Work from Home. 
There are about 23,958 of these signs in Sacramento. That is an exaggeration, but they really are everywhere. They are nailed to telephone poles and zip-tied to chain-link fences. There are new designs all the time.  All of them have a mysterious lack of information regarding what company or scheme they are promoting.

I was always sure they were promoting a scam, I mean, people with a real money-making opportunity don't have to post it on telephone poles. They guard it with encrypted emails, copyrights and lawyers. I never bothered calling the numbers, although I was curious. When I was working at MCI back in 1998, I learned that all toll-free numbers reveal your phone number when you call them, so I didn't want to call from my home phone.
 
 
While taking photos for the "Why would anyone want to visit Sacramento" story, I was spending a lot of time driving around taking photos. I tore down a bunch of these signs, but it seemed like a hopeless endeavor...there were hundreds of them, and they've been around for years.

Finally, one night on Yahoo Messenger,  my friend Ross suggested that I do some investigation and report on what I find.  He suggested that I call them up from a pay phone & track down what they were all about. I wasn't too excited about it, after all, I was sure it was a scam. 

The very next day, I wrote down seven of the toll-free phone numbers and called them. 

The first one was 800-326-2016.

I was sure I would just be listening to message-machines, so I wasn't nervous about calling them. The first one was a message about how mail order is the best business in the world, how it wasn't a "get-rich-quick scheme", and about how they "need help in their business". It asked me to leave my address at the tone, so they could send me a 14-page report. The message didn't say what the company was...just that it was a Fortune 500 company, described as the "fastest growing company in the industry".
 
Alright, well, I hung up without leaving a message. Then I called the next three numbers. 
800-756-8424, 800-296-7519, and 800-213-6421. 

They all had the SAME message. It was a woman's voice, and she started the message with a distinctive "Ya know". In the upcoming days of  phone number investigation, I heard this message dozens of times. The next one was a wrong number, the sixth number was the "ya know" message. The seventh number had a different message, but it had some aspects of the first message, "20-year industry leader" and "tap into mail-order".  This message, too, was an effort to send me a 14-page booklet.
 
Well.  I was stunned. These signs were all over town, in scores of different designs, and they were all the work of one company. A super-secret Fortune 500 company that never put it's name of it's ugly ever-present signs. 
I walked down to the mini-mart with my head spinning. All of these signs...all of this trash...all over Sacramento. One company was responsible. I had to track them down & I had to expose them! Also, I had to get photos of the offending signs & start keeping track of the numbers so I could build a convincing case and find the whole story.  Maybe my sign-sample just happened to have one source. 

On the way back from the mini-mart, I found a little one of these dumb mini-fliers taped to a news stand. It had the tell-tale figures of my mystery company, $500-$3,000/mo pt, $3,000-$10,000/mo ft. I immediately knew...it was the same people.
 
It was exciting... I was almost scared.  
This company obviously had lots of people working in all sorts of ways trying to recruit new people into the business.  I figured it must be a multi-level marketing company, like Amway, but I wasn't sure what the company was yet.

The next day I woke up early and took more photo of signs, making note of the phone numbers.  This isn't hard in Sacramento...they are all over the place.  I found about 15 varieties in West Sacramento and Downtown. I also photographed  bunch of "lose weight now" and "I lost 30lbs. in 30 days" signs, and one "Sal's Tacos" sign.



Work From Home, Part 2    


 My instincts told me that the "lose weight" signs were also a scam, but I didn't have this negative reaction to Sal's Tacos sign.  It was just as illegally placed, but there were two attributes that I liked about it. 
I trusted the information.  "Sal's tacos, 3 blocks" with an arrow. I bet that was the truth. 
It identified the source. If this sign was attached to your fence, you could go tell Sal to remove it. 
Some of the signs I saw in West Sacramento also had web addresses on them.  This is how I eventually linked the signs and the phone messages to a single corporation.
 

