This is even sadder than it appears, because it isn't an official Nu-Skin pitch video. These brothers are somewhere in the pyramid, and this is THEIR pitch video to bring in the next level below them. It looks amateur because it is amateur.

“You Turn to Win” As in “make a u-turn away from this video and avoid getting ripped off”

I went to an MLM job interview in 2005. The idea was to sell cellphone service but it required YOU to also get the phone service and then pay $500 for some pamphlets that you then attempt to sell to others. Their claim to fame was they made more money than Microsoft in one single quarter once. Obviously the company went nowhere because that was the only time I ever heard of the company. The weird thing about the marketing tactic was they wanted you to mow other people's lawns to make a sale.

I'm gonna say it was recorded in 1990. The car is a C4 ZR-1 Corvette which was released in 1990. And the book mentioned at around 11:55, which is said to be 8 months at the time, was released in 1989.

I can't tell you how many friends I lost by not joining their MLM/Pyramid Scheme. Funny thing is, they all ended up losing significant money.

Multi-level marketing / pyramid scheme is very clearly illegal in Japan. Amway tried to have business in Japan (in 90s', I believe... maybe they haven't given up) but they couldn't because, fundamentally, their business model is pyramid scheme. How come this is still legal in the US?

I like how the diagram at 17:40 is drawn weirdly to avoid looking like a pyramid.

The video has a peak late 80’s aesthetics. I enjoyed it quite a bit despite a dubious topic. Thanks for publishing!

I once knew someone who got caught up in this. It was like a cult, and kind of creepy

Ten minutes in and I'm ready for my new amazing lifestyle thanks to Nu Skin!

13:45 "you may not have heard of Nutriol but you will". Well now i've heard about it in 2022 from a video from the 1980s.

I was able to decipher the marketing speak and summarize it: “We were tired of our humble lifestyle so we thought long and hard about how to better feed our ego. What we realized is that lying and cheating others to build wealth is incredibly easy if you have no morals. Please help us help you help us in being filthy rich and join us today! Who knows, maybe you could even be a politician someday.”

As someone who god swindled by the same sort of persuasion techniques (how much commission you’ll make, company not having a single sentence describing what they do within their marketing, etc.) this brings back some bad memories. Thankfully I didn’t lose any money, just a day of my time

Ah VHS night is back, with added scam factor, perfect for a Sunday night!

Here's why the Pyramid Scheme never had a chance with me, even if I wanted to: I did not (and still do not) have a large pool of friends, colleagues, family or acquaintances to recruit or sell things to. Besides, none of the people I know have the type of money to spend on such junk or even if they did, they certainly wouldn't need to invest on it.

Remember, it's not a pyramid, it's a triangle, and it's not a "scheme", it's an opportunity. :^)

My parents were involved in this scheme. They would try to get other people to sell Nu Skin products with them. They sank over $1500 dollars ( USD in 1995) in Nu Skin beauty products. I remember a few products: *Coconut scented lotion, Soap, and skin care lotions.*

-Hey you, wanna work in sales? great commissions! -Wow, sounds great! what am I selling? -Yes.

Thank you NuSkin for reminding me of the time when "boomer" refered to a generation from 1946-1964 instead of being an insult

Crank the distortion to 110% jeeze! You gotta love the lower-than-normal video and audio quality, makes me not want to watch or hear whatever they're trying to sell. If they actually had real money they would've hired a real video production crew and made this thing properly.... but then again we know where the money went, all the way to the top!!

BRB, sharing this in my anti-MLM Facebook group

Herbalife was also something like this, wasn’t it? My uncle tried to convince me to join. I of course didn’t fall for it. ;)

"Sounds impossible, It is."

All the MLvM bullshit aside, they had a point: Find the largest group of people and predict their future desires as they grow older. Whole industries are based on this principle today.

