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A week ago, BehindMLM published a story on Vasayo’s closure.
CEO Daniel Picou acquired the business, and he intends to relaunch it under a new name.
We look at 34 different data points when analyzing and rating online money-earning opportunities. Once the research on these data points is submitted, expert contributors reach out to the company’s customers and associates to get more insight into their operation. Finally, all the collected information is presented in the form of this expert review.
All the data is extracted from publicly available information and the sources are given in the transparency section at the bottom of every report.
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Alongside this, Rob Alwin, a former Vasayo Black Diamond, pre-launched Life Wise, another Vasayo offshoot.
Alwin’s status as a Black Diamond in Dallin Larsen’s prior MLM business, Monavie, where Vasayo was founded, should come as no surprise.
In June 2012, Alwin left Monavie. Three months later, he agreed to become a distributor for Jeunesse.
Alwin may have been with Jeunesse for a while, but Vasayo debuted in December 2016.
Alwin also owns Lake Life Properties in addition to MLM.
| A corporation called Lake Life Properties develops, manages, and flips properties. We buy dilapidated houses, undertake extensive renovations, and rebuild the house to like-new condition! We rent some out and sell some. Since 1987, we have been conducting this. |
Alwin is joined at the pre-launch of Life Wise by Tracy Gibbs, a former Vasayo Chief Scientific Advisor.
Gibbs describes himself on LinkedIn as a “world-renowned formulator in the nutraceutical industry.”
Gibbs is also listed as “the formulator of over 900 dietary supplements and skin care products” in a 2021 marketing piece that was released by the Native American Fatherhood & Family Association of all places.
Alwin is a Black Diamond, thus one would assume that he would want to stay with the business even though Larsen has sold Vasayo.
Assembling an MLM business requires time, raising the possibility that Life Wise has been in development for some time raises more issues.
Gibbs left Vasayo in June 2022, leaving a maximum time frame of seven months.
Unfortunately, I was unable to pinpoint with certainty Alwin’s lack of commitment to the new identity Daniel Picou will give Vasayo.
I could be interpreting it too literally, but a Life Wise marketing clip-on openness caught my attention.
Alwin says in the video;
| I want to share with you all a message that is very, very strong. Leadership comes in two flavors: it’s either sincere and truthful or it’s manipulative. There are businesses out there that have zero transparency, which is regrettably heartbreaking. But it’s the reason I’m not employed by those specific businesses. |
Alwin says in a different video;
| This pay structure is not being created in order to profit handsomely and exit the business. We aren’t establishing the company so that we may remain in a tower. My ethics wouldn’t allow me to go build over the past three years while I searched my heart for the motivation to go do it because there were too many things I didn’t agree with. I so reasoned that if I simply pray for them, they will undoubtedly change. No, those doors shut, and they are now back to doing the same old things. |
I believe the context is very clear given that Vasayo recently came to an end along with Alwin’s employment with the organization.
Despite Alwin’s claims of transparency, Life Wise presently only appears to exist as a restricted Facebook group and a YouTube account.
So much for transparency—if Life Wise does have a website, it hasn’t been made public.
The vice president of Life Wise, Gregg Adelman, is another intriguing name.
According to Adelman, he was a “founding partner” of Vasayo. A member of Vasayo since January 2017, according to Adelman’s LinkedIn profile.
Adelman promoted the infamous OneCoin Ponzi scheme before Vasayo.
In January 2017, OneCoin’s Ponzi component fell apart. In November 2018, Adelman was still frantically attempting to sell his OneCoin holdings:
Adelman had 145,990.69 worthless ONE Ponzi points in his OneCoin back office at the moment.
Adelman intended to sell his useless ONE points for $1 each to a new victim:
Returning to Life Wise, Alwin revealed its Arkansas basis in a post on Facebook on February 15th.
The headquarters of Life Wise now appears to be a house.
The Life Wise MLM opportunity is fully reviewed in the following paragraphs.
