A couple of week in the past BehindMLM reported on Vasayo shutting down.
The corporate was bought to CEO Daniel Picou, who plans to relaunch the corporate below a distinct title.
Coinciding with that is Life Smart, one other Vasayo spinoff pre-launched by former Vasayo Black Diamond Rob Alwin.
Not surprisingly, Alwin was additionally a Black Diamond in Monavie, Vasayo founder Dallin Larsen’s earlier MLM firm.
Alwin left Monavie in June 2012. Three months later he signed on as Jeunesse distributor.
I don’t understand how lengthy Alwin was with Jeunesse however Vasayo launched in December 2016.
Along with MLM, Alwin runs Lake Life Properties.
Lake Life Properties is a house flipping / property growing / property administration firm.
We buy run down properties and main tasks and rebuild the house to love new situation!!
We promote some and lease some. We now have been doing this since 1987.
In pre-launching Life Smart, Alwin is joined by former Vasayo Chief Scientific Advisor Tracy Gibbs.
On LinkedIn Gibbs cites himself as a “world famend formulator within the nutraceutical trade.”
A 2021 advertising and marketing puff-piece, printed by the Native American Fatherhood & Household Affiliation of all locations, moreover cites Gibbs as ” the formulator of over 900 dietary dietary supplements and skincare merchandise”.
Though Larsen has bought Vasayo, one would assume Alwin, a Black Diamond, would wish to keep on with the corporate.
Additional questions come up when you think about it takes time to place collectively an MLM firm, suggesting Life Smart has been within the works for a while.
Gibbs left Vasayo in June 2022, which provides a most seven-month time window.
Sadly I wasn’t in a position to definitively pin down why Alwin isn’t persevering with on with no matter Daniel Picou relaunches Vasayo as.
I could be studying an excessive amount of into it, however one Life Smart advertising and marketing video addressing transparency caught my eye.
Within the video, Alwin states;
I’ve a really, very robust message that I wish to share with you of us.
There’s something referred to as management, and it’s both genuine and trustworthy, or it’s manipulative.
There are corporations on the market with completely no transparency, and sadly that’s a heartbreak.
Nevertheless it’s why I’m not with these sure corporations.
In one other video, Alwin states;
We’re not constructing this compensation plan to make a bunch of cash and promote the corporate.
We’re not constructing the enterprise in order that we are able to sit in an ivory tower.
Over the past three years as I searched and searched and searched my coronary heart to encourage myself to go do it, my integrity wouldn’t let me go construct as a result of it was too many issues I didn’t agree with.
So I believed I’ll simply pray for them and absolutely they’ll make modifications.
Nope, these doorways closed and now they’re proper again on the standard issues.
Given Vasayo simply got here to an finish and with it Alwin’s time on the firm, I believe the context is fairly apparent.
One factor I’ll say is, for all of Alwin’s speak of transparency, Life Smart presently doesn’t seem to exist past a YouTube account and closed FaceBook group.
If Life Smart does have an online presence, it has not been made public (a lot for transparency).
One other title of curiosity is Life Smart’s Vice President, Gregg Adelman (proper).
Adelman cites himself as a “founding companion” of Vasayo. As per Adelman’s LinkedIn profile, he joined Vasayo in January 2017.
Previous to Vasayo, Adelman was a promoter of the infamous OneCoin Ponzi scheme.
The Ponzi facet of OneCoin collapsed in January 2017. As of November 2018, Adelman was nonetheless desperately making an attempt to money out of OneCoin:
On the time Adelman had accrued 145,990.69 nugatory ONE Ponzi factors in his OneCoin backoffice.
Adelman hoped to dump his nugatory ONE factors onto a brand new sufferer for $1 a degree:
Getting again to Life Smart, in a fifteenth February Fb put up by Alwin we be taught the corporate relies out of Arkansas.
Life Smart’s headquarters presently seems to be a residential property.
Learn on for a full overview of Life Smart’s MLM alternative.
Life Smart’s Merchandise
On February twentieth Life Smart uploaded a video to their YouTube channel titled “Life Smart Merchandise with Dr. Tracy Gibbs”.
