How much does it cost for a Juice Plus Convention?

 

It's all systems go as Jenny and her "team" prepare for the 2016 Juice Plus Convention in Birmingham.

The convention apparently gives distributors like Jenny the opportunity to rub shoulders with the big players of the company. It is an opportunity to build your network, establish contacts and get wealth-generating tips on how to grow your JP business into a mega bucks industry.

So far, as documented on this blog, Jenny's sales and recruitment figures have been awful. At best, she currently has three distributors recruited and made a couple of sales earlier this month. Currently, the number of people in her Facebook page is now 537. That means that if she were to sell £20 worth of stock to each person in that number (for the sake of argument assuming every one is a unique person not including me, herself or distributors), she would make £10,740. That's without taking into account tax and the amount that goes to JP and her uplines. That's horrendous figures for a company that she has claimed can make you a six figure sum in less than two years.

Anyway, to the convention. When people go on business trips, as Jenny has decided to call this, the person's travel and accommodation expenses are covered by the employer/whoever he/she is representing. If I personally were to be representing my boss at an event, I would stand to be reimbursed. That's how these things work.

But not for JP. For a company that's all about including people in the get-rich-quick scheme, they sure seem very reluctant to help their distributors with the cost of attending these events.

So how much does it cost to attend a JP convention? I tallied together three key issues: the cost of travel, the cost of accommodation and the cost, if any, for attendance. As the conference is a Friday and Saturday event I assume Jenny will be heading there on the Thursday and leaving the Sunday morning. Here are the results.

1) Flight tickets

Last time, Jenny and her "team" flew to the convention which I assume they will be doing again. How much is the cheapest from Jenny's nearest airport to Birmingham?

 

£109.

2) Cost of accommodation

I went for a typical budget hotel chain you get here in the UK.I have no doubt you can probably find a better deal with a bit of digging, but I generally could not be bothered so assume this is an average rate for a three night stay in Birmingham.

£190.50.

3) Cost of attendance

Would you be shocked if I told you that yes, JP charge their distributors to attend the convention? To be honest I don't think you would be. I mean, it should be what, a tenner/£15 max in order to spread the cost of hiring out that big centre, right?

£50. Five zero. Fifty. And that's for the early bird ticket otherwise you have to pay £60 and a £4.25 booking fee. That's roughly the cost of a ticket to see an Arsenal FC match at the Emirates stadium. It's double the cost of a typical standing ticket to see a pop star like Justin Bieber. So how on earth does it cost so much to hear people tell you you're going to get rich? Well, JP doesn't say.

The overall cost of travel, accommodation and attendance of the Juice Plus 2016 Birmingham Convention stands at £349.50.

That figure doesn't even take into account other factors such as the cost of inter-city transport, the cost of food, the cost of alcohol at the "glam party" or the cost of merchandise Jenny and her "team" may buy at the convention. To cover that, Jenny would need to sell an average £20 JP product to 17.4 people - and that would be assuming that she got 100% of the sales, which she wouldn't.

The conclusion? This is a very costly business trip to hear people give you advice on how to make money. It doesn't seem to register to Jenny that a core concept of business is to keep costs low. Whatever profit you make goes up in smoke if you continue to blow away money on nonsense like this.

But JP don't care. They're making money out of the very people who think they'll be getting rich off JP. Something about biting the hand that feeds you springs to mind.

Enjoy your trip, Jenny.

You've failed already, Jenny

This has got to be the saddest attempt at weight loss I have ever seen. Everything in there is just plain wrong.

1. "Once you over indulge" implies that it is inevitable that you are going to overeat this Christmas. That's simply not true. There is nothing stopping you from saying "no thanks" to an extra slice of Christmas pudding. Learn a little self-control.

2. This begs the question of what JP actually does to help people lose weight. Really, all someone needs to do to lose weight is to eat less. That's all there is to it. Simple changes that can help achieve this cost nothing - the one that springs to mind most of all is to cut out calory-dense drinks with water or sugar-free cola.

3. I have never understood why people wait until New Years day to make changes. There is nothing stopping you from making these changes right now. When I started my weight loss journey it began in late October 2014; by the time New Years day came along I already had two months worth of progress to motivate me into the year.

The above point is why I know already that Jenny's health kick is doomed to fail. She has absolutely no self-control, she has absolutely no motivation. Jenny will use the remaining week of 2015 to stuff her face with junk, knowing that her kick doesn't kick off until 2016. When it comes along, she'll struggle bad, she'll cheat on meals, she'll give up the gym, and then it's back to square one by February.

And in all that time, she'll be asking people to buy "healthy" JP junk and to listen to her weight loss advice. You couldn't make it up.

Facebook count: 538. Will we reach below 500? Time will tell, but I actually think we will.

A Double Whammy for Jenny

Two posts today.

The top one was a "lol" moment that should, once again, tell Jenny that demand for JP products is extremely low in this group. Barely anybody except her fellow distributors respond to them.

This time, Jenny decided to ask people how much weight they would like to "loose" (sic) this New Year and gave people a choice of emojis to use. You'd think that the blonde lady's response would be encouraging - a possible sale perhaps - but no, because the emoji she used corresponded to "happy with the weight I am". I have no doubt that Jenny hated "liking" that post.

The second post is a brilliant example of why stupid people shouldn't use analogies. In my earlier, sad ass days, I'd spend a couple hours a day arguing on internet forums. One thing I learned is that many people out there simply do not understand how analogies work. For the comparison to be valid, the two things need to have similar, if not the same, qualities.

Jenny's cut-n-paste job is a fantastic flavour of stupid, claiming that as a piece of jewellery may go up in value, so too can your Juice Plus business to the tune of a six figure income within two years.