In some Digital Betacam cassettes that I was given I found the original camera master tape for a somewhat similar advertising video. A company, that would give you access to price comparisons. And all the money you saved by looking at their price comparisons would make you rich! All for only 99 DM annually! It took them many takes to get everything right. The most revealing moment was when one actor was confused that the script didn't mention that the 99 DM were to be paid annually. The director then told him that he had checked back with the company and they were indeed not supposed to mention that. So in the final edited video it would have seemed like you would have to only pay 99 DM once to get the service. No mention of it being an annual subscription.

Yea! Keep 'em VU meters in the red!

I knew a guy at work who got roped into one of these MLM scams. He was going to give up his engineering job. I tried to convince him that these never work out, but he was hopelessly brainwashed. A couple years later I found out he was back working another job since the MLM didn't work out. It was an Amway Quixtar scheme from about 20 years ago.

It's always neat seeing something from Austin, Texas. Henna Chevrolet is a dealership that still exist.

I had someone try and get me into one of these. Within the first two minutes they were showing a diagram of a pyramid and how the money flow worked. After the video he asked me what I thought. I immediately responded with "It's a pyramid scheme". His smile dropped and he immediately tried to explain how it wasn't. I never got involved and warned my neighbors as there were a high concentration of senior citizens in the neighborhood. Word spread fast and funnily enough, he and his wife moved shortly there after.

That's the usual audio and video quality that I've seen in most of the recorded VHS that I used to rent in early 2000's. A few ones were pretty well recorded directly from DVD's and the audio quality was flawless Dolby Stereo, but most of them in Latin America (including original and official ones) were poorly recorded in that quality, feeding the bad reputation that VHS = Lo-Fi. Sadly, that Nu-Skin adoctrination video is one of that infamous examples of that VHS tapes.

The disclaimer “results not typical” should have stayed through the duration of the tape

How on earth is a company under investigation for 30 years and not shutdown or had someone thrown in prison?

It looks very familiar to tricks we can see on Internet today. Fraud never changes)

36:11 definitely an 80s 'Vette.."money absolutely cannot buy happiness...but it has been known to cause an occasional smile" would have sounded a little classier without the the seat-belt alarm going off

The quality and production of this video reminds me of when my old school was going to be taken apart and a new school was going to be built, the students and faculty decided to do a Goodbye ceremony for the school. It was a full blown show with music and old students and teachers that was performed live, the show really was amazing. A group of "professionals" was ordered to video tape this ceremony and they took students to help with the video taping. Well I was a part of the group and the so called "professionals" screwed it all up us much as possible. They blew out the audio completely so you could not hear anything from the tape and your ears were bleeding and whenever someone spoke you had to turn the volume all the way up. I can forever remember sitting there looking at the VU meters that were not just going on the red but staying on the red. It really is a sad story because the amount of time and effort that was put into the show was wasted by inexperienced people screwing it up, and if I at the time a 15 yo kid, could see these problems I can't imagine how inexperienced and untrained these "professionals" were.

This tape brings my anxiety levels up, mostly from the wierd tangents lol

A modern example of this is essential oil sales. Most people are having trouble selling the oils to anyone outside friends and family. The only way to get the real money is to get more sellers to get distribution packages through you. That's how the pyramid/MLM grows. That's how the top makes money and everyone else suffers. That's by design. How sad.

I remember commercials for SMC with Tom Bosley. You pay like $300 and then were able to buy figurines for like $9 and sell them at flea markets for $30 to $35. Then there was the Carlton Sheets Real Estate infomercials late at night. There was another one where some guy sold subliminal self improvement tapes on cassettes for like $50. Beanie Babies infomercials with some bears going for $1000 each...

Omg I love old scams. Thanks

They did a Good cop bad cop routine, cant help wondering were they both are now....

MLM's were everywhere in 80's and 90's, and unfortunately still thrive. A "long lost friend" contacted me out of the blue during the pandemic to try to sell me Shaklee. Someone else tried to do a hard sell of wine from a wine MLM. I despise all things MLM!

