Today I just
happen to open up Advocare Internationals income disclosure statement. I like to reevaluate my work, to
ensure that I am delivering nothing but the facts. I assume, because Advocare
has not made an attempt to contact me, all the information I provide is
correct. I obtained a plethora of my information from shouldijoin.org and saved
it, I dare say I might have his whole website saved. I would provide the link
but it is no longer in service. That is because the owner of the website was
paid off by Advocare, and so were many other people. But that story will be
coming up soon. I want to talk today about the math used by Advocare.
If you open
the 2015 income statement you will notice that everything is based on 2014
information. There were over 500,000 distributors all together, but I am going
to take a look at only the active distributors. According to the statement
154,819 distributors received a check from Advocare in 2014. That would mean
that 362,847 did not receive a check from Advocare, but does not necessarily
mean they did not make money. The chart is based on the 154,819 distributors and
what they were paid.
You will
notice that 34.52% (distributors) and 58.04% (advisors) make up the first two
levels. Correct me if I am wrong but that means that 92.56% of distributors receive
an average yearly income of $831-$2,190 from Advocare. My math tells me that
92.56% of 154,819 equal 143,300 distributors. That is more than ¾ of all
distributors that received a check in 2014. It cost almost $3,000 just to get
to advisor. If you take a look at the
smaller chart with the total payment amount from Advocare and the number of
distributors associated with each payment, you might be thinking what I was
thinking at the time when I first read it. At the top, Advocare is telling you
that 143,000 distributors made anywhere from $72 (Bottom 10%) to $3,320 (top
10%). If you just read the yearly income, you would get the impression that an
advisor would earn an average of 2,190. I am not sure if you can trust those
numbers. But in the small chart they paid 131,141 distributors $1000 or less.
What? Why not just write that in the chart? Write the fact, 131,141 of the
154,819 earned $1000 dollars or less a year in 2014. Advocare wrote that 18,327
earned 1,000-5,000. Those numbers are all deceiving! We do not know if they are
real viable numbers.How many actually made $5000?
One thing we
can see right away is that 131,141 made 1000 dollars or less. If we subtract
131,141 from the 92.56% (143,300) we are left with 12,159 making over 1000,
right? This is where I think the math gets really fuzzy. The only thing clear
at this point is 131,141 make $1000 or less a year not subtracting business
expenses such as giving away free spark drinks at meetings, and gas. Going back
to the smaller chart I want you to take a look at the number of distributors
that earned 5,000 or less. Well, we know that we were only left with 12,159
that made over 1,000. Going back to the big chart under silver, 4.70% made an
average of $12,817 supposedly. Correct me if I am wrong but 4.70% of 154,819
distributors equal around 7,277 after rounding up. Because we know that 12,159
made over $1000 we can subtract the 7,277 from the 12,159 and that leaves us
with 4,882. Now what does that number mean? Well, according to Advocare, only
7,277 fall in the category of silver, right. Silver makes a yearly income of
12,817. Either way, it really does not matter because this is what the first
chart is saying to me. The math is all over the place and unreliable. Let me go
ahead and crunch the numbers.
Distributor 34.52%
* 154,819=53443.5188 (around 53,444 distributors)
Advisor 58.04%* 154,819= 89857 (53,444 +
89,857=143,300)
Silver 4.70%* 154,819=7,276
Gold 1.34%* 154,819=2075
Gold 3
Star 0.31%* 154,819=480
Ruby 0.58%* 154,819=898
Ruby 6
Star 0.06%* 154,819=93
Emerald 0.21%* 154,819=325
Emerald 9
Star 0.09%* 154,819=139
Diamond 0.12%* 154,819=186
Platinum^ 0.03%* 154,819=46 Total Distributors=154,819 (rounded up)
Those are
some really interesting numbers. Correct me if I am wrong but the math in
regards to distributor’s works. Meaning if you take all the levels and do the
math, then add all the distributors from each level, you should come up with
Advocare’s 154,819. The same can be said about the average monthly calculations
and yearly averages.
Being a
database programmer, I find it difficult to believe that Advocare cannot supply
a better breakdown of earnings. Each person is paid by Advocare because they
earned a commission. Every month the distributor should have a record of what
they sold, how much they sold, and how much commission was earned, and at what
level each distributor was at per month. The total of distributors, advisors,
silver, gold, and so on should be calculated per month. But to provide such a
deceptive and misleading income statement is beyond comprehension. I probably
could have skipped the entire math but I thought it would makes things a little
clearer when I start explaining why I believe Advocare is being deceptive?
This is the
problem I see with Advocare and their misleading information. It is apparent to
me that sales are not calculated by Advocare, and let me explain why. The
income statement clearly indicated that the chart only includes information
pertaining to those that earned a check from purchases by them and their recruits, and that the earnings could be
higher because they do not use the sales information. They would be unable to
calculate sales because they truly have no clue who is selling
because they do not keep those records. You earn commission only if you
recruit.