There's plenty of reasons for why that is just nonsense. To start with, jewellery, to my knowledge, does not go "up" in value other than with inflation. If you buy a ring that is worth £69, then chances are you have bought a tacky piece of junk that doesn't even have real jewels in it. It's the kind of crap you would buy from Argos.

Second, the chances of your JP "business" shooting up to six figures by just paying £50 is insane. This goes back to Clara who Jenny sees as a kind of demi-god who apparently joined the franchise then started rolling in crazy sums of money. Ignore that she's a thin, attractive woman who is perfect to model the JP "health" image, ignore that nothing is said about her husband's career who could well be funding their lifestyle moreso than she is, ignore the fact that she does not explain remotely how she made that amount of alleged income.

That last point is important. As mentioned plenty of times on this blog already, the JP model flies in the face of business common sense. Businesspeople do not want to sell away parts of their business if it means others may well be getting profits and saturating the market. It only works for franchises (i.e. McDonalds) and pyramid schemes like JP because the companies/people who do buy into the business are obliged to turn in some, if not most of, the profits back to the company. The people at the top make the big money and the people at the bottom, like Jenny, get the scraps.

For someone like Jenny to become a big earner requires her to sign up hundreds, if not thousands, of distributors and sell the products like hotcakes. But in order to sign up more people, she has to saturate the market; she has to increase competition in her catchment area so more people in her city and beyond are looking for people to sell and get recruited into the company. Recruiting people into the company is only good for Jenny is she instigates it and thus gets a slice of commission. Other people joining new members means nothing for her.

Does this sound like a business model that, within two years, will have you rolling in money even as you sleep? Of course not.

I also note that in Jenny's recent profile picture her arm is up. Underneath is horrifically sagging skin due to excess weight. I'm saying this again not to be rude against her, to make fun of her, but to be brutally honest: she is obese. It is the upmost of cheek for her to think that she can advise people to make healthy life choices.

Jenny, heed your own advice. 2015 was a wasted year. How about you make 2016 a year of proper change where you first of all educate yourself on health, nutrition and diet, leave this scam of a business that has no interest in you making money and earn some self-respect instead of being a fat-assed hypocrite.

The choice is yours, Jenny.

Updates from Jenny's Juice Plus Farce

Reminder: "Jenny" is a fictional name for a Juice Plus (JP) peddler who is ironically obese yet sells health products as if they are wonder products. She is a 21st century snake oil saleswoman. All efforts are made to keep her real identity anonymous.

So, it's been a while since my  last post, what has Jenny been up to?

The short answer is just "the usual". Spamming recruitment and sales posts. New "team" members? Zero. Sales? Two. Fantastic results for a sure-fire-way-to-make-money business.

Since my last post that exposed Jenny's incident with advertising standards, she has actually launched a new promotion: buy a JP product from her in December and you enter a draw to win £100. Wowee! It appears that nobody was tempted by this deal, so after a couple of posts about it Jenny has swept this promotion under the rug.

A post she made today spurred me on to type this one up. It's nothing different, it's yet another recruitment pitch that exposes JP for the pyramid scheme that it is.

You'd think the penny would drop for Jenny but... no. She has either deluded herself into believing the rubbish shovelled up by JP or she genuinely does not have the intelligence to figure out why this is a scam.

Just because your friends may get fed up of seeing your spam doesn't mean that they are bad people; it means that they have got fed up seeing you, their friend, gullibly fall for what is nothing more than a scam. That's not their issue, it's yours.

Furthermore, again, as I've said before, the international aspect of JP is meaningless. A customer in Canada is going to buy from a distributor in Canada; they are not going to think "hmm, I know someone in the UK who sells this stuff, I'll buy it from them!"

The haters don't pay your wages, sure, but your employer - JP - pays a ridiculous rate based on your commission and recruitment figures. That's why it's so important for you to recruit people; it's about their sales from membership subscriptions and commission, not because they want the average person on the street to get rich. The "haters" are just normal people who can see a scam for what it is.

Finally, it's not negativity from stopping people joining JP. It's reality. In reality, JP is a scam. In reality, business is not a big yay-lets-hug-each-other-and-make-a-big-club-where-everyone-in-it-makes-cash. The dream business environment is domination of the market with a never-ending demand for your product, which is completely against the JP model of saturating the market with distributors which in turn reduces demand and customers at the same time.

Since the last post, Jenny's Facebook count is down to 543. I'm amazed that still, in December, there is a steady decline in her group numbers. I always think that we've reached the bedrock of people who are friends, family or oblivious to being members. But the counter still goes down.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Jenny's Slap on the Wrist from Advertising Standards

Jenny has this knack of starting promotions but never really persisting with them. In the last few weeks this has included her "Christmas Challenge", which as mentioned in a previous post, appeared to be nothing more than her beginning to use the "Booster" product that JP had started selling. The launch date came and went without incident, and nothing has been said of it since.

This also include's Jenny's attempt to stir up attention by posting a fitness jpeg that had a list of exercises she promised to do all of based on each comment the post received. Thus for every comment she would do 20 star jumps, 10 sit-ups, 30 squats, you get the idea. She received 7/8 comments, then said she would carry through with her challenge the next day... and never did. So that was another empty promotion.

Of particular significance was Jenny's relatively short run of doing competitions. You get the idea, like and share the post, enter the competition, hopefully you win a prize. Nothing amazing, pretty much every company does this on social media from time to time and Jenny was no different.

That was, until, she posted this:

My first thought upon reading that was that she had totally lost the plot and was going to be giving away pretty much all of her capsules to people who liked and shared that status. It does, after all, say that this is a freebie promotion for one month's supply of capsules. So basically, like and share, and get your capsules, right?

