From Jim Rivas
First, a little about me. I have a joint advanced degree in Systems Engineering and Printing/ Publishing from a very prestigious upstate New York University. I have owned several successful traditional businesses where I serviced fortune 500 clients for most of the last 15 years. I hold the intellectual property rights to several innovative software systems still in use in the Trade Show Industry.
I got involved in EPI because I am disabled due to a serious accident I was involved in back in 1999. I received 3 spinal fractures, underwent 6 surgeries, 2 years of recovery and simply could not travel any more as required to service my high end clients. When I got involved in EPI it was because of the extraordinary product value, and because the business was capitalizing on some very significant Internet trends. Since starting my EPI business, I have conducted myself with the very highest standards of ethics and professionalism.
All of the information I am providing for this rebuttal can be verified as fact, unlike most of the claims in this post which are opinion. Opinions from a person that is now working for our competition and is motivated to make these posts because I am the Top producer in the world in the EPI business. Nothing like attacking the leader. It goes with the territory.
In order to properly answer the length of these allegations let me first state that the individual that made this post is lying with the very first statement. Jack, enrolled in EPI in December 2005, after calling me, Jack enrolled in the EPI program on his own free will. I never called him to try to convince him to join, not once. He said he had thoroughly researched Emerald Passport was completely satisfied with the product, and business model. I told Jack up front (and I have the document in writing to prove it) that this was a real business and that he would have to advertise to be successful. Jack proceeded to tell me that he would advertise after he started making money (I have this in writing from him also). He had already been in the business 2 weeks at this point and accepted his product. He did not once ever request a refund, and he did not once engage in the business.
He did call me for a scheduled strategy session, and I explained what he needed to do to get his business in to profits; that he would need to speak with people and introduce them to the business if he was to engage in the referral marketing side. His other choice was to strictly market the Product, the Passport to Prosperity to end users. Keep in mind in our business; Jack got to see the Passport to Prosperity before he elected to purchase it. He paid zero dollars to become a distributor, as we do not require anyone to purchase anything to become and Emerald Passport Distributor. But Jack wanted my coaching and training program, so he chose to enroll with me.
Also keep in mind that Jack got a 30+ page written business plan when he enrolled with me that spelled out exactly what I did to start my business in great detail, and what he should do to duplicate that. He also had a 4 day right of cancellation period that he did not take advantage of. So if he did not like the Passport to Prosperity as he claims, or my training, he should have simply requested his money back and moved on with his life.
After doing nothing in the business for 2 months, he requested to be transferred to another director claiming that I was not accessible. Again that is totally unfounded because I am accessible on team training call every day, as well as for scheduled appointments. Jack knew this because I post my schedule every week to my team members. I have been very successful in Emerald Passport because of the excellent Service and Support I provide. You can verify this by reviewing the testimonials on my website.
After 2 months, Jack had made a statement that I was not supporting the company marketing system. It was totally incorrect, I completely supported it and advised him that I could teach him how to use it, and would teach him how to use it. I had made several hundred thousand dollars using the company systems. But I had created my own marketing system that was producing better results. He was offered both options.
Bottom line is that Jack had some kind of personality clash with me that I never understood because he made several false and defamatory statements to EPI's officials about me after I released him.
My personal opinion is the Jack had another agenda all together because he never once asked for a refund, and never once did any activity with his business. He had 4 days to review the product her purchased from me, plenty of time to dig into it actually, yet did not request a refund. If it was as bad as he claims in his post then, why would he keep it?
To make the claim that I am scammer or "Scammed" is completely false constitutes a defamatory and totally unsupportable statement by Jack. He purchased a product from me, it was delivered under terms. His purchase did not constitute a business opportunity of any sort. He also chose to become a distributor for EPI and entered into a contract with me to mentor, train, and coaches him.
He even went and made several post on other message boards under the alias "Kaiser Soze", putting a modified picture of me on his post with a rifle cross hair over my head. The picture had been taken from a Christmas card I sent him. On one post in-particular (and I can provide the exact post), Jack committed the equivalent of a federal crime by using a public medium to personally threaten my life. I think on this basis alone, you should remove any posts he has made using your forum. Please contact me for the support on the personally threatening post.
Jack also associates me with Liberty League in his post. Please be advised that I have never been involved in Liberty League in any capacity. I got involved with EPI instead of Liberty League because EPI had a real product with extensive marketable value. I have many product only clients that paid full retain for the Financial Literacy Package.
Emerald Passport's world headquarters are located in the World Trade Center in Panama City Panama, a major international financial, banking, and commerce center. Panama also has an extraordinary business climate and internet infrastructure. It really is a great place to host a global internet business. Being headquartered there also keeps our cost down so we can offer extraordinary value for the price.
My responses to Jack's list of supposed facts are as follows.
