Wealth Podium Review: Ultamex gets a reboot?
Wealth Podium launched in early May with Danny Gauthier crediting himself as the founder and CEO of the company on the Wealth Podium website.
On the Wealth Podium’s “About Us” section of their website, Gauthier writes
Many self employed people have been looking for a way to get a foothold into 21st century technology.
I said the timing is perfect to provide these tools and services. You have probably heard the saying “Find a need in the marketplace and fill it.”
This is a sure formula to wealth.
You have seen it with telecommunications. Now it is the Internet‘s time. I wanted to provide a turnkey system for doing business that would encompass anyone who wanted, yes, needed a chance in life.
I wanted to do this at a price that would not exclude anyone. I wanted an all inclusive business that would embrace everyone who wanted it worldwide.
I wanted to help people to generate income and take away the stress of living from pay check to pay check.
Between 2006 and 2009 Gauthier launched several low-key matrix-based MLM opportunites (WeNetProfits, Seed2Wealth and United TSI). Due to the recruitment-driven nature of these schemes, none of them survived any considerable length of time after being launched.
Writing off the failure of these previous company launches as “4 years of market and software testing”, Gauthier then went on to launch a new scheme in January 2012 called Ultamex.
Ultamex was your typical membership-based digital library, with affiliates paid commissions to recruit others into the scheme on a one-time affiliate membership fee of $59.
Just over a year after launching Ultamex, not surprisingly, appears to be in steady decline and with that comes the launch of Gauthier’s latest company, Wealth Podium.
Read on for a full review of the Wealth Podium MLM business opportunity.
The Wealth Podium Product Line
Like Ultamex, Wealth Podium has no retailable products or services, with affiliates marketing only able to market membership to the company itself ($99).
Bundled with Wealth Podium affiliate membership is access to a digital library, featuring several of the same digital products made available in Ultamex.
The Wealth Podium Compensation Plan
Wealth Podium uses a series of four matrices to pay affiliates commissions. Positions into these matrices are bought by Wealth Podium affiliates, bundled with affiliate membership to the company itself.
Feeder Matrix
The Wealth Podium Feeder Matrix is designed as a feeder to get people to sign as a Wealth Podium affiliate via recruitment as opposed to paying the $99 membership fee.
The Wealth Podium Feeder Matrix is a 2×3 matrix which places an affiliate at the top of of the matrix with two member positions under them (level 1). Under these two positions are another two respectively (level 2) and then again (level 3) for a total of fourteen positions needing to be filled.
One can buy a position in the Wealth Podium Feeder Matrix for $50 and once a matrix is full, the affiliate at the top of the matrix “cycles out” with a $112 commission and “free” entry into Wealth Podium’s “Mixer” matrix.
Once the affiliate at the top of the matrix has cycled out, the matrix splits and creates two new matrices (the two affiliates on level 2 of the original matrix now sit at the top of two new matrices), and the process repeats itself.
Mixer Matrix
Like the Feeder Matrix, Wealth Podium’s Mixer Matrix is also a 2×3 matrix. Affiliates can directly buy into the matrix by signing up as an affiliate for $99 or cycling out of a Feeder Matrix.
The Mixer Matrix operates in the same manner as the Feeder Matrix, with the cycling affiliate receiving a $280 commission, two matrix positions (which can be given away to prospective affiliates) and entry into Wealth Podium’s “Profit Centre 1” matrix.
Profit Center 1 Matrix
Wealth Podium’s Profit Center 1 matrix is a 2×3 matrix that operates in the same manner as the two previous matrices.
Upon cycling out of a Profit Center 1 Matrix the affiliate cycling is paid a $1400 commission, a new position in a Mixer Matrix, 4 Mixer Matrix positions that can be given away to prospective affiliates and entry into Wealth Podium’s “Profit Center 2” matrix.
A $100 referral commission is also paid out to the recruiting affiliate when any affiliates they’ve recruited cycle out of a Profit Center 1 matrix.
Profit Center 2 Matrix
Profit Center 2 is Wealth Podium’s top matrix and operates identically to the other three matrices.
Upon cycling out of a Profit Center 2 matrix an affiliate is paid $7000, free re-entry back into a new Profit Center 2 matrix and 8 Mixer Matrix positions that can be given away to prospective affiliates.
A $200 referral commission is also paid out to the recruiting affiliate when any affiliates they’ve recruited cycle out of a Profit Center 2 matrix.
If an affiliate has recruited 3 or more affiliates into the scheme, an additional $800 is paid out as a “car allowance” when an affiliate cycles out of a Profit Center 2 matrix.
The Mortgage Pool
The Mortgage Pool is a 2×20 matrix that holds every affiliate’s individual downline (affiliates they and their recruited affiliates recruit).
Each time a Wealth Podium affiliate re-enters a Mixer Matrix, Wealth Podium take out $10 from their earnings and put it into the Mortgage Pool.
Each month, affiliates then earn 50 cents for each affiliate they have in their Mortgage Pool.
Joining Wealth Podium
Affiliate membership to Wealth Podium is available at two levels:
- Feeder Affiliate – $50 (a position in a Feeder Matrix)
- Regular Affiliate $99 (a position in the Mixer Matrix)
Conclusion
Wealth Podium’s business model and compensation plan is pretty much identical to that of Ultamex. The number of matrices used differs, as doe the affiliate cost to participate, however the underlying premise is the same:
Pay an affiliate membership fee and then earn money by recruiting others into the scheme.
The digital library bundled with Podium Wealth seems to largely offer titles available with Ultamex affiliate members, indicating that Danny Gauthier is simply attempting to re-use the Ultamex library with a new compensation plan.
The tacked on “Mortgage Pool” is new, however is essentially just a 2×20 pyramid scheme, paying commissions to affiliates directly based to how many new affiliates themselves and they recruit bring into the company each month.
Like Ultamex, via the compensation plan positions (referred to as “Pay it forward positions”), a large number of compensation plan positions are created out of thin air each time an affiliates cycles through Wealth Podium’s four matrices (or three if they skip the Feeder matrix).
As such when the commissions owed on the free positions starts to add up, coupled with an inevitable organic slowdown in recruitment, the scheme will inevitably collapse.
Ultamex seems to have lasted just over a year before Gauthier felt the need to launch a new scheme. Typically in these scenarios each successive scheme survives shorter than the last, so make of that what you will.
Ultamex was pushed by Tatiana Toganel and what’s that guy, uh… Who did HugeYield matrix scheme? And we found them pushing yet something else?
Seems leopard don’t change its spots… These folks just repackage the same stuff under different names. (Kinda like Robert Kiyosaki, but that’s a different story).
Something Halverson or some such from memory.
There’s a bunch of Russian ads for Wealth Podium on YouTube so they seem to be targeting the Russians pretty heavily.
Carl Haavaldsen, from Canada if I remember it correctly. He’s a serial MLM-er and also an organizer, but I believe most of it is about organizing parts of the programs for others (e.g. organizing the recruitment in specific markets).
Gauthier is back with a new scam….this one is called appitravels.com. I hope Oz can do a review of this one soon.