What’s going on with WMI’s leadership?
Just under a month ago now I wrote about Wealth Masters International rewarding Norwegian distributor Per Gunnar Hoem, despite WMI being officially banned in Norway.
In the discussion that followed, it was reasoned that seeing as the ban wasn’t applied retrospectively for the month of March, Hoem’s promoting of WMI in Norway was justifiable.
In light of this, I turned my anticipation to WMI’s May awards. With Norway now officially out of the picture, I was keen to see who would be the new recipient.
This morning WMI published their May Gold Award winners and whilst I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, this month’s winners does raise some interesting questions…
As BehindMLM reader David pointed out, this month’s consultant of the month recipient was none other then Wealth Masters International newcomer Tony Rush.
Tony Rush joined WMI in early April, leaving me wondering how in just one month he managed to become the consultant of the month.
Well, turns out according to ‘Inside FAQ’ that the point of the consultant of the month award is to just ‘recognize new people‘. You don’t actually have to do anything to qualify other than join Wealth Masters.
Perhaps Tony was feeling a bit left out that some of his constituents who joined at the same time as he did were presented with flashy executive titles.
But I digress, getting back to Wealth Masters International’s monthly gold awards, who won the May award for top m1 and mPower sales?
None other than Tony Rush and his wife Jessica.
After joining Wealth Masters International barely a m0nth ago, these two somehow managed to beat the entire established Wealth Masters International organisation of members to sell the most entry level products?!
Credit given where credit is due, Rush certainly knows how to move a product and rack up sales. Whether he’s selling to new members or a downline he’s brought with him from one of his many previous ventures is obviously something WMI won’t disclose, but the sales are there regardless.
Of far more greater concern to someone keeping up with WMI though, is that even if these are new members – regardless of their selling ability – how is someone who joined a six year old company barely a month ago taking out the award for top sales?
This alone speaks volumes about the internal state of affairs inside WMI.
Are things really going that badly that someone can just walk in and trump an entire field who’ve had potentially a six year long head start?
What are the rest of the Wealth Masters International consultants doing?
Unfortunately the other two awards announced this morning don’t provide any reassurances, both were given to executive leaders.
Michael Hamburger, Senior Vice President of Marketing was awarded the ‘WMI Founders Award‘ and Ryan Nelson, Vice President of Internet Strategy was awarded the ‘WMI Leadership Award‘.
Being in management positions (vice-presidents no less), shouldn’t the success of the company you’re working for be enough reward in itself? I know that as a vice president I’d be feeling pretty uncomfortable walking out to accept an award infront of a field of associates wondering why they weren’t successful enough with the business to be recognised.
There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of organic success going on within the consultants of WMI, and awards like this only emphasise that.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens when WMI run out of executives and ‘star recruits’ to shower with awards.
I recently came into contact with WMI (in QLD), we were suspicious of the vague ‘pitch’ and my research lead me here – thank you! I have forwarded this site to our would-be recruiters, but alas, ‘You can lead a man to wisdom, but you can’t make him think.’
I found an interesting comment on a site today;
Posted by none other than Tony Rush in 2008. Seems lack of integrity is not such a deal breaker after all for Tony.
It suprises me that these schemes willingly promote that (other) known scammers are joining the company in executive positions. How do they possibly expect to have any credibility?
link to article:
http://www.review-blog.home-business-top-pick.com/homeinternet-businesses/wealth-masters-international-or-liberty-league-international
Lol, that quote is hilarious – thanks for sharing that.
Aussie, that is brilliant, Tony Rush should be a politician.
Can you name who approached you in QLD?
We were contacted by friends (I don’t want to name them), who are downline one or two people from Gerry and Anastasia Arkouzis.
Like Carbon Copy Pro, the leadership in WMI did not have the courage to contact me about the content of the blog Pharao’s Tomb. Now they prepare legal action against the Norwegian Gaming Board for cooperating with me.
Pretty strange, as Per Gunnar Hoem and Carl Harald Krystad have claimed that WMI was in dialogue with the Gaming Board even before the blog was established:
If they are so mad about the blog content, what about contacting me about it?
I’m pretty sure you can’t just demand the information of third parties who may or may not have been involved in a government investigation. Especially when you’re just operating on a hunch.