 With about 15 new toll-free numbers, I went back to the pay phone and started calling around.  I got a variety of new messages, but they all had elements of that first "ya know" message.  I began transcribing the messages so I could keep track.  Eventually I noted 10 "work from home" messages, and three "lose weight now" messages. 
Drizzly rain drove me inside to the warm, inviting internet. The internet sites advertised on the signs had names like homebiz4u.com and workforriches.com, and on the surface, they hid their corporate identity very well.  Each site had photos of happy entrepreneurs basking in their riches.  These "success stories" were their undoing. 
 

 Before I actually tracked down the source of this company, I began to suspect it was Herbalife. I did a search for "plastic signs" on google and found a site called MLM watch.  An article on their site mentioned that 60% of "work from home" offers were from Herbalife.  That jibed with my findings, except for that in Sacramento, it was 97%. 
I also found Causs.org, a nationwide organization against these signs, which they call "street spam".  They have members in about 35 states, including at least one guy in Sacramento.  The guy in Sac had photos of the signs he had torn down, and photos of a guy putting them up!  I was impressed!
 

 Back to my own research, I pored over the homebiz4NE1.com site, looking for a hint about what the product was. 
Eventually I found it.  About halfway down on the "success stories" page, there was a happy couple identified as Kevin & Amy L. Their testimonial showed that they "aren't a slave to company relocations", and that they are now able to "enjoy the outdoors year-round".  They also had a photo of their four kids with Santa hats playing in a pool with an inflatable Orca. The photo was named "lausen_kids.jpg". This was just the kind of information an internet detective needs. 
 

 I searched Google for "Kevin Lausen" and voila! The first result was on the official Herbalife website. Kevin Lausen and his four kids were an Herbalife success story. I had found the link!
 

 Herbalife is the company. Their stock is traded on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange, and they have been in business for about 20 years. They sell health and diet products, as well as material to start and maintain your own business.  They sell their products across the nation and the world through a network of "independent distributors". 
These are the people who put up the signs. These are the people trying to make US$1500-US$5000 a month. At the time, I hated their guts, but as I learned more about what Herbalife had promised them,  the hatred subsided.

Please Read Page Three

My raw Research Data Sheet. The signs are in numerical order according to their telephone number. I stopped cataloguing them in this manner a period of time, but I think the evidence is overwhelming.  

 

Page 3      

All of these signs were promoting the products of one corporation, but they were being constructed and posted by regular people in my community, trying to make a buck. 
I knew deep inside that the people I was really after were the people that run the Herbalife Corporation itself.  They had, through their actions or inaction, created a chain of events that created a rag-tag marketing steamroller. This "Work from Home"  steamroller continuously plasters my town with cheap promotional signs.

My solution in the past had been to tear down the signs, but I began to realize that wasn't a solution at all. I needed to do something else.
 
I didn't know how to proceed.   
My mind was a like a blender for two days, whirring with guerrilla tactics and diplomatic approaches. Could I stop an entire corporation? Would they slap a big lawsuit on me? Did they make big donations to local politicians? Does anyone else care about this enough to join me? What if I just made new signs that said "herbalife" with an arrow pointing to the other signs, could I get other people involved? 

There are laws against these signs in West Sacramento (link) and in the City of Sacramento (link), but the Herbalife Corporation can't exactly be held responsible for what their "independent distributors" do, can they? They seem to be shielded by a layer of independence and artful camouflage.
 
I could feel myself losing steam.  I didn't know how to focus my energy, and it was all getting wasted tracking down Herbalife websites. The incredible maze of the whole operation astounded me. The Herbalife name was so hidden, it was ridiculous! 
At some point, I remembered that old commercial from 1971 with the crying Indian. I looked him up on Google and found, not only his photo, but a quick-time copy of the commercial! (link) This was just the kind of motivation I needed. 

 
 
Here is the text of the Crying Indian commercial from Keep America Beautiful. 
This was exactly what I needed to hear. People had been fighting big-business pollution for years, and that was what I was going to do.
 
The first step is to link Herbalife with these signs in the minds of as many people as possible. My best connection to people is my website, so if you could please send this web address to a friend, I would appreciate it.... particularly if that friend runs CNN.com. 
Of course, most big-time community leaders that might be able to steer Herbalife into a change don't spend much time surfing the web, so I am also working on a letter-writing campaign to raise awareness.

