culpability there on Langille’s behalf.
For now however it seems Roger Langille has buried the hatched and moved onto solely focusing on DS Domination. Whether or not Sozo and Mark Adams will take any further action against Langille remains to be seen.
Footnote: Most of the source material for this artcle comes from a YouTube video Roger Langille uploaded on the 16th of September 2013.
Langille’s video, titled “Sozo Life Coffee Company President Mark E Adams Termination if your in Sozo dont watch”, is accompanied by the following text:
I want everyone to know I wrestled with this video. I know several people in SoZo that are trying to grow teams and that should not be interrupted.
After much thought 4 days after being terminated from SoZo wrongly, I decided on the following: If you are growing a team, they have the right to know what they are growing as do you. Leaders would want loved ones to know exactly what they are staking their career and names on.
If this video offends anyone I apologize. Everything in here is true, and is documented to the fullest of my capabilities. I wish everyone in network marketing the best of luck.
I have included no link in this video or in this text to my new company. Just more of me trying to do the right thing.
It should however be a clue that a long standing company is so fearful of a 3 week old company that they would terminate their top producer.
I am still willing to share DS’s back office where you will see I recruited 1 person, 1 of nearly a hundred of my personals in SoZo.
I am very hurt but am not that selfish to make it about me. As an industry you must deliver on your promises. As leaders, there is no room for jealousy.
I did not include this in the video but at one point Terry was to be involved in DS and it was to launch internationally.
However, after seeing the delays in engaging and witnessing him doing that on other projects in SoZo we decided to pass on Terrys offer.
Good luck to all of you.
Doesnt matter. He would have been on to the next deal in 6 to 12 months anyway. If you want your team and your work to be FOR SALE to the highest bidder, stick with Roger.
ANYONE that says or thinks SoZo has shown ANYTHING that would make them a “legacy company” has got a screw loose.
I was involved with Sozo for a while actually – but on the ‘other leg’ of Terry McEwen than Roger Langille was on. Roger had become quite well known for the volume he was driving in the company – we all were told to listen to Roger/try to look into his marketing strategies, which were largely online based.
I think to claim that Langille was focused on the Affiliate recruitment is unfair because every single person in Sozo was focused on the same thing…in Canada and Australia you could ONLY recruit affiliates, no product could be sold in the first place, so in 2/3 of the nations Sozo was ‘open’, only affiliate recruitment was allowed in the first place.
Interestingly Oz, Langille actually had the highest product volume generation overall in his team compared to pretty much anyone else (again, this was intimated to the group I was in by my upline who was 2-3 steps from Terry himself).
Many of us were also involved in multiple ventures besides Sozo – that was actually the ‘hook’ that was used by Sozo. At the time I joined (and Langille was becoming a super star in the company), affiliates were being Terminated in Visalus for building multiple businesses together.
Sozo, we were told, would never oppose someone building multiple companies…in fact, we were told, that Mark Adams himself runs multiple businesses. In Sozo’s own TOS, it states that you CAN cross recruit your own personals into multiple companies (just not non-personals).
So all of this has indeed left a very bad taste in my mouth – being inside the company I have seen the same things happen – we were told about a 401k program that was a coming, health insurance that would be great, and great matching bonuses. My own income for the amount of team building and volume generation I did was well short of what it should have been based on the promises and ideas by Sozo.
Overall, even though Roger was not an upline of mine, I tend to largely agree with him on the points made (and he shows evidence of it all). When I asked about joining DS Domination, I was specifically told that I will need to ask my sponsor in Sozo about it because Roger did not want any cross recruiting.
I would like to point out and correct 2 things Oz:
1. The Chicago event was not a Sozo event – it was a TOPP (Terry McEwen’s online marketing group) event. Almost all of the people there were from Roger’s team (since it was by far the largest group in the company). This was not an official Sozo event, so the whole idea of asking Mark Adams permissions or involving him seem to have been initiated by Terry as I can’t see why Mark Adams would care about that.
2. If Sozo’s focus was on ‘product sales’ and not affiliate recruitment, they would’ve done things very differently. For one, the comp plan rewards ‘signing people up’, not product sales.
Second, we were all told repeatedly at webinars, major events and so on that we should try and mimic Roger’s results. In fact, Terry’s whole group was based around copying Roger’s online marketing with their TOPP system.
I was, for example, told to get a hold of Oli T, another online marketer for any help with online marketing so we could get results like Roger’s.
