Botwatch 90!!!! MLM is dying but we are still watching and sadly there are still many victims. 99.6% of participants in these “legal” schemes lose money but they are STILL being promised the world by MLM. And ‘coaching’ scams are just as bad!

[Spongebobette]

New Fred

welcome one and all to bot watching- where we pint out the lies and manipulation by ‘bots’ - those involved in network marketing, coaching etc etc

there is no magic money tree so don’t be fooled!

Waiting for WW's app and Nurse's book is like waiting for the stunning modern glass-box extension that Yawn was planning for the thatch when they first moved in.

@OhMyGiddyAuntWeird Willy’s app was an absolute masterclass in bot thinking wasn’t it?! From memory, he confessed that he hand found a new credit card in his drawer that he hadn’t used because it had arrived during the pandemic. It was perfect timing because he had no money, in fact he had less that no money but had a brilliant idea that would make his non-viable coaching business a complete success - the simple addition of an app! What could possibly go wrong??!

Waiting in the wings was an app developer who wanted money up front, clearly sensing that they were about to design an app for something ridiculous. Before it was even available something went wrong but he had already paid for it. It was after that he disappeared from FB and reappeared on the Insolvency Register.

I wonder if Yawn’s [not an]App has transformed her coaching biz? If so it’s a good thing she paid all that money to register BuildABot!

Oh the grand designs glass box extension!!! I had forgotten that

Brick House With Glass Conservatory was her 2015 Pinterest goal.

A decade later and she has a brick shit house with a bot potty :)

Yawn being rude about her husband. Fancy calling him a massive smeg

In 2015 a mere "glass conservatory" but by the time she'd moved into the thatch it had become something much more impressive....as Spongebobette said, it was more akin to something from Grand Designs (all in her head of course).

It stuck in my head because I live not too far away from Yawn and have personal experience of the local planning department and some of their rather suspect decisions.

Mr Boring Name is keeping his hand in by commenting on the odd FBO private group post, congratulating people. I’m dying to say, ‘glad to see your FB account is now up and running after you were hacked. Why don’t you or your wife post on your own profiles anymore?’.

What is MLM and Botwatch? Don’t understand thread..

Mrs Boring name is regularly commenting on various posts on LinkedIn, but not posting herself. I wonder where they are living?!

I've just been perusing her long forgotten about Thatch Reno page, 10 years in July they will have had lived there.

From FL Product placements and endless frenchic horrors. An 'island' which is a kitchen table, Homesense overload, plastic plants, death trap nicknack stairs, dreamcatchers which have only harboured nightmares and quickfix stick on tiles in bathrooms that will tide them over a year of so whilst they do other jobs...............never completed :( I don't think the driveway has had it's cotswold stone makeover either

And that's not even talking about that roof...

oh yes! the roof and the directors loan hanging above their heads like a macrame heart, about to unravel at any minute. On her thatch account she mentions an expert said the roof is good for 40 years (chinny reckon) I think she is getting confused with dog years.

She either needs to bite the bullet and start paying for some advertising for the current biznizzes to see if she can drum up some trade that way, or get a job. Between the two, she can only be making a few hundred pounds a month. I doubt Mr Yawn's project manager job can be enough to hold prop all four of them up.

@user1471446301 to be honest with the directors loan, unless they are insolvent and owe others money like HMRC etc, she can keep that loan hanging in there within the company indefinitely , especially if she paid the 33% corporation tax for unpaid off directors loans on it at some point - if she didn’t , then if she’s writes it off ( which you can do) she has to pay personal tax on it , and a load of NI , however she can reclaim the company tax she paid - the big issue is whether or not they owe anyone else because if anyone winds it up or she tried to liquidate then a liquidator will want to call that back in to pay debts - and if they have assets would make them sell them

If I was her I would have a cash at tick tock at say £5 a month - but take out any ‘personalised’ work - as if you got thousands you wouldn’t be able to keep it up - it’s risk of course because anyone paying £25 a month will just mover over - as they’ve done a fair bit of work I woukd have a bash at that and try it for 3 months - £5 profit off even 300people will be more than they are getting now

thanks for the clarification!

I agree this is a good idea but she's in a rock and a hard place with existing subscribers but she could like you say remove the personal element, she's no stranger to developing offerings / biznizzes so she could offer "unlucky girl lite" and you're right a few more suckers might take a punt for a fiver.