I organized the 65 or so sign photos I had taken so far and arranged them onto a single sheet. I added some text, "on telephone poles, mailboxes and newsstands, they litter the landscape.  Can you believe they are all from one company?".  I asked my sister to help me compose a letter to mayor Fargo and the next day I sent off my first envelope of anti-marketing material.
 
I would also like to discourage new potential Herbalife customers from getting involved with this company. 

From what I have learned so far, it is very, very difficult to profit as an Herbalife distributor. 
 
Please read Part 2 of this article: Small business
 
 

Herbalife, a lesson in small business
I'd like to make this information available to as many people as possible.

This is the story of how Herbalife works. I've never actually been an herbalife distributor, but I've interviewed a couple of them to get this information. If you know more about it, or find any errors, please email me.
 
1) you call a toll-free number of one of their current distributors, (not the herbalife company itself), leave your name, address, and phone number.  
2) That distributor sends you a free 14-page booklet. 
This booklet is red, yellow, blue or green. It has NO information about what the home-business actually is besides "Mail-order". It contains eight "success stories" from happy people that make $8,000-$15,000 per month.

 It seems to concentrate on the fabulous vacations that this kind of money can buy. Interspersed with the success stories are paragraphs of text that challenge you to buy into this scheme, like "Choosing to succeed can be frightening", and "Success is our birthright and we cannot allow our fears to keep us from it.", and "only desire and determination matter".
 
3) If you call the number on the back, you will be given the option to pay $36 for the first information packet. 
If you decide to pay this, you will get a "decision kit" package. It will have one videotape, an audiotape, and another booklet. Still, no mention of Herbalife, just "success stories". If you want to take the next step, you will call another phone number, and really talk to your real, human, independent distributor. 

 
4) He or she will send you a second set of tapes for free. 
One audio tape and one video tape. These are more success stories and motivational speeches. If you call your Mentor back, he or she may tell you it is Herbalife at that point. To get started in the actual business, you have to spend more money for an "IBP".

 
5) The IBP, International Business Packet is $195 
The packet contains the manual, notebook with forms, procedure, some actual products and books to get you started. This is where you first hear the name "Herbalife" if your distributor didn't tell you already.

Once you purchase the IBP and complete the Distributor Application, you qualify for a 35% retail discount. 

(The IBP contains a catalog, order forms, 3 manuals (Success Starter, Welcome &  Sales and Marketing plan), samples of 1 Thermojetics bar, 1 peach mango drink mix,1 chocolate shake mix, 1 vanilla shake mix, 1 herbal concentrate, 1 herbal aloe, 1 balancing system, 1 "lose weight now ask me how" button, price list and other various forms)

You are now ready to proceed as an independent herbalife distributor.

 
6) Then, you have to decide how dedicated you are to the Herbalife business, which is based on how much product you buy for resale.

When you get the IBP and sign up for your HAP, you qualify for 35% below retail, but if you want to get a better price on your products, you need to become a "Supervisor". 
HAP stands for Herbalife Advantage Program, and it is a package of stuff that you are required to buy every month. They want you to be using the herbalife products, so that you can accurately describe their qualities to potential customers. It is not to be sold, just used by you. It is $80 worth every month. The HAP can be set up to automatically charge your credit card or checking account.

 
 
7) To become a supervisor you must have 2,500 VP.  VP stands for "value points", and are awarded for goods that you buy from herbalife. Some information indicates that you must recruit 3-5 people under you to become a supervisor, but others say you simply need the VP. If you leap into Herbalife determined to start at that advanced level, you need to buy $4,000 worth of products. 

This allows you to get the products from Herbalife at 50% below retail. (the $4000 worth of stuff costs you $2000).

 
To help you with your big purchase, they send you a list of the top 100 credit card companies in the country.
 
You may also be encouraged to buy a website to sell Herbalife diet and skin products for $315, and a site to promote the "work at home" business for another $315.  And it doesn't stop there.  I downloaded a PDF which describes Silver, Gold and Platinum E-Commerce Business Packages from $952.90 to $1994.22.