Oli’s ideas included making videos or taking pictures holding wads of cash and telling 8 people that they would be able to do the same if they followed the ‘blueprint’ (with the blueprint being get 8, then get them 2 each) – all about affiliate recruitement.
At this point, I largely agree with Langille’s position – should Roger begin aggressively going after the team he built in Sozo, the company would basically collapse.
At this point I think Sozo has around 8,000 customers, roughly 5,000 affiliates, and Roger’s team was at least 30% of that. Overall, a stupid move by Sozo – they could’ve just talk with Roger instead of trying to pick a fight.
Full Disclosure: I am no longer paying for an autoship in Sozo. I have no ‘loyalty’ to Roger though I certainly am a BIG proponent of DSD because I’ve been dropshipping for a long time. My evaluation is based largely on the understanding and information I received in the company.
A recruiter-type MLMer, convinced a company to give him special perks if he meets his quota, used unscrupulous methods to achieve that quota, then have a very public tummy ache about it when the company called him out on it? Muahahahaha.
Two possibilities that I see (sure there are more).
1) Sozo sent him a cease and desist letter, warning him to shut up and make nice… Or they’re gonna sue the **** out of him.
2) Sozo let the word loose through the “Scamworld” underground that the recruiter-MLMers play in, that this guy is a backstabber, essentially put him on the blacklist that NOBODY should ever use ever again, and now he’s trying to make nice.
You usually seem to do your due diligence before making comments, but clearly not in this case.
As a person who was involved in Sozo and saw a lot of this play out myself, I can tell you there was no special treatment given to Langille – we were actually encouraged to mimic his results and a lot of ‘funnels’ were set up to try and get results like Roger (in our group these were largely done by Oli T by Terry McEwen’s asking).
This is a clear cut case of a company that is struggling trying to cut out the individuals making the most. The reason that I can guarantee this has nothing to do with DS Domination or Cross-recruiting is because that didn’t come out until the end of August, while the fiasco with Sozo has been going on sine at least July.
There was a LOT of anxiety when many of us noticed that the payouts were FAR lower than promised, that the health insurance package was pathetic, that there was no opening of other parts of the world as we were all told, and their product is not allowed in Australia and Canada.
What you might not realize is that a LOT of people have dropped out of Sozo for the same reasons that Roger outlined (like me), but this case was bigger than all others because Roger couldn’t just ‘drop out’, like the rest of us with only 3-4 people involved.
He had 1500-2000 people directly in his team, so him airing these issues openly about Sozo would be very damaging. So instead Sozo tries to push him out and try to silence him on these points.
Finally, one of the big reasons that Roger didn’t specify (probably because as you noted his focus was afifliates not product), the ‘coffeeberry’ patent is not owned by Sozo. You can find the same thing in other products at a MUCH cheaper price in grocery stores. Just other mlms are not allowed to sell it.
@JoshQ
Sozo’s comp plan aside, which I am wholly critical of as it clearly is affiliate focused, I don’t think Langille can be excused for focusing on affiliate recruitment.
There was a reason he was attracted to Sozo in the first place, and that came after focusing on recruitment at Visalus. I’m guessing there was next to no retail in Langille’s downline there too.
Quite obviously there’s an observable pattern here and what I’d be concerned about is this following Langille into DS Domination. It’s obvious that a pass-up plan favours recruiters over retail (retail customers don’t pass anything up), so that’s your first red-flag.
The second is the emphasis on “but I only recruited one person”. In a pass-up plan there’s perpetual pass-ups and by placing Langille’s direct downline close to the top (I’m assuming he holds the top position), maybe he’s decided their perpetual pass-ups will be enough, ontop of any revenue he collects directly from the company itself (fees).
A company’s compensation plan might be used to absolve an affiliate if they aren’t aware of what they are effectively doing by participating. Langille clearly knows what he’s doing as he’s quite happy to focus on it as a personal marketing point and notch of his “success”.
I doubt Langille would do well in a plan that wasn’t geared towards affiliate recruitment + autoship, and I think, irrespective of the company, that’s indicatively damning of Langille’s overall approach to MLM.
@Josh again
So uh why were Sozo affiliates being given Sozo affiliate membership rank recognition at the event? Quite obviously, regardless of who they billed on the ticket, it was a Sozo event.