1) There is over a 90% chance that any new business will fail in the first 3 years from startup. Internet business and home based businesses are not exempt from this. There is no guarantee of success from either the company or from me as the mentor trainer. Business success depends upon the development of the distributor as an entrepreneur and the hard work and de3dication of that entrepreneur. Jack knew from my written disclosure and training document that he was enrolling with EPI, indicating that he wanted to start an EPI business. He never got started. I have no record of his ever purchasing any advertising from our co-opt and her certainly never brought me a client for a 3-way.
2) Jack chose to join with me after seeing the disclaimer on my JimRivas.com website that clearly says that it is HIS responsibility to get back with the person that introduced him to the business. That I was not in the business of taking other ID's prospects. Jack did not disclose to me that he had spoken with someone else already. Who is the one with the lack of character here? I have my website up there to promote EPI and for my prospects to see when they go out on Google. AS far has his smoke and mirrors statement, tell that to the hundreds of people that are making multiple six figure income in our program, and to all of the happy product clients out there.
3) Jack's statement constitutes a direct defamatory remark with no support to back up his statements. I thought this website held people to some form of Burdon of proof. I am sure my response will be. My income is well documented by the company. Jack does not understand the compensation plan very well. To generate the $800K + only required that I enroll 162 direct distributors. The rest come from referrals and Phase 2 upgrades. And those numbers only happen when people succeed. 70% of my business is Phase 2 or $4500 commissions. Again Jack does not know his facts very well.
4) The Passport to Prosperity is clearly not re-gritted Carlton Sheets. It is a complete original. There is nothing out there like it. The courses are the Emerald Passport brand and the company spent millions of dollars paying professors, other professional advisors and industry consultants to develope the content. The Passport to Prosperity is a condensation of Financial Literacy and personal development information into a knowledge platform. But rmember, Jack saw the product before he bought it, and he had 4 days to review it and request a refund. Even when he left the business is a bitter manner he still did not request a refund. My guess is that he extracted the value of the system, and the records indicate that he in fact downloaded it to his computer using special software. It was good enough for him to spend the hours it took to download the information so his statements are completely false and lack any credibility. I am not sure what credentials Jack has to put a value on the Passport to Prosperity, but our courses have been independently valued at over $7,500; the cost of attaining comparable information on today's equivalent market. If it was so bad he should have returned it.
5) Again Jack was not in EPI for 6 months, he was only in for 2 months. And it is really hard to get people to spend $1400 when you are not talking to any people trying to market the product. My results on the other hand, as well as many others's are that when presented to the right market, the $1295 is an insignificant price to pay for the knowledge. I mean really, a college English class cost $1200 - $1600. The Passport to Prosperity contains over 120 hours of proprietary material; and you get to see if before you purchase it. How much more forthcoming can a company be than that.
And any business person knows that it takes effort and resources to get a business up and running; especially if you have never run one before. We are completely forthcoming in our disclosure about what it takes to be successful in the business. We even provide a business plan in writing for new associates. A business plan that has been used to grow a $1,000,000 per year plus Emerald Passport businesses. Again, read the testimonials on my website to see what many people wrote about the training program and documentation.
6) One of the most difficult things to teach a new entrepreneur is marketing. I created my lead co-opt program so that new associates could have access to high quality leads that were exclusive to each purchaser (unlike lead company leads) and were generated from very highly placed Google Adwords advertising. Anyone that knows anything about Google Adwords know that it is very expensive to put your ads up in the top 6 which is where our co-opt ads typically are. I disclose my costs to the co-opt participants on a regular basis, and when costs drop, like they did recently, lead costs to the participants dropped too. But I should point out that this lead program is totally optional. Every new distributor has a choice of how to acquire leads, but history has shown that the leads from our co-opt are the very best that you can purchase because they are actually generated the same way you would your own organic advertising. Anyone that knows direct advertising, knows it is expensive, but it also produces the best quality prospect. Most new distributors simply would not have access to these kinds of leads if it were not for the co-opt. The co-opt has made many people into 6 figure earners before they had to worry about learning their own advertising. We encourage all associates to learn how to do their own advertising, once they are in profits and have the time to devote to it. However, it has been my experience that many people prefer to just out-source this activity and are making big money using the $18 leads. In our pay plan, the numbers work out just fine. I built by business on $20 - $30 leads. You have to talk to far less people when you are talking to more qualified people.
I see a 20/20 interview in the future after hundreds of millionaires have been made in this program because they took advantage of huge emerging trends that are building in the marketplace. I have already been featured in a cover story of an industry publication, Home Business Connection, April 2006. You can see the article and cover by visiting my website.
