"The Birth of Equinox"

March 2000
By a former NSA Distributor

I am a twenty-nine year old woman with a high school education, but have an entrepreneurial spirit. I believe greatly in the "American Dream".

Eleven years ago I was in a car accident, I broke my neck and was partially paralyzed on the left side. After about a year passed my husband (at the time) was searching the want ads for a job. He ended up at a "meeting" for, at that time, NSA.

He came home very excited about this new "opportunity." He took me to the office the next day to see exactly what he was so excited about. The upbeat atmosphere and the appearance of wealth was very exciting and addicting. We ended up buying the Supervisor position for $3,000.

Funny how it seems that the Equinox approaches haven't changed over the years. We were told the same things that everyone else has wrote, bring in your friends and family, we'll build your sales force, etc., et.

Right about that same time I was settling a lawsuit related to my accident for an undisclosed amount of money (pretty substantial). All the Equinox people (e.g. our "up line"), by this time were our good friends. Because they were so close to us they knew the financial circumstances. Subsequently we were deeply sucked in.

After being involved for about six months and attending many seminars we still hadn't made a dime and/or sold out our original purchased product. Then the whole company was buzzing with a supposedly huge secret! But if you wanted to be let in on this secret before everyone else knew--you had to attend another seminar. This is when we learned about the "birth of Equinox."

After that we were talked into opening an office--the start up costs were very high. After all, according to the Equinox mindset we had to appear wealthy, even though the money wasn't coming from any Equinox profits. We felt like we would do almost anything to gain any recognition from Bill Gouldd and Shari Sharman--they were portrayed as gods and we idolized them.

It makes me sick now just to think about the lengths we went to! We footed the bills for the office, solely, for almost a year. And lets just say that many people could buy a very nice home for that one year expense.

No one else could afford the desk rent.

But again the mindset was not to look like a failure--especially to Bill Gouldd. If we couldn't keep our office up and running--then he wouldn't waste his time coming to our area to do his seminars!

They used us as "success stories" because we fit the profile. We had the appearance of success, but didn't tell people where our money really came from. People saw us as an example of entrepreneurs in their in twenties who made it big through Equinox. After all, how else would twenty year olds get that kind of money?

I personally know what the mantra "fake it 'till you make it" really means. I was there faking it and I also know that many "Round Table" members, were doing the same. All the time these people were being portrayed as making millions. Whenever they came to town they stayed with me and were actually really just struggling to make it.

Our upline once asked us to buy him a Rolex just to add to this illusion. He stated that it would make us more money too, because the people we brought in would look at him and know he was making money, which would add to our status by association.

My Equinox fantasy began to fade and reality started to become clearer. But the money from my settlement that should have taken care of me for my remaining life was almost gone. I saw for myself though first hand how the money supposedly earned through Equinox was most often a total illusion.

The seminars at Equinox are totally designed to keep you in and alienate anyone who is not involved in the business. You are told to get anyone in that you care about because if they are not involved you won't have time for them anyway and besides they might influence you through their negativity.

I will say this, I got to see most of the country (at my own expense) and I did learn a lot from the advanced seminars about how to deal with people. But the way we were taught to use the information was to manipulate. This is a shame, because those teachings could have been used more positively and perhaps benefited a lot of people. Instead they were used for personal greed!

I learned a VERY expensive lesson. Over a three year span between the office, product, the appearance, traveling the country for seminars, etc.--I lost more money than many people may make in their lifetime! We were the "perfect" recruits and they took full advantage of us.

I wish I could have read something like this web site page back then. Hopefully, someone reading about my experiences will learn a lesson without loosing so much money!

Copyright © Rick Ross