Oh I see. Is every Sozo affiliate given a special “Performance Based Compensation Agreement” and a company-paid “wine and dine” steak dinner before joining then?
I’m on neither side of the fence here as I believe nobody wins when you set up autoship+affiliate recruitment focused companies, however let’s not distort the reality of the situation hey.
Yes, quite a few different affiliates and potential ‘big hitters’ were given this. In fact, this practice continues to go on in not just sozo and many other companies.
Now obviously, you can try and twist my words a bit. We both know that in any company the top producers are given ‘special attention’. My point was that Langille wasn’t the only one – most companies ‘fly in’ the ‘big hitters’ and offer them these type of agreements, and quite a few other people in Sozo also had similar set ups and were promised similar things. All I was clarifying was that this wasn’t a ‘special thing’ only promised to Roger.
Even though I am not a big hitter, I was originally ‘recruited’ in by many very similar promises – spillover, 401k plan, massive marketability by going international and range of products including weight loss market.
My point is that this seems more of a ‘hit piece’ on Langille than a hit piece on both (really this should be an analysis of exactly what happens when a bad company and wrongheaded recruitment approach combine).
Because the TOPP team was trying to ‘encourage’ their team members by showing off the achievements of a few to make others think they could get it too.
It was not an official Sozo event at all, and from what I understand only TOPP team (Terry McEwen’s downline) was invited. The event was held, paid for, and the payments were made to TOPP. I think that distinction is important because basically Mark ADams wouldn’t care to make an official statement about such an event.
I’m not sure why we’re talking about this since neither DS nor Sozo have a pass-up plan?
And I’m on the same page in damning that approach and the flaws of it with you. However, my point is that you’re trying to make this seem like Sozo is trying to focus on product and Langille was focused on recruiting.
The reality is VERY different – NO ONE in the company with any weight was focused on product side. At all. This should be obvious given the fact that in canada nad australia all you can do is recruit affiliates. The emphasis was always on trying to mimic roger, not on going the different way.
Quite obviously, Roger was held up as the model that everyone should follow, not the guy doing it incorrectly. This is what I meant by singling out Roger incorrectly. The company was honoring the guy left and right for his results, encouraging everyone to do the same. In fact, you can see posts by Oli T still on Facebook as recent as 2-3 days ago holding up cash and talking about recruiting affilaites (and this is Terry’s second emphasis after Roger).
Again Oz, we are on the same page in being opposed to these type of activities, but what seems to be happening here is a failing company is trying to pin this all on their top earner. This is great for them because that can:
1. Put a gag order on him.
2. Claim that the problems were his fault and not Sozo’s own.
3. Distract from the obvious issues in the comp plan.
4. Save a bunch of money by not having to pay whatever it is that Roger was making.
5. Attract other big-hitters by offering them a ‘ready made downline’ by selling spots in Sozo’s team.
Should Roger try similar affiliate recruitment approach again I’d condemn it again too, but the bigger evil here IMO is Sozo which openly encouraged this and now is trying to save itself by turning Langille into a scapegoat.
However, like I stated before, they are indeed both in the wrong. A LOT of people got hurt financially by joining sozo and sinking in thousands (me being one of them) as an affilaite, and both Roger and Sozo should take responsibility for it.
Whether they were or not is irrelevant. Unless every affiliate is given a steak dinner and Performance Based Compensation Plan, then these two things are indicative of special treatment.
In offering it to other recruiters Sozo appears to demonstrate a planned campaign towards an affiliate-heavy company, no doubt hoping this would somehow boost the retail side of the business. As evidenced this appears to have backfired.
None of that however diminishes the special treatment given Langille by the company.
And what goes on in “other companies” is entirely a strawman argument.
Looks like you’ve missed the point of the article entirely. It’s not a “hit piece” on anyone.
BehindMLM was chosen as a name for this blog for a reason. If you’re after hit pieces on people and companies I suggest you look elsewhere.
Yet Mark Adams was there and Sozo affiliate’s success in qualifying for Sozo ranks was being decided? Come on son.
Yes TOPP’s name might have been on the ticket but quite clearly it was unofficially or otherwise a Sozo event.
Entirely my bad, apologies for that. Usually I recheck a review on a company before engaging in a discussion on them due to the sheer number of companies I review. Forgot to in this instance and got my comp plans mixed up.
