Monday, October 21, 2013

A Loved One Joins ZoiVi

My cousin was raised by my parents since he was young and went to study abroad for college. He left around five years ago and in November 2012, he came back to visit for three months. My parents and I both thought he came back to visit us and his old high school friends, and to catch up on what happened since we last saw each other. Well he stayed at our house, but he was out all the time from pretty much day 2 in New York.

In the beginning, I found it understandable because he hadn't seen his friends in such a long time. One day I went into his room to get something and I found a list of names and their interests next to them. My family members, his friends, his former teachers, church members were on it. There were around 40-50 people on it. I thought, woah thats a lot of people he wanted to see. In hindsight, I now know it was a list of potential recruits for ZoiVi.

Soon, he started going out at 8 AM and coming home at 3-4 AM in the morning. He did this pretty much everyday. My parents were getting concerned over his lack of sleep and he said that he was fine. My cousin took some ZoiVi supplement for extra energy. He said he didn't need to sleep because he had that powder/pill and that since he slept less, he could spend more of his waking hours making money. Time is money, after all.

When he did have time, we had conversations late into the night. We talked about how college was a waste of time and how the student debt in this country was a huge problem. We talked about how jobs were stupid, and who needs jobs when we could be our own boss, and make our own schedule. We also talked about the law of attraction and the importance of visualizing your success and achieving your dreams. When you believe, you can achieve.

He mentioned network marketing (at the time, I didnt know what network marketing was or that he worked for a network marketing company) and how word of mouth advertising was the best form of advertising. Its free and effective. From those words, I assumed that thats what network marketing was and I agreed. Thats because my mom used to start plenty of her businesses. Her best one relied on word of mouth. She didnt have a single flyer or anything. People liked her product so much, they called her all the time, and demanded for them. She worked only three hours a day and made a couple hundred, sometimes over a thousand. And thats impressive. He told me he came to New York to learn from her how she did it because she was really good at it. If you want to make lots of money, you gotta study how people who have already done it, did it.

I agreed and still agree with him 100%. I think thats the right mindset to have. When you have dreams, you should go and achieve them with all you can. I do believe in the law of attraction and college is a waste of time and money. Thats why Im not in college now. And I think having a business like my mom is the way to go because she made so much money, and she also had the choice to spontaneously take a day off or a vacation without any real consequence.

But its the way he acted and went about achieving his dreams of becoming rich that bothered me...

My parents became curious over what those ZoiVi products were since he was taking them all the time and they ended up buying the DTX and Genki. Mom lost a couple pounds and gained it back a few days later. Dad claimed that he was perfectly healthy and didnt need DTX. No "toxins" came out when he took DTX. He had the urge to use the toilet all day but nothing major would come out. My parents raved over Genki though. They loved it because it had so many vitamins and minerals in it and my mom started to look younger after taking it everyday. She loved it so much she recommended it to all her friends and wanted to sell it.

I recall one evening, she wanted to help my brother recruit someone because she believed ZoiVi was a great company with a great product. She suggested a childhood friend who was friends with him ten years ago. The guy just stayed at home playing games on the computer, doing nothing really productive with his life, so it would be great if he got a job. I was on the computer at the time and pretended I was busy, but I was actually listening in on the phone conversation between my cousin and his childhood friend. It began with questions about his life and what he did on his free time and then my cousin smoothly changed the topic to hanging out in real life to catch up. He didnt mention ZoiVi or anything. He just said he wanted the guy to meet his new friends and everyone could socialize and have fun.

This is almost exactly like the script in action. I didnt find out until yesterday that these people are trained to follow a script. At the time though, it still felt wrong. My stomach was churning and I was really upset. I didnt like how his friend was talked into hanging out and then would be slickly lured into joining a company.

My cousin introduced mom to Evaji. Evaji and the representatives explained to her the business model and she didn't like it. Since she started so many businesses and had so much success, she didnt understand why these people were calling it their "own" business when they had to answer someone above them and someone above them took a cut of their pay. She found it stupid and complex.

Why couldnt she just buy the product for wholesale and then sell it retail price to a bunch of people in the community as she always did it? Why would someone be making money off of every sale she made? Why couldnt she determine when she worked, whenever she wanted? And why go to training half the week, which was a waste of time? To her, this wasnt a business.

My cousin said that everyone in the company was like family and everyone helped each other out. Everyone was in a team. Everyone was nice to each other. Everyone shared their profits this way. Evaji was a great guy who cared a lot about the people who worked for him. When employees who did well and customers who lost the weight got an all expense paid trip to wherever. Didnt my mom want to have a vacation all paid for?

My father, a former math professor, tried doing the math and came to the conclusion that you can never make money in this sort of business model. Only people at the top made money because they had everyone below them make money for them. Plus, the products were so expensive but the profit you would make from selling them were so low. I didnt know what the numbers were because he and my parents were excluding me from all this.

My cousin said that he made 400/week but that he could make more if he wanted to. He only worked part time. We asked him why hes always out then, and he said he wasnt going out to work and going to training. He was hanging out with his friends at the same time too.

Regardless of the stupid model, my mom still wanted to sell this product because it was great. In fact, this is almost a year later and she ran out of Genki a long time ago, and she still comments on how this is the best health supplement ever. She knew that if she sold in New York, she wouldnt sell well because her English wasnt that good and since the product was so expensive, it required good persuasive skills. She wanted to distribute this product in China instead.