The Products of Life Wise
Life Wise published a video titled “Life Wise Products with Dr. Tracy Gibbs” on their YouTube channel on February 20.
Gibbs reveals three products in the video and admits that he is the creator of the Life Wise range of goods.
-Dream is a box of 30 single-use strips that delivers sleep assistance via cyclodextrin and contains melatonin and saffron extract.
-Restore is a 60-capsule bottle of black cumin seed oil and frankincense-based supplement from SMEDDS that targets inflammation.
-A box of 30 single-use strips of Clarity, a cyclodextrin-delivered “energy boosting” supplement, is available for purchase.
Rob Alwin claims in a different video that Life Wise will also provide a $35 “leadership development program”.
Chris Clem, Senior Pastor at Highland Assembly, created the program.
| The best teachers having the best lessons. Interviews with the right people—those you want to learn from—will be conducted by Dr. Clem. For you to follow him into your own particular promised land, he is creating a curriculum. |
For any of Life Wise’s products, no retail price has been provided.
However, it appears from their compensation marketing that Life Wise’s items will cost between $35 and $39.
Pricing like this is advertised as wholesale. It is uncertain if retail prices are higher or even available.
The Compensation Plan for Life Wise
Affiliates of Life Wise commit to a monthly auto-ship order by signing up.
They receive commissions when they bring on new hires who follow suit.
Life Wise uses a unilevel compensation structure to pay commissions.
An affiliate is put at the head of a unilevel team in a unilevel pay system, and each affiliate they personally recruited is positioned immediately under them (level 1):
New affiliates brought on by any level 1 affiliates are added to the original affiliate’s unilevel team at level 2.
If any level 2 affiliates bring on new affiliates, they are promoted to level 3, and so on down a theoretically endless number of levels.
The recruitment commission ceiling set by Life Wise is seven unilevel team levels.
Depending on orders placed on any of the seven tiers, commissions are given as a flat sum:
- level 1 (personally recruited affiliates) – $5 per product purchased
- level 2 – $3 per product purchased
- level 3 – $2 per product purchased
- levels 4 to 7 – $1 per product purchased
Life Wise Affiliate Rankings
The Life Wise pay structure has seven affiliate ranks.
They are as follows, along with their respective qualification standards:
- Bronze Partner – earn $200 a week
- Silver Partner – earn $300 a week
- Gold Partner – earn $500 a week
- Ruby Partner – earn $1000 a week and have three Silver Partners or higher in your downline
- Emerald Partner – earn $2000 a week and have three Gold Partners or higher in your downline
- Diamond Partner – earn $3000 a week and have three Ruby Partners or higher in your downline
- Black Diamond Partner – earn $5000 a week and have three Diamond Partners or higher in your downline
Keep in mind that downline affiliates of a required rank must be in separate unilevel team legs.
E.g. You must have three Gold Partners or higher in your downline to join Emerald Partner. A unique unilevel team leg is required for every Gold Partner or higher.
It’s unclear if the Life Wise rank qualification comes with any benefits.
Enrolling in Life Wise
The annual cost of Life Wise affiliate membership is $99.
Get Your Money Back Suspicious
Conclusion: Life is Wise
Life Wise is a straightforward auto-ship recruitment system, as opposed to Vasayo, which includes a robust retail offering.
| Rob Alwin: If you want to participate, you can do so by paying $39 every month. You won’t ever be required to purchase anything more. To demonstrate how to build big and powerfully, we might offer you a variety of business propositions, suggesting that you purchase two items for a total of $78. We might simply ask you to sponsor one person on a $39 monthly autoship. What if, however, I laid out a strategy whereby, if each person for four, they might finally finish up producing a sizeable six-figure income with only one product and no front loading? In fact, even if you only started one person, you might still earn a sizable salary. I’m in for free until launch right here. Free. I have to decide if I want to pay $35 or $39 for autoship. Your compensation schedule is listed there. |
Retail sales are not mentioned in any of Life Tree’s publicly accessible marketing materials. In actuality, I’m not even sure that retail sales are even conceivable.