Within the video Gibbs confirms he’s behind Life Smart’s product line and particulars three merchandise:
- Dream – cyclodextrin delivered sleep help containing melatonin and saffron extract, bought in a field of 30 single-use strips
- Restore – SMEDDS delivered black cumin seed oil and frankincense complement concentrating on irritation, bought in a bottle of 60 softgel capsules
- Readability – cyclodextrin delivered “vitality boosting” complement, bought in a field of 30 single-use strips
In one other video Rob Alwin states Life Smart will even have a $35 “management improvement program”.
This system is put collectively by Chris Clem, Senior Pastor at Highland Meeting.
The most effective educating from one of the best folks. Dr. Clem will likely be interviewing all the fitting folks, folks you wish to be taught from.
He’s growing curriculum to assist lead you into your individual private promised land.
Retail pricing has not been disclosed for any of Life Smart’s merchandise.
From their compensation advertising and marketing nevertheless, it seems Life Smart’s merchandise will likely be priced between $35 to $39.
That is introduced as wholesale pricing. Whether or not retail pricing is extra and even out there is unknown.
Life Smart’s Compensation Plan
Life Smart associates join and decide to a month-to-month autoship order.
Commissions are paid after they recruit others who do the identical.
Life Smart pays commissions through a unilevel compensation construction.
A unilevel compensation construction locations an affiliate on the prime of a unilevel crew, with each personally recruited affiliate positioned straight below them (stage 1):
If any stage 1 associates recruit new associates, they’re positioned on stage 2 of the unique affiliate’s unilevel crew.
If any stage 2 associates recruit new associates, they’re positioned on stage 3 and so forth and so forth down a theoretical infinite variety of ranges.
Life Smart caps recruitment commissions down seven unilevel crew ranges.
Commissions are paid as a flat quantity primarily based on orders positioned on any of the seven ranges:
- stage 1 (personally recruited associates) – $5 per product bought
- stage 2 – $3 per product bought
- stage 3 – $2 per product bought
- ranges 4 to 7 – $1 per product bought
Life Smart Affiliate Ranks
There are seven affiliate ranks inside Life Smart’s compensation plan.
Together with their respective qualification standards, they’re as follows:
- Bronze Companion – earn $200 every week
- Silver Companion – earn $300 every week
- Gold Companion – earn $500 every week
- Ruby Companion – earn $1000 every week and have three Silver Companions or larger in your downline
- Emerald Companion – earn $2000 every week and have three Gold Companions or larger in your downline
- Diamond Companion – earn $3000 every week and have three Ruby Companions or larger in your downline
- Black Diamond Companion – earn $5000 every week and have three Diamond Companions or larger in your downline
Word that required rank particular downline associates have to be in separate unilevel crew legs.
E.g. At Emerald Companion you want three Gold Companions or larger in your downline. Every Gold Companion or larger have to be in a separate unilevel crew leg.
Whether or not there are any rewards connected to Life Smart rank qualification is unclear.
Becoming a member of Life Smart
Life Smart affiliate membership is $99 yearly.
Life Smart Conclusion
Whereas Vasayo had a powerful retail providing, Life Smart is a straightforward autoship recruitment scheme.
Rob Alwin: That is going to be a spot the place you may get concerned and spend $39 a month … you’re by no means going to be requested to purchase greater than that.
We would counsel totally different enterprise proposals to indicate you find out how to construct large and powerfully, that perhaps you get two merchandise and spend $78.
Perhaps we solely require you to sponsor one particular person on autoship of $39 a month. However, what if I laid out a plan the place if every particular person for 4 you’d ultimately, with only one product, with no entrance loading, you may find yourself making a big six determine revenue of us?
In reality you may make a big revenue even when you solely received one particular person began.
Right here I’m, I’m in without cost till after launch. Free.
I’m figuring out whether or not I wish to spend $35 or $39 on autoship. There’s your comp plan.
Nowhere in Life Tree’s publicly out there advertising and marketing materials are retail gross sales talked about. In reality I don’t even know if retail gross sales are even doable.