Evaji was happy to hear that she wanted to expand ZoiVi into China. He gave her the english manuscripts to each product and told her to find a translator to translate them into Chinese. She was annoyed because she didnt even work for the company yet and she was told to do this. She felt like since she wasnt even working for ZoiVi, it wasnt her job to look for a translator or pay for one. Evaji said she would be reimbursed for the translations, but still, they should do the translations themselves.

For some reason or another, she called many places and couldnt find a translator that could take the job. I felt bad for my mom so I offered to help. She said she wanted to show me the manuscripts and maybe I could translate it, but was told that the documents were to be kept secret. Apparently my cousin said that I wasnt allowed to look at them. I looked them over when he wasnt home and turns out they were just statistics on the disease epidemics in America and how each ZoiVi product would benefit the body and improve health. What the hell? Every statement on the paper were things I already knew. I read books on holistic health all the time. Its my favorite subject in the whole world. This was common information found in books and online, nothing new. I found it so suspicious.

Anyway, I have a friend from China who is fluent in both Chinese and English who can translate that stuff fast. But at the time, my friend had lots of school related work and wouldnt be done until two weeks from that time. My cousin said no and that time is money and that things needed to be done right away. It was urgent. My cousin said my friend had the chance to become a translator for a million dollar company and that its something nice to put on a resume. Too bad he missed the opportunity.

The documents never did end up getting translated. My mom got annoyed over a couple weeks how all my brother talked about all time was ZoiVi, and business, and making money. She talked to her friends and they all told her not to join because they knew people involved in Amway and Herbalife and how screwed up their lives became. She made the connection that the company was a scam, although the products were great.

One night, my cousin came home and mom yelled at him telling him to quit, that he didnt know what he got himself into. That this "business" of his wasnt really his, but belonged to 
Evaji. That Evaji was a bad man and profited off of everyones efforts. That people who join MLMs end up ruining all family and friend relationships. That she didnt want him to end up as one of those people.

He and my parents had a huge argument and in the days after, my mom would constantly bitch and complain about my cousin calling him a fool. She continued acting nice until he left New 
York, but the relationship was still strained. I spoke to my cousin, and in his eyes, my mom is the fool because she skipped out on the opportunity to expand a million dollar company into fucking China, where she couldve became a millionaire herself because she would be the first one selling  ZoiVi products there.

I honestly didnt know what to think. I was so confused. I searched up this company and found nothing meaningful. If the company was so huge and the products were so popular, how come I couldnt find anything about the product itself and only found information on making money? I didnt understand. Surely there would have been tons of reviews if the product was so great. Im glad to see more real people posting their experiences online, and though I have more of an outsiders experience with this company, I want to post this so others can read it.

9 comments:

  1. Awww so sorry to hear your story. So many relationships are being ruined by this scam, its so sad. Unfortunately, they do such a good job at brainwashing people at these trainings and meetings they completely rewire their personalities.

    ReplyDelete
  2. He's the fool thinking he could make money scamming his friends. To be honest as a top director I can tell you ZoiVi isn't making much profit and that people have tried expanding into China but failed due to the communist regime. ZoiVi is in Japan. USA, Puerto Rico and Mexico. Read my blog. I worked as evajis personal organizer. I can tell you more on the product if you like. Also feel free to create your own blog and warn your friends of this scam

    ReplyDelete
  3. The above is my story. I was approached by someone working in Amway yesterday so I decided to use it as a way to start a conversation with my family members about Zoivi. Turns out my mom did buy the $349 package, but she bought multiple quantities of it, so she actually ended up losing 2k. I asked my cousin over Facebook whether he still worked for Zoivi, and he said not so much anymore. He still uses the products though.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If I were you, I'd tell your cousin right now to stop using those Zoivi shit-plements and start taking some real vitamins, like products from GNC.

      Delete
  4. It's so interesting how similar these pyramid schemes are. Another one is Visalus (nutrition shakes), and also Rapid Realty (ghetto real estate company in NYC). They use the "training" thing to pull the victims away from their friends and families and get them attached to the cult. The more time the victim spends with the cult people the more attached he feels to them and less attached he feels to his true loved ones. They also build up the victim's ego with big aspirations and tell them everything they want to hear.

    ReplyDelete
  5. www.metacafe.com/videos_about/sex_nude_girls
    One of the world's largest video sites, serving the best videos, funniest movies and clips.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Child Sex Image Stock Photos And Pictures | Getty Images
    www.gettyimages.com/photos/child-sex-image
    Child Sex Image Pictures and Images. Photography .... Thai bar girl stands in the red light district of Pattaya Thailand September 21 2014 Pattaya. ED. Editorial.
    Child Abuse Stock Photos, Images, & Pictures | Shutterstock
    www.shutterstock.com/s/child+abuse/search.html
    Child abuse stock photos, vectors and illustrations from Shutterstock, the world's largest ... Parents left the girl To stay home alone she is very poor - stock photo ...

    ReplyDelete
  7. Fucking sister
    A fool who is fucking himself.
    One who came out from vagina
    Whore
    Whore
    Motherfucker
    Daughter fucker
    Fucker
    Penis, dick, cock
    Gay, Transsexual
    bastard
    idiot’s brain has gone to eat grass
    Sexy Girl

    ReplyDelete
  8. anus - butt

    arse - butt

    arsehole - butt

    ass - butt

    ass-hat - idiot

    ass-jabber - homosexual

    ass-pirate - homosexual

    assbag - idiot

    assbandit - homosexual

    assbanger - homosexual

    assbite - idiot

    assclown - butt

    asscock - idiot

    asscracker - butt

    asses - butts

    ReplyDelete