Get Started Login. Up next Kathleen Booth. Kane Simms. Stacey Higginbotham. Jim Kwik. Marketing - boss - Level. Should It Be? With Prisc Marketing - Cheung - Attribution. If you did enjoy my writing, why not join the thousands of other good looking work at home seekers like yourself and become a subscriber my little blog by clicking here.
I'll send you more reviews like this and other ways to make money online without being shafted. I appreciate you taking the time to read my yapping but now it's your turn to let me know what you think down below in the comment section. Post your thoughts, feedback or request for reviews you want to see down below in the comment section. I look forward to hearing from you. Don't leave a brother hanging. WUN went bankrupt months ago and the only ones who made money were the top earners red flag and a big fat NO.
I totally agree with you Eddy!!! My girlfriend said to join her but I said heck no!!! I would think WUN would have a tough time getting a lot of takers. As everyone has pointed out, there are lots of free discount and coupon programs on line. Thank you Eddy for doing all that you do. But who knows. It means a lot that you trust me and the advice I provide. Thanks for chiming in and sharing your feedback. I really appreciate it and always love talking to you guys.
Thanks for keeping us safe! Hmmm, maybe OUterBanks or O, should give you your own show! Giving you your props! Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam.
Learn how your comment data is processed. What is WakeUpNow. Wake Up Now Complaints Okay so I've provided you a very high level and over simplified overview of the company. The Math Doesn't Add Up. So is WakeUpNow. LOL Speak to you soon! And he couldn't find any where the CEO was paid even half of what Horowitz made. Now, if you just own a few shares of a company's stock and you think the CEO is overpaid, there isn't much you can do.
But if you own more, well, that's different. And by the fall of , Tim owned , shares. His stake was worth more than half a million dollars. And it turned out, Tim had an ally in this fight, a guy with a little more experience, a guy who ran a hedge fund. I'm Andrew Shapiro. I'm president and portfolio manager of Lawndale Capital Management.
He and Tim didn't work together directly. They had very different styles. Andrew was a by-the-book investor, fond of semi-obscure military allusions. With what we do, we deploy what I call the Powell Doctrine of investments. And I try to take on targets where I can mount overwhelming force. For years, Andrew had been arguing that the CEO was grossly overpaid.
That's more than twice what the entire company made in profits over that time. Sometimes, when people complain about CEO pay, they talk about it as if the money's coming out of the pockets of ordinary workers.
That is not how Tim and Andrew see it. The overpaid CEO's taking money out of the shareowner's pocket. You're not in it because, hey, wouldn't it feel great if CEOs weren't paid so much more than everyone else? This is why, if you think CEOs are overpaid rich guys, your best hope for changing things may be other rich guys, rich guys with enough money to buy up a bunch of stock and take on the company to try and cut the CEO's pay, in hopes of becoming even richer themselves.
We tried to get him. We had a bunch of talks with the company's lawyer. In the end, Horowitz declined to be interviewed. But because this is a public company, there are plenty of recordings of him.
Public companies have what are called "quarterly earnings calls" for investors, really anyone who wants to listen. Good day, everyone. Thank you for holding. Today's conference will begin with a presentation and, then, a question and The operator starts the call. And then, here is the man himself, Richard Horowitz. I've listened to a lot of earnings calls like this over the years. Usually, they are incredibly dull. Analysts from big banks asking super specific things about the company's balance sheet.
And on some of these calls, there are only two people phoning in with questions, two people who feel the CEO is grossly overpaid, Andrew and Tim. They get to ask the CEO whatever they want. Here's one exchange.
Thank you. Our next question is from Timothy Stabosz. Your line is Tim is asking about this key thing that's used to determine a CEO's salary. It's called a compensation study. It looks at what CEOs at comparable companies are earning. And Tim wanted details. So we're still waiting on a report from that outside firm, right? I can't tell you. I don't know what the comp committee-- I mean, I don't-- I can't answer that question.
I don't have the knowledge to answer that question. I'm not being evasive. I just don't know the answer, Tim. I'm sorry. Well, you know that there's a firm that's-- we've certainly announced that there's a firm that's doing an analysis, right? Tim, I can't comment any further. And this is a Q2 conference call. So please, please, please, Tim, and Andrew and anybody else, please, let's keep the comments to the Q2 numbers. Well, that's fine. But executive salaries are relevant to the future profitability and whatnot.
I can't comment any further, Tim. Any other questions about the Q2? Well, it would have been helpful if you would have simply said, we're not going to talk about executive compensation, period.
Because that's what you're essentially saying, right? I'll get back in queue. I'm frustrated right now, Richard. Our next question is from Andrew Shapiro.
Your line is open. A CEO's salary is set by a company's board of directors. And Shapiro suspected Richard Horowitz had packed the board with his cronies, people who paid him more than he deserved.