The FTC has made it clear that retail gross sales are what differentiates reputable MLM corporations from scams.
If an MLM firm isn’t producing the vast majority of its gross sales income from retail prospects, they’re working as a pyramid scheme.
Life Smart’s compensation plan, as introduced by founder and CEO Rob Alwin, is seven ranges deep of autoship recruitment. There isn’t a retail part as introduced.
Rob Alwin: Signal somebody up without cost and spend $35 or $39 … you are able to do that as many occasions as you want or solely as soon as.
And you bought 4 associates, and so they say to you, they go, “What will we do?”
And what do you say? Go get 4.
You solely want one however we advocate go get 4.
When your 4 folks every go get 4, now there’s sixteen folks. And you bought sixteen occasions three, and also you simply made 48 bucks.
You’re bringing in 4. Your 4 grows right into a $285,000 a yr revenue.
And even when there was (one could be rapidly tacked on following publication of this overview), Life Smart’s core enterprise mannequin is apparent: join, decide to autoship and recruit different associates who do the identical.
That’s your traditional MLM autoship recruitment pyramid scheme.
And, naturally, sitting on the prime of mentioned autoship recruitment pyramid scheme, is Alwin and the remainder of Life Smart’s executives;
Tracy Gibbs: I’m tremendous excited to be teaming up with Rob on this new enterprise of ours, and having a compensation plan that’s fully clear.
We’re constructing groups, proper there with you. And that’s our wage … we receives a commission off the compensation plan.
Rob Alwin: We received positions within the enterprise, constructing the identical comp plan and getting paid precisely the way in which you do.
Satirically Alwin appears in a position to establish fraud…
Most compensation plans at most corporations, there’s large fraud going down.
They’re inserting positions above you to draw the chief as an alternative of permitting the chief to return up and present you the way it’s completed, genuine and actual.
…however takes difficulty with secrecy behind pyramid schemes, versus the pyramid scheme itself.
Transferring on to Life Smart’s merchandise, they appear fairly priced for what they’re. Sadly any merchandise connected to an autoship recruitment scheme are secondary to the scheme itself.
One other disturbing facet to Life Smart is the heavy integration of faith. Consider what you wish to consider, however mixing faith and MLM lends itself to toxicity, cliques and discrimination.
As an example a degree, let’s say hypothetically I’m an atheist. Pyramid scheme or no I see Life Smart as an revenue alternative and make my approach up the corporate’s affiliate ranks.
I’m incomes a good revenue on recruitment. However how lengthy will it’s earlier than me considering Christianity is a crock of shit turns into an issue?
One particularly potential problematic space is Pastor Chris Clem “growing curriculum to assist lead you into your individual private promised land.”
Is Life Smart’s management improvement program spiritual themed? If that’s the case, that’s a doubtlessly main downside for anybody not religiously inclined. Or doubtlessly even worse, following the unsuitable faith.
So? Simply don’t purchase this system then, duh.
Positive, and if that was the one purple flag I’d be keen to provide Life Smart and Alwin the good thing about the doubt. Life Smart’s advertising and marketing materials nevertheless is already closely laced with spiritual undertones.
I’d be very stunned if Clem’s program wasn’t closely pushed onto Life Smart associates.
Once more, by all means consider what you wish to consider – however mixing faith and MLM is mostly a nasty concept.
When mixed with a pyramid model autoship recruitment mannequin, it additionally permits spiritual affinity fraud as a advertising and marketing device.
As with all pyramid schemes, as soon as affiliate recruitment dries up so too will commissions for current Life Smart associates.
Except new victims are discovered, these on the backside of Life Smart’s compensation plan will over time cancel their month-to-month autoship.
This may see these above them cease getting paid and in time cancel their very own autoship.
As soon as sufficient Life Smart associates cancel autoship, an irreversible collapse is triggered.
The maths behind pyramid schemes ensures that almost all of contributors lose cash.
Presently in prelaunch, Life Smart is scheduled to launch in full on July 4th, 2023.