My wife's mother does some amount of Nu Skin. She gives us Nu Skin lotion for free. It's actually not a bad lotion product, but obviously the company is dubious.

I'm a member of the NFL (No Friends Left).

Amway's videos showed gigantic concerts where they had millionaires who already owned hotel chains that were "diamond" level because they used the products in the hotels, not from personal sales.

I'd date this to at least 1993-94. The guy mentions his police career starting in 1979 and ending 13 years later. That and Video Toaster-tastic production qualities. Also, sitting on that C4 Corvette's hood.....triggered.

The Age -wave portion of info is true. I'm gen-x and can see the in commercials that I am now the target demographic for many big ticket items. The music of my youth is in every adversment I hear now it seems.

Holy shit, I found Dennis on LinkedIn! Apparently as of 2015 he was still in network marketing to some capacity though under his own company name. It's literally the only thing on his profile, and I couldn't find his brother. Here's hoping they made it out.

Two problems, ONE: you actually have to go out and SELL the damn product to people, one by one, and then your subs are competing with you, and TWO, the products are organic, and expire, you have to sell the entire allotment before ir goes bad ,otherwise you lose the cost on unsold units. A friend was taken in by Nuskin, he discovered this, and lost big money. The skin care products are basically good stuff, but not in any way unique. The customer can go to a drug store or beauty shop for the same type of thing.

I heard about these brothers from someone named Mark Yarnell, who was a top distributor in Nu Skin. I live in Utah and I'm ashamed at all of the MLMs in this state. It really sank in when the FTC studied 350 MLMs and discovered that 99.3% of distibutors lost money.

Kirby, Rainbow, etc, are MLM's, and have been for decades. Thanks for the video, Kevin.

Gosh. A history lesson on boomers, Miami vice vibes, fast cars, fast hair and fast men. Sign me up!

Again and again, they seek out people who aren't real good at math, accounting, and any semblance of how economics work.

This was recently featured on VCR Party Live. What an awful scam!

The saddest part is that my sister (currently at home with her baby) got approached by one of these scammers, and I had the great chance to see a recently made version of this for selling some kind of bs online course about creating an online business (yes, it sounds stupid, because it is), and they didn't change by anything besides the quality. Just like in this video, after the video ended I still had not seen a single image or clip of the online course they were supposed to sell, nor had any idea how to even get it. Although I had every piece of information about how they can make my dreams come true, and how I could achieve anything I wanted if I just put myself to the work.. Strange. :D

Very interesting Kevin!! Never seen one of these in action but it's funny how sleazy these guys could go.

Shut up and take my 💰😂

U-Turn to Win.. they had it right on the label. ↪

The crazy thing is these companies still exist and people still buy into them. Makeup, speciality foods and supplements, on and on. Penn and Teller have a whole episode on their show Bullshit! that was on showtime about this. The episode is called "easy money" and it's worth watching if you have a streaming service that has the show on it. They break down how much of a joke these companies are. "Multi Level Marketing" = Pyramid Scheme.

Like Amway..

There is actually a real product called New-Skin for skin patches, which I used to use when bowling, although it didn't work very well (which is why I don't use it anymore...I still bowl) - but it was a real product. I'll remember the smell of it forever.

this reminds me somewhat of the Tahitian Noni Juice scam my mother got caught up in during the mid 00's, but she got out of it in less than a year, as as it just became too much of a hassle along with her day job. I'll have to ask her if she still had the promo DVD as it would make for a great scam movie night 🙂

Ah nice a Sunday Video about pyramid schemes and VHS. Nu skin looks like Mary Kay and Tupperware pyramidal schemes...

"...on the 'Cutting Edge'........(more like 'RIPPING OFF')

I remember I was at a gas station about a year ago and this nice handsome young man started talking to me and got into about how well I spoke he said he works with some investors in some cutting edge stuff and he was going to speak to them about getting me in. I unfortunately gave him my number just to see where it went and of course he called me and it got kinda creepy but he asked me “what would you do if you made 2 mil overnight?” The big red flag was he wouldn’t tell about the name of the business or what the actually did. Come to find out it was probably an Amway thing 😂

You should try and find these guys to see if they’d do an interview.I think it would be interesting.Are they billionaires now still doing MLM’s or did they realize it was a scheme and move on?

