World Ventures + YTB; Two Peas In A Pod?

The following post (in its entirety) was taken from a new WorldVentures blog. As I read it, I kept asking myself if these tactics and shenanigans apply to YTB as well. I think they do--what do you think? Try saying "YTB" whenever you read WorldVentures and see if it isn't the same!

If you have just been given a WorldVentures presentation by an enthusiastic friend and you are wondering whether you should go for it or if you are already a member and after the initial excitement you are left wondering if you made the right decision because you have just found out things that have not been revealed to you in the beginning, read the information contained here as it might possibly save you a lot of time, troubles and hurdles that you don’t need to get into. 

My goal here is not to make you hold back from joining or promoting the company, but to give you an honest and ‘behind the doors’ review, so that you might avoid the pain, humiliation, betrayal and loss that I went through, wasting a precious 1.5 year of my life and ruining my previous business, my reputation and some friendships to follow a fake dream that was sold to me wrapped in golden ribbons.

Because you see, WorldVentures is pretty good at one thing: selling a dream. All the marketing, the spectacular videos of the ‘Dreamlife’, the photographs of dream locations with people holding the ‘You should be here’ sign (reps, becoming mascots of the company on social media to sell memberships) the smiling over-confident presenters who seem to be ‘gurus’ of personal development, wealth building and creating a 'Dreamlife' – I know because I was one of them – all of these have a goal to make you believe that this is the company that will indeed, easily and effortlessly make all your dreams come true!… and don’t get me wrong, some of those people you meet at the presentations are indeed amazing individuals who just bought into this dream like I did for a while, until I realized that this digging for gold had turned me into a restless unethical lair and an abuser of people’s good will and trust..

So here is how I became Marketing Director in WorldVentures (second level of income, earning around 5000 US per month) and then decided to give it all up, as this company insulted my values, my ethics and my integrity as an individual.

I was lured in after I met one of the top leaders of the company at a independent online marketing event.  He seemed to live the life that most people can only dream of with money and time freedom and loads of vacations around the world as it was revealed to me on his Facebook profile. He talked about his 'travel club’ making it sound like he a magical travel agency which makes dreams come true and claiming that he made millions in 4 years of starting this 'Worldventures travel business'.  So I was inclined to find out more….

At the presentation that I attended I got impressed and excited  - I was at a strange point in my life and what they presented seemed to offer solutions to all my problems (it is designed that way, as I found out later, I had the profile of the 'ideal prospect' - vulnerable and looking for something new). I trusted the person who invited me and the people who were there, because they were amazing at giving presentations and convincing that indeed they did live a lifestyle of time and money freedom that we all dream of, so I jumped right in.

I decided that I was going to make it work, I was going to break all the records, get all the bonuses and create my desired residual income very soon. I pioneered in my market presenting this new concept, bringing in hundreds of excited people with me! In 6 months I was already a Director and on the top 0.03% of the income earners of the company (according to the official Income Disclosure Statement) and moving fast to the second level of Marketing Director. It was at that stage that it struck to me that things were not so good at it seemed.... It wasn’t easy, I had given up everything for this company and believed in it with all my soul and after I started earning my first cheque of ‘residual income’ I truly thought I had found freedom! But that is when the problems began, as I started seeing more clearly….

WorldVentures Dreamtrips :  What they say at the presentations about the ‘product’ and what you actually get.

At the well crafted presentations, they tell you that the company is buying ‘in bulk’ and you are getting Dream Vacations at wholesale (ie lower) prices. That’s the first lie. After I enrolled all the elite of people I knew in my market, many close friends, business owners and marketers  (I got really excited and people who trusted me believed in whatever I told them about WorldVentures) we all started finding out, that the vacations offered were not really discounted at all and were not happening so often as promised either. 

Out of 50 'Dreamtrips' offered there was the odd 69$ vacation which they sell so strongly at presentations, but that sells out within 2-3 hours of announcing it and they just put it in the Dreamtrips list for the show! We were basically telling people to pay an enrollment fee of 200 US dollars and then another 700 USD per year, to belong in a ‘discount travel club’ which offered no discount at all, proven and documented by our research!

As my team was growing bigger and bigger and I was running from presentation to presentation, from training to training, I started receiving tens of upset phonecalls and e-mails every day from people who had done their research online or by calling the hotels as normal customers and had clear straightforward evidence that the ‘Dreamtrips’ did not offer any discount at all while most of the times, they are priced higher than the prices you can get online if you are expert enough in internet searches!!! I wasn't able to sleep well at night, my life began to look like a nightmare.

I initially began informing and forwarding the information found to my sponsor which is within the top 20 leaders of the company and the answer I kept getting was that me and the people sending these e-mails had negative mindset and that I should work on my mindset in this business, focus on selling, that they people buy because of me and because they want to start a business, not because of the Dreamtrips and a lot of ‘personal development’ bullshit, no discussions about the Dreamtrips prices, with the only occasional excuse that the company is new and it is still building relationships with the hotels! I started getting frustrated and confused at the same time.... I didn't get it: When I sell something I want to give true VALUE to people on what they are buying, I believe in ‘under promise and over deliver’ and what was WorldVentures making me do? Amazing presentations where we ‘over promised’ and then severely ‘under delivered’ – not to strangers, but to our friends and family...