So Andrew hired a private detective and did some digging himself. He discovered that, in fact, several board members played golf at the same country club as the CEO. Nothing illegal or maybe even surprising about these guys blowing into the same country club.
But still, what would General Colin Powell do? He'd get them off the board. Andrew suggested several potential new board members. And Tim, Tim nominated himself. Getting new people on a board is tough. There is a vote. But in most cases, the existing board members get to decide who's on the ballot. It's as if members of Congress were the ones who decided who got to run for Congress.
So Tim and Andrew went to the company's annual meeting to try to convince the board to put their candidates on the ballot. It actually was quite crowded. Every seat at the table was full. And there was the paid-for advisers standing around the periphery of the table, in the room, but along the wall. Oh, it's not awkward or not. I go into these rooms with the distinct view that I am an owner of this business and you members of the board of directors are my agents.
And you work for me. You don't work for Mr. You don't work for management. Management works for you, the board. And the board, you work for me and all of the other shareholders. The board did not seem immediately swayed by this argument. And it's easy to imagine how this whole thing might feel on the other side if you're, say, Richard Horowitz, the CEO; if you've got two guys who have never even worked in the tool business telling you how they think the business that your father built up should be run and how much you should be paid and who should be on your board.
For Tim Stabosz, what had started out as a rational investment, something just based on numbers, had become emotional, had become something hard to let go of. At some point in this whole fight, Tim's letters to the company took on a different tone. He got rid of the lawyer who'd been vetting them.
Some of the letters start to have words in all caps. Some start to feel weirdly intimate. One is addressed just to Richard and uses phrases like, "I was at the end of my rope," and, "goodness knows, I tried a different course. There was a change on the board. The two guys who played golf at the same country club as the CEO stepped down from the committee that set the CEO's pay.
Also, one of the people Andrew had recommended for the board got put on the ballot and elected. And a year and a half later-- if you haven't noticed, this is an incredibly long process-- it finally happened, the thing that almost never happens. It actually made the news, at least a little corner of the news, an article in a publication called "Institutional Investor. Tim Stabosz, of course, was elated about the pay cut. Well, it felt fantastic.
It felt great. It felt like I had served to effect this change, that I was an agent of change. That feeling did not last. It turns out, that new contract also made it easier for Richard Horowitz to get a bigger bonus. And in , even though Horowitz's base pay had been cut, he actually ended up making more money than he had the previous year.
And then, earlier this year, Richard Horowitz got a raise. And they also raised the bonus percentages, so he would be able to earn even more on the bonus. The company only let us talk to one person on its side of things. But it was someone we definitely wanted to hear from, the board member that Andrew Shapiro had recommended. We met him one afternoon at a business club at the top of a tall building in Philadelphia. His name is Howard Brownstein. And he told us he thinks Richard Horowitz's pay is reasonable.
Yeah, I would say to you that, based on the work that the comp committee did, as they reported it to us and as we listened to it, that the compensation is within the realm of reasonableness for our company and how it's doing and the money we make for the shareholders. We asked Brownstein about that compensation study that Tim asked about on the conference call, the study that compares Richard Horowitz's pay to the CEOs of other companies.
And we read Brownstein this letter Tim wrote, asking the board to release details from the report. Tim writes, I demand, in all caps. And then, at the end, also in caps, I have waited long enough. I am done waiting. Well, Mr.
Stabosz obviously hasn't been able to find the Caps Lock key on his typewriter. Look, generally in my world, when somebody demands something, it's because they have a legal right to it. He may say he demands it, but the fact is, he doesn't have a right to it. So what he really meant when he said, I demand it, is I really, really want it. I get it. You can't have it. Sure he is. But the owners of the company only have the rights that they have, the rights the law gives them. It doesn't give them more than that.
The company is called Equilar. They do a lot of work for companies who are trying to figure out how much to pay their CEOs. Here is what Equilar found. There were 13 companies in that group. In other words, according to the study, Richard Horowitz is one of the highest paid or the highest paid CEO for what he does.
Tim Stabosz lost. And when you've been in something that long, it can be hard to know when to walk away. That's a good question. I hadn't thought about that. Um, yeah, yeah. I want the company to know that I'm not going anywhere. Well, I mean, I'm trying to think about what giving up means. I can tell you what giving up looks like. After we talked to Tim this summer, he had a momentary cash crunch.
He had to sell all his shares. The company bought them from him. Now, he has even less power to do anything about it. Now, Tim Stabosz is just like everybody else. Get it for free at npr. Act 3, Sleep No More. OK, so to end today's program about waking up, let's leave the world of metaphor completely.
So we're not talking about waking up to a new way of seeing the world or waking up to the things you need to do to change your life or waking up other people to the issue of overpaid CEOs, or whatever issue.