Regardless, a matrix setup still favours affiliate recruitment. Sure Langille might have personally recruited one affiliate, but if he’s at the top of the matrix does it matter? Everyone his one downline recruits (directly or indirectly via strategic placement so that Langille can continue to claim to have only personally recruited one affiliate), pretty much winds up in his matrix anyway.
When you’re at the top of the company matrix that’s still a sizeable commission check, sourced from affiliate membership fees.
You’re reading what you want to read. Read this article and my Sozo review again. Their compensation plan shortcomings are well-noted.
No idea why now you’re talking about a matrix. What matrix? No company Langille is involved in has a matrix…. If you’re referring to DS, there is no matrix. It’s the plain-jane affiliate program with commissions per sale.
Anyway that’s besides the point again.
I understand who hate being proven wrong, but if an event is held that clearly states that it is NOT an official Sozo event, then it isn’t. Especially when there is no financial relationship to it. Mark Adams would be there simply because it was the event held by his biggest affiliate (Terry) for the bigest team (TOPP).
I see pretty much the whole point has been ignored about the fact that OFFICIALLY and UNOFFICIALLY, Sozo held up Roger as the model of affilaite success that everyone else had to follow. Your article on the other hand makes it seem like Roger was dumped for going against the direction that the company wants to go in (recruitement vs product focus).
I quote:
You’re implying somehow that Mark wants a different direction than the one that Roger was pursuing. My point is entirely that this is FALSE.
Your article seems to say that Sozo terminated him because it’s trying to address an issue that Roger was a part of. My point is that Sozo terminated him because it’s a failing company and terminating him saves them money, allows them to ‘auction the spot’ to other big hitters, and also allows them to pin some of this on him while claiming innocence (which your article very much seems to do).
On top of that your headline reads that Langille has ‘buried the hatchet’. I’m unsure f you know what that saying means, because the video indicates the hatchet is very much above the ground.
My point being – Roger makes for an excellent case stuy of everything that is wrong with Sozo as a company and affiliate driven companies/approaches/plans in general. However, this does not excuse Sozo in the least.
I don’t need a ‘hit piece’ on Sozo by any means, but your article certianly gives the impression that Sozo is a great company that’s ‘punishing’ a bad affiliate. In reality, Sozo has encouraged everyone to do exactly what Roger did – Roger happens to be the one in this case that got ahead and is now being attacked.
Your continued defense of sozo or refusal to make their participation in this is quite suspicious to me. Almost makes it seems like you were paid to pin this on Langille and drive away the focus from Sozo. I’m not saying this is what happened, but your commentary on this event comes across as such.
A simple statement in there to the effect that ‘Sozo celebrated Roger as a great success story and greatly encouraged others to follow in his footsteps seems to have come back to bite them’ would go a long way towards explaining that this is not a case of ‘Good company vs Bad Affiliate’. It’s a case ‘Bad company punishing bad affiliate for doing exactly what they encouraged’.
As per the DS Domination compensation plan information circulated by affiliates (DS Domination did not provide any public information on its compensation plan at the time of publication), I cited it pays out on 10 levels. That’s either matrix or unilevel.
Fill in the blanks if you wish but either way, it’s gearing up to be an affiliate heavy company that fits right in with Langille’s recruitment-driven focus.
Autoship = DS Domination’s monthly fees and you get paid on it. I don’t think DS Domination’s comp plan is co-incidental.
I have no idea why this is so important to you, but regarldess of who’s name was on the ticket – Sozo corporate staff were there, Sozo affiliates’s promotions were being officially recognised (or denied as in the case of Langille) = Sozo event.
Call it what you want, it does not change what it was.
As per Langille’s own words (his distaste for home-parties), that certainly appears to be the case now.
Langille does affiliate recruitment, home parties tend to focus more on the sale of products to those invited (with affiliate recruitment being a side focus).
Trouble is Sozo still have the same autoship affiliate-recruitment orientated compensation plan so it won’t work until that’s changed.
Like I said, you’re reading what you want to read.
Acknowledging our use of the past tense, I entirely agree.
If that issue is cross-recruitment, then that’d be spot on. Regardless of whether your downline did it or not, Langille isn’t fooling anyone hiding behind “but I only personally recruited one affiliate”.
Cross recruiting into the company Langille was heading up happened. Langille’s at the top of that food chain so claiming ignorance is folly.
Of course Sozo brought this on themselves by having a comp plan that focused on recruitment and pursuing recruiters who are attracted to these type of plans. So that is entirely on them.