At some stage around my 8^th month  I was getting so many angry e-mails and phonecalls daily from people I had enrolled or people that my team had enrolled and my leader was acting so totally irresponsible and ignoring me that I decided to start forwarding some e-mails to the support team and the Dreamtrips management team to get some straightforward answers. Remember, the e-mails included EVIDENCE that the Dreamtrips were not discounted at all as promised at the presentations with links to websites or info that people from my team (Dreamtrips customers and reps) had gotten directly from the hotels.

And that was the first huge slap in the face: BLACKMAIL.  

I actually got an e-mail from the headquarters that nor me or my team are allowed to call hotels as normal customers to double check prices with those offered on the Dreamtrips and that was a breach of rules and regulations and if I continued my research. They also made it clear that if I send any more e-mails to the very busy Dreamtrips team about the complains I was getting from my team on Dreamtrips prices and evidence with links from websites, I would be TERMINATED. Yes, that would be a reason for TERMINATION!!!! I was in total SHOCK!  By that time I had spend 8 full months promoting the WorldVentures concept passionately I had almost reached Marketing Director level. My residual was increasing, but I wasn’t feeling well. I had just been Blackmailed for getting ‘fired’ because I wanted to be true and ethical to the people I enrolled. I badly wanted to give them the value I promised at the presentations, I wanted to give constructive feedback to the company to improve because I thought they didn't know what was happening with Dreamtrips prices,  but I was clearly ‘ordered’ to stop giving them ANY feedback on their product! I was in denial, I didn't know what to do, I had already build a big team that I had a responsibility towards....

Then other things started becoming clear one by one:

1    The Big LIE that ‘You will have your own Business on the side’ – it is so unethical that they sell this ‘own your own side business’ concept at the presentations so strongly, that it makes me want to be sick. Being a WorldVentures rep you are not a Business Owner – you are an employee, maybe a highly paid one if you get to be in the top 0.01% and reach IMD, but an employee who can be kicked out of the door and fired at any time. During my time with WorldVentures and after my initial shock when I was blackmailed with termination because I send them EVIDENCE that 95% of the Dreamtrips were not discounted, I experienced the termination of their top UK Leader and their No1 USA Earner, both of which had build huge teams for the company, teams which of course remained with WorldVentures after the leaders termination (and hence, Worldventures saved their big fat salaries and also kept their teams or whatever was left of them!)

I saw those people working hard to bring into the company thousands of people, train new leaders and support the concept passionately, just to be terminated like normal employees, because of supposedly breaking ‘rules and regulations’, which by the way, is never concealed to the other members openly what the actual 'breaking of the rules' by those leaders entailed. You see, the WorldVentures rules and regulations are crafted in such way, that the owners of the company can wake up one day, ‘fire’ you from being a leader’ take all your team, never pay you again and they don’t even have to give you a reason! Its true, read the rules carefully and you will see what I mean. They can just decide that they didn’t like something about your behavior and just like that, poof! You’re gone!

2    ‘We want sheep and mascots’ mentality – WorldVentures does not really want you to have an opinion (hence you are a simple employee like in any other company). What they are looking for and what they are creating in their trainings is opinion-less sheep that the company turns into brainless brainwashed mascots. These mascots are reps who pay for Dreamtrip after Dreamtrip to promote the company by taking photos with the logos and slogans and post it on their profiles (note: if you are already a member, notice that 90% of the people who go to all the Dreamtrips are leaders who go there just to promote the concept and not actual members who pay to use the 'product'), thus building the WV brand with the illusion that they are actually building their own business (whereas they are just normal employees)

3    The Lie of long term Residual Income while offering a non sustainable product with no value. I have experienced firsthand how the top leaders have to work to maintain their status and trust me, that is not lifestyle freedom! The top 20 leaders and income earners of the company that I personally met at various trainings and presentations,  are constantly on the road giving presentations and trainings, have barely bought a house and a car, all the vacations you see them posing are at work because this is where they spend time ‘bonding’ with their team (and they actually have to use those travel dollars) and nobody knows what they are really earning, due to the ever collapsing team. You see, as WorldVentures product offers no true savings, most people drop out within 1 to 3 months. On a rare occasion, someone will stick around to pay membership until the 6^th month maximum. After that they are long gone and you have to bring in new people. Since there is no actual physical product that people like and re-order, dropout rate in WorldVentures is so high, that you can have 5000 members in one month and 5 months after you have 500 unsatisfied complaining ones  left (I have seen many leaders experience that too, it is common reality in this company).

4    Additional Costs for Trainings/Marketing Tools/Going to Dreamtrips profiting WorldVentures:

Not only you have to pay for Dreamtrips membership for trips which are priced the same or even higher than if you booked the exact same trip online or better through your travel agent who would take care of your flights too and treat you like a good valued customer, but you are bombarded every month with trainings (costing from 99US to 500 US), Marketing Tools that should be offered for free (ie 30 US per month to use a mailing system) and many more additional costs that WorldVentures uses to extract more money out of its reps and members.

