Brig Hart found evangelical Christianity and success in multilevel marketing at the same time. Today, the top distributor for Utah-based MonaVie’s nutritional fruit juice has a mansion in Florida, a Lamborghini and a Rolls-Royce.
He’s probably the wealthiest multilevel distributor in the world, a few years ago earning more than $600,000 a month.
The state of supplements » This is another in a series of occasional stories about Utah as the nation’s multilevel marketing capital amid criticism of nutritional product companies that rely on independent distributor networks. Read other stories in the series at sltrib.com/topics/supplements.
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Utah is a hub of multilevel, or network, marketing, in which independent distributors earn commissions based on the number of people they recruit, who in turn get others to join. But Hart is the rare example among them of someone who makes it big. Really, really, really big.
"I don’t know if I’m the top networker," Hart said in a recent interview by phone from Jacksonville, Fla., where he lives. "Shoot, I don’t think I’ve done anything. But I am probably the highest-paid, earning more commissions that any person on planet Earth."
Hart credits God for his success in recruiting more than 2 million people for his "downline" after he came together with a group of mostly Mormons to build a fountain of wealth. But he also has used questionable health claims about the MonaVie juice and he admits that the industry’s high rate of distributor turnover means the game is all about constant recruiting to replace those who leave.
Brig Hart is very good at that and his riches help explain why so many people are attracted to the promises of multilevel marketing, despite near impossible odds of becoming wealthy like him.
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"I came to know the Lord" » Hart was born to a middle-class family in Florida. After high school, the son of an alcoholic father went into the Marine Corps. Once out, he opened a series of a surf shops in Florida, but around 1978 the enterprises were in financial trouble, and Hart says he was drinking and doing drugs.
It was then that Hart said he became sold on Amway, the direct seller of consumer products and the original MLM (multilevel marketer). Still, he was idle for months after.
"But in that year and three months, I had a spiritual conversion," he said in the interview to promote a new book, Why Not You, Why Not Now? "I came to know the Lord, kind of turned my life around, away from the drugs and alcohol and riotous living."
Over the next 19 years, Hart said, he "made history in the industry."
After joining Amway in 1978, he produced $5.5 billion in sales, and made more than $100 million himself in one 12-year period, Hart said.
"Before God, Brig was a long-haired, hippy-type surfer, broke and going to hell," he said. "And after I came to know the Lord, I’m [still] in the same business — I can do no wrong."
Despite his success, Hart is bitter about Amway. He left in 2000 after he battled the company and high-level distributors in court over what he alleged were efforts to deny him profits from an ancillary business, the sales to distributors of "tools," such as recordings of inspirational talks, business-building materials and pay-to-attend meetings.
In March 2008, Amway sued Hart and other distributors who had left for MonaVie, alleging they violated contracts or lured away distributors with false claims about MonaVie’s products. The suit was settled late last year; terms were not disclosed.
"Amway was jealous," Hart said of the lawsuit. "They’re embarrassed that I left. I left because they’re an illegitimate company. They don’t pay their distributors. It’s a falsehood. It’s the worse compensation plan on planet Earth."
He said that his generation of $350 million sales a year netted him less than $1 million in annual commissions.
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