You can subscribe to a toll-free number for $6.95 a month plus the price of the calls. You can expect a $25 bill each month.

TouchFone is the company recommended in the IBP.

Please Read part 3 of this article, entitled Trying Anything to Sell 

  

Now, whether you are a regular distributor or a supervisor, you need start selling the herbalife pills or the herbalife "work from home" business. Good luck! 
You will need to sell a lot of pills to make back the money you have invested. As a distributor, you will have spent at least $240 in materials to get started, and you are probably anxious to get that money back in sales. If you are a Supervisor, you have an easier road, but it is a lot longer, because you are trying to make up for buying that initial $2,000 in product.

You will most likely spend the rest of your "herbalife" sales career trying to earn back your original investment.

Green and Beige Set (60 and 60 pills each), 30-day supply
 
Regular Distributor buys at 35% discount
 Supervisor buys at 50% discount
 
Retail $30 (plus $2.10 shipping) Cost $19.50 (plus $2.10 shipping)

Profit per set $10.50

To make back initial $240 investment you must sell: 

23 sets of Green and Beige
 Retail $30 (plus $2.10 shipping) Cost $15.00 (plus $2.10 shipping)

Profit per set $15.00

To make back initial $2,240 investment you must sell: 

150 sets of Green and Beige 
 

Making the $2000 initial investment to become a supervisor may seem like a good idea, but it is extremely rare for someone to sell enough Herbalife to make back that money. Take a look at the variety of herbalife products that people are trying to unload on ebay.  Anyone with more than $100 in products probably bought a giant batch to gain supervisor status, not realizing that the market for home-sold diet pills was totally saturated.

 
 
There are two main groups of people that you should consider selling to:  
all the people you already know 
the masses of people you don't know 
Now, the people that you know might buy some of your products.  Make a list of the people that you know and try to imagine yourself approaching them about a great way to lose weight. Maybe that isn't going to be as comfortable as you would like. Still some people may buy your products just because they feel sorry for you, especially if you have been in trouble with the law or have been living on the streets. 

As far as the "work from home" part of the business goes, you probably don't want to sell that to people that you know. Odds are that they will just lose the money they invest in it, and then they will blame you.

  
 
Selling to people that you don't know is tricky.  You have to make contact with people who are interested in what you have to sell. This can be pretty expensive. 
  
 
You will probably want to try newspaper ads first.

They will probably fail. One woman I talked to put small ads in her local paper for four weeks straight.  She spent $31.50, which didn't break the bank, but she only got 4 phone calls, and no one bought any pills from her.

 

  
You can try putting an ad in the phone book.  Of course, you will have to compete with the other people in there.  Sacramento is bursting at the seams with distributors, and it really shows in the white pages here. 
Your "Mentor" will encourage you to go to mall parking lots and distribute 1000 fliers a day, but most people don't like that idea. 
Once you start in the Herbalife business, you will find yourself in a number of socially awkward situations.  No one likes fliers on their windshield, so you will probably be half-sneaking around the lot, arising the attention of security guards. If they see what you are doing, they will chase you off.

 
 
I think it is tacky, and half the time they end up on the blacktop. 
A cheap way to reach out a lot of people is to send out unsolicited email. 
Everyone on the face of the earth hates this. Please don't do it.
 
Herbalife will probably sell you some chintzy marketing merchandise, like bumper stickers and magnetic car signs, key chains, mugs, t-shirts, pens, paper weights, squishy herbalife balls.  This is fun stuff, but lets face it, that kind of stuff is more for YOU than for your customers. 
No one ever called a number on the side of a car to buy weight-loss pills.
 
The sales method that motivated me to write this story in the first place is the cheap sign nailed on a telephone pole.  These are illegal in Sacramento, West Sacramento and many other areas of the country.  I believe the reason they are illegal is that they are ugly. 
Some people don't find them ugly at all, but other people go to great lengths to tear them down in their neighborhood. I guess it depends on your own sense of aesthetics. I don't mind fallen leaves on the sidewalk, but other people feel strongly enough about them to buy leaf-blowers and rakes.