Basically WorldVentrures makes a huge additional income on its trainings, although I have to admit, most of them are pretty good and entertaining and there are people who do enjoy paying for those trainings because they get some value in the friendships they make and the shift of mindset in spending a weekend in a room-full of positive minded people who are looking to change their lives. However, what people don’t realize is the cost of producing that training vs the proceeds of the company with the very high participation fees, gives WorldVentures  a pretty good additional profit  for each and every training! (out of which, of course you don’t get any commission, even if you have campaigned your whole team to attend and if you are a leader, you are asked to be one of the trainers for free!).

5    Unethical Training guidelines for approaching prospects

The training on how to invite and ‘close’ leads goes against any ethical business practices. Members are encouraged in the training, not to tell their prospects what the invitation is about and to push them to sign the form giving their visa information right after the presentation, before they have the chance to ask too many questions!

They are basically masters of psychological pressure and brainwash. There are many ethical and proper ways to invite a friend to come see a presentation about something that you are doing without you acting weird and hiding things, putting your friend and yourself in an uncomfortable position. It is also unethical to practice tricky pressure techniques with your friends to get them to sign in to something they have no real clue about what it is (after the first 30 minutes of presentation, where they only present their own version of what they want you to see) and without giving you the time to think about it and ask questions.

6    Presentation style: creating fake enthusiasm and pushing for the sale.

Again, what I am mentioning above. Reps are encouraged at all the trainings to create fake enthusiasm in the room and push for the sale right after the end of the presentation, so that ‘too many questions’ are avoided. This goes against my logic of keeping some standards of ethics.

7       Constant Legal Issues of the company and bad media coverage – WorldVentures is going through legal issues sooner or later, in every country it enters. Have that mind that if in your market there hasn’t been yet negative publicity in the media about Worldventures and about how it has been sued for this or that, or for the fact that it is probably a Pyramid or a Ponzi scheme (I will get into that discussion in a future post),  as there will probably be something soon. Are you ready to handle it? This will mean losing a big portion of your team every time this happens, losing a lot of respect from friends and family, being laughed at and rebuilding everything from scratch every time (most of the time leaders move from State to State or from country to country to sustain growth as markets are crushed and burned out) until the company builds in all the markets it could enter and totally collapses.  I personally prefer to spend my time and effort more constructively on other projects.

After one by one all the above points revealed themselves to me, I felt so ashamed of having dragged in WorldVentures with me, so many amazing people which were also left disappointed and wondering how they didn’t see it coming! I even had my wife sign up, who is the quiet type and shy at giving presentations and she had been so supportive that she had already spend around 1000 US in membership fees from her hard earned salary within a year, although we didn't really need a second membership as a couple.

I totally lost interest to promote it and realized that the only person I can truly count on is myself and what value I have to give to the society as an entrepreneur. I didn’t want to be that fake mascot of an unethical company anymore….

I am now making money in a different business model, I no longer get angry customer phonecalls, I no longer get insulted for unethical behavior that I wasn’t even responsible for.

Who is WorldVentures good for? 

It wouldn’t be fair not to add a paragraph about the fact that some people do indeed enjoy paying that 1000US/year WorldVentures membership for while, either because they have been lonely before and they found a fun group of people to go travelling with (because Dreamtrips offer no privacy, on the contrary they are group vacations where you interact with other members at parties, excursions etc) or because they enjoy all the ‘personal development’ training and bonding with other members that happens at the trainings. These are the 10% of people who stick with the company for more than a year as reps working hard on building teams and swear  by the value they receive.  

And yes, I did attend a couple of very nice Dreamtrips which were memorable experiences and did see some great friendships being formed in WorldVentures that's why I am keeping this blog anonymous, as many of those people who are still in WorldVentures and enjoying it,  are my friends and I truly respect them as individuals. I wouldn't go to them and try to change their mind by giving them the information that I wrote here, because it is my story,  it is up to form their own experience with the company. 

If WorldVentures makes some people happy and fullfills their life purpose, I am not the one to tell them that they are wrong, it was just the wrong project for me for all the reasons described. For them, it might be their true life purpose to promote this company or it might be a journey they have to go through, to learn and grow like I did. 

Or like me, some of these people have spend so much effort and time to build big teams, they have put so much trust and time in WorldVentrues, that they would hate to admit 'defeat' and admit to anyone (especially to friends and family who made fun of them in the beginning) that WorldVentures isn't really what they thought it was when they started, they are now too deep in and dependent on it, to make any decision to quit if they decide like me, that they don't feel comfortable with the product not delivering what it initially promised or if they find that they disagree with certain policies and procedures.

For me quitting and going on to start ventures which were true to me, was liberating, because I realized that with WorldVentures I wasn't giving the value I was promising to people. For others, quitting might show defeat to all their friends and family, so they do what they gotta do to prove what they have to prove to whoever they want to prove it...

So Is WorldVentures a scam?

This is for you to judge after reading this article and doing your own research. I am long gone for all the reasons I described and I pray for my friends who are still in this company promoting the concept, not to find themselves one day in the streets with no team and no money, having to rebuild their life after WorldVentures would have broken their dreams.