Well, it worked, people were liking and sharing that post. Buoyed by this reaction, Jenny continued her pitch:

 And again, people did. They wanted their free month's supply of capsules so liked and shared that status. I mean, it's free pills!

Along came the deadline...

 

 

*CAR SCREECH*

Sorry, what?

"will announce the winner of the vineyard capsules tomorrow!

"Thank you to everyone who entered

"Look out for more prizes soon"

"winner... entered... prizes..."

Okay, so despite her previous posts clearly saying this was a freebie for one months supply with no mention of this being a competition, it turns out that this was, apparently, another competition. So no, you didn't get a free supply for liking and sharing the post, as she advertised, you simply got the opportunity to get a free month's supply.

Call me petty - it could well be that she is simply an utter idiot who didn't understand what she was typing - but to me this was out and out false advertising whether she meant it or not. As a result I contacted Advertising Standards and was absolutely amazed when I got this response (red are my edits):

Dear BAJ,

 

Your Complaint: Jenny

 

Thank you for your continued patience and sending the ads to us. I note you raised concerns that Jenny's ads do not make clear that the promotion was a competition, and that only a few individuals would win the prize.

 

We think you’ve made a valid point, and with a view to acting quickly, we contacted the advertiser and requested changes.  I’m happy to advise that the advertiser has provided their assurance that they will ensure all their future promotions will clearly state where there are only a select number of winners.

 

We will now close our files on this matter. Basic information including the company name, the industry sector and the medium in which the ad appeared will appear on our website... in a list with other advertisers that have co-operated in resolving complaints.

 

I do hope that this outcome is satisfactory to you, and finally I’d like to thank you for taking the time and trouble to bring this matter to our attention.

 

 

Kind regards,

 

Betty Smith (edit)

Complaints Executive

 

So, there you have it. Jenny either let her dishonesty get to her head to squeeze out reactions on her page, or she was so stupid she didn't understand basic advertisement ethics. Either way, just like her "Christmas Challenge", just like her exercise-for-comments pledge, the promotions have simply disappeared. It appears that the chances of winning a free supply of capsules... are gone... *sniff*.

 

Facebook page count: 558. I think we're down to the base number now consisting of her friends, family, fellow distributors and people oblivious to the fact that they're members of this page.

 

Updates with Jenny's Juice Plus Scam

I haven't posted anything in the last week or so because I thought we were getting to the stage where Jenny's enthusiasm for JP would fade and the realisation that she has been duped this whole time would set in.

Jenny's relentless posting became one a day, some not even related to JP, and I honestly thought she had put two and two together and figured out the JP scam. But no, not Jenny. In recent days she has gone into recruitment overdrive, posting hardly any product ads and focusing exclusively on finding new members for her "team", you know, where everybody in this team is in direct competition with each other to sell to largely the same catchment area while trying to find even more members to saturate the market. That "team".

Her page's members count is now down to 559. It keeps going down, nobody ever joins. Why can't Jenny figure this out? Well, lay it down to good snake oil sales tactics from the JP marketing machine.

Oh, the Irony

So according to Jenny (well, not her exactly, considering she just copies and pastes whatever her fellow distributors post or she finds herself), having a typical job is a "scam". It is a "scam" because you make "someone else richer", you work for 40 years and you retire on a poor pension.

The solution? Join Juice Plus. Oh, the irony.

Give up your job and join Juice Plus for the benefits of:

- an income that is not guaranteed as it is wholly dependent on your own sales and recruitment figures.

- a company where you are encouraged to recruit anybody, including customers, whereby you are shooting both of your feet by reducing demand and increasing supply at the same time.

- harassing your friends and family and potentially alienating them from your social circle.

- making other people richer because they benefit from your sales, whose uplines also benefit from your sales, whose upline also benefit from your sales, etc, etc, etc.

- getting bored off your pants because your "job" can be done in a matter of minutes, depending on how many posts you feel like spamming in a day.

-  going to conferences where you have to pay for tickets, travel and accommodation to hear people tell you you're going to get rich. Only you never really seem to get rich, let alone make much of a profit.

To date I am yet to see anyone from JP tackle the issue of the company being a pyramid scheme, aka, a scam. The best I have seen yet is a cutesy doodle video Jenny posted where they claim that JP isn't a pyramid because they want to "help" everyone become national marketing distributors, even though that is impossible and would require a never-ending demand for the products.

Sensible, rational people know that JP is a scam. If Jenny truly believes a proper job is a scam and being a JP isn't, then I dare her to quit her day job and focus solely on her distribution sales. Go for it, Jenny, put your money where your mouth is.

Refuting the Responses to Reasons for not joining Juice Plus

Tomorrow, Jenny's "Christmas Challenge" will be launched which, based on the looks of things, is basically just her beginning to use the super duper "Booster" product. She claims that once she starts seeing results she'll be "singing from the roof tops" but considering Jenny has already been using both the capsules and shakes since May, and has GAINED weight since then, the chances of her "singing from the roof tops" are, at best, remote.

Anyway, I have the pleasure of refuting another of her pastejob attempts to recruit people into the "team". Let's begin.

"The main reasons I hear for not joining JuicePlus is that 'it costs money to join', 'I have no time' and 'I don't know who I would sell to'. Now on the outside they seem like completely valid reasons! But let's think about this a minute.... 😉"

Right off the bat this is a strawman. I'll explain why later in this post.

"'It costs money to join JuicePlus' - yes it does, it costs you literally £50 to get your own business!"

And funnily enough the more people who create their "own businesses" the more competition you have to sell products and the more saturated the market becomes. Who wants to compete with their own "team" for customers and pay for the privilege of doing it?