Yeah Adams was probably butthurt about his top-recruiter shifting focus and then trying to retain his position on autopilot, but that doesn’t excuse what happened on Langille’s end with the obvious cross-recruiting.
I suggest you go and read up on what it means. I believe you’re confusing the phrase with “knifed in the back”.
To bury the hatchet has an entirely different meaning altogether.
Perhaps if your evident hard-on for Langille is so big that it’s draining your brain of sufficient nourishment to perform the most basic of reading comprehension.
Think of dead puppies and try reading the article again.
I’m sorry what? Yo, I wasn’t aware I’d signed a Performance Based Compensation Agreement with you…
See Langille’s response to Adams as an example of how people respond when you try to cram PR spin bullshit down their throats.
And there it is. Look son you should have just opened with this and saved us both some time.
First and last warning, derail attempts = spam bin. Leave the silly conspiracy theories for Facebook and the like.
Man your ego is just so big you fail to ever accept you might be wrong.
My point in all of this, which you continue to ignore is that this company has from the beginning been the spwaning ground of Roger Langille’s of this world. To focus this on him alone is to ignore the companies that create such affiliates. There are countless others in the company just like Roger right now, just not as good as him at recruiting.
And that’s the real BS here that I’ve been smelling. You claim he was terminated for cross recruiting when the man clearly provides evidence that he did not.
I went to the page and confirmed that he made a public post that all Sozo people in DS will be removed if they tried to cross recruit. You cannot ignore the evidence, and your attempts to do so continue to onnly make one think you have something to gain by bashing him while ignoring Sozo’s obvious issues.
Mark Adams himself claims that he was terminated for making ‘disparaging claims about Sozo and others’ and for fostering cross recruiting. In the video there is evidence provided clearly that:
1. It was Terry that made disparaging comments.
2. That there was no cross recruiting.
And MOST important of all, you’re turning this into an issue with cross recruiting and DS, when these problems have been plaguing Sozo for WAY longer than this.
Well before DS was even on the scene. For example, the TOPP/Sozo conference was held in first week of August, if the problem was DS and cross recruiting, it wouldn’t happen in first week of August. Sozo failing to pay on binanries and bonuses like they claimed happened in June/July…
There is no defense for Langille in my posts, but there is a STRONG comdemnation of Sozo as well. Condemnation that you seem to be bent on ignoring.
I think this is the third time I’ve agreed. As evidenced by my initial review of Sozo and commentary on their compensation plan in this article.
But please, keep going on about it.
Claim? That’s the reason provided in Langille’s termination notice.
But let’s play. *wink wink, nudge, nudge* Langille didn’t personally cross-recruit anyone *wink wink, nudge nudge, wink wink wink*
Feel better?
Cross recruiting did happen and downlines were pillaged, that much is obvious. You only have to hear Langille gloat that if Sozo downlines were asked to, they’d follow him to the ends of the Earth in a blaze of affiliate recruitment glory. He wears it like a badge of honor in his video.
And that’s nothing wrong with that. But pretending cross-recruiting didn’t happen on the technicality of Langille himself only recruiting one affiliate?
That’s some pure MLM spin marketing BS right there.
Agreed.
What Terry did or didn’t do is irrelevant. As is, within the context of this discussion, whether or not Sozo acted on anything Terry did or didn’t do. It’s a strawman argument.
Right. Wink wink, nudge nudge nudge, wink wink.
Again, claiming I’m turning “this” into something and then arguing against your own hypothesis? Strawman argument.
This isn’t a pissing contest to see who can greater condemn one party over the other. I suggest you remove your MLM marketing hat if you wish to continue this discussion.
Sigh
And ’round and ’round we go, doin’ the MLM Boogie.
* Company blames the IBOs for turning it into an endless chain recruiting scheme
* IBOs blame the company for allowing itself to be used as an endless chain recruiting scheme
* They both blame each other for the fact a blatant endless chain recruiting scheme exists
Result: The MLM industry gives itself another black eye and the general public is left wondering if there is such a thing as a “legitimate” MLM
Meaning:
Bury the hatchet is an American English colloquialism meaning “to make peace.”
Once again Oz, you take potential allies and alienate them with with your boundless ego. Your use of ‘Bury the Hatchet’ is incorrect and instead of accepting that and editing the headline you simply claim you couldn’t possibly be wrong.
