Happy 106th Birthday to the Legendary J. Earl Shoaff !

I pulled the following post below from my friend Ron Henleys Facebook page. If you don’t follow Ron on Facebook, you should, he is my opinion the number one historia in network marketing. If I have a question about the history of network markeing Ron Henley is my go to guy. The dark italic text are my personal comments and not part of Ron’s original post.

>>>Network Marketing History<<106 years ago today, John Earl Shoaff was born in Point Grove, Pennsylvania with no idea just how much of an impact he would have, and continues to have, in the lives of untold millions of people.

At age 37, he found himself in Long Beach, California, working at Desmond’s department store as a pants presser, earning $100 bucks per week. His neighbor, Marvin Wendt, had invited him several times to an upcoming lecture on success by Napoleon Hill mentee, Dr. J. B. Jones. Finally, only to get Marvin off of his back, he decided to go and what he heard that night set him on the path to his destiny. I wonder what happened to Marvin Wendt?

That night, Earl was introduced to Jones’ fledgling nutritional supplement company called Abundavita and joined on the spot. There, he met Rich Schnackenberg, who had been recruited by Jones because of his massive success with Nutrilite.

(Quick side story) Five years earlier (1948) Schnackenberg had joined Nutrilite and quickly built one of, if not THE largest organizations in the company. Future Amway founders Jay Van Andel and Rich DeVos joined Nutrilite in 1949 under Schnackenberg’s organization.

In 1945, Lee Mytinger and Bill Casselberry had signed an agreement with Carl Rehnborg becoming exclusive national distributors for Nutrilite. Seeing Schnackenberg’s massive success, Lee and Bill started using his organization training and concepts throughout the company.

At first, Schnackenberg was elated, but Mytinger and Casselberry got greedy and started doing things Schnackenberg knew would turn out badly. Schnackenberg had several meetings with Rehnborg, outlining his concerns, but Rehnborg refused to do anything. Schnackenberg was so distraught, he offered to buy the company from Rehnborg but he refused.
The greed and ego of distributors and companies is the only thing that can bring down a booming network marketing organization. It has always been that way, and it always will be. The two things all network marketing distributors must always speak out against is greed and ego.

Unhappy with what they were doing with the company, he didn’t resign but he stopped actively building. Dr. Jones, watching all of this unfold, recruited Schnackenberg, offering him free reign to build Abundavita the way he wanted to. (Now back to the main story)

Under Rich’s mentorship, Earl quickly rose to VP of sales. The two men became best friends and traveled the country together for Abundavita. Using Jones’ success lecture strategy followed by an Abundavita opportunity meeting, the company exploded .It was at one of those meetings, in Pensacola, Florida, where a 25 year old Jim Rohn attended and another legend was born. It was after resigning from Abundavita (what a story that is!) and starting their own supplement company called Nutri-Bio where the two men really kicked it into high gear and created what the newspapers of the time called “A national mania.

“Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar, William E. Bailey, Bobby DePew, William Penn Patrick, and so many others were directly mentored by Shoaff and Schnackenberg, creating the legends and icons that created more legends and icons.We’ll stop the story there for now but let’s all give a huge shout out to Earl Shoaff today, on his 106th birthday, and to celebrate his place in network marketing history!

END OF RON’S POST

RARE HOW TO BECOME A MILLIONAIRE RECORDING BY EARL SHOAFF