7) Kasier's (oops Jack's) statement's here show his TRUE agenda. He is an angry person, angry at his inability to produce results for himself in life. The only problem for Jack is that defamation of character is a violation of civil law. When you make defaming comments about someone, with the clear intent to do just that as you so graciously point out in this statement, you open yourself up for legal action.
But think about it, look at his anger, it is probably that anger that actually prevents him from any success because people don't like to do business with angry people. Would you do business with someone that is bitter and angry. You would not. Perhaps Jack thought that he was entitled to make money just because he purchased (and kept) the Passport to Prosperity. Truth be told, he could simply use the Real Estate Course, or Forex course to recover his $1295 easily. Or just go to the insurance module and negotiation training module and reduce your insurance costs 30% this year. That will probably pay for your purchase price.
If you are seeking prosperity, keep in mind, you have to listen to those people that have the kind of prosperity you want, in order for you to learn how to attract that kind of prosperity into your life. You cannot listen to underachievers like Jack (Kaiser). If I ever did anything to personally offend you Jack, please accept my apology. I am running a business, and sometimes people mistake my business only approach as something else. I also have also encountered those that think I do not deserve the kind of prosperity I have attained through hard work because all of the people I coached did not succeed. Well if being coached guaranteed success, then I guess all football players would be in the pro-bowl, or that everyone with a CPA would become a millionaire. No it is what the individual does with the coaching that will produce (or not produce) the desired result.
8) I doubt EPI will ever be shut down because of our product quality and very high ethical standards of operations. The company takes ethics very seriously. The home business industry does bring out some unscrupulous people that need to be monitored, and in some cases banned from being in business. AS far as Jack's comment's about Panama, he is quoting 25 year old material. Panama today is a thriving international business community. It's good enough for Federal Express, Proctor and Gamble, Coca Cola, Adams and Reese, and many other fortune 500 companies to locate their international headquarters in Panama. In fact all of the company's I mentioned are located in the World Trade Center in Panama, the same building as EPI's home office. I guess we shouldn't do business with companies in Singapore or Taiwan either. Come on! How about a real argument. And again, Jack you chose to get involved with EPI KNOWING the company's headquarters were in Panama. It did not seem to bother you when you had profits on your mind.
9)The number's don't lie, Jack you are right. The problem is that you don't know them because you actually never generated any. You cannot throw any generic "lead" counts without factoring quality of leads and lead source. Plus you have to figure the experience of the distributor. When a distributor is new they have to learn our system and get comfortable talking to people on the phone. Most people that join have not done that before. That's why they require coaching. That's why we provide extensive training and coaching. I'll tell you a couple of numbers. I did not enroll a single person from my first 100 leads when I stared by 6 weeks in the business. By 1 year later, I had enrolled 9 out of my first 10. You see when you are building a real business with a real client base, it takes time to forge relationships. Plus the timing has to be right for the customer. We never control whether the timing is right for the customer, so if you are building your business, you simply keep building your potential client base. And then, as the clients start reaching their right buying time, they step forward to get started. It does work like that. But we do no chasing of prospects or hyping them up or hard closing them. Our sales approach is that of tour guides, we take people through for a look. Then get their questions answered. If the business is a fit, then it is a fit. If not then it is not. Nothing lost.
To address the other aspect of Jack's ridiculous statements (and Jack I thought you were a business consultant so you know the right answer here, do you know a business that has zero overhead that is actually a business. Why is it so incredible to think that there might be overhead costs? With my team though, if you are using the co-opt, you don't need websites, and your only overhead is your phone system ($30 a month with inbound 800 number) and you advertising budget. This is a very low overhead business. In fact all you need is a phone and an internet connection (with computer of course) and you are in business.
10) EPI and Liberty League are totally unrelated. But I guess Jack is an expert at Liberty League to. Did he also join Liberty League?
Closing remarks
Jack, watch you language, your anger is showing again. And again, you don't know your numbers or what you are talking about. How could you? You never even worked the business. You are making statements as fact without any support or even a basis for support. And you give your real agenda away with your personal attack comments. I think the people reading your story are smarter than that and can see your true motivation. I really believe you are a competitor just taking cheap shots. That's unfortunate because you may be depriving some people the opportunity to change their lives. We know you aren't interested in that, but other's are. Anyone interested, I can give you a long list of personal and professional references.
If you are looking for a real home business, do your due diligence. Beware the person that is always doing a new deal. BE careful. Some bad people give this industry a bad name. I, Jim Rivas, am not one of them. I invite you to find out for yourself. Since all of my contact information will get filtered out of this response, just go ononline and and type in my name.
Jim Rivas
sorry, …allowing you to give a competitors name would instigate others to just file against their competition, to only come back later to suggest their company… your comments on this policy are welcome! CLICK here to see why Rip-off Report, as a matter of policy, deleted either a phone number, link or e-mail address from this Report.
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