"You get a personalised website for customers to order through as well as an amazing ...virtual office for you to have all the training tools at your fingertips....."

Everyone has this "virtual office". This isn't a unique selling point. Hell, I have my own "virtual office" right now.

"You are getting your OWN BUSINESS for £50 with no other fees"

Except the products you need to bulk buy to sell on to other people.

"no stock to hold"

Except the products you need to bulk buy to sell on to other people.
 
"Pretty good deal when you say it like that huh?"

Not really. All you have said so far is that I get the privilege of spending money joining a pyramid scheme.

"Oh and don't forget that you could make that back as fast as you want, some do it the day they join, personally I earned it back within a week... Since then I've been in completely profit!!"

Wow, as fast as I want? So I can dictate to people that they have to buy my products whether they want to or not? Na, I don't think so.

Also, show us the balance sheet. Every time you guys make these claims you never show us the balance sheets. And I'm not talking about alleged success stories who "made it" to the top and are making £16k+ a month; I want to see YOUR finances.


"Second, 'I have no time' - now this I do understand as I have a busy life, but if you are reading this now, then you easily have time to talk to some people and post some statuses on Facebook through the day"

People come on to Facebook to unwind and talk with friends/family. The last thing they want to do in their free time is harass people into buying junk.

"Lastly we have 'I don't know
who I would sell to'. Again sounds legit but think of it this way... How many businesses start up and only ever sell to the few contacts they already have?? None! We have launched into 25 countries and expanding further next year and you are completely free to sell to anyone from any of those countries! "

Except, as we have already established plenty of times in this blog, the main objective of the company is to recruit more and more and more and more people into the firm. That makes international selling pointless. Why would someone in Switzerland, for instance, want to buy JP products from someone in Canada when there's already thousands and thousands of distributors in their country? It makes no sense. It's a farce.

Furthermore, as more people join, the more saturated the market. It would get to the stage where the latest recruits have nobody left to sell to. That's why JP, like all the others, is a pyramid scheme.

"A lot of us use Facebook as our main platform, but there are so many others! Get chatting to new people and making new friends!!"

People don't make "friends" to be subjected to relentless sales pitches and recruitment drives.

"A lot of things are just a matter of perspective.... Look at things with an open mind rather than a closed one, take a leap of faith and you never know what might just happen."

Sure, let's look at things with an open mind and examine other reasons why people don't join JP but you didn't seem keen on mentioning (hence why it's a strawman):

1) Juice Plus is a pyramid scheme.

2) People don't want to harass their friends and family.

3) People want to engage in proper careers. Careers that extend beyond copying and pasting junk on Facebook. That's not a job.

4) They have no faith in the products. JP products, while it would be perhaps too harsh to say that they are ultimately useless, certainly aren't the revolutionary products the bigwigs claim they are. Furthermore the pricing structure is outright scandalous; for much cheaper you can get more vitamins and nutrients from multi-vitamin tablets, fruit and vegetables.

5) Let me repeat 1): Juice Plus is a pyramid scheme.

Jenny, you have been relentlessly spamming recruitment posts like the above but never seem to get a response. I have counted perhaps three recruits you have made since getting on board JP, one of which quitted soon after joining. People who actually have business brains realise that this is a message from the public, namely, that they do not want to join your scam. You can ask them another ten, hundred, even a thousand times, and the answer will remain the same.

Give it up already and accept that you have been duped. Sort out your diet, join a gym and start to legitimately address your weight instead of blindly chasing a hopeless dream that spreads misinformation about health. You're better than that.

When Jenny takes tabloid stories out of context.

In early October Jenny posted this Sun article as a claim that JP products are more effective in combating weight issues than advice you get from your doctor. Read that sentence again and let it sink in.

What Jenny doesn't seem to realise, or is deliberately ignoring, is:

- Based on that part of the article from her photo (there's no way I'm paying a Sun subscription to read the whole thing), JP isn't mentioned at all. So how she can claim this is evidence that her junk products are worthwhile is beyond me.

- It's from the Sun. For non UK readers the Sun is the gossip magazine newspaper of Britain that is more concerned with boobs and football, not contemporary, relevant issues.

- Based on my interpretation the article is saying that social media is more effective than doctors. What I believe this is based on is the fact that because social media connects us to many people from various walks of life, who can then share their experiences with each other, people learn new ways to address their weight issues and may discover why do date their attempts have been unsuccessful. Above all else, it is likely that people are getting advice about calories-in-calories-out and how this simple but extremely effective system can be the difference between you over-eating, and getting fat, and eating at a deficit and losing weight.

It certainly does not mean that obese people selling over-priced junk on Facebook is more effective than doctors. Above all else, the doctor is the number one person anyone should go to if they are concerned about their health. To claim based on a tabloid article that doesn't even mention your pyramid scheme that it's as good as, if not better, than qualified, expert, medical advice is outright shameful.

Oh, by the way, Facebook count down to 564. That means that since I began posting in the middle of October, Jenny has been losing an average of over one person a day. In a later post I'll do the maths but, regardless, it really doesn't look like attending Brighton for that inspirational (and costly) JP conference has done her sales any good whatsoever.

Translating a Typical Recruitment Pitch...

What Jenny and Juice Plus actually mean with their recruitment pitches:

"Hours to suit you"

This is meaningless considering it takes minutes to copy and paste adverts on a social media page and distributors aren't paid an hourly wage. Their income is based on the sales they make and the people they recruit into the firm.

"Work from home"

As long as you have an internet connection it doesn't matter a jot where you are.

"All from your mobile"

See above. This isn't really a perk.