Oh and I get this isn’t a pissing match, but your defense of Sozo is ever more suspicious. To single out one affiliate who provides evidence to back up his claims, and a timeline proving the issues with the company while continuing to defend the company is definitely wrong and you claim it’s a conspiracy.
Fact is that Sozo is currently desperate to prevent a major fallout from this event, and even your headline implies that Sozo and Roger are at peace when clearly they aren’t.
I for one hope that recruitment driven schemes (like Sozo) and absuers of affilaite recruitment (Like Langille) are both stopped through this and hoped this article would reflect as much.
Yes.
No, it isn’t.
I get why Sozo did what they did. I never said I defended or agreed with it.
Hiring someone to mass recruit and then firing them for starting their own mass-recruitment orientated opportunity and (indrectly) taking their downline with them, creates an assinine reflection of all involved.
Now we’re doing what exactly, putting words into my mouth?
I believe Langille singled himself out when he started his own network marketing company and started indirectly cross recruiting a bunch of affiliates from Sozo. What happened after that is up there for all to see.
That’s not the impression given by the language used in Langille’s video. And to date I’m unaware of any further retaliation by Sozo against Langille.
Sozo terminated Langille and he has responded with a YouTube video clearly targeted at those still in Sozo, despite the title. He makes repeated talks about forgiving Sozo and his upline in said video and concludes it by buying Mark Adams a steak dinner for his birthday.
Sounds to me like, based on what is currently publicly known, both parties are moving on and the hatchet has indeed been buried.
Interesting… First you wrote:
Then you wrote:
That is special treatment. “Top recruiters” were handed a special deal not available for the normal recruit.
Keep your own story straight before you accuse others of “not understanding”.
@JoshQ
The audience here is NOT an ordinary “MLM True Believers” audience, it’s balanced between different types of people (non MLM and MLM, all types of experiences).
I simply read the review and watched the video, and first THEN I tried to come to any conclusions, and they were rather neutral until you started to post.
I have interpreted the video to be a “What really happened …” video, telling Roger Langille’s side of the story. But he told it in a neutral and factual way, so I accepted the story as “genuine”.
Cross recruiting isn’t about the details, it’s about the big picture, whether or not a huge part of his downline are offered to join a new company he has set up, rather than about whether or not he PERSONALLY have tried to recruit people.
Making a compensation plan available is actually a cross recruitment attempt, circulating it out through an entire downline. It’s about the ATTEMPT, not about whether or not he actually have recruited them into a new company.
I would simply have ignored it if you had kept quiet about it. “Shit happpens, and so do cross recruitment”. You will only achieve the “Streisand Effect” if you try to tell people that cross recruitment attempts didn’t happen there.
As a defense strategy, the video was actually a relatively good strategy, if the audience were assumed to be relatively neutral. It contained some factual info about where it failed, i.e. the events and promises leading up to it.
Sozo obviously have different problems, e.g. “Clique problems” where people either are in or out of the clique, with people protecting their own positions by kissing up to different types of “leaders” and avoiding others.
It’s not very tempting to bring in a personal team into a company like that, so the video is also a warning to other team leaders. You will always have people higher up in the system protecting their own positions.
The video showed something important (for team leaders). If you join the TOPP Team, your team will not be YOUR team anymore, it will be part of the TOPP Team. You should preferrably try to enter the company closer to the top, or join a different type of team (different type of leader).
The video also showed that you are expected to disguise problems and not bring them out to the public. They will even dictate a “proper statement” you can make about the situation. It doesn’t reflect the truth, but it sounds rather positive for the company.
Perhaps the lesson to be learned from this is if you join a “marketing team” where they all practice “multiple positions”, expect your own downlines to be pitched other opportunities and be poached for other people’s other “businesses”.
Right on! I whole heartedly agree with you on this. This is PRECISELY what I keep pointing out. There is fault on both ends, but the problem here is as follows:
1. The claim being made is that Sozo did what it did in response to DS Domination.
My point: Majority of this drama occurred well before DS was ever talked about.
2. Oz points to Langille as someone doing ‘bad things’ by focusing on affiliate recruitement while sozo didn’t want this.
My point: Langille was ALWAYS shown to everyone in sozo as an example. WE were all told to mimic Langille, and out of all the groups, his team produced the highest product volume too. So this defense of Sozo, that Langille’s approach is different from them is BS. Sozo has from the beginning pushed as much affiliate recruitement as possible.