Retail sales, according to the FTC, are what set reputable MLM businesses apart from frauds.
An MLM business is operating as a pyramid scheme if retail consumers don’t account for the majority of its sales revenue.
Rob Alwin, the creator and CEO of Life Wise, described the company’s pay plan, which has seven stages of autoship recruitment. As stated, there is no retail component.
| Rob Alwin Spend $35 or $39 and register someone for free. You can repeat that as often as you like or just once. And you have four friends who are asking you, “What do we do?” What say you, then? Get four now. Even though you only need one, we advise getting four. There are sixteen people when you four go get four each. You multiplied sixteen by three to arrive at 48 dollars. You are bringing four people. Your four turns into an annual income of $285,000. |
And even if they were, Life Wise’s basic business plan is clear: join up, agree to auto-ship, and find other affiliates who do the same. One might be quickly added after the publication of this review.
That is the standard MLM autoship pyramid strategy.
Naturally, Alwin and the other executives of Life Wise are at the top of the aforementioned pyramid plan for auto-ship recruitment.
| Tracy Gibbs: Rob and I are working together on a new project, and I couldn’t be more thrilled to have a totally open remuneration structure. Teams are being built alongside you. And that is our pay; we are compensated according to the compensation plan. Rob Alwin: We obtained jobs within the company, developed the same compensation scheme, and received compensation in line with yours. |
Ironically, Alwin appears to be able to spot fraud.
| Massive fraud is occurring in the majority of compensation schemes at the majority of businesses. Instead of letting the leader come up and demonstrate how it’s done in a genuine and real way, they are installing positions above you to lure the leader. |
…but criticizes the secrecy surrounding pyramid schemes rather than the scheme itself.
The products from Life Wise appear to be competitively priced for what they are. Unfortunately, the autoship recruitment strategy itself is more important than any items related to it.
The strong religious component of Life Wise is another unsettling feature. Whatever your beliefs, combining religion with MLM can lead to animosity, cliques, and prejudice.
Let’s imagine for the sake of argument that I am an atheist. Whether it’s a pyramid scam or not, I consider Life Wise to be an earning potential and work my way up the affiliate ladder.
I make a respectable living from recruiting. But how long before it becomes a problem for me because I think Christianity is a crock of shit?
Pastor Chris Clem’s “creating curriculum to help lead you into your own personal promised land” is one particularly risky area.
The leadership training course at Life Wise has a religious undertone, right? If that is the case, it poses a serious risk to everyone who is not religious. Or perhaps even worse, practicing the incorrect faith.
So? Then obviously don’t purchase the program.
Sure, and if it were the only cause for concern, I’d be inclined to believe Life Wise and Alwin. However, Life Wise’s promotional materials are already quite strongly loaded with religious overtones.
If Clem’s program wasn’t widely promoted to Life Wise affiliates, I’d be quite astonished.
Again, believe what you want to believe; but, combining religion and multilevel marketing is generally not a good idea.
It also makes it possible to use religious affinity fraud as a marketing strategy when coupled with a pyramid-style autoship recruitment scheme.
Like all pyramid schemes, commissions for current Life Wise affiliates will stop once affiliate recruitment stops.
Those at the bottom of Life Wise’s compensation process will eventually stop receiving their monthly auto-ship until new victims are discovered.
The people above them will stop receiving pay as a result, and eventually, they’ll cancel their auto-ship.
When enough affiliates of Life Wise cancel their auto-ship, an irreversible collapse is set off.
Pyramid schemes’ mathematical design ensures that the majority of participants will lose money.
Life Wise, which is now under prelaunch, will officially launch on July 4th, 2023.
Life Wise has designated the stated “transparency” video as private at some point in the previous week or so. I’ve now disabled the video’s previously active link as a result.
I assumed Life Wise had taken down their YouTube channel, yet it is still accessible. Only a couple of Alwin’s previous films have been designated as private.
In a related vein, as of the time of this update, the Life Wise website is still “under construction”.