"Part time hours 1000+ a month"

Makes absolutely no sense. Is that figure 1000 hours or £1000? If it's hours then that is literally impossible as in a typical month there's only 730 hours. Maybe JP distributors have discovered a vortex that allows them to manipulate time? Who knows. If it's money then citation is badly, badly needed. Please show us how the average - emphasis on AVERAGE - JP distributor makes £1000 a month.

"Free holidays"

Why do I have a sneaking suspicion that by "free holiday" Jenny is referring to JP conventions where you buy a ticket, pay for travel, and pay for accommodation to hear people tell you you're going to be rich off selling junk on the internet? Why would any company, let alone a MLM company, give their staff free holidays outwith perhaps rewarding longstanding service or the like?

"Meet amazing people"

People who make money from an unethical business model are not who I would call "amazing". They are con artists who manipulate people like Jenny with false promises of riches and encourage them to engage in a selling practice that can potentially alienate them from the truly amazing people in their lives.

"78k uncapped bonuses"

Again, citation badly needed along with a comprehensive breakdown of how many sales and recruitments the average person would need to make to reach this kind of money. When you make serious claims, you need serious evidence. Unless you're someone like Jenny, I suppose.

"Full training provided"

How to copy and paste cheesy motivational pictures and text for dummies. Training not provided: training in diet, nutrition and lifestyle effects on health. You know, the variables that actually influence a person's weight and wellbeing.

And finally...

"What is Juice Plus?"

A barely legal pyramid scheme that rips off people desperate for quick fixes in their health and/or finances.

A company whose image is all about promoting healthy, active lives... and has obese people like Jenny peddling their products.

A company whose products are completely unnecessary to live a happy, healthy life.

Finally, once again Jenny pitched to everyone on the page to add at least one friend/family member to her page. Considering at the time she had 570 people in the page, she could have theoretically seen a massive jump to 1140.

The figure?

Down to 566. People simply do not want to subject their friends and family to Jenny's garbage. They weren't born yesterday. It was actually 565 as Jenny's own distributor had left the page, only to be readded. Was that a mistake or a "mistake"? Time will tell.

Responding to a Pity Party Pastejob

Okay, so evidently either Jenny has seen her sales dry up, or she's been rightly criticised for her relentless, hypocritical sales pitches, or maybe just saw the above pastejob and liked the sound of it. Regardless, it looks like some MLM distributors have gone on the defensive and tried a new tactic to drum up sales: the emotional pity party pitch. Woah is me, I'm being bullied for spamming adverts to my friends and family, trying to get them to buy or join whatever product I'm selling.

I'm going to run through the post and respond to each point. Lets go.

"ARE YOU SICK OF SEEING WRAP POSTS, JUICE PLUS POSTS, YOUNIQUE POSTS, OR OTHER MLM POSTS? ARE YOU AN EYE ROLLER??"

Yes, absolutely.

"Do you think lower of those in network marketing?? If so ask yourself WHY??"

Because I am smart enough to know a scam when I see one.

"How would you feel if your friends and family constantly attacked you or put you down about your chosen job?"

I would question why people who I know care about me are doing this. If it were one person I'd be dubious; if it were a huge number of my friends and family, I'd kind of think that they would have legitimate reason to criticise my job and not be "attacking" me.

"Refused to support or refer you on to friends in the job that pays your bills and puts a roof over your head? The job that feeds your children?"

Probably because they care about their friends and don't want them to buy your junk products. Furthermore if you rely on a MLM scam for your income then you seriously need to think of an alternative career.

"Maybe you would feel better if the people in network marketing 'Got a real job' that meant leaving their kids at home and doing a job working to make someone else rich?"

Considering there are millions of working families out there who have to arrange childcare for their kids you cannot in any shape or form use this as an excuse for MLM distribution. This is tantamount to emotional blackmail. Furthermore, pretty ironic to whine about working to make other people rich when you are only involved in this scam because you think it is going to make you rich.

"Maybe you would prefer they sat at home and did nothing? Claiming benefit from the 'real job' tax payers (we pay tax too by the way)"

That's essentially what you are doing already unless, like Jenny, you have another job. It really doesn't take much out of the day to copy and paste cheesy crap like this garbage on your social media page. It's not a hard day's work.

"Maybe you think we shouldn't post so much, maybe it annoys you to see people succeeding and wanting more? That we shouldn't do our best to make our dreams come true? I don't think you really think that!! In fact I know you don't when you're honest with yourself! "

Maybe you don't have a clue about how effective marketing works. You can post and post and post this crap until you're blue in the face, but hardly anyone is going to buy products that are overpriced and over-rated. Maybe you're not being honest with yourself.

"If you're in network marketing you're here because YOU SEE A DIFFERENT WAY! A better FUTURE! A way to build your dreams!
HOW MANY OF YOU THINK THAT'S ADMIRABLE?"

It's not admirable, it's sad. You have been duped into engaging in a pyramid scheme where people at the top will make more money off of you and other distributors than they will off product sales. You guys pay the joining fee. You guys pay for bulk products. You guys pay for tickets and merchandise at JP conventions. They make money off it, you don't.

You joined because you think you can make money from doing the bare minimum. Sorry, but it's just not true.

"If you do, then this month instead of scrolling past the posts about candles, wraps, mascara, jewelry or anything else, while rolling your eyes, ask yourself if your willing to help make someone else's dreams come true!
Help someone achieve simply by just liking/sharing or commenting on the post!"

"Help me get rich by buying my over-priced junk! Please! I'm begging you!" Ehm, no thanks.

"A few years ago the campaign to support small businesses was huge!! How about a campaign to support dream chasers, help some parents give children an ace Christmas or make a lifelong dream a reality? I know most of my friends and I know most of you are GOOD PEOPLE!"