3. Sozo gave 2 reasons for Langille’s termination – that he somehow spoke ill or Sozo and that he cross recruited. Oz makes the point that ‘cross recruiting occurred’. That’s beyond the point! Entirely! Because the contract specifically states that you can promote and build multiple companies while in Sozo, as long as you don’t recruit your NON-PERSONALS from Sozo.
On this point, Langille gave a TON of evidence that he never cross recruited (maybe he did, but we only have evidence that he didn’t).
But lets assume for a moment that this ‘cross recruiting’ occurred. Now, if it did, why was Langille terminated, but not any of other people from DS…many of who hold considerable positions in Sozo. Langille clearly shows evidence that he didn’t do so, but even assuming that he did, if this was the ‘real reason’, then why did Sozo go just after him while ignoring others?
Looking at these facts, the conclusion is that Sozo kicked him out for reasons other than the so-called cross-recruiting, especially since all the issues he points out have been going on well before DS.
I conclude that Langille was kicked out because of the sizeable income he draws, and that it was becoming evident that with all of Sozo’s issues, Langille would likely jump ship and take much of the company with him. See the point? This is a clear case of a near-broke company trying to save money and absorb a ‘team’.
Overall, I just want it to be made clear that much of what happened in Sozo was dirty to the core. Companies like this NEED to be exposed to warn people more about them.
At the same time, Langille’s excessive focus on affiliate recruitement might well have been his own undoing, and rightfully so. Companies and affilaites that are compensation focused and not product focused usually fail in the long run.
This whole article gives the impression that the problem is a bad affiliate vs good company when it’s FAR from that.
With the greatest of respect, it appears to me that you are the only one left with that impression.
To me it appears yet another case of the “grubby little people doing grubby little things to other grubby little people” syndrome which seems to bedevil the so called MLM “industry”
@JoshQ
Refer to Sozo’s termination notice.
Perhaps not in the past, however the push for “parties” which Langille himself mentions would seem to suggest a recently adopted difference in approach to Langille’s autoship + recruitment business operation.
Did Langille’s downline all jump ship before any of this happened? Was Langille’s Sozo downline in decline before he started DS Domination?
Claiming DS Domination just popped into existence in August after Langille’s Sozo problems started is pretty silly. MLM companies aren’t born overnight.
“But eye didint have anythings to do with what my downlines did guv. Honests! (wink wink, nudge nudge) I only recruiteds me one downline so I played entirelys within the rules I did.
My downlines recruiteds them peoples alls on their own!”
Quite obviously cross-recruiting occured and Langille knew what would happen / did happen. “I only recruited one person” is just an attempt to weasle out of responsibility on a technicality.
Langille pulled a T LeMont Silver and tried to keep his residual recruitment check coming in despite abandoning ship and taking some sailors with him. Right or wrong, Sozo said no. Claiming otherwise is naively asinine.
The problem with this arguement is simply that Sozo claimed right from the start that you could recruit your personals in Sozo into anything else. You simply couldn’t PERSONALLY go after non-personals.
In this case, that’s preceisely what Langille did – he SEEMS to have (I’m not privy to the details obviously) gone after his personals, who then spoke to their personals and so on and so forth. Isn’t that the ENTIRE point of Sozo pointing out that they didn’t restrict promoting/building multiple companies together?
That argument doesn’t hold water because Langille seems to have done exactly what Sozo said in their policies he was supposed to do when building another company. He spoke to his personals, who then spoke to theirs. There’s no need for the ‘wink wink nudge nudge’ as he seems quite open about that fact.
Now again, maybe he actually did go after non-personals, but we have no evidence to that and quite a bit of evidence to the contrary. If Sozo didn’t want such a thing, they should have simply stated so from the beginning.
It’s the classic case of a company reeling in recruiters with promises and claims, then after the growth trying to back off. Again, I’m not defending langille but pointing out Sozo’s obvious issues here.
Actually it was the opposite. The major Sozo teams, the most prominent of which was TOPP under Terry McEwen had long been pushing the ‘new online systems’. They failed miserably though because I don’t believe Sozo is really suited for online growth, and because TOPP people in general had no clue about online marketing (shoot they openly advocated scraping and dumping contacts into their ‘mailer’ to spam people).
In absence of any success, they talked about holding parties (which also no one was having success with) but continued to push and tell everyone that ‘online is where its at’.