Advocare
gives you two charts. The first one has the potential to mislead the reader
into believing that you could make around 2,000 extra a year if you buy into
the advisor level, and if you work hard you could make more than 12,000 at the
silver level. This is the problem with their math, and what many do not see
when they look at that chart. A distributor must maintain $500 personal volume (pv).
Although some of that volume can be obtained by your recruited distributors
that sold less than $500 (Link), you still might be required to
make a purchase to fulfill some of your personal volume requirement. Notice I
said that personal volume less than $500 rolls up to the person that recruited
you if you do not meet your goal. If you do not sell the products you might be
stuck with 25 bucks a month or more. That adds up to $300 right there if I use
the $25. Take into consideration you have to deduct your distributorship fee of
$79 that puts you at $379. If you include $20 a month for gas to get back and
forth to meetings that is another 240 out of your pocket. That puts your
current expenses at $619. Advocare wants you to spark everyone at the mixers so
you will have to buy at least $20 dollars in spark a month, and that would be a
minimum of $240 a year, which puts your expenses up to $859. It is no surprise
after reading the compensation plan and the income statement that 99% fail. I
was being nice using $500 personal volume in a pay period as your goal is to
reach advisor.You would technically have to maintain that $500 pv in three
consecutive pay periods. Once you reach advisor you would have to prequalify
every year according to the policies and procedures. I did not include your own personal use in that calculation. According to Advocare you have to be on the products.
Advocare is
intentionally misleading the public by providing their version of an income
statement. I would venture to guess that 90 percent of Americans do not bother
reading the small print, or cannot read it even if they wanted to. The second
chart really contradicts the first one, and is misleading as well. You will
notice that in the second chart Advocare indicated a set number of distributors
that earned a set amount of money. Those numbers do not match my numbers that I
crunched based on their information. Why not change the chart so it shows all
distributors that made 2000 or less in the first block? Is it because it would
look bad having almost all the distributors in that particular block? I think
it is important to know the true math. If you are considering this type of
business, I would just cut out the recruiting and just sell the product. Unless
Advocare is going to start sharing information such as how many distributors
are in each location. That would at least give you an idea of how saturated your market
is.
I know this
was redundant, but once every so often I have to revisit these numbers. They
have been the same for the past 20 years. They are never going to change unless something changes in the multi level marketing system. Let me say this. On the charts
provided in the 2014 statement, Advocare is saying that you can earn $800 to $12,000
depending on the level you’re at. Then they turn around and tell you that the
average for all active distributors is less than 2000 in 2014. They tell you in really small
print. If you look at their 2013
income disclosure you will notice it was $1700. Nothing changes folks. If
you take a look at 2012
income disclosure it is still around $1700. Do I really need to say more? Advocare
shows you the information in a light most favorable to the company and not the
distributor. They need you to believe that you can make money selling, and that
anyone can do it. I am here to tell you that it is not easy, and you must be a
good sales person to sell these products. Even then, you are still going to
have to worry about market saturation. If everyone succeeds, saturation is
imminent, unless you can afford to travel somewhere else where the market is
still productive. I believe Danny McDaniel moved because he thought the market
was saturated, and he probably was right.
If you are
thinking about joining any multi level marketing company, this is what you need
to know. There are hundreds of them! If you are thinking about selling products
and you think you would be good at it, then just go find a good product and
market it. Advocare is never going to tell you the truth. Distributors that are
making the money are never going to tell you the truth. Some of them may actually
believe their success was directly related to the company, but I assure you,
the companies’ market plan is not what created their wealth. Those same people
will have you believe that it was easy. They have more time for their children,
they work less hours, they get to go on free vacations, and they are making
tons of money. They need you to believe
in what they are doing because they need you to sign on, so they can continue
making the big money. If they stop recruiting, they will no longer make money.
The ones making the money can afford to wait out the saturated market. The ones
making the money can afford to travel to an unsaturated market. The unfortunate
truth is, I am not so sure there are any markets left unsaturated. Maybe Advocare
can start collecting location data so distributors can be informed. Now we have people going around with the passive attitude trying to sell the products. You know the people I am talking about. I just bought the distributorship for the discount, I do not care about the market plan. But if you want to buy something I can sell it to you, or you can get a discount by purchasing your own wholesale distributorship. Trust me, I have seen it all in the past year. All I can
say is if you read this and you are still thinking about joining with the less
than stellar numbers, good luck! Think about this! Where did shouldijoin.org go? Where did David Mills lawsuit end up? I still have his video that I obtained from shouldijoin.
What about Diana Becnel, the woman that was suing Advocare in 2014 because of the adverse effects she suffered minutes after drinking slam? Where are all these cases going? These people are all taking money to drop their case and agree to never say anything bad about Advocare, and never talk about the case. I hate to be the one to tell you the truth, but Advocare is not concerned about your health in my opinion. They will do anything to hide the financial truth, and they have done a lot to hide any negative court cases. Well, the decision is yours!
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