Here are 40 more photos of signs on telephone poles and fences.
 
 
Sometimes people only cut away part of the sign, such as the telephone number. 

This may be for two reasons. The first reason is that some signs are difficult to remove without a crowbar.  They often have long nails and nickle-sized washers holding them on the pole, so it is easier to just cut part of the sign off.

The second reason is to have a discouraging effect on future sign-posters, indicating bandit sign posting is not welcome. A clean pole seems to be an invitation to some sign-hangers.
 
I've heard that it is forbidden for distributors to indicate the herbalife name on the "work at home" and "use a computer" signs.  
I believe this is because they don't want their company name to be associated with these cheap, illegal signs. It might also be because if you knew all these signs were for herbalife, you would recognize how saturated the market was already.

These signs cost about $1.50 each when ordered in quantities of 100 or more.

You can buy them at Witness Designs in Tulsa, Oklahoma, "where God does signs and wonders, and we do signs and windows".
 
Another cheap method of advertising is to create small paper or plastic pouches filled with tiny paper fliers. 
I've seen them on ATMs, newspaper stands, phone booths, gas pumps, church pews, in toilet stalls, library cubicles, and on drive-thru menus. These pockets really look crappy, so you will have to be pretty self-serving to put them up around your own neighborhood.

Some herbalife distributors refer to them as "hot pockets".  Because these pouches are a new form of advertising, they may not be a law against them in your area yet.

It is common to see these tattered plastic envelopes half-full of colored water. What a mess. 
 
When I first began researching these Herbalife signs, I found a website called, "your body is a miracle", which, to be fair, doesn't have anything to do with herbalife, but has this sickening line: "These are GREAT Work From Home Ads for PLASTERING EVERYWHERE YOU GO." and continues, "Get some double stickytape and then put them "EVERYWHERE "you can think of. Laundry Mats, bus stops, telephone booths, put them on the inside of bathroom stalls, telephone poles ,hand then put individually too." 
An herbalife site on Angelfire has this catchy poem: We will be what we will to be. For failure finds it's false content, In that petty word "Environment" But our spirit scorns it and is free. 

 I have no idea what he is trying to say here, but I don't like it. 
 
On the official Herbalife site, they have a bunch of "success stories", one of which is the story of Katiuzka Vera.   
In her story, she describes distributing 1000 fliers a day for 90 days. Can you imagine? 90,000 fliers. Think of all the time that takes, and how her city looked afterward.  Jiminy. And she netted 225 customers. That is 400 fliers for each and every person she made a sale to. 

 
 
Another Herbalife "Success Story" describes the work of Diana and Nile Eddy: 
“Every day for weeks we packed up our car with flyers, staple guns, heavy tape, tacks and our children. It was a family affair,” she explains.

I'd like to show her a trick with that staple gun and heavy tape. 

  
 
The sticky backs of "hot pockets" leave distinct adhesive rectangles wherever they are torn down.  They are all over the curbside features of downtown Sacramento. 
Here is another excerpt from an Herbalife "success story": Matthew and Michelle Leavitt

There are about 1,000 homes in our neighbourhood," he continues. "Every other week we put the same flyer under people's doormats. It wasn't long before we had 10 new Distributors in our neighbourhood alone." Now, Matt and Michele spend a maximum of two hours a day, five days a week, putting flyers on cars and under doormats in front of people's homes. 

Please continue reading Trying Anything to Sell, Page Two 
 

Part Two                       
An environmentally-conscious method of selling Herbalife in Sacramento, or anywhere, is to post a website on the internet.  You can set up a website where customers anywhere in the world can go and buy pills and shake-mix from you.  
The internet is an interesting place to sell things, and although I enjoy the internet as a powerful source of information, I don't recommend buying a website to sell the Herbalife pills or "distributorships".  The reason is simple; there is too much competition for such a small market.

