The first time I found out about Legacy was in 2001. The banned tape gave me the impression that BioChoice would sell itself, and nothing was further from the truth. Anyway, it took me 18 months full time in the business to learn that, even getting to National Marketing Director in the company did not help me financially.

I did not quit the business immediately after that, as I still had a lot of faith in the product (looked pretty good on paper right?), so I went to the president of the company and see whether we could work something out that average people can survive the business (like lowering the monthly requirement and sign up fee etc.). All I received from him was something like "You have been in the company for 18 months, 100+ distributors, you are not supposed to be making money with that because of the standard attrition rate, 200 to 300 maybe. Our comp plan is perfect, if you cannot keep 5 ~ 7 customers consistently using the product, you are not good enough to do the business".

So I asked him "If BioChoice is so fantastic, would it not be logical that my customers would upgrade and become distributors? Which then I will lose my volume." Reply "You just have to find new customers". I thought I started an MLM business in order to retire earlier than working a job, if I have to keep finding new customers, then I can never retire. My customer retention was 5% to 10% as well (and he said the product was not to blame, my customer service was the problem. Being full time and never respond to any inquiry later than 24hrs, I really do not know how to improve on my service), so I took his advice and try looking for something else more suitable for me.

By that time my sponsor had left and after giving up hope in Legacy, I reluctantly followed her into the new program. With Legacy being my first MLM, I did not know the rules. So the first thing I did was go back to the lists I bought when doing the Legacy business, there were quite a few people who were already involved with Legacy when I first contacted them. With my new program, I thought I would send them a mail and ask them whether they were still with Legacy and what their experience was like, briefly outlining my involvement with the new program (this was where I overstepped the rule). Most of the responses were no, and quite a few of them even tried to recruit me. Unfortunately some of the people I contacted filed a report against me and Legacy promptly terminated my distributorship.

Realizing my error I wrote an apology to the company and promised not to do so again. At the time George Booras was still the compliance officer, and he said he would talk to the president about reinstating my distributorship (18 months of full time effort at stake here, even though my paycheck was small). Over the 3 months period I left him many messages as well as emails, no response. At the end I found out he left Legacy. After the constant follow up I gave up trying to reinstate my account and only recently found out that I still have some BioChoice stuck in the garage, thus the attempt to return it. By the way, I quit the new program within 3 weeks as another health deal was not my cup of tea, but informing Legacy of that did nothing to reactivate my distributorship.

Here are my conclusions about Legacy:

- I was stupid to believe what I heard on the conference call about Legacy not caring about how many deals I did because Legacy was so solid that I would eventually go back to it. The minute I shift gear, so did my distributorship.

- I was silly to not calculate deeper when I heard Mark saying that his paycheck had gone up by about 10 times when he shifted his volume from NuSkin to Legacy. That did NOT imply that the pay plan was 10 times better. Considering the payout for standard MLMs being the same (~50%), let's say in NuSkin Mark received $1 million from $20 million payout, and in Legacy Mark received $10 from $20 million payout, where does the extra $9 million come from? Yep, the downlines. That was why my paycheck was so small in Legacy, all the money I generated went to my uplines.

- I was ignorant to not understand what frontloading was. It was common to hear Legacy claiming other companies frontload their distributors, but most of them have monthly fees lower than Legacy.

- I was blind to believe in the hype that Legacy was the first in BioTech and had no competition. Customers do not care about patents and how you make the egg works miracles, they care about how it makes them feel. And there are thousands of other products out there designed to make people feel better, and different people respond to different product. Competition? Yes - every other health based MLM and non MLM companies out there.

Lesson to Legacy - do not treat your distributors like dirt. You made me into a networker, and we talk, a lot.