wakeupnow-logoChatter on the grapevine this morning is that WakeUpNow are looking to file for bankruptcy.

I haven’t confirmed this yet myself, but a significant number of affiliates in other opportunities have been observed making the claim in recent promotional videos targeting WakeUpNow affiliates.

I did check Pacer for any bankruptcy filings but at the time of publication none were on the record.

The closest I’ve come to being able to confirm the news is a Facebook posting by Eric Turner, made just a few hours ago.

Turner, widely known as “Seemore Green” in WakeUpNow affiliate circles, was a top earner in the company.

Turner claims WakeUpNow owes him over $300,000 in commissions and that he hasn’t been paid anything since last August.

The topic of bankruptcy doesn’t come up in Turner’s post, however he does state

I am saddened to have to say something that I honestly thought I’d never have to say, and that is that ‪#‎WakeUpNow‬ will no longer be the company you’ve come to know & love.

WakeUpNow, at least in the US, is no longer.

A video from another WakeUpNow affiliate, Logan Shippy, was uploaded on February 9th and claims that

Over the next week some information will be released and it’s not pretty.

Shippy also claims he is a “top executive” with the company and that he’s “not going down with the ship”.

People are owed commissions. People are distraught in this situation. People are stressed out.

People relied on WakeUpNow. They let me down, they let you guys down. And honestly they burned so much trust with so many different people.

Some people might learn from the experience, however judging by what is said by Trippy in his video, he’s already jumped ship into a new (and likely similar) opportunity.

Pending official bankruptcy filings or confirmation from the company itself, that’s all I’ve been able to find.

WakeUpNow’s Facebook page meanwhile boasts of “awesome new enhancements to the comp plan” announced on a February 4th affiliate training call.

Personally whether WakeUpNow formally file for bankruptcy or whether or not they’ve just ran out of money and don’t know what to do, it’s hard for anyone to say they didn’t see this coming.

I called it mid last year after revealing WakeUpNow generated almost $8 million dollars in losses over 2012 and 2013.

In response to our article, WakeUpNow

BusinessForHome also raised concerns roughly a fortnight ago, publishing a report detailing payment processor problems in the US and combined losses now at $15 million dollars.

“Word in the street” in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA where around 100 MLM companies are based, is that Wake Up Now is looking for a new investor, if not found, it would be possible Wake Up Now will terminate operations shortly.

The way I see it, at its core WakeUpNow was always about recruiting new affiliates. The losses incurred are a result of paying out recruitment commissions and blowing money on useless pseudo-compliance.

Rather than address the core of the business model, in which quite obviously little to no retail activity was taking place (legitimate retail activity shouldn’t result in millions of dollars in losses),  WakeUpNow instead ignored the recruitment problem.

A perfect example of this was the now deleted response to the article WakeUpNow published on their official company blog.

In the response, WakeUpNow ignored the lack of retail sales and instead attempted to deflect attention elsewhere. The company claimed BehindMLM was working for their competitors and compared themselves to Facebook, Amazon and eBay.

With this sort of nonsense being produced by WakeUpNow corporate, it was hardly surprising to see WakeUpNow affiliates parrot the nonsense.then that at an affiliate level things weren’t that different.

One such example was the response that the hiring of “famous people” would somehow turn around a recruitment driven compensation plan that saw almost nobody make any money.

In response to our $8 million in losses article, WakeUpNow affiliate Rick Almeida wrote

They Also added 20+ famous people, we wont have any problems growing our distributor base and customer base..

Now, published on Almeida’s Facebook page a few hours ago, he writes

I cant help but to think that if all the Famous people that joined WUN actually tried, instead of just posting 1-2 pics…the company wouldve exploded…

Denial much?

Perhaps not. Almeida also confesses that he was one of the few who made money in WakeUpNow:

No matter what happens with WUN, I made money with WUN and reached the 2-3% who successfully make money in Network Marketing.

Given that, expecting acknowledgement of the fact that Almeida screwed those he recruited into WakeUpNow because they couldn’t recruit new affiliates is probably a stretch.

And I suspect this will be a common theme among the few who actually made money in the company.

Pending official confirmation of bankruptcy being filed, or at the very least some official information as to what’s going on at WakeUpNow from corporate – As always, stay tuned…