@user1471446301 didn’t want to sound a bore and you might well be an accountant ! But I do think some people don’t realise this about company’s - the only time directors loans are a really big problem for an individual is if company becomes insolvent - which isn’t that likely in this case if she hasn’t got much turnover or ‘payments out’ -

I think it’s worth a punt - it’s not working as it is so try a ‘lite’ offering - if that doesn’t work then it’s not going to work ‘at all’ - if I was coaching her that’s what I would advise

oh no I appreciate your input you are not a bore! I presume her large 222K debt listed on her accounts is for her mortgage and she is using her directors loan to cover that. The pressure must really be on Mr Yawn to cover all the outgoings on his own and I don't see any provision for her pension in those accounts either.

@user1471446301 it could be all kinds of things, at some point she could have had a lot on balance and drew out a lot for a deposit - I’m not sure if it’s a cumulative balance over lots of years or it suddenly appeared asa big figure . Thing is if you don’t pay it back in within 9 months she will have paid a huge amount of corporation tax on it if it suddenly ‘was all in one go’ or some each year if it’s not cumulative- I’ve not ever looked at her accounts as that to me seems a bit intrusive - thing about directors loans though is they can be there ad infinitum if you keep the company alive , unless the law changes- and if she did pay tax on that amount either as a 1 off or in stages as it added up , it’s not a big deal - you can write them off too , although she would then have a really big NI bill I believe - ( if done correctly) - hence why she’s probably keeping it ‘as it is’

I started looking at her accounts when she started claiming she was 'debt free'!

Interesting she can just keep rolling over the loan and the write off tax, Well I hope she values her accountant and manages to make enough cash to pay them again next year.

@user1471446301 yep you only pay the tax once (33%)! Unless she’s adding to it each year and not paying it off within 9!months in which case she will pay 33% on that additional amount - which only makes sense is she would be paying 40% tax on self assessment by declaring some as dividends ( which can only be done if you are making profits and only up to the amount of your profit post tax)

I know all this kind of crap as I’ve got a business and a directors loan account - although not remotely in this league of size!!

You’d have thought now was the time to think creatively or even realistically wouldn’t you? Unlucky Girl is already “lite” and the “lite lite” TikTok version would be lost in a sea of other vague unfocussed stuff wouldn’t it? I have to hold my hands up to knowing very little about Tik Tok so I may have missed something.

Tik Tok has not provided the positive audience that Yawn likes to have. The last two Tik Tok escapades being the patch selling nightmare and the previous wellness and teetotal guru episode. Both got plenty of backlash from people (other than Botwatchers). The first escapade was panned on a very regular basis by people who had spotted the MLM behind her posts, those who didn’t think she should be dispensing advice and those struggling who commented about their own significant difficulties with alcohol only to be blocked or given a lightweight solution that betrayed her lack of empathy and knowledge. I suspect she doesn’t want to be exposed to a broader audience who don’t comply in the same way as her carefully edited and purchased audience on FB.

The other reason for not trying another approach especially one that is more distant/less personalised is that it doesn’t give her the ego boost that her current way of doing things has traditionally done (albeit with FLP behind her) and this is such a core reason for the current post-FLP world she has constructed around herself. Step outside that and into a job or in front of a broader audience - total panic. She isn’t a creative thinker who can regroup and try something else, she is trapped trying to reproduce that summer of 2015 by doing slight variations of the same old thing.

As for the loan, I realise it’s not simple or necessarily as immediately catastrophic as it looks on paper but I still struggle to see how the sums work. This may be because I am not good at sums and I have to add directors loans to the area marked “stuff I don’t understand” along with Tik Tok and a scarily large amount of other blind spots and knowledge gaps. It seems she has a house (with a mortgage?) that needs some significant money spent on it to a) keep it standing and b) if she needs to sell it. I have always got the impression that the thatch is her Golden Ticket. I live in a similar but older house and they always need significant money spent on them (I’m afraid this is an area I do know about!) as nothing is standard and usually a fair few emergency situations develop that are expensive and need immediate action. Insurance is tricky too as many building insurance companies won’t touch old houses that are thatched or listed leaving the owners at the mercy of those that will insure at a price. Unless there is another source of money it all looks very precarious. Who knows what anyone’s personal financial situation is but it sure doesn’t look like MLM has delivered on the promises it made her.