Here are a few websites I found that sell herbalife diet products:

http://www.inches2lose.net
http://herbalinks.com
http://www.itsahealthylife.com/
http://www.herbals4less.com/ (has a special 'til midnight whenever you arrive)
http://www.justherbalife.com
http://www.herbaldiscountclub.com
http://xyxy2000.friendpages.com

In fact, try searching Google for herbalife.  I got about 210,000 results. That's more than I got on a search for Monica Lewinski. That's not a community, that's competition.

There are hundreds of Herbalife websites already online, so why is anyone going to buy Herbalife products from you? Price? Selection? Free Shipping? Speed? Location? Service? On the internet, Consumers aren't looking into your shop to see if it is clean, and they don't care if you are in a bad neighborhood.  What they care most about is price. 
 
You'll notice that only one of the above sites have the word "herbalife" in the URL, that is partially because of rule 23 of the herbalife internet, mail order and lead generation regulations:  Distributors may not use the name "Herbalife" or any of its trademarks, trade names, or product names in their domain name (URL) which could create confusion with the Company.
I'll bet they were anxious about having 1,349 domains registered with "herbalife" in the URL.
 
 
The most important reason you shouldn't bother posting an herbalife website is that you will never be able to match the prices available on ebay.com.  The auctions there often end with prices that are less than half of the retail price.

I believe that there is a steady stream of herbalifers going out of business, selling off their inventory at or below cost, keeping a glut of herbalife products on the discount market. Try searching for "herbalife retail" or "herbalife business" on ebay.
 
One other environmentally-friendly way to try selling herbalife is by telemarketing.  You could just open up the white pages and start calling people at random and offering to sell them Herbalife. Wait! I'm just kidding! 
Back when I was working at MCI,  I got to talk to the telemarketers sometimes.  Apparently their performance was judged on a 1 or 2% success rate.  That means they had to annoy hundreds of people every day just to get 3-4 people to sign up for long distance. Sometimes they would work all day having people yell at them & not have anyone sign up. They would hire anybody who could operate a telephone because it was so hard to keep the workers motivated. People almost never lasted more than a year in telemarketing.

I've had some kind of automated telemarketing machine call me up and try to sell me diet pills before.  I didn't like it much, but I was kind of helpless to stop it.
 
In summary, successfully selling Herbalife is very difficult and expensive.  The most common herbalife advertising technique is through plastic telephone pole signs and paper fliers. If you aren't willing to do these things, I don't know how you can succeed at this business.  On the other hand, if you are willing to do these things, I don't want you in my community. Your fliers and ugly signs are unwelcome. 
 
 
Selling Herbalife Distributorships
I've tried to concentrate on the pill and herbal diet supplement side of the business, because if the diet-pill supplement side of the business doesn't really work, then the "home business" part of the herbalife plan can't work either. If a dedicated, hard working person can't really make an honest, legal living selling herbalife pills and supplements, then it is dishonest to promote Herbalife Independent Distributorships as a business opportunity. If it is impossible to sell the product of the business itself, then it is an illegal pyramid scheme. 

  
 
Maybe you are wondering, "if it is impossible to succeed, how can there be more than 300 success stories on the herbalife website?"
Well, they do claim to have over one million international distributors. That means that only ONE out of every 3,300 distributors has his or her story on the site. What are the the odds against success? I'd call them overwhelming.
 
It was probably a bit easier back in 1981, when the planet wasn't already saturated with distributors. Twenty years of independent distributor recruiting.  Think about that.


Universal Distributor Saturation 

Historically, it has been very, very hard to recruit successful herbalife distributors to work beneath you. How do I know that? Well, it is easy, if you understand exponential growth.

Herbalife has been around for about 20 years, and while there are a lot of Herbalife distributors, not everyone is an Herbalife distributor. I don't know how many there are in the world right now, but I am certain that it is less than 200 million. Does that make sense? That would be one Herbalife distributor for every 30 people on the face of the earth. Surely there can't be more than that.