Along comes Langille and blows up online side of things – exactly what TOPP had been trying to do. Immediately he is held up as the poster boy for Sozo and TOPP “look what’s possible with online’ and all the hoopla that comes with promising success to many based on some unique case.
There is no recent push for online parties. It’s the approach they had been trying and failed at, then pushed Roger’s model which they had also been trying but failing at. There are no 2 distinct directions here. It’s just a mad rush by EVERYONE to make money with no regard for the consumer or the standard affiliate.
At best it could be argued that Sozo is trying to clean up its image given all the backlash they’re getting from the Canadian government. From their mass email today, looks like they just had to cancel their Canada Launch because they couldn’t pass the regulations (again as alluded to by Langille).
It’s only a problem if you’re focused on assigning blame for the cross-recruiting to either Langille or Sozo.
I read and analyse with a much wider lense. I acknowledge cross-recruiting occurred of Langille’s downline into a company he founded whilst at Sozo. Who personally recruited who is irrelevant and the whole “but I only personally recruited one affiliate” is of the same calibre a child might use to argue something with.
And to repeat myself, I’m not arguing that what Sozo did or why was right or wrong, merely acknowledging that it had everything to do with cross-recruitment of Langille’s Sozo downline into DS Domination.
Anything that’s “was” is irrelevant. As per Langille’s own video and words this is apparently the direction Sozo is now being taken (or retaken) in.
The issue of whether the approach will fail or has failed in the past is a separate discussion and offtopic in this one.
Sozo has/had issues for sure, but that doesn’t negate cross-recruitment and launch of DS Domination residing in the core of Sozo’s termination of Langille.
We were less eager to take a side in the situation and identify either one of them as “good” or “bad”. The article isn’t published in support for any of them, it’s published mostly because of the factual information it contains (about different types of problems).
I simply interpreted it to be Roger Langille’s version of the story, and I accepted it as “genuine” but without ignoring that there’s more than one side to it. I looked more for whether or not the strategy made some sense than for the details.
That has probably been tested in court several times.
* The individuals in a downline belong to themselves, neither to the company nor to the recruiter. They are NOT “personal assets” of the recruiter that rightfully belongs to him. They are NOT “corporate assets” of the company that rightfully belong to it.
* the downline (not the individuals in it) belong to the company, not to the recruiter. The downline is an asset of the company. That’s typically about situations where recruiters have built up a downline over many years in one single company and want to bring that entire downline over to another company.
The first point is most important. Neither one of them can legally claim any of the individuals rightfully belong to them. The individuals can leave or join any company they like (other than direct competitors).
The second point is about organized recruitment attempts throughout an entire downline. It’s not about whether or not you PERSONALLY have recruited anyone, it’s about whether you have ORGANIZED ATTEMPTS. People can leave or join as individuals, but not as an organized group.
The first point can be used as a defense system against lawsuits, if the other party have made claims about “ownership”, or illegally have tried to prevent individuals from joining a specific opportunity.
Sozo have some “clique problems”. That alone can be a reason for people to want to leave it in masses. But they can’t organize a “member flee” to another company, it can only legally be done as one and one individual.
The best strategy in a dispute should normally be about not making too many “point 1 claims”, i.e. claim some type of “ownership” to individual people in a downline. “I didn’t PERSONALLY recruit more than one” is a rather poor defense. A contract isn’t meant to be interpreted too literally.
“I shared the compensation plan with all people in my core team (the ones I brought with me into the company)” is a better strategy than “I PERSONALLY recruited only one”. The first method can probably be defended in the TYPE of agreement he had, e.g. “performance based compensation”.
It’s possible to build up a much better defense strategy around “They hired me to solve some specific problems” than around “I recruited only one PERSONALLY”.
Terminations and unwritten comp plan ‘adjustments’ by MLM owners are as old as the hills. When the company sees you as too big for your britches, they’ll cut back your money or cut you out. It is robbery under the guise of taking the high moral ground.
Owners are the ‘wise guys’, the sharks. And now Roger has switched sides and become a shark himself with DS Dom.
There is a major law suit again Sozo Global and Mark Adams that will expose all of these issues and so much more. The facts are well documented from a former consultant of SoZo Global and Ambassador Distributor.
The case is expected to go public very soon. The details of this case will set the record straight and will be undenial proof of fraud. These matter are the very things that give MLM a bad reputation.