There's a big difference between supporting small businesses and MLM distributors. The difference is people behind small businesses actually run their companies. They start it up, or are continuing a business that may have been started further back in time by family members. Their business sells a unique product, or provides a unique service, that may have a reputation for being of good quality. Or they may be a start-up company that has found a niche in the market and need a bit of support to take off and get the ground running.

In other words, they have worked their socks off to get the business off the ground.

You guys, on the other hand, do next-to-nothing in MLM companies. Everything is already done for you - your job is simply to bulk-order products and sell them off online. Your products are over-priced and unnecessary. Furthermore, you try and recruit more people into the scam which begs the question as to how we can support MLM companies when you can theoretically replace customers with distributors - it makes absolutely no sense.

That is why MLMs cannot be supported. They are scams. Small businesses are not. There is no way you can look a small business owner in the eye and say "I know how you feel", because you don't. You know nothing, whatsoever, about business and the risks involved in this sector.

Edit: also, another big difference between small businesses and MLM distributors is that small businesses actually employ people. People are contracted to a set number of hours at a set wage with a set time of payment. Thus, it is absolutely vital that small businesses are kept running not just for the sake of the owners but for the sake of their staff. If these businesses go, so do their staff's livelihoods.

Do MLM distributors get paid like this? No. If JP and other scams go belly-up, you stand to lose nothing but the money you chose to throw at this scheme thinking it was going to lead to long-term riches. It's exactly like demanding that people fork out cash to help a gambler who blew his savings on two cards in blackjack. It's your own fault. Furthermore, I rarely see any distributors fully live on this MLM for their income. Jenny, like many of you, has a proper job and uses this as a supplement for extra cash. How, therefore, is this the same as campaigning for small businesses? It isn't.

"So while you're searching for the perfect Christmas gift this month consider some of these posts! Many offer life changing or lifestyle improving products that could make a huge difference to you or their recipient! Others offer stuff you would probably buy from an online retailer at a higher price"

The problem is your products are not "life changing". With JP I can buy products for way, way cheaper and get much more value for money from my local supermarket. Why would I want my friends and family to buy your overpriced rubbish?

"be savvy this Christmas help those helping themselves and support those wanting to make a difference! It goes a very long way!! "

If you want to make a difference to people then provide them a service that can actually help them. Sitting on your fat ass all day spamming crap on social media isn't helping anyone.

... geez that took longer than I thought. Basically, Jenny is pissed that her sales have dried up and is basically begging people to buy her crap.

I have one question, Jenny.

When's the penny going to drop?

Once again, the silence is deafening

Facebook count: down to 571. When's the penny going to drop?

Why is Jenny Reluctant to Show Her Own Before and After Photos?

Disclaimer: I have decided to show pictures of Jenny because I believe it is vital to show people how farcical Juice Plus is as a business. It is ridiculous that people like her, who are plainly obese and know nothing about health and fitness, is considered acceptable to sell products designed to aid people live healthier lifestyles. It makes a mockery of the supposed health benefits of their products.

I am not showing the person's photographs to promote, or incite, harassment. I have made sure to omit any potentially-identifying information, including faces of other people in the photographs. I will never, ever, condone harassment of other people.

The following picture is a typical before and after shot that we see from distributors to hype up JP products as magical weight loss busters:

 

 

 

 

It certainly cannot be denied that the lady in the photos has lost weight. Clearly, she has - and that's fantastic. What these photographs never tell us, however, are:

- the person's diet;

- the person's exercise regime;

- the person's lifestyle.

We know nothing about how this lady lived, ate and exercised before taking JP pills and how it compares to her habits of today. That missing information is crucial. Simply saying "It's because of Juice Plus" is like giving us a jigsaw puzzle with only a couple of pieces. Without knowing the other crucial factors that influence a person's weight, we can in no way say that JP has even had a miniscule effect on the lady's weight whatsoever.

This also raises another question. The time period between those photos is interesting, because May is when Jenny herself became a distributor and joined the JP bandwagon. If this lady is doing so well with JP, then surely Jenny must be as well? She certainly goes out of her way to show off her capsules and shakes, so she is clearly taking the products.

Unfortunately finding these before and after photos prove problematic because Jenny is extremely reluctant to show any photos of herself. Unless it's a selfie, or she's with other people and able to hide most of her body. Then along came the curse of "tagged" photos, where we are able  to see the full extent of what five/six months on JP has done for our health fanatic distributor. Are you ready?

Jenny: Picture taken prior to becoming a distributor (April/May 2015?):

Jenny: Brighton Juice Plus conference, October 2015:

And there you have it. How can it be that two women using the same products are yielding spectacularly different results? We know nothing about Jenny's diet, we know nothing about her exercise regime, we know nothing about her general lifestyle.

JP cannot have it both ways. They cannot ignore the effects of diet, exercise and lifestyle choices when it benefits them but also say their products work when people like Jenny clearly prove otherwise. It is frankly unreal.

Jenny, when are you going to give up this farce and accept that you are the last person on the planet who can advise others on healthy life choices? I can think of 576 reasons why you should - because that's your latest numbers that have declined, once again.

Getting advice on health and diet from you is like getting advice on breaking drug addiction from the town junkie.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Stupidity Becomes Serious

What  we know about Jenny:

- She is obese (confirmed from pictures recently uploaded by one of her JP colleagues);

- She has no medical qualifications;

- She has no expertise in dietary nutrition;

Yet here she is making outrageous claims about how JP products not only help lose weight, but can help deal with a wide range of disorders and diseases - including some like Crohns, that to date has no cure.

While I too have no medical qualifications so cannot exactly go in depth with why this is, putting it best, ill-informed drivel, I certainly know how these products would be useless in combating diabetes.

