At the risk of being flamed.....

> Thanks for the info. That was more than I was able to find. It actually
> sounds even worse than Melaleuca so I think I'll stay away from it unless
> I find something good about it. If anyone has any other info on The Team
> I'd like to hear more. Randy

No personal details need to be posted here, but there certainly is plenty of data. Check the links yourself, due to issues out of my control.

BBBOnLine Reliability Participation Confirmed For
Team of Destiny

Team of Destiny meets all BBBOnLine Reliability participation and Better Business Bureau membership standards and is authorized to display the BBBOnLine Reliability seal.

# This company has been in business since 03/01/1999
# This company became a Better Business Bureau member in 08/22/2003
# This company was approved for BBBOnLine Reliability in 10/16/2003

http://www.bbbonline.org/profile.asp?ID=103101610582236421

This leads to:
http://www.orrinwoodward.com/

Long link found in a search for "Orrin Woodward":

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.clearing.avatar/browse_frm/thread/19605e7ebcdff423/8767cc256e0f4400?q=%22Orrin+Woodward%22&rnum=1&hl=en#8767cc256e0f4400

Beginning of Usenet post (not written by me):

EldonB123 May 4 2004, 2:51 pm show options
Newsgroups: alt.clearing.avatar
From: eldonb...@aol.com (EldonB123) - Find messages by this author
Date: 04 May 2004 18:51:37 GMT
Local: Tues,May 4 2004 2:51 pm
Subject: Amway & Avatar
Reply to Author | Forward | Print | Individual Message | Show original | Report Abuse

This is a post that recently appeared on www.freedomofmind.com/

I assume it's OK to repost it, since it seems relevant to the way Star's Edge
does business.

Best, Eldon
--------
Hi everyone. I am new to the discussion group. My interest is in the
area of multi-level marketing and the cult or cult-like behavioral
control methods they employ to separate people from their support
systems and drain them of money. I am particularly interested in
Amway and its Internet clone, Quixtar and the damage it does to
individuals and relationships because I have family members involved.

Take the following link to a very enlightening document about how
the "Amway Motiviational Organizations" control behavior. The
document is an internal memorandum between executives of the Amway
Corporation. It was written around 1983 but was successfully kept
sealed and hidden until this weekend.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Amway/postma-memo-1983.pdf

For those that aren't familiar with the Amway, it is the oldest and
largest network marketing or multi-level marketing ("MLM") company in
the world. The concept is to buy Amway (now "Quixtar") products and
recruit others to join as "Amway distributors" (now known as "Quixtar
Independent Business Owners" or "IBOs") to buy the products and
you'll receive a share of the purchases made by the "downline"
recruits that you convince to join below you as IBOs. It is
presented as a way to make massive amounts of money, retire young,
fulfill all of your dreams, etc. An Amway/Quixtar distributor and
his downline are referred to as a "line of sponsorship." As one
would expect, it resembles a pyramid.

Within Amway/Quixtar are several "lines of sponsorship" where the
money is not made primarily from the purchase or sale of
Amway/Quixtar products, but by selling huge amounts of motivational
and behavior modification materials called "Business Support
Materials" or "Tools." These include multiple weekly audiotapes or
CDs, monthly books and videos, and rallies and "seminars."
Particpating the motiavational BSM business is called "being CORE" by
many of these groups and the motivational business itself is often
referred to as "the system" and are often referred to as "Amway
Motivational Organizations" or "AMOs."

These "systems" promote themselves by hiding their affiliation with
Amway/Quixtar from new and potential recruits. Instead, they will
use the system name. All of the following are Amway/Quixtar
motivational systems:

Team of Destiny
InterNet
World Wide Dreambuilders (WWDB or WWG)
Britt World Wide (BWW)
Network 21
ProNet

Each of these systems is controlled by a group of 2-5 distributors
who in turn answer to a handful of Amway distributors that control
every system. These high ranking "tools kingpins" are the same
people that have run the systems and controlled Amway/Quixtar for the
last three decades. The three primary kingpins are the three
individuals named in the title of the memo I linked to above: Dexter
Yager, Bill Britt and Ron Puryear. Other major players that have
gained significant control since 1983 include Orrin Woodward, Jim
Dornan, Tim Bryan, Jody Victor, Fred Hartheis, Hal Gooch, Bill
Childers, Don Storms, Gred and Brad Duncan, Curtis and Lennon
Ledbetter, and others.

One raises through the ranks of Amway/Quixtar by signing up more
people to buy more products as measured by one's sales volume
(called "PV"). The more PV one has, the higher their "pin level."
The pin levels start at "Platinum" (formerly called a "Direct"),
which indicates that a distributor's downline purchases about $20,000
in one month from Quixtar. A study by the Wisconsin Attorney General
in 1983 demonstrated that even with all of this volume and
the "bonus" paid by the corporation, a direct or platinum distributor
in Amway still shows a NET LOSS on average after expenses. Less than
one-half of 1% of Amway/Quixtar participants ever reach the level of
Platinum/Direct. Up from Platinum are pin levels named after semi-
precious stones: Sapphire, Ruby, Emerald and Diamond. The target
goal for all system distributors is the glory of reaching the heights
of "Diamond." Because of a successful regulatory action by the FTC
against Amway, the corporation is required by law to provide average
incomes and the percentages of distributors reaching each pin level
anytime it makes an income representation. Those numbers, according
to Quixtar Corporation are as follows:

Annual Earnings in U.S. Dollars•
Platinum $24,952•
Founders Platinum $30,193•
Q12 Award $39,763•
Emerald $69,122•
Founders Emerald $89,646•
Diamond $149,942•
Founders Diamond $227,400•
Exec. Diamond and Above $450,729•
Founders Exec. and Above $982,154

The following are approximate percentages of Direct Fulfillment IBOs
of record in North America who achieved these levels of success in
the calendar year ending December 31, 2001. Platinum .4242%, Founders
Platinum .2704%, Q-12 Qualifiers .1317%, Emeralds .0458%, Founders
Emeralds .0186%, Diamonds .0076%, Founders Diamonds .0018%, EDC &
Up .0042%, Founders Executive & up .0007%.

The linked memo (known as the "Postma Memo") explains in detail how
the system operates to isolate IBOs from their normal support system
to take advantage of them by selling them BSMs. The BSMs are the
source of the vast majority of income claimed by the higher up "pins"
and practically the exclusive source of income for the "kingpins."
The system rigorously enforces a method of worship of the upline
called "edification" as noted in the Postma memo. Very little has
changed since this memo was written in 1983 except that information
about the "true" business of Amway was made public on the Internet in
1996-1997. The individual who culled through court records to
collect documents and open Amway up to public scrutiny was Sidney
Schwartz. Taking a page from Scientology, Schwartz was repeatedly
sued by Amway for exercising his First Amendment rights. Another
critic, Phil Kearns (author of the Jonestown account "People's
Temple, People's Tomb") also wrote a book about Amway, "Fake it 'til
you make it" and was likewise harrassed into silence.

For more information see:

http://www.amquix.info

http://www.quixtarblog.com and its forum

http://www.mlmsurvivor.com

For a discussion of the ethics of the Amway business and the truth
behind its operation, the following site is a collection of essays by
a former Amway "diamond" level distributor:

http://www.formerdiamond.com