Was that a communique sent directly to you or the gaming board? And is it from WMI or WMI Scandanavia?
Finally, what’s the Gaming Board’s track record for losing court cases? I don’t imagine too many companies win when they try and sue the government.
In Norway transparancy is a key foundation of the democracy. Everyone can demand the right to see documents and communication in an official case like this (Some documents are excepted from publicity). To request documents regarding WMI, you can do this:
1. Go to http://www.oep.no
2. Click “Gå til søkesiden”
3. In the field “Søk etter” type “Wealth masters”
4. Choose “Alle år” and click “Søk”
5. Click “Dok. dato” to sort by date (the results are split into 3 pages)
6. Use the checkbox to select documents you want a copy of
7. Click “Legg valgte dokumenter i bestillingskurv”
8. Click “Bestill innsyn i valgte dokumenter”
9. Enter your e-mail address and click “Utfør bestilling”
10. Expect to receive the documents by e-mail within a week
The sentence cited is from one of these documents sent to the Gaming Board. Another Norwegian citizen published parts of it yesterday in a Norwegian forum (http://forum.hegnar.no/post.asp?id=16960494), I don’t have the entire document.
The Gaming Board is rarely involved in court cases, and since the gaming law was upgraded in 2005, I don’t know any pyramid scheme conclusion from the Gaming Board that have been discarded by any other authority.
I’m kinda curious what exactly the gaming board are going to be asked to hand over.
WMI: hay, you guys colluded with that blogger guy, hand over all the email/telephone call records etc.
Gaming Board: no we didn’t. You can have nothing.
What then? Surely the Gaming Board aren’t going to be required to hand over records without and proof.
Looking further down the track, lets say the Gaming Board decision was biased (which is obviously what WMI are gunning for here), what then?
Do they fire everyone and launch another investigation into WMI? What happens if the same conclusion is reached?
Actions against regulators raise so many questions.
A company can appeal once to the Gaming Board, which WMI did, but the conclusion was the same (WMI is an illegal pyramid scheme). Then WMI had to appeal to the Gaming Committee which is an independent unit. If the Gaming Committee decides to maintain the ban, police will be involved if WMI is believed to continue business in Norway.
@Oz:
I can send you the letter – “WMI vs Norwegian Gaming Board”.
Here’s the quote where they threaten to sue the Gaming Board:
I liked the part “consult with our Norwegian experts”. It means that they let their members try to solve this by themselves, and that Wealth Masters International won’t pay for it.
Here are some other quotes from “WMI vs Norway Gaming Board”:
Focused on the wrong parts of the UCP Directive?
“Refund policy” and “Money back guarantee” wasn’t even part of the case. WMI may have looked at a previous version of the law, from before the “EU UCP Directive” was implemented. The EU Directive doesn’t mention anything about refund policy in the parts that are related to promotional pyramids. It focus mainly on the recruitment system, like when you sell a business opportunity with a product attached to it – where the opportunity is the “main product”.
Sending “testimonies” from members?
Why did they send “testimonies” from members? The video material is understandable, as part of the documentation. 25 hours of video is time-consuming, but at least it is some sort of documentation about M2 and M3. Some written material would probably have done the same job.
I expected something else when I read the title “Wealth Masters International vs. Norway Gaming Board” + “WMI – U.S. legal”. I expected a letter from a US lawyer or something similar, with citations from “1979: Amway vs FTC”, some “per se”-arguments like “the products are in fact legal per se” – and other heavy stuff from a lawyer.
I have covered nearly half of the letter with these 4 quotes. WMI seems to feel like they have been treated badly by Norwegian authorities, but they have misinterpreted the actual case. Pyramid cases are about business models, not about products, refund policy or testimonials from satisfied distributors or customers.
They should probably have used the lawyer as a legal advisor as a part of his job, and they should have accepted legal advises even if they didn’t like them. The letter from WMI has a lack of “legal understanding” in most parts.
Yep. I said it. I sure did.
Someone sent me that quote a couple of months ago and I genuinely didn’t remember saying that. But when I looked up the post….sure enough! I had.
In fairness, my issue at the time was not with WMI but, instead, with some of the leaders at that time who were building their business by attacking other companies (mine included).
I felt that it wasn’t a way of marketing that had the highest integrity and that was the point of my comment.