Now during the 20-year history of Herbalife, distributors have constantly attempted to recruit new people into the company. In fact, a whole lot of combined effort goes into recruiting new distributors. The Herbalife marketing material might make you think that it is possible to recruit 3 new distributors each month. But, what if everyone selling Herbalife was that successful? In one month there would be 3 new distributors, the next month 9, and the next month 27, then 81, 243, and 729. In eight months, there would be 6,561 new distributors down this line, and in 18 months, there would be 129 million new distributors! 129 million people walking around with "lose weight now" buttons! It is easy to calculate just get out a calculator and punch in "times 3" 18 times. or look at this chart.

Well, that obviously didn't happen, because Herbalife has been in business for 20 years! 

What if each distributor only recruited two new distributors each month? Well, that would take longer, but in two months, there would be 4 distributors, then in 3 months, there would be 8, then 16. In six months there would be 64 distributors, 12 months there would be 4,096, and in 22 months, there would be 4 million. In 36 months, there would be 68 billion Herbalife distributors! use a calculator, or look at this chart.

Now, that didn't happen either, because, again, herbalife has been in business for 20 years, and they seem to have about a million distributors. It must be very, very hard to recruit people. 
It was probably easier in 1980 and 1981.  The herbalife name was unknown, and there was something of a natural-foods mania. People sold Herbalife distributorships to their friends and families across the United States.

Then a bit later, other people, bilingual or citizens of foreign lands brought herbalife to their home countries, where they found an open and eager market for green pills and the "work at home" business opportunity.

If you read through the success stories on the Herbalife corporate page, as I have, you see this story time and again: The first people into a new area make money.

Here are some examples: 

Christine Lewis returned to England and was successful selling herbalife. 
Michiko Dejaeghere headed to Japan when Herbalife had just opened there, and was a big success. 
Chaim Kosman sold Herbalife in Israel, then went to Brazil when Herbalife had just opened there. 
Irina Dubnik brought Herbalife to her parents in Siberia, making both her and them successful. 
Hassan and Vahibe Daoud sponsored Manuel Aguilar who "took the business home to Spain". That was around 1989. 
Shirley Kim has a large organization in the US and distributors throughout Asia. 
Woon Hynug Kim learned about Herbalife in the US, and began distributing it in Korea in 1996. 
Beate and Andreas Chory got started in Germany some time before 1995. 
Tony Cibarra saw an opportunity in the newly opened Taiwanese market. He was in Taiwan three weeks later. 
 The most famous example is John and Susan Peterson.  From what I have read, I believe they were the first to bring Herbalife into Mexico. Now THAT is an real opportunity.

Take a glance at the graphs on the first page of this Forbes article by Seth Lubove, written in 1997.  See how sales increase in a country, then decrease? Combine this information with the citizenship cross-section of those Herbalife success stories; there are only so many Herbalife success stories a country can support.

 If you are the first into an area, there are more people to sell to.  It is as simple as that. If you are in the Herbalife business, I suggest finding a new, virgin territory to bring the Herbalife products to. Avoid the following countries:


Argentina 
Australia 
Austria 
Belgium 
Botswana 
Brazil 
Canada 
Chile 
China 
Colombia 
Croatia 
Cyprus 
Czech Republic 
Denmark 
Dominican Republic 
Finland 
France 
Germany 
Greece 
 Hong Kong 
Iceland 
India 
Indonesia 
Israel 
Italy 
Jamaica 
Japan 
Korea 
Latvia 
Lesotho 
Mexico 
Morocco 
Namibia 
Netherlands 
New Zealand 
Norway 
Panama 
Philippines 
 Poland 
Portugal 
Puerto Rico 
Republic of Ireland 
Russian Federation 
Slovak Republic 
South Africa 
Spain 
Swaziland 
Sweden 
Switzerland 
Taiwan 
Thailand 
Turkey 
United Kingdom 
United States 
Venezuela  

But don't bother bringing it into an area that is too poor, like Kenya or Somalia.

You see, Herbalife doesn't know or care if your area is already saturated. All of the investment has been made by YOU. They don't take any of the blame for totally overbooking your market with distributors. 

They are churning them out as fast as they can sign them up. 


Please read Part 5 of this special report: Active Ingredient? 