JP capsules, for instance, contain only four specific vitamins: A, E, C and folate. Diabetes, which you may well know about, is a condition where people are unable to produce insulin and as a result get sick and even die if they do not get their levels replenished. My brother is a case in point and as such needs to inject himself with insulin to keep his body in working order. Thus, in order to fight diabetes, it is all about the insulin.

Can Jenny explain to me how a product that has absolutely no insulin can address diabetes? She can't. It is ludicrous to suggest that diabetics should buy a product that has no insulin to help fight their condition; it makes absolutely no sense. It is like giving a surgeon a toothbrush to cut open a patient's chest to conduct heart surgery.

It's fun to dismiss Jenny's delusions of riches, but this is a whole new level of bullsh!t. It is downright disgraceful to play on people's hopes for life-changing products that could help alleviate symptoms of their diseases, when the reality is these products would have zero effect. You have some nerve, Jenny, to think people can trust you to give them advice on diseases as if your ill-informed, uneducated word has as much authority as a doctor's. Shame on you. Shame on you.

Also, Facebook page count down to 577. Nobody can think of anyone interested in joining, and evidently more and more people are getting fed up with her relentless sales pitches. When is the penny going to drop? I say by Christmas.

Juice Plus's Warped Idea of "Helping" People

Now and again Jenny will pitch to people to try and recruit them into JP. That's expected - she does, after all, participate in a legal pyramid scheme - it's what they do.

A key aspect of this pitch is the idea that by joining JP you get the opportunity to help people. You help people make healthy choices, you guide them on their healthy journey, you can even help people get rich! That's absolutely awesome, right? Who doesn't want to help people live long, healthy, happy lives and be driving around in Mercedes or sitting at home in their big comfy mansions thanks to the riches made from selling pills and shakes on the internet?

In theory, it's a nice idea. In reality, it's bogus, it's misleading, it's unethical and in terms of getting rich is near-impossible to do.

As said in a previous post, JP do not care about the quality of their distributors. You could be a ripped gym rat who knows health and fitness like the back of his hand... or you could be someone like Jenny who is obese, clueless about calories and doesn't have a clue about even the very basics of exercise or healthy eating.

It's therefore amazing how Jenny thinks she is "helping" people. Ignore the fact that if someone had a legitimate question about exercise, she would have no idea how to answer it. Ignore the fact that she knows nothing about calorie counting, so would be at a loss to explain why her customer, despite taking the pills/shakes, is not losing weight. Ignore the fact that she charges ridiculous prices for these products which she stands to gain a meagre profit from.

If Jenny and all the other distributors actually cared about making people's lives healthier they would be in gyms, they would be in schools, they would be at old people's homes. They would do their absolute upmost to advise people about the benefits of exercise and healthy eating which includes eating actual fruit and vegetables as part of a healthy diet. And most of all, they would be doing all this for free.

So, give the charade a rest, and open your eyes to the bullsh!t JP feeds you through hypocritical lines like the above picture. You ARE selling supplements for the sake of making money, you are NOT helping people. It's all about fuelling your own selfish, greedy dreams of making easy money on the internet without actually doing a proper job.

Oh, and on a final note, Jenny pitched another request for the remaining 581 people on her page to add anybody who they thought would be interested in JP's products and/or business. And guess what? Her number actually went up...

... by one. Jenny herself added a poor stupid sap who has joined the "team" who do the "unteamly" thing of competing against each other for business and saturating the market. Everybody else either didn't notice, because they don't care about her junk (and aren't aware of being members of the group) or simply saw it, thought "na", and got on with their lives.

The silence is deafening

Facebook count: down 3 to 581. Penny dropped yet?

Jenny hits Brighton: JP Conference 2015

This weekend Jenny has travelled more than half the country to Brighton for this year's JP conference. From what I see it is a big get-together of distributors to pat each other on the back for a hard year of selling, recruitment and an opportunity for the bigger fish to keep dangling the promises-of-riches carrot over their heads.

So far, Jenny has posted two updates onto the Facebook page. The first is a cliché photo of her capsules along with the line (paraphrased) "great party last night, glad I took my pills!" Right off the bat this is pretty contradictory as nights out, and the huge volumes of alcohol that goes with it, is a sure-fire way to take in way too much calories. Furthermore these pills are unlikely to be much help as a hangover cure considering the water is extracted from the final product. Three likes, all from distributors.

The second thing Jenny posted is a video of  a lady I shall call Clara who gives an emotional pitch about how becoming a JP distributor changed her and her family's life. Apparently she is now raking in about £16k a month and as such both she and her husband have retired from work. Clara also speaks about how first she was "materialistic" and bought flashy cars and Rolex watches, before looking at the bigger picture and investing in her kids and focusing on "helping" people like her down-lines and the public.

Jenny, of course, laps this up and sees Clara as an inspiration, without noticing a few big red flags:

- Clara is an attractive young woman. This may sound trivial, but it is an important point. Every time there is a JP success story, they are unanimously attractive women, usually young. This is telling, as it shows that JP wholly care about image for the brand. Jenny, being fat, has no chance on this basis alone because nobody will take her seriously.

-No detail is mentioned about how Clara makes £16,000 a month. That's £192,000 a year. For Clara to be earning that much requires her to have an insanely high number of down-lines making phenomenal amounts of sales like clockwork.

-The classic JP mixed message is apparent. JP loves to claim that the business is all about "helping" people to make healthy choices and become rich. Yet, the overall message is "join us, become rich". Clara dropped in a few enticing details (flashy cars, Rolex watch, buying a nice house, retiring early) specifically to get distributors thinking about how they could benefit from the scheme. It's not remotely about helping other people, it's about generating greed so that people at the top of the company get more money. Again, it's a classic pyramid scheme.

