Monavie letter to Ted Nuyten regarding the Reported Revenue for 2010

  • August 13, 2010
  • By Team Business For Home

I received the below letter from Monavie's Legal Counsel– Graden Jackson from Strong Hanni Law Firm-, to pull down the post Monavie Revenue 2010 under heavy pressure?  Mr. Jackson informed me that the post was malicious and alleged that the post was published with the intent of interfering with MonaVie’s business relationships with its distributors.

I think it’s obvious to say that this website regularly publishes information about the Direct Selling Industry. On this website, we share the good news and the bad news. Just recently, I published about the top earners in the network marketing industry.

4 of the top 25 earners were from MonaVie. Clearly, I do not have a grudge to settle with MonaVie.  When I receive newsworthy material, I publish it assuming that it appears accurate.  In this particular case, I got the information from this website.  Based on my observations in the industry, the information seemed accurate. Rod Cook, the MLM watchdog, recently published an article about MonaVie’s decline in numbers.

In my previous post titled, “Monavie Revenue 2010 under heavy pressure?” I have made it crystal clear that the figures are from an unverified source and I have made a disclaimer on the information.  Unlike was Mr. Jackson alleged, I did not publish the article with “malicious intent” and I did not publish the article with the hopes of “interfering” with MonaVie’s business.

I have absolutely nothing to gain by harming MonaVie. In fact, I have published articles in the past that have been positive towards MonaVie. If the statistics are true and MonaVie is in a steep decline, it’s certainly newsworthy.

Instead of threatening me with a legal action and using words like “malice” and “tortious,” the more appropriate and civil response would have been to reach out to me and provide the correct figures. Instead, they’ve chosen to attack my character without even providing any data that would suggest the numbers are incorrect. 

As a Dutch web reporter, I am provided with broad protections under the Dutch constitution to publish newsworthy information. And in the USA, one of the principles that makes it such a great nation is the broad protection afforded to speech.

I am not defaming MonaVie and I would never “maliciously” attack any company. Furthermore, I never said MonaVie was not a viable business as suggested by Mr. Jackson. If Mr. Jackson interprets a significant drop in revenue as proof of non-viability, it was his own conclusion and not mine.

I will only agree to delete the post if MonaVie provides me with accurate figures or they at least make a public representation that the figures are substantially wrong with “substantial” being defined as off by more than 5%. As requested by Mr. Jackson, I am to write on this blog that the figures are “inaccurate” and “unsupported by facts.”

How do they expect me to make this representation when they are unwilling to provide with any data to contract the publication?  Instead, in the spirit of cooperation, I will extend an invitation to MonaVie and allow them to publish a statement on my own site. I have no malicious motive towards MonaVie and I am pulling for their success.  They’re one of the larger companies in the network marketing industries and their success is certainly admirable.    

I would love to have the opinion of our readers.  Am I missing something here or should I just pull it down?

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Comments (8)

  2. Ted,

    As you know I stand for Freedom of Speech 100% of the time. I do agree the attorney could have approached this in a different manor. As a matter of fact I had this happen not to long ago with a different company, and the attorney was so nasty, I picked up the phone and called him just to inform him I would not be taking down anything until the Supreme Court of the U.S. told me I had to take it down.

    However… Two things comes to mind that all of us, who love this profession should think about in the future.

    1. Where the info came from. I fully agree the website who originally published the info does look legit. But, it is very clear they are NOT friends of direct selling. I just finished reading an article on Primerica and others on MonaVie and it is clear the reporter on this blog doesn’t understand or just doesn’t like our profession. Maybe in the future we should not use information from known sites, who are not unbiased to our industry.

    2. We should always put the distributors first. When we get information such as the original report, maybe we should call the company and ask if the info is true or false. Then when we do report, we will have both sides of the issue in the same article.

    Outside of that, I am glad you are holding your ground and not removing your post. without at least doing further investigation.

    Please keep us posted, and I will reach out to my resources and see if we can get some type of official response outside of the hired guns 🙂

    Living An Epic Adventure,

    Troy

  3. Yes, of course. Anyone who is willing to expose MLM for the scam that it is, must just “not understand” it. I’ve spent years researching MLM. I understand it quite well, thank you. And will continue to expose the truth about it.

  5. I am wondering why you would publish anything unverified by fact? What exactly does “it looked legit” mean. Is that the professional journalist standard? I am sorry but if you can’t confirm the numbers why publish the article at all? If I were to send a photo shopped picture of a prominent figure’s wife in bed with another man to a journalist and he published it because “it looked legit” does that make it right? And then after the fact agree to take it off my publication only if you could prove that it wasn’t her?????????

    I am missing the integrity here. When you put your name on something as a professional it should be known to be fact. Maybe I am off here but I firmly believe professional’s should hold themselves to the highest standard. Remember that document that “looked legit” that ABC aired about former President Bush duckling the draft? It looked legit as well. At least until it was found out to be a fraud. How do you unring a bell??

  6. One of the big problems that we have in this industry is the misconception that networking is a scam or a pyramid scheme. We battle that all the time. With articles being posted from unverifiable sources from anonymous people, this can do nothing but hurt our industry.

    I agree with most of the thought printed here. If you have information that is so unverifiable that you have to sandwich your article between two disclaimers, rest assured most of what’s in the sandwich is probably baloney. Ted, if you want to be known as a gossip journalist and write tabloid pieces, that’s fine. But I don’t think you do. I’ve read a lot of your stuff, and you’re good at what you do.

    I do not concur with Tracy’s opinion. A manufacturer makes a product, and if it would sell for ‘X’ dollars after all the advertising and marketing was added in, why can’t they pay ‘X’ dollars to the community who does all their marketing for them? It’s really as simple as that. We go out and find people who want to be distributors and customers and we teach those people how to do the same thing.

    I’m glad that Admin does not agree with Tracy as well. The FTC doesn’t agree with Tracy. You can’t do the numbers that Monavie has been doing without the government crawling up your backside with a microscope. If it was a scam, it would be closed down.

    The other thing that really concerns me is that while Monavie’s numbers in web traffic might be down and maybe even a few teams within Monavie might be going down, the better the system, the better the growth. So it’s safe to say that there are probably groups in Monavie who are going up while others are going down. But doesn’t it work that way in all MLMs?

  8. Monavie board are arrogant!!!!!! We are not in the USA here, but we are in Europe, so you do not have the right to Sue anybody!!!
    Ted is a good man and He did not do any wrong doing. So Ted continue your great job. Also I am very happy that Monavie is goind down to HELL……………….Greed will destroy them I promise.

    Best regards,

    Max

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