The Herbalife Diet Products 
Along with hundreds of success stories regarding the ability to profit from sales of Herbalife, there are also a bountiful supply of weight-loss success stories online. 

I don't have any solid information about the product's effectiveness.  On herbalife websites, the experienced weight loss is anecdotal, and often subtitled with a "results not typical" tagline. All diet products, from Jenny Craig to Slim Fast and Subway Sandwiches seem to have this disclaimer.

Herbalife weight-loss claims are probably largely attributable to the use of ephedrine in their "Thermajetic" green formulas.  I've seen first hand evidence of the weight loss possible through the use of amphetamines, and because ephedrine is so closely related to amphetamines, I'll bet it works in a similar way.

Effective but Dangerous
Ephedrine is a powerful stimulant.  It was used in the 80s and 90s by athletes & truck drivers to give their energy a boost & stave off hunger. 

The FDA began collecting data on ill-effects from ephedrine in 1994 or 1995. 

A report in the New England Journal of Medicine in November 2000 said that at least 54 deaths and about 1,000 reports of complications have been linked to the popular bodybuilding supplement since the mid-1990s. The FDA has since said about 80 deaths have been associated with Ephedrine.

The NFL banned it's use among their athletes in September of 2001, joining the NCAA and International Olympic Committee.

Due to these health and safety concerns, Herbalife reformulated their Green formula without Ephedrine, although the original formula is still available as "Original Green" outside of Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Dakota, Ohio, Michigan, Hawaii and Texas. 

I applaud Herbalife's reformulation of perhaps their oldest product, but anyone thinking of buying or selling herbalife should know that the product has changed.  Herbalife weight-loss claims may be attributable to the old Ephedrine-rich formula.  How can someone tell if the Herbalife weight-loss claims are from the old formula, or the new one?

"Original Green" Product #0114 contains Ephedra, or ephedrine or Ma Huang 
"Refresh Green" Product #0108 (also called "Green") contains Ephedra or Ma Huang 
"Ephedra Free" Product #0070 is ephedrine-free, but has it helped anyone lose weight? 

Most of ephedra's activity stems from the ephedrine component, which produces amphetamine-like actions. Often ephedra is combined with other stimulants to potentiate the amphetamine-like stimulant effect of ephedrine.  - Ephedra: Buyer Beware, Volume 2, Issue 4 of Newsletter of Medical/Legal Consultants of Colorado - August 2000 
  
Ephedrine is a structural analog of methamphetamine -abstract by Glennon R Young, Discriminative stimulus properties of (-)ephedrine 1998 

Please read my summary on the next page 
 
Herbalife is a company that uses network marketing to distribute it's products. 
The process of becoming an Herbalife distributor uses booklets, videos and websites to make success look possible for anyone who is "motivated and willing to work hard".
 
 
The chance of genuine financial success are very remote, and dependent more on timing and environment than on motivation and personal effort.
 
 
The unbridled, independent and anonymous nature of Herbalife advertising leads to untended litter and nuisance signs of every kind. 

Herbalife signs
 
I believe the Herbalife Company should take responsibility for their role in unleashing this scourge of desperate promotion and put an end to it. 
I believe that "small business" tax relief for failed Herbalife businesses should be suspended, so that the Federal government is no longer subsidizing the fruitless over-selling of this non-existent business "opportunity". 

 I believe that the spread of 4 facts will stop Herbalife from continuing to mislead people: 
At least 95% of anything that says "work from home" is promoting the Herbalife business. 
It costs a minimum of $230 to become an independent herbalife distributor in the US. 
The market value of their products hovers around 50% of the advertised retail price. 
Becoming even slightly successful means spending money on advertising & ignoring social norms or the law. 
 
 
I'm not trying to hurt anyone.  I just want to stop these signs. Maybe I can save some otherwise honest people $230 at the same time. 
 I'd appreciate your help in getting word out. 

-Rob Cockerham
rob@cockeyed.com
www.cockeyed.com 


Last updated March 28, 2002. Terms and Conditions Copyright 2002 Cockeyed.com