MLM's Dirty Laundry on Display

Recently Randy Schroeder and his wife, Tara, left AGEL to pursue a business opportunity with MonaVie. You may not have been aware of this development. You may not care, but you should.

Why?

Randy Schroeder was one of AGEL's big names. As a successful and inspirational leader, he also became a powerful force in the multilevel marketing (MLM) industry as a whole.

It has not yet been made clear publicly exactly why Randy left AGEL for a competitor, but we do know that AGEL has filed a lawsuit against him for Trademark Infringement. While Randy once spoke against MonaVie, he now embraces its business model.

Which brings me back to why you should care. . .

People move around among mlm opportunities all the time. The moving and shuffling usually happens among the lower ranks in company organizations, as people who are relatively new search for more lucrative compensation plans or easier to sell products. What is unusual in this case is that someone so respected and so high up in the organization has made the decision to move. As a result, the stakes are higher for everyone. So people (and companies) start to get ugly as the dollars at stake grow higher and higher.

I am sure that the folks at AGEL are concerned about how many distributors will move to MonaVie with Randy. He is, individually, not the big loss for AGEL - the loss is the portion of the organization that will go with him.

Of course, AGEL needs to protect its brand and trademark, but the dirtier and uglier the "divorce"gets, the more mud gets splattered on the MLM industry as a whole.

The general public already has a baseline level of distrust for network marketing. It seems like everyone knows someone who has tried an mlm opportunity at some point and failed (which is not surprising, since 97% of people who start out in network marketing don't succeed). Many of us have been duped into attending a business opportunity pitch by an eager friend or family member who learned the wrong way of recruiting prospects. Many have been turned off to network marketing forever by these experiences.

Given this environment and existing levels of caution about the mlm industry, none of us wins when a big name in the industry has a public battle with a company. The parties in the dispute both lose (regardless of what the courts rule) and the whole industry ends up looking a little sleazier.

The end result is that people who really may have done well and benefited from an excellent business opportunity may be even less likely to give it a look now because they see the dirt and don't want any part of it.

No one should be celebrating this turn of events - not Randy Schroeder, not AGEL, not MonaVie - no one.