Earlier today I received an anonymous email informing me that Quixtar had terminated the IBOships of IBOAI board members Executive Diamond Orrin Woodward (pictured right) and Founders’ Diamond Chris Brady (below right) of TEAM, otherwise known as Team of Destiny. Furthermore, Diamond Randy Haugen had also resigned and others were likely to follow.

Shortly after a brief posting about the email, Quixtar PR contacted me enquiring about the source, I told them what I said above. I’ve since asked for confirmation but received no reply. Ty Tribble of MLMBlog tells me his search counter is going crazy with searches for "Orrin Woodward leaving Quixtar", so i’m fairly confident my anonymous correspondent is correct.

The correspondent stated that Woodward, Brady and others had been breaking a number of Quixtar rules and had refused to change their practices. On the TTAA forums a poster claims that Orin Woodward and Chris Brady have been actively stating that if the Quixtar to Amway name change goes ahead, they will leave Quixtar. Posters on QuixtarBlog have been saying they’ve been told the same thing since the name change was announced.

Other posts have been saying things similar to the following for some time, well before the name change was announced –

"when I was shown the TEAM plan I was told they were just using Quixtar for now, and may switch suppliers at any time" (source)

Well, my source tells me that Woodward and Brady did indeed want to start their own MLM, and had threatened Quixtar with an anti-Quixtar PR war unless they waived the anti-compete rule in the Quixtar IBO contract and allowed them to leave with their organization. Quixtar refused. Given the earlier reports of rule breaking, it is obvious that Quixtar had little choice to terminate them.

Woodward was reportedly the instigator of the reintroduction of a "stacking" strategy where IBOs focus on building one leg at a time (depth) rather than focus on building width first. This involved sponsoring people downline of each other. From what I understand, the corporation had tacitly approved the strategy, as long as the IBOs involved met and agreed. Internet reports have said that some teams were however ignoring this requirement, and furthermore taking the "one leg" strategy to extremes – building as many as 5 or more levels deep before starting a second leg. This dramatically decreases bonuses (and profitability) for new IBOs. Furthermore, there were reports the strategy had resulted in a lot of new applications, but little new volume. Another source told me last week that Quixtar had decided to implement, starting September 1st, a policy of randomly ringing new IBOs and asking if they new who their sponsor was. If they could not answer and this occured repeatedly, the IBOs responsible would be terminated. If all of this is true, the method used by Orrin Woodward’s TEAM would obviously be threatened.

The question now is – who will leave with them? Randy Haugen, well known for his role in the P&G Satanism rumor has reportedly already resigned. A number of other organizations have been working with TEAM over the past few year, including quite a few lead by members of the IBOAI, including Billy Florence of DCI International. Other Diamonds that have reportedly been associated with TEAM include Fred and Linda Harteis, Tim and Amy Marks, Doug and Sheri Stroh, Bill and Jackie Lewis, Bobby Howard, George and Jill Guzzardo and Larry and Marsie Vanbuskirk. No word yet on who, if any, will follow Woodward, Haugen, and Brady.

Not surprisingly, lawsuits have begun to fly. It will be interesting to see if the reported "PR war" threat occurs. Orrin Woodward and his team have a huge number of different blogs and websites on the Internet – the real origin of the so-called "Google Bombing" attempt blamed on Quixtar.

We certainly live in interesting times. Personally I must say I’m encouraged by the strength of decision making that has come out of Ada, Michigan of late. I don’t agree with all they are doing (in particular I think they’re being a little overzealous on BSM in some markets) but it’s great to see they are trying to take control of the business and the business reputation. That can only help in the future.

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UPDATE: An IBO just passed on this information –

I just had a TEAM IBO asking me off the boards, they don’t know about this board yet, if I knew if TEAM was breaking up. I just asked why. They wrote that something is definitely going on because several meetings have been cancelled and they are too new but they saw some literature with a different company name other than Quixtar at their upline’s house.

So it would appear that TEAM is already well down the path to beginning their new venture. The whole situation is very reminicient of the Team In Focus debacle, where a number of diamonds, including Bo Short and Andy Andrews, had their IBOships terminated or elected to resign. Short and others launched their own, short-lived, competitor MLM called Passport and are reportedly now working with another MLM – Univera Life Sciences.

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