-The whole conference is a scam. As mentioned previously, a big chunk of JP's income comes not from the sales of the products, but from the distributors who think they're going to become rich. Jenny, for instance, has had to buy a ticket for the conference where there will no doubt be stalls selling JP memorabilia and other products. It's easier to get money from people who believe in the scheme than it is from the general public where a huge number (hopefully a majority) see through the smoke and mirrors of what are essentially overpriced, overrated junk. JP see the conference as an opportunity to fuel the greed of their distributors and get more money from them - that's all they do it for. The real decision making is done by a board in a cushy boardroom. Also, travel and accommodation isn't catered for; Jenny and her "colleagues" are out of pocket there as well.

And by the way, no likes at all for the video. That should be telling for Jenny, but it won't register to her.

So yes, Jenny, while I hope you do enjoy your stay in Brighton, can you at least factor in the cost this whole event and how it squares up to your income from JP sales/down-line recruitment? Surely if this is a lucractive business you'll still be in the black? I very much doubt it.

Note: current Facebook membership at 584.

Content: Jenny and Juice Plus

Okay. Trained, showered, bed, time to set the scene.

What is Juice Plus?

Juice Plus (JP) is a Multi-Level-Marketing company that sells products they claim to be the "next big thing" to fruit and vegetables. These products come as capsules, shakes, gummy sweets, etc. Their target market are average people who may have various health-based goals such as losing weight, building muscle or strengthening their immune system. As most people these days are less likely to eat fruit or vegetables, JP try to cash in by acting as a substitute (or supplement) into people's diets.

There are plenty of informative websites out there that have researched JP's products, and outwith studies funded by themselves to support their products, they largely call into question their effects. It appears that contrary to being the next best thing to fruit and veg, they're largely a waste of money. For much cheaper, you can get more vitamins from a typical multivitamin or plenty of vitamins, nutrients and fibre from fruit and veg.

Products aside, there is an ethical issue with JP too. Like all MLM companies, a huge slice of their income comes from the distributors they recruit to sell the products for them. For a £50 start-up fee, people with no expertise, experience or even basic knowledge in health, fitness and nutrition can become distributors and sell these products to the wider world.

 Distributors can also earn money by recruiting other people into the franchise and the sales that their "lower line" "colleagues" make. Thus, in what would be a bizarre business model for legitimate businesspeople, they are motivated to recruit more "team members" into the business for commission. What this means, of course, is that the more people recruited into the firm, the more customers who become businesspeople, the more competition for remaining business in local catchment areas, and the more money made by people at the top. Does that sound familiar? It should, because JP is a typical pyramid scheme that is legal only because they have products to sell unlike classic scams.

What's the beef with this one distributor? Who is she?

"Jenny" is someone I know of who I used to have on Facebook. She has a long history of trying (and failing) to become fit and healthy by going to the gym, only to ruin it by overeating. Her diet has always been horrendous, she clearly has no clue about calorie counting, and as a result has always been overweight. By my reckoning I believe she is now obese based on her most recent photographs.

Her name isn't actually Jenny, but for the sake of anonymity I am calling her Jenny out of respect for her right to privacy and freedom from personal attacks and harassment.

I have no personal issue with her, I am sure that JP aside, Jenny is a lovely person. Unfortunately, she is a perfect example of the kind of person who can easily be manipulated into scams. Since she added me to her community page, I have been astonished with the utter rubbish she posts to sell products. Clearly, as mentioned above, she has no clue about health, fitness or nutrition. She simply sees what other distributors post, and runs with it.

JP do not care about the quality of their distributors. There is no screening process. As a result, people like Jenny, who are clearly not fit (literally) to advise people on healthy life choices, are recruited into the firm. As such, we live in a crazy world where fat, unhealthy people are selling health-based products to the public. And that's just sad.

Why this blog?

So many crazy claims have been made that I felt compelled to start documenting these incidents. I have already had to report Jenny to the Advertising Standards Authority once for false advertising (stay tuned for a future post), which they acted upon, and it's funny seeing her posts get hardly any "likes" (apart from other distributors) and her followers slowly go down day by day, week by week. Clearly very few people care about her sales.

Jenny also acts as inspiration for my own personal fitness journey. As documented in previous blog posts - I think - I myself was at one stage very overweight, probably borderline obese. For the past year and a month, I have gone on my own journey of losing weight, building muscle and tweaking my diet to ensure the right amount of calories depending on muscle gain or weight loss. Apart from taking BCAAs and drinking protein shakes - that are far cheaper, and that I don't worship as "miracle products" - I have never taken a single shake or capsule from a company like JP. It's therefore a slap in the face that someone like Jenny thinks she is in any position to advise people on healthy life choices. How about sorting yourself out first before worrying about others? Maybe then you would attract some business if people saw your wonder products work on you, yourself.

I don't know how often I'll post stuff, but whenever I feel like it, I will. Stay tuned...

A Blog Series on a Juice Plus Peddler

I have decided to start documenting this woman who used to be on my Facebook and who added me to her Juice Plus community group.

Basically, this woman is extremely overweight, if not obese, but thinks she is in a position to encourage other people to buy her "healthy" Juice Plus products. Juice Plus, if you are not aware, is a Multi-Level-Marketing company that recruits as many people as possible to sell their products on to friends and family. It is a barely legal pyramid scheme.

I am in a rush to type this introductory post, as some people actually have a clue about general health and fitness, and I would quite like to get my gym session done. In a nutshell I will now semi-regularly/routinely/whenever I feel like it post updates on this ham scammer's latest escapades in her quest to become a millionaire by doing nothing but spamming pictures and cheesy motivational sayings on a Facebook page.

The next post, possibly later tonight, will properly outline the state of play.