I had a friend who was always falling for a different pyramid scheme every 6 months. One of em was "X20" they were little pouches like tea bags that had charcoal and a few other things in it to purify the water lol

the Steve Winwood song is so distorted I'd be surprised if the content ID even picked it up lol

This is gold! Are these guys still around?

How come so many MLM's seem to come from Utah/Salt Lake City area?

I remember this and remember someone who tried to sell this to me. I also remember that it didn’t last very long at all.

In college I went to one thoes AMWAY seminars at a church. I felt like a bizzare religious cult, I noped out of that. My friend that invited me isn't active in that any more but his parents are. Even after 15 years. Funny thing shortly after a classmate tried recruiting me to some meetings 2 hours away when the same thing was happening in the same town we lived in.

I barely made it through half of it, the color of the Corvette is really nice.

you bring us the most interesting contect! thank you again Mr. Volkswagen.

Remember the Carlton Sheets No Money Down Real Estate course?

Take a shot every time they say "opportunity".

NuSkin has gone on for so long that John Oliver talked about it

I have a few of those tapes. 2 from mary kay and 2 from melaleuca. they're always fun to find in the thrift store.

The point about boomers doing whatever is needed to maintain themselves as they age is one I arrived at independently around this time. But I invested in the Vanguard Health Care fund, not something like this scam. I think it was the right decision, lol. 🙂

Wow these guys really have BS on tap. Or perhaps they are reading an autoscript. Pyramid selling is the oldest scam in the book.

Loved to see a f/u video of these two; wonder if they still have that rented Corvette?

I feel some pity for people caught up in these schemes in the 80s & 90s when information was harder to come by... How anyone falls for them these days is beyond me. I guess PT Barnum was right.

I want to be a flea in a jar, after seeing this.

4:35 "... but they paid me enough to overlook my doubts."

love the aspect ratio of this video, keep it up being different

Could you possibly make a video or tell us how you convert these tapes to digital?

Pronounced _Nu Skam_

Forex guru also doing the same. Show off cars, money or beside private jet (maybe rented)

The appearance of Tony Clifton would have vastly improved their video.

I don't know if that's the case everywhere, but here in Germany, MLM people are always writing to me on Instagram. They send you a voice message, and say they have discovered your profile somewhere. You would fit perfectly into their team etc. It's embarrassing that this still works nowadays.

@3:43 wow I can't even see his lips moving while he controls the dummy with the red tie. he's good at that!

Still more honest than Washington D.C. Politicians...

Love it! I remember my boss at the time trying to suck me into NSA water filters pyramid scheme. Car qualified in no time. Lol

There are other companies that are direct selling that use this model. Examples of these are Amway, Avon, Herbalife, Tupperware Brands, and many others.

I fast-forwarded into the video in the hope of hearing another John Oliver clip but didn't get one, too bad ! :P As for Nu Skin, I remember my wife and I were invited by a cousin to a "great opportunity", a NS presentation. I didn't know the company by then, but I already knew MLM... Imagine my disappointment when finding out it was just another scam! We should have left as soon as I found out, we didn't, for many reasons. In the end, we agreed to at least buy some products for ourselves just to test their quality. My wife a few days later: "it's not even that great..."

Another Amway................

The audio sounds like flat soda

I have the same Corvette C4 but as a convertible!

Good ol' snake oil salesmen. I never heard of Nu Skin, however, I heard of Avon, and Mary Kay. I forgot Herbalife too.

I always wondered what Ted Bundy did for a day job

The guy wearing the red polo at 7:35 looks like 1980s Steve Jobs, after a few too many burgers 🍔