I'm talking about just waking up, just waking up, pure and simple. That shouldn't be hard, right? You do it every day. Springfield, Oregon, Monday morning during finals week, Morgan Peach, a grad student hears the alarm that's supposed to wake him up. And he shuts it off. This happens again at You get the idea, , Finally, 9 o'clock, his girlfriend, Angela Evancie, who made this recording, steps in.
He doesn't get up. Besides an exam, he has two research papers to turn in and 55 exams and papers to grade. Angela sees him struggle everyday with waking up. But she thought, this week-- this week-- for once, he would do it when the alarm sounds, because he has so much to do. Tuesday, it goes off first at , then seven more times. Wednesday, pretty much the same deal.
At some point, Angela says to her sleeping boyfriend People can be surprisingly articulate when they're barely awake sometimes. Wednesday night, Morgan tells Angela that the next morning, Thursday, he actually is going to have to get up. The geography paper's due at noon.
Yeah, could you set the alarm for tomorrow? I'd like to get up at and work on my research papers and finish them. The alarm went off. And he reset it for I really thought he was going to do it this morning.
Sometime near AM, they finally have this conversation. And then, still lying in bed. He explains the whole thing perfectly. It would be impossible to say this better. Our senior producer is Julie Snyder. Production help from JP Dukes. Seth Lind is our operations director. Emily Condon's our production manager.
Elise Bergerson's our office manager. Adrianne Mathiowetz runs our website. Editing help today from Joel Lovell. Research help from Christopher Swetala and Benjamin Anastas. Music help from Damen Graef. Our website, thisamericanlife. Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. Skip to main content.
Full episode. Prologue Ira Glass Someone who works with our radio show, Bianca Giaever, went to this presentation at Columbia University a while back where two people onstage puzzled over this thing they had found online called Wake Up Now.
Woman Why do some people live their lives in black and white while others seem to live in vibrant color? Ira Glass This is a video that was on WakeUpNow's website, which just looked like a kind of generic corporate-y website. Ira Glass This is a video of a bunch of young people hanging out on the beach. Man 2 WakeUpNow is one of the most legitimate companies out there. Brian Reed We honestly didn't know. Brian Reed Yeah, exactly that. Bianca Giaever I mean, in so many of these WakeUpNow videos, we could tell people we're pitching something.
Ira Glass So what is this? Bianca Giaever This is a video of a guy who calls himself Panama. Panama What are you doing? Bianca Giaever Yeah, and we went to try and figure out what this was.
Brian Reed Yeah, and what we eventually found out is that it's something called "network marketing. Brian Reed I'm a little embarrassed to admit this. Bianca Giaever We talked to dozens of participants. Woman 1 Why do WakeUpNow? Bianca Giaever What is it? I don't even know what it is. Woman 1 Oh, it's a software company.
Bianca Giaever It's a software company, you said? Brian Reed For the longest time, I couldn't even figure out what to call the hundreds of people at this conference. Brian Reed And the product is? Man 1 Awaken Thunder. Brian Reed What's Wake and Thunder? Brian Reed What is that? Man 1 --an energy drink. An energy drink. Brian Reed Oh, so you're selling an energy drink. Man 1 We're not selling it.
You can buy it. Brian Reed OK. Man 1 Well, we don't have to buy the product. Brian Reed But are you selling an energy drink, though? Man 1 No, we don't have to sell it. Man 2 The company offers it. Man 2 The company offers it for you. Bianca Giaever So there are products. Woman 2 Yeah, I mean, I don't like saying "selling.
Bianca Giaever Do they pay you money in exchange? Woman 2 No, not really. Man 3 We have the Trivanis. Brian Reed What are those? Man 3 They're like lotion, skin products. Woman 3 And then, we have the coffee. Man 4 We have cyber-protection. Man 5 Have you ever wanted to learn another language? Bianca Giaever There's a vacation club.
Man 5 For example, I'm going to Florida. Brian Reed There's tax software. Bianca Giaever But in this sea of hard-to-understand information and unrelated products, one thing everyone seemed to agree on, WakeUpNow had a mission.
Man 7 WakeUpNow actually is a financial wellness company, showing people how to save, manage, and make money. Brian Reed In fact, so many people recited this mission so precisely, it was actually a bit weird. Man 8 We'll save money, manage money, and make money. Man 9 Save money, make money, and manage your money. Man 10 Save, manage, and make money. Man 11 Save money, manage money, and make more money.
Man 12 Save, manage, and make money at the same time. Brian Reed It took us all day and, honestly, quite a bit more research afterwards, including signing up ourselves-- which was really complicated-- to piece together how WakeUpNow works.
Brian Reed I know, this may sound like a pyramid scheme. Bianca Giaever For now though, WakeUpNow members are charging forth, recruiting more and more people into the company and, apparently, getting paid a boatload to do it. Brian Reed This guy's pointing at a group of otherwise ordinary looking people. Brian Reed K a month?
Man 13 K a month just walked by you, under years-old. Man 14 This company is making history actually. Bianca Giaever People loved pointing out all the 6-figure-earner magnates among us. Bianca Giaever His name? Man 17 See More Green! Man 16 See More! Bianca Giaever A woman near me says, he's a regular dude. Woman 5 You would never know. Woman 6 You'd never know, right? Brian Reed Another thing we encountered at the conference was a repulsion to something so unsavory, so unseemly, that WakeUpNow's emcee for the day couldn't even bear to speak the word aloud.
Man 17 There are so many people in a J-O-B that are bored. Brian Reed J-O-B. Man 17 When you go into a store and you run into an employee with a J-O-B, and you can see it in their face. Bianca Giaever This dissatisfaction with 9-to-5s ran deep through the crowd. Woman 7 It's a soul-sucking, like, life-destroying, "sit at a desk all day and get fat" waste of life.
Bianca Giaever She told me that as soon as her income from WakeUpNow inches above her current salary, she's outta there. Brian Reed Of course, lots of jobs do suck. Bianca Giaever And we also met people who had actually done it.
Antonio Johnson Antonio "Unemployable" Johnson. Bianca Giaever He quit his job two years ago. Now, he has a motto. Antonio Johnson Friends don't let friends get jobs. Brian Reed It's clear why lots of people would want to leave their current lousy jobs. Bianca Giaever This is the beginning of the main event, what was billed as a business presentation that stretched on for nearly five hours with more than a dozen speakers. Rob Mcfadden You set up a conference call at AM.
Brian Reed The next step was to get each person on the AM call to bring 10 more people with them to the noon call and, then, to do the exact same thing over again for a 2 o'clock call, all with no mention of what the business actually is.
Rob Mcfadden People care more about how you say something that anything you ever say. Bianca Giaever The fact that they called this event a business presentation was strange, because there was so little actual business discussed. Man 18 And you being here today, I got to give you props. Rob Mcfadden You don't got a dream, you don't have a roadmap. Man 19 See, what is it that drives you? Man 20 I saw a vision to help people. Bianca Giaever This was the aspect of the conference that we really struggled to make sense of, the contrast between this vision of WakeUpNow changing the world, speaking life into people, and the reality of what it seemed like WakeUpNow is actually doing, which is selling energy drinks and giving people discounts on random stuff.
Jordan Harris Now, product announcements, guys. It wouldn't be Bianca Giaever This crystallized during the single most confusing moment of the conference, the big announcement they made in between inspirational speeches. Jordan Harris Nobody else outside this room knows anything about what we're about to talk about.
Brian Reed And what he went on to talk about was coupons. Jordan Harris How many of you guys have smartphones? Brian Reed The big announcement was that you no longer had to print the coupons out. Jordan Harris Let's talk about when it's going to launch. Bianca Giaever After this, Brian and I had to check with each other. Brian Reed The emcee couldn't even move on with the presentation after this, because everyone was so overwhelmed. Emcee Wow, that is-- I'm-- I'm beside myself. Bianca Giaever We left the conference not sure what to think of what we'd witnessed.
Brian Reed And to our surprise, when we interviewed WakeUpNow's Chief Marketing Officer Jordan Harris, the guy who made the coupon announcement, he said that isn't meant to be the company's message. Jordan Harris There's an element of any live event, like we have, where sometimes people get up there and they get excited. Jordan Harris I think, no question. Brian Reed You guys-- like, I don't think you mentioned it aloud at the conference.
Jordan Harris Yeah, we don't mention it aloud. Brian Reed Why not? Jordan Harris --on our website, on every-- eh? Bianca Giaever We told Jordan this wasn't the measured message we left the conference with. Brian Reed Right, but from being at the conference, it just does seem like the messages are not that. Jordan Harris Yeah. Brian Reed The conference we went to was in April. Bianca Giaever A couple weeks ago, we talked to a guy who studies companies like WakeUpNow, Amway and Herbalife and other network marketing companies.
Robert L. Fitzpatrick It's an economic cult. Brian Reed Robert Fitzpatrick says it's not an accident that it took us so long to figure out what WakeUpNow is, that the videos all seem so vague and the website was so confusing about pricing and products when we signed up as a member.
Fitzpatrick The intention to isolate you from other people who are not in the scheme-- you are told to shun doubters, critics, even if they're in your family. Wakeupnow Speaker And then, when you go around your friends and they get uncomfortable, like, you buggin'!
Dream big. Fitzpatrick So isolation-- and the other is a certain requirement of blind faith and obedience. Wakeupnow Speaker This industry-- wrong.
0コメント