Unfortunately, I didn’t make the distinction and wound up saying something that sounded like I had a problem with WMI as a company.
Which I didn’t.
On the contrary, I’ve been aware of WMI for years. I’ve regarded them as a company that’s done a good job of marketing their product and for conducting business in an professional way.
But, yes, the comment above is mine. I own it. And I don’t mind “eating a little crow” for it. 🙂
Tony Rush
Hi Tony
Thanks for the honesty, what is your opinion of the Behind MLM blog?
[…] […]
@Tony Rush
And you don’t think the leaders are a reflection of the company they are in?
A company dictates how its marketed. Obviously WMI at the time had no problems with the way it was being marketed (or were slow to react if they did indeed do anything).
Thanks for the question.
Not necessarily, no. One of the reasons that people get started in ANY network marketing company is the fact that they have a lot of freedom and autonomy about how they can market their business.
So, as long as a network marketer is operating within the parameters of the Policies and Procedures of their company…..HOW they market is pretty much up to them.
So, if John Doe joins Herbalife and decides to create his entire marketing around the idea of “Herbalife is better than Shaklee”……well, that’s probably not a violation of Herbalife’s rules.
It’s also not going to make him any friends at Shaklee. 🙂
And that was basically the case a few years ago when I made that comment. Rather than marketing the benefits of WMI, a small number of people were aggressively marketing in a way that I felt wasn’t good for the industry as a whole. That’s all.
I could have expressed myself better in that old post. But I hope the clarification here assists.
Tony
@Tony — so is it fair to say that previously you believe that the markets/members/distributors/whatever reflect the company itself, but you have since softened your stance?
Hi, K. Chang,
Actually I’ve never been one to blame a company for the actions of their distributors except in very unique wide-sweeping situations where it’s obvious that a company is aware of a problem and turning a blind eye.
For example, it was hard not to look at the abuse of the “tools business” within Amway back in the 80s and 90s and imagine that the company wasn’t aware of the problem and that, by their lack of action, were endorsing it.
Or looking at SeaSilver in the 1990s. Over 90% of the company were using a particular replicated website (created by a distributor) and it had loads of product and health testimonials that were just SCREAMING for regulator attention. It was virtually impossible to believe that SeaSilver (the company) didn’t know their distributors were making wild and illegal health claims in order to promote the product to others.
So, in broad, company-wide issues, I think there’s sometimes a correlation between what the distributors are doing and what the company wants done.
But correlation isn’t causation. In other words, just because a few distributors are doing something doesn’t mean that the company supports it, endorses it, or even knows about it.
And no company wants to be guilty of micro-managing if they can avoid it.
But if distributors stay at something long enough, certainly it will become known and — when that happens — then the company has an opportunity to address it.
Tony
@Tony — so what you are saying is that if the distributors did something that is very much questionable, the company needs to address it, either slapping them down hard (terminating them), or write rules that clarify the situation. If the company fails to do so, then they would share the blame for allowing the situation to fester. Would that be a fair summary?
This is an interesting statement.
In Norway the distributors have created marketing material containing obvious lies since the very beginning. One of these lies is the claim that the average yearly income for a WMI distributor is 1,300,000 NOK (about $ 200,000). We are not talking about a few distributors, it’s the big majority. This kind of marketing is illegal regardless if WMI is a pyramid scheme or not.
Do you really mean that WMI don’t know about this? I find it hard to believe, as Per Gunnar Hoem is the man behind a lot of this illegal marketing and he is in the WMI Executive Committee.
Now as you seem to be close to the WMI leadership, you should have the chance to address this problem.
Here is just a small number of landing pages containing this illegal income claim:
http://jobbenhjemme.info
http://dinegenvirksomhet.com
http://inntekt-online.net
http://tjenbedrelonn.com
http://tjendegrik.com
http://forgetpayday.net
If you like I can provide a long list of landing pages containing this kind of marketing.
Tony Rush seems to be associated with Vitamark too:
http://890817.vitamark.com/
Rush seems to have many fingers in many pies.
Haven’t heard a peep out of him since joining WMI though.
Wow! That’s a blast from the past. If my memory serves me correctly, that page is from probably 10 years ago, at least 2002.
I think I’m going to not finish the rest of this Coca-Cola. Looking at that picture